Lost Documents - Found Files : Stephen King on The Shining

Lost Documents - Found Files. This is a new series I plan to build upon, with my task being of finding relics of film criticism: texts that are not readily available, which are obscure, and that may have been only partly referenced. I plan on finding them, from libraries and such, and then hosting them here. And make sure to email me if you have any suggestions of pieces that you are curious about and that you would like me to try to find. - D.D.

Stephen King's new book 11/23/63 is like what Triple Agent was for Eric Rohmer: They are both late works that explore the era of their authors childhood, though not so much in a vein of romantic nostalgia but through a more critical lens. The subject of Rohmer's Triple Agent is the opaqueness of others, even those that are closest to us, through a look at humanity at its extreme within the behind-the-scene politics of the Popular Front in France in the thirties, as the Russian Fiodor betrays his Greek wife Arsinoé. While for King it is the cultural and emotional legacy of the post-WWII American rural life, with the large catastrophe being the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas Texas on November twenty-third in nine-teen-sixty-three. In 11/23/63, Jake Epping time-travels from the present to the past to do something "good", make the world a better place, but what he finds there is just as racist and vicious as anything today - and say that the assassination was prevented, whose to say the world would a better place? Even though the two artists are different in sensibility they very much to speak to a certain regional populace for both of their respective countries, with Rohmer being in the tradition of a French discursive and articulate intellectual tradition while for King that of a blue-collar and mainstream America - the voice of the people. 

To get ready for the class on The Shining (tonight, Monday June 11^th at 7PM) in the series In Nayman's Terms: The Films of Stanley Kubrick at the Miles Nadal JCC, I've found and transcribed a rare interview with Stephen King where he discusses his thoughts on the Kubrick adaptation as well as other anecdotes. Vincent LoBrutto in his excellent Kubrick biography Stanley Kubrick: A Biography first brought up this King interview, which I then found in the June 1986 issue of American Film that I was able to find at the Film Reference Library.

Though to start off here is how most people would be familiar with King's views on Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, from the introduction to the reprint edition of The Shining:

"My single conversation with the late Stanley Kubrick, about six months before he commenced filming his version of The Shining, suggested that it was this quality of the writing that appealed to him: What, exactly, is impelling Jack Torrance toward murder in the winter-isolated rooms and hallways of the Overlook Hotel? Is it undead people, or undead memories? Mr. Kubrick and I came to different conclusions (I always thought there were malevolent ghosts in the Overlook, driving Jack to the precipice), but perhaps those different conclusions are, in fact, the same. For aren't memories the true ghosts of our lives? Do they not drive all of us to words and acts we regret from time to time?"

*****

"King of The Road" by Darrel Ewing and Dennis Myers (American Film, June 1986)

He's the self-proclaimed "Sears catalog with a plot," the chronicler of contemporary America's dreams, desires, and fears. His name is synonymous with literary horror. He is Stephen King, and he holds the imagination of millions of Americans hostage. Mixing humor and horror into the landscape of middle-class America, King fascinates and terrifies people in record numbers. With his extensive mainstream popularity, he is, in effect, the literary counterpart of Hollywood's Stephen Spielberg. Spielberg and King have similar sensibilities. Both situate the evil aspects of the world within the commonplace. The difference between the two, of course, is that Spielberg offers transcendence and escape, but for King the horror is never ending, and often apocalyptic.

King's film credits include eleven movies based on his writings, with another four in development, and Maximum Overdrive, the first film he has not only written but also directed. Based on his short story "Trucks," it is set for a national release date in July.

Question: Can you talk about Maximum Overdrive - what was it like directing your first movie?

Stephen King: The movie is about all these vehicles going crazy and running by themselves, so we started shooting a lot of gas pedals, clutches, transmissions, things like that, operating themselves. We had one sequence: The gas pedal to the floor, the gas pedal goes up, the clutch goes in, the gear shifts by itself, the clutch comes out, and the gas pedal goes back to the floor again. We were able to shoot everything but the transmission from the driver's-side door. The transmission was a problem, because we kept seeing either a corner of the studio or a reflection.

So I said: This is no problem, we will simply take the camera around to the other side and shoot the transmission from there. Total silence. Everybody looked at everybody else. You know what's happening here, right? I'd crossed the axis. It was like farting at the dinner party: Nobody wanted to say you've made a terrible mistake. I didn't get this job because I could direct or because I had any background in film; I got it because I was Stephen King.

So finally [cameraman] Daniele Nannuzzi told me I'd crossed the 180=degree axis and that this simply wasn't done, and although I didn't understand what it was, I grasped the idea that it was breaking a rule.

Later on I called George [Romero] up on the phone and I said, "What is this axis shit?" and he laughed his head off, and explained it, and I said, "Can you break it - the rule?" He said, "It's better not to, but if you have to, you can. If you look at The Battleship Potemkin" (which I never have), "it crosses the axis all the time and the guy [Sergei Eisenstein] gets away with it." Then I saw David Lynch and asked him: "What's this about crossing the axis?" and he burst out laughing and said, "Stephen, you can do anything. You're the director." Then he paused and said, "But it doesn't cut together."

Question: What effect were you aiming for in Maximum Overdrive?

King: I wanted it to move fast. It's a wonderful moron picture, in that sense. It's a really iilliterate picture in a lot of ways. There isn't a lot of dialogue in it. It's fast. A lot of things explode. It's very profane, very vulgar, quite violent in some places. We're going to have trouble with the Ratings Board, I guess.

Question: Did you pay attention to character relations in the story or did you want to wow the audience with spectacle?

King: I'm interested in my people. One of the few really sensible things that anybody said at the story conference that we had at MGM in L.A. - those people, what an alien mentality! - But somebody did say that if the charactersdon't stand out and this is just a movie about machines it'll be a bad picture. Their solution was to suggest that a lot of dialogue and scenes between the major characters be added for character and texture. I was always calling them the jumbo "John! Oh, Martha!" scenes because they're like soap operas. We shot 'em. We just cut 'em all out in the editing room, every single one.

It's like that classic moment in The Swarm where Fred MacMurray and Olivia De Havilland have this scene, and Fred says the equivalent - I swear this is true - he doesn't actually say this, he says something like, "The bees are coming, and we'll all probably be killed, but thank Christ I'm not impotent anymore." That's really what they want.

