Outside Screening: Jakob Trollbäck, Trollbäck & Co

I had the opportunity to go to the Jakob Trollbäck event for my last outside screening. It was hosted by the Art Department so it was a little different than doc–or narrative, for that matter–but relevant, nonetheless. Basically, it was a series of visual art pieces that his company, Trollbäck & Co, composed for various large companies, including Nike, AMC, HBO, Fox Searchlight, etc. in after effects. The event really made me look at my film degree differently, in that I may also explore various additional outlets to make a living.

First, Jakob started with his life story/background. He did not receive any formal training and was completely self-taught. He is from Sweden originally, but moved to New York City. He eventually opened his own company, with about 15-20 staff members and various free-lancers, to create a very successful multi-media/visual arts company. He did a short presentation, about 10-15 minutes, on his childhood and interests. It was an interesting power point with various photos of his past, music, and artists that inspired him growing up. Then, he went into a presentation of all the work he had completed. It was about 45 minutes of impressive pieces, including commercials, opening film sequences, and animation clips. Lastly, Jakob took questions from the audience.

I can say that although Jakob was very dry and, at times, boring. (Note to Trollbäck & Co PR monitoring: sorry!) But overall, his presentation was very helpful and intriguing. It put me out of my normal space of narrative and doc, and shooting and editing. It showed me other paths I have the option of pursuing if I so choose, that my degree is marketable, and that my classes trained me very well for a multitude of paths. I really enjoyed seeing Jakob speak. Now the step: Take on Aftereffects.

AFS Screening: Alan Berliner’s Intimate Stranger

So I was not looking forward to posting about the Austin Film Society screening of Intimate Stranger because I am torn on my reaction. On the one hand, what a great opportunity to see such an influential documentarian. On the other, I think I pumped myself up too much for a mediocre film and, thus, was severely disappointed. The snobby-film-student in me says to say “oh, it was so good. it was experimental and avante-garde and real and gritty” and blah-blah-blah. But the film-lover in me says “yeah, that was just boring.”

So…Okay, here goes…

Strengths: Certainly, Berliner’s strength in editing is shown in this feature. The typewriter device, which he said was a narrative thread to hold the fim together structurally, was definitely a good choice. His committment to editing is impressive, as well. After all, he did assemble this film from all home videos, pictures, letters, and audio interviews. This film certainly explains where his heavy reliance on editing comes from in his later films. The thing I find the most interesting about his editing style is that it still has an experimental feel while remaining clean, crisp, and almost “invisible.” In the shorts, he tells a story through archival images–by juxtaposing opposite but related moving images–and he lets the audience come up with the story in their minds. I love film maker’s who do this.

Weaknesses: Mainly, his subject. The grandfather’s story is interesting…but nothing that couldn’t be acheived by focusing on another family member. His personality is unappealing…this subject has no emotional appeal to the audience because all we, the veiwers, have is stories told by his family members…and let’s just say they don’t do very much for him as a human. Even if he is a “bad person,” Berliner could have given us somethign to connect with and something to route for. But then you just get into ethics of staying true to the subject and questions of how does one define a bad person. And to that I say… GET A NEW SUBJECT.

But, what’s done is done.

Or finished, I should say. This isn’t a baked treat, after all. Or is it?!

Dark Days is a MUST check out this semester!!

I strongly urge everyone to check out Mark Singer’s Dark Days from Ellen if you have not already done so. I am about to sit down for the 4th time this week to watch it, no joke. It won the audience award at Sundance in 2000 and you’ll know why when you see it. The documentary tells the story of an underground community of homeless people living in the tunnels of New York’s Penn Station, with free electricity, a neighborhood of shacks, and a population of 90% crack addicts. Signer documents four primary subjects and their struggles living in poverty and captures the spirit of each protagonist quite eloquently. It is a small glimpse into the microcosm of the ultimate hardship and the human experience.

