Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. For many ardent listeners, the words “jazz” and “philharmonic” have heavy significance when used in close proximity. It automatically summons images of the all-star concerts and recording sessions the legendary Norman Granz produced in concert halls around the country. This is not a Granz production. The philharmonic reference is more in keeping with the classical tradition. However, the jazz is still for real in Jazz and the Philharmonic, a concert featuring alumni of the National YoungArts Foundation, the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, and some of the top names in jazz, which airs on most PBS stations this Friday (yes, real honest-to-gosh jazz on PBS).

Of course, jazz and classical crossover fusions are nothing new. That is exactly what Third Stream Jazz was all about. While many of the program selections feature jazz soloists playing with the Mancini Orchestra (whose namesake would surely have approved of the program, especially the theme from Charade), there are several straight-up solo, duo, or trio jazz performances, which is obviously not a bad thing.

In fact, it is a very good thing when Chick Corea, Dave Grusin, and Bobby McFerrin open the concert with an elegant but persistently swinging “Autumn Leaves” for voice and two pianos. Corea fans really get their money’s worth throughout the concert, with the NEA Jazz Master performing in a variety of settings, mostly notably joining the Mancini Orchestra on his “Spanish Suite,” a composition perfectly suited to the evening. His duet with McFerrin, “Armando’s Rhumba” is not as distinctive, but they clearly enjoy making music together, which is part of the fun of a show like this.

In addition to “Spanish Suite,” Terence Blanchard also has feature spots on “Fugue in C Minor” and “Solfeggietto,” probably the two most overtly swinging-the-classics numbers of the evening. However, he is probably best showcased fronting the orchestra for a rendition of “Charade,” a wonderfully lush arrangement that brings to mind his classic Jazz in Film CD. Yet, perhaps the most effective jazz and classical dialogue comes when Elizabeth Joy Roe and Shelly Berg tackle “The Man I Love” as a lyrical but muscular piano duet, from the classical and jazz sides, respectively.

Nevertheless, the surprise peak of the concert integrates the sounds of deep roots Americana as well as jazz and classical when violinist Mark O’Connor joins pianist Dave Grusin on a sensitive and soulful version of “Simple Gifts,” the Shaker standard subsequently incorporated into Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Rather fittingly, Grusin’s “Mountain Dance” follows. Purists might dismiss it as too “smooth,” but man, is it ever a pretty melody, sounding almost tailor made for the full orchestral treatment. It also provides a nice launching pad for O’Connor. In fact, Grusin takes two rather impressive solos as well: one fleet and swinging and the second surprisingly adventurous—so take that jazz snobs.

Aside from a weird choice for a closer (Also sprach Zarathustra from 2001, really?), Jazz and the Philharmonic is an extremely welcome dose of jazz on primetime PBS. It ranges from pleasantly entertaining to downright revelatory. It should motivate viewer-listeners to keep an eye out for a talented newcomer like Roe and catch up with the work of accomplished veterans like O’Connor and Blanchard. Naturally, it always sounds great from a technical perspective, thanks to the late, great engineer Phil Ramone, in whose memory it is dedicated. Highly recommended, Jazz and the Philharmonic airs on hip PBS outlets this Friday night (2/28).

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on February 25th, 2014 at 10:22pm.

By Joe Bendel. Granted, motherhood is an endeavor that always requires courage and conviction, but the level exhibited by Chinese mothers resisting mandated sterilization is something else entirely. Documentarian Xu Huijing captured the local cadres of provincial Ma village going about their shocking business in his very personal expose, Mothers, which screens as part of this year’s Documentary Fortnight at MoMA.

As Xu explains in his brief opening narration, he would not be here today if the Communist Party had had its way. He was a second child conceived in the fourth year of the One Child campaign. Like his mother, Rong-rong has already had a second child and paid a hefty fine as a result. She has also paid several subsequent fines for not consenting to mandatory sterilization.

Zhang Qing-mei, Ma’s “director of women’s care,” and thug-turned-village-deputy Zhang Guo-hong can no longer tolerate her disobedience. They have to meet the quota of fourteen sterilizations handed down from high. The problem is that Ma is running out of fertile women. To make matters worse, women who voluntarily request such a procedure do not count towards the quota. Shamelessly, in full view of Xu’s camera, Deputy Zhang will brazenly harass Rong-rong’s grandmother and direct the local school to expel her children to put pressure on the fugitive mother.

The manner in which the Zhangs conduct “family planning” will make most jaws drop, but the real kicker comes when they complain about the village’s dwindling number of marriages and children enrolled in the local school. Hello McFly, that’s what happens when you sterilize everyone. Their village is slowly dying, yet they double-down on the very policies so obviously responsible.

