tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/miff-2014-11684/articlesMIFF 2014 – The Conversation2014-08-19T02:27:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297602014-08-19T02:27:46Z2014-08-19T02:27:46ZCheck your moral disapproval: Buzzard at MIFF<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55249/original/3f5fxc6t-1406692688.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Buzzard is in effect quirky – and quirk belongs on the fringe. Or does it?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Kafkaesque nightmare that underpins Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard might not be just located on the screen. Buzzard, which screened at MIFF 2014 as part of the <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/buzzard">international panorama program</a>, is an uncomfortable film.</p>
<p>We watch helpless as the haplessly unethical Marty Jackitansky (Joshua Burge) descends into degeneration fuelled by petty crime. He cashes cheques that aren’t his and pulls off minor conman stunts. However, as the film unfolds and Marty’s crimes catch up with him, for me, the moral compass turns squarely on the audience. The film is a dissertation against contemporary capitalism and its ravages – but equally it’s an invitation to audiences to check their own sources of moral disapproval. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Buzzard.</span></figcaption>
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<p>If Buzzard is subversive, that is because on the surface the film appears as a warning against Marty’s petty, nerdish aggression. But while we may disapprove of his pathetic acts, our lives often contain similar defects. Marty has a penchant for junk food, computer games, heavy metal music. He hates his job, if with some perversity. These are common traits – they can hardly be summarily dismissed as quirky or alternative. </p>
<h2>Finding subversion in Buzzard</h2>
<p>The typical language developed for such a piece of “independent” cinema is “<a href="http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/sxsw-film-review-buzzard-1201130606/">grunge weirdness</a>”. That’s the term Variety used. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1811127/">Potrykus</a> himself says of Buzzard, “It’s an art film disguised as a violent, slacker black comedy nightmare”. </p>
<p>The audience I watched the film with at MIFF was well tuned to the independent slacker genre and the tribulations of a heavy metal afflicted pop culture addicted loser. Where the film is subversive is in the way it mocks an audience who might want to see Marty Jackitansky as a strange “other”.</p>
<p>Potrykus pushes Marty’s habits to the limits, using close-ups of his Buster Keaton-esque, hang-dog face to evoke his pain in everyday life. But this pain also mirrors our own inevitable foibles. The everyday banalities of life, the small idiosyncratic affectations we practice and the antagonisms and anxieties we produce are universal. Using this logic Buzzard challenges the viewer to account for the ethical dimension of their lives, not judge the paucity of Marty’s.</p>
<h2>Lucky I am not Marty</h2>
<p>Potrykus gives us plenty of reasons Marty Jackitansky and his ultra-geek friend Derek (played by Potrykus). But these guffaws are at least in part due to the fact that the film audience doesn’t identify with them. They are geeks and nerds and we are not. They obsess with snack foods and computer games and we don’t. They inhabit an arthouse film world – but we know that this is not the real film world. Buzzard can be seen to inhabit that world on the other side of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/">Silver Linings Playbook</a> (2012). </p>
<p>Buzzard is in effect quirky – and quirk belongs on the fringe. Or does it?</p>
<p>Life itself might be quirky and the default position <em>is</em> with mind numbing jobs and the minutiae of day to day existence. An obsession with snack food is structurally similar to an obsession with vegetable juice or cappuccino. We need to develop a different vocabulary of interpretation to deal with films like Buzzard – one that doesn’t just marginalise it as weird or quirky. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> screened during August 2014. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Manning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Kafkaesque nightmare that underpins Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard might not be just located on the screen. Buzzard, which screened at MIFF 2014 as part of the international panorama program, is an uncomfortable…Russell Manning, Phd Candidate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297502014-08-18T20:21:22Z2014-08-18T20:21:22ZAnatomy of an Ant: Doomsday in Phase IV<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55263/original/3z38yb6x-1406694866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This is carnal science fiction cinema.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanchom/4487685929/in/photolist-7QyyFk-6AeFFu-o7NBi-mNWEP-P6DdH-6SKMsQ-4UEwpC-8L6G6n-6jo7mV-3eJn3B-6Mp-mVJ4BH-b3dga-6oC1yN-ffKkzB-5hVrNm-68DawN-9isNaL-2S1NRi-oy8z51-a926nV-njqq44-sqM8-o2Uq1R-7QBTfN-b3FQAD-fJoFGM-4TtzzC-9yyi8A-bvkZ4R-6cpp3u-oR9wa-gGwet-dcXrvG-ESBH2-fuPmpC-aabarY-anA9LU-aNSZH-25y9Bi-4Ji7hp-N4Ws3-bSMrtV-fAtHT-a8XNRJ-djnj4h-319Tke-9AbyuJ-3KFDuV-8hz4bA">Sancho McCann/Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I will often say to my film students that if you want to know what aches a culture at a particular historical juncture then you need to visit and spend time with the catastrophic imagination of science fiction. For it is in the restless dreaming of future horizons where the hopes and fears of the present are laid bare.</p>
<p>Showing at the Melbourne International Film Festival in a lush restored 35mm print and with its original montage ending restored, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/6023">Phase IV</a> - the only film to be directed by the exquisite poster and title sequence designer, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000866/">Saul Bass</a> - explores what happens when humankind is threatened by hyper-intelligent ants intent on colonising Earth. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Phase IV (1974).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Set in the Arizona desert – but filmed at Pinewood Studios in England and on-location in Kenya – Phase IV narrates the struggle between two scientists, James Lesko <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0614526/">(Michael Murphy)</a> and Ernest Hubbs <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0202638/">(Nigel Davenport)</a> as they seek to understand and overcome the mysterious unification of all ant colonies and the (alien) hive mind that controls and advances their collective cause. </p>
<p>It is suggested that if Lesko and Hubbs cannot stop these super ants, then human civilisation is doomed. Doomed, I tell you.</p>
<h2>Doomsday visions</h2>
<p>Visually and aurally the film is indebted to a heady mixture of influences including the wildlife documentary; the anti-realism of European art cinema; the topography of the desert Western and the rural road movie; and to the new wave of electronic music and atonal chords that is so effectively used to eerily score the film and its often ferocious feral sound effects. </p>
<p>The ants enunciate like a ravenous and telepathic army on the relentless march to herald in the Armageddon, while the bleeps, squeaks, hums and drones that also saturate the soundscape creates the impression that invisible forces haunt every space. </p>
<p>These are not ants that can be trampled upon or squished between ones fingers but super centurions of the insect world.</p>
<p>The film’s cinematography is composed of two distinct styles.</p>
<p>Firstly, there are the intimate and naturalistic close ups of the ants, their colonies, machinery, computers, the sun and the moon, obelisques, and the various textures - such as skin, electrical wires, yellow poison - that colour and wash the entire <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-mise-en-sc-ne-27281">mise-en-scène</a>. </p>
<p>One feels as if one is in the laboratory or desert with the ants, and in that transferable relationship between film and viewer, as one watches one scratches skin and hair as if their phantom legs are beginning to crawl over and burrow down deep into you. This is carnal science fiction cinema.</p>
<p>The wildlife photographer <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0585453/">Ken Middleham</a> shot the insect sequences for Phase IV, as he also did for the documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067197/">The Hellstrom Chronicle</a>. Through a microscopic lens, the anatomy of an ant has never been so diabolically well chronicled.</p>
<p>Phase IV is also composed of long shots, frames of deep focus and wide panoramas, so that the shimmering heat of the desert and the liquid fire of the sun appear enormous and awesome in their power. The film is full of sublime cinematography. It simply takes one’s breath away and makes one feel like a tiny dot, like a single ant, in a giant universe.</p>
<p>This oscillation between near and far, between claustrophobia and agoraphobia, positions Earth in a never ending and expanding cosmos, but also under a forensic microscope where all our activities are being closely monitored. Ultimately this is a film caught in a paranoid state of delusion and allusion, as the troubles of America seep its way into its metaphoric visual and aural palettes.</p>
<h2>Signs of the times</h2>
<p>Narratively, Phase IV speaks to a number of critical concerns of America at the time the film was made: ecological and environmental collapse; the Cold War, and the Vietnam war; the ambivalent relationship that society has to science and their hyper-rationalist scientists; and to the irrational fear of miscegenation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56652/original/5gf5pkcn-1408326959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Velvet ant stinger tip scanning electron microscope</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Velvet_ant_stinger_%28tip%29--scanning_electron_microscope_image.jpg">Janice Carr/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Phase I: Ecological and Environmental Apocalypse</em> <br>
One of the concerns of Phase IV is the relentless expansion of the suburbs, population growth, unsustainability and the mechanisation of farming. </p>
