Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. Fashion designer Nora Noh is widely credited with popularizing the mini-skirt in South Korea. Obviously, she deserves the thanks of a grateful nation, if not the entire world. Yet many younger Korean fashionistas were unaware of her trailblazing work until the opening of a special retrospective commemorating her sixty years in the business. Kim Sung-hee surveys Noh’s life and couture while chronicling the mounting of the designer’s special exhibition in Nora Noh, which screens for free this coming Tuesday in New York, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service.

Noh could be considered the Korean Coco Chanel and Edith Head combined. She was a pioneer designing sleek, elegant “western style” business and casual wear for professional Korean women. A shrewd businesswoman, Noh launched a successful ready-to-wear line before her European colleagues. Yet, she also became the personally designer for many of Korea’s top stars, including pop idol Yoon Bok-hee, who made Korean cultural history sporting Noh’s minis.

Even viewers with little fashion sense will pick out interesting nuggets from Kim’s profile. Noh very definitely lived a feminist Horatio Alger life. Her challenges continued when she refused to kowtow to the arrogant press (likely explaining her under-representation in Korean cultural history). She had her run-ins with the secret police, yet ironically, the film indirectly suggests the liberated simplicity of Noh’s designs was rather compatible with the militarist government’s drive to industrialize (a potentially provocative point that could have been explored at greater length).

Perhaps the film’s greatest assets are the extensive clips from vintage Korean movies illustrating Noh’s image-making power, which will intrigue cineastes as much or perhaps more than clothes horses. While not exactly chatty, she remains a strong figure of individual stick-to-itiveness and a mostly likable screen presence.

Nora Noh is not the most dramatic film ever lensed, even though Noh’s early life was quite tumultuous. Frankly, the sentimental soundtrack does not sound very Nora Noh. Nevertheless, Kim and editor Lee Hyuk-sang keep it moving along nicely. Recommended for students of fashion as well as those fascinated by the phenomenon of global cultural modernization, Nora Noh screens (free of charge) this Tuesday (4/29) at the Tribeca Cinemas as part of the Korean Cultural Service’s regular Korean Movie Night series.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on April 27th, 2014 at 9:52pm.

By Joe Bendel. Record collectors are prone to strange fetishes. A vintage Blue Note with an “ear” impressed in the dead wax can still fix ridiculous sums. It probably makes more sense to innocent bystanders when we obsess over recording studios. After all, that is where the magic originally happened. FAME Studios is one such storied shrine. It was there producer Rick Hall fostered a distinctive sound that made soul so much more soulful and midwifed what we now consider “Southern Rock.” Greg “Freddy” Camalier chronicles the man, his studio, and the sound in Muscle Shoals, which airs this Monday on PBS as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

Ironically, many fans do not realize Hall and his original studio ensemble, The Swampers, were all white cats. Regardless of listeners’ racial preconceptions, they directly contributed to some of the greatest hits waxed by artists like Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Candi Staton, Clarence Carter, Etta James, and Percy Sledge. When we talk of hits, we are referring to classics like “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “Land of 1,000 Dances.”

While many of the great Muscle Shoals recording artists grace Camalier’s film, he focuses on Hall as his protagonist. His producing touch might be golden, but Hall’s formative years were just as hardscrabble as that of any delta bluesman. Abandoned by his mother early on, Hall has faced more than his share of adversity throughout his life. Although he is clearly reserved by nature, when Hall opens up, it is heavy stuff. In fact, his resilience becomes a source of inspiration.

Camalier integrates enough historical context to establish the wider cultural significance of FAME Studios without belaboring the point. He also scored some pretty impressive sit-downs with the likes of Franklin, Carter, and Keith Richards, which he stages in visually intriguing settings. However, the interstitial music never sounds very Muscle Shoalsy. He also over-indulges attempts to explain the local sound in spiritual terms. Sometimes poetic, these often descend into New Aginess corniness (to quote Jobim: “it’s the mud, it’s the mud”).

Muscles Shoals tells an important story with more style than the average music documentary. It is entertaining in a jukebox kind of way, but also compelling on a human level. Recommended for fans of soul, swampy R&B, and the Allman Brothers (who will probably not be seeing Midnight Rider anytime soon), Muscle Shoals premieres on most PBS stations this coming Monday (4/21), courtesy of Independent Lens.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on April 21st, 2014 at 3:18pm.

By Joe Bendel. Muammar Gaddafi was responsible for the mass murder of man and camel alike. Never shy about executing those unfortunate enough to have their loyalty questioned, Gaddafi also once ordered the wholesale extermination of all camels within Tripoli, believing they were incompatible with his vision of a modern city. Yet, during his final years, Gaddafi traveled internationally with representative camels along with his ostentatious, bullet proof tent, and extensive entourage of female bodyguards. Even the animals never knew where they stood with the Libyan tyrant. The cruel and erratic nature of his dictatorship is documented in shocking detail throughout Christopher Olgiati’s Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi, which premieres on Showtime this Friday.