I'm interested in character eccentricity, in the interactions of daily life that you don't necessarily see on the screen. I'm not particularly interested in character in the traditional sense of, let's say, Scorsese. I prefer Hitchcock, because the character that you find really interesting in his picture are always in supporting roles, like the old lady who lectures about the birds in The Birds: "They can't. It's simply not possible. Their brain pans are too small."

Question: What do you feel are some of the scariest moments in your film adaptations?

King: You mean that scared me in the theater? When that hand comes out of the grave in Carrie at the end. Man, I thought I was going to shit in my pants.

Question: You had no idea ... ?

King: Yeah, I knew they were going to do it, and I still almost shit in my pants. The first time I saw Carrie with an audience they previewed it about a week and a half before Halloween. They didn't do a screening in Maine, but they did one in Boston, so my wife and I went down to the theater, and I just looked around in total dismay, because the regular picture that they were showing was Norman, Is That You? with Redd Foxx. The theater was entirely full of black people. We looked like two little grains of salt in a pepper shake, and we thought: This audience is just going to rate the hell out of this picture. What are they going to think about a skinny little white girl with her menstrual problems? And that's the way it started, and then, little by little, they got on her side, you know, and when she started going her shtick, I mean, they're going, "Tear it up!" "Go for it!" and all this other stuff. These two guys were talking behind us, and we were llistening to them, and at the end they're putting on their coats and getting ready to leave. Suddenly this hand comes up, and these two big guys screamed along with everyone else, and one of them goes, "That's it!" That's it! She ain't never gonna be right!" And I knew it was going to be a hit.

Question: What do you think of the movies adapted from your books?

King: Firestarter is one of the worst of the bunch, even though in terms of story it's very close to the original. But it's flavorless; it's like cafeteria mashed potatoes. There are things that happen in terms of special effects in that movie that make no sense to whatsoever. Why this kid's hair blows every time she starts fire is totally beyond my understanding. I never got a satisfactory answer when I saw the rough cut. By that time, Dino [De Laurentiis] was regularly asking me for input, so I'd give him the input. Sometimes he'd take it. In that case...

The movie has great actors, with the exception of the lead, David Keith, who I didn't feel was very good - my wife said that he has stupid eyes. The actors were allowed to do pretty much what they wanted to do. Martin Sheen, who is a great actor, with no direction and nobody to him - and I mean there must have been literally no direction - with nobody to pull him in and say, "Stop what you're doing," he simply reprised Greg Stillson [in The Dead Zone]. That's all there is; it's the same character exactly. But Greg Stillson should not be in charge of The Shop [secret government organization in Firestarter]. He's not the kind of guy who gets that job.

Question: You were disappointed in The Shining - if you were directing it now, what would you do with it?

King: Oh, I would do everything different. There's a lot to like about it. But it's a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside. You can sit in it, and you can enjoy the smell of the leather upholstery - the only thing you can't do is drive it anywhere. So I would do everything different. The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it scream that from the beginning to the end, from plot decisions to that final - which has been used before on The Twilight Zone.

The best illustration of what's wrong with that movie, and I guess it is a scary moment - yeah, there is one scary moment in The Shining. It's a classic fairy tale situation, the Bluebeard situation, where Bluebeard says, "You can go anywhere in the castle, but don't go into this room." Only in this case, what Bluebeard says is, "You can do anything you want or go anywhere you want, but you can't look at my book - which I'm going to leave right here." So she can't help it, she looks at it. And we're frightened when she does that because we know the conventions of the genre and we know that the conventions of the genre demand that she be caught. The it gets worse, because when she starts to thumb through the pages she sees that he's writing the same thing over and over again: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." And she's thumbing through it faster and faster and faster, and we're cutting back and forth to her face, from the book to her face, from the face to the book, back and forth, and it's great, because you know he's going to come.

Then for some reason that I still don't understand, Kubrick cuts away and shows us Nicholson approaching her. Now, sometimes this works. Hitchcock said that if you show the bomb under the table and then have the guy sitting down, it's worse than if the bomb just explodes, and that's right, except that sometimes it's wrong. In this case, you know that he's there, you don't need to see him, and what should happen is that while she's looking at the book, there should be just this [King grabs the interviewer's shoulder], and cuts away and shows us Nicholson first, so there's no payoff. That's the end of it; that's the dissipation of the climax.

I wanted to like that movie. I was so flattered that Kubrick was going to do something of mine. The first time he called, it was 7:30 in the morning. I was standing in the bathroom in my underwear, shaving, and my wife comes in and her eyes are bugging out. I thought one of the kids must be choking in the kitchen or something. She says, "Stanley Kubrick is on the phone!" I mean, I was just floored. I didn't even take the shaving cream off my face.

Just about the first thing he said was, The whole idea of ghosts is always optimistic, isn't it?" And I said, with a hangover and one eye almost open, "I don't understand what you mean." He said, "Well, the concept of the ghost presupposes life after death. That's a cheerful concept, isn't it?" And it sounded so plausible that for a moment I just floundered and didn't say anything, and then I said, "But what about hell?" There was a long pause on his end, and then he came in a very stiff voice and said, "But I don't believe in hell." He doesn't believe in ghosts, either, he just found the whole concept very optimistic, which is what leads his version of the happy ending for Jack Torrance - this closed loop where he is always the caretaker. He didn't seem to want to get behind the concept of the ghost as a damned soul.

Question: It sounds as though he was trying to rewrite the horror genre.

King: I'm sure that he wanted to bust it open, to do something new with it, but it is very unbustable, which is one of the reasons it has endeared as long as it has.

Question: What was it you liked about David Cronenberg's direction of The Dead Zone?

King: If there were no element of horror in my books, they'd be the dullest books ever written. Everything in those stories is totally ordinary - Dairy Queens - except you take one element and you take that out of context. Cronenberg did the ordinary, and nobody else who has used my books really has. I thought that Lewis Teague, who directed Cujo, did to a degree, except that Teague always seems to me to get this kind of soap-opera look in his people and his sets. But once you got them to the house, I mean, that movie just Sonny Liston. I love it.