<p>The film’s first land-based shots are of new town billboards and half completed homes. The yellow poison used to destroy the ant colony is a coda for industrial fertilisation and the dangers it brings to agriculture. The ants, which wipe out species that are above them in the food chain, are the avatars that put the ecology of Earth out of balance and as a consequence threaten the survival of all species, of the planet itself. </p>
<p>However, we realise late in the film that they are actually custodians of the future – it is we who must be stopped or over-taken in the evolutionary chain if Earth is to prosper.</p>
<p><em>Phase II: Red Ants under the Bed</em><br>
Phase IV was made at a time when the Cold War and Vietnam was uppermost in the American nation’s psyche. The ants in the film become both the fifth column, and the personification of Soviet norms – working collectively for the greater good and without individuality or individualism, always willing to sacrifice so long as the cohering centre is maintained. </p>
<p>The ant army can also be likened to the Viet Cong or the National Liberation Front, fighting against the superior technology and firepower of the American military. The ants build a series of connecting tunnels and traps, infiltrate the compound, and in consort with the “natural” environment turn the desert and sun on the scientists. </p>
<p>The scientists, secured in their hi-tech fortress compound, use yellow poison (agent orange, napalm) to kill the ants, but the ants only grow stronger. Eventually, the scientists have to abandon their laboratory and the ants begin to secure their victory as their centurions march on its grounds.</p>
<p><em>Phase III: Mad Science</em><br>
Phase IV offers up an ambivalent representation of science. Hubbs is the archetypal mad scientist, one who seeks truth in rational method and through reason alone, but is solely intent on destroying the ants at whatever cost. He uses science in a destructive way and is impervious to the human death that occurs around him. The film is a warning about letting too much science into the world.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56648/original/grkjqpr8-1408325729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanchom/4487685929/in/photolist-7QyyFk-6AeFFu-o7NBi-mNWEP-P6DdH-6SKMsQ-4UEwpC-8L6G6n-6jo7mV-3eJn3B-6Mp-mVJ4BH-b3dga-6oC1yN-ffKkzB-5hVrNm-68DawN-9isNaL-2S1NRi-oy8z51-a926nV-njqq44-sqM8-o2Uq1R-7QBTfN-b3FQAD-fJoFGM-4TtzzC-9yyi8A-bvkZ4R-6cpp3u-oR9wa-gGwet-dcXrvG-ESBH2-fuPmpC-aabarY-anA9LU-aNSZH-25y9Bi-4Ji7hp-N4Ws3-bSMrtV-fAtHT-a8XNRJ-djnj4h-319Tke-9AbyuJ-3KFDuV-8hz4bA"> Sancho McCann/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, Lesko is the humanist scientist. Through his mathematical formulations he seeks to communicate with the ants, to understand them better. Lesko cares about human and ant life and looks to reason and emotion to bridge the species gap. </p>
<p>However, the film suggests that Hubb’s approach maybe the one that needs to be followed, offering the viewer a powerful Cold War message about weapons proliferation and the need for aggressive responses.</p>
<p><em>Phase IV: Inter-Species coupling</em><br>
Phase IV has a fear of borders being breached and is full of images of thresholds being overtaken, overrun. The film offers us images of “white flight” in which the ants become marauding rioters intent on taking over the “neighbourhood”. There is one scene of a house being “looted”, flames licking its grounds. The film’s context can be set in the context of the race riots and civil rights abuses that dominated the period.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Phase IV brings the two species together, ant and human, suggesting that in their communion a new dawn will be reached, a new age will be born. In the newly restored cut of the film, this future horizon is a psychedelic trip where a new inter-species reaches the astral plane. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> screened during August 2014. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29750/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Redmond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I will often say to my film students that if you want to know what aches a culture at a particular historical juncture then you need to visit and spend time with the catastrophic imagination of science…Sean Redmond, Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297522014-08-18T05:31:04Z2014-08-18T05:31:04ZWho has the time? Four hours of Norte, the End of History, at MIFF<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55262/original/tg2449ng-1406694427.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In a four-hour long film, we have all the time in the world to consider the misogyny, misanthropy and pathos.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For an expectant crowd of cinephiles sitting down to see a four-hour film, it is easy enough to identify with Fabian, the main character of <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/5561">Norte, the End of History</a>, that screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Fabian is a young student in the midst of a growing existential malaise. He drops out of university to just live in his own idealistic way.</p>
<p>Given the grim events that dominate news headlines today, the despondency that creeps into Fabian’s otherwise privileged life as a gifted law student in Laoag City, located in the Ilocos Norte province of the Philippines, is intoxicating. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Norte, the End of History (2013).</span></figcaption>
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<p>What makes the celebrated Filipino director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0225010/">Lav Diaz’s</a> 250-minute epic so hard to bear is that our protagonist begins to spiral beyond his comfortable armchair philosophising with his beer buddies – and resolves to take his romantic student politics into everyday life. This leads him, almost an hour into the film, to brutally murder his local money-lender. In the act he confronts the unlikeable woman in her home and stabs her to death in front of her young daughter – whom he also murders on an impulse as a witness to the crime. </p>
<p>For the remainder of the film, Fabian’s commitment to acting out his increasingly radical beliefs exposes the futility of his righteous actions. Fabian’s character stands in contrast to Joaquin, whose partner Eliza struggles with their debt while he recovers from a leg injury. </p>
<p>After farcically attacking Magda the moneylender from his crutches, it is Joaquin who is accused of the murder. Speechlessly, the labourer accepts making a guilty plea for a crime we know he didn’t commit. Throughout the film a faceless justice system administers impenetrable social control. Accepting a life in prison, his sentence is ameliorated only by the fact that the rooms we see in residential buildings do not differ greatly from the stifling atmosphere of the prison’s interior.</p>
<h2>The cinema of Lav Diaz</h2>
<p>A mature writer and director, Diaz has made 15 films since 1998, including the eight-hour survey of existential desolation in Filipino life, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1269566/">Melancholia </a>(2008). He is known for his commitment to an editorial style that attempts to capture real moments of lingering and banal social interactions which expose the extreme situations of contemporary life. </p>
<p>Norte screened at the <em>Un Certain Regard</em> section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and has since received glowing praise. </p>
<p>What’s rarely noted in mainstream press, however, is the violence inflicted on almost all of the women in the film. The woman as victim, as the helpless subordinate, is a figure repeated here again and again, to the point of producing our disgust.</p>
<p>Diaz’s critique of the mythology of the West is clearly marked. Signifiers of western culture make constant appearances throughout the film.</p>
<p>Fabian is reading Norman Mailer and the Marquis de Sade. He discusses missionary philosopher <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/443529/Derek-Parfit">Derek Parfit</a> with his ever-encouraging law teachers. Meanwhile, the prisons are labelled with English-language imperatives such as “visitor meeting point”. The Tagalog dialogue frequently breaks into English catchphrases – and Fabian finds work for a time in an American-style diner in Manila staffed with born-again Christians.</p>
<h2>Who has the time?</h2>
<p>The brutal symmetry of the time-rich audience, who can afford to sit down to enjoy a 250-minute film in a cinema matches only too well with Fabian’s student life. Long, idle periods are made available in which to ponder the state of the world. By contrast, Eliza and her family work long days at the margins of a society in which there’s an entrenched gap between the poor and the wealthy. This is the central conceit of the film. </p>
<p>The contrast reinforces the polarising dynamic between Fabian, the demonised intellectual and Joaquin, the angelic and redemptive hero. Ultimately Diaz’s film is a thorough and sincere lamentation on the fatalism of a post-colonial world. The children who grow up into this situation are already orphaned by the system they have inherited.</p>
<p>There is a line from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7144.Crime_and_Punishment?from_search=true">Crime and Punishment</a>, that’s been etched into my memory and upon which Diaz’s film has been loosely adapted from: “We’ve got all the time in the world,” says the investigator Porfiry to the villain Raskolnikov, caught in the excruciating deferral of his fate. Similarly, in Diaz’s strong-arm character, Wakwak – a prison heavy who brutalises Joaquin and the other prisoners – as the literal manifestation of the film’s dystopian psychodrama, the end of history is the end of a form of life. </p>
<p>Modernity, patriarchy, social organisation and domination, are all placed in crises by the broken philosophies that undermine this image of Filipino society. The barbarity of this contemporary breakdown reinstates all horrors of the epoch. Diaz’s characters are cut adrift from all the once-stabilising structures such as law, justice, civility. Their world is defined by dollar value. </p>
