Category: 4. Joe Bendel

LFM Reviews I Am Sun Mu @ DOC NYC 2015

IAmSunMu2By Joe Bendel. In the post-Warhol era, Sun Mu is one of the few (perhaps only) artists who shuns the media as well as the trappings of fame. He has good reason. As a defector from North Korea, he must be secretive, for reasons of survival. Even his professional name is a pseudonym, meaning “no boundaries.” Despite the differences in their circumstances and styles, it is not impossible to compare him to Ai Weiwei. It was therefore quite a surprise when he was invited to mount a solo show in China. Adam Sjöberg chronicles the artist’s eventful visit while scrupulously protecting his identity in I A Sun Mu, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

You might think you know exactly where this story is headed and you will be correct, except there is way, way more to it. Not surprisingly, Sun Mu’s work is controversial in South Korea (he bristles at the term “pop art,” but it is handy shorthand in this context). Through a strange chain of events, Sun Mu befriended Chinese-Korean artist Cui Xiangi, who introduced him to Liang Ke-gang, the curator of the Yuan Museum of Art in Beijing. Being extraordinarily brave and maybe a bit naïve, Liang proposed a one-man exhibition to Sun Mu. Although mindful of the considerable risks, the prestige involved was too significant to turn down.

Thanks to Liang’s hospitality, the early days in China were quite pleasant for Sun Mu, his South Korean wife, and their young daughters. However, as the opening day approaches, tension rises. In addition to the usual last minute crunch, Sun Mu and Liang worry the Chinese government will disrupt their plans at the request of their North Korean allies. Had the Party allowed the show to proceed, their critics would have had to give them credit and eat crow. Unfortunately, that plate of crow will have to wait for another day. If anything, the Chinese authorities and North Korean enforcers exceed our expectations, in the worst way possible.

Like a quarterback facing a ferocious pass rush, Sjöberg stays in the pocket, capturing the ugliness of censorship and thuggery as it unfolds. That alone gives the film scalding power. However, Sjöberg also fully explores the implications of Sun Mu’s life and art. In many ways, he is one of the luckier defectors, who has been able to de-program his “brainwashing,” start a loving family, and build an impressive career. His stories of life in the DPRK are absolutely harrowing, but his exile also comes with deep sadness. Yet, he has no nostalgia for the Kim Dynasty, whom he explicitly blames for the North Koreans’ suffering.

From "I Am Sun Mu."
From “I Am Sun Mu.”

Throughout the film, Sjöberg films Sun Mu from behind or obscured by shadows, which might sound distractingly awkward, but actually gives the film a distinctively noir vibe. He truly immerses viewers in Sun Mu’s work, which Ryan Wehner literally brings to life through elegant animated sequences. As a result, even though we never see Sun Mu directly, the audience will feel they intimately understand the artist.

Among documentaries, I Am Sun Mu is a rare breed apart that manages to be visually stylish and gutsy as all get-out. Frankly, the last half hour is like one cold bucket of water to the face after another. Yet, it is ultimately a deeply humanist cinematic experience. Easily ranking as the best of this year’s DOC NYC and one of the best films currently on the festival circuit, I Am Sun Mu screens in New York this Sunday (11/15) at the Bow Tie Chelsea and Tuesday (11/17) at the IFC Center, as well as next Friday (11/20) and the following Saturday (11/21) as part of the 2015 Hawaii International Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A+

Posted on November 13th, 2015 at 12:41pm.

LFM Reviews On the Rim of the Sky @ DOC NYC 2015

By Joe Bendel. By now, Westerners know to be wary whenever do-gooder activists show up offering their services out of the goodness of their hearts. A provincial Chinese primary school teacher learns that lesson the hard way in one of the most isolated schools in the world. Xu Hongjie documented every agonizing step of the resulting clash of values and personalities in On the Rim of the Sky, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

You know what they say about the Road to Hell? Well, in this case, it is debatable just how good the Che Guevara-idolizing Bao Tangtao’s intentions really are. Regardless, it is safe to say he enjoys getting praised for his supposed altruism. In contrast, “Teacher Shen” Qijun has been content to quietly plug away as the only teacher students of Gulu village have known for the last twenty-five years. However, because Shen only has a middle school diploma, the educational bureaucracy classifies him as a substitute teacher. As a result, he has earned a pittance compared to so-called full time teachers.