It was President Ronald Reagan who dubbed Gaddafi a “mad dog” and history has vindicated him once again. Gaddafi initially charmed his neighbors and the regional media, but as the years progressed, his grandiose ambitions to become a modern day Saladin were largely derided within the Arab world. Instead, he tried to “re-brand” himself as the once-and-future “King of Africa,” launching a good will offensive aimed at Africa’s crowned royalty, despite his explicitly racist beliefs. At least, he always maintained mutually cordial relations with just about every terrorist group operating around the globe, including Carlos the Jackal, the PLO, and the IRA.

Nearly everyone will go into Mad Dog with the general understanding that Gaddafi was a bad guy, but the depths of his sadistic perversity are truly shocking. Olgiati thoroughly exposes Gaddafi’s crimes as a sexual predator, targeting young girls and boys alike, in a manner befitting Uday Hussein as immortalized in Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double.

Indeed, Mad Dog uncovers many more truly bizarre revelations that are mystifyingly macabre (you could say he had a habit of keeping his political opponents on ice). To his credit, director-producer-cameraman Olgiati pushes his interview subjects to be precise and supply specifics. He never accepts vague implications, forcing them to spell out each and every incident under discussion. While most of the talking heads are surviving Libyan dissidents, there are a few hidden camera sequences with former regime insiders that are highly illuminating.

Perhaps the least substantiated passages within Mad Dog are the rather gossipy charges of CIA support for Gaddafi during his early days as a mini-mart for terrorists. However, Olgiati is on solid ground criticizing the overly optimistic campaign to rehabilitate Gaddafi (who by the way, was sitting on top of vast oil reserves). He also notably details ways in which Gaddafi exploited Islam to serve his propaganda purposes.

Olgiati paints a comprehensively damning portrait of Gaddafi, but it is also a well paced, compelling viewing experience. He certainly appreciates the spectacle of Gaddafi’s flamboyant vanity, but never loses sight of his brutal despotism. Recommended for anyone seeking insight into the Libyan revolution, Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi airs this Friday (4/11) on Showtime.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on April 9th, 2014 at 11:21pm.

By Joe Bendel. One would expect the sons of a Sun Ra Arkestra veteran would naturally take to music. Their somewhat unconventional upbringing is hardly surprising either. Yet, the members of the eight-brothers strong Hypnotic Brass Ensemble both honor and reject their father’s musical legacy in ways that generate real tension throughout Brothers Hypnotic, Reuben Atlas’s behind-the-scenes look at the brassy jam-band, which airs this Monday on PBS, as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

After early stints with the Jay McShann and the U.S. Navy bands, Phil Cohran signed up with the Arkestra while it was based in Chicagoland. When Sun Ra continued on his galactic journey, Cohran helped co-found the AACM. For a while, he was also the director of the Phil Cohran Youth Ensemble (which could have passed for the Arkestra’s children’s auxiliary), but as soon as one Cohran brother left the fold, the entire ensemble deflated.

In a sense, they were reborn as Hypnotic, a jazz and funk influenced jam-band somewhat in the tradition of the Hot 8 Brass Band and their New Orleans contemporaries, but utilizing a strictly brass-only instrumentation. They have a great sound (particularly when they are not incorporating just okay raps into the mix). You can hear a bit of their father in there, but there are plenty of other elements in the mix as well.

Atlas does an excellent job documenting the ironic realities of a jazz (or jazz-ish) musician’s life. One minute you are eating cold Spaghetti-O’s out of the can, but the very next day you might be off on a seat-of-the-pants European tour. The filmmaker caught the Ensemble at a fortuitous time, when they were still giving street performances (which are highly cinematic), but were also fielding offers from legitimate labels. Musicians who tune in might get a nasty case of heartburn when they turn down Atlantic Records, but you have to give them credit for staying true to the convictions they inherited from their father. Unfortunately, the broadcast edit of Brothers H never allows a musical performance to continue long enough to give viewers a truly vivid sense of the ensemble’s full force.

Atlas captures some intimate moments with a band that is on the way up, but shrewdly trying to avoid a harsh burn-out. The Brothers must have seen their share of music docs before appearing in their own. It is nice to know some musicians are trying to learn from others’ mistakes. While Atlas also includes enough intra-family drama to avoid accusations of PR flakery, the film never feels intrusive or gossipy. Recommended for fans of funky brass (and who isn’t?), Brothers Hypnotic debuts tonight (4/7) on PBS’s Independent Lens.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on April 7th, 2014 at 5:59pm.