<p>In a four-hour long film, we have all the time in the world to consider this misogyny and misanthropy, and pathos – realised as a despairing result of one reading of the despotic conditions reappearing under late capitalism, or, the end of history.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giles Fielke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For an expectant crowd of cinephiles sitting down to see a four-hour film, it is easy enough to identify with Fabian, the main character of Norte, the End of History, that screened at the Melbourne International…Giles Fielke, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297532014-08-18T04:18:21Z2014-08-18T04:18:21ZThe Skeleton Twins, a dark comedy about mental illness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55258/original/frr8rtv2-1406693699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wiig and Hader are well cast and convincingly play the troubled 'Skeleton Twins'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the Melbourne International Film Festival draws to a close for another year, what better way to finish than with a comedy? Well, not quite. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2574897/">Craig Johnson’s</a> latest release, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/5635">Skeleton Twins</a>, starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1325419/">Kristen Wiig</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0352778/">Bill Hader</a> exists somewhere between tragedy and comedy, perhaps leaning more towards the dramatic family crisis side of the spectrum. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Skeleton Twins.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film follows Milo’s (Hader) unexpected reunion with his twin sister, Maggie (Wiig) after ten years of separation. The film opens with not one but two suicide attempts. That tells you a lot about the dark comic tone that Johnson maintains throughout this ambitious film, his second feature.</p>
<h2>Twins like these</h2>
<p>Wiig and Hader are excellently cast and convincingly play the troubled “Skeleton Twins” from the film’s title. There were rumours circulating that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267506/">Anna Faris</a> had initially been considered for the lead role. It would have been a very different film had that been the case. </p>
<p>Wiig lends great emotional depth to the role and is compelling to watch. Her performance is beautifully complemented by Hader as her sarcastic, guarded but magnetic brother. Their infectious banter and natural dynamic really carries the film and particularly shines through when they lipsync Starship’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBQVrCflZ_E">“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”</a> and in their nitrous-oxide fuelled antics in Maggie’s dental clinic. The film also features <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005561/">Luke Wilson</a> as Maggie’s enthusiastic but simple-minded husband, Lance, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0123092/">Ty Burrell</a> as Milo’s sometime lover, Rich.</p>
<h2>Bigger questions</h2>
<p>The film is primarily concerned with Maggie and Milo’s relationship however the little subplots with Lance and Rich are neatly executed. They allow for the discussion surrounding dysfunctional families to be extended to broach broader questions about our desire for intimacy and the need to feel connected. </p>
<p>Maggie’s extramarital affair with her scuba-diving instructor and Milo’s attempt to rekindle a romantic relationship with his high-school teacher both experiment with this idea of a forbidden intimacy that hints at a deeper malaise. </p>
<p>There is something very bittersweet in these moments and some scenes are difficult to watch. Johnson tries to fit a lot into the script – and this is occasionally to the film’s detriment. Milo’s history with Rich is fascinatingly complex and the trauma of this illicit affair surfaces in Hader and Burrell’s strong performances. However there are many interesting extrapolations about the taboos governing this relationship that could have been further developed.</p>
<h2>Flash back, flash forward</h2>
<p>Johnson’s film is beautifully shot and expertly structured. The narrative seamlessly transitions from moments of light-hearted comic repartee to thoughtful reflections on the trauma of loss and painful transitions of life. This is both the film’s strength and its weakness: it acknowledges the complexity of these connections and miscommunications but its treatment of these important discussions sometimes feels a little rushed and under-developed. </p>
<p>The film regularly relies on childhood flashbacks to give context and emotional weight to the interactions between Maggie and Milo. These moments are a little heavy-handed. Johnson might have instead used the time to better explore these complicated dialogues surrounding mental illness and suicide. </p>
<p>In the recent aftermath of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-make-assumptions-about-comedy-and-depression-after-the-death-of-robin-williams-30432">Robin Williams’ suicide</a>, there has of course been renewed public discussion about the importance of openly acknowledging mental illness and ensuring that there are dialogues of support available for people in need. While Skeleton Twins provides an engaging and convincing study of depression and family trauma, some audiences may feel that its approach to suicide is insubstantial and perhaps even romanticised. </p>
<p>We often see mental illness tacked onto films and television shows as a plot device or as shorthand for a “complex” character. However, there does seem to be a growing trend to engage more meaningfully with the discourse surrounding mental illness. Comedies such as The Skeleton Twins can effectively bridge this divide and allow for difficult conversations about isolation to be brought to the fore. </p>
<p>Films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/">Little Miss Sunshine</a> (2006) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/">Silver Linings Playbook</a> (2012) were both very well received by audiences and generated a lot of public discussion about depression. Johnson’s film is an entertaining and ambitious contribution to this discourse and will hopefully open up further reflection on the prevalence of depression. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Felicity Ford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the Melbourne International Film Festival draws to a close for another year, what better way to finish than with a comedy? Well, not quite. Craig Johnson’s latest release, Skeleton Twins, starring Kristen…Felicity Ford, Researcher and Tutor in Screen and Cultural Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/300212014-08-15T02:58:37Z2014-08-15T02:58:37ZGerman Concentration Camps Factual Survey: shocking to watch, important to witness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56493/original/nzyg68m3-1407994333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Footage shot at German concentration camps at the end of the second world war is the basis for a harrowing documentary screening at MIFF.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ho visto nino volare/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The experience of watching horrific imagery in both fiction film and documentary cinema sometimes pushes the act of viewing cinema to its limit. It tests the spectator’s ability to keep looking. That’s certainly the case with the Imperial War Museum’s restoration of <a href="http://theessential.com.au/reviews/film/2014/miff-2014-german-concentration-camps-factual-survey">German Concentration Camps Factual Survey</a>, a documentary that screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for German Concentration Camps Factual Survey.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Often extreme images are intended to shock, defamiliarise and provoke a broader contemplation of violence. Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s famous Surrealist film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/">Un Chien Andalou</a> (1929) creates the most beautiful and horrible graphic match. Clouds segmenting the moon create that graphic match with a razor slicing an eye, an attack on vision, the primary sense involved in watching film. Bunuel’s film was made as a reflective analogy, a shocking impression of the violence of war. </p>
<p>Alain Resnais’ film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/">Night and Fog</a> (1955) juxtaposes colour images of concentration camps with black and white archival footage to extend the memory of the past into the present. In each case the spectator is asked to keep watching, to attend to images of extreme violence from the past in order to prevent their repetition in the present.</p>
<p>The film theorist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Kracauer">Siegfried Kracauer</a> argues that images of Nazi concentration camps “beckon the spectator to take them in and thus incorporate into his memory the real face of things too dreadful to be beheld in reality”. The German Concentration Camp Factual Survey is an example of how cinema can be used as a powerful medium to display events and histories that are extremely difficult to watch, but important to witness.</p>
<h2>The origin of the footage</h2>
<p>This film was ordered by The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to be screened for German audiences after the fall of the Third Reich. Alfred Hitchcock worked on the film for a month. He was initially described as one of the directors, but is more accurately credited as a “Treatment Advisor”. </p>
<p>Produced by Sidney Bernstein from Britain’s Ministry of Information, it was shot by Allied Service Newsreel cameramen in 1945 in an attempt to provide a testimony of the atrocities of Concentration Camps. The film was shelved as Occupation policy moved away from retribution and towards reconstruction.</p>
<p>The full restoration premiered this year at the 64th Berlin Film Festival. This week’s screening at The Forum for the Masters and Restoration program of MIFF was only the sixth time that this film had been shown. Dr Toby Haggith, Senior Curator, Imperial War Museum, introduced the film. </p>
