ACE Film Fest: Music From the Inside Out (NYFA)

Representatives from New York Foundation for the Arts sounded like they really wanted to talk money at the ACE Film Fest. The lead sponsor of the festival, NYFA screened five documentaries made possible by seed money they originally provided. Before each screening they invited filmmakers to come talk to them later about their financing opportunities for documentary projects. (They would not have needed to ask me twice.) Their showcase films all received significant theatrical distribution and usually related to the arts and humanities, like Been Rich All My Life, a profile of the Silver Belles dancers, and Daniel Anker’s Music From the Inside Out (trailer here).

The Philadelphia Orchestra already had a significant claim on cinema history, having recorded the soundtrack to Disney’s Fantasia. With MFTIO, Anker profiled the orchestra over the course of five years and several world tours. While not every musician of the 105-member organization gets individual screen time, Anker shoehorns a good number of them into the film. These are section players, not star soloists, although some, like concertmaster David Kim, had such aspirations. His story of frustrated ambition, giving way to the artistic satisfaction of musical collaboration, is really representative of the spirit of MFTIO.

A surprising number of the musicians Anker interviews actually perform in different styles and genres for their own satisfaction. Adam Unsworth graduated from a jazz program and admits the regimentation of the orchestra is often artistically frustrating for a trained improviser. We then hear a cool performance of Bird’s “Blues for Alice” from Unsworth on French horn, an instrument not heard very often in a jazz context (only Julius Watkins and Vincent Chancey come readily to mind).

We also meet violinists who moonlight as blue grass fiddlers and Udi Bar-David, an Israeli cellist performing traditionally Middle Eastern music with Palestinian oud player Simon Shaheen. Perhaps the busiest crossover musician is principal trombonist Nitzan Haroz, who regularly jams with a salsa band after his symphony concerts.

Even though MFTIO profiles a symphony orchestra, it is more about the emotional resonance of music in general, than classical music specifically. While the film never gets too heavy or dramatic, there are some very effective scenes which convey the power of music to make direct human connections. It was an excellent representative of NYFA’s mission. Though available on DVD, special screenings for community and educational groups seem to be continuing. It is well worth seeing in either format.

ACE Film Fest: The Big Shot Caller

While deeply rooted in the cultural environment of 1970’s El Barrio, salsa music has used evolving strategies to appeal to an emerging transnational market. That will be the stuff of an upcoming review of Christopher Washburne’s Sounding Salsa, but it is largely superfluous to Marlene Rhein’s salsa-flavored indy drama, The Big Shot Caller (trailer here), which concluded this year’s ACE Film Fest.

For protagonist Jaime Lessor, salsa simply represents freedom, passion, and a brief respite from being an uptight white guy. However, uncharitable reactions to an unfortunate eye condition (Nystagmus) caused him to bury his dancing ambitions, instead immersing himself in wage-slave drudgery. His family support system is nearly non-existent. He rarely visits a father who only cares about his next poker game, and he is avoiding his estranged sister Lianne, who ran away from home fifteen years ago.

At first, Lessor only agrees to see Lianne to get advice about a rare romantic prospect, Elissa, an Upper Manhattan party girl. It is pretty clear Lessor and Elissa are not going to work, but she is a woman giving him attention, so he falls hard. When the inevitable happens, it sends him into a personal tailspin. Depressed and unemployed, he turns to the only one who will take him in: his sister.

At its heart, Caller is a sibling story more than anything else. Music does play a significant role in the story, but it never eclipses the personal drama. The big dance comes and goes, but life goes on. Salsa fans might be a bit disappointed the music is not more prominent in the film, but they will enjoy hearing up-and-coming salsa band La Excelencia perform two tunes.

Jaime and Lianne Lessor are played by real-life brother-and-sister David and writer-director Marlene Rhein. They are indeed convincing in the roles, as one would expect. Marlene Rhein, a former music video director who worked with the likes of 2Pac Shakur and Amy Winehouse, helms with considerable sensitivity and uses New York locations to good effect. As a screenwriter, she steers clear of easy sentiment and delivers some of the film’s best lines as Lianne.

At times Caller is painfully believable to watch. Life can be that way. It is strong feature debut for the Rheins that deserves to find an audience as it plays the festival circuit.

ACE Film Fest: Kill Kill Faster Faster

The ACE Film Festival began with a truncated discussion of the challenges facing independent filmmaking. In some respects, the indy film scene has been a victim of its own past success, with the influence of breakout hits, like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, becoming all too pervasive. Now, far from being “edgy” graphic violence and sex, as well as frank language about both, are more derivative than transgressive. A case in point is Kill Kill Faster Faster (trailer here), which screened at ACE.

Frustratingly, KKFF begins with the promise of fresh originality. Gil Bellows plays Joey One-Way, a convicted murderer released from prison through the intervention Markie Mann, a producer who has optioned the con’s confessional play White Man Black Hole. Mann and his vapid show business associates want to romanticize One-Way’s thug life as a paragon of artistic integrity and authenticity. However, One-Way, consumed with guilt for his wife’s murder, contrarily argues there is nothing to admire in his life of crime and addiction. It is the straight family man who upholds his commitments that gets One-Way’s props. A cutting rebuke of hipster values—that’s edgy.

However, things go downhill precipitously when One-Way meets Mann’s wife Fleur, leading to a series of depressingly graphic, but unsatisfying sexual encounters. These are not erotic scenes in the least, but more like exercises in mutual contempt and debasement. Unfortunately, they dominate the second act, making it near impossible to develop a rooting interest in any character.