One of the guys who worked on Dead Zone, someone I respect very much, told that Dino was the first producer David Cronenberg ever had who forced him to direct. Who forced him to approach the job, not as this gorgeous toy that was made for David Cronenberg, but as a job where he had a responsibility to the producer and to the audience. And that's another reason why Dead Zone was a good picture.

Question: Where did you get the idea for it?

King: For some reason I had just a scene in my mind of this teacher, and a test going on, and how quiet the room is when you're having a really tough test, and everybody is bent over and there's no sound whatsoever, and then this girl finishing up and handing her test paper to the teacher, and their hands coming into contact, and the teacher saying, "You must go home at once. Your house is on fire. Everybody's going to die." And everyone in the room looks up, sort of pinning him with their eyes, and him being very self-conscious and like a crazy person. Something like that.

The scene never ended up in the book at all - it was just a focus point. The story was supposed to be about this guy who eventually would shake hands with the man is going to blow up the world. I got interested in the idea of whether it would be possible to write a moral novel where an assassin, an American assassin, actually was a good guy, or where the act would be justified. When you write a novel - well, at least for me, because I never think about theme as a starting point - I just think about story. But sometimes about three-quarters o the way through the first draft you'll discover that there is a theme, or the potential for a theme. Or you discover what it is that you were actually talking about all along.

In Dead Zone, I thought that what I was talking about was the way that we sometimes think gifts or special talents are actually the things that cause people to be totally rejected by society. Books like Carrie and Firestarter are instinctive rebellings against that. I think that Dead Zone is the only time that I was able to go back and actually approach the whole rewrite of the book with one unifying idea in mind, which made it into a novel. I mean, it's actually sort of thoughtful.

Pet Sematary to some degree is the same: It's supposed to be a reflection on what happens when people in a materialistic society,  people who live only for materialistic reasons, come into contact with questions of faith and death and outside forces.

Question: What do you think of America at present? Is it ordinary?

King: I think the same thing about it that I have always thought: I think it's fantastic. We're killing ourselves; we're fiddling while Rome burns. I mean, while we've got enough explosives to turn planet Earth into the second asteroid belt, the largest weekly magazine in the country talking about where celebrities shop, and why people in Hollywoo don't want to serve finder foods any more. It all seems really ridiculous to me, but I love it. I love everything about it.

Festival Report: Cannes 2012

This is the first guest-contribution by Blake Williams: he arranged the fifty-two films that he saw at Cannes into seven categories, here are the top two. You can read the rest of Blake's comments on everything else he saw at Cannes on his excellent blog, R, and G, and B. – D.D.

Tier 1
Holy Motors (Leos Carax) – So singularly weird and exhilaratingly cinematic that, really, it doesn’t even *need* to mean anything (though it clearly does mean many things). It’s capital ‘S’ Surrealism as it pertains to the disappearance of cinema and humanity as we know them. Very telling anecdote: Carax hates digital cinema, and this film was shot digitally (among other things, Holy Motors may be the only Cannes Main Competition film that will ever have the screen intentionally datamosh). But there’s so much more, relating to online avatars, Georges Franju, as well as the confusion of our own personas and identities in the face of virtual existences (video games, cinema, the internet). The fact that all of these broad themes are packed into such an entertaining, euphoric presentation is just icing. Had the film walloped me the way I think it should have at the end, I might already be calling it one of the greatest films ever made.

Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu) – I was no lover of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, but this all but cleaned the floor with me; had it had a less Romanian ending (think Aurora), I’d have probably needed to ask for tissues when it ended. It details the tragic rejection of compromise between three parties that is so intense I often could not believe what I was seeing. The second half of the film in particular is just crescendo after crescendo of pure emotion that’s as visceral as in any recent film I can recall. Many intelligent persons are calling this film boring, and I do not know what film they were watching.

Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami) – When the screening first ended, I went out on a limb and called that this would be the most divisive film at Cannes this year, having heard no reactions yet. I was right. Playing off of Certified Copy’s interests in what makes us love another person, and the way the *behaviours* of loving someone is ingrained in our DNA, this is a minimal, sorrowful and absurdist package that contains dozens of breathtakingly serene and blissfully drawn-out conversations & car rides. Kiarostami is practically confrontational in his challenge for us to add it all up to something, only refusing to be easily define it for us (in contrast to the new Carlos Reygadas film (see Tier 5), it is apparent that further digging will actually yield substance). I thought of Chantal Akerman’s News From Home on occasion while watching, but really it’s like nothing I’ve seen or experienced in quite some time – a truly weird film. I will need another look, or twenty, before I can make perfect sense of this, but it refuses to exit my mind.

Tier 2
Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg) – radically stylized & inhuman, it actually took me a while to realize that Robert Pattinson wasn’t in fact giving one of the worst screen performances I’d ever seen, but was, conversely, giving a pretty amazing portrayal of a man who’s forgotten how to be human. Once it picks up steam, ideas fly at you like data in a detached but riveting stream, perfectly complimenting its theme (which pairs nicely with A Dangerous Method): the way our minds can repress the humanity of our mannerisms, behaviours, and interactions.

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! (Alain Resnais) – I saw this one twice, and I’m so glad I did, because what was a tedious and disappointing chore on first watch cleared itself up nicely on another viewing, though I don’t think everyone will require a second look to fall for it. Basically, there is a very heady, clever, and playful conceit at the heart of this film, and I fixated on it too much the first time. The key to appreciating this film lies in its source material: Eurydice. Pay attention to the play – it’s really lovely, intelligent, and bittersweet – and don’t get hung up on the wacky set-up, and you should be good to go.

Amour (Michael Haneke) – Turns out I already saw the new Haneke film a year ago in the Director’s Fortnight; an unfortunate coincidence, it’s almost identical to the Icelandic film, Volcano. Moment-to-moment it’s incredibly straightforward considering its maker, and starkly ‘what it is’. We wait for each progressed stage of deterioration in order to arrive at the same defeating and inevitable exit that we know – and are told in the very first scene – will come. For the first time, it felt to me like Haneke has made a film for his own cathartic therapy; no scolding or lessons to teach the audience. Getting old sucks, and that is primarily true because you have to watch loved ones do it, too. A devastating film, in its own modest, not-earth-shattering way.

Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan) – OK, fine! I still think Dolan is light on ideas, and he’s far too young to hold steadfast to a fixed theme (that being ‘impossible love’; I mean, this guy wants so hard to be taken seriously as a wunderkind auteur that he risks suffocating himself, which he did in his previous film, Heartbeats), but the filmmaking is really superb for most of this, and for the first time, it feels more ‘Dolan’ than anyone else (Wong, Almodovar, Allen….). Not sure what’s changed since his last film actually, but it’s just more genuine and honestly exuberant in its youthfulness and naïveté.

Room 237 (Rodney Ascher) – It’s practically a comedy, offering up a string of straight-faced observations, theories, exposés, and analyses by OCD cinephiles who latch on to what they perceive to be subliminal messages hidden in The Shining. Because Kubrick’s a genius, of *course* he slyly inserted all of this devastating and subversive conspiracy theory nonsense on purpose, right?!?! Most of what these guys propose is so insane/absurd – but genuine! – that I felt ashamed of the fact that, as a passionate cinephile myself, I often do the very same thing all the time. Films are playgrounds for us to insert ourselves and our experiences into, and we manufacture statements that reflect *us* so that we can understand a film just as much as we wish to be understood by others. Many will see this film as a curio that introduces interesting ideas on what The Shining is about, but what it *actually* accomplishes is more ambitious: showing exactly how cinephilia has been transformed by the home video era of movie-(re)(re)(re)(re)watching.

In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo) – since this was ‘only’ my seventh Hong film, it still felt fresh to me. Huppert had me giggling the entire time, even when I didn’t know what I was laughing at. Those familiar enough with Hong (i.e. if you’ve seen more than two) will note that this is yet another auto-critique, this one regarding the fact that pretty much all of his films have the same script and casting aesthetic. The 1st act is the funniest, but for the rest I was coasting on the subtle differences in each Anne (Huppert plays three different characters, all with the same name, naturally), and the treatment toward her by others.

Sister (Ursula Meier) – Ursula Meier is one talented lady. I wish the twist came about a little more naturally than it did (actually, I think the film would have improved if the audience had been in on it from the get-go), and I’ve yet to get more out of the film than just seeing it as a really well-done inversion of the absent parental guardian picture, but it’s *really* good at that. It’s a popular comment, but this really is a very Dardennes-ian film, though I missed the quasi-surrealism from her last film, Home, which was no doubt lifted in order to better serve the ultra-realistic tone.

Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik) – No doubting what Dominik wants you to take away from this (hint – Obama may not like this movie), but it’s still an exceptional, dialogue-heavy thriller that is boldly non-commercial. It is impressive that such a movie was made without ever feeling Tarantino-esque. I loved Gandolfini and Liotta.

Tabu (Miguel Gomes) – how anyone claims to have properly digested this on a single viewing is a mystery to me, but its second half sure lived up to the vague memory of hype I seem to recall it having, which is to say: I was floored by its singularity and the fact I cared so much. Bifurcation is like so ‘in’ right now and I guess now that I see the hints of connections between the halves I can start to appreciate it next time, but in the act of watching this I wished that the first hour would up and disappear altogether.

Sightseers (Ben Wheatley) – a pretty solid mix of Mike Leigh’s naturalism and Edgar Wright’s absurdly casual genre injections; humor works about half the time – mostly because you can see many jokes coming from a mile away – but its simple yet accurate observations of a couple who’ve reached a romantic plateau in their relationship and must invent new ways of staying interested in each other is often piercing despite the laughter.

No (Pablo Larraín) – aesthetically, conceptually, and thematically bold, not to mention that I laughed more at this film than anything else other than the new Hong. I just wish its political purpose resonated as much as the ironies and kitsch do.

Blake Williams

For the following five tiers, see Blake's blog entry "Cannes 2012 Hierarchy, with comments".

Bruce Baillie and others (Experimental Cinema, Summer 2012)

To kick off their Summer program at the Lightbox, The Free Screen will be screening Bruce Baillie’s Quixote, "the Baillie film most in need of rediscovery" according to The Free Screen programmer Chris Kennedy, and All My Life with Arthur Lipsett’s 21-87, and Joshua Romphf’s Ride This Country (May 30^th, 7PM), a portrait of a southern Ontario farm, with Romphf in attendance. The Free Screen summer schedule will also include the programs Liquid Metal (June 20^th, 7PM), a series that explores the changing textures of new digital effects; Fractured Movement / Constituent Parts (July 18^th, 7PM), whose centerpieces are the restored work of Los Angeles avant-gardist Gary Beydler, and with works by Alexandre Larose and Alexi Manis who will be in attendance; and Jonathan Schwartz: The Skies Can't Keep Their Secrets (August 15^th, 2012). On the subject of experimental-films, there are also the Pleasure Dome screenings of the recent work of Basma Alsharif at A Space Gallery (June 2^nd – July 14^th); James Richards recent videos at Cinecycle (June 2^nd, 7PM) and a conversation between Richards and Steve Reinke at The Power Plant (June 3^rd, 3PM); a book launch and screening of the short movies of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby at Cinecycle (June 15^th, 8PM) and artist talk with Mike Hoolboom (June 16^th, 2PM); Robert Frank’s Me & My Brother at the Courtyard (July 21^st, 9PM); an Open Screening at the Courtyard (August 11^th, 9PM); and screenings of performance art curated by Johannes Zits at Artscape Gibraltar Point (August 19, 7:30PM). The next Early Monthly Segments will feature Ute Aurand, Ulrike Pfeiffer and Marie Menken at the Art Bar in the Gladstone Hotel (June 11, 8PM), as well they will continue their programming into the summer. As part of the TIFF Cinematheque First Peoples Cinema program, Kate MacKay programmed Chick Strand's Anselmo Trilogy a three-part look ath the Mexican native Anselmo Aguascalientes (July 11th, 6:30PM). And to keep up-to-date on all experimental film related screenings in Toronto make sure to keep checking out John Porter’s website super8porter.

***** 

On Bruce Baillie

To discuss Baillie it is relevant to bring up the book Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000 as Baillie is most readily known as one of the grandfather figures of the San Francisco experimental film community.

