Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. You can pretty much count on one finger the jazz musicians who have received Papal commissions. Mary Lou Williams will always be remembered for excelling as a musician-arranger-composer at a time when the music industry was ridiculously male-dominated. Yet, by reconciling and combining jazz with her Catholic faith, Williams shattered just as many musical preconceptions. Williams’ life and music are surveyed in Carol Bash’s Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, which premieres on many PBS stations this week.

Williams was a child prodigy born to play the piano, but she first started to make a name for herself in Kansas City, at the height of the town’s hipness. Most musicians were loath to play with women, but her husband, alto and baritone player John O. Williams, knew she could swing. When his boss, territory bandleader Andy Kirk, found himself caught without a piano player, he reluctantly called her in to sub. Needless to say, she basically made Andy Kirk and the Clouds of Joy. Naturally, he resented her for it, but the producers were adamant—no Williams, no contract.

Eventually, Williams would separate from both Kirk and her husband, striking out on her own. Despite her talent and reputation, she would experience all the ups and downs of the jazz musician’s life, except it was always even more challenging for Williams—until she heard what can be rightly described as her calling. Finding spiritual renewal in the Catholic Church, Williams was encouraged to use her musical gifts, but in a way that expressed her deepening faith.

It is great to see Bash fully explore the significance and influence of Williams’ sacred music. She also gives the jazz legend her due as an entrepreneur – self-producing her releases on her own Mary label, long before that became the industry norm. However, the film leaves some unanswered questions regarding her relationship with John O. According to his obit, he also played with the Cootie Williams band and co-wrote “Froggy Bottom,” which suggests he might be one of those unfairly overlooked kind of guys.

Of course, the music is the most important thing in Lady Who Swings. Bash incorporates some all-star performances, appropriately including Geri Allen, who played the Mary Lou Williams figure in Robert Altman’s unfairly panned Kansas City. Wycliffe Gordon also leads a big band and Carmen Lundy lends her vocal chops and elegant presence, but Bash cuts off them off before they really get started. That is a shame, because just about all of us interested in Williams will want to hear their take on her music. Maybe the concert interludes are allowed to go on longer in a more extensive festival cut.

Indeed, fifty-four minutes on Mary Lou Williams is certainly economical, but it only scratches the surface and whets the appetite. Nevertheless, Bash makes sure viewers leave with the right take-aways. If you still don’t understand Williams was Catholic who could still swing hard after watching her film, you have serious retention issues. Brisk, informative, and respectful of Williams’ Catholicism, Mary Lou Williams: the Lady Who Swings the Band will leave audiences wanting more, but what we have is still definitely worth seeing. Highly recommended, it airs Monday night (4/13) in LA and Wednesday night (4/15) in San Francisco, with more airdates to come across the country, so check those local listings.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on April 13th, 2015 at 3:56pm.

By Joe Bendel. A cop who collects Cultural Revolution-era pre-execution photos must sound like one scary cat, but Li Wen does it with a sense of irony. To keep the peace, he will hunt a supposedly mentally disturbed troublemaker, who might just be an eccentric gadfly the powers-that-be find inconvenient. Everything about the copper and his latest case are both fake and real, making Luo Li’s meta-meta-hybrid documentary Li Wen at East Lake a perfect selection for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Art of the Real series of aesthetically challenging docs.

Following in the recent tradition of independent Chinese cinema, Li Luo does not exactly rush into his narrative. Instead, he establishes a sense of East Lake, one of the few remaining inland lakes in the hyper-developed Wuhan metropolitan district. Legend has it, a dragon once rose from the lake to wreak fiery, purifying vengeance. A sort of Holy Fool seems to be peddling that story again, which is bad for state socialist-crony capitalist business, so Li Wen and his deputy must track down the rabble-rouser. Yet, either their quarry is surprisingly elusive or Li Wen is not feeling especially motivated, because it will take quite some time.

If ever there was a film whose sum of its parts is greater than its whole, it would be LW@EL. There are a number of boldly pointed scenes, some of which even get quite intense. Unfortunately, there is an awful lot of sketchy and sluggish connective material, ostensibly holding it together, but really just watering down the overall cinematic experience.

