By Joe Bendel. It’s a Dutch thing, you just wouldn’t understand. In Holland, they love their herring, preferably raw, which they consume by dangling overhead, like a cartoon cat preparing to devour a squirming mouse. Unfortunately, the classically Dutch herring industry has fallen on hard times. Viewers will set sail on one of the two remaining Dutch commercial herring fishing boats in Leonard Retel Helmrich & Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich’s Raw Herring, which screens during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.
The tightly knit, religiously devout community of Katwijk is known for its tradition of herring fishing, but competition from Norwegian crews has drastically thinned their ranks. Only the Wiron 5 and 6 still venture out, often in Norwegian and Scottish waters. On this outing, much of the skipper’s time is spent tracking a Norwegian rival skulking nearby. The Wirons still process herring at sea, using traditional methods, but such days are apparently numbered. In fact, recording the end of the era was a primary motivation for the Retel Helmrich filmmaking siblings and their producer In-soo Radstake (a director in his own right, having helmed the intriguing Parradox).
No matter how long the filmmakers hold their breath and jump up and down, critics will still inevitably compare Raw to Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel’s Leviathan. However, Raw has the advantage of being comprehensible. Frankly, Leviathan seeks to disorient, whereas the Retel Helmrichs present a vivid sense of the Wiron environment and capture some striking images. Their scenes of gulls diving underwater in search of fishy prey are particularly impressive.
In further contrast, Raw is also conveys the personalities of the Wiron crew, while remaining strictly observation in approach. We see these rugged, inked-up men praying before each meal. Of course, they are still sailors, so you know what that means.
Raw is not the Dutch version of a History Channel reality show. Nonetheless, it is mindful of the dangers of the job, beginning with the dedication to a monument to Katwijk fishermen lost at sea. Arguably, it bears closer comparison to a more accessible Castaing-Taylor documentary, Sweetgrass, which had its merits. Yet, the periodic flashes of earthy humor and some of the incredible shots primary cinematographer Leonard Retel Helmrich pulled off further distinguish Raw Herring. Recommended for patrons of you-are-there-style documentaries, Raw Herring screens again tomorrow (4/20), Wednesday (4/24), and next Saturday (4/27) as part of the World Documentary Competition at this year’s Tribeca.
By Joe Bendel. Judging solely on the American drive-by media’s coverage, one would assume Japan was nothing but a glowing wasteland after the March 11th earthquake and subsequent nuclear emergency. In contrast, the Japanese media was evidently restrained to a fault, leaving a vacuum for rumor, fear, and denial to run rampant. Rather than the all too familiar images of devastation, Nobuteru Uchida focuses on the messy uncertainties of the aftermath in Odayaka, which screens during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.
When the quake hit, Saeko’s husband Noboru was typically nowhere to be found. When he finally shows up, it is only to announce he is abandoning her and their daughter Kiyomi. Next door, Yukako’s husband Tatsuya also arrives well after the fact, having been toiling in his office, as per usual. Despite the government’s unconvincing assurances, both women become deeply concerned about Fukushima’s radiation. As neighbors and acquaintances belittle their worries, Saeko and Yukako agitation steadily increases. Saeko’s stress is understandably amplified by her husband’s desertion. Likewise, a recent painful episode Yukako and Tatsuya never properly dealt with acerbates her anxiety.
Filmed in a deliberately lo-fi, no frills style, Odayaka’s “you are there” vibe is often a genuinely uncomfortable to experience. This is no canned, made-for-TV movie building to a cheap triumph over adversity. Uchida portrays the emotional damage done to his characters in a relentlessly intimate fashion.Odayaka is a quiet film, but it stings.
Nonetheless, along with Chen’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Odayaka lends this year’s festival some major star power. It might be hard to believe anyone could walk out on Kiki Sugino, the darling of Japanese indie cinema (often dubbed Japan’s Parker Posey), but she is truly devastating as Saeko. Always convincing and never overly showy, her portrayal of a mother coming apart at the seams is absolutely harrowing.
Likewise, Yukiko Shinohara plums some dark places as the distressed Yukako. In a way, it is a much more off-putting part. However, she truly lowers the film’s dramatic boom in key sequences down the stretch. Ami Watanabe’s Kiyoshi is also remarkably affecting and natural in scenes that might well be confusing for a young child. Indeed, Odayaka boasts a strong supporting cast from stem to stern, especially Makiko Watanabe, who becomes the face of rigid Japanese social conformity as the queen bee mother at Kiyoshi’s nursery school.
