DOC NYC ’19: Mai Khoi and the Dissidents

If the New Left anti-war protestors ever really took stock of their legacy, they would have to confront their inadvertent contribution to the abysmal human rights record of modern-day Vietnam, a one-party Communist surveillance state that regularly ranks down at the bottom of press freedom indexes, alongside China and Iran. Recently, the regime has also moved aggressively to curtail the flow of information over the internet. That is the environment the free-thinking recording artist Mai Khoi was forced to operate in. Filmmaker Joe Piscatella follows Khoi during a pivotal period of her career as an artist and an activist in Mai Khoi and the Dissidents, which premiered at this year’s DOC NYC.

Khoi has frequently been dubbed Vietnam’s Lady Gaga, but she is also intelligent and capable of thinking for herself. However, her first big hit was something like the Vietnamese equivalent of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” The government certainly promoted it that way, but she continued to grow as an artist. Even more inconveniently, she also developed a social conscience, especially with respects to free speech and women’s rights.

Inevitably, the Party cooled on the once favored Khoi and it became downright hostile when she launched an independent campaign for parliament. In a weird kink of the nation’s electoral laws, rival political parties are expressly prohibited, but independent candidacies are ostensibly legal. Of course, the Party still kept her off the ballot. As the pressure on Khoi mounts, she forms a new band that reflects her concerns and frustrations: “Mai Khoi and the Dissidents.” You know they do not reflect the Party approved aesthetics, because it includes a jazz saxophonist.

Although Dissidents is not quite as intense as Nanfu Wang’s Hooligan Sparrow, the stakes are high throughout the film and Khoi faces genuine peril. Despite its atrocious human rights record, Vietnam has enjoyed a fair amount of sympathetic press in recent years. Dissidents should serve as a sharp rebuke and a bitter antidote to such white-washed coverage.

DOC NYC ’19: Buster Williams Bass to Infinity

The bass is really quite a fitting instrument for a Buddhist jazz musician. It can create a drone-like effect, especially if played arco. Yet, more importantly, the bass provides the selfless foundation that the rest of the ensemble plays over. Bassists frequently comp under soloists and generally “keep the band together,” to quote the words of Buster Williams. He ought to know. Williams played with everyone and has become a popular bandleader in his own right. Viewers get to hang with the virtuoso bassist in Adam Kahan’s Buster Williams Bass to Infinity, which premiered at this year’s DOC NYC.

Williams played with undeniable legends, like Miles Davis, Nancy Wilson, and Sarah Vaughan. However, his first professional stint came in the ruckus band co-led by “Boss Tenors” Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. It was quite an education for the young Williams, as viewers learn from his colorful anecdotes and the lively animated sequences that accompany them.

Most of the film is more conventional and laidback, but it slyly builds to a significant point, appropriately delivered by NEA Jazz Master Herbie Hancock, whose Buster Williams story perfectly represents and encapsulates the film. Disappointingly, we do not get to hear Hancock play with Williams (oh well), but we do hear the bassist perform with famous friends, such as tenor-player Benny Golson, vocalist Carmen Lundy, pianists Kenny Barron and Larry Willis, fellow bassist Rufus Reid, as well as his own ensemble featuring Steve Wilson and George Colligan, so that’s definitely something.

Buster Williams is a likable screen presence throughout the film. Oddly enough, Infinity could be the best opportunity to hear Williams on his own, because he never hogs the solo spotlight, even at his own gigs. He really takes the business of “keeping the band together” seriously. But of course, his musicianship is undeniably accomplished.

DOC NYC ’19: On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship

Obama became first U.S. president to visit Myanmar (or Burma as most Burmese still call it), even returning a second time. Everything was sunshine and rainbows until things suddenly got awkward again. Aung San Suu Kyi’s stock has plummeted in recent years, but Karen Stokkendal Poulsen takes a necessary step back to put current controversies in a fuller historical context. Viewers get a sense of how Burma’s tragic past has shaped its frustrating present in On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship, which screens tonight during this year’s DOC NYC.

Aung San Suu Kyi might have fallen from grace, but we still love Michelle Yeoh’s portrayal in The Lady. Poulsen briefly covers her celebrated years of house arrest, but she dives deeply into the transitional period following her release. Burma was sort of democratizing, but the ruling generals had devised enough loopholes to ensure their continuing hold on power. The military was guaranteed 25% of seats in parliament and article 59 (f) expressly prohibited Aung San Suu Kyi from serving as the nation’s president.

However, she was elected to parliament, but that meant serving alongside former leaders of the not-so old regime. The guts of Poulsen’s doc really examine the implications of this situation, which are fascinating. Frankly, Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation would be secure today if she just voted no on everything and told the general to stick it in their ears. Instead, she tried to reach out and form alliances to get things done. Of course, making the repeal of 59 (f) a priority doesn’t exactly burnish her image in retrospect.