Nevertheless, when it is on, it scores impressive points. This is especially true when Li Wen argues with a gender and sexuality identity-studies grad student—a sequence that is as funny as anything you will see in a major studio release this year. Yet, there is also a very serious subtext critiquing the Communist government and state media’s hostility towards LGBT citizens. Likewise, Li Wen’s rather frank discussions regarding the Party and the Cultural Revolution (which officially never happened) are far from flattering. In fact, we eventually learn he was once a modernist artist, but now Li Wen paints motel-worthy landscapes as brown-nosing offerings for his uncultured superiors.

Piling on the meta-ness, Li Wen the copper-painter is played by Li Wen the real life painter and occasional actor, previously seen as the title character in Luo Li’s Emperor Visits the Hell. As his namesake, he shows considerable range, in the unlikeliest of ways. He shows off some razor sharp comedic timing, while also conveying profoundly sad awareness of current injustices and the weight of historical tragedies.

There are flashes of brilliance from Li Luo and his mostly unprofessional (or perhaps semi-professional) cast throughout LW@EL, but he forces viewers to really work for them. Committed China watchers will find it worth the effort, but the less cerebral and adventurous the viewer, the slimmer the returns. Recommended for a narrow, confidently self-selected audience, Li Wen at East Lake screens this Wednesday (4/15) at the Francesca Beale Theater, as part of this year’s Art of the Real.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on April 13th, 2015 at 3:55pm.

By Joe Bendel. Even according to its most ardent admirers, it was a movement that only lasted a few years in the 1980s. Yet, it has had a lasting influence on art cinema throughout Asia and beyond. If there is one filmmaker who best embodies the New Taiwanese Cinema (or New Wave) it would be Hou Hsiao-hsien. Fittingly, Hou factors prominently in Hsieh Chin-lin’s documentary, Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema, which screens as part of the Hou retrospective Also Like Life, now underway at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater.

They were the product of a very specific place, at a very specific time. Taiwan was beginning its transition to a legitimate democracy, while its economy was emerging as one of Asia’s vaunted “Tigers.” Hou and Edward Yang were addressing the Taiwanese character in intimate terms, while also exploring the messier aspects of the nation’s history, including the Japanese occupation and the purges of the 1950s. Perhaps most importantly, they received unprecedented recognition on the international festival circuit.

It is particularly telling to hear Chinese filmmakers like Jia Zhangke and dissident artist Ai Weiwei express their esteem for New Taiwanese Cinema and considerable regret an equivalent movement was not possible in Mainland cinema. Hsieh does not belabor the point, but one gets a real sense that Hou, Yang, and their colleagues helped exorcise many of Taiwan’s ghosts and thereby helped the nation progress into a modern democracy.

We hear from many other appreciative filmmakers, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who credits the New Taiwanese Cinema for shaping his style. It is not hard to see the seeds of his inspiration, but it does not seem fair to lump the 1980s Taiwanese auteurs into the slow cinema rubric. Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day is a particular touchstone for Weerasethakul, but that film has no shortage of plot in its two hundred thirty-seven minutes.

Unlike typical talking head documentaries, Hsieh is unusually sensitive to the power of place. It just adds something unquantifiable when Japanese actor Asano Tadanobu discusses making Hou’s Café Lumière in the Japanese bookstore where many of their scenes were shot. It is also a nice touch interviewing Hirokazu Kore-eda in the hotel room where Ozu and his co-writer Kogo Noda worked out so many of their great collaborations. Of course, Hsieh liberally illustrates Flowers with clips from the films under discussion. Many might be obvious choices, like the stunning opening shot of Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo (which some might consider a post-New film), but they still look great.