Since Gulu is literally built into the side of a treacherous cliff face, Shen has been the only teacher willing to stay in the mountain village. Initially, he welcomed the help offered by Bao and his colleagues from an Americorps style non-profit, but it was clear the “volunteers” were more interested in taking bows than actually teaching, right from the start. Unfortunately, Shen also flashes his temper a little too freely, resulting in a bitter and prolonged conflict between the two. Frustratingly, most of the village apparently sides with Bao and his cronies, because they can bring the development funds. Despite the official complaints they convince the villagers to file, Shen has one trump card in their power struggle—he controls the school’s bank account.

Rim is one of the most draining, disillusioning films you will see all year. Xu resists playing favorites between Shen and Bao, but she simply catches the latter in too many unflattering moments to maintain an air of neutrality. Plus, the bitterly ironic implications of the closing scene are impossible to miss.

From "On the Rim of the Sky."
From “On the Rim of the Sky.”

The drama Xu records is massively real and the stakes are hugely significant. Yet, just the act of filming in Gulu represented a serious challenge. It is about as accessible as Shangri-La, but that vivid sense of place further distinguishes Rim from equally disenchanting but dingier looking independent Chinese documentaries.

Rim plays like a collaboration between Jia Zhangke and Arthur Miller, but it is all real life happening. It is a real feat of nonfiction filmmaking that will make you gasp in several different ways. Xu’s multi-year investment pays off in spades with a film that will ultimately turn your stomach to ice. Very highly recommended, On the Rim of the World screens this Sunday morning (11/15) at the IFC Center, as part of DOC NYC ’15.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on November 13th, 2015 at 12:40pm.

LFM Reviews Gil Scott-Heron: Black Wax

GilScottHeronBlackWaxBy Joe Bendel. It is profoundly sad watching Gil Scott-Heron in his prime, knowing how terribly he would struggle with drugs in his later years. Of course, the gifted artist who sabotaged a potentially long and fruitful career through substance abuse is one of the oldest stories in jazz. However, Scott-Heron was supposed to be the heir to Oscar Brown, Jr., shining a light on the nation’s urban pathologies with his socially conscious lyrics. Instead, he was largely undone by the very dangers and malaise he decried. Happily, it is the forceful Scott-Heron music documentarian Robert Mugge captured in performance at a DC club and pontificating on the streets of the capitol in Gil Scott-Heron: Black Wax, which releases today on DVD as part of MVD’s Mugge reissue program.

Many consider Scott-Heron the forefather of rap, but his concert at the Black Wax club is very much in a jazz bag, albeit a decidedly funky one, thanks to the bluesy guitar work of Ed Brady and a swinging horn line featuring Ron Holloway. Even though Scott-Heron has plenty to say, he and his band definitely keep everyone’s toes tapping. If only all protest songs were as groovy as “Johannesburg.”

You can better see why Scott-Heron is considered an apostolic link to rap and hip hop in the monologues and poetry he recites during various DC location shoots. Again, the talent is clear to see. Frankly, Scott-Heron could have easily pursued a stand-up comedy career, in the Richard Pryor-George Carlin tradition. Unfortunately, his political commentary is so dated, it is truly painful. Seriously, he offers up chestnuts like Ronald “Ray-Gun,” the actor playing the role of president. From a post-Cold War, Twenty-First Century vantage point, even William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech holds up better.

From "Gil Scott-Heron: Black Wax."
From “Gil Scott-Heron: Black Wax.”

Fortunately, the music still grooves. Despite his crossover jazz-soul-funk status, Scott-Hero could really swing a band. He also had a sly delivery that suited his hipster-prophet persona quite well. Clearly, the Black Wax concert is the main attraction, but Mugge has a keen eye for ironic backdrops. The wax museum sequences are particularly surreal, in a playful sort of way.

It is a shame Scott-Heron’s demons did not allow him to fully capitalize on his stature as a crossover jazz great in the 1990s and 2000s. Such opportunities might have challenged some of his hard left preconceptions, but they also would have helped spread awareness of his music. Instead, Scott-Heron will largely be remembered as he is seen in Mugge’s film, which makes it a rather important snapshot. A must-see for fans and a good time for anyone with ears for jazz-funk (even with the polemical interruptions), Gil Scott-Heron is now available again from MVD on DVD and BluRay.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on November 13th, 2015 at 12:40pm.