<p>A spoken introduction, three prologue slates containing written context and the decompression/debrief question and answer session are part of the Imperial War Museum’s stipulated agreement for any screening of this footage. The introduction and debrief proved crucial: it provided much-needed opportunities for contextualisation and decompression before and after viewing such harrowing images.</p>
<p>In 1952 the Imperial War Museum received a collection of five (out of the six) reels from the original silent film along with 100 reels of additional footage shot by Allied cameramen. Work on the reconstruction began in 2008. </p>
<p>The restoration team assembled the missing sixth reel from the additional footage in accordance with the original voice-over script and shot list for the film. Toby Haggith understands that the images received by the Imperial War Museum belonged to the original filmmakers.</p>
<p>It was the museum’s role to use this footage along with scanning and editing technologies to recreate the missing final reel and to restore the film according to the intentions of the first filmmakers. The restoration team made a conscious effort to avoid enhancement, to remain faithful to this historical document. This task took them more than five years.</p>
<h2>The content of the film</h2>
<p>This voice-over contextualises the information and guides the audience. It begins with Leni Riefenstahl’s footage of Hitler’s parade through Germany as dense crowds line up to watch him pass by. This sequence is shot from above to show the immense scale and broad expanse of the crowd. Flowers are thrown across his pathway, one image shows a young man who has climbed above the crowd, trying to find the best possible vantage point. </p>
<p>The film then creates an opposition between the pageantry of the parade and the depravity within the concentration camps. The voice-over describes the images that we are about to see as “heavier than the human soul can bear”.</p>
<p>With its optical focus, German Concentration Camp Factual Survey uses visuals to carry the weight of this film. </p>
<p>Maps suggested by Alfred Hitchcock introduce the locations, the often peaceful surroundings, leading towards the depravity inside the camps. Here, the focus falls directly onto images of prisoners behind barbed wire fences looking directly towards the camera, some still, seemingly contemplative, some people appearing agitated and anxious.</p>
<p>One prisoner being supported by others in the Dachau sequence tries to stand upright independently when he becomes aware of the camera’s focus, a protective gesture perhaps, for those who might recognise his image. A sequence of women peeping through the branches of a makeshift barrier designed to cordon off a brothel ends with a shot of a young girl smiling at the camera, revealing teeth that are still forming.</p>
<h2>Silence</h2>
<p>The voice-over falls away during sequences that reveal images of extreme dehumanisation. Images of the dead are depicted in silence. Terrible images of emaciated bodies, bodies being dragged, disposed of in mass graves, are incredibly difficult to watch. Footage of bodies buried in mass graves by bulldozers signifies the scale of destruction. </p>
<p>The silence in the cinema emphasises the role of the viewer as bearing witness to the representation of history on the screen. The film mirrors the position of the spectator with images of bystanders anguished and devastated. </p>
<p>In the screening that I attended, the young man next to me began to breathe loudly and inconsistently, enduring the silent violence. While I recognised the importance of seeing these images, the confronting close-ups of faces frozen with distress and the seemingly relentless long takes of bodies being dragged by their limbs forced me to avert my gaze many times. I held tight to my armrest throughout these silent, harrowing sequences.</p>
<p>Like Resnais’ film Night and Fog, German Concentration Camp Factual Survey also uses metonymy to represent the depth and degree of loss. Both films include images showing piles of shoes, scissors and brushes for hair, shaving and nails.</p>
<p>German Concentration Camp Factual Survey shows gloves that are organised and displayed in their pairs. The collection of glasses represents the one in ten people who wore them at that time. Tattooed, tanned skin is displayed on tables alongside lampshades made of flesh and displayed like souvenirs. Personal possessions, clothes, hair and skin – each representative of absence and loss.</p>
<h2>Insight and clarity</h2>
<p>Amid the distressing images are moments of clarity, insight and relief. </p>
<p>One British soldier responds to his experience directly, articulating that “I know personally what I am fighting for”. Water is provided for the prisoners of Belsen and many are shown drinking, washing their clothes and showering with hot water and soap. A Harrods sign points towards a clothes store where people try on outfits and, as the voice-over says – gossip “as women love to do”. </p>
<p>This is a historical document, a time piece that is committed to the production of cinema that remains faithful to the events it depicts. It is a film that is based in the principle of objective veracity pioneered by Dziga Vertov and the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino-Pravda">kino Pravda/film truth</a>” movement, but built on an awareness of the potential for framing, voice-over and silence to embody a traumatic history of dehumanisation. </p>
<p>Moments of compassion and empathy stood out. Shot with the distance of the observational newsreel camera, two moments in particular are symbolised by movement and stillness. Some women walking amid a large group towards the camps appear distressed and turn to walk away, their movement opposing the flow of people visiting.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the film, one British member of Parliament stands completely still with his hat positioned across his heart in deference to the victims of the violence that surrounds him. He appears fixed to the ground, shocked by the images, but realising the importance of bearing witness. </p>
<p>It is in both the apprehension of extreme violence alongside empathic responses on screen that – as Kracauer suggests - audiences are asked to incorporate into their memories impressions of the camps that would be too difficult to behold in reality.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Haslem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The experience of watching horrific imagery in both fiction film and documentary cinema sometimes pushes the act of viewing cinema to its limit. It tests the spectator’s ability to keep looking. That’s…Wendy Haslem, Lecturer - Screen Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297542014-08-14T20:38:02Z2014-08-14T20:38:02ZEnfant terrible Xavier Dolan at MIFF<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56327/original/tnq6g2dt-1407887663.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fans of Canadian film director Xavier Dolan were treated with two of his films at MIFF 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ETTORE FERRARI</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whether you see him as an enfant terrible or an indie darling, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0230859/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Xavier Dolan</a> is a prodigious filmmaker. At the age of 25 he has five critically acclaimed feature-length films to his name. I am a keen fan of his work. Both <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424797/">I Killed My Mother</a> (2009) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1600524/">Heartbeats</a> (2010) hold pride of place on my DVD shelf at home.</p>
<p>I was overjoyed when I heard that the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival had scheduled two of his recent films this year: <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/5584">Mommy</a> and <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/5586">Tom at the Farm</a>. Mommy was nominated for the Palme d’Or and won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The 2013 film Tom at the Farm received mixed reviews when it went on the festival circuit last year and I was keen to see it.</p>
<h2>Mommy</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55255/original/v66hzb8q-1406693563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mommy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the title suggests, this film, perhaps Dolan’s strongest yet, is anchored by a strong maternal character. Mommy recalls the strained mother-son relationship from his first effort, I Killed My Mother. This is even referred to in the <a href="http://www.festival-cannes.com/assets/Image/Direct/4e102d6526d3028a93a49ac2c9d4d9ce.pdf">director’s note</a> for Mommy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Back in the days of I Killed My Mother, I felt like I wanted to punish my mom. Only five years have passed since and I believe that, through Mommy, I’m now seeking her revenge. Don’t ask.</p>
</blockquote>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ArkOM1desII?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Mommy (2014).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0234237/">Anne Dorval</a> plays Diane “Die” Després, a widowed mother burdened with full-time custody of her son, Steve, a troubled 15-year-old with ADHD and prone to violent outbursts. Dorval also played the maternal role of Chantale Lemming in I Killed My Mother. While Die is an effervescent powerhouse, she becomes overwhelmed by the demands of taking care of Steve, culminating in a violent confrontation between the two. </p>
<p>Respite arrives in the form of Kyla (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0167501/?ref_=tt_cl_t3">Suzanne Clément</a>), an awkward neighbour from across the road who offers her assistance to the pair. Kyla suffers from a speech impediment, brought on by a breakdown in her previous role as a high school teacher.</p>
<p>Both Dorval and Clément have become muses to Dolan. Dorval also played Désirée in Heartbearts; Clément played schoolteacher Julie Cloutier in I Killed My Mother and Fred in Dolan’s almost three-hour-long relationship drama Laurence Anyways.</p>
<p>A strikingly different 1:1 aspect ratio is used for the film: the cinematic frame is a perfect square. For most parts, the ratio is used well, with Dolan being careful about what visual information stays in the frame. </p>