Odayaka is packed with scenes that resonate acutely. When Uchida holds up a mirror to Japanese society, it is not always pretty. Yet, Odayaka is a profoundly humanistic film, anchored by Sugino’s unforgettable work. Recommended for those who appreciate a tough human drama, Odayaka screens today (4/18), this Saturday (4/20), Wednesday (4/24), and next Saturday (4/27) as a Viewpoints selection of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
By Joe Bendel. Compared to its neighbors, Taiwan is quite tolerant of its GLTB citizens. Communist China not so much. Nonetheless, the gay marriage debate has yet to reach Taipei. To start a family, one middle-aged man went back into the closet, yet events cause him to question that decision in Arvin Chen’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, which screens during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.
It is hard to imagine Weichung hitting the club scene. The straight-laced optometrist is almost painfully reserved. He is a good father, though, and a dutiful husband. He thought he had buried his past, but much to his surprise, Stephen, one of his flamboyant former club buddies, is his sister Mandy’s wedding photographer. At least, he was supposed to be. During the rehearsal dinner, Mandy kind of loses it, calling off the wedding soon thereafter. Having reawakened Weichung’s memories of his younger, freer days, Stephen starts counseling Mandy’s nebbish jilted fiancé, while Weichung starts a tentative flirtation with a flight attendant customer.
Weichung might be finding himself, but he still has a wife likely to consider his actions a deep emotional betrayal. In fact, the relationship between him and Feng constitutes the guts of the film. To his credit, Chen does not take any easy outs. Feng is no shrew. In fact, she is played by Mavis Fan and happens to be a good mother and responsible bread-winner. All of which make things complicated both for the characters and viewers’ emotional responses.
Fan, the Taiwanese popstar successfully transitioning to the big screen, will be most familiar to American audiences from Tsui Hark’s all kinds of cool Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. She still has a cute screen presence, but the acute sensitivity and down-to-earth sensibilities she brings to bear as Feng are quite impressive. Johnnie To regular Richie Jen will also surprise viewers as the convincingly conflicted Weichung. Unfortunately, Lawrence Ko’s Stephen and his cronies are mostly shticky caricatures.
Thisis not a didactic message movie. Chen resists the Glee-like temptation to lecture his audience on tolerance, but he understandably spotlights Fan in a karaoke number, thereby boosting Tomorrow’s domestic commercial appeal. Like most of the film, it is actually quite well staged. While a few more broadly comic scenes fall flat, the film and its characters are surprisingly endearing, getting a nice assist from Hsu Wen’s lush, unabashedly sentimental score. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is not a towering cinematic experience, but it is extremely likable. Recommended for fans of Eat Drink Man Woman, it screens tomorrow (4/19), Saturday (4/20), Sunday (4/21), and next Thursday (4/25) during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Lola Versus' Zoe Lister-Jones & Greta Gerwig with LFM's Govindini Murty.
By Govindini Murty. The turn toward female-centered comedies seems to be accelerating in the indie cinema as much as in mainstream Hollywood. In the wake of Bridesmaids and HBO’s Girls, the new comedy Lola Versus, starring indie favorite Greta Gerwig, is the latest risque, R-rated project to explore the imperfect reality of women’s lives. The film screened this spring at the Tribeca Film Festival and is currently playing in theaters.
Greta Gerwig plays 29-year old Lola, a graduate student working on her Ph.D. in literature who thinks her life is perfect until she is dumped by her fiance just a few weeks before their wedding. Lola is devastated by the break-up – and flummoxed at the prospect of turning 30 as a single in New York. She swerves into a series of comic misadventures: hooking up with the wrong men, drinking and partying too hard, and neglecting her work, as she tries to figure out what to do with her life. Aiding and abetting her are her friends, the zany aspiring actress Alice (Zoe Lister-Jones, also the film’s screenwriter) and a quirky musician named Henry (Hamish Linklater). Lola’s parents are played in nice turns by Debra Winger and Bill Pullman.
Gerwig shines as Lola, bringing a quirky charm and intelligence to what might otherwise be a standard rom-com role. It’s easy to see why directors Whit Stillman (in Damsels in Distress), Woody Allen (in From Rome With Love) and mumblecore favorite Mark Duplass have all worked with her.
I had the chance recently to chat with Greta Gerwig, as well as with director Daryl Wein and screenwriter Zoe Lister-Jones, at a screening of Lola Versus at USC Cinema School in LA. Interestingly enough, all three of them emphasized the importance of making a film that celebrated a woman’s point of view. As Wein said in the Q & A after the screening:
“We realized that we really wanted to do a female oriented film just because we weren’t really seeing female-driven stories about single women, especially at this age. … Even me as a man, I wanted to see a portrait of a woman I could relate with.”
I asked them what influenced them as filmmakers in this regard, and Gerwig, Wein, and Lister-Jones cited films from two distinct eras: the 1970s/‘80s (with a smattering of ‘90s indie cinema) and classic Hollywood in the 1930s and ‘40s.
