ND/NF ’24: Break No. 1 & Break No. 2 (short)

There is only good thing about censors. Since they are crude creatures of their ruling regime, they are mostly dim bulbs and largely out of their depth when it comes to experimental film. Maybe that is why this short film exists. Technically, it is two films that are possibly related, but part two directly references censorship. If you want to gingerly stick your toe into the avant-garde, a good place to start would be Lei Lei’s Break No. 1 & Break No. 2, which screens during New Directors/New Films 2024.

This first “Break,” tells a rather tragic but highly relatable human story, albeit in a somewhat elliptical manner. The narrator’s tale of his lover, who inexplicably committed suicide in hotel room also has extra resonance the filmmaker perhaps never intended. Nevertheless, it is a fact a wave of convenient suicides has swept over Hong Kong, suspiciously targeting supporters of the Umbrella protests.

In this case, the photos the narrator’s lover always carried were also mysteriously missing, which again echoes experiences of Hong Kongers. It all unfolds over a montage of static shots of the lover’s hotel room and close-ups of the retro light fixtures, which was maybe a blessing, because the unsophisticated will quickly tune out.

During the second “Break,” the narrator discusses a visit he made with his lover (not expressively identified as the suicide victim in the first break, but that seems to be a logical assumption) to public video booth that screened serious cinema instead of skin flicks. Unfortunately, the proprietor could never find the John Woo gangster film that wanted to watch.

First Look ’24: Solaris Mon Amour

Cineastes sometimes forget Tarkovsky’s Solaris was not the first adaptation of the Stanislaw Lem novel. It certainly wasn’t Soderbergh’s either. In 1968 there was an early Russian film released, often referred to as Solyaris. Even before that, there were Polish radio productions in 1962 and 1970, each predating Tarkovsky and Soderbergh. Filmmaker Kuba Mikurda samples audio from both Polskie Radio plays in this hybrid documentary that in a very abstract way also condenses the themes and story of Lem’s novel in Solaris Mon Amour, which screens during this year’s First Look.

For those who know the book (which Lem started writing in 1959, the same year Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour was released, so there you go) and films, Mikurda’s audio excerpts are readily identifiable as Solaris-ian. The images are culled from vintage 1960s Polish industrial and educational science films that have nothing to do with Lem, but marry-up rather aptly with the audio passages. Scenes of protozoa and microscopic cell structures fittingly match discussion of the sentient “sea” on planet Solaris, while protagonist Kris Kelvin’s alienation is nicely represented by star fields and remote figures traversing alien-looking terrain, or the like.

As a result, Solaris Mon Amour sort of is Solaris, but you need to know some of the various Solarises to fill in the gaps. Ironically, that now makes Tarkovsky’s Solaris one of the more “accessible” versions.

Ken Jacobs: From Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art

Ken Jacobs rarely (but occasionally) features linear narratives in his films. This is one of the exceptions. Technically, it is Fred Riedel’s documentary, but it is all about Jacobs. The experimental filmmaker takes stock of his life and career in Riedel’s Ken Jacobs: From Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art, which screens this weekend at Anthology Film Archive.

Jacobs’ first film, Orchard Street, captured the comings and goings along the Lower Eastside commercial strip. Last year, MoMA acquired his prolific film collection. In between, he created 200-some films, including many non-narrative, abstract short films.

Jacobs has long been one of the best-known avant-garde filmmakers. Quite logically, he drops the names of experimental colleagues like Jack Smith, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas (who was particularly supportive at critical junctures of his life). Throughout most of the film, his wife Flo is by his side, filling in gaps in his memory. Their son Azazel is also seen helping his father render his latest project.

In many respects, Riedel takes a conventional approach, even though the generous sample of images from Jacobs’ films are anything but. It is rather sweet to observe the Jacobs’ comfortable chemistry together. However, Riedel’s doc is unlikely to win any converts for its subject. Indeed, From Orchard is conspicuously missing a sort of aesthetic statement from Jacobs, or any in-depth explanation of what excites him in cinema. For those unfamiliar with experimental filmmaking in general, it would have helped them relate better to the film clips Riedel shows.

Rampart: Fractured Memories of Belgrade

Everyone who still has their VCR tapes from the 1980s and 1990s is probably holding a real time capsule of the era (the fashions, the hairstyles, the commercials). That was true of filmmaker Marko Grba Singh, who grew up in Belgrade during the Kosovo War. Returning to his family’s former apartment, he found a box of tapes that he transformed into the experimental documentary Rampart, which screens tomorrow and Saturday in New York.

For the pre-teen Singh, his family’s apartment was like a fortress (hence the title). As the fighting intensified, the extended clan clearly came together, with the intention of shielding the children as best they could. In fact, the camcorder footage, mostly shot by Singh’s grandfather, often has the vibe of a family reunion or a sleepover.