It. is. OUT. STANDING. As for my thoughts:

Singer’s Aesthetic: This director made a feature-length film using all 16mm, so you can imagine how much he spent on film and processing; but it was absolutely necessary to his aesthetic that he did so. The picture is dark, grainy, and dirty with what seems like one primary light–this immediately shows the viewer what living in the tunnel might actually be like. I can see why he chose to do this: (1) it is a story one wouldn’t want to see this in color and (2) perfectly portrays how one living in the tunnel might actually see the world..distorted and messy. Additionally, the directer truly has a talent for creating a narrative arc in the construction of his film. As a narrative person, I could see where exactly the act breaks could be if if were to be a narrative film; not to mention, the climactic montage that is not short of breath taking.

Singer’s ethics: In relation to the protagonist’s condition, the viewer really get’s a sense of the director’s ethics in remaining true to reality. For one, Singer rarely chooses to interject and simply let’s the subjects talk. We see silence in their awkward pauses, vulnerabilities in their jokes, and honesty in their dialogue. Whereas a Michael Moore film shows manipulative film techniques, Singer simply let’s the story unfold before the viewer’s eyes and really leaves it up to his subjects to tell their own story. This allows us to connect with each person on a personal level and we start routing for their safety and survival all the way until they reveal their inner-most struggles; it creates a moment that could bring you to tears.

Dark Days is one of those films that you want to show to everyone because it is so effective and powerful. It is my favorite documentary I have seen all semester and it will be hard to top. Mark Singer is who I strive to be as a student documentarian, in terms of aesthetic, structure, and ethics.

At the Austin Film Festival: Poliwood

So I had one of the best experiences of my life at the festival this year and got to listen and speak to many industry professionals. Not to mention, see many potential Oscar films and films to be released in the coming months. All in all, I probably saw about 30 films with directors/producers in attendance for almost every one. But one of my favorite screenings was Barry Levinson’s ‘Poliwood’…and here is why:

1. Thematically: This film was simple, yet once the layers were revealed it became complex and deep. On the surface, it is a commentary on how Hollywood actors influence politics, but then evolves into how the political arena has been Hollywoodized  and politicians are now having to deal with media attention equal to actors–all while trying to run a country. The doc touches on how simple and respectful politics was before television, how internet is changing it, and how it has now become a blood bath of aesthetics, schemes, and tricks. It is bi-partisan and smart. And certainly, it is postmodern in it’s commentary on the rapid, information-overloaded society in which we live.

2. Storyline: It follows a group of political actors and their struggles as artists coupled with their passion for politics, especially in a world where the mass population believes they should not be vocal about an arena they are not educated on. Many believe actors abuse their power about being too vocal about their favorite candidates/issues and resent them for it. Hollywood actors struggle with this insecurity and the inner conflict they have to become more educated and vocal. They want to use their unique voice that society has granted them, but feel hushed at the same time…especially in a world where so much information is being thrown at us that we can’t possibly be 100% educated on any given subject.

3. Structure/Aesthetics: The opening sequence sets up a personal doc, with a constructed 1950s sequence and Levinson addressing us on the TV. Then we are taken to the present day, where Levinson embarks on his journey. For the majority of the time, the doc follows a group of actors on their trip to the DNC; with a smaller segment devoted to the RNC. Admittedly, this film is a little of a liberal bias but it does a good job of trying to stay bi-partisan. After each National Political Convention is presented, we get into a broader social commentary that brings us to a political dialogue between the Hollywood actors and the common American. It is perfectly structured and the production value is high. This is definitely the type of film I can see getting picked up by a distributor.

Hopefully, Ellen will screen this in the class.

Tupac is my new homie (in heaven, of course) ((i hope))