Greta Gerwig answered:
“I’m a cinephile – I love movies … I like movies that have a really strong writer, I love Howard Hawks’ movies, I love Preston Sturges movies, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch. Those are the movies that I love because they’re almost “plays as films.” They have this quality of – you can almost see the dialogue when people speak it. [That’s] really important, and I think that that’s still what I love, and I’m so grateful that I got to work with someone like Whit Stillman who is in that tradition, who’s really erudite and literary. … And I also love Woody Allen, I mean he’s kind of a person I think of all the time. But those filmmakers – that’s what I always look for, what I always hope for, and when I see echoes of that in things I just get so excited.”
Zoe Lister-Jones added:
“I love John Hughes, I love Pretty in Pink … and obviously Woody Allen … Daryl and I as filmmakers are very inspired by him, he’s just sort of the OG and no-one can ever top him. I like Robert Altman, I think his movies are really cool, and Hal Hartley, I grew up really being into Hal Hartley in the ‘90s. Music’s really important to me and he always had really good music – and you know, complex characters who were dark and dry.”
As for Daryl Wein, he recounted: “I grew up on classic guys like Scorsese and Spielberg and Kubrick. Big fan of Hitchcock’s films, and I love some of Hal Ashby’s movies, and of course Woody Allen is a big influence.”
Of course, many of these filmmakers are notable for creating witty, dialogue-centered movies that took a fresh approach to depicting women’s lives. And as women gain greater power in the film industry, it seems we may have a new era upon us of character-driven women’s comedies and dramas. Greta Gerwig, for example, who studied at Barnard to be a playwright before turning to acting, has written and directed an indie women-centered comedy that will be unveiled later this year. Gerwig in particular spoke with great passion at the screening about what she saw as a coming revolution for women in the movies.
“This is a huge moment, I really think, for women in film. I think it is as big as anything that has happened for women. I think people look at television and movies to figure out who they are and how they live and what’s important, and for the first time in a big way women are being shown to women as they are. I think it’s unprecedented, and if I get to participate in it even a little bit it’s the most exciting thing I can think of. I went to women’s college so I get really excited about it. But it’s true … If women aren’t represented in media the way they are, it’s like they don’t exist. I just think it’s such a huge moment. … and I hope it keeps going because I feel seen and heard in a big way as a woman…”
To which Wein piped up: “Greta for President. First female president!”
Director Daryl Wein, writer/actress Zoe Lister-Jones, star Greta Gerwig.
After the Q & A, I chatted further with Gerwig, Wein, and Lister-Jones about the issue of women’s representation in the film industry. We discussed the absurd fact that three or four men are still cast for every one woman in film and TV, and Wein indicated his own commitment to making more movies that featured women. I told them about the work of Geena Davis’s Institute on Gender in Media, and all three of them expressed how glad they were to hear about her work. I also told Gerwig that I agreed with her that we’re entering an important new era for women in film, and that the success of Twilight and The Hunger Games had been crucial in this regard. Wein and Lister-Jones added that they thought that Bridesmaids had also played a major role in showing that women-centered comedies could make money.
In all, I think we have some very provocative and interesting times ahead of us as more and more women get both in front of and behind the camera.
Joe Bendel, Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo @ The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
By Govindini Murty. As Libertas readers know, we’ve long been advocates of film festivals, especially those that celebrate independent film. Because they empower individual filmmakers to try out new ideas, film festivals are a crucial way to inspire the spirit of freedom and innovation in the culture. And did I also mention that they’re a lot of fun? Where else can you hang out with fellow film fanatics, see great films, meet talented filmmakers, and return to your own creative work buzzing with renewed energy and ideas?
That’s why we’ve been stepping up our film festival coverage here at Libertas. Jason and I had the chance to attend the Sundance Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival this year, and we also just finished attending the LA Film Festival. All three festivals have been terrific experiences. And of course, Libertas’ own Joe Bendel, the Zen master of the independent film review, has already been doing a fantastic job these past two years covering pretty much every film festival on the planet (maybe even in the known universe).
As a result of our indie focus, Indiewire has added us to Criticwire, which means that you can click on our names on their Criticwire page and find letter grades and film reviews for all the independent and mainstream movies we’re seeing.
To also make it easier for Libertas readers to find our film festival reviews, we’ve created new categories in the ‘Articles’ drop down menu above for each of the major film festivals we’re covering. We’ve created a new Sundance category, a Tribeca category, and an LA Film Festival category. Click on one of those categories and you will see all the reviews we’ve posted for that festival going back to the launch of Libertas Film Magazine.