However, it is clear everyone is trying to herd the kids (and the pets) towards the interior of the flat. Obviously, this was a time to stay in-doors, which gives Rampart additional resonance in the days after the Wuhan-inspired Covid lockdowns. Yet, the Belgrade stores were still open and buying advertising time, as some of the commercials Signh incorporates will duly attest.

Regardless, we know what it is like to be stuck inside. They had better reason in 1999 Belgrade. However, they still were not in the sort of peril Sarajevo experienced, when it was terrorized by Bosnian-Serb separatist snipers, as Sejla Kameric dramatized in the experimental 1395 Days Without Red (because color would draw the shooters’ attention). Ironically, both films would pair well together, due to their roughly one hour running times and avant-garde sensibilities.

The Philosophy of Horror: A Symphony of Film Terror

Experimental filmmakers can make anything feel slow and inaccessible. You can see that clearly in this “docu”-essay film. Ostensibly, it is based on Noel Carroll’s monogram explaining the appeal of scary stories and films. We can thank Carroll for his influential critique of Marxist critical theorists, like Lacan and Althusser, but his horror ideas are not fleshed out to any great extent in director-editors Peter Lichter & Bori Mate’s The Philosophy of Horror: A Symphony of Film Terror, which screens at the Spectacle Theater, as part of its Collage Horreur series.

Ironically, the best parts of Philosophy of Horror are the “Overture” and “Intermission,” which are sort of like audio collages of creepy movie sounds, including dialogue from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The other sections simply present quotes from Carroll’s treatise that do not clearly relate to the images that follow.

Most of Philosophy resembles a Bill Morrison film, like Dawson City: Frozen Time. Stills from Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street and the first sequel, Freddy’s Revenge have been defaced and distorted, making them almost unrecognizable (although fans will still know Johnny Depp’s half-shirt when they see it).

Enys Men: Cornish Folk Horror

This is a very Cornish film, but at least it was not produced in the Cornish language, which would have been a “performative” gimmick. Yet, in a way, it hardly would have mattered considering how little dialogue there is in this 16mm exercise in isolation and dread. The lonely landscape and Cornwall’s tragic history contribute to a woman’s descent into madness during the deliberate course of Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men, which opens Friday in New York.

We only know the woman as “The Volunteer,” who has come to the deserted isle of Enys Men (which translates to “Stone Island”) to observe the wildlife, particularly a patch of wildflowers. It is a methodical routine, with little variation, at least initially, but that appears to be what the Volunteer wants. At night, she still maintains her personal rituals, including reading A Blueprint for Survival, a 1970s environmental tract that may have directly contributed to her impending doom. Her only company comes from the occasional scheduled supply runs from the “Boatman,” who seems to mean more to her than a mere deliveryman.

Jenkins repeats this pattern over and over again, so the audience can pick up small deviations when they first start to develop. It begins with small lichen appearing on the Volunteer’s wildflowers. Then the fungi starts growing on her long-healed scar. Here and there, we see ever-so brief flashes of visions or hallucinations, harkening back to the Bal Maidens and the isle’s long-deserted mines.

A pat description of Enys Men might be “experimental folk horror.” As a filmmaker, Jenkins clearly exhibits avant-garde and ethnographic sensibilities. The film has a remarkably vivid sense of place—nearly to the exclusion of everything else. Yet, he milks a palpable sense of mounting dread from the eerie standing stones and abandoned monuments, quite skillfully.

Last and First Men: Adapting Olaf Stapledon

Many millennia from now, will human beings still be wearing cloth masks? The voice from the future never specifies, but apparently, we evolved to have telescopic eyeballs on the top of our heads. Mankind survived several extinction-level events, but fate will eventually catch up with us on the plains of Neptune in the late composer Johann Johannsson’s unlikely but spiritually-faithful adaptation of Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, which is now screening at the Metrograph.

We are hearing a communication from the far, far future. They want something from us in the past, but it is not to recruit us to fight aliens, as in The Tomorrow War. Unfortunately, it will be solar events and cosmic gaseous bodies that spell mankind’s demise, but they are resigned to it at this point. Their business is more philosophical.

This is why Stapledon was always considered so unadaptable. His best-known novels were not about ray-guns and rocket-ships, but rather the rise and fall of galactic civilizations and species. Although Johannsson and co-writer Jose Enrique Macain incorporate a mere fraction of his text into Tilda Swinton’s anesthetizing voice-overs, they faithfully convey the vibe and sweep of his work.

To accompany these grand and sometimes dire descriptions of future humanity, Johannsson films the imposing and often crumbling Brutalist monuments of the former Yugoslavia. These de-humanized vistas are lensed in starkly glorious black-and-white by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grovlen. Some of them even look akin the statuary of Easter Island and the neo-primitivist masonry designed by Burle-Marx.

