SFFILM ’17: Half-Life in Fukushima

Nuclear disasters are bad for the environment, right? It certainly hasn’t hurt the flora in Fukushima. Large mass merchandiser parking lots are now overgrown with weeds and grass. Naoto Matsumura’s cows and ostrich are still hanging on just fine, but only time will tell whether they will thrive like the Wolves of Chernobyl. Being domesticated livestock (that now will never be eaten), they are dependent on the survivor-farmer to feed them. Fortunately for them, that is exactly the sort of lonely task Matsumura regularly tends to in Mark Olexa & Francesca Scalisi’s Half-Life in Fukushima (clip here), which screens during the 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival.

As of Olexa & Scalisi’s filming, it has been five years since the 2011 disaster. In many ways, the restricted Fukushima region resembles the Pripyat Exclusion Zone, but that is hardly good news for Matsumura. At this point, he has given up hope his community will ever rebound in his lifetime. Yet, Matsumura and his father have returned to their home, much like the aged Babushkas of Chernobyl.

If you have seen a lot of documentaries on Chernobyl (and lord knows we have have), you will be struck by the visual similarities with Matsumura’s Fukushima. Of course, Olexa, Scalisi, and their cinematographer Jakob Stark clearly had an eye peeled for surreal imagery. They do indeed capture some stunningly eerie visuals. However, Half-Life is definitely the sort of film that demands viewers accept it on its own long-take aesthetic terms, or they can just go jump in a radioactive lake.

Half-Life clocks in at a mere sixty-one minutes, including the entire closing credits and standing on its tippy toes, but it still takes its own time. Olexa & Scalisi make no concessions to anyone’s attention span, yet for the fore-warned, it is a distinctively contemplative and immersive viewing experience. Recommended for patrons of meditative documentaries, Half-Life in Fukushima screens tomorrow (4/13), Monday (4/17), and Wednesday (4/19), as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFFILM ’17: Duet

To pursue professional and artistic goals, Iranian often have to go abroad (assuming they have the money and connections). The process of expatriation and repatriation, the coming and going, leads to uncertainty in personal relationships. Sometimes reunions are joyous and sometimes they are awkward. When Hamed the composer encounters his old flame, it will be exceedingly distressing for all involved in Navid Danesh’s Duet (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Hamed has been back a year, but he is only now seeing Sepideh, thanks to a tip from their old mutual college crony, Kaveh. While studying in Paris, Hamed met Minoo, whom he married after their return. Following graduation, Sepideh broke with her former mates, eventually marrying Massoud, who largely kept in contact with his college friends. Tragedy has recently struck his tight knit social circle, complicating Massoud’s reactions when he deduces Sepideh has seen a man from her past.

He has one particularly significant clue: a demo recording Hamed cut shortly before his departure, which Sepideh often listens to when she is in a pensive mood. It was meant to be a piano-cello duet, but he arranged it as a piano solo for his study abroad application. That seems rather symbolic, doesn’t it?

Right now, Iranian cinema has a major comparative advantage in brutally honest domestic dramas. You couldn’t make a film like Ordinary People in Hollywood today, yet it looks rather shallow when compared to recent Iranian releases like The Salesman, The Risk of Acid Rain, Nahid, and Melbourne. Like the best of Asghar Farhadi’s films, Danesh derives suspense from interpersonal turmoil rather than genre situations. It is a tense, uncomfortably intimate film. Granted, Danesh sort of belly-flops with a flat, anti-climactic ending, but the quality of the fab five principal cast-members is so strong, we can forgive its flaws.

As Massoud, Ali Mosaffa truly puts on a masterclass for screen acting. Over and over, he demonstrates the power of suggestion, while guarding his character’s secrets. Negar Javaherian’s performance as Sepideh is raw and honest, but Hedieh Tehrani really lowers the boom as Minoo. Morteza Farshbaf (better known as a director) hits the right notes as Hamed, the sad-eyed sad sack, but Kaveh Kateb really makes the film as his well-meaning but increasing remorseful namesake.

Frequently pairing up (hence the title), Danesh’s assured cast create some remarkable duets. As a screenwriter, he probably has some room to tighten up his craft, but he certainly understands how to guide his thesps. Exquisitely stifling, Duet is another very fine Persian film, quite highly recommended when it screens this Thursday afternoon (4/13), Saturday (4/15), and Sunday (4/16) as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFFILM ’17: Tania Libre

Even one minute without censorship is too long for the Castro regime. In her work Yo Tambien Exijo, performance and installation artist Tania Bruguera invited participants to come forward and enjoy one completely uncensored minute at the microphone. At least that was the idea. The Castros’ secret police swooped in before things could get . . . free. After several re-arrests and eight months of interrogation, Raul Castro finally released Bruguera, allowing her to return to New York. Recognizing she carried a lot of emotional baggage, Bruguera sought out the counsel of a trauma specialist, Dr. Frank Ochberg. Their conversations provide the guts of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Tania Libre (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Whether they are performances or clinical sessions, Bruguera reveals a lot of truth while talking to Dr. Ochberg. Of course, given the nature of her art, Bruguera is probably always performing to some extent. Either way, the artist frankly discusses some understandably painful topics when gently prodded by the psychiatrist. Dr. Ochberg is one of the pioneers in treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress and the Stockholm Syndrome, both of which apply to Bruguera’s case. She also suffers from survivor’s guilt, understanding she was released thanks to international pressure, while the less famous Cubans swept up with her remain incommunicado.

