Documentary Fortnight ’11: Countryside 35x45 & Almost Married

Their rhetoric might be slightly different, but the practices of the Soviet Union and Putin’s successor regime are eerily similar, chief among them being a preoccupation with paperwork. At least this generates some work for a middle-aged photographer in Evgeny Solomin’s Countryside 35x45, which screens as part of a short doc double-bill during MoMA’s 2011 Documentary Fortnight.

The government has decreed all remaining Communist era passports must be exchanged for new ID cards. For many Russians, particularly older citizens living in remote villages, this is a meaningless hassle. However, they have to do it, if they want to keep getting their pension checks. Enter Lyutikov, an enterprising photographer who barnstorms Siberia, setting up shop in village meeting halls to snap the needed 35x45 passport photos.

Though Siberians do not look particularly chatty, the bald photographer operates much like a barber or hairdresser, getting his subjects to open up awfully quickly, while he gets down to business. As one might expect, life was bleak and continues to be hard for the hardscrabble Siberians. Though Lyutikov’s reactions to stories of husbands swept up by the authorities and assorted WWII privations appear rather cold and superficial, his photographs capture something touching in their weathered faces, even if they were produced in assembly line fashion. Perhaps the real credit should go to Vladimir Ponomaryov, whose elegant, crystal clear black-and-white cinematography gives Countryside the look of a high art film, despite its TV-ish aspect ratio.

In contrast to Lyutikov’s cool remove, Fatma Bucak takes viewers on an emotional (nearly angst-ridden) homecoming to her native Turkey in Almost Married, co-written and co-directed by her and Sergio Fergnachino. Stifling under her Kurdish family’s traditionalism, Bucak essentially ran away from home, settling in Italy where she pursued her photography. She also fell in love with an Italian. Complications ensue.

Bucak has finally returned in hopes of securing her father’s blessing for their marriage, but she is quite apprehensive about broaching the subject. Dad is a hard cat to talk to. An old school leftist rabble-rouser in the 1980’s, he still holds fast to traditional practices, like arranged marriages.

In the technically well-staged opening sequence, the audience sees a deceptively dramatic example of Bucak’s work, supposedly inspired by her family history. Frankly, it sets viewers up for a medieval horror show that mercifully never materializes. Though a bit difficult perhaps, overall her father seems more-or-less reasonable. For her part, Bucak diligently avoids even the mention of Islam, let alone honor killings and other such manifestations of fundamentalist misogyny. She even presents a half-hearted justification of arranged marriage, despite the less-than-thrilled look of the bride at an arranged wedding she attends.

Understandably, Bucak opts to work out her own issues rather than adopt the cause of women’s rights in the Islamic world. Yet that determination to narrow Married’s focus also limits its relevancy. Artfully rendered, Countryside is a small but intriguing film, while Married conversely starts with a big important premise, but proceeds to bury it, most likely for the sake of familial peace. A mixed bag, the double-bill screens again this afternoon (2/27), as Documentary Fortnight continues at MoMA.

Documentary Fortnight ’11: Tape

Li Ning has quite possibly been naked in public more often than anyone else in China. Somehow, the avant-garde dancer-performance artist has eluded the police after each of his public happenings, yet he has still paid a high price for his art as he personally documents in his post-modern docu-memoir Tape (video intro here), which screens today as part of the 2011 Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art.

Li Ning would probably be more comfortable living in the East Village than the relatively quiet, industrial city of Jinan. However, his troupe of merry prankster dancers has given him a creative outlet. Recruited mostly from his dance classes at the local university, they have been up for just about anything. Usually, Li is the only naked one though. Unfortunately, it is difficult for Li to hold the company together, as the demands of life pull them apart. Indeed, Li has his own obligations as a father and husband. By his own admission, his performance as the former has been only so-so, while largely failing at the latter.

Far from a sufficient provider, Li is in fact a financial burden on his wife. Yet, that is not even the half of it. Throughout the five years of Tape, Li implies or outright confesses secrets that violate any notion of marital trust. To give the filmmaker due credit, Li never panders for audience approval. However, the entire project is rife with psychological neediness and sundry other emotional issues.

Sharing a kinship with Bansky and other underground artists, Li unambiguously toys with the conventions of documentary filmmaking. Many sequences are clearly staged, but such is the nature of his art. At times though, his self-indulgence pushes the boundaries of taste and appropriateness, as when he simulates auto-eroticism lying next to his sleeping son. As a result of Li’s determination to hold himself up for loathing, each time the filmmaker endures a not-so infrequent beating it is rather hard to care.

At 168 minutes, Tape is a long, hard march. While one periodically gleans moments of insight into the repressive and arbitrary nature of authority in China, particularly for the creative community, the film is far more intimate in focus. Yes, the filmmaker sticks his neck out to document some abuses in his neighborhood, like a woman who is evicted and beaten by thugs simply because they seem to have a work order to do so. Yet, ultimately it is all about Li. Certainly bold, but truly grueling, Tape (also distributed by dGenerate Films, the Chinese indie specialists) screens again this afternoon (2/23) as part of the Chinese Independent Cinema section of this year’s Documentary Fortnight.

Documentary Fortnight ’11: Disorder

Word to the wise, take care crossing the streets of Guangzhou and the surrounding suburbs. If you are hit by a car, the driver might just try to stuff some cash in your pocket and toss you out of the way. For their part, the police appear woefully inadequate at managing accidents. It is all rather messy and unfortunate, but it is easy to understand how such episodes caught the attention of scores of Chinese digital video enthusiasts, whose most “youtube-able” footage has been edited together in Huang Weikai’s collage-like Disorder (trailer here), which screens during the 2011 Documentary Fortnight now underway at MoMA.

China has a reputation for being a tightly regulated society, perhaps tragically so. However, the amateur video assembled by editor-director (emphasis on editor) Huang paints a more anarchic picture. At times, it is somewhat amusing. The face of a restaurant customer finding a roach in his ramen is pure movie gold. Indeed, there are plenty of “you-don’t-see-that-everyday” moments, as when a group of men try to corral a pack of panicky pigs on the highway, while the cops watch disinterestedly. They do that quite frequently in Disorder.

However, Disorder is not all light-hearted corruption and incompetence. There is real tragedy as well. Frankly, Huang somewhat downplays the most shocking incident, most likely a by-product of China’s strict one-child policy. Still, his concluding sequences logically have the most political bite, capturing full-scale police brutality in an incident that teeters on the brink of a legitimate riot.

They might be so-called amateurs, but the videographers who recorded these scenes deserve considerable credit for standing their ground and getting their shots. In his editorial judgment, Huang demonstrates a shrewd eye for visuals and a subversive sensibility. Whether he intended to or not, he conveys a sense of the anger and frustration bubbling beneath the surface of many average citizens. Yet, they never seem to release it in a coordinated, efficacious manner, as the audience witnesses in graphic terms.

At just about an hour’s running time, Disorder is a particularly manageable dose of the Digital Generation style of independent Chinese filmmaking, appropriately distributed by dGenerate Films, the Chinese indie specialists. Short but sometimes shocking, it is strong selection for this year’s Documentary Fortnight. It screens again tomorrow (2/20) as the annual doc festival continues at MoMA, but it might be a ticket in high demand. There were a few technical glitches at last night’s screening (ultimately resolved well enough), so some of the near capacity audience might be back for the second go-round.