Silverdocs: Tuesday Preview
The AFI/Discovery Channel Silverdocs documentary film festival gets underway tonight with a screening of the multi-director collaborative adaptation of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's book, Freakonomics. We'll have coverage of the opening night festivities tomorrow, but in the meantime, here's the first in a daily roundup of reviews of films screening in the festival tomorrow.
Kaleo La Belle's 'Beyond This Place'
Kaleo La Belle wants answers. He wants to know why his father, Cloudrock, signed so many letters "I love you," but then only managed to see him twice when he was growing up (when he was 6, and then later 17). He wants to know why personal freedom and a quest for enlightenment through psychedelic drugs seemed to matter more to Cloudrock than a relationship with his son.
In a search for answers Kaleo, now 34, combines his passion for film-making with his father's love of cycling. Kaleo pieces together, as writer and director of Beyond This Place, footage of his cycling journey with his father to Spirit Lake at Mount St. Helens, along with interviews with family and friends (from former members of the Hawaiian commune where Kaleo spent his first 3 years, to his homeless half-brother in Maui, to even his own mother) to examine a complicated and yet tender father-son relationship. Cloudrock's out-there responses to Kaleo's questions are often maddeningly frustrating to both Kaleo and the audience, and definitely support Cloudrock's statement that he's been "stoned for 40 years." How can Kaleo expect accountability from his father when Cloudrock asserts that children choose their parents (while on their spirit journey), and that parents don't choose their children?
But as the father-son cycling trip progresses, so does the conversation, and both men work to get the other to understand him. While Cloudrock defensively argues for his son not to judge him, Kaleo struggles to find a place where even if he can not understand his father, he can at least accept him. The documentary weaves together old photos from hippie days gone by, beautiful wilderness footage, and the hauntingly beautiful music of Sufjan Stevens to create a contemplative and interesting film.
Premieres tomorrow at 9:30 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 2, and screens again on Thursday at 4 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 3.
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Richard Press' 'Bill Cunningham New York'
Being dubbed "maybe the hardest working reporter in New York" is quite the honor, particularly coming from the New York Times. Bill Cunningham has earned it. At 81, Cunningham continues to cycle through the streets of New York, donning his near-iconic blue janitor's jacket, snapping pictures on his 35mm film Nikon and helming the "On the Street" and "Evening Hours" features in The Times. Day to day, Cunningham scours downtown New York, documenting the fashion trends that permeate the city, from stiletto-heeled cocktail partiers to the bag-ladies of the streets. For many who have lived in the city even a few years, he quickly becomes known as 'that Times fashion photographer."
But while the filmmakers of Bill Cunningham New York, former colleagues of his at The Times, sought to immortalize Cunningham as an obsessive journalist and historian of New York fashion and nightlife, they don't ignore the many contradictions in his life as an artist and trend-setter.
Cunningham's spartan lifestyle belies his pillar-status in New York's social ladder, and as a staple in the front rows of haute-couture shows in Paris, he still believes in equality between the street and runway -- "The fashion show is on the street, always has been, always will be." Although he would like to think of himself as a simple photojournalist, I don't know many reporters who command the attention and fear of international clothing designers.
Beginning and ending on the streets of New York, the documentary is just as much about the city as it is about the man behind the camera lens &mdash after all, it is half the film's title. Like Wordplay, a 2006 documentary on another Times staple — the crossword puzzle — Bill Cunningham New York explains how an inconsequential tidbit of the paper can represent a cross section of all New Yorkers. To the filmmakers, a portrait of Cunningham is really a portrait of the city, and along her streets, "he who seeks beauty will find it."
Premieres tomorrow at 4 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 3, and screens again on Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 1.
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The kids grow up, and the kids may very well be alright, but neither of those statements may always be true of parents. That's the subject of Doug Block's deeply personal documentary, the second part of a planned trilogy about him and his family. Block has been filming his daughter, Lucy, for her entire life. That footage forms the backdrop for The Kids Grow Up, a documentary that concentrates mostly on her last year at home before leaving for college, and looks more generally at the issue of how parents deal (or fail to deal) with the departure of their children.
It must be particularly annoying to have a documentarian who likes to make personal documentaries as a father. Take the usual teenage annoyance at being photographed or taped, and multiply by a factor of 100. To Block's credit, he doesn't soft-pedal how difficult it is for his own family to be both his loved ones and his subjects. Both his wife and his daughter have moments where they obviously no longer wish to be filmed, and with few exceptions he keeps going, reasoning that they'll thank him later. His wife jokes that at least when their daughter has to go through therapy as an adult, she'll be able to bring the tapes to show what she went through.
