First Look ’25: Chronicles of the Absurd

Unfortunately, for Miguel Coyula and his collaborator-muse, Lynn Cruz, being an independent artist is illegal in Cuba. That is not my analysis. Those are the words of multiple government officials whom they secretly recorded. The apparatchiks did not just tell them. They also laid down the law for photographer Javier Caso, who happens to be the brother of Anna de Armas (whose roles they approved of). You can hear the censoring and the not so veiled threats for yourself in Coyula’s documentary, Chronicles of the Absurd, which screens today as part of First Look 2025.

Shot over the course of several years, Absurd initially documents the long, arduous production of their dystopian film, Corazon Azul. Eventually, it cost Cruz her livelihood, because she was expelled from the actors’ union, but never properly informed. She even sort of successfully challenges her expulsion, winning reinstatement along with the immediate, legally required 30-days-notice of her second, permanent ejection.

Routinely, their attempts to attend screenings of their past films are blocked by cops and secret police, who refuse to identify themselves. Accustomed to the harassment, Coyula and Cruz regularly leave home with secret cell phones hidden on their bodies recording whatever might transpire. Indeed, such recordings make up nearly the film’s entire audio track. Although they have no corresponding video, they use cleverly monstrous looking stand-in icons and slyly selected photos for bureaucrats with an online footprint, creating dramatic montages.

Frankly, Absurd would be quite amusing in a farcical and aptly absurd way, if it were also not so Orwellian. Clearly, Cruz and Coyula are not paranoid. Caso similarly employs their cell phone technique to capture the secret police trying to scare him away from his longtime friends. Fortunately for Caso, his relationship with his famous sister provides him some degree of protection.

First Look ’25: The Vanguard Tapes (short)

This film couldn’t be made in the same way today. That is because the venerable Village Vanguard jazz club no longer has a kitchen—at least not one that requires a paid dish-washer. However, from 1991 to 1995, filmmaker Bill Morrison washed dishes in the Vanguard kitchen. Evidently, even back then the kitchen-area was a hang-space for musicians between sets and their guests. Morrison quickly realized he should film some of their candid banter. Jazz fans finally get to hear some of the comradery in the short film (possibly an excerpt of a longer future project) The Vanguard Tapes, which screens today as part of First Look 2025.

Jazz fans will immediately understand the appeal of this film when they hear the two most prominent voices are alto-sax player Lou Donaldson and pianist Harold Mabern. They were both amazing musicians and wonderful showmen, who routinely cracked up both their audiences and sidemen in between numbers. Whether it is Donaldson talking about playing his numbers and betting on horses, or Mabern recapping his favorite soap opera, you can understand why Morrison felt compelled to record these slices of the behind-the-scenes jazz life.

Logically, there are also very serious discussions of music. Trumpeter Danny Moore pulls no punches with his critical appraisals of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. (It should be noted, this was the early 1990s. By the late 1990s, Shorter was enjoying a career renaissance returning to the acoustic hardbop he played before his Weather Report years.)

First Look ’25: Zodiac Killer Project

The Zodiac Killer remains America’s deadliest uncaught serial killer, so any half-baked theory about his identity deserves a Netflix documentary. At least that is what documentary filmmaker Charlie Shackleton (probably rightly) figured. Deciding to essentially “sell out” and go true crime, Shackleton tried to buy the rights to a former California highway patrolman’s expose/memoir of his off-the-books Zodiac investigation. The negotiation went smoothly until the rights-holders suddenly backed out. Undeterred, Shackleton explains the film he would have made, using material already in the public domain in Zodiac Killer Project, a sort of docu-curio that screens during this year’s First Look.

By the time the deal unexpectedly fell through Shackleton had already done a lot of prep work, including scouting locations and pre-interviewing potential on-camera subjects. The focus of his film would have been the late Lyndon Lafferty, who had a fateful encounter at a rest stop with the man who would become his prime suspect for the Zodiac murders.

Ordinarily, Highway Patrol is not in charge of serial killer investigations, but the police took his information and started sniffing around his suspect, until higher-ups declared him off limits. Considering this a cover-up, Lafferty assembled his own team, largely consisting of retired law enforcement friends, who worked the case without official sanction.

In fact, that sounds like a very commercial premise, so it is easy to understand why Shackleton thought his unmade Zodiac Killer Project could have been a nice payday. Basically, he explains shot-by-shot, what might have been. The visuals are mostly static shots of prospective locations, like the library that would have served as the police station.

Frankly, the real revelation in Zodiac Killer Project are the ways Shackleton quite offhandedly admits he would have deceived viewers and distorted the truth, for dramatic effect. For instance, he causally admits he would have implied Lafferty had been present for his suspect’s first police interview, even though he seriously doubts that was true. It just would have made better TV.

Shackleton also skewers the very genre he hoped to join, illustrating each of his hypothetical scenes with half of dozen split screens from previous true crime productions that show nearly identical imagery. It starts with the grainy, dreamlike opening credits and precedes to the description of the suspect’s hometown as “a nice play to raise a family,” but it always “had a dark side.” Plus, every other cop is nicknamed “the Bulldog.”