FilmClick

Independent documentary filmmaker Melody Gilbert receives her much deserved attention at this years SFIndie DocFest. Gilbert has directed and produced for film and television for over 20 years and is a six-year veteran of both IndieFest, DocFest, and a participant many other festivals including Sundance. This year, SF DocFest will showcase five of her films from the past six years:

MARRIED AT THE MALL (2002) captures an assortment of lovebirds who decide to get married at the Chapel of Love in the Mall of America, the largest shopping mall in the U.S. While they exchange their most intimate vows, everyone else is busy exercising their capitalistic power to purchase.

Fri. Oct 24 2008 5:00 PM at Roxie Cinema

WHOLE (2003) explores the world of physically healthy people who are obsessed with becoming amputee. Gilbert traveled all over the world to investigate the impact that obsession has on loved ones, and the way that medical professionals are dealing with the growing worldwide network of amputee wannabes. The mysterious psychiatric condition is so new it does not have a name, but Gilbert’s pursuit produces a courageous film that dares to ask questions without obvious answers, questions about body image, cosmetic surgery, relationships, the Hippocratic oath, love, identity and the lengths people will go to in order to complete themselves. Robert Koehler (Variety) explains: “The pic’s great achievement is being able to shine light on this ultra-dark corner of the medical avant-garde, and draw out undoubtedly reluctant subjects to talk on camera”. The provocative subject alone is no surprise that WHOLE was the “jawdropper” of IndieFest 2004.

Fri. Oct 24 2008 5:00 PM Roxie Cinema

A LIFE WITHOUT PAIN (2005) What happens when a person can’t feel pain? This doc is a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of three children who literally feel no pain. Three-year-old Gabby from Minnesota, 7-year-old Miriam from Norwa, and 10-year-old Jamilah from Germany have a genetic defect so rare that it only one hundred people in the world have it. Their parents must watch their every move, but even their vigilance hasn’t shielded the girls from many serious, life-altering injuries. As the film follow the families who cope with this enormous challenge, we learn that pain is really a gift that no one wants, but none of us can do without.

Saturday, October 25 at 2:45 PM Roxie Cinema

URBAN EXPLORERS: INTO THE DARKNESS (2007) won best feature at the 2007 Boston Undergroud Film Fest. It dives into the world of urban exploration, a growing sub-culture of adventure-seekers from around the globe who explore where most “normal people” would never go. The film follows these fearless thrill-seekers search for the useen treasures of modern civilization, below manholes and through abandoned buildings.

Friday, OCtober 24 at 7:15 PM Roxie Cinema

Sunday, Octber 26 at  12:30PM Roxie Cinema

DISCONNECTED (2008) follows three Carleton  College students who unplug from the internet and learn about things like typewriters.   Taking on the challenge “disconnect”, we see how their academic, social, and work lives are affected.  bHow will they get their work done? Will they cheat? This film follows Andrew, Caitlin and Chel as they learn to interact with themselves and others in ways we have largely forgotten.

Saturday, October 25 at 5:00PM Roxie Cinema

Also on Saturday, Oct 25, at 12:30 PM at Roxie Cinema, DocFest will host “A Chat With Melody Gilbert.” Gilbert will screen clips from her films and talk about her top 10 docmaking tips.  After that, she’ll show a sneak peek of her top secret documentary-in-progress. In return for your feedback, you can see what Gilbert’s working on before it hits the film fest circuit.

Two much-anticipated features from the Sundance lineup have finally hit Manhattan. Choke, based on the book of the same name by gut humorist and cultural ball-breaker Chuck Palahniuk, won the Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Cast in January.