There is a narrative of sorts to Last and First, but no characters per se. Yet, there is plenty to intrigue the curious mind, like the development of “navigators,” a “hardy” folk, who prefer to travel space beyond the range of future man’s hive-mind telepathy. So, there will still be Red-Staters thousands of millions of years from now.

OVID.tv: Akerman’s From the East

It was Chantal Akerman’s “End of Communism” Rock & Roll-All-You-Can-Drink-Late-Night-Road-Trip-Party. Actually, it is an experimental non-narrative 16mm docu-essay, but the precipitating event is the same. Inspired to document the Communist East while it still existed (or at least before the old way of life changed for average citizens), Akerman essentially filmed whatever caught her eye during her journey through East Germany, Poland, and Russia. There are no talking heads to provide context. Instead, Akerman takes us to the cold, damp streets behind the former Iron Curtain in From the East (D’Est), which premieres tomorrow on OVID.tv.

Although D’Est was originally conceived as a stand-alone film, Akerman later incorporated it into a special installation. Frankly, that might be the best forum for it. It is rather hypnotic to watch her restless camera scan the weary faces of the innumerable by-standers queueing around street corners and packed into train stations, staring out blankly at the audience. It would probably be even more so as part of an immersive destination exhibit. However, casual viewers should be forgiven if they lose patience with it at home.

Regardless, D’Est is very much a time capsule that transports us to a very specific place, at a very specific time. Of course, much has changed in Germany and Poland since Akerman shot her footage in 1992. Russia—maybe not so much. The babushkas are different (presumably), but the crumbling edifices are the same (if not worse).

Frankly, if you took a similar journey east today, you would suddenly find yourself in the West when you hit the Baltic Republics, where they uphold democratic values and observe their NATO commitments. Poland has made great strides, but recently they have taken a bit of a detour through populism—it happens to the best of countries. However, Russia is practically back to where it started, passively standing in line, waiting for change, but acquiescing to the status quo, out of fear things could get worse.

Veredas: Bedouin

For these two thesps, the play is the thing—or rather the experimental film. They will play a pair of lovers in a variety of situations and contexts, but they will never have the time and conditions necessary to develop any sort of relationship arc. Playfulness and intentional artificiality trump narrative and character in Julio Bressane’s Bedouin, which screens tomorrow during the film series, Veredas: A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers.

“Bedouin” is maybe a bit older than “Surm,” but more problematically, he often projects an air of potential violence (that does indeed manifest itself from time to time). Nonetheless, the actors keep coming together to play problematic courtship scenes. Of course, we can plainly gather they are thespians from the behind-the-scenes prologue.

Bressane certainly has the experimental filmmaker’s contempt for convention, but he still clearly has a love of cinema. During various sequences, he evokes the look and vibe of Golden Age Hollywood, film noir, and the Nouvelle Vague, with the collaboration of cinematographers Pablo Baiao and Pepe Schettino. Admittedly, his visuals compositions are often could interesting to eyeball, which is fortunate, because they are largely the whole point of the film.

Instead of traditional acting, Alessandra Negrini and Fernando Eiras are more like malleable clay dolls for Bressane to mold and place in position as he sees fit. However, it must be conceded Negri can be remarkably expressive through the use of mere body language. With her chops, she could have worked steadily during the old-time silent movie era.

Raul Ruiz’s The Wandering Soap Opera

You have to give the Chilean auteur Raul Ruiz credit for being so admirably prolific in death. Night Across the Street released shortly after his demise, whereas Ruiz’s wife and frequent collaborator Valeria Sarmiento used his pre-production work to helm The Lines of Wellington, taking sole directorial credit. His “latest” film is more of a rediscovery. Unlike suspiciously posthumous novels released years after the supposed author’s death, Ruiz helmed these satirical interconnected vignettes at the peak of his powers in 1990, so Sarmiento only had to edit them together per his intentions. The hardest part was finding the lost film of the experimental workshop sessions. Your feelings on experimental workshops will be a strong indicator of how much or how little you will enjoy Ruiz’s The Wandering Soap Opera when it opens today in New York.

Soap Opera was filmed in 1990, when Ruiz returned to Chile during the early days of the democratic reforms. Not surprisingly, there are political references littered throughout the film, but many will be stubbornly murky for outsiders to interpret. On the other hand, most of the comedy sending up the conventions and clichés of telenovelas is easy to get. Essentially, the figures we see on screen are mostly characters on telenovelas, but some are telenovela characters who are watching other telenovelas characters. In one case, the telenovela is even interrupted by an actress asking the characters how she could get cast to be on their show.

This all sort of gives the film a Russian doll structure, but it lacks the Borgesian bravura of Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room or even Ruiz’s masterful Mysteries of Lisbon. It also logically follows that some mini-arcs will be stronger than others. By far the funniest sequence chronicles an endless cycle of rival leftist rebels killing each other and issuing stilted statements, before getting gunned down in turn. However, there are several sequences involving overwrought middle-aged characters (often former political exiles) sitting around parlors exchanging purple dialogue that start to blend together.