The book Radical Light which is edited by Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid is described by film critic Nicole Brenez as being "a scientifically and visually magnificent survey". The title, Radical Light, according to Seid, “emerges from this sense of a cinema that considers its origins in a substrate of emulsion and luminescence.”  And, according to Anker, “They were filmmakers, many of them not-so-recovered painters and poets, ill at ease with cinema as an entertainment but rather fondly fixated on the apparatus, the alchemy of light and chemistry, and their own eccentric admixture that might make this all art.” In the books two introductions by Seid and Anker, what is highlighted is the Bay Area's topography, from Anker’s introduction A Haven for Radical Art and Experimental Film and Video, the Bay Area “remains unsurpassed as a place where artists using film and video for personal expression choose to live.” The history of this art form, as Seid brings up in Form from the Fog: A Book Takes Shape, "begins in the late nineteenth century, in 1878 in nearby Palo Alto. It was then that Eadweard Muybridge began his pioneering experiments with the photographic image and the incremental improvements that would result in the motion picture.” The avant-garde film flourished in San Francisco after World War II with people like Sidney Peterson. In Scott MacDonald’s essay, Art in Cinema: Creating an Audience for Experimental Film, things started, in the fall of 1946, with the San Francisco Museum of Art which had a film series Art in Cinema, organized by Frank Stauffacher, that focused on “avant-garde films in modern art forms - surrealist, non-objective, abstract, fantastic.”” The series was called Art in Cinema which was “established to present a more vigorous and liberated attitude towards the film medium.”  The popularity of experimental cinema was connected not only with advantageous exhibition venues, but also with the educational institutions that taught production and appreciation of experimental film and video, and media arts centers that fostered it.

Baillie was one of the founding members of Canyon Cinema in 1961, “a nomadic group presenting underground programs in different settings, and developed into a small organization that presents a regular series, produced by artists and curators,” which was named after the small town of Canyon which is just outside of Oakland. Canyon Cinema later became the San Francisco Cinematheque.

Baillie, as Kennedy describes him, “has forged a singular path in his visionary explorations of the world, his exquisite treatment of light and fragmented storytelling influencing successive generations of like-minded filmmakers.” Radical Light includes a really nice artist page by Baillie, which includes a picture of him as a boy with his dog, a younger picture of him in an open field carrying a camera on a tripod, and a few colorful figural sketches. Michael Sicinsky's contribution, The Bay Area as Cinematic Space in Twenty-five Stops or Less, includes Baillie’s All My Life, and Sicinsky writes, “Bruce Baillie’s lasting achievement (in this and all his films) is his attention to the living surfaces of the physical world, the way he allows them to disclose themselves.” While in Canyon Cinema: The Early Years – Interviews with Bruce Baillie, Ernest Callenbach, Chick Strand, and Emory Menefee by Kathy Geritz, Baillie talks about the aura around the early screenings, programming criteria, and projection details. Bailie: “Years of fun, work, and thoughtful exchange, covering perhaps everything under the sun!” 

David Davidson

*****

“This visually exquisite masterpiece of minimal-budget, low-tech filmmaking has nothing to do with the Castro Street of San Francisco’s gay district, or with Fidel Castro of Cuba. Named for a Spanish land grantee, Castro Street, in Richmond, California, is a gritty industrial byway lined with refinery structures, railroad switchyards, omnipresent power lines, and the general detritus of modern heavy industry. Bruce Baillie, with his magical eye, has taken these unpromising materials and constructed a flowing lyric poem. Its steady rhythm of pans and dissolves is set by the ponderous motion of trains over a sound track bass line of industrial noises: bangs, regular beats, whirrs, clangs, toots. Baillie makes iris effects in the camera; he softens and blurs the imagery, perhaps with Vaseline on the lens; he distorts images, perhaps with mirrors; he catches a gorgeous palette of colors in the wasteland; he twists human voices into abstract sounds; he runs some images in negative color. This elegant playfulness combines the half-recognizable, the luminously abstracted, and occasional flashes of ordinary vision: train wheels, yellow earth-moving machinery, flowering lupines glowing purple, corrugated iron. Yet everything is carried along with the flow, the dance of exploration and perception: this is what we can see, if our inner eyes are open. Castro Street is a meditation on the reality of our industrial condition, not redeeming it, but transcending it." - Ernest Callenbach on Castro Street (1966)

The Best of Hot Docs 2012

This festival report is the second guest contribution by Moen Mohamed. - D.D.

The 2012 edition of Hot Docs proved once again that the festival keeps getting better and better, year after year. The enthusiastic audiences and interesting line-up of world documentaries culminate in a well-organized ten-day event. They expanded this year, but I believe they will need to expand even more next year. Such is the enthusiasm for documentaries in Toronto. Of the fifty-four feature films I saw this year, here are my personal favorites, in order of preference:

1. JAI BHIM COMRADE (India, Anand Patwardhan)

Due to its three-hour running time, I expected an epic documentary about the low-caste untouchables (Dalits) in India.  However, this superb labour of respect chronicles the plight and suffering of the untouchables in a way that elevates it to a work of poetic art. The director uses protest songs and poems, composed and performed by Dalits, not for the camera, but captured at events and gatherings. The poetry and songs serve as a Greek Chorus, strategically placed at various intervals as the director uses interviews, media-coverage and heart-breaking testimonies to make this film an unforgettable experience. The genesis of the film itself is interesting and almost accidental. The suicide of a low-caste poet who was a friend of the director, prompted him to assemble footage of the poet's songs on film, and from that, blossomed the documentary. The film took fourteen years to be completed, not because the director was intentionally making an epic, but for the simple fact that he was awaiting a verdict on a court case about atrocities committed by police against a group of untouchables, which incidentally was the reason the poet friend committed suicide. 

2. WHERE HEAVEN MEETS HELL (USA, Sasha Friedlander)

The daily toil and struggles of Indonesian sulphur miners are captured with such respect by this first-time director, that it leaves you speechless. From their toil to their tender moments, all is chronicled so intimately that we feel privileged to have spent this time with the miners and their families.