As One-Way, Bellows has sullen down cold, but never hits any other notes. Esai Morales’s Markie is a basic stock character. Only Shaun Parkes as One-Way’s former cell-mate Clinique shows any screen presence, providing Cassandra-like commentary. Probably the most successful aspect of the film is the score composed by Mike Benn, a musician best known for his work with folk-soul-jazz vocalist Terry Callier (who is also heard on the soundtrack), which effectively mixes blues, crime-jazz, and soundtracky mood cues.

KKFF is based on a novel by Joel Rose, which may well be worth reading. Periodically, interesting ideas do peak out of the screenplay, before being overwhelmed by its indy film excesses. Had KKFF followed through on its early hints of being a morality play with a genuine sense of morality, it truly would be edgy and independent. Instead, it is only another explicit crime drama.

ACE Film Fest: Shorts

Events seem to be conspiring against the ACE Film Festival. After facing stiff opening night competition from a historic RNC convention (better to be up against Sen. McCain than Gov. Palin though) the organizers will have Tropical Storm Hanna to contend with today. At least a couple shorts which screened Thursday should have cheered them up.

L.A. traffic can be a killer, to your social life at least. It also leads to a fair amount of bruising in Crystal Liu’s Speed Dating. Single and rather depressed about it, Kate is having difficulty meeting anyone, spending her days hermetically sealed in either her car or her office cubicle. After an unsuccessful night of clubbing, she accidentally nicks a single (but fortunately understanding) guy while pulling out of her parking spot. In the sober light of day, Kate realizes this can be quite an effective ice-breaker and loads up the car to deliberately clip eligible pedestrians. Hit them then hit-on them being the strategy.

Speed has pretty clever concept. While it might get a little thin if stretched to feature length, at about fifteen minutes, it maintains its comedic energy quite nicely. There are probably more laughs in this short film than most of the supposed relationship comedies produced by Hollywood for either television or the big screen.

While L’amie de Zoé would probably be more appreciated in this morning’s children’s program (at only two minutes, why not throw it in as a bonus?), it is an endearing little film, that actually tells a fair amount of story in its relatively short running time. In general, I think it is more effective when festivals thematically organize their shorts programs, but I have to admit the hodge-podge approach does sometimes get me to see films like Zoé which ordinarily I would not seek out.

You can see Zoé online here, but like any film, shorts are best viewed on the big screen. ACE screens another shorts program tonight, for those bold enough to brave the storm.

ACE Film Festival: Preview

Yes, this week will be heavy on Korean films as coverage of the NYKFF continues. If Korean cinema is not your cup of tea, you’re missing out, but there will be plenty of arts documentaries in the very near future. The 2008 ACE Film Festival (the American Cinematic Experience) is set to take place September 4-7 in the main theater of New World Stages, just west of Times Square in the Theater District. Having seen shows here before, I expect it to be a cool venue for the Fest.

In addition to narrative features and shorts, the ACE Film Festival includes five documentaries from the extensive New York Foundation for the Arts film library. The NYFA selections touch on various disciplines of the humanities, including music, dance, architecture, and history. I already heartily recommend Been Rich All My Life¸ the story of the Apollo Theater dancers, the Silver Belles, which screens the 7th and plan to attend the screening of the Holocaust documentary, The Children of Chabannes.

In the narrative program, the Salsa drama The Big Shot Caller, sounds particularly promising, since it has been chosen to close the festival. Also, Kill Kill Faster Faster looks like a notable film-noir, with a big-name cast and a Crime Jazz-influenced score by Michael Benn, known for his work with Terry Callier.

The ACE Film Festival runs from the 4th through the 7th. Information on tickets and passes, directions, and film descriptions can be found here. As a preview, here is a slightly condensed version of a previous Been Rich All My Life review, which screens at ACE Sunday, September 7th:


There was a time when people dressed up for a night out. The big bands ruled the night clubs and theaters, and the women of the Silver Belles were dancing in the chorus at the Apollo Theater. Director-producer-and-most-everything-else Heather Lyn MacDonald records their stories in the touching feature documentary Been Rich All My Life.

It was big band swing that they danced to at the Apollo and legendary night-spots like the Cotton Club, so as one would expect, music plays an important role in their story. Silver Belle Marian Coles explains: “We do mostly jazz moves. You got to be loose to move and the music inspires that.” Which band did they single out? Jimmie Lunceford’s: “that was our band . . . because they were swinging.”

Ms. Coles, age 88 at time of filming, was also teaching tap in addition to performing. When she talks about preserving the tap tradition, her words have resonance for jazz lovers as well: “I love to dance—I teach because our style of dance—there’s no one out here doing it . . . I teach to pass it on, because the students love it.” Her teaching techniques even reflect a jazz influence, as she scats the dance steps to her students.

MacDonald captured some great interviews, preserving some important cultural history. In one interview, Cleo Hayes tells us: “I’m from Greenville, Mississippi and I don’t have to tell you why I left.” If you don’t know, it should be clear when listening to their experiences on Southern tours. Even when a part of the first African-American USO tour, they had to deal with segregation, despite soldiers shouting: “Hey Apollo, Hey Apollo.”

Tap like jazz depends on masters passing down the tradition, by teaching young talents. Coles and Hayes both credit senior member Bettye Lou Wood, who passed away during filming, for just that sort of formative instruction early in their careers. It is that sense of living tradition and passion for one’s art that makes Been Rich a rewarding film.