Not surprisingly, there is an off-the-cuff raggedness to Wandering that is part of its charm. It was a time of change. Ruiz and his cast and crew were obviously delighted to have the opportunity to work together and address issues of exile, resistance, and religion openly. It is just somewhat surprising they did not have more to say.

Even though it only runs a modest 78 minutes, a little of Wandering goes a long way. After 40 minutes, most viewers will get everything there is to get. There are amusing moments sprinkled throughout, but it is definitely a decidedly uneven viewing experience. Those with mainstream tastes and preferences should be strongly cautioned: The Wandering Soap Opera is only for patrons of the avant-garde who will forgive its excesses for the sake of its politics. Recommended for the one-percent of the population that loves to use the term “one-percent” derisively, The Wandering Soap Opera opens today (5/17) in New York, at Anthology Film Archives.

Ossang’s 9 Fingers

Brace yourself for some film noir that takes a detour into Samuel Butler terrain. Instead of Erehwon, a motley band of rogues sinks into the morass that is “Nowhereland.” Whatever and wherever that is, it sure isn’t utopia. The film is also far from perfect, but admirers of F.J. Ossang, the French poet and experimental filmmaker-provocateur will eat it up with a big spoon and ask for more. For us mere mortals, Ossang’s throwback film noir imagery provides the thin edge of the wedge that lets us get some kind of handle on 9 Fingers (trailer here), which opens today in New York, at Anthology Film Archives (also available on MUBI for a limited time only).

Fleeing an i.d. check at a lonely train station, Magloire stumbles across a dying man, who gives him a wad of bills, most likely illicitly acquired. That brings him into the crosshairs of the gang that did in the unnamed man, but instead of doing the same to Magloire, they recruit him into their ranks—after duly taking the cash. Unfortunately, the first heist they pull with Magloire goes down badly. This rather surprises the leader, because the intel supplied by the shadowy mastermind known as “The 9 Fingers” is usually infallible.

Forced to lay low, the gang books passage on a dodgy boat to South America. Unfortunately, when their ship hits the doldrums off the coast of Nowhereland, so does the film. Admittedly, Ossang’s narrative, if we can even use the term in this context, is baffling right from the start, but at least the first act zips along at a jaunty clip.

Regardless, Ossang is undeniably well versed in mystery, noir, caper, and seafaring adventure genres. Viewers can easily catch echoes of John Huston, Fritz Lang, and Jean-Pierre Melville films, as well as the novels of B. Traven, Eric Ambler, and Joseph Conrad. They are all there in the mix, but their influence eventually gets bogged down in all the talk about floating garbage.

It is a shame, because for a while, 9 Fingers is on pace to be one of the most entertaining films to ever get tagged with the “experimental” label. Paul Hamy is suitably cynical and hardboiled. Lisa Hartman also makes a highly credible femme fatale as Drella. However, the real stars are Simon Roca’s arresting black-and-white cinematography and the evocatively seedy urban locations. Serious genre fans will find it intriguing for a while, but diminishing marginal returns will kick in hard. Best saved for Ossang’s admirers, 9 Fingers opens today (11/2) at Anthology Film Archives, in conjunction with a retrospective of his film oeuvre.

Caniba: Problematic Experimental True Crime

Evidently, Japan does not have a “Son of Sam” Law, because if it did, Issei Sagawa probably would have starved. In a way, that would have been poetic justice. While studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, Sagawa murdered and partially ate his fellow student, Renée Hartevelt. In the years since, he has traded on his infamy through books, crude autobiographical manga, and appearance in hardcore films as well as documentaries. Noted ethnographic documentarians Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor are the latest to prolong Sagawa’s fifteen minutes of fame with Caniba (trailer here), which opens tomorrow at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Unfortunately, Hartevelt was not available to participate in the documentary, because Sagawa killed her. He was never really punished for it either. France deported him back to Japan, where he only spent a few years in a mental facility. Since then, his brother Jun has been his primary care-giver and adult supervision. As you might expect, it is a weird symbiotic relationship, but it reaches new levels of awkwardness when Jun finally reveals to his brother the sort of extreme S&M he both fantasizes about and participates in.

Clearly, Paravel & Castaing-Taylor envision the film as a sort of Grey Gardens for violent predators, but their experimental approach perversely drains the film of any lurid interest it might hold for cult movie patrons. Ironically, their extreme close-ups have a distancing effect. Most of their shots of Sagawa look like they were composed with the intent of recreating Bowie’s Hunky Dory album cover.

Without question, the most effective sequences show the Sagawa brothers when they were apparently happy and healthy children. It definitely begs the question: what happened? Yet, the filmmakers do not investigate in any meaningful way. Instead, they latch on to Sagawa’s banal bromides that supposedly explain the forbidden appeal of cannibalism. The truth is, it is pretty thin stuff. Again, Ms. Hartevelt is not afforded an opportunity to present a dissenting view.