3. ¡VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS! (Germany, Victor Kossakovsky)

One of the most enjoyable experiences of the festival was this gorgeously photographed film about settlements on precisely opposite points of the globe (there are only a few due to the vastness of the oceans). The conceptual design of this film is to be marveled at. No, this is not one of those Disney or Imax nature documentaries.  Akin to the great films of Nikolaus Geyrhalter, this film gave me much to think about our planet, our existence and how insignificant we are in this sphere of nature. This film is not about how we treat our planet, it is simply illustrating to us how we are all linked to each other, regardless of the vast diversity. Distances and differences melt away watching this film; and that, in itself, is a great achievement because the film is about places that are furthest away from each other.  

4. BALLROOM DANCER (Denmark, Christian Bonke & Andreas Koefoed)

A revelation. I was expecting perhaps a fun film about a dancing competition and the come-back of an aging ballroom dancer (thirty-four is considered old in that world), but this film is a sad, love story that disintegrates before your eyes. In complete cinéma vérité style, no interviews, no narration, the camera seems almost voyeuristic as we watch this dancing couple battle their personal and professional issues. 

5. WITH MY HEART IN YAMBO (Ecuador, Maria Fernanda Restrepo)

The director searches for the truth about her two teenaged brothers' disappearance and murder that occurred in the 80s. Interviews and confrontations with the corrupt officials in charge at that time, home movies, the last known footage of the brothers at a Scout camp, all come together to weave the making of a tragedy that happened over and over again to thousands of families, all across Latin America in the 70s and 80s. At 140 minutes, this film felt much shorter.

6. OUTING (Austria, Sebastian Meise & Thomas Reider)

The most difficult and uncomfortable film I had to sit through during the festival. A shy, young man confesses to his family (and the camera) about his growing attraction to children. What ensues is at times unsettling, candid but never sensational. When you realize why this man would agree to document his story on camera, knowing the effects of his disclosure, the film comes together.

7. GREETINGS FROM THE COLONY (Belgium, Nathalie Borgers)

Almost every year, I discover an excellent documentary about dark, family secrets. This year, it was Greetings from the Colony. A young child is brought from Rwanda to Belgium in the 1920s. She is fathered by a white colonial official. Her mother is native Rwandan. In Belgium, she is never told that her mother is black, still alive with her 2 younger brothers in Rwanda. As a child, she is given no information as to why the colour of her skin is darker than other children. Thus begins this intimate journey back in time as we explore family secrets, alienation, shame and racism.

8. THE PROPHET (UK, Gary Tarn)

The poetic prose of Lebanese writer Kahlil Gibran is the soundtrack of this mesmerizing film, beautifully read by Thandie Newton. It is an exploration of life, love and the human condition. Although it was filmed in many countries, one may think this is a visual delight, but this is a film that begs you to listen first and then watch.

9. 5 BROKEN CAMERAS (Israel, Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi)

Profound and humanist in every way, five cameras (all broken due to clashes and gunfire) used by the main subject of the film to chronicle six years of life in his tiny West Bank village which is threatened by new settlements. I know we have seen many of these documentaries, but there is something immediate and deeply personal about this film which contains no talking heads, interviews or experts. It is all real footage, some shocking, of one man's efforts to become a journalist and to document what is happening to his home, family and the livelihood of the farmers.

10. THE IMPOSTER (UK, Bart Layton)

The most cinematic documentary you will see this year, or perhaps ever. A young boy, missing for years, is returned to his Texan family after being found in Spain. What unfolds is such an incredible story. No more can be revealed here.

11. COLOMBIANOS (Sweden, Tora Martens)

Two young brothers of Colombian origin, born and raised in Sweden, make different choices in life. One has returned to Colombia for his medical studies and the other is in Sweden, dependent on drugs and alcohol. And he is only twenty-three years old. Yet another superb cinéma vérité work that allows us into the lives of two sons and a strong mother.

12. MCCULLIN (UK, Jacqui Morris)

Spanning decades of wars and humanitarian catastrophes, we hear, in his own words, all about the life and career of celebrated 'war photographer', Donald McCullin.  He is conflicted about how he feels about the title of war photographer, and this is just one of the many things that make this dignified man such a compelling subject. 

The rest of my Top 25:

13.  PLANET OF SNAIL (South Korea, Seung-jun Yi)

14.  MARLEY (UK, Kevin MacDonald)

15.  THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES (USA, Laura Greenfield)

16.  MADE IN CHINA (China, Jian Du)

17.  CHASING ICE (USA, Jeff Orlowski)

18.  ESPOIR VOYAGE (Burkina Faso, Michel Zongo)

19.  PRIVATE UNIVERSE (Czech Republic, Helena Trestikova)

20.  THE LIST (USA, Beth Murphy)

21.  THE REVISIONARIES (USA, Scott Thurman)

22.  DOWNEAST (USA, David Redmon, Ashley Sabin)

23.  THE WAITING ROOM (USA, Pete Nicks)

24.  DROUGHT (Mexico, Everardo Gonzalez)

25.  THE WORLD BEFORE HER (Canada, Nisha Pahuja)

Moen Mohamed

Editorial: Programmer (Cahiers du Cinéma, May 2012) [English Translation]

After writing editorials on University Film Studies Programs in France (March) and then on Online Film Pirating (April); the editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, Stéphane Delorme, in the editorial of the May issue (N.678) re-asserts the direction in which he's shaping the magazine, which I translated below. [For more on Delorme's writing at Cahiers see the last paragraph of my review of his Coppola book.] - D.D.

Putting together a film magazine is not much different than being a programmer. Which films does one decide to show in a movie theater? At a film festival? At Cannes? In Competition? Or elsewhere? To program is to think methodically, considering locations, inclusions and exclusions, openings and fences. This supposes a selection and a hierarchy. But we not only program for people, we guide them. This then supposes an alterity.

Programmer, a nice word, but one that does not have a good reputation these days. Defending five or six films each week, like in the alt-papers, reverts to annulling this work of programming. The films in these papers are all in the same mess, they are all equal. We ask ourselves how can the reader really figure them out! The mission of criticism is in opposition to choice, instead it should recommend what one must see first, what one can't miss. We live in strange times, where in the press there is a fear of losing space (one must consider the amount of pages dedicated to films), and too there is now the fear of loosing the larger audience (one then has to like the big films), and there is also the worry of "killing" the smaller films (that one should forcedly defend...). The situation since the beginning of the year has become dramatic: we have the sentiment that all the films are being defended. Cahiers, in contrast, seems very severe. Five or six films, only, liked each month!