LFM Reviews Rock in the Red Zone

By Joe Bendel. Sderot ought to be known as Israel’s Seattle, considering how many earthy and influential Israeli rock bands have hailed from there. Unfortunately, the constant rocket attacks from Gaza have thus far frightened off potential music tourists. By the time filmmaker Laura Bialis arrived, seven thousand so-called Qassam rockets had already pummeled the city of some 20,000 citizens—and Hamas was only getting started. However, Bialis would not be dissuaded from documenting the Sderot scene in Rock in the Red Zone, which opens this Thursday in New York.

A Qassam is basically a flying pipe bomb loaded with shrapnel. From a legitimate military perspective, they are too unpredictable for practical use, but they are perfect for inflicting pain on innocent civilians. Of course, that is exactly why Hamas and their fellow terrorists use them. When Bialis started filming in Sderot, the city was just inside the so-called Red Zone, making it ground zero for Qassam attacks. Thanks to the alert system, Sderot residences had fifteen seconds to find shelter after a launch was detected (that’s fifteen Mississippi’s). Eventually, other cities started to feel Sderot’s pain, but for years, Qassam attacks were a perversely localized phenomenon. Music became the coping mechanism for a deeply traumatized city.

RockintheRedZoneFor Bialis and many young Sderot musicians, it all starts with Sderock, a club and rehearsal studio conveniently located in a bomb shelter. You had better get used to seeing concrete reinforced basements. Bialis’s filming is interrupted at least dozen times (probably more) by launch warnings. None of it was included for effect. It is simply impossible to make a documentary in Sderot without the sound of explosions.

Avi Vaknin, the proprietor of Sderock, will introduce Bialis to a host of diverse musicians calling Sderot (and its outskirts) home. In many ways, their brand of rock incorporating what could be described as world music influences has conquered the Israeli mainstream, yet at that point, Sderot still felt isolated and forgotten. Since both were looking for flats, Vaknin and Bialis became housemates—and life continued, despite the constant raining terror.

Bialis is a world class documentarian who previously made the outstanding Refusenik, but the immediacy and emotional resonance of Red Zone is something else entirely. Literally years in the making, it witnesses over a decade of Israeli history from the perspective of the bullseye in the center of Hamas’s target. At times it is harrowing, but it is also funny and deeply passionate, particularly the music.

Without a doubt, Red Zone is the feel-good, get-angry, and get-down movie of the year. When it is over, you will have seen a heck of a lot of life happening and far too much tragedy. Very highly recommended, Rock in the Red Zone opens this Thursday (11/12) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on November 12th, 2015 at 9:25pm.

LFM Reviews Steve McQueen: the Man and Le Mans

By Joe Bendel. Steve McQueen helped finance and appeared in the Oscar-nominated On Any Sunday, which remains the preeminent motorcycle documentary to this day. He had something similar in mind for Le Mans. However, the rest of the cast and crew thought they were making a dramatic narrative. Those are what are generally termed creative differences. There were quite a few going on behind-the-scenes of the 1971 film. The difficult production process as well as the eternally cool actor’s passion for the sport are chronicled in John McKenna & Gabriel Clarke’ Steve McQueen: the Man and Le Mans, which opens this Friday in New York.

Le Mans is the oldest endurance contest in car racing—twenty-four hours circling the picturesque French village. As McQueen envisioned it, Le Mans would give viewers a vivid, tactile sense of what it was like to drive the course at speeds over 200 miles per hour. Like Paul Newman (who finished second at Le Mans in 1979), McQueen was a legit racer in his own right, but for insurance reasons, he was not allowed to compete in the actual race. However, much of what driver Jonathan Williams’ camera car recorded during that year’s Le Mans was incorporated into the film. They had the authenticity nailed down, but they lacked a script.

SteveMcQueenManLeMansIt quickly becomes apparent from the rediscovered “making of” footage and interviews with the surviving participants, Le Mans could be considered something like McQueen’s Apocalypse Now. It ballooned way over budget and severed several of McQueen’s professional relationships. During the chaotic shoot, McQueen’s marriage to cabaret-musical theater performer Neile Adams also collapsed. However, causal fans might be most surprised to learn McQueen was already under stress following revelations the Manson Family had specifically targeted him. In fact, he was expected to join his friend Jason Sebring at Sharon Tate’s home on that horrific night.