I have to say…I’ve always enjoyed Tupac’s music, and there is certainly a social awareness and commentary in his lyrics, but I never got to know the man behind the words. This documentary was enlightening and entertaining. Of course because of the MTV style of production. But, moreover, because Tupac’s story speaks for itself. I do always find myself very interested in the MTV documentary because it never lets the viewer get complacent or bored. And while Tupac’s story kind of escaped me since I wasn’t into hip-hop or gansta rap when I was in elementary school, it was good to see that such a controversial and influential person emerged during the period of the 1990s. From his family life and ties to the Blac Panther party coupled with his fine education at arts academies, it seemed obvious (through the narrative) that Tupac would become successful in whatever he chose to pursue. I’m just glad it was entertainment, instead of drugs. He is a textbook example of an African-American minority who would fall into the lifestyle of poverty (and he undoubtedly lived portions of his life irresponsibly in this respect) but he didn’t. Instead, he became a voice of racial inequality. But I’d like to focus on the paradoxical way he went about it…and I felt like it hurt him more than helped him. While he prided himself on “being real” and delivered socially conscious lyrics, he made decisions in his personal life that sometimes furthered the stereotype of black man as predator (e.g. the rape incident & multiple run ins with the law). But he did say that he “wouldn’t change the world, but plant the seeds for change”. And he did, in a way, but should have in a more tactful way. For one, he was arrogant and had no verbal filter whatsoever and chose to say whatever came out of his mouth; I can certainly appreciate brutal honesty and “being real” but I wish he didn’t stick his foot in his mouth so much. I almost wanted him to adopt a more diplomatic approach to bringing light to issues of police brutality, poverty, and racial inequality; I think he would have reached more people and engendered better and quicker change.

I did appreciate how honestly the documentarian chose to portray Tupac, though.

I will stop ranting now.

What in Tarnation??!

In an effort to “research” my documentary on gay adoption and the Guatemalan adoption industry, I felt it was suitable to watch a doc this week that hits on similar themes. But Jonathan Caoulette’s personal documentary as breathtaking as it was effective; it was elegant but raunchy, experimental but structured, traditional yet pornographic. What a boundary breaker! No wonder Sundance and Cannes picked this project up.

Okay, enough with the ostentation.

Well, maybe not…

(I’m so pretentious)

I couldn’t help but think about Tarnation when reading Rabiger this week; specifically, his section on how content influences form. While most working in the arts (e.g. narrative film makers) control their own content and form, the “documentarian is more like a mosiac artist who works from the idosyncratic, chance-influenced nature of found materials” (Rabiger 322). For a documentary film maker relies on the real life to shape her or his aesthetic/style. One’s style is limited along the journey and yet exemplified at the same time.

Caoulette’s Tarnation is a paragon of Rabiger’s paradoxical notion of content and style. Digging deep into his past, Caoulette had to rely on old photographs and text to tell his story (especially for the exposition portion). In doing so, I found myself–the spectator–surprisingly more interested in these tidbits, as if the film maker said “hey, this is important and entertaining.” Ironically, these parts were the most interesting narrative elements–like if I missed these parts, I would miss out on the story…thus causing me to pay even more attention during these sequences. Just one example of how Caoulette used limitations to exemplify his own style of content & form.

Additionally, the psychedelic, drug-like aesthetic made it his own; but moreover, the raw footage he choose to include made limitations look more like opportunities. For instance, the footage of his mother refusing to talk about the tough issue of growing up in a mentally and physically abusive household must’ve looked like wasted footage in the editing room. Yet, Caoulette chose to include it (even though he ironically references his “stupid film”) and then take it step further by juxtaposing it with home footage from her father/his grandfather; which creates for what, in my mind, is the most affective narrative moment in the entire film. This just goes to show how potentially limiting footage can be used a powerful narrative technique.

If you have not seen this film, please check it out. There is a reason Roger Ebert chose to invest $400,000 in this project.

‘Body of War’ (dir. Spiro & Donahue)

I just finished watching Ellen’s ‘Body of War’ and…wow. It was pretty powerful. Since we’ve been watching so many hybrid docs, you’d think these would be more effective in playing on our emotions and really getting us to empathizing with the characters; and they were, I definitely found myself effected by the characters in Waltz with Bashir & Road to Guantanamo. But watching a true documentary like this one, where we follow a paraplegic Iraq vet, and being brought–literally–to tears at certain points shows how a traditional documentary done well can still be more effective than a narrative documentary. I don’t want to tell you these specific moments that did this to me, because that would give you impossible expectations when you do see it for yourself, and you SHOULD. This movie is amazing. But I do have some issues:

First, choosing to follow this specific Iraq war veteran (Thomas Young) was a keen and certainly effective decision in showing how our previous president and party-in-power at the time were acting purely out of gut and paranoia to fight an unjustified war. But I found myself not identifying with the character some of the time because he was a little too liberally biased. I still empathized with  him, how could you not? He lost motor functions in the entire lower half of his body and we see how drastically his lifestyle changed for the worse throughout every moment of the film. But some of the footage Spiro chose to edit in gave Thomas an extremist aura at times. Granted, he is very disheartened and angry at a president who “did this to him”; additionally, he has symptoms of PTSD that cause him to lash out in certain ways…but it seemed at little much at points. In the sense that it would not appeal to a broader audience, i.e. a more moderate/conservative one. And I know, Ellen, that is it important and unavoidable to not put your personal politics into a documentary of this nature…but I feel his handicap did all the speaking for this. And choosing to put this footage in brought it a little bit over the top. I’d like to get your thoughts on why you chose to do this and if you foresaw a viewer reacting this way.

Second, I would have liked to see more archival footage. It seemed like we were following two integrated story lines: I growing partisan debate on the war in Iraq and Thomas’ story. And they both came full circle in the end with the interview between Sen. Byrd and Thomas in the end. MAN…powerful ending. I would have liked to see more interviews with other talking heads, though. We did see interviews with people at the anti-war protest and I liked that. You certainly run the risk of becoming too unfocused by including more random interviews, but if you do it effectively it gives the documentary a more broad appeal in the sense that this war is affecting more than just Thomas (and those like him). I would have liked to see how its going to affect me; and I will credit the doc in that the House/Senatorial debate addressed this on some level (e.g. “These are your sons who are going to fight/die for your country”).

Finally, I was astounded by the filmmaker’s ethos that was oozing out of the screen when watching this film. You could see it in the interviews with Thomas and his loved ones and how comfortable they were, you could see it in filming style, you could see it in the intimate footage Ellen chose to include. We see Thomas go through a full dramatic arch to come to a place where his handicap dictates his personal relationships for the worse. Not only do we see it take a sad toll on his romantic life, but his functional-everyday life too. We are shown some graphic and challenging footage on how his mother has to help him put his catheter on; a truly emasculating thing, I can imagine. And for his brother to still want to go to Iraq despite Thomas’ injuries is heartbreaking. Ellen & Phil did a perfect job in showing us these things, not simply talking about them. It was extremely effective.

Overall, well done. Please see this film and let me know you guys’ thoughts. You’d be doing yourself a disservice to not borrow this one from Ellen.

[Ryan]

Road to Guantanamo..wait, there’s a road that runs from the middle east to Cuba?!

After much researching through the magic google machine, I have come to the conclusion that there is NO road that runs from Afghanistan to Cuba. My first thought was that this title is very misleading, but then I realized that I may have gotten a more literal reading than the film’s title intended.

On a more serious note…

I enjoyed this film a lot. Although, I think because of my experience only in narrative film making that am partial to the hybrid documentary. Here are some on my issues:

First and finally, although I was partial to the believable reenactments of true events I did find myself questioning its authenticity at times. Whereas in a narrative film this isn’t an issue since it is an outright admission to its fictional world, the narrative doc has problems as this tends to undermine it’s credibility. Maybe this is because of the strict definition that limits documentary to a “treatment of reality” and thus our expectations for it are different. But in our postmodern world, the issue of authenticity is becoming less and less relevant anyway (but that’s another discussion in itself). I especially started to raise questions about authenticity when the narrative feel started to overpower the documentary feel…this happened somewhere towards the middle. When Michael Winterbottom chose to eliminate the talking heads altogether (something that undoubtedly keeps the doc in the documentary realm), I started to question if the events taking place on screen were actually real. This undoubtedly sparks an uneasy feeling within the viewer simply because it is a docudrama…but should it? I started to ask myself questions about what is really real; whether perception and reality were even aligned; and, even so, if our individual perceptions (or how we construct and reconstruct the world) were even accurate representations of the world? I don’t think a traditional documentary would raise these questions in the viewer’s mind. That’s why I have a problem with someone saying that this documentary is a sympathetic, true account of how individual liberties were taken by the evils of the American government. I do not doubt that this happened and continues to happen, but you do have to account for the fact that the subjects may exaggerate this fact, then the film maker, and so on. It’s important to remember that everyone views the world through different lenses, terministic screens if you will (to be ostentatious about it). And the film maker and the subject are not immune to this. I can’t help but think of the story of catching the fish, and how it gets bigger each time the story gets passed a long from one person to another. Bad metaphor?