There is a fair degree of debate amongst Flowers’ expert commentators, but there is general agreement on the merits of Taiwanese New Cinema films, regardless of categorizations. It is rather fascinating to see how these acutely personal films fit within a larger social and cultural context. This is also an appropriate time to take stock of Taiwanese cinema, with the Hou retrospective now playing in Los Angeles and the Tsai Ming-liang career survey launching at MoMI this weekend, both of whom appear in Flowers. One of the best documentaries on non-genre-related cinema in recent years, Flowers of Taipei is very highly recommended when it screens this Sunday (4/12) in Los Angeles, as part of Also Like Life: the Films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on April 10th, 2015 at 2:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. It was only the third time in history that the ATF mobilized two national response teams simultaneously. The first was the Oklahoma City bombing and the second was on September 11th. In 2010, East Texas was terrified by a spree of church fires. These were not merely cases of arson. They were designed to be deliberately transgressive and disturbing. However, the faith of the targeted congregations would not be shaken. Partly a true crime investigation and partly an exploration of the possibilities of forgiveness, Theo Love’s Little Hope was Arson is an unusually moving documentary that appropriately airs Easter Monday on most PBS stations, as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

Initially, the New Year’s Day fire at the Little Hope Baptist Church in Canton, Texas was blamed on faulty wiring. However, after nine subsequent Baptist and Methodist churches were torched, authorities found an ominous taunt carved into the wall of a hardware store’s men’s room: “Little Hope was Arson.” Someone apparently wanted credit for all their handiwork.

With dozens of law enforcement agencies assigned to the case, it is considered one of the biggest investigations in Texas history. Eventually, suspicion fell on Ben McAllister and Jason Bourque. At one time, the former Sunday school classmates were quite devout, but tribulations in their personal lives had left them bitterly resentful of God and the church—or so we gather.

Despite scoring prison interviews with both convicted arsonists, Little Hope is unable to conclusively establish their motives. Yet, Love is more concerned with the pastors and parishioners who strive to apply the teachings of their faith to such a difficult situation and the devastated family members who struggle to reconcile the loved ones they thought they knew with the monsters they now appear to be. This is especially painful for McAllister’s sister Christy McAllister, a civilian communications specialist with the Texas Department of Public Safety, who faithfully aided the investigation of her brother.

Very few filmmakers have ever shown as much empathy for the people of East Texas as Love does in Little Hope. He finds no snarky humor in the situation when anguished worshippers express their fears that the church fires were the work of Satan himself. Instead, it is a point of view he seems to understand, considering that they are standing over the smoking ashes that were once their beloved family church. Love clearly establishes the central role these churches played in the social and spiritual lives of their members. The pain of their loss is quite genuine, but so is the effort to forgive and to console.

Love chronicles the investigation and resulting legal negotiations, step by lucid step, but the real meat of the film captures the communities’ soul searching and emotional resiliency. It is rather shockingly touching and inspiring, making it perfect viewing for Holy Week (especially since the religiously themed Death of a Tree turned out to be something of a bummer). The point that each church is more about its people than its steeple might sound obvious, but it hits home hard. Highly recommended, Little Hope was Arson premieres tonight (4/6) on PBS’s Independent Lens.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 6th, 2015 at 9:22pm.

By Joe Bendel. To hear Dick Miller tell the tale, had the upholstery school offered night classes the world might have been denied some of cinema history’s finest moments. Fortunately, they started bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the early a.m., but the acting school next door was more accommodating. This is the creation legend of cult actor Dick Miller, the man who ate the flowers in Little Shop of Horrors, got run over by a snowplow in Gremlins, sold Schwarzenegger a shotgun in Terminator, and tried to explain the plot of The Terror to Jack Nicholson. You might not know his name, but whenever he pops up a movie, it is a sure sign of awesomeness to follow. The Bronx-born character actor gets his overdue ovation in Elijah Drenner’s That Guy Dick Miller, which opens this Friday at Anthology Film Archives, in conjunction with their mini Miller retrospective.

Miller’s first big break came in Roger Corman’s Apache Woman, where he found himself playing both a cowboy and a native character. Thus began a long association that would include classics like Little Shop and the deliciously astute beatnik satire Bucket of Blood. That film would launch his Walter Paisley alter ego, who would periodically re-appear in considerably different incarnations in films helmed by Corman and his protégés. Arguably, Miller is even more beloved by Corman alumni like James Cameron, Allan Arkush, Jonathan Kaplan, and particularly Joe Dante, than the dean of indie genre filmmaking himself.

