Slamdance ’21: Black Kung Fu Chick (Episode)

Mastering martial arts involves more than simply learning the moves. The discipline it entails is even more important, especially on a mental level. Tasha will learn that from her new sifu, but going to high school in LA means she can still use plenty of hand-to-hand fighting technique in the mini-episodes of creator-director Rae Shaw’s Black Kung Fu Chick, which screens as part of the 2021 (online) Slamdance Film Festival.

Tasha is a serious student, who also happens to be into comic book culture. Unfortunately, that means she often gets bullied on the streets of her Watts neighborhood. It has gotten so bad, she has even started cutting class, despite her college aspirations. Recognizing her predicament, Tasha’s math teacher, Mr. Jian, offers to serve as her Mr. Miyagi. However, his approach initially confuses Tasha—as do the crane videos he has her watch.

haw deserves a lot of credit for portraying the kind of martial arts discipline that you usually don’t see in kung fu movies. Real masters always prefer to avoid a fight. Likewise, Tasha will extract herself from the big centerpiece fight scene as soon as possible, because she has more important things to do. That is a good message for kids, but the fight scenes (overseen by stunt coordinator Alfred Hsing) are still pretty cool.

The vibe of BKFC is also quite appealing in a nostalgic kind of way, because of Raven Stevenson’s Super8 cinematography, which approximates the retro-look of 1970s “Afterschool Specials.” There is a nice geek element as well, thanks to the use of still comic panels during scene transitions. Ironically, it is easier to imagine it getting picked up by a network during the 1990s than finding a match with today’s compulsively cutting-edge streaming services, but Shaw’s’ characters deserve to find a longer life somewhere.

Slamdance ’21: Code Name: Nagasaki

This happens to be a documentary, but it also proves genre filmmaking can be therapeutic. Fredrik S. Hana and his good pal Marius Lunde made several short films together, with Hana directing and Lunde in front of the camera, but for their first feature, they documented Lunde’s efforts to find his birth mother in Japan. It is an emotional process for Lunde, whose doubts and angst are distinctively represented by mini-genre-vignettes in Hana & Lunde’s Code Name: Nagasaki, which screens during the (online) 2021 Slamdance Film Festival.

Lunde’s memories of his birth mother are hazy at best, because he was only five years-old when she returned to her native Japan without warning, leaving her Norwegian family behind. He still had a reasonably happy childhood, but her absence still left a void. Years later, he hires a Japanese private investigator to track down his mother. With Hana along for moral support and his cameras to record the moment, Lunde prepares for a trip to Japan, even though he is not sure whether he will be welcome when he arrives.

Periodically, Hana and Lunde also go back to their roots, staging film noir, J-horror, and Chanbara samurai interludes that express Lunde’s states of mind. They all look so cool, Code Name: Nagasaki is sure to inspire a surge of interest in their previous shorts among festival patrons.

Slamdance ’21: A Black Rift Begins to Yawn

Analog media continues to intrigue for many reasons, including its intentional purposefulness. Somewhat went to the effort of recording those mysterious old cassette and reel-to-reel tapes and then dedicated the considerable space to store them. Whatever might be on them must mean something, right? That is what two women assume when they start cataloging their former professor’s weird archive in director-screenwriter-editor-composer-prop-designer Matthew Wade’s A Black Rift Begins to Yawn, which screens during this year’s (online) Slamdance Film Festival.

People often confuse Laura and Lara (honestly, if you remember which one is which an hour after finishing the film, then hats off to you). Despite the misgivings of his widow, they have taken possession of a mysterious cache of tapes their former professor, Dr. Meyer was studying. They seem to have been transferred from reel-to-reel tapes to the cassettes, but there are strange, disorienting noises on them which neither Lara and Laura or Dr. Meyer before them can identify. As they continue to listen and examining the tapes, they start to lose track of time and their surroundings. The strange noises could very well be driving them mad.

A cheap review could easily fall back on an easy line like “you can see why the black rift is beginning to yawn.” It is true Black Rift is a deliberately and sometimes maddeningly slow film. However, it is also clear to see Wade is a very talented cinematic stylist. The problem is he is not a great storyteller.