Mothers clocks in just short of seventy minutes, but it is loaded with incendiary moments. Frankly, it brings to mind A Handmaid’s Tale, even including the dystopian religious fervor, courtesy of Zhang Qing-mei, who bizarrely likens Mao Zedong to a saint and a divine emperor. The mind reels.

Recently, the Communist government has promised some flexibility in One Child enforcement, but broad reforms still seem unlikely (just ask the great filmmaker Zhang Yimou). In any event, the policy has already wrought tremendous emotional damage that will reverberate for decades. You can see it clearly in Mothers. A bold work of cinematic journalism and a gripping human interest story, Mothers is highly recommended when it screens Thursday (2/27) with Leslie Tai The Private Life of Fenfen (another worthy selection) during MoMA’s 2014 Doc Fortnight.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on February 25th, 2014 at 1:25am.

The Private Life of Fenfen (Trailer) from Leslie Tai on Vimeo.

By Joe Bendel. Evidently, fifteen minutes will not get you very far in today’s China. Guo Lifen (familiarly known as Fenfen) gained considerable new media-social network notoriety as the subject of Leslie Tai’s collaborative documentaries, but the reality of her class and circumstances remained unchanged. Her personal travails will become grist for public consumption in Tai’s The Private Life of Fenfen, which screens as part of this year’s Documentary Fortnight at MoMA.

Guo Lifen has a lot of history with Tai. By giving her editorial control over their previous film, Tai hoped to avoid issues of exploitation. The divorced Guo also has considerable history with men that could be considered unambiguously exploitative. After completing their collaboration My Name is Fenfen and her own Sister Heaven Sister Earth, Tai gave a camera to record Guo video diary. Three years later, Guo handed Tai over one hundred hours of tape, declaring her dreams were now “dead.”

It is stark stuff, including accounts of family strife, domestic abuse, and an abortion precipitated by her lowlife fiancé’s drunken attack. Guo recounts it all matter-of-factly, as if she were already dead on the inside. Frankly, her testimony is quite spooky, but Tai’s presentation strategy is somewhat debatable.

Rather than simply edit it together, she films closed circuit broadcasts of Fenfen’s diaries, as if it were a legit reality TV program, in the sort of greasy spoons and hole-in-the-wall shops that cater to migrant workers such as Guo. While it adds an uncomfortably voyeuristic dynamic to the film (particularly when we hear some of the viewers’ unkind commentary), it also provides the constant reminder that this is where Guo came from and this is where she will inevitably return.

Guo is still relatively young. She should be able to make mistakes and get on with her life, but she clearly does not think she has that option. At best, she hopes for a modest measure of peace and quiet.  In its unassuming way, that is a damning indictment of contemporary China. Well worth seeing, The Private Life of Fenfen screens Thursday (2/27) as part of a double bill with Xu Huijing’s extraordinarily revealing Mothers, during MoMA’s annual Documentary Fortnight.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 25th, 2014 at 1:20am.

By Joe Bendel. You can draw a lot of conclusions about people simply from judging the groups trying to kill them. Most western observers are utterly baffled by the bedlam of the Syrian Civil War. However, it is pretty easy to side with the initial rebel groups who rose up against the Assad regime and now find themselves battling a virulently Islamist faction in the north, once the particulars of the conflict are established. This Tuesday, PBS’s Frontline broadcasts Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo, two boots-on-the-ground reports from Syria documenting the precarious state of the original, largely secular rebels and the dire conditions faced by sympathetic civilians.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is supposedly so extreme and violent, al-Qaeda wants to keep them at arm’s length. Presumably, they will patch things up if ISIS takes operational control of Syria, which is not outside the realm of possibility. They have little use for secular society and a special enmity for reporters, whom they are perfectly willing to execute on sight. Nevertheless, Muhammad Ali, a daring independent journalist with a memorable name, has infiltrated ISIS controlled territory with a team of Free Syrian Army aligned rebels.

When ISIS eventually leaves town, everyone is relieved to see them go. Frankly, many of the local citizenry are quite courageous expressing their hopes for a free secular democratic state. However, the prospects are rather iffy, even if the fractious rebel forces can unite against both ISIS and Assad. Second Front offers some cautious optimism on this score, but it is tempered by the shocking footage of the better organized ISIS brutally administering Sharia Law.

