Ameena Matthews in "The Interrupters"
My best film experiences of 2011 (in no particular order):
16-Feb-2011
*I am offering this post in honor of the “For the Love of Film (Noir)” blogathon. All you noir lovers, please donate to the film preservation fund at the following link and enjoy this essay on the semi-documentary crime film (noir)…
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=LAWFPAB4XLHAW
For blogathon navigation:
http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/?p=8403 (Ferdy on Films)
http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2011/02/for-love-of-film-noir-let-links-begin.html (Self-Styled Siren)
PART ONE
Noirs always take place at night, much in the same way that a western takes place on the frontier. But they’re still not a genre. What they are is a style. This is why we can speak of them in terms of mood, tone, and atmosphere. But this is also the reason we can analyze a unique sub-class of this form that appeared primarily after the war and lasted only until the beginning of the next decade: the police procedural. Or, for the purposes of this analysis, the semi-documentary crime film.
It is a style of crime film that generally attempts to show the inner-workings of a justice organization in intricate detail. Unlike classical noirs, the bad guy is usually punished (through death generally, but sometimes through apprehension) by the pursuing agency at the conclusion of these films and hope is confirmed that the world is good[1], or the status quo is maintained. The reason that these films are associated with the documentary, the traditional discourse of sobriety, has more to do with stylistic elements than most anything else. Certain formal attributes are appropriated by the semi-documentary crime film for the purposes of advancing a story. A realistic story.
03-Dec-2010
The Wall of Memories directed by Vlada Petric is a personal DV essay that has been over a decade in the making — the work of a lifetime. The lengthy video (over two hours) details the professional and personal history of Professor Petric, who was the founding curator of the Harvard Film Archive and who also taught film studies courses at Harvard University from the 70s until his retirement in 1997.
28-Aug-2010
CINEASTE ON ŽILNIK
Category : Cinematic Arts, Documentary Film, Yugoslav Cinema
I was very happy to see Cineaste, probably the most important American film magazine (along with Film Comment), run an extended interview with Želimir Žilnik in their Fall issue. Žilnik is a filmmaker that has been in need of “rediscovery” for more than 40 years now, dating back from when he won the Berlin Golden Bear in 1969 for his debut film Rani radovi/Early Works. Since then Žilnik has maintained his dedicated path through the history of cinema, turning out a number of powerful, socially-incisive works that have all but slipped through the cracks in the meantime.
Želimir Žilnik
The interviewer seems to know a great deal about Žilnik and the larger history of Yugoslav cinema; the introduction to this interview is a useful primer. Unfortunately the writer did not go into detail on the experimental “amateur” phase of Žilnik’s career in the 60s, though this segment is even more unknown than his larger career in general. Likewise, more attention could have been given to all of Žilnik’s documentary shorts of the 60s as they are key in understanding the growth of his “documentary approach.” Films like Pioniri maleni/Little Pioneers (1967) which exposed the condition of homeless children living on the streets of Yugoslavia and Crni film/Black Film (1971) which treated the same condition among adults (and also commented ironically on the notion of the “Black Wave”) would have been of interest here.
15-Jan-2010
Well, well, well. Look who’s the most popular form of entertainment today. Look who’s always been associated with dryness, unbearable didacticism, and anything but excitement, and is now associated with action, adventure, and the irresistible lure of the spectacle. Look who’s arrived, after toiling in obscurity since the very dawn of the cinematic age. Recorded reality. Actuality footage. The non-fiction form. The documentary film.
"Nanook of the North" (1922) by Robert Flaherty
Yes ladies and gentlemen, the classic discourse of sobriety is finally having its day in the sun. Step right up, and witness the glory of life as it is lived without (much of) an intermediary. After all, the fiction film is no more than reality filtered through the subjectivity of artistic choice. And to be fair, the documentary has never been able to lay claims to absolute purity and independence of artificiality. A thin line separates the two disciplines. Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Moana), the first acknowledged practitioner of the documentary style, frequently staged “scenes” in his efforts to represent reality. John Grierson (Drifters) did too (because an interview, no matter how spontaneous, always has an element of performance lurking in the shadows). But I digress. The documentary work of art is the flavor of the month. Why?
24-Dec-2009
Dear Mr. Kiarostami:
The title of your freewheeling documentary almost reflects the approach to cinema that is exhibited. A, B, C. An effort at simplicity. A reduction of cinema to its most basic and original component: the actuality (documentary-styled slices of real life, often taking the form of rough footage, which were the first attempts at filmed entertainment over a century ago). The actuality, presented as a sort of stitched-together diary. The result of what happens when you turned on your digital camera much in the same way that you would open your eyes on a morning like any other morning. But Mr. Kiarostami, the documentary form doesn’t offer so simple an out as to say, “What are you looking at?” The documentary form should, and sometimes does, ask, “Why?”
23-Dec-2009
Among the earliest of attempts at filmed entertainment were actualities. The cinema has had a long-lasting relationship with the real. A relationship that dates back to the very first Lumiere shorts that appeared before the turn of the century. You see, cinema suffers from documentary impulses much in the same way that a killer suffers from uncontrollable fits of violence. It’s an ingrained aesthetic. An irresistible urge. As such, its importance can never be overestimated. Reality has been a cornerstone of this medium since day one.
And since day one, there have been documentaries[1]. Although not labeled as such in those times, these early documentary shorts thrived on the ordinary. Since the cinematographe was an invention not more than a couple of years old, many people marveled at the apparatus and nothing more. Subjects worth filming and viewing were often everyday people in everyday situations. Actualites, as the French dubbed them, became something like the home videos we now know which flourished with the invention of the camcorder.
17-Dec-2009
T-Men (1947) represents a sterling example of a unique sub-class of classic film noir: the semi-documentary crime thriller (or police procedural). This sub-class was born with The House on 92nd Street (1945), produced by Louis de Rochemont (creator of the March of Time newsreel series), and concluded with Rudolph Maté’s Union Station (1950). The semi-documentary crime film was a contemporary of Italian Neorealism, and both forms utilized similar tropes to similar effects.
The postwar period invoked a rise in cinematic representations of realism. The semi-documentary crime film was marked by sober documentary-styled verisimilitude just as much as irrational expressionistic tendencies. In fact, these unique noirs were a perfect hybrid of the two. Stylistically, semi-documentary crime films usually featured an expository and omniscient voice-over narration, real locations (with real people), a focus on the various procedures of police work, and actual cases used as source material. The semi-doc thriller was a short-lived moment in the short-lived history of classic film noir, and Anthony Mann’s T-Men remains one of the best.
30-Nov-2009
When the Smoke Clears is the latest “news video” from the renegade media collective known as Guerrilla News Network. Combining the spoken words of International Slam Champion Taalam Acey with a barrage of excerpted hip-hop music video clips, the short film stands out as a scathing indictment of the current state of hip-hop as well as an example of political filmmaking at its finest. This experimental documentary was an official selection of the 2002 Sundance On-Line Film Festival. Urban Stage and Screen film critic Bobby Wise sat down with one of the creative forces behind this powerful film for a discussion on politics, filmmaking, music, and how it all comes together in this provocative work of art.