The #metoo movement is as good as dead if established filmmakers who regularly present their work at festivals like Venice, Berlin, and Locarno are uncomfortable taking a firm moral stand against killing and eating women. That sounds gauchely harsh, but this film is sort of asking for it. It could very well be problematic in every way possible. Not recommended, Caniba opens tomorrow (10/19) in Queens, NY at MoMI.

It Takes from Within: The Horror of Experimental Film

If your life turned into a horror movie, it would probably be fun for a while to find yourself amid a group of super-fit teenagers getting hammered and frisky. On the other hand, it would be horrifying to wake up in an experimental film. Suddenly, the world would be a grainy black-and-white place, where dour looking Seventh Seal-style figures in black would ominously hard-stare at you across forlorn vistas. In some ways, we will take an excursion into that nether-zone where the two genres intersect, but filmmaker Lee Eubanks always favors the obscurely symbolic avant-garde tradition in It Takes from Within (trailer here), which releases today on DVD, from First Run Features.

We meet a man and a woman bickering in a hideaway motel on the day of a funeral of someone well known to him. Perhaps they are also the older couple seen in the prologue, but it is hard to say, since nobody has names in this shadowy world. Regardless, the man and woman played by Kristin Duarte and James Feagin are clearly a long way down the Lynchian Lost Highway.

Eubanks regularly plays with the motif of couples in various states of discord or distress. Their relationship to each other and their partners is always kept ambiguous. Frankly, there are any number of sinister encounters and evil imagery that would be perfectly compatible with an old school horror movie, but Eubanks refuses to invest them with the context and meaning to make them scary. By comparison, Nikolas List’s Tombville shares a somewhat similar experimental aesthetic (minimalist sets, existential characters and settings), but because it is at least 25% more grounded in narrative, it is exponentially more frightening—and more effective—and more memorable.

Yet, ITFW exists on a plane unto itself, which for all practical purposes makes it immune to any criticism that might be leveled at it. Eubanks is obviously deeply steeped in critical theory and postmodernism. He also composes some striking tableaux, which look starkly beautiful though the lens of cinematographer Jason Crow, but that is about all we have to work with.

If you want a film that invites you to impose all the meaning unilaterally than this is your catnip. On the other hand, if you prefer a film at least meets you half way than you’re just hopelessly bourgeoise. It is what it is and you already know if its your thing, so if it is, have at it, when It Takes from Within releases today (1/30) on DVD.

Taiwanese Film Biennial ’17: Realm of Reverberations

It sounds like the premise of a horror movie, but it really happened. Due to shifting fault lines and water contamination caused by ill-conceived construction projects, locals genuinely believed the land Losheng Sanatorium was built over really was cursed. Intended as a place to shut away patients suffering from Hansen’s disease (leprosy), Losheng was not a particularly progressive undertaking, even by the standards of the Japanese imperialists. Yet, decades later, residents protested plans to close the facility, because they had no place else to go. Losheng and the ironically similar looking Taipei Prison provide the settings for Chen Chieh-jen’s Realm of Reverberations (trailer here), an essayistic docu-art installation hybrid, which screens as part of What Time Is It There? Taiwanese Film Biennial at the UCLA Film & Television archive.

Chen frequently explores the (often oppressive) impact architecture has on the ant-like humans who navigate the demarcated spaces, but in the cases of Losheng and Taipei Prison, you could say he is shooting fish in a barrel. Nonetheless, Losheng and its displaced residents have become a cause célèbre for Taiwan’s activist class. Franky, the underlying land sounds uniquely ill-suited for a transit hub and the high-handed manner in which local authorities made decisions understandably rubbed many the wrong way.

Chen’s starkly dignified close-ups of the wheelchair-bound residents make a powerful statement, but they lose their potency due to repetition. Likewise, the circumstances of the hospice nurse’s life are certainly dramatic. She survived the Cultural Revolution while young girl on the Mainland, eventually coming to Taiwan to marry her future ex-husband. Eventually, she was forced to retire from Losheng, because it was too painful watching her patients die. Yet, watching her do penance by cleaning up the decaying Losheng premises is maybe not the most profitable use of her presence and it gives short shrift to her deeply compelling story. Similarly, the guilt-ridden niece who constantly returns to visit the spirit of her Uncle Yang and the fictional time-traveling political prisoner function more as symbols (or even props) than characters or subjects.

Nevertheless, Chen’s black-and-white visuals are absolutely arresting. He and cinematographer Chien Ming-chi just hold them for exquisitely hushed, maddeningly static long takes. In all honesty, it is probably much easier to relate to Realm as the installation piece it was intended to be, rather than as a work of beginning, middle, and end cinema to be properly screened. Instead, it is probably best to walk under its large projections screens, remark how it sure is something, and then continue through the museum or gallery. Lovely to take in, in a tragically scarred kind of way, but not really recommended as a film for theaters, Realm of Reverberations screens this Saturday (11/11) at the UCLA Film & TV Archive.