I would write more, but I feel like this concept is controversial enough on its own and I hope to hear what you guys think about my perception.

[Ryan]

Waltz and Bashir…no moral dilemma here

My absolute favorite thing about this film is the bang it both began and ended with. Personally, I belief the hallmark of a powerful film is one that grabs your attention from the get-go and drives it home with a challenging, somewhat open-ended, and intensely thought-provoking ending (in narrative and documentary). This is exactly what Waltz and Bashir did; in a very interesting way, too. The animation the film begins with–with the dogs running through the city, controlling humans with intimidation and fear–is a inarguably a spectacle in itself. Additionally, the sound design takes it to the next level. The intensity of the music and sound design really took this opening sequence to a powerful place. I remember thinking, actually, that I had to have this soundtrack. Fast forward to the closing sequence to where we are bombarded with an impoverished woman screaming in a crowd of chaos–it really drives it all home and brings the film in a full circle. I couldn’t help but think back to the beginning scene and parallel her terror with that of the dogs. Even more amazing was the fact that I was juxtaposing these two sequences in my mind even though one was animated and one was actual footage.

I guess there is the whole issue of the hybrid animation-narrative documentary being a moral violation. For me, this was not a problem. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. I think the direction acknowledged that it was not only a biased Israeli account of the conflict, but also the surrealism of the whole film. It certainly had moments where reality came into question, specifically with the dreamlike and flashback sequences. The viewer was not exactly sure what was real and what was a dream, but that’s what make it so cool. It is history unfolding in a PTSD mind, so of course it’s not going to all be exactly real or realistic. This concept was very Freudian and speaks for each our our individual perceptions and how we see and then construct the world around us. It really makes us think about the human psyche and raises deeper philosophical about what is really real? So for me, it was more of an issue of authenticity than moral dilemma.

My absolute favorite thing about this film is the bang it both began and ended with. Personally, I belief the hallmark of a powerful film is one that grabs your attention from the get-go and drives it home with a challenging, somewhat open-ended, and intensely thought-provoking ending (in narrative and documentary). This is exactly what Waltz and Bashir did; in a very interesting way, too. The animation the film begins with–with the dogs running through the city, controlling humans with intimidation and fear–is a inarguably a spectacle in itself. Additionally, the sound design takes it to the next level. The intensity of the music and sound design really took this opening sequence to a powerful place. I remember thinking, actually, that I had to have this soundtrack. Fast forward to the closing sequence to where we are bombarded with an impoverished woman screaming in a crowd of chaos–it really drives it all home and brings the film in a full circle. I couldn’t help but think back to the beginning scene and parallel her terror with that of the dogs. Even more amazing was the fact that I was juxtaposing these two sequences in my mind even though one was animated and one was actual footage.

I guess there is the whole issue of the hybrid animation-narrative documentary being a moral violation. For me, this was not a problem. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. I think the direction acknowledged that it was not only a biased Israeli account of the conflict, but also the surrealism of the whole film. It certainly had moments where reality came into question, specifically with the dreamlike and flashback sequences. The viewer was not exactly sure what was real and what was a dream, but that’s what make it so cool. It is history unfolding in a PTSD mind, so of course it’s not going to all be exactly real or realistic. This concept was very Freudian and speaks for each our our individual perceptions and how we see and then construct the world around us. It really makes us think about the human psyche and raises deeper philosophical about what is really real? So for me, it was more of an issue of authenticity than moral dilemma.

Ryan