ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

South Africa

Slamdance Film Festival – Day 4

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Covering Slamdance has been a bit different for me because I didn’t actually attend the festival. Through filmmakers and publicists sharing screeners with me I’ve covered the film festival from the warmth of southern California. (As I write this it’s currently 33 F in Park City and 74 F in my patio.) While there are plusses to covering a festival remotely, I miss the word of mouth and opportunity to meet filmmakers and hear their introductions and Q&As at screening. My thanks for all those who shared their films with me for coverage.

The Bekińskis opens with the voice of Polish painter Zdzislaw Bekiński informing a friend of his son Tomasz’s death. The film then uses family photos, taped audio, home movies and video to relate the family’s history. Zdzislaw was fascinated with new technology and took every opportunity to use it to chronicle has family’s life. And it is not just vacations and birthday parties. It includes very personal discussions about the family dynamics and resentments. As the film progresses we learn of suicide attempts, a plane crash, illness, and murder. The elder Bekiński created dark surrealist paintings. We see some of his works throughout the film. Those dark paintings set a morose mood for the film that grows ever more grim.

Director Joshua Magor describes We Are Thankful (original title Siyabonga) as docufiction. It is the story of an South African actor, Siyabonga Majola, who hears that an English filmmaker is going to make a film in a nearby town. He sets off on a journey to take his career to a new level. That is exactly how Magor and Majola got together, and from that meeting, Magor decided the film he needed to make was the story of Majola’s trip and the various people and situations he encountered on the way. While the film spends a lot of time with Siya walking alone through country and towns, it is interesting to see and hear the parts of life that Siya lives. At the very end of the film, We hear his prayer and his desires for his day, his career, and the people he meets. That prayer puts the whole film into context.

 

Day 6 at NBFF

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Why should people go to film festivals? Because it may be the only chance they get to see films like Meerkat Moonship. This South African film by Hanneke Schutte features wonderful cinematography and a story of overcoming fear to be able to embrace life. Young Gideonette de la Rey lives under a curse. All the Gideon de la Reys in her family tree have died young. Her father named her that to show the world the curse wasn’t real. But after his sudden death, Gideonette is more convinced that ever she is doomed. She is sent to live on her grandparent’s farm. She tries to hide from anything dangerous. But then she makes friends with Bubesi, a deaf boy who is training to be an astronaut and fly away in the makeshift rocket Gideonette’s grandfather is building for him. When death once more comes into her life, Gideonette must determine how she will face the curse.

From Italy comes The Laplace’s Demon, directed by Giordano Giulivi. When a group of researchers have perfected the ability to predict exactly the number of pieces there will be when a glass falls to the floor, they are invited to a remote island by a mysterious professor. There they become the subjects of an experiment about human behavior. It becomes a cross of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and the philosophical debate about free will and determinism. This film is shot in black and white and makes excellent use of light and shadows to set the mood for this creepy mystery.

Wednesday was set as the Latino Showcase with films from Brazil, Mexico, and a joint production from Chile and Argentina. The Desert Bride, directed by Cecilia Atari and Valeria Pivato, is the story of Teresa, a middle-aged maid who has been with a family most of her life. When they sell the house, she must take a job in a far off city. But when the bus breaks down in the desert, she loses her bag with all her possessions, and must rely on the help of an affable vender named Gringo to search for it. This area venerates an unofficial Saint Correa, who seems to miraculously bring people together. Teresa seems to have a thoroughly joyless life, but perhaps there will be a miracle for her that will bring some joy into her life. The Desert Bride opens in some theaters on Friday.

Saturday at AFI Fest 2017

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The first full day for the festival took me on a trip around the world. That’s one of the values of film festivals, we get to see other lands and cultures without the expense and time of travel. (Not that I wouldn’t love being able to go to so many places.) We also get to see through different eyes. Four of the films for today were from women directors. Some have lived in more than one culture and so can compare and contrast. To see such films encourages us to see our own world and culture as others might.

From Spain comes Summer 1993 (New Auteurs section). Director Carla Simón tells a story based on her own childhood. After her mother’s AIDS-related death, young Frida moves into the Catalan countryside to live with her uncle and his family. She is surrounded by loving family members, but she has not yet come to grips with the enormity of the change in her life and discovered how to deal with the grief she holds inside. The beautiful, sunny countryside creates a contrast for the pain that Frida has. Summer 1993 is Spain’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film.

Joachim Trier’s Thelma (World Cinema) is a nicely creepy film coming out of Norway. Thelma has grown up in a religious family, but has now set off to university, where she finds new ideas and experiences life in new ways. She is strangely attracted to another student, Anja. But when she starts having unexplained seizures strange things begin to happen. There are secrets from her past that come to bear on her life and a chance for her to find happiness. Thelma is Norway’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film. It is slated to open in theaters on November 24.

Wajib (World Cinema) is a father/son story from director Annemarie Jacir. Shadi, an architect living in Rome, returns to Israel, to help his father Abu Shad hand-deliver wedding invitation for Shadi’s sister’s wedding. As the two men drive around Nazareth and visit friends and relatives, their differences create tensions. For Shadi, a Palestinian living an affluent life abroad, there is a culture clash in returning. The relationship between the two is very complex, at once loving and fractious. Has Shadi abandoned his family and people (as his mother did many years ago)? Has Abu Shadi compromised his principles to advance his career? As a father and a son, I found this a very universal reality of the difficulty in understanding a generational difference, yet being bonded by a lifetime of love. Wajib is the official Palestinian entry for Best Foreign Language Film.

In Iram Haq’s What Will People Say? (New Auteurs) a 1.5 generation Pakistani immigrant lives a dual life: the perfect Pakistani daughter at home, but a normal Norwegian teenager among her friends. But when Misha’s father discovers her with her boyfriend in her room late one night, everything changes. The story is a clash of important values. For the West, where Nisha has grown up, freedom is perhaps the highest value. But for her family, both in their new country and back in Pakistan, honor is paramount. It may seem that her parents are only concerned with how they are perceived, but at the same time it seems they are acting out of love for their daughter, trying to provide her with a life that fits their worldview. Of course, I watched this through western eyes, so some of the responses by her family seem extreme, but at the same time I could empathize with their desire to raise their daughter in what they considered a proper life. Mark this down as one of my favorites of the festival.

I traveled to South Africa with Jenna Bass’s High Fantasy (New Auteurs). Four friends (three women, one white, one colored, two black) go to an isolated farm for a camping trip. But when they wake up in the morning, they have somehow swapped bodies. This is more than Freaky Friday. As they struggle to understand what happened, they must also struggle with the difficulty of what it means to live in a “rainbow nation”. The racial and sexual differences are not something that can be covered up by just “walking a mile in another’s shoes”. The resentments of generations of apartheid and oppression are too deep. South Africa continues to be a country that struggles with racism—as does the U.S. This film is not about finding easy answers for how we live together in racist societies, but rather it raises some questions that need to be addressed if we are ever going to find ways to move forward.