It is pretty clear right from the start, with Miller, what you see is what you get. He is a tough talking industry survivor, but has an appealingly goofy sense of humor and stills enjoys bantering with his wife Lainie. Drenner nicely brings out a sense of their personalities and the dynamics of their still-going-strong relationship in a number of relaxed interview segments.

He also scores revealing sit-downs with Miller’s brothers, Roger and Julie Corman, and a number of their old Corman machine colleagues, including Little Shop co-star Jonathan Haze. However, one person comes out of That Guy not looking so hot. That would be Quentin Tarantino, who cut Miller’s scene from Pulp Fiction (inadvertently inspiring Agnieszka Kurant’s short film The Cutaways, which also screens at AFA with Bucket).

That Guy is just a ton of fun. The clips alone deliver a wildly eccentric nostalgia trip. However, there is something rather inspiring about Miller’s resiliency and his generally positive attitude. This is a film that needed to happen, so hats off to Drenner for fully getting it. He maintains a brisk pace and obviously shares the audience’s affection for the films under discussion. With Lainie Miller and Julie Corman on board as co-executive producers, you can have confidence it will all be done right. Hugely entertaining and even somewhat “feel-good,” That Guy Dick Miller is highly recommended (along with the entire Dick Miller tribute series) when it opens this Friday (4/3) in New York, at Anthology Film Archives.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on March 31st, 2015 at 3:33pm.

By Joe Bendel. Considering that the sport of cycling’s most important competition recently lost nine years of history to doping scandals, you would think they would celebrate a genuine hero from their past, but Italian champion Gino Bartali’s clandestine efforts to save Italian Jewry remain largely unsung. He was not alone in his secret defiance. Eighty percent of Jews in wartime Italy survived thanks to Bartli and a host of like-minded Italians. Oren Jacoby profiles many of Italy’s righteous and the grown survivors they helped save in My Italian Secret, which opens this Friday in New York.

Mussolini had been firmly entrenched in power since the 1920s, but the Holocaust was slow in reaching Italy. Yes, anti-Semitic laws were passed, but anti-Semitism never really caught on as an ideology. It was not until the German occupation that deportations started in earnest. Of course, there were more than enough Fascists willing to collaborate, but not Bartali.

The Fascists did there level best to co-opt Bartali as a symbol of Italian physical supremacy, but the cyclist refused to participate in their propaganda. Fortunately, his standing as Italy’s preeminent sportsman granted him certain liberties, such as an excuse for long distance bike runs. Soon, Bartali was shuttling counterfeited documents provided by the Catholic Church to Jews in hiding. Bartali further risked his neck by sheltering a Jewish family in his own home.

Frankly, it is quite eye-opening to see the bourgeoisie or even privileged status of so many of the Italian Righteous, given the carefully romanticized proletariat image of the resistance. Granted, Bartali came from rugged smallholding farm stock, but Marchesa Gallo did not. Yet, she sheltered numerous Jewish families in her grand palazzo. Likewise, Dr. Giovanni Borromeo was a man of considerable position, who ran tremendous risks operating his special “K” wing, where he hid Jewish fugitives supposedly infected with the nonexistent “K” disease. Jacoby also makes it crystal clear how deeply involved the Catholic Church was in rescue efforts. In fact, it was the Archbishop of Florence who recruited Bartali in the first place.

Jacoby uses the tried and true methods of documentary filmmaking, to good effect. He sparingly employs recreations, but incorporates plenty of archival photos and video. However, the most dramatic sequences by far capture the heartfelt meetings between the survivors (now of advanced years) and the children of their protectors. The Hot Club soundtrack selections are also quite pleasant.

Frankly, it is strange that more of these incidents have not been more widely reported, especially given Italy’s remarkably high Jewish survival rate. However, Bartali was characteristically modest about his actions. Fortunately, he now has Oscar nominated actor Robert Loggia to literally speak for him. Jaded viewers might think they more or less know the trajectory of its collected stories and perhaps they do, but the details are unusually rich. Secret also helps counteract the ideologically-driven smearing of the WWII-era Church and Pope Pius XII, complimenting recent scholarship, like Rabbi David Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope. Recommended for general audiences and especially students, My Italian Secret opens this Friday (3/23) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on March 27th, 2015 at 12:48am.