“The Power Was in the Conversations, So I Knew I Had to Help the Viewer to Hear Them”: Tomasz Wolski on his Doc Fortnight-Debuting 1970

Tomasz Wolski’s 1970 is a riveting work of ingenious artistry. (And one of the highlights of last November’s IDFA, where it screened in the Best of Fests section.) It was during that chaotic titular year that food prices skyrocketed, and Gdansk’s striking shipyard workers would spark nationwide protests across Poland, which would culminate in the triumphal Solidarity movement a decade later — but not before the Communist leaders at the time decided to quash the threatening uprising with lethal force, calling in army units, tanks, and militiamen with guns. None of which we actually see in 1970. Indeed, the veteran Polish documentarian has chosen instead to flip the historical playbook, focusing not on the righteous protestors but on their bureaucratic tormentors. 1970 takes as its basis rare audio recordings of the actual Communist crisis team tasked to figure out how to avoid a repeat of Prague. And these back and forth telephone calls — equal parts frantic and utterly ridiculous — are made visual not through any archival imagery but via realistically handcrafted, stop-motion-animated dolls. To learn all about the process of turning his country’s shadowy past into a high-stakes drama with humanoid models, Filmmaker reached out to Wolski the week of the film’s (North American) Doc Fortnight premiere. (1970 continues screening virtually through March 10, and IRL at MoMA on March 1.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Wreckers of Civilization : Marcus Werner Hed and Dan Fox on their Doc Fortnight-premiering Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle

Marcus Werner Hed and Dan Fox’s Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle, which NY-premiered February 24 as part of this year’s hybrid Doc Fortnight, certainly lives up to its billing as “a unique portrait of living for art’s sake.” The story began in the UK’s pre-punk days in Hull — a port city never to be remembered for its music scene — when a group of resident weirdos rebranded themselves as COUM Transmissions and began staging colorful happenings on the city’s grey streets. Artists and musicians came and went (and moved to London); the group and its members metamorphosized (most notably founding rebel Genesis P-Orridge); and controversy ensued (a pornographic model, co-founder Cosey Fanni Tutti, boldly re-appropriated her own image by transforming those sex photos into artwork). And then they formed noise band Throbbing Gristle, and industrial music was born. And now that this unceasing creative whirlwind has been captured onscreen through a massive trove of archival material and candid interviews with the surviving misfits (including P-Orridge who passed away in March 2020, when the doc first hit screens), Filmmaker decided to reach out to the Swedish-British doc duo to learn all about their journey back to a futuristic time. (Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle continues screening virtually through March 10, and IRL at MoMA on February 27.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Pandemic was Raging but the People I was Filming were Unfazed”: Jenny Perlin on her Doc Fortnight-Opening Bunker

Multimedia artist Jenny Perlin, whose work includes 16mm hand-drawn animated films, videos, installations, and drawings (some of which are in MoMA’s collection), opens this year’s hybrid Doc Fortnight with Bunker, a literal underground film. Beginning back in pre-pandemic 2018 Perlin took a cross-country road trip, hoping to explore the lives of men (almost all straight, white and middle-aged) who call decommissioned nuclear silos and military bunkers home. Along the way, she also meets the (demographically similar) businessmen building, selling and sometimes even living the fear-driven American dream. Filmmaker caught up with Perlin a few days before the doc’s February 23rd opening night debut to learn all about her eye-opening journey into an off-the-grid world defined as much by nature connection as by any bunker mentality. (Bunker is preceded by Perlin’s animated short Each thing its place, inspired by her time at the VivosX bunker complex in South Dakota.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Invisible woman: Europe

MIGRANTS: Philip Scheffner's foray into fiction varies the game of visible and invisible until dreams and reality fuse. Despite its anodyne title Philip Scheffner’s Europe, world-premiering at this year’s Berlinale, is one of the more unusual projects in the Forum section lineup. It refers not to the continent (though perhaps figuratively) but to the bus stop in the small French suburb of Chatellerault that the film’s 30-something protagonist Zohra Hamadi utilizes to get from her small flat, to work (at an NGO-run, second-hand-clothing warehouse), to various medical and physical therapy appointments, and back again. Having left her native Algeria to undergo a series of surgeries to correct a debilitating spinal condition, Zohra is now pain-free and able to walk upright for the very first time. Surrounded by a vast network of family and friends, all of whom live in the same housing block, she now only has to wait for her husband Hocine’s family reunification visa to come through. And then – voila! – her new and improved life can commence. Or not. Most likely not.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

“I Believe that Valuing African Audiences Will Break the Pattern of Cliches That We Have Become Accustomed To”: Akuol de Mabior on Her Berlinale-Debuting doc No Simple Way Home