For a film about the need for speed, Man and Le Mans is surprisingly calm and contemplative, even with McQueen’s son Chad doing his best to liven things up with attitude and enthusiasm. Still, McKenna & Clarke include plenty of ironic anecdotes and fully capture a holistic sense of the actor, the race, and the challenging film. They even score a pretty significant scoop, vouched for by McQueen’s former personal assistant Mario Iscovich (a great interview) and Louise Edlind, the sort-of lead actress, who would later be elected to Sweden’s parliament.

It’s not Bullitt, but Man and Le Mans is still a good movie for auto enthusiasts. Arguably, McKenna & Clarke’s Zen-like approach works quite well, especially considering how their use of ghostly audio interviews recorded with McQueen shortly before his death gives the film such an elegiac vibe. If you like motor sports and classic Hollywood, Man and Le Mans would make a terrific triple feature with Winning: the Racing Life of Paul Newman and Weekend of a Champion, featuring Roman Polanski. All three are quite entertaining, even if you are more interested in the famous drivers than their fast cars. Recommended for McQueen fans, Steve McQueen: the Man and Le Mans opens this Friday (11/13) in New York, at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on November 11th, 2015 at 7:34pm.

LFM Reviews The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith @ DOC NYC 2015

JazzLoftAccordingtoWEugeneSmith2

By Joe Bendel. It was the jazz loft scene before the “Loft Jazz Scene.” In the mid-1970s, downtown lofts like Sam Rivers’ Studio Rivbea were an important venue for the fiery Free Jazz artists that were not getting commercial club bookings. They were sort of following in the tradition of W. Eugene Smith, who hosted round-the-clock jam sessions in his Flower District living space from 1957 to 1965. As a professional photographer and amateur reel-to-reel tape-recorder, Smith documented a great deal of the music and the comings and goings of the musicians drawn to his scene. Treasures from his chaotic archive are revealed in Sara Fishko’s The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith, the documentary component of WNYC’s multimedia Jazz Loft project, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

In the late 1950s, Smith was widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading photo-essayists, but like a good jazz musician, he badly mismanaged his career. Although not a musician himself, he shared a natural affinity for jazz artists, like his neighbor, Hall Overton. If jazz fans are having trouble placing that name, Overton was an accomplished jazz and classical composer who co-led sessions for Prestige with Jimmy Raney and Teddy Charles. He also arranged Thelonius Monk’s compositions for a ten-piece orchestra performance at Town Hall. Naturally, they rehearsed those demanding charts at the Sixth Avenue loft space, where Smith duly recorded them at work.

Fittingly, one of the musicians Fishko interviews is the great Freddie Redd, featured in both the Off-Broadway production of Jack Gelber’s The Connection and Shirley Clarke’s film adaptation. Indeed, its fictional narrative seems not so very far removed from events that transpired there. Unfortunately, that included heroin use, as drummer Ronnie Free explains in detail.

There is a lot of great music in Jazz Loft, but Fishko also gives Smith his due as a photographer. Thanks to his painstaking printing techniques, the contrast between light and shadow in Smith’s black-and-white images is often resembles Renaissance painting. In some ways, the film also functions as a time capsule, incorporating eccentric details of the late 1950s-early 1960s era, such as radio show hosted Long John Nebel, a sort of forerunner to Art Bell and George Noory, to whom Smith often set rather bizarre but expensive telegrams.

JazzLoftAccordingtoWEugeneSmithIn addition to Redd and Free, Fishko includes the reminiscences of Phil Woods (always a lively interview subject), David Amram (who seems like a nice fellow based on a few email exchanges), Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Dave Frishberg, Bill Crow, and Overton’s colleague, Steve Reich, as well as some contemporary perspective from Jason Moran. That is quite a diverse but talented ensemble.

Arguably, one point Fishko might have emphasized more was the stylistic openness of the sessions. Apparently Zoot Sims ruled the roost whenever he was in town, but Dixieland trumpeter Wingy Manone was equally welcome as his Hardbop, Bebop, and Swing colleagues. That was cool and very jazz. In fact, the entire film is a nostalgic, finger-snapping celebration of music and photography. At times, Jazz Loft is distinguished by a tone of clear-eyed sadness for the human weaknesses that sabotaged so many remarkable artists, but it is mostly just a swinging good time. Highly recommended hip eyes and ears, The Jazz Loft Scene According to W. Eugene Smith screens this Friday (11/13) at the Chelsea Bowtie and next Monday (11/16) at the IFC Center, as part of DOC NYC.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on November 11th, 2015 at 7:34pm.