There are some remarkable visuals in Black Rift, but the two main characters are basically interchangeable ciphers. It looks great, but it never really connects on an emotional or intellectual level. If Wade ever teams up with an old school screenwriter, they could probably produce something as distinctive as The Vast of Night (which is also stylistically arresting, but also features memorable characters). However, as the work of a one-man auteur, Black Rift is problematically diffuse and opaque. It is good to be challenging, but we need characters and narrative signposts to carry along the heady concepts.

Slamdance ’21: Isaac

Isaac Kaplan was killed by a mob enthralled by an anti-Semitic ideology during the 1941 Lietukis Garage Massacre in Lithuanian, but he was also a victim of the Soviet Socialist ideology, before and after the fact. The truth, as revealed to viewers in fractured fragments, will be duly covered up in Jurgis Matulevicius’s extraordinary Isaac, which screens during this year’s (online) Slamdance Film Festival.

Viewers will see the murder of Kaplan unfold amidst the horrors of the massacre in the riveting and horrifying long opening tracking shot. Supposedly, Kaplan denounced his score-settling murderer to the retreating Soviet occupiers for his anti-Soviet activities. Obviously, the atrocities committed by the Soviets, the Germans, and their respective Lithuanian collaborators continue to fester and corrode the national psyche, but in the mid-1960s, you could only safely address the crimes of the Germans and their fascist allies—and then only cautiously so. Expat film director Gediminus Gutauskas does not understand how carefully he should tread when he returns home from America to shoot a film based on the Lietukis Massacre.

Initially, Soviet propaganda hails his voluntary return, receiving him like a superstar. His former lover, Elena Gluosnis is also happy to see him, because she hopes he will jumpstart her stalled film career. Her semi-estranged husband Andrius is less than thrilled at the prospect of his homecoming, but he too rekindles their friendship. As Gutauskas and his wife start production on the film, Gluosnis finds himself working more closely with KGB Major Kazimeiras, both as a crime scene photographer and as a photographic expert, analyzing archival photographs of the massacre. Struck by the similarities between the script and classified details of mass killings, Kazimeiras starts to suspect Gutauskas was present in a culpable capacity.

Except, nothing in Isaac is that simple. The screenplay, co-written by Matulevicius with Saule Bliuvaite and Nerijus Milerius takes a story by Lithuanian émigré writer Antanas Skema folds into itself and even incorporates Skema into the narrative. It has been billed as a “film noir,” which it is to an extent, but there is also heavy absurdist and postmodern elements. Yet, we can maybe also discern the influence Andrzej Wajda, particularly in they way it portrays censorship and cover-ups as an act of violence upon the national Lithuanian conscience.

Visually, Isaac is also a flat-out knockout. Matulevicius starts in brutally stark black-and-white then shifts to crimson-tinged color, before eventually reverting back to black-and-white. He and cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis pull off some stunning tracking shots. They truly immerse viewers in the characters’ world and surroundings. At times, Matulevicius’s visuals are almost too eye-popping, because they can distract from drama, which is also considerable.

Slamdance ’21: Taipei Suicide Story

Service at this hotel is excellent, but it is hard to say Michelin or Zagat would rate them. Guests never stay a second night—there or anywhere else, for that matter. It is a suicide hotel and the night receptionist is about to break a cardinal rule when he starts to form ambiguous feelings for a guest in director-screenwriter-co-editor Keff’s Taipei Suicide Story, which screens during this year’s (online) Slamdance Film Festival.

Usually, Zhi-hao ends his day after the cleaning crew has finished bagging the bodies and conducting Buddhist last rites ceremonies. However, this day one of the cleaners has some annoying news. Jun-ting has not vacated her room after five days. Zhi-hao goes to roust her, one way or another, but is surprised to himself attracted to the shy, sensitive young woman.

When he is back on duty, he makes a point of apologizing for his rudeness when he sees her again. As the conversation stretches out, Zhi-hao clearly starts to feel conflicted. Even his boss can tell—and he knows it can’t end well for the employee.

Indeed, a film called Taipei Suicide Story (presumably a nod to Edward Yang’s Taipei Story, which was all about intimacy issues) simply can’t be a laugh-a-minute. However, it is an exquisitely humanistic film. At times, the tone feels akin to the films of Kore-eda, especially thanks to the delicate but still distinctive acoustic guitar themes performed by Yang Tzu-ting.