In these lasts few months, there has been an extreme tolerance directed towards French productions, from Marsupilami to Cap Nord to Two Days in New York, by the way of 38 Témoins and Les Adieux à la reine (two proud representatives of the cinema du milieux something that Pascal Ferran wished for, but that engulfs France in an old French tradition). All the while an American production like the cotton-candy We Bought A Zoo by Cameron Crowe is being hailed by the snobbish critics as a new Hawks. The disorientation of criticism is real. The reader that discovers the programming that Cahiers proposed for in April was forced into disorder: Twixt on the cover, the extremely moving animated film The Plague Dogs - not tucked away in a corner like in the Journal section, but spread over four pages - alongside the great Bulgarian film Avé, which could touch a larger public if it was actually put in front of them.

The privilege of a monthly is to be the first to arrive on a film and then to propose the first programming. In the previous months we have accorded four pages to Oslo, 31 août and eight pages to Policier; two films by unknown directors, and which have had great commercial success. Cahiers played it's part. Too many films come out, the situation is becoming absurd. At the hour where films only last two weeks in the cinema, there needs to be a criticism that hits hard, and fair, and assumes it's role as a guide. If not then these important films won't be seen. This month, if we exclude the new Cronenberg and the Wes Anderson, only one film appears in our critique, the new Hong Sang-soo; a sign of the desertion of distribution due to Cannes (in regards to Burton, Warner declined to show it to us). Do we need to force ourselves to find others?

This politic, since it is one, goes with, at Cahiers, for the last three years, with the refusal to follow the perverse rule of that, "that the person who likes the film most, should write about it." The excessive generosity of this axiom leads to that there is always someone to write about them! Today the chief editor decides, after a discussion with the team about the films, how the film is "treated" and programmed in the magazine. When a movie divides (like the Hong Sang-soo, by coincidence, this month), one must press upon a position. If no films fit the criteria, so be it. There are also DVDs to see, and books and magazine to read. The programming of a magazine should account for all of this. So, with that said, the film to see this month is maybe Touki Bouki, which just came out on DVD. There is also this pleasure, which is becoming even more rare, of rewatching films. As one knows, the demands of reality no longer offer us the time.

Stéphane Delorme

A Child’s Hope (A Placed Called Los Pereyra at the Projection Booth)

"A very honest, strong film. I liked the vision of this film very much." - Carlos Reygadas on A Place Called Los Pereyra

The documentary A Place Called Los Pereyra, which is directed by Andrés Livov-Macklin (who was born in Buenos Aires, and is mostly known for short films) and produced by Hugh Gibson and Peter Starr, is about the elementary school 959 in the rural community of Los Pereyra, in the Tucumán Province, Argentina. A Place Called Los Pereyra is like a mixture between two films: the classroom drama Monsieur Lazhar, which is about an elementary school teacher guiding a group of young and impressionable students; and the documentary-fiction hybrid Alamar, a naturalistic cinéma vérité look at a Mexican father teaching his son how to fish in the coral reef.

These two films give a sense of what A Place Called Los Pereyra is like. But the film is different from these other works and needs to be further discussed.

Los Pereyra is located east of the Tucumán Province, which is known for its Gran Chaco flatlands. The documentary refers to the area as the El Impenetrable, “the second largest forested region in South America after the Amazon.” A Place Called Los Pereyra shows a town without electricity or modern day appliances. It paints a portrait of a culturally and geographically isolated location that hardly has any information online.

In the community of Los Pereyra there are families and children. The children either stay at home where they help their parents at their farms, or they go to school with the hope of later pursuing their education elsewhere. A Place Called Los Pereyra centers on a group of high school girls from an expensive all-girl private school in Buenos Aires, who are known as the godmothers. The young godmothers are part of an annual charitable mission from Buenos Aires that provides goods and medical attention to the people of the area. It is these godmothers that were the inspiration for A Place Called Los Pereyra. One of Livov-Macklin’s friends went to this school in Buenos Aires, and shared with him the experience of the trips. Livov-Macklin was struck by both the disparity between the two groups and the kindness of their interactions.

These godmothers are a great asset to the community, and their arrival seems much anticipated. They show to the kids the possibilities that lie outside of Los Pereyra. As well they emphasize education, they bring them new toys and they perform medical check-ups. Fun and nice anecdotes from A Place Called Los Pereyra includes: the girls describing contraception, you see the boys playing with a new soccer ball, the girls tease one of the older boys, they do math equations where they distribute candy, they bring them to a zoo, and they even make one of the boys a nice birthday cake. But they are only there for a short amount time, and who knows when, and if, they are ever going to come back?

As Los Pereyra is over one-thousand kilometers away from the city of Buenos Aires, one of the subjects of the film is the Argentinean rural/urban divide. The teacher continuously brings up to these children that if they want a better future for themselves they will need to go to Buenos Aires to study. The teacher says, “You know that as people grow up, they want to do something with their lives. They dream of becoming something.” Concluding, “Nothing is difficult, if you’re willing to do it.”

A Place Called Los Pereyra will be screening at the Projection Booth from May 11^th to the 17^th.  And there will be a special event on Friday May 11^th with a cocktail reception and post-screening discussion with producer Hugh Gibson and film critic Adam Nayman (The Grid, Cinema Scope).

The Best of BAFICI 2012

This is the first guest contribution by Moen Mohamed. – D.D. The Top Five of BAFICI 2012:

BLOOD OF MY BLOOD (Joao Canijo, Portugal) The best film I saw at the festival and a major discovery. In fact the 2 best films of the festival just happen to be Portuguese. Blood of my Blood is 193m long and feels much shorter. It is about a Lisbon family from the ghetto and their many, many family issues. Label it Kitchen Sink Portuguese style, soap opera, melodrama or any other facsimile, I think this film is inventive, original and unforgettable. And then we have the performances. These actors own their roles. It is hard to believe that all these people are not actually playing themselves. One of the best films I have seen in a long time.