There is indeed real drama that comes out from Bruguera’s talking cure. The circumstances of her imprisonment and psychological manipulation are not pretty, but that is not what really troubles Bruguera. It is the role her father played, as a member of the secret police apparatus, setting her up for what was to come that truly haunts the artist.

Of course, critics question Bruguera’s bonafides as a dissident precisely because she most likely enjoyed some protection due to her family connections. Her anti-capitalist-Occupy rhetoric also makes one wonder how closely she has been paying attention to socialism in Cuba, but, by this point, her commitment to free expression has been established beyond any possible doubt. (Getting a concerned call from Pussy Riot while she was still behind bars also speaks volumes.)

Arguably, the random bits and pieces thrown into Tania Libre lessen its impact, especially Bruguera’s embarrassingly 1960s-sounding manifesto of art read by Tilda Swinton. However, Bruguera’s dialogue with Ochberg is often quite provocative. It is easy to imagine the script/transcript repurposed for the stage. Recommended for fans of psychoanalysis films, like David and Lisa and Jimmy P., Tania Libre screens tomorrow (4/11) as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFFILM ’17: The Cage Fighter

Forty is still pretty young these days, unless you’re an athlete scuffling in the minor leagues. If you are still shagging flies in baseball’s farm teams, you might earn points for “Crash” Davis persistence, but to keep plugging away in regional MMA cage matches could be dangerous at that age. Despite his family’s pleas, veteran fighter Joe Carman does indeed keep taking the punches throughout Jeff Unay’s documentary, The Cage Fighter, which screens during the 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival.

To put it in On the Waterfront terms, Carman never really sees himself as a contender, but going into the steel cage is the only way to prove to himself he is a somebody. Partially, we can blame his alcoholic, bipolar, psychologically abusive father, whom viewers will come to pretty much despise during the course of the film. In contrast, Joe Carman is a thoroughly likable fellow, even when he makes mistakes in his life.

Even though Cage Fighter weighs in at a svelte eighty-three minutes, Unay makes us feel like we know exactly what makes Carman tick. Clearly, the filmmaker built up a high degree of trust, because he captured some painfully dramatic episodes. Frankly, Carman’s big confrontation with his parents hurts to watch more than some of the beatings he endures—and those will certainly make even regular MMA patrons wince. In many ways, Unay’s doc serves as a corrective to Rocky and scores of other sentimental sports movies. The simple truth is most fighters lose their last match. The same might be true for Carman, even though he is not ready to retire.

This is about as gritty as documentary filmmaking gets. The fights are brutal and the milieu is blue collar all the way. Yet, there is a nobility to Carman that always shines through. As a result, the experience of watching him over the course of three emotionally exhausting years is shockingly cathartic. Highly recommended for MMA fans and cats over forty who also refuse to hang up their spurs, The Cage Fighter screens again this afternoon (4/10) and Thursday (4/13), as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFFILM ’17: Ma’ Rosa

“Sari-sari” means variety in Tagalog and Rosa’s Sari-Sari store lives up to its name. In addition to candy and cigarettes, she and her husband deal crystal meth (literally out of a cigar box). Unfortunately, Rosa’s Sari-sari is a little too well known in the neighborhood. Inevitably, Rosa and Nestor Reyes will be busted by Metro Manila’s “finest,” but these cops are not interested in collars. They are looking for a six-figure bail/ransom payment in Brillante Ma Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Rosa Reyes is a wife, a mother, a struggling member of the proletariat, and a small-time drug dealer. Her husband Nestor is her chief accomplice, but he is more of a consumer than a seller. Wisely, they kept the dealing at arm’s length from their children, but Raquel, Jackson, and Erwin still know exactly what is going on. The police do too, but they just what to shake the couple down for money.

Since the Reyeses cannot afford the 200K “bail,” they have no option but to give up their supplier. Unfortunately, they remain on the hook for 100,000 Pesos, which their twenty-something children will have to raise quickly, by hook or by crook.

Like many of Mendoza’s films, Ma’ Rosa will leave viewers feeling waterlogged. It gives you a vivid, tactile sense of life in the rough & tumble Mandaluyong neighborhood, where it seems to monsoon several times a day. In addition to the sweltering naturalism, Ma’ Rosa offers an intimate critique of the Filipino criminal justice system, making it directly comparable in theme and tone to Mendoza’s Lola (a.k.a. Grandmother).