Poulsen does not let Aung San Suu Kyi off the hook for her response (or lack of a response) to the systematic attacks on Rohingya Muslims, but she also makes it clear how precarious her current position is. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the chilling consequences of the assassination of her legal advisor, who also happened to be Muslim. Frankly, it could well be that the film stops just as Aung San Suu Kyi’s third act might start (as time will perhaps tell).

DOC NYC ’19: Ai Weiwei Yours Truly

Ai Weiwei has arguably succeeded Warhol and Picasso as the most recognizable artist of his times. He has also succeeded Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn as the most recognizable dissident of our current era. The Mainland Communist regime is less than thrilled about both scores. Ai’s dissidence (as well as that of his father before him clearly informs his art, as his curator Cheryl Haines clearly documents in Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

For nearly three months, Ai was held incommunicado on bogus charged. He was then released, but placed under house and his passport was confiscated. It was under these circumstances Ai challenged Haines to help bring his art to an even greater international audience. Her idea to mount a site-specific show at the notorious Alcatraz island prison was fraught with complications, but the creative possibilities and symbolism fired Ai’s creative imagination. Much like banned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi directing over the phone during his house arrest, Ai planned out the project from his Beijing workshop, relying on Haines to oversee the implementation on-site.

Clearly, the scale and historical significance of Alcatraz well-suited Ai’s art—perhaps better than most museums could. Patrons saw large scale installations that have been interpreted as tributes to the oppressed Tibetan people and his father, Chinese modernist poet Ai Qing, who was beaten, publicly humiliated, and ostracized during the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

Yet, the clear centerpiece of the show was “Yours Truly” that depicted Lego portraits of prisoners of conscience held at the time around the world and then invited patrons to write postcards to any of the subjects whose cases particularly moved them. However, Haines clearly focus on Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning as the centerpiece of the “Yours Truly” “dissidents,” which is problematic.

DOC NYC ’19: What We Left Unfinished

It is estimated the Taliban destroyed 200-300 Afghan motion pictures during their oppressive misrule. That is indefensibly horrifying, but at least it was not the complete and total destruction of Cambodian cinema wrought by the Communist Khmer Rouge. Ironically, five of the films that survived were incomplete Soviet occupation-era propaganda movies that will remain unfinished, because the featured actors have long since aged out of their roles or passed away. Veterans of the Afghan film industry contemplate its tumultuous past and uncertain future through the lens of these films in Mariam Ghani’s documentary, What We Left Unfinished, which screens today at DOC NYC 2019.

The films spanned a period from 1978 to 1991 and all had mostly wrapped their principal shoots, but they were halted due to regime changes, political infighting, and civil strife. Daoud Farani’s The April Revolution even featured the current General Secretary-Strongman Hafizullah Amin playing himself in the hagiographic biography he also wrote. Alas, his Soviet sponsors turned on him after three months, prompting the assassination that cut short the production.

There is no question Farani’s interrupted film is the most interesting of the quintet. To a large extent, Faqir Nabi’s Downfall, Khalek Halil’s The Black Diamond, Juwansher Haidary’s Wrong Way, and Latif Ahmadi’s Agent all have a similar look and feel, having been shot between 1987 and 1991 and feature tales of evil Westerners and heroic Afghan cops from the drug enforcement and counter-espionage squads. Think of the roughest, cheapest South Asian films you have seen and then try to envision them even more stilted.

Ghani takes a quiet, meditative approach, but her film lacks the emotional wallop of Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers, his documentary elegy for Cambodia’s cinematic heritage, which is the obvious comparison film. Ghani’s participants are also in an awkward position of admitting they accepted Communist regime funding and were very definitely expected to tow the Party’s line (although some claim they still stayed true to reality and their creative visions).

DOC NYC ’19: In Bright Axiom

If you ever find yourself wondering “hey, am I in a cult,” then dude, mostly likely you are. Still, it is understandable why it would be hard to tell in the case of the House of Latitude. Secrecy was supposedly their watch word, but everyone was perfectly willing to participate in director-editor-co-writer-co-cinematographer Spencer McCall’s documentary, In Bright Axiom, which screens during DOC NYC 2019.

The origins of the House of Latitude go back to a fantastical era never documented in official human history. It had been dormant for centuries, but it rose from the ashes in the back alleys and brew pubs of San Francisco.

Just what is the House of Latitude? Essentially, it is the Jejune Institute 2.0. That is why those who have already seen McCall’s previous (and superior) “documentary,” The Institute will quite likely be a bit disappointed in Axiom. It is an unusually slick and stylish hybrid-doc-thingy, but The Institute maintained a greater sense of mystery. Frankly, the Latitude backstory is not as compelling either.