NYFF ’17: Dragonfly Eyes

Given the proliferation of security cameras, Mainland Chinese increasingly live in public. However, it is hard for them to object when they willing trade away so much privacy through web-cams and social media. Installation artist Xu Bing tells a modern fable exclusively through cobbled-together excerpts of CCTV footage and cloud-stored internet video in Dragonfly Eyes (trailer here), which screens as a Projections selection of the 55^th New York Film Festival.

Ting Qing (“Dragonfly”) has lived a sheltered existence in a Buddhist monastery, but she is restless to see some of big city life. Will she ever. Repeatedly told she is plain, the unskilled young woman accepts a series of menial jobs. At a large dairy farm, she turns the head of a Ke Fan, a skilled worker with anger management issues. He will follow her from city to city and job to job, lashing out whenever he feels she has been mistreated.

Eventually, this lands Ke Fan in prison and Ting Qing in need of another fresh start. She gets a crack at it, thanks to plastic surgery, obtained through her before-and-after modeling. Suddenly, she finds creepy fame as an internet idol. Unfortunately, the masses are fickle and the trolls will be cruel.

Frankly, Dragonfly makes you wonder why the Chinese government bothered to install so many cameras, when nobody makes an effort to stop the various beatings and drownings they captured. If they aren’t being watched, then what is the point?

In fact, some of the edited footage is highly disturbing, almost in a Faces of Death kind of way. While some of the most disastrous clips are used as metaphorical interstitial buffers, they register just the same. For instance, Xu incorporates car accidents, suicides, roof cave-ins, bridge collapses, train derailments, and an airliner falling out of the sky. China never looked more dangerous than it does in Dragonfly, because it is all real.

Zhai Yongming and Zhang Hanyi’s screenplay definitely leans towards the melodramatic, but it takes a gender-bending left turn late in the third act that is definitely gutsy for the Mainland. Their story might be sudsy, there is something oddly compelling about Ting Qing and Ke Fan, two young people trying to make it in the city, but finding the deck stacked against them. The disembodied voices of Liu Yongfang and Su Shangqing that narrate the grainy footage are weirdly compelling in a similar way.

Yet, considering how it was assembled, it is rather surprising Dragonfly is more of an indictment of the corrosive madness of social media than the invasiveness of the surveillance state. Either way, the film clearly suggests a bit more privacy would be a good thing.

China could very well be the most connected and tech-savvy country in the world, but it is also one of the most socially and economically stratified. Xu and his team throw that dichotomy into sharp relief. They also give viewers a feel for everyday life in China, albeit often in times of sudden stress. Watching some of the particularly violent and tragic scenes will make viewers feel like intrusive voyeurs, but at least Xu employs (or exploits) them to make a progressive point. Recommended with minor reservations for patrons of experimental cinema, Dragonfly Eyes screens this Sunday (10/8) and twice on Monday (10/9), as part of this year’s NYFF.

TIFF ’17: Simulation

They are like characters in a Persian Pirandello play, but at least they are well accessorized. Existence is absurd and tragic, yet everyone sports ultra-sparkly blue boots. It is not realistic, but it is not meant to be. Probably the only thing true to life is the gut-punching conclusion, but that comes relatively early in Abed Abest’s experimental, reverse-sequence Simulation (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

Abest starts with the third act and then rewinds to the second and first. Yes, it ends badly, but that is what you should expect if you’ve been dragged down to an Iranian police station. Living in Abadan near the Iraqi border means the Iran-Iraq War remains high in people’s consciousness, even for Abed and his two delinquent friends, Aris and Vahim, who are all far too young to have served. They have been arrested for causing disturbance of the home of Esi, a well-to-do merchant who is plenty old enough to remember the war.

The exact nature of their relationship is sketchy, but you probably would not call them friends. For obvious reasons, the tell-tale signs are double or triple coded, but we start to suspect Esi is somewhat openly closeted and the three young punks are pretending to be on the down-low to get close to him for nefarious, non-sexual purposes.

The action takes place on a stripped-down stage that is Spartan to the point of being surreal. Despite the deliberately “staged” presentation, Abest’s restless camera and distorted sound effects constantly bust us out of the proscenium arch. He does everything humanly possible to undermine the on-screen drama, yet somehow we get pulled in anyway.

Simulation partly derives its potency from the hot-button issues that divide contemporary Iranian society. Regardless of his sexuality, we can infer Esi is relatively wealthy and more secularly inclined in his values. On the other hand, Abed and company have little prospects, but even though they hypocritically indulge in alcohol and drugs, they most likely voted for Ahmadinejad, if they were old enough.