<p>A good example is a culminating scene between Steve and Kyla in the car where the emotional intensity builds to breaking point. Similarly, the scene of Steve widening the frame as he skates to Oasis’ “Wonderwall” is a revelatory moment. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ETPU_kKEf7o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Musical cues like this are vital to Mommy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Music plays an integral role in Dolan’s films. Mommy features music from the Counting Crows, Eiffel 65, Dido, Celine Dion – the dancing in the kitchen scene was just sublime – and Oasis. This pop playlist is driven by a mixtape Die’s husband made before he died.</p>
<p>These songs play a key role in Dolan’s stylistic revelry. Often narrative progression is shown purely through musical montages, with the Counting Crows’ Colour Blind playing as Steve plays with the shopping trolley in the local car park.</p>
<h2>Tom at the Farm</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Tom at the Farm (2013).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before the release of Mommy, Dolan’s Tom at the Farm was his most commercial film to date. The film plays upon the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22447726">Stockholm Syndrome</a> narrative device, resulting in a queer thriller. Personally, I am always a fan of these attempts to queer existing genres. </p>
<p>The eponymous Tom, played by Dolan, is dealing with the recent death of his boyfriend Guy. Tom heads to his late lover’s family farm for the funeral.</p>
<p>After his arrival at a deserted, eerie farmhouse, Guy’s mother, Agathe, finds Tom asleep, drooling on the kitchen table. We later meet Guy’s unstable older brother, Francis, who warns Tom that the mother has no idea that Tom was her son’s boyfriend. Instead, Tom is to keep up the façade of Agathe’s relationship with her two sons, completely unaware that one was queer, while the other is prone to violent, angry outbursts.</p>
<p>Tom remains trapped at the farmhouse for the next few days, the victim of Francis’s beatings and intimidating demeanour. As Francis slowly develops a connection with Tom, the narrative turns. He reveals that he too is unable to leave the farm. The unspoken sexual chemistry between the two is palpable as they tango in the barn house. </p>
<p>The stand-out stars of this film are Dolan’s cinematographer André Turpin and composer Gabriel Yared, who also scored The Talented Mr Ripley, The Lives of Others and Cold Mountain. Turpin carefully captures Tom’s feeling of isolation and increasing instability. Yared’s score is central to the film’s evocation of impending danger.</p>
<p>Once again, we have an enigmatic maternal figure at the centre of the narrative. Lise Roy’s Agathe, however, is different from the mothers in Dolan’s other films. She is frail and overwhelmed by the loss of her son. It isn’t until the film’s final act that she begins to piece together the inconsistencies in the many fabrications Francis has told her. </p>
<p>Tom’s inner conflict – being attracted to Francis in such a dangerous situation – results in him being quite a difficult character to read. When Sarah, the fake girlfriend Francis has created for his late brother, arrives at the farmhouse at Tom’s request, the audience is just as confused as she is when Tom is adamant that he needs to stay.</p>
<p>Xavier Dolan has been accused of narcissistic filmmaking before. This is arguably evident here, with repetitive close-up shots of his face. The Hollywood Reporter’s Davis Rooney <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tom-at-farm-venice-review-619296">excoriated</a> Dolan on just this point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s also hard to take the film seriously when scene after scene explores the director’s face with such swooning intoxication. Shots of Tom are held and held and then held some more — at the wheel of his car, in the cornfields, running in slow motion with his blond locks dancing in the breeze, sitting pensively on a bed in his underwear, or looking out through a screen door as a single tear streaks his face, like Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Both Mommy and Tom at the Farm demonstrate considerable growth in Dolan’s filmmaking. He has retained his distinctive style. So is it time for the enfant terrible label to be retired?</p>
<p>I shall leave the final word to Dolan himself in his reply to the Hollywood Reporter’s review: </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56277/original/bvgyxx9b-1407832218.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Richards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether you see him as an enfant terrible or an indie darling, Xavier Dolan is a prodigious filmmaker. At the age of 25 he has five critically acclaimed feature-length films to his name. I am a keen fan…Stuart Richards, Researcher and Tutor in Screen and Cultural Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297632014-08-13T05:45:49Z2014-08-13T05:45:49ZTranscending testimony: an interview with filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56370/original/x3wn258g-1407907678.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A screening of Invoking Justice at Mahim Beach, Mumbai, India, 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BMW Guggenheim Lab/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deepa Dhanraj.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/makers/fm134.shtml">Deepa Dhanraj</a> is a filmmaker and feminist whose extensive filmography spans issues of gender, labour, education and women’s position in Indian society. In 1980, she founded the Bangalore-based filmmaking collective <a href="http://www.yugantar.org.in/">Yugantar</a>, an organisation that produced films about women’s labour and domestic conditions in Southern India. With searing imagery, Dhanraj’s highly influential 1991 film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4vaELkhjhs">Something Like a War</a>, presented the gender and class violence of the population-control policy of the Indian government.<br></p>
<p>Dhanraj is a guest at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year. She presented her recent film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7YnTgjfB_8">Invoking Justice</a> (ITVS, 2011) as part of the <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/streams/india-in-flux-living-resistance">India in Flux: Living Resistance</a> strand of contemporary documentary cinema and was a panellist on the Talking Pictures panel, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/talking-pictures-currents-of-dissent-documentary-resistance-in-india">Currents of Dissent: Documentary Resistance in India</a>, with <a href="http://patwardhan.com/">Anand Patwardhan</a> and <a href="http://miff.com.au/criticscampus/meenakshishedde">Meenakshi Shedde</a> in conversation with me. <br></p>
<p>In this interview, I talk with Dhanraj about the historic relationship between activism and documentary film and the ways in which she addresses contemporary industrial as well as aesthetic shifts in this cinema.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Deepa, you were closely associated with the Indian women’s movement during the 1970s and the 1980s. How did your involvement with this movement lead you towards documentary cinema?</strong> <br>
I became a documentary filmmaker because of my association with the women’s movement. </p>
<p>When we started our collective Yugantar in 1980, the intention was to make films on various struggles, agitations and issues that were being raised by the women’s movement at that time, particularly the shifts in consciousness, politics and the kind of contributions that both the activists and the academy were making in public discourse. </p>
<p>A lot of theory was being generated and one of the things we asked as a collective was: how do you communicate this back to the audiences and particularly women audiences so that there is a continuous loop? How do you tell these stories and talk about this politics at all levels from the grassroots to the academy? </p>
<p>Personally, the intention of the collective was to document the struggles and then return these stories to the constituency, which could be women’s groups of all classes and as many institutions as we could tap into – trade unions, universities, high schools and film clubs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screening of Invoking Justice, January 2013, Mahim Beach, Mumbai, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bmwguggenheimlab/8423394503/in/photolist-dQrGDh-dQm62e-dQrFdS-dQm5HF-dQrFGd-dQrHpN-dQm6HH-dQrGYf"> BMW Guggenheim Lab/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Coming to the documentary medium from activism, how did you conceptualise the documentary form? What could the documentary film accomplish in the social collective?</strong> <br>
We did not come to a ready-made understanding of documentary practice; we were creating a process as we worked. When we started this collective, our intention was to be collaborative and to stand with the women, not only to transmit their story. </p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c68.shtml">Something Like a War</a>, we spoke about issues that were important to many women’s groups. I am often surprised at how much of my work is used for teaching in universities – but, at that time, it wasn’t our intention. With Something Like a War, we wanted to stop the government of India’s coercive targeting of poor women to achieve state sterilisation targets. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J4vaELkhjhs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Something Like a War.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But we also wanted to address the structural consensual belief that the poor were responsible for their poverty because of excessive breeding. So in the film we also talked about why poor women made the reproductive choices that they did – they were not foolish, but various social factors influenced their decisions. </p>
<p>So we not only had to address the state agenda but also this political consensus that made it acceptable to have a eugenics notion about the poor. The films produced with this political understanding acted as a medium between the activists and the academy and brought these issues into a space for discussion. So I see documentary films as building a bridge between these two worlds.</p>
<p><strong>Documentary cinema appears to have moved into many directions and filmmakers approach the form from several positions; as artists, storytellers or poets. How does activism or political interrogation reconcile with these shifts?</strong> <br>