We’ll add more festival categories as we proceed – and remember to go out and support these films! If a movie isn’t playing in a theater in your area, then remember that many of these movies are also available on your cable provider’s VOD, Netflix streaming, Amazon on-demand, or iTunes.
By Govindini Murty. Even as Chinese dissidents like Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and artist Ai Weiwei suffer physical imprisonment, hundreds of millions of their fellow Chinese citizens are suffering a form of mental imprisonment thanks to their nation’s system of internet censorship. For example, the Chinese government recently blocked on-line searches for words relating to the 23rd anniversary of the June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, censoring the terms “Tiananmen square,” “June 4th,” the number twenty-three, the words “never forget,” and even images of candles. The award-winning documentary High Tech, Low Life, currently screening at film festivals in the U.S., UK, and Australia, profiles two dissident Chinese bloggers who are working to challenge this Orwellian system.
Directed by Stephen Maing, High Tech, Low Life was in part funded by a Kickstarter campaign publicized on The Huffington Post and was an official selection of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. High Tech, Low Life documents the work of 57-year old blogger Zhang Shihe (known as “Tiger Temple”) and 27-year old Zhou Shuguang (known as “Zola”), two of China’s best-known “citizen reporters.” Even as the Chinese government uses internet technology to stifle dissent, these brave bloggers find creative ways to circumvent “The Great Firewall of China” and publish the truth about human rights abuses to the world. Along the way, Tiger and Zola suffer official harassment, familial disapproval, eviction, and arrest.
Blogger Zola describes in the film the vast apparatus of internet censorship that exists in China:
“There are 440 million netizens in China, 40,000 internal police monitor them, and 500,000 websites are blocked in China.” [Despite this,] “if an incident happens anywhere, netizens and citizen journalists will flock to the scene from all over the country. The censors might stop some of us, but they can’t stop all of us.”
Tiger Temple expands on the morally corrosive effect of the government’s censorship: “We’ve all been brainwashed. We’ve been listening to lies for too many years.” Although material prosperity may have improved in China, Tiger argues that life today is as bad as it was under Mao’s dictatorship. As Tiger puts it, the Chinese people are “complacent because they feel powerless.”
Tiger Temple and Zola could not be more different in style. The older, more experienced Tiger is a writer and former publisher living in Beijing who becomes closely involved in his subjects’ lives, bringing them food, money, and legal help. Tiger’s father was a high official in the Communist Party, but the family was persecuted by Mao during the Cultural Revolution in the ’60s. Tiger recalls how he and his family were beaten, evicted from their home, and exiled to the countryside. It was then, as a 13-year old, that Tiger says he started “roaming the country.”
Tiger’s entry into blogging was almost accidental. Returning home one day from viewing an exhibition of Monet paintings in Beijing, he saw a woman being stabbed to death on the street by a man as bystanders watched. Horrified but unable to prevent the murder, Tiger grabbed his camera and documented its aftermath instead. He notes that when the police showed up, they were angrier at him for taking the photos than at the murderer himself, because such scenes would normally be censored from the press. Tiger went on to publish the photos online and caused a sensation, becoming known as China’s first “citizen journalist.” Tiger adds that he calls himself a “citizen” and not a “citizen journalist” because that way the government can’t ban him.
Years later, Tiger makes lengthy journeys on bike through the countryside to report on the lives of the rural poor who have suffered in the rush to urbanization. He is even on occasion tailed by agents of the government. In one trip documented in the film, Tiger bicycles 4000 miles to Er Loa, a village devastated by the illegal flooding of toxic waste by the local government. The floods of waste have caused the farmers’ homes to collapse and have made farming impossible. Villagers tell Tiger that local officials have warned them that if they complain too much they will be arrested. Not only does Tiger take photos and video of the environmental devastation, he also brings the villagers flour and noodles to feed them and tells them he has forwarded their information to a university in Beijing where law students are working to file a legal complaint with the authorities. Tiger interests an NGO in their case, and the farmers are ultimately brought to Beijing to speak at the Civil Society Watch’s Environmental Protection Conference.
Raw is not the Dutch version of a History Channel reality show. Nonetheless, it is mindful of the dangers of the job, beginning with the dedication to a monument to Katwijk fishermen lost at sea. Arguably, it bears closer comparison to a more accessible Castaing-Taylor documentary, Sweetgrass, which had its merits. Yet, the periodic flashes of earthy humor and some of the incredible shots primary cinematographer Leonard Retel Helmrich pulled off further distinguish Raw Herring. Recommended for patrons of you-are-there-style documentaries, Raw Herring screens again tomorrow (4/20), Wednesday (4/24), and next Saturday (4/27) as part of the World Documentary Competition at this year’s Tribeca.