Despite playing a character at least twenty years older than himself, without the benefit of special make-up or costuming, Daniyal Khojasteh is terrific as old Esi. It is a portrayal of rage and dignity that leaves a deep impression. As Abed, Aris, and Vahin, Abest, Majid Yousefi, and Vahid Rad personify alienated malevolence, but Abest somewhat humanizes his namesake through Abed’s relationship with his adoring niece.

Frankly, Simulation is considerably more accessible than it sounds. There really isn’t that much not to get. However, Abest’s bold aesthetics will inevitably put off many viewers. Nonetheless, it is rather invigorating to watch him go for broke and mostly pull it off. Highly recommended for adventurous viewers, Simulation screens again tomorrow (9/17) as part of this year’s TIFF.

Future Imperfect: Slow Action

In the future, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon has been lost. Sociologists and ethnographers now believe utopia is attainable, though admittedly at a very high cost. Some sort of apocalyptic event has wiped out most of the world, but four island communities will vie for the designation of Utopia on Earth from an Asimovian encyclopedia in Ben Rivers’ experimental science fiction essay film Slow Action, which screens during MoMA’s ongoing film series, Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction.

Researcher-advocates will narrate anthropologic papers on their prospective island communities as Rivers camera explores the exotic locales. The city-state of Eleven offers the strongest case. Despite believing themselves to be holograms, the residents of Eleven sleep all day and venture out at night naked as jaybirds. They conduct their courtships through mathematical equations, so new arrivals better brush up on their diffy q’s, yet residents are always free to leave by boat.

Hiva is an island chain whose visible hardscrabble poverty contrasts sharply with the locals’ epic-heroic sense of self. While feudal fiefdom and communist collective compete under the archipelago’s lose central government, each resident maintains his own running narration of his life, building up to a dramatically scripted suicide.

Kannzennashima might be the truest Utopia yet, since it only has one resident, Harai, a castaway historian who finds sustaining glory in the “ruins of the ruins” of the island fortress. However, those who lived on the island ages before him would never have considered it utopian. Similarly, the characteristics of Somerset ought to instantly disqualify it. The streets are literally lined with gutters for blood, because the citizens exist in a constant state of warfare and rebellion. Fittingly, Trotsky and Rousseau are among the philosophical polestars of this community, whose residents wear burlap war masks that would not look out of place in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Nightbreed movie.

Slow Action incorporates elements of science fiction, but it is definitely in the Olaf Stapledon tradition, which was never particularly accessible. Perhaps unfortunately for Rivers, Lanzarote, the real-life setting of Eleven will be more recognizable to genre viewers after Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution was filmed there. Likewise, anyone who has seen Battleship Island will immediately guess Kanzennashima is in fact the tragically historic Hashima. Hiva is Tuvalu, but frankly, it never really looks that exotic, while Somerset is indeed Rivers’ South West England birthplace.

There are some striking visuals and some intriguing bits of speculative ethnographic detail, but Slow Action is definitely the sort of film that depends on viewers to invest it with their own meanings. There is no great truth that emerges out of the film, but it ironically reinforces the idea utopia is an elusive and frequently dangerous ideal that humanity would be foolish to pursue. It also effectively showcases Rivers’ eye for assembling images as the director, editor, and cinematography.

For those who want a taste of avant-garde filmmaking, the forty-five-minute Slow Action is pretty easy to handle, but it has rather awkwardly been paired up with Barry Jenkins’ Remigration (a didactic film that never manages to go anywhere), presumably because of his eleventh-hour Oscar victory with Moonlight. Produced as part of ITVS’s Futurestates, it is one of the lesser installments of the series. Only Slow Action is recommended for discerning patrons of experimental film and cerebral science fiction when it screens this coming Tuesday (8/22) and Thursday the 31^st, as part of Future Imperfect at MoMA.

Japan Cuts ’17: Haruneko

It is strange film theorists have not spent more time analyzing the connection between genre cinema and experimental film. After all, to accept a postmodern fantasia on anything approaching face value, you have to make similar or even greater jumps as those required by fantastical cinema. Take this one. In many ways, it would bear comparison to Kore-eda’s After Life, but the herky-jerky flow puts us in a completely different headspace. In any event, those who seek death will eventually find it in Sora Hokimoto’s Haruneko (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New York.

The Manager runs a coffee shop in the woods that attracts a steady clientele, despite its remote location. After serving some rich looking French-press coffee, “The Manager” will escort guests into the woods, where they dissolve into sound vibrations. At least, that is the idea. Some guests, like the yakuza on the run or the delusional father who just murdered his wife and daughter might require a little coaxing. However, from a Karmic standpoint, it is necessary for them to move on.

That is the [relatively] clear-cut narrative part. Haruneko has no shortage of hallucinatory imagery that viewers could mull over for years without fully parsing them. Of course, for some, that is the charm of a film like this.