South Sudanese director Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home is a gorgeous example of what African filmmakers can accomplish if Westerners would just get out of their way. A world premiere in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale, the doc is produced by Kenyan filmmaker Sam Soko (Softie) and the South African duo Tiny Mungwe and Don Edkins of STEPS (Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) as part of the organization’s Generation Africa initiative, “a pan-African anthology of 25 documentary films from 16 countries in Africa, on the topic of migration.” And it tells a tale not of folks fleeing to the mythic “promised lands” of the colonizers, but defiantly staying put on their own continent to right the fallout from historical wrongs at home. Luckily for de Mabior, the very embodiment of taking the power back for the people resides literally in her home – as her mother is Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior, who also happens to be “the mother of South Sudan.” The director herself was forced into exile as a teenager in 2005, soon after her father, the rebel leader-turned-politician John Garang de Mabior, died in a helicopter crash (three weeks after becoming First Vice President of Sudan). And now after years of grueling conflict, South Sudanese independence (in 2011), and a fragile peace agreement, the mother – and current Vice President of South Sudan – and her now adult daughters have returned with nervous high hopes. Along with the filmmaker sibling’s camera in tow. Filmmaker reached out to the Havana-born, Nairobi-residing, first-time-feature director a week prior to her doc’s Berlinale debut to learn all about this most unusual family movie.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Magic Kingdom: The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales

CAPITALISM: The higher one climbs the ladder, the more obscured the view below becomes. At the beginning of Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes’s provocatively titled The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, a recent last-minute addition to this year’s online Sundance, the co-director with the globally famous last name describes the feeling as if she’d been born with a «weird superpower» she’d never asked for. Yet this granddaughter of fantasyland royalty – specifically Roy, who Disney describes as the business-minded Jiminy Cricket to his brother Walt’s dreaming Pinocchio – also admits to feeling a bit like a «goldfish.» A childhood in which trips to «the park» were routine was just part of the water that the now sexagenarian activist filmmaker swam in. It’s a terrifically astute assertion. A reminder that the higher up in the economic ladder one climbs (or is birthed into), the more obscured the view below. And the more insulated one becomes from her own blindspots.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

"...A Person Deprived of a Legal Status is Further Denied a Voice and an Image”: Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger on their Berlinale-Debuting Europe

World-premiering in the Forum section (February 13) at this year’s Berlinale, Philip Scheffner’s Europe is a work at once as simple and complex as its title might imply. “Europe” is the name of a bus stop in Europe (specifically in the small French town of Chatellerault) where the main character Zohra, an Algerian citizen, catches a ride from her housing block flat to her job sorting secondhand clothes at an NGO-run warehouse and also to various doctor and physical therapy appointments – her reason for coming to France in the first place. Fortunately, the numerous surgeries and treatments for her debilitating scoliosis have now paid off as she’s finally able to stand up straight and pain-free. Not so fortunately, as a result of being “healed” Zohra is no longer eligible to stay, her residence permit renewal coldly and bureaucratically denied. And this regardless of her legitimate employment, the many family members who live nearby, and the family reunification visa that she’s been waiting on to bring her husband Hocine over to join her. And then there’s the fact that she doesn’t exist, rendered invisible by the state — and also by the director, who inventively cuts Zohra out of the frame for a large chunk of the film once she loses her right to be recognized. But this is also where abstract metaphor meets harsh reality; Zohra is played by Rhim Ibrir, whose own life story is pretty much identical to that of her character’s. Indeed, what began as documentary ended as a troubling work of “state enforced fiction.” Which is why Filmmaker was particularly keen to catch up with the German director (whose Havarie likewise played the Berlinale Forum in 2016) and his co-writer Merle Kröger to learn all about working within a government-provoked genre they never intended to create.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Manifesting destiny: The Territory

INDIGENOUS RIGHTS: Promised dominion over their own rainforest territory, Brazil's Uru-eu-wau-wau people have since faced illegal incursions from mining companies and land-grabbing invasions spurred on by right-wing politicians. As a critic keenly attuned to white (especially American) saviour filmmaking, I was admittedly wary of tuning in to Alex Pritz’s debut feature The Territory, which just nabbed double honours (the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Documentary Craft and the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary) at this year’s online Sundance. The film follows the plight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people, who, along with the Brazilian rainforest they call home, may soon no longer exist. Pritz, a non-Indigenous American director, and cinematographer – who’s worked with Matthew Heineman, another white American that likewise has a habit of dropping in on foreign conflict zones to lend a do-gooding cinematic hand – originally was introduced to the Uru-eu-wau-wau through environmental and human rights activist Neidinha Bandeira. The feisty Bandeira, who grew up in the rainforest observing the tribe and eventually became one of the doc’s main characters, has fought for the Uru-eu-wau-wau for decades though is not Indigenous herself. Nor for that matter is Gabriel Uchida, the Sao Paolo-born journalist, and photographer who connected Pritz with Bandeira in the first place. (Uchida is listed as a producer on the film – as is high-profile white American Darren Aronofsky.)

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.