NYJFF ’15: Angels of Revolution

As envisioned by Alexey Fedorchenko, the real life Polina Schneider is something like the mythical heroines of the French Resistance. She is an action figure and an artist, who can juggle legions of lovers while remaining faithful to her leftist ideology. Unfortunately, her latest assignment will end badly when she tries to win over the indigenous people of western Siberia with avant-garde Soviet art and theater in Fedorchenko’s Angels of Revolution (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival.

Schneider has the dash of Amelia Earhart, the crack marksmanship of Lara Croft, and the politicized artistic soul of Simone Weil. Her Soviet masters are confident she can stem the discontent brewing among the Khanty people and perhaps spilling over into the neighboring Nenet. In his infinite generosity, Stalin has built the town of Kazym, complete with a boarding school, where indigenous children forcibly attend classes, but are forbidden from using their native tongues.

To reach their hearts and minds, Schneider and her four male colleagues will build atheist monuments and stage ridiculous pageants. While their revolutionary spirits are willing, it seems their artistic talents are inadequate for the task at hand. If you think you know where this is all heading, you are probably right, but Fedorchenko keeps the bloodshed not wholly off-screen, but mostly confined to the far corner of the field of vision.

It also hardly helps that he does everything possible to chop and dice his narrative, incorporating needlessly whimsical intertitles and injecting highly stylized interludes. This is a fascinating yet under-reported historical incident that would be better served by a more straight forward approach. Still, despite its rather scattershot nature, Angels represents a considerable rebound for Fedorchenko after his excessively sketchy and overly precious Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari. In contrast, Angels has a pointed perspective and it very definitely builds to something significant. Rather than one powerful indictment of the Stalinist era, it is more like a half dozen little nibbling critiques.

Regardless, with his largely sympathetic treatment of the Khanty and Nenet, Fedorchenko has established himself as the leading cinematic chronicler of Russia’s ethnic minorities, following his earthy but lightweight ode to the Mari and the austere but surprisingly moving Silent Souls, featuring the Merjan Russians. Fedorchenko and his co-art director Artem Khabibulin also brilliantly recreate the Soviet constructivist madness of the era.

When Angels works, it is absolutely inspired, but when it gets bogged in its own affectations, it can get stuck noodling about for a while. Consequently, it is dramatically uneven (featuring intentionally stiff, ironically intentional propaganda-like performances), but its ambition, historical honesty, and ironic sensibility pulls it through. Recommended with mild aesthetic reservations, Angels of Revolution screens twice this coming Tuesday (1/27) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of the 2015 NYJFF.

Rural Route ’14: Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari

One might say the women of the Mari El autonomous republic are in touch with their inner Earth Mothers. They are comfortable with nature and their sexuality, but the local men folk can be vexing. A parade of Mari women will experience the rituals of life in their village on the Volga in Alexsei Fedorchenko’s Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (trailer here), which screens during the 2014 Rural Route Film Festival in New York.

Screenwriter Denis Osokin clearly has an affinity for “O” names, since every name of the women featured in Celestial start with that letter. It turns out there are a lot of Mari names like that. In fact, there are more names than stories. Not just episodic, many of the women’s collected stories are mere fragments or jotted sketches, with little development of any kind.

Nor is there any sort of through-line, Our Town style narrator, or callbacks to previous incidents to provide connective tissue. Instead, Fedorchenko and Osokin are purely concerned with ambiance and local color. Inconsistent by its nature, the better arcs (that could credibly stand alone as short films) are those that carry a pronounced folkloric air, such as the standout tale of Onalcha, a purported sorceress and “Daughter of the Wind.” Twelve year old Ormarche’s encounter with three werewolves is also quite memorable, but the sexualized imagery imposed the older women in her party might be problematic for some viewers.

Cinematographer Shandor Berkeshi nicely captures the verdant ruggedness of the Uralic region and composer Andrei Karasyov’s traditionally-inspired music is surprisingly catchy. Fedorchenko and Osokin really do give the audience a vivid sense of Mari life (even though they reportedly take considerable liberties with the details). However, it is nearly impossible to form an attachment to any of the assorted characters or to get caught up in the plethora of narrative fragments.

Fedorchenko has already made something of a festival name for himself with the powerfully meditative Silent Souls and his nicely turned contribution to the anthology film The Fourth Dimension. He certainly has a strong affinity for the pagan legends and hardscrabble living conditions of Russia’s far flung ethnic conclaves, but Celestial’s ADD-like lack of focus undermine attempts to submerge viewers in the Mari milieu.

He is still a filmmaker to watch, but Celestial will probably be remembered as a minor oddball entry in his filmography. More interesting on paper, Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari screens tomorrow (8/10) at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of this year’s Slavic-focused Rural Route Film Festival in New York.

Tribeca ’12: The Fourth Dimension

Representing the fourth dimension in 2D is quite the daunting challenge.  Fortunately, none of the filmmakers participating in a new hipster sci-fi anthology take it seriously.  Nor will annoying glasses be necessary when watching The Fourth Dimension (trailer here), three short films produced and assembled by Vice and Grolsch Film Works (cheers, mate), which screens again this afternoon as part of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

In the opening The Lotus Community Workshop, Harmony Korine (yes, but don’t panic) takes us to a world much like our own, where Val Kilmer plays a low rent motivational speaker named Val Kilmer.  Addressing church groups in roller rinks, he passes off ego-centric tripe as New Agey pearls of wisdom.  Occasionally hinting at the metaphysical, Lotus seems more like a confessional piece from Kilmer, admitting to his fans: “I realize I was once Iceman in Top Gun and now I’m kind of a slob, but at least I still don’t have to work at a real job.”  This is a case where brevity is definitely Korine’s ally.  Given the relatively short running time, the self-referential joke maintains its novelty better than one might expect.

Making a bit of a concession to the film’s umbrella premise, Alexey Fedorchenko’s Chronoeye involves indirect time travel.  Employing some analog-style technology, a misanthropic Russian scientist (is there any other kind?) is able to glimpse into the past.  However, there is an attractive neighbor above him to remind viewers not to lose sight of the present.  Fedorchenko (probably best known for the strikingly austere road movie Silent Souls) maintains a fable-like vibe, preventing Chronoeye from descending into the realm of romantic cliché.

Jan Kwiecinski’s Fawns might come closest to revealing the fourth dimension, since it induces Armageddon.  Much like Abel Ferrara’s meandering 4:44 Last Day on Earth, doomsday vaguely involves global warmish-ing, but here it is more Biblical.  A cataclysmic flood has led to worldwide evacuation, but a group of Polish slackers are too cool to pay attention.  Instead, they careen about a provincial town, hinting at the sexual tensions within their group.  Suddenly though, the end of the world takes a serious turn for the aimless youth.  Frankly, none of the Kwiecinski’s characters are particularly well defined, but as a mood piece, it is quite eerie.

Defiantly disregarding the theme ostensibly holding it together, The Fourth Dimension lurches all over the place, but it is not without merit.  Indeed, there should be enough eccentricity in each constituent short film to satisfy some strange subset of cult film fandom out there someplace.  Recommended for those in search of a bit of bemusement, it screens again this afternoon (4/27) as part of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.