He could have easily edited around their anger or frustration, but in allowing himself to be shown in this light (though usually as nothing more than a voice), he becomes a fascinating, and not always sympathetic central character, and one with a real narrative arc. This movie may have been the therapy he needed to deal with the loss of his daughter to adulthood; whether it's fair of him to force his family to play these roles in working through his own issues is up to audiences to decide. There are times when the viewer joins with Lucy and her mother in the frustration, wishing that Block would quit acting like a child whose best friend is moving away, and start acting like a parent. At the same time, parents who have experienced this life change will likely recognize bits of their own sadness and insecurities in his journey; and the love that this family feels for one another, even as they navigate the often rocky transition into adulthood or new phases of life, is touching to witness.
Premieres tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 2 , and screens again on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 1.
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Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten's documentary Sons of Perdition explores the lives of three teenage boys that escape from Colorado City, a Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint (FLDS) polygamist compound in Arizona. Despite uneven pacing and an over-expansive scope, the film is a stirring look at the cost of the boys' upbringing on the compound and the struggles with their newfound freedom.
The film is most effective when it focuses on Sam, Joe, and Bruce, the three boys now living in a world that has been denied to them growing up. The boys are stunted developmentally and socially once out of the compound, as evidenced by Bruce's struggle to write a Mother's Day card and the generous use of subtitles when any of the three talks. The most outward signs of their freedom are evident in dyed hair, freeflowing profanities, and loose-fitting clothing. Occasionally the boys are treated as a punchline, with lapses in geographical and religious knowledge, as well as an entertaining diatribe about Bill Clinton.
The narrative of the film is told against the backdrop of Warren Jeffs, under whom life at Colorado City grew tightly restricted, with all outside media being banned, and religion and math being the only subjects taught in school. The glimpses of the compound that are offered are provided through the recollections of exiled and escaped former members, who offer insight into family structure and the allocation of young girls for marriage.
While the development of the boys is compelling, the pacing of the film is uneven and the narrative is scattered. The pace at the end is hurried, and an unexpected turn in the final 10 minutes interferes with the filmmakers' abilities to adequately wrap up each of the storylines. However, the subjects related both to social programs supporting the escaped boys' development and to the compound warrant further examination.
Premieres tomorrow at 10 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 1, and screens again on Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theater 2.
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"Space is open for business now," Iranian-American telecom billionnaire Anousheh Ansari chirps an hour into Space Tourists, Christian Frei's sluggish, fragmented investigation of how the Russian space program has turned to wealthy adventurers to remain aflo— er, in orbit following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ansari paid $20 million to spend eight days aboard the International Space Station in 2006, becoming the first private citizen to buy her way off-planet (and the first Muslim woman to travel into space). Her family also sponsored the 2004 Ansari X-Prize, offering a $10 million reward to the first non-government entity to put a reusable manned vehicle into space twice within two weeks.
We see Ansari training for her trip at "Star City," Russia's massive cosmonaut college in the forest 20 miles northeast of Moscow, and aboard the ISS, attempting to wash her hair and showing us the toilet. In voice over, she quotes Ghandi and gushes about how our planet, seen from orbit, reveals "no sign of trouble. Just pure, pure peace and beauty." Frei cuts back to Earth, where a member of a private salvage crew powersaws a fallen Soyuz launch vehicle's hull into sections. Jettisoned after lifting the Soyuz capsule into the upper atmosphere, the three-stage rockets fall back to the Central Asian landscape frighteningly intact. Farmers use the metal alloys to make tools or patch their roofs, while more entrepreneurial scavengers sell the metal to Chinese manufacturers.
Ansari's story, and that of the effects of these Soyuz rockets on the local environment and economy, are both potentially compelling, but Frei fails to explore either subject to a satisfying degree. Instead, he front-loads the film with narration and on-camera commentary from Jonas Bendriksen, a Magnum photographer whose credentials as our tour guide are never clear. Long sequences of trucks traversing the desert scored by a somnolent lite-jazz gruel seem to have been inserted almost at random to pad the running time to a feature-length 98 minutes. Finally, discussion of whether turning manned spaceflight over to the private sector is a good or bad thing remains the elephant in the living module. Maybe that would have further scattered an already disjointed prduct, but it's frustrating that a film with so many good ideas can leave its biggest questions unasked.
Premieres tomorrow at 5 p.m. in the AFI Silver Theater 1, and screens again on Thursday at 1:30 p.m in the AFI Silver Theater 3.