According to Children of Aleppo, an estimated 11,000 children have been killed in the course of the Syrian conflict. Most parents opted to shelter their sons and daughters outside the country. One FSA captain is a notable exception. He and his wife still live in their once fashionable Aleppo flat with their son and three daughters. The captain’s comrades are now like extended family to his girls, which would be almost heartwarming, if their familiarity with the sounds of war were not so tragically well developed.

Those who have seen Matthew VanDyke’s Not Anymore will also recognize his footage of a twelve year old protest singer, who just started performing for his camera as a shell landed nearly on top of them. Both survived, but she evidently now lives in Qatar. Frankly, VanDyke’s film is even more effective than the Frontline films at putting a human face on the Syrian civil war. Although it is now available online, interested New Yorkers can see VanDyke’s short doc on the big screen on February 28th as part of the 2014 Winter Film Awards. In contrast, Syria’s Second Front better establishes the ideological and geopolitical context for the various factions.

The one-two punch of last month’s Secret State of North Korea and the upcoming Syria’s Second Front make this Frontline’s strongest season perhaps ever. Both broadcasts represent solid investigative journalism conducted in countries that do not recognize press freedoms. Highly recommended, Frontline’s twofer of Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo air tomorrow night (2/11) on most PBS stations nationwide.

LFM GRADES: A-/ A-

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:37am.

By Joe Bendel. The subjects of this year’s two best Oscar nominated documentary shorts have some pretty unique talents, but Alice Herz-Sommer is in a class by herself. Still playing with verve at the spry age of 109, Herz-Sommer performed over one hundred piano recitals in the Theresienstadt (or Terezin) concentration camp. Taking strength from her music, she lived to tell and continued to find the beauty in life. Her story unfolds in Malcolm Clarke’s The Lady in Number 6, part of the annual two part showcase of Academy Award nominated short docs, which opens today at the IFC Center.

As a young girl, Herz-Sommer’s sophisticated Prague family often socialized with the likes of Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka. Something of a prodigy, she was widely recognized as one of the world’s top concert pianists by the time she was in her early thirties. Then the Germans invaded.

Obviously Herz-Sommer survived, but she would be no stranger to tragedy. Yet her indomitable spirit is genuinely inspiring—not in a Hallmark card sort of way, but reflecting hard won wisdom and a tenacious love of music. Still razor sharp at 109, she is a forceful screen presence, who never resorts to canned clichés.

No stranger to the subject of Theresienstadt, Malcolm Clarke was previously Oscar nominated for the documentary feature, Prisoner of Paradise, chronicling the life of Herz-Sommer’s fellow prisoner, Kurt Gerron. He includes enough historical context for those unfamiliar with the realities of the Potemkin concentration camp, but keeps the focus squarely on Herz-Sommer. He also has a great voice for narration and incorporates some distinctive original music, performed by Julie Theriault. Altogether, it is a sensitive and classy package, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the field.

While his life circumstances are radically different, Ra Paulette, the subject of Jeffrey Karoff’s Cavedigger is another fascinating artist. Like the title implies, Paulette digs caves. He is sort of a subterranean landscape artist, whose work incorporates elements of architecture and sculpture. Frankly, Paulette comes across as a bit of a flake, but his dedication is impressive and his caves are truly a sight to behold. Some of his work is reminiscent of Granada cave homes, but on a much grander scale. It is real feat of filmmaking, spanning years and transporting viewers to the remote corners of northern New Mexico.

Ordinarily, Yemen would also be considered quite the exotic locale, but over the last two years footage of the Arab Spring uprisings have become almost ubiquitous. Sara Ishaq’s Karama has no Walls adds some particularly graphic images to the public discourse. Drawing on video shot by two remarkably young cameramen, Walls is surprisingly effective breaking down step-by-step how the Change Square massacre escalated. Yet, despite the anguished testimony of two grieving fathers (say, why don’t we see the mothers on camera, as well?), the film has the look and trajectory of an extended BBC report. In contrast, Matthew VanDyke’s Not Anymore feels more cinematic, yet also more immediate.

Granted, Herz-Sommer’s story has been documented in Caroline Stoessinger’s widely translated A Century of Wisdom, but thank heavens Clarke got her oral history on film. Frankly, Paulette is not getting any younger either, but he seems to keep chugging along, just like Herz-Sommer. The best of the five, The Lady in Number 6 screens as part of the annual nominated short documentary showcase’s program A, along with the well intentioned Karama has no Walls. The intriguing outdoorsman outsider art documentary Cavedigger screens as part of program B, both of which open today (1/31) in New York at the IFC Center.

Posted on January 31st, 2014 at 2:01pm.