IT'S ON EARTH, NOT ON THE MOON (Goncalo Tocha, Portugal) A song for the soul. A poem of nostalgia for the human spirit. Goncalo Tocha's 194m documentary about the island of Corvo in the Azores, is to be felt and not watched. It is that kind of film. You will find this film with its incorrectly translated title of It's The Earth, not the Moon. The original title is about the location of the island, as people over the centuries seem to have forgotten it exists.

NOSILATIAJ (BEAUTY) (Daniela Seggiaro, Argentina) A young indigenous girl, works as a maid for a white family. No, she is not abused or anything like that, but what happens to her paints a broad and provoking picture of the loss of identity and the effects of colonialisation. The one thing she cherishes is her memories of her grandparents and mother, as she recalls their stories of her ancestors. Her hair plays an important role in her persona as an indigenous woman, as she has been told by her grandmother. The single words that flash across the screen in the closing of the film pack an emotional and ethical punch.  

FRANCINE (Brian Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky, USA) A woman is released from prison and tries to re-assimilate into society. I know we have seen this story many times before, but I doubt you have seen anything like this. Melissa Leo's tour-de-force performance is incredible. From the directors of The Patron Saints, which played last year at TIFF.  

CORTA (Felipe Guerrero, Colombia) Featuring various tableaux of Colombian men as they harvest sugar-cane, this film is observational with a stationary camera as we experience their cutting, burning, clearing, cleaning, singing and food-breaks. Punctuated with interludes of music, it is one of the best visual experiences I have had in a long time. A sugarcane burning sequence is brilliantly shot on a pitch-black night and it is my favorite of the sequences. The best of the rest in alphabetic order:
THE ATOMIC AGE (Helena Klotz, France) A wonderful companion piece to Four Nights and a Dreamer. The odyssey of two young men into the Parisian night is modern and yet Bressonian at the same time. BARBARA (Christian Petzold, Germany) A doctor is transferred to the provinces of East Germany to work after being incarcerated for what, we do not know. She is constantly under surveillance and may or may not be guilty of something. Wonderful. BEST INTENTIONS (Adrian Sitaru, Romania) A neurotic son worries about his mother after she has been admitted to the hospital. Filmed in long takes with a slow and gliding camera, this film is also very funny, Romanian dry-humour style. BESTIAIRE (Denis Cote, Canada) I think this is his best film. A wordless, observational documentary about the animals who serve as entertainment on a Quebec safari. The doc captures their moments of imprisonment and our shame. EL DIFFICIL ARTE DEL PASEO (Ivan Garcia, Spain) A delight. This collage of scenes from films and newsreels from the 20s and 30s focuses on 5 places, in 5 different chapters. Translated as The Difficult Art of Strolling, this film is for every cinephile, especially if you love films from the 20s and 30s - like me. Starting in Shanghai, then Berlin, Paris, Ulan Bator to Moscow and finally it ends Japan. Full Disclosure: I realized I loved this film in the Ulan Bator to Moscow segment, the Japan segment that features clips from about 20 films of Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kinoshita are not the reason I loved the film. Just wanted to be clear that these clips did not influence me, these clips were an added bonus. EVERYBODY IN OUR FAMILY (Radu Jude, Romania) A man goes to pick up his daughter for a court-appointed vacation. This film is unintentionally funny, and when you realize that you are laughing, it may be too late because it is not really a laughing matter. FOR ELLEN (So Yong Kim, USA) A superb performance by Paul Dano anchors this subtle and restrained film from the director of Treeless Mountain. A man makes a long trip to sign his divorce papers. What entails is truly revelatory and heart-rending. GERMANIA (Maximiliano Schonfeld, Argentina) Set in a small German village in the Argentine countryside, a family faces financial troubles as the chickens on their farm are all inexplicably dying, as if the family has been struck by a plague. Very slow and meditative, this film is not about plot or big discoveries. It is about people from another culture living in a land they have adopted as their own and now have to start all over again. There is the chance that if they move they may never speak their German dialect again. And no, it is not like Silent Light or tries to be. HEMEL (Sacha Polak, Netherlands) The young director said at the screening that Maurice Pialat's A NOS AMOURS heavily influenced her film. And she was right. Just when you would think that this is yet another European film about a young woman and her sexual encounters told in a bleak fashion, layers are peeled away to reveal much more underneath, so to speak. INDIA (Armando Bo, Argentina) This lost 1960 classic from Argentina is a thing of its time and epoque. It is about a white man who is lost in the wilderness and rescued by the Maca tribe, and he falls in love with a Maca woman (played with a white woman, a former Miss Argentina). Yes, it is behind its time in terms of tolerance, but it is told and filmed with such sincerity and honesty, one cannot help but being carried away with the romance and being completely entertained by the not-so good acting. I give the film-makers full credit for having the original tribal language spoken for the first time on screen in a big-budget studio film. But our lead, the princess of the tribe speaks with a perfect Argentine accent. You have to smile. L'ENFANT D'EN HAUT (Ursula Meier, France) A distinct voice in cinema, Ms. Meier may be compared to many but I think she is an original. A young boy makes his living stealing from a ski resort in the mountains. That is all you need to know. PAPIROSEN (Gaston Solnicki, Argentina) A stunning documentary about a Polish family who sought refuge in Argentina after during the war. It is a family portrait, but this one is told with such honesty and proximity as the director is the brother/son of the family. Caught between their heritage, past, present and future of the family, all of us could relate to this film. STATELESS THINGS (Kim Kyung-mook, South Korea) Three young North Korean teenagers struggle to make a living in South Korea. We have seen this film told before, but what makes it different here is the way it is told. Are there three teenagers, or two or one? And Apichatpong may need to see this film because the title of the film shows up on the screen a full 91m after the film has started. VIENTO SUR (Paz Encina, Paraguay) After waiting for another film from this director after her enchanting Hamaca Paraguaya, her stunning 23m short film was worth the wait. Two brothers who are fishermen, contemplate their future and their existence, whether to leave their village and move to the city. The images convey to us that these brothers may not exist anymore, they may have disappeared, the images also keep appearing and disappearing on the screen. Set in the 1970s dictatorship, this film poetically echoes the Paraguayan (and many countries in Latin American) experience. Moen Mohamed