During the 1980s and 1990s there was a stated political objective with which people approached documentary, which has now gradually shifted into the domain of the individual. </p>
<p>Of course, being India, a lot of social context inherently emerges in any story, but the question is: what do you do with this context? How are you recasting it in a way that there are insights not just at the level of testimony but how do we create a framework to understand social formations? </p>
<p>I think if you are making a film about the social collective you are also making a public intervention, politically you are making an intervention and you choose cinema to do it. When you are doing that, why is there a diffidence or hesitation to articulate a political position? To me it raises questions about aesthetics and politics; does the style of filmmaking determine your politics? Or does the way of looking determine your politics and style, which, of course, could be poetic.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56112/original/frnv6g2v-1407720798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screening of Invoking Justice, January 2013, Mahim Beach, Mumbai, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bmwguggenheimlab/8424488646/in/photolist-dQrGDh-dQm62e-dQrFdS-dQm5HF-dQrFGd-dQrHpN-dQm6HH-dQrGYf/"> BMW Guggenheim Lab/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Some of the issues that face documentary filmmakers in India have historically related to distribution and audiences, but contemporary India is an image-and-media-saturated environment. Is this also a challenge?</strong><br>
The issue of resources always remains. It is very impressive that so many people are still working given the desperate lack of resources. But the good news is that there are more exhibition forums and mini-festivals where people watch films. </p>
<p>The challenge for a filmmaker like myself is how to deal with a very complex reality. It is not only at the stage of formal or creative planning but requires creating processes where people are comfortable with being filmed and feel that it is worth their participation. Cable television and 24-hour news and current affairs have created a situation where people are very media aware and understand how they might be represented or misrepresented. </p>
<p>They are also filming themselves – so the relationship to image has changed and the potential film participants have a different level of visual literacy and consciousness of representation. In this setting, the challenge is to create a process that takes this into account and remains accountable to the people one is filming.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shweta Kishore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Deepa Dhanraj is a filmmaker and feminist whose extensive filmography spans issues of gender, labour, education and women’s position in Indian society. In 1980, she founded the Bangalore-based filmmaking…Shweta Kishore, PhD Cndidate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297612014-08-12T20:33:45Z2014-08-12T20:33:45ZA blues song to break the silence: Black Panther Woman at MIFF<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55245/original/n6yxqmmn-1406692057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blues singer Marlene Cummins is the subject of Rachel Perkins' latest film, Black Panther Woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>I sing this song. I sing it for my sisters. <br>
For I feel the backbone of our struggle in this country,<br>
Trying to keep it together.<br>
<a href="http://www.marlenecummins.com/audio/koori-woman-blues/">Koori Woman</a> – Marlene Cummins</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://blackfellafilms.com.au/about/">Rachel Perkins</a>’ latest documentary, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/black-panther-woman">Black Panther Woman</a>, brings to the screen the life of Australia’s foremost Indigenous female blues singer: Marlene Cummins. Like any good blues song this is a confronting and powerful story. Black Panther Woman recounts Marlene’s experience in the first and only Australian Black Panthers chapter, the abuses she suffered from men within the Indigenous community and her need to break a 40-year silence.</p>
<p>When we first meet Marlene, she is about to leave for a trip to New York to attend an international gathering of Black Panthers, hosted by <a href="http://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/kathleen-cleaver">Kathleen Cleaver</a>, who is now a law professor at Yale. Marlene joined the Brisbane chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1972 – after falling in love with their leader, Dennis Walker. </p>
<p>For a year, and with just ten members, the Australian Black Panthers were at the forefront of the Aboriginal civil and land rights movement. As we learn from Cummins, Indigenous women were the backbone of the struggle – and sometimes paid a price for the cause.</p>
<h2>Breaking the code of silence</h2>
<p>Throughout the documentary, Cummins asserts that she has no interest in “starting a witch-hunt” and that her story is her own. Even so, Black Panther Woman offers more than a tale of one woman’s survival. Perkins’ documentary turns a critical eye on the experience of Indigenous women in the Aboriginal civil rights movement as a whole. </p>
<p>It asks important questions about the “code of silence” that protected the cause from media attacks. In doing so, it also denounces the white political agenda that enforced it and still holds whole Indigenous communities responsible for the actions of individuals. As Cummins says in an interview:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we pointed the finger at one black man, they’d say it was all black men.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55246/original/zbyy2wpf-1406692064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Panther Woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The voice of the archives</h2>
<p>The complex interactions between Cummins’ personal history and the wider experience of Indigenous women in the movement is reflected in Perkins’ documentary. Black Panther Woman plays out as an observational narrative: the story takes centre stage. By interweaving interviews with archival footage from the protests of the 1970s and stills from Cummins’ personal life, Perkins provides another layer of interpretation to the events. </p>
<p>As in her 2007 series <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/">First Australians</a>, the inclusion of archival materials asks the viewer to connect with the story at an emotional level. As Cummins talks about her life in the Black Panthers we are presented with personal footage from what looks like a spontaneous theatre performance. </p>
<p>We see a young Cummins on a day out with Dennis Walker and the rest of the Brisbane chapter members. Cummins jokes about feeling like an “Aboriginal woman superhero” at the time. We are offered a rare and precious look into what being a member of the Black Panthers must have felt like for a young Aboriginal woman.</p>
<p>Footage from Alessandro Cavadini’s 1972 documentary about black activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, <a href="http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/ningla-a-na/">Ningla A-Na</a>, is drawn into the documentary alongside Cummins’ photos. In this way Perkins provides a larger political stage for a personal history.</p>
<h2>A blues song to start a dialogue</h2>
<p>Black Panther Woman is also the result of a long friendship between Perkins and Cummins. </p>
<p>As such, it’s a documentary where the distance between director and subject is reduced to dialogue. As Cummins reflects on the violence suffered by Indigenous women, she pauses for a second and asks Perkins, “Is that what you want to hear?” Perkins replies, “I want to know why you want to tell this story.” </p>
<p>It’s just a brief moment, but one that speaks to the need to name the abuse and to start a conversation about the “code of silence”. Black Panther Woman breaks 40 years of silence and asks for dialogue – and it does so with the strength and grace of one of Marlene Cummins’ blues songs.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matteo Dutto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I sing this song. I sing it for my sisters. For I feel the backbone of our struggle in this country, Trying to keep it together. Koori Woman – Marlene Cummins Rachel Perkins’ latest documentary, Black…Matteo Dutto, PhD Candidate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297582014-08-12T00:02:02Z2014-08-12T00:02:02ZWetlands: sugar and spice at MIFF<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55253/original/2zmgqm4y-1406693278.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Watching Wetlands is an unquestionably visceral experience and is not for the easily repulsed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2524674/">Wetlands</a>, directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1177494/">David Wnendt</a> and based on the best-selling novel by Charlotte Roche, is part of an ever-expanding body of work that gives the lie to the “sugar and spice” conception of women and girls’ sexuality. </p>
<p>Playing as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival’s <a href="http://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/category/International+Panorama">International Panorama</a>, this German film is about a sensation-seeking young woman, Helen Memel (Carla Juri), who relishes sex, germs and body fluids. Describing herself as a “living pussy hygiene experiment”, Helen resolves to live as filthy a life as possible. Her favoured exploits include wiping her bare backside on public toilet seats and swapping tampons with her best friend Corinna (Marlen Kruse), a girl who was ostracised at school after she performed a scatological sex act on her boyfriend.</p>
<p>Watching Wetlands is an unquestionably visceral experience and is not for the easily repulsed. The exposition is a veritable hazing ritual for audiences: in the first 15 minutes, Helen wades through toilet sewerage, discusses the consistency of her cervical mucous and picks at the haemorrhoids that have her plagued her since childhood. </p>
