By Jason Apuzzo. War photographer and documentarian Tim Hetherington was killed yesterday in Libya, while covering the civil war there. The New York Times reports on the incident here. We extend our condolences to his friends, family and colleagues.
Tim Hetherington.
Hetherington’s extraordinary documentary about the Afghanistan war, Restrepo, was nominated for an Oscar just last year (read Joe Bendel’s Libertas review here). Hetherington was one of the leading photographers and documentarians of his generation, a courageous and poetic soul who studied literature at Oxford and who brought a writer’s sensibility to his work. He will be missed.
I invite Libertas readers to take a few moments and watch what was apparently Hetherington’s last film effort, a short film called Diary which I’ve embedded above. It’s really an astonishing piece of filmmaking – richly suggestive of what a talent Hetherington was, and of the depth of his passion for justice.
By Joe Bendel. Just because they are Danish soldiers, that does not mean they should trust the media any more than their American counterparts. A group of Danes serving in Afghanistan learns this PR lesson the hard way in Janus Metz’s embed-style documentary Armadillo, which opened yesterday in New York and elsewhere.
Amazingly, as the film opens, the Danish unit stationed at the Helmand forward operating base (nicknamed Armadillo) has yet to suffer a fatal casualty. In fact, when the group of soldiers Metz follows from enlistment and basic training arrive at Armadillo, boredom seems to be their greatest foe. In a rather clumsy effort to be provocative, Metz makes much of their choice of entertainment: violent video games and run-of-the-mill porn, as if this were shocking for a group of twenty-something men serving in the middle of nowhere without any interaction with women.
The Danish soldiers make an effort to reach out to the locals, but they have trouble overcoming the widespread fear of Taliban reprisals. Isolated and untested, the Helmand outpost is simply too tempting a target for the Taliban to resist for long. Eventually they make their move. Unfortunately, it is impossible to really tell what went down in the soon-to-be-controversial incident. Most of the camerawork is a veritable blur, which is understandable considering that bullets were flying. However, Metz never establishes any reference points for area in question, or sets the scene in any way. Continue reading LFM Review: Armadillo & The War in Afghanistan
By Joe Bendel. In 1968, Amos Poe was a budding photographer visiting family in Czechoslovakia. For obvious reasons, the Soviet invasion cut short his photographic sojourn to the countryside. There were no such constraints in the lawless anarchy of late 1970s New York, where Poe became a trailblazer in the underground Super-8 filmmaking community. Céline Danhier profiles those squatter-auteurs in Blank City, which opens this Wednesday in New York at the IFC Center.
Abe Beam’s New York was about as pre-Giuliani as the City ever got. The rule of law was tenuous at best, but rents in the East Village were relatively affordable—not that anyone even bothered to pay. CBGB’s was the center of the musical universe, also hosting a number of early screenings of what would later be dubbed the “No Wave” movement.
Danhier scored interviews with just about every significant surviving figure on the scene at the time. A portrait emerges of a kind of dormitory-like atmosphere, where everyone knew each other, but nobody had a job. Though they do not confess it outright, “coolness” within the clique was clearly of primary importance. Musician-turned-filmmaker John Lurie admits he hid his saxophone, “because nobody was doing what they knew how to do . . . technique was so hated.”
The great irony of Blank is that Danhier’s doc is far easier to watch than a good many of the films it documents. Fortunately, just about every chaotic shoot generated its share of humorous anecdotes, which generously pepper Blank. Indeed, the film is at its best when filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch reminisce about their early days. However, it is hard to stifle the eye-rolling when her interview subjects get political. At least Lizzie Borden expresses grief for the World Trade Center terrorist attack, while acknowledging the awkward similarity between 9/11 and the conclusion of her film Born in Flame.
Granted, Poe’s Blank Generation is probably not at the top of a lot of Netflix queues. Still, it is bit of an eye-opener to see how many figures from the Blank scene either legitimately crossed over, like Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Debbie Harry, Susan Seidelman, and Ann Magnuson, or kind-of sort-of did, such as John Lurie, Charlie “Wild Style” Ahearn, and Bette Gordon.
Like the films under discussion, Blank is best when its participants do not take their illustrious careers too seriously. While the time spent with the subsequent “Cinema of Transgression” lacks the same charm, the film mostly works as a valentine to scruffy independent filmmaking. Surprisingly entertaining, Blank opens today at the IFC Center.
By Joe Bendel. For many South Koreans, it is difficult to believe the reports of horrific human rights abuses committed in the North. That is why Polish director Andrzej Fidyk became the prime mover behind Yodok Stories, a stage musical about the inhuman atrocities regularly happening in North Korean concentration camps. Fidyk also documented the controversial theatrical production, undertaken at great risk by defectors who survived the Yodok camp, in his eye-opening Norwegian-produced film, likewise titled Yodok Stories, a standout selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival now available for free in its entirety (see above) at Snag Films.
One thing the North Koreans certainly know is how to do is stage huge spectacles of tens of thousands of tightly choreographed participants, like the grand pageant celebrating the fortieth anniversary of DPRK Fidyk recorded in his 1988 documentary Parade. Impressed by the technical skill required to mount such a production, Fidyk wanted to collaborate with a former North Korean director to document the rest of the North Korean experiment in Communist collectivism. After many inquiries, he eventually found Jung Sung San. Continue reading LFM Review: Yodok Stories & North Korean Tyranny + Watch Film Now for FREE
By Joe Bendel. The “Fatherly Leader” loved the sight of young comrades physically exerting themselves in the open arena. Of course, the consequences of losing were rather permanent in “Juche” sports. Fortunately, Kim Il-sung also had ideas on cinema that prohibited any inconvenient realism. As a result, North Koreans had a steady diet of propaganda films, including Pak Chong-song’s oddly watchable Centre Forward, which screens at the 2011 Korean American Film Festival on a double bill with Mads Brügger’s reality check Red Chapel.
After several frustrating years as a scrub, Cha In-son finally gets a chance to start for the Taesongsan football team. Unfortunately, he is so keyed-up, he pretty much stinks up the field. Shortly thereafter, he and his entire family are consigned to a prison camp. The end. Actually, not in this sanitized portrayal of DPRK. Instead, Cha’s awful performance sets of a round of recriminations and self-criticism that would be out of place in any healthy society.
From North Korea's "Centre Forward."
Basically, the Taesongsan coach decides his team lost because everyone got too fat and complacent, so he institutes a bone-crushing new training program, making Cha one popular fellow. He does not get much sympathy from his sister Myong-suk either, because as dancer in the elaborate propaganda productions staged on behalf of the Kim personality cult, she works harder than any of the football slackers.
Anyone waiting for a romance to blossom between Cha’s superstar roommate Chol-gyu and his sister Myong-suk better forget it. Centre is not merely chaste, it is neutered. There is only one person getting any love in this film, but he never appears directly. However, plenty of rousing songs are sung in Kim’s honor.
There is no question Centre is propaganda bearing little or no resemblance to the truth. Everyone is robustly vital and all the shops are amply stocked. Yet, it is bizarrely fascinating to watch this Rocky unfold with all its idiosyncrasies, while knowing it all takes place in one of the most isolated, repressive regimes in the world. At times, it is downright surreal, like the cut-away shots of the Taesongsan team suddenly riding a roller coaster in their Sunday best amidst their final training montage. (Aren’t they supposed to win the big game before going to Kim Il-sung-Land?) Still, the young actress playing Myong-suk is quite good, coming across as endearingly sweetly as she busts Cha’s chops for his insufficient zeal. Continue reading North Korean Double Feature: LFM Reviews Centre Forward & Red Chapel