Choke
It’s hilarious at times, and could easily go scene for scene with any of this year’s comedies (and, yes, that even includes the likes of such comedic gold mines as Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express), but what Choke lacks is a clear definition of the world it actually inhabits. Writer-director Clark Gregg has placed a completely surreal and screwball comedy inside the stale framework of a Hollywood romantic comedy, and the result is confusing for an indie audience that would have otherwise been on board for some genre rule-breaking. Unfortunately, Mr. Gregg’s strategy squanders an otherwise beautiful opportunity for some truly offbeat hijinks.
Ballast

Next on the list is an interesting story. The first feature by director Lance Hammer, Ballast, was involved in a distribution deal with IFC until the director pulled out and decided to distribute the film himself. In Manhattan so far, only the consistently wonderful and truly independent Film Forum has shown the film. The winner of both the Best Director and Best Cinematography awards in the Narrative Competition at Sundance, it’s the story of a broken family in the Mississippi Delta. Shot with a deliberately expressionistic style, though using almost all natural light during the rainy season, the film somehow goes a step beyond a so-called “verité” look. Three powerful, if not agonizing, performances tear through this surreality until a poignant and gorgeously abrupt ending. The film was nominated for Berlin’s Golden Bear award.

Elite Squad

The Golden Bear winner, a film that completely missed Sundance, was José Padilha’s Elite Squad. It’s something of a right-wing answer to 2002’s City of God, where the heroes are an assault-rifle-toting Special Forces Police Squad. Their insignia is a skull and crossbones and the film seems to advocate a kind of fascist police state as a simple, hard-nosed solution to the violent drug crime problem in Brazil’s shantytowns. It sounds to me, though, with all the Weinstein money involved, just another case of rich American power brokers funding right-wing projects in resource-rich countries. Nothing indie about that.

By Michael Prall, FilmClick staff, mprall@filmclick.com

The Third World is lately such an object of constant attention. Can it still be relegated to “third” when it plays daily importance here in the first? News, conversations, and daily economies direct much of their focus on specific events that happen in these poor countries. Cyclones, oil refineries, and revolutions. And likewise independent film has co-opted the impoverished, but in a more wholesome way than the sensational media, the culture vultures, and the business community. Sundance favorite Chris Smith (American Movie) has finally managed to release The Pool at Manhattan’s Film Forum. It’s set in Goa, India and spoken entirely in Hindi by an all-Indian cast, a far cry from his auspicious Mid-Western American debut. Also, currently without theatrical release despite an Un Certain Regard mention at Cannes 2007, Munyurangabo played as part of Brooklyn’s fantastic 2008 Rooftop Films series. The series takes place at outdoor, rooftop venues and features the best in local, underground, and otherwise independent cinema. Munyurangabo is a film by young Korean American director Lee Isaac Chung, set in post-Genocide Rwanda and also spoken completely in the local dialect by an all-African cast.

The Pool

Both films involve a pair of young men in coming-of-age situations, and both are certainly worth a look should they make it your way. While Chung’s story bites with a life-and-death urgency, Smith’s comedic levity is a fitting contrast to a harsher reality. The two films are committed to the worlds in which they inhabit. “We decided not to explain things that Westerners might not understand but that people in Rwanda would,” says Chung. As well, Smith’s characters tell jokes, use cadences of language, and perform everyday rituals that are unexplained and perhaps confusing to the average American audience (the Indian head-bobble, the whistles on the buses, the rhyming jokes). Independent films by American directors intended for third world audiences? It sounds like the opposite of what an exploitive American pop culture does on a daily basis, doesn’t it? Extrapolating foreign cultural elements and distilling them for Western consumption..

Munyurangabo

To place these films on a thematic spectrum somewhere, they are about mobility. Venkatesh faces a decision between moving to Bombay, a Northward social climb, or staying and continuing to maintain something that, however beautiful, will always remain constant. Ngabo and his friend, with machete in hand, decide between the constancy of family and the fateful progression that comes from vengeance. While The Pool resembles the Garden of Eden story, Munyurangabo has more of a tendency toward Moby Dick. Both stories are about eventuality, which is indicative of this opening of the third world. Eventually, we’ll all live in the same world, but in the magic of this current global rendez-vous, it’s nice to see films that allow a culture to stay right where it is.

By Michael Prall, FilmClick staff; mprall@filmclick.com