Jaclyn Jose is wonderfully, horribly ferocious as Rosa Reyes, whose survival imperative borders on the sociopathic, yet she still has her mothering instincts. Julio Diaz is just as chilling, but in an equal-opposite-reciprocal fashion as Nestor Diaz, the passive, soul-dead meth addict. Filipino “It Girl” actress-model Andi Eigenmann (Jose’s real life daughter) is almost unrecognizably glammed-down as the grimly dutiful Raquel (under ordinary circumstances, everyone with refined cinematic taste should be able to place her from the killer appliance movie, Fridge). As her brothers Erwin and Jackson, Jomari Angeles and Felix Roco slow burn to the point of explosion, just as Mendoza and screenwriter Troy Espiritu clearly suggest is liable to happen in the distressed Metro Manila district, as long as the cops keep running gangster-like extortion rackets.

You can label Ma’ Rosa poverty porn, but it has a tight, tense narrative, with stakes that start out high and keep rising, like a more predatory version of the Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days One Night. This is a grungy cautionary crime drama, depicting a situation nearly any Mandaluyong resident could be ensnared in. Highly recommended for those who appreciate socially-informed class-conscience drama, Ma’ Rosa screens this Saturday (4/8) and Sunday the 16^th, as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFFILM ’17: Xiu Xiu the Sent-Down Girl

The Cultural Revolution was supposed to sweep away all unfair advantageous derived from wealth and social connections, right? Try telling that to a fifteen-year-old nick-named Xiu Xiu. As the daughter of poor laboring parents, she cannot buy herself a discharge from her involuntary service in the “Down to the Countryside” Movement. Unfortunately, her beauty will only attract more exploitation in Joan Chen’s Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl, which will have a special 20-year anniversary screening at the 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival, with the ageless director scheduled to attend.

Co-adapted by Chen and co-screenwriter Yan Geling from Yan’s own novel, Sent-Down is narrated by the boy in class who carried a torch for Xiu Xiu, but would not be joining her in the Sent-Down social engineering experience, because his parents were high-ranking Party members. Much to her trepidation, Xiu Xiu is sent to the occupied nation of Tibet, to learn the sort of animal handling and husbandry skills that were so needed in the big city of Chengdu.

Initially, Xiu Xiu’s early months in the Tibetan base camp pass without incident for her, but the disappearance of her friend Chen Li and the subsequent lack of concern from the authorities obviously holds grim foreboding implications. Eventually, she is sent to live with gruff horseman Lao Jin to learn horsemanship. Rather awkwardly, she will be sharing his small yurt, but she need not worry about him possibly taking advantage. Remember Jake Barnes from The Sun Also Rises? Lao Jin suffered a similar injury—and apparently, everyone knows about it.

However, the taciturn horseman will still fall in love with Xiu Xiu, even though he is incapable of acting on his feelings. While she eventually develops a platonic affection for him as well, she still yearns to return to her family and friends in Chengdu. Ill-advisedly, she will submit to the sexual demands of several supposedly influential minor officials, in hopes they will facilitate her transfer. At such times, the heartbroken Lao Jin is forced to watch in a literal state of impotency, as Xiu Xiu is horribly misused and abused.

This might be the most gut-wrenching portrayal of love ever portrayed on screen. Yet, it also might be the purest cinematic manifestation of love as well. Rarely, has a film so lovely to look at been so difficult to watch. Accomplished cinematographer Lü Yue (who also directed the Cultural Revolution-themed drama Foliage) soaks up the stunning Tibetan vistas and makes the crimson reds of Xiu Xiu’s wardrobe pop off the screen. However, he also forces us to watch her victimization from an intimate vantage point, just like Lao Jin.

Li Xiaolu (then billed as Lu Lu) gives an absolutely heart-stopping performance as Xiu Xiu. Frankly, she can be a bit immature at times, which is why she is so convincing as a fifteen-year-old girl shipped off to the Steppe to satisfy the Gang of Four’s perverse ideological caprices. However, Lopsang might even be more devastating as the physically and spiritually wounded Lao Jin.

Chen is an exquisitely sensitive director, yet she never waters down Xiu Xiu’s reality, sparing viewers none of her suffering. It really packs a wallop, because Chen and editor Ruby Yang (the Oscar winning documentarian) never cop out on us. It is not hard to see why the Party used the film’s lack of bureaucratic approvals for shooting on-location in Tibet to censor it on the Mainland. Nevertheless, Xiu Xiu went on to nearly sweep the Golden Horse Awards (Taiwan’s Oscars). Having a chance to watch it with Chen in attendance would be a pleasure and a privilege Bay Area residents should absolutely not pass up, when the San Francisco International Film Festival holds its special anniversary screening this Saturday (4/8).