Slamdance ’20: 1986

Thanks to Russia and Putin’s expansionist ambitions, this is an interesting year to be Belarusian. 1986 was also an interesting year to be Belarusian, thanks to the Soviets and the radiation wafting from their Chernobyl meltdown. As a Belarusian today, Elena doesn’t think she has much to lose, so instead of looking for opportunities in her own nation, she seeks them in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. She might just find her destiny there, for better or worse, in Lothar Herzog’s 1986, which had its American premiere at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival.

These days, time spent in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is no longer necessarily fatal—just ask the wolves. However, you are still warned not to ingest anything originating there. Elena will do so anyway, because she is a millennial. However, she has a right to be bitter. Despite the phony Lukashenko propaganda her economics professor spouts in class, the economy is stagnant. Elena would like to pay-off her father’s tax-debt to get him out of jail, but $30,000 is a prohibitive sum to raise.

Her only chance is by taking over his former gig smuggling salvaged scrap metal out of the Exclusion Zone. Frankly, she rather likes it there, because she can visit her grandmother’s house. It also forces her to take a break from her unhealthy relationship with her unfaithful boyfriend Viktor.

The stakes are serious for Elena, but plot is not the film’s top priority. Rather, Herzog is more concerned with conveying a sense of place (that being the Exclusion Zone) and exploring the national Belarusian malaise. Although he wisely does not overplay the metaphor, we can pick up on Herzog’s analogy comparing the corruption permeating contemporary Belarusian society to the radiation that devastated Chernobyl.

Herzog and cinematographer Philipp Baben der Erde frame some vividly striking imagery. As a result, Elena’s trips into the Zone are often hypnotic, creating an almost immersive cinematic experience. This is one of the few examples of slow-ish cinema that might have gained something from 3D. Still, its ambiguous nature will certainly limit its popular audience.

Slamdance ’20: Ask No Questions

The world should be horrified by the evidence of genocide emerging from East Turkestan, but we shouldn’t be so surprised. To a large extent, the Chinese Communist Party is merely repeating the game-plan they used to launch their wholesale crackdown on Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong). Today, Party propaganda tells the world they are simply rotting out terrorists. In the case, of Falun Gong, it was religious extremism. Filmmakers Jason Loftus & Eric Pedicelli ask the hard questions about the incident used to justify the anti-Falun Gong campaign that the Western media should have in the riveting expose documentary, Ask No Questions, which premiered at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival, in Park City.

Falun Dafa is a spiritual practice combining Buddhism and Taoism that is not inherently political, but its rapid growth spooked the Communism Party, so true to form, they prohibited it. Those who still practiced, were subjected to physical and mental torture in re-education camps. Whoever refused to recant became slave laborers in work camps (much like what is happening in East Turkestan).

For a while, the world expressed concern over this naked repression of Falun Gong, but the release of video tape supposedly documenting practitioners self-immolating on Tiananmen Square largely defused the issue. (In fact, the IOC rewarded the CCP for their brutality by approving China’s bid for the 2008 Olympics.) Ever since, the incident has made practitioners like Loftus defensive. Yet, when he took a hard look at the tape, he noticed some suspicious inconsistencies. CNN reporter Lisa Weaver (who happened to be on the Square at that very moment) had questions about the official story, but she was not allowed to follow-up, because CNN wanted to protect its Beijing bureau.

Throughout Ask No Questions, Loftus points out the strange circumstances surrounding the incident, starting with the fact the self-immolators had no known history of practicing Falun Dafa. He also interviews at length Chen Ruichang, a former state television official and Falun Dafa practitioner, who refused to recant despite the brutal torture he endured in a prison camp.

Slamdance ’20: Sanzaru

An estimated 10% of the Philippines’ population works outside of the nation. Many such domestic and home-care workers have found themselves in exploitative situations. In Evelyn’s case, her employers’ treat her pretty fairly and respectfully. However, their karma is truly terrifying. Past anguish and lingering guilt metastasize to an uncanny extent in Xia Magnus’s Sanzaru, which premiered at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Home-bound Dena Regan and her grown son Clem, a discharged veteran, live in the middle of East Nowhere, Texas, literally a world away from the Philippines. Yet, it is a decent paying gig for Evelyn, especially since they also allowed her to bring over her son Amos when he got into trouble at school. Technically, he has always known as his aunt, even though he has long suspected the truth.

Dena’s relationship with Clem is probably even more awkward, because of the family’s mysterious history. He still suffers from some serious service-related PSTD, but he is probably even more haunted by whatever it is they never talk about. The name “Sanzaru,” the Japanese word for the see-hear-and-speak-no-evil monkeys, ominously looms over the house. In fact, Evelyn can often hear a spectral entity whispering that name.

Sanzaru easily fits within the new “elevated horror” rubric. There are absolutely no cheap jump-scares, but the atmosphere of decay is almost stifling. To be honest, the limited woo-woo special effects look like they were rendered in the 1980s—the early 1980s, but they are not the point. Instead, Magnus unflinchingly depicts the consequences of trauma on individuals, families, and even the outsiders who enter their orbits.

Shrewd viewers will probably easily guess the family’s hidden shame, because it is usually the big secret in films like this. Nevertheless, it explores its themes with unusual humanism, especially for a genre(-ish) film. This is most notably true with the character of Clem Regan, who demonstrates how the demarcation between victim and villain is sometimes quite blurry. In fact, his Job-like suffering ultimately makes him an acutely sympathetic figure—no doubt Justin Arnold’s remarkably sensitive performance is a tremendous help in this respect.

Slamdance ’20: The Penny Black

Brace yourself for some extreme philately. Anyone who has seen Charade knows there are stamps out there that are valuable enough for people to kill for. That is why his under-achieving neighbor is rather confused when a sketchy Russian asks him to “hold on” to his rare stamp collection for an indefinite period. Confusion and moral dilemmas abound in William J. Saunders’ documentary The Penny Black, which premiered at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, in Park City.

Will used to smoke with Roman on the sidewalk outside their Los Angeles apartments. He never really knew what the Russian did for a living precisely, but he definitely seemed to be a tough guy. Regardless, he had no idea why Roman asked him to hold onto a large collection of stamps. He even pointed out a few that had recently sold at auction for tens of thousands of Dollars. Shortly thereafter, Roman vanished from the neighborhood. A few weeks later, Will also moved out of his apartment, taking the stamp collection with him, because he did not know what else to do with it.

Trying to get a handle on the situation, Will makes halting attempts to appraise the collection, which includes the Penny Black, the world’s first stick-on stamp, issued by the UK in 1840. The value of the collection and Roman’s mysterious disappearance represent potential temptation for Will, who rather awkwardly finds himself revisiting his painful relationship with his father, a convicted con artist.