<p>The gross-outs taper off slightly (but certainly not entirely) once the story begins in earnest. One morning before school, Helen accidentally nicks her anus while shaving her nether regions and is hospitalised for rectal surgery. While there, she decides to “parent-trap” her divorced mother and father, hoping to trick them into visiting the hospital at the same time and subsequently to rekindle their relationship. </p>
<p>For all its taboo-breaking content, Wetlands is underpinned by a heartfelt sincerity and sweetness — the girl who thinks nothing of contaminated toilet seats is actually a softie who cannot accept her parents’ separation.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xjiFA-ku-A0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Wetlands.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women’s transgressive desire is certainly not a new theme upon which to base a narrative. Earlier texts like Catherine Breillat’s film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0194314/">Romance</a> (1999), Lena Dunham’s TV series Girls (2012 – ) and Caitlin Moran’s novel <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/caitlin-moran/how-to-build-a-girl-9780091949006.aspx">How To Build a Girl</a> (2014) make a point of being candid about the indecorous dimensions of women’s sexuality. </p>
<p>What makes Wetlands idiosyncratic is the way it marries this impulse to the concerns of the teen film genre. Wnendt’s film addresses a common adolescent concern: the feeling of being invisible to one’s parents. The solution it proposes is a hyper-engagement with one’s own body. </p>
<p>A series of flashbacks inform us that Helen’s mother and father constantly ignored their daughter as a child, recoiling whenever she initiated any form of intimacy with them. In one of these scenes, eight-year-old Helen attempts to inflate a pink flotation device — realising she cannot do it herself, she asks her father to blow it up for her. She gauchely declares that the exchange of saliva involved in the act is like a kiss, something that leaves her dad nonplussed. This scene repeats itself in the diegetic present when Helen’s father inflates a haemorrhoid pillow. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55252/original/9v24vh66-1406693167.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wetlands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These scenes give the impression that Helen was left alone as a child to peel her scabs and pick her nose. In the absence of her parents’ recognition, she continued this behaviour into her adolescent life as a means of asserting her own being. Instead of talking with one’s peers (the proposed solution to adolescent loneliness in films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/">The Breakfast Club</a> (John Hughes, 1985) or forming a surrogate family with other teens - <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048545/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Rebel Without a Cause</a> (Nicholas Ray, 1955); <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840196/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Skins</a> (2007-13) - the ratification of selfhood in Wetlands occurs through a relishing of body fluids.</p>
<h2>The unbroken taboo</h2>
<p>For all this, however, Wetlands does not capture the feeling of adolescence very well.</p>
<p>Although the film bears the hallmarks of a YA sensibility — adults are buffoons, teens are the repositories of wisdom — Helen is about 18 years old and is therefore legally an adult. She checks herself into hospital without needing her parents’ consent, and she makes the very mature decision to move in with her boyfriend at the film’s conclusion. </p>
<p>Actress Carla Juri was 27 at the time of filming. Although she delivers a lively performance as Helen, her casting is central to the problem. For all her preoccupation with bodily functions, Helen possesses none of the acne-riddled, braces-clad ungainliness that makes adolescence such an excruciatingly physical experience. </p>
<p>Put bluntly, Juri is simply too beautiful and graceful to be a convincing teen. Given the importance of visual spectacle to the film, this inconsistency is difficult to ignore. One gets the feeling that the only taboo Wetlands cannot break is that of putting an awkward or “unattractive” female body in the starring role. </p>
<p>For all its colourful grotesquery, Wetlands misses a key point of both teen fiction and much of the work on women’s corporeality. You don’t need to act gross. According to the norms of society, your very personhood is gross. </p>
<p>Such an idea is captured with verve and humour in films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074285/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Carrie</a> (Brian De Palma, 1976) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210070/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Ginger Snaps</a> (John Fawcett, 2000). Self-possessed and trying too hard, Helen just seems like she’s faking it.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janice Loreck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wetlands, directed by David Wnendt and based on the best-selling novel by Charlotte Roche, is part of an ever-expanding body of work that gives the lie to the “sugar and spice” conception of women and…Janice Loreck, Teaching Associate in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/300202014-08-11T05:21:37Z2014-08-11T05:21:37ZWho conned Catherine Breillat? Abuse of Weakness at MIFF<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56148/original/x3yj48jy-1407734872.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Isabelle Huppert and Kool Shen star in Abuse of Weakness, currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/abuse-of-weakness">Abuse of Weakness</a>, currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, reflects on French director Catherine Breillat’s experience of being swindled by con-man Christophe Rocancourt. The film follows the lead character - Breillat’s double, a renowned film director named Maud, played by Isabelle Huppert – from the opening scene, in which she has a stroke, through her relationship with Rocancourt to her closing recognition that he has defrauded her of almost 700,000 euros. As it follows this path, Abuse of Weakness weaves together elements of autobiography and visual and literary history. </p>
<p>As Breillat put it when I conducted a director Q&A at MIFF last weekend, the film relies on “truth and lies” to depict intimate and familial relationships that transcend binaries of victim and villain. As with all of Breillat’s cinema, this film is sophisticated and challenging, providing affective and empathic connections to characters, symbols and scenarios.</p>
<h2>The body, out of control</h2>
<p>Abuse of Weakness opens with a crumpled swathe of white sheets, a muted colour palette designed to express coldness and isolation. Signs of movement can be detected beneath the sheets, but rather than the languid, fluid movement of sleep, this is a distressed agitation. </p>
<p>Maud (Isabelle Huppert) feels her left arm as if it is disconnected from her body. She pounds it in an effort to register the sensation. Maud collapses onto the ground as she tries to get out of bed. A chair falls over her and traps her further.</p>
<p>All is in silence until the soundtrack gradually rises and Maud calls for an ambulance, explaining to the operator that “half of my body is dead”. The operator misunderstands her, responding that she can’t be dead because she wouldn’t be able to speak to her. </p>
<p>Abuse of Weakness continues Breillat’s commitment to the development of highly symbolic cinema. Maud’s complexion is opalescent. Her pallid, translucent skin is framed by Titian hair. Her face looks as pale as the sheets on the bed, which are as white the walls in the hospital. Breillat has coded Maud as a contemporary form of Botticelli’s Venus. </p>
<p>Sounds of the beeping heart monitor dominate as her family watch from outside the room. As with many of Breillat’s narratives, the feminine voice is articulated explicitly and it drives the narrative. Maud’s voiceover mentions that she was told that she had experienced a massive brain hemorrhage, but she didn’t hear this, or didn’t understand it for a year. Breillat herself had a stroke in 2004 and this film draws extensively on her experiences then and afterwards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55660/original/sttpwtgj-1407135404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Isabelle Huppert stars in Abuse of Weakness, currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This film is as much about the internal struggle with the body as it is about external relationships. The camera traces Maud’s attempts to control limbs that move involuntarily, to prise her fingers out from the clenched fist that has become the default gesture. In hospital she practises pronouncing “eee” and “ooo” sounds in order to stretch her lips. Maud also sees colours that are not accurately reflected in the world. </p>
<p>The fiction of the film and the actuality of Catherine Breillat’s experience intersect in a fleeting instant where the director can be seen dressed in black, walking unsteadily down the corridor of the hospital. Maud and Catherine are on the same path here – but they are opposed in their direction.</p>
<p>The struggle is not without lightness and determination. There is a lot of laughing amid the frustration. The film shows Maud returning to her work as film director, art director, costume designer – and designer of her own long, black, chrome-studded orthopaedic boots.</p>
<h2>Meeting Vilko</h2>
<p>Abuse of Weakness prioritises the feminine point of view and affords it the power of direction. Maud is captivated by con-man Vilko Piran (Kool Shen) when she watches him talking candidly about his crimes in a television interview. </p>
<p>She calls her assistant Ezzé (Christophe Sermet) and asks him to watch as well. She decides that he should star in her next film. Vilko morphs from the flat-screen televisual image, moving into the depth of the cinematic frame as he enters Maud’s home to discuss the film. </p>
<p>During their first meeting, he climbs the stepladder and steps along her bookshelf like a cat. He says that he wants to catch up on reading, but he has never bought a book in his life, he just steals them.</p>
<p>From the beginning, Maud and Vilko are shot in separate frames. Their conversation is connected uneasily and contrasts are highlighted by positioning each against either black or white backgrounds. Initially it is an uneasy alliance, but Vilko agrees to do the film “if the ending is good”.</p>
<p>Their relationship is chaste and intimate, illicit and exciting. Vilko compares them to “Bonnie and Clyde”. They are described as “like two live hand grenades”. While she tells him that it is not her practice to see her actors before the film begins production, he counters with the pronouncement that “you’re gonna see a lot of me”. </p>
<p>When he visits next, he is wearing a Dior suit. She watches him pace and he confesses, “you’ve made me permanently anguished”. Maud repeatedly refuses to allow Vilko to sleep in her bed, assigning him to a single cot with a foam mattress instead. </p>
<p>Moments of tenderness are juxtaposed with expressions of violence. Vilko picks up Maud and carries her like a bride – but he also strikes her, abandons her and defrauds her of almost 700,000 euros.</p>
<h2>The hand that signs the cheques</h2>
<p>Breillat’s film repeats and varies the intimate (but troubling) symbolic gesture of Vilko holding open Maud’s chequebook as she writes and signs her name. While Jean-Luc Godard’s film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069398/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Tout Va Bien</a> (1972) used a montage of cheques to signify the film as commodity, the repetition of images that form the narrative sequence of exchange in Abuse of Weakness represents Vilko’s increasing influence over Maud as well as her physical decline. She becomes unable to write and sign her name and he takes over. </p>
<p>Abuse of Weakness treats confronting, unspoken issues with an intense and sometimes disturbing clarity. It represents the family and individuals as atomised and divided. </p>
<p>The family who wait outside the hospital room at the beginning of the film never enter the space to provide support. Maud’s mother doesn’t recognise her while visiting her in a nursing home. The body in decline is depicted symbolically when the grandmother is asked to stop messing with her diaper. </p>
<p>In the end, Maud attends a family meeting to discuss her financial situation. When asked what was special about Vilko, Maud replies, “he turned up”. </p>
<p>The dialogue reflects back on the family and their absence. Finally, in a revealing moment, Maud is filmed in a close-up that shows the detail of her red-rimmed eyes. She acknowledges her responsibility in the new reality that she inhabits, saying clearly: “I verified my expenses. I was lucid … I did realise it, but it didn’t matter … it was me and it wasn’t me.” </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Haslem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Abuse of Weakness, currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, reflects on French director Catherine Breillat’s experience of being swindled by con-man Christophe Rocancourt. The…Wendy Haslem, Lecturer - Screen Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297572014-08-10T21:34:18Z2014-08-10T21:34:18ZJodorowsky’s Dune: an acid trip without the acid at MIFF 2014<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55254/original/r47hmr7q-1406693371.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jodorowsky saw Dune as a chance to bring 1970s avant-garde ideas to mainstream audiences.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the big attractions at the <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival</a> this year is Frank Pavich’s documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/">Jodorowsky’s Dune</a> (2013). The film retells the story of cult Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune – as well as explaining what became of the project afterwards. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Director of acid western <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067866/?ref_=nv_sr_1">El Topo</a> (1970) and avant-garde tale <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071615/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Holy Mountain</a> (1973), Jodorowsky acquired the rights to adapt Dune in 1974. Through the sheer power of his personal charisma, he assembled an impressive team to work on the film. </p>
<p>Mick Jagger, Orson Welles and Salvador Dali were cast in key roles. Pink Floyd agreed to provide the soundtrack. A team of “up and coming” young creatives – including illustrators <a href="http://www.chrisfossart.com/">Chris Foss</a> and <a href="http://www.moebius.fr/">Jean “Mœbius” Giraud</a>, artist <a href="http://www.hrgiger.com/">H.R. Giger</a>, and special effects supervisor Dan O’Bannon — were hired to produce conceptual art. Their efforts resulted in a phonebook-sized collection of images, reverently referred to in Pavich’s documentary as “the Dune book”.</p>
<p>In keeping with the sensibilities of his earlier work, Jodorowsky saw Dune as a chance to bring 1970s avant-garde ideas to mainstream audiences. Herbert’s original novel concerns a noble family who regain political power by controlling the sole supply of a vital resource — the “spice” — that induces second sight, prescience and ancestral memory in humans who consume it. Although he hadn’t actually read the book, Jodorowsky felt an affinity with these themes of psychic awakening; they meshed well with the Surrealistic sensibilities of his earlier work. </p>
<p>By adapting Dune, Jodorowsky’s ambition was no less than to utilise the full expressive power of cinema to induce transcendent experiences in the audience’s own minds: an acid trip without the acid. </p>
<p>Predictably, Jodorowsky’s vision didn’t impress the moneymen in Hollywood. They deemed Dune unmarketable. When asked about the film’s total run-time, Jodorowsky told producers that it would come in at around 12 to 20 hours. This left the pre-production team to expend their talents elsewhere: Giger, Mœbius and O’Bannon famously went on to make <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Alien</a> (Ridley Scott, 1979), clearly drawing upon the ideas they developed while working on the Dune project.</p>
<p>Jodorowsky’s Dune is an entertaining story about a group of talented people who tried, and failed, to push Hollywood cinema towards more avant-garde themes. It is perhaps ironic, then, that Pavich’s film is a rather conventional affair. The film consists mostly of talking heads and exhibits little of the aesthetic ambition of its subject matter. Its story of the failed Dune project conforms to a predictable narrative arc of rising action, climax and dénouement. </p>
<p>In short, except for a few occasions where the artworks by Foss, Giger and Mœbius achieve cut-through by the sheer force of their beauty, there are no transcendent experiences to be had while watching Jodorowsky’s Dune. Perhaps Pavich took the lesson of the failed Dune project too greatly to heart. </p>
<p>Any lack of creative daring in the documentary is happily ameliorated by its star, Alejandro Jodorowsky himself. He is clearly a man who can spin a ripping yarn, and it doesn’t take long to see why Pavich just lets him talk.</p>
<p>Jodorowsky’s retelling captures the giddy feeling of embarking on a big creative project. When Jodorowsky recounts how he convinced Orson Welles to perform the role of bad-guy Baron Harkonnen, it indeed seems that Dune was fated to succeed. (Jodorowsky did so by offering to hire Welles’ favourite Parisian chef to cook meals on set every night.)</p>
<p>It is quite appropriate that these anecdotes should take precedence in the documentary. Jodorowsky’s innate storytelling capacity is clearly what got people interested in the first place. </p>
<p>Pavich’s film concludes by arguing that Jodorowsky’s project did in fact change cinema because it influenced half-a-dozen other movies. While it is easy to agree that the concept art for Dune inspired films like Alien and Masters of the Universe (Gary Goddard, 1987), the stronger point of Jodorowsky’s Dune is, I think, that unrealised ideas have their own beauty. The Dune project was never a film, but it was a set of gleaming pictures and ideas dreamed up in the minds of its creators. </p>
<p>The point is not merely that inspiration can arise from failure. It is that the pitch can be as poetic as the movie. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janice Loreck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of the big attractions at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year is Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013). The film retells the story of cult Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s…Janice Loreck, Teaching Associate in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/293972014-08-08T04:38:48Z2014-08-08T04:38:48ZJalanan: Busking and dreaming in the city<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55820/original/hz55vb62-1407284343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By telling the stories of Boni, Titi and Ho, Jalanan brings to the screen the hardships and precarious lives of marginalised people in one of the most economically promising Asian countries.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Jalanan Movie Team</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.danielziv.com/">Daniel Ziv</a>’s documentary feature Jalanan
(Streetside), currently screening at the <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/jalanan">Melbourne International Film Festival</a>, is a film that seeks to move its audience.</p>
<p>Documentaries sometimes invite viewers to social and political engagement. To do this, they might put viewers into uncomfortable situations. Jalanan, the story of three Jakarta buskers, Boni, Titi and Ho, is this kind of film. </p>
<p>Ziv, an Indonesia-based Canadian filmmaker, filmed the three street singers for six years. He pointed his camera at their reality and homed in on the social and political forces that shaped it. </p>
<p>By telling the stories of Boni, Titi and Ho, Jalanan brings to the screen the hardships and precarious lives of marginalised people in one of the most economically promising Asian countries. Jalanan presents the three as aspiring individuals with self-actualisation needs amid the hardship they encounter on a day-to-day basis.</p>
<h2>Everyone is looking for something</h2>
<p>Boni, an illiterate “singer-songwriter”, has been living in a canal tunnel with his wife, Rita for ten years. He dreams of a proper home yet all he can do is paint the word “Hyatt” on the tunnel wall.</p