Haruneko is part of the experimental focus at this year’s Japan Cuts, so its surreal sensibilities should not come as a surprise. It is not for a mass audience, but the intimidated will miss out on a terrific performance from young Ryuto Iwata as Haru, a little boy who assists the manager with day-to-day chores and might also be a potential client, as his mysterious sister was or will be.

This is a strange film that changes tone on a dime. Yet, there is something undeniably inviting about the fateful coffeehouse. It is a lovely example of the power of mise-en-scene. Yoi Suzuki’s suggestive cinematography also captures the deep verdant colors of the forest, as well as a sense of the mysteries lurking within. Arguably, it is an experimental film that could have been more powerful if it were less experimental. Recommended for patrons of the avant-garde, Haruneko screens tonight (7/16) at the Japan Society, as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.

Japan Cuts ’17: Hengyoro (Queer Fish Lane)

Underwater plastic surgery is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Fortunately, eccentric elderly vagabonds Tarugani and Papajo have more reputable side jobs staging chain plays that incorporate stagecraft, film, and traditional Okinawan music. The underlying mythology is rich, but narrative logic isn’t much of a priority for Go Takamine’s Hengyoro (Queer Fish Lane) (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New York.

Something happened long ago that wiped out most of the population of Patai Village, but Tarugani and Papjo still shuffle around like ghosts. Frankly, things make more sense when they are mounting their chain plays, featuring eerie looking Super8 footage Takamine shot on Okinawa in the 1970s.

Episodic in nature, we watch the strange misadventures of a bag of an illegal aphrodisiac purchased instead of flour. Wrongly blamed for inappropriately acquiring the potent powder, Tarugani goes about his professional practice editing film and faces, while trying to elude the Bibiju, the three supernaturally damp wives of the aphrodisiac-peddling shopkeeper, who are dead set on cutting his ears.

Whatever. Don’t try to make sense of Hengyoro. While bits and pieces make sense in isolation, it is baffling as a whole. This is self-consciously experimental cinema that makes no concessions. Yet, it is easier to watch than you might expect, because Takamine is constantly pulling off wild in-camera visual tricks. Even if you have no patience for the avant-garde, it is strangely compelling to watch him top himself. In fact, it is no hyperbole to say cinematographer Mamoru Hirata’s work is frequently stunning. The traditional Okinawan soundtrack is also starkly powerful.

Takamine is probably best known internationally for the socially conscious, deliberately paced Paradise View, but that film will feel like Guardians of the Galaxy compared to Hengyoro. Still, it is often fascinating to look at and listen to—and that’s definitely something. Recommended for devoted patrons of experimental cinema, Hengyoro (Queer Fish Lane) screens Saturday (7/15) at the Japan Society, as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.

Tav Falco’s Urania Descending

There is a heck of a lot of National Socialist gold still out there. Some is safely tucked away in Swiss vaults, but there is one wayward shipment rather tantalizingly lying at the bottom of Lake Atter (a.k.a. the Attersee). An American fleeing boobsie Arkansas will be recruited into a scheme to salvage that gold in Tav Falco’s first feature-length film, Urania Descending (trailer here), which screens this Thursday as part of a night of the Panther Burns front man’s film at the Anthology Film Archives.

Title cards warn us not to expect perfectly synchronized audio, but frankly there will not be a lot of dialogue to worry about. Not exactly found footage, Descending claims to be the mysterious 16mm reels of an unknown outsider-artist filmmaker, cobbled together as well as possible. Although there is a bit of talking here and there, Falco is clearly engaging with the conventions and motifs of silent cinema—much more so than the caper movie.

Fed up with leering lowlifes, Gina Lee just up and bought a one-way ticket to Vienna. How long can she afford to idle away her days in merry old Vienna? Maybe for quite a while, if she can complete the job offered to her by tango-dancing playboy Diego Moritz. Her job will be to romance Karl-Heinz Von Riegl, the son of the German officer in charge of the gold shipment that crashed in Lake Atter. It will not be difficult to get him talking about it, but snapping a picture of the pertinent map will be a trickier task.

That probably makes it sound like intrigue abounds in Descending, but frankly there are almost no twists or turns to this sixty-nine minute tale. Instead, Falco is much more interested in realizing the film’s neo-retro look. Think of it as a more animated cousin of Sally Potter’s Thriller, or a less grungy, modern day Alphaville. Indeed, Descending could pass for Godard’s remake of a John Huston caper film, produced by the Warhol factory.

Descending is probably most successful evoking the spirit of Vienna through its soundtrack of accordion music, tangos, waltzes, and hints of the Third Man theme. Nevertheless, its deliberately self-conscious gamesmanship ultimately wears thin. This is definitely a case where it would be much more nourishing to watch the films that inspired Falco. More intriguing as a concept than as a finished film, Falco’s Urania Descending screens this Thursday night (5/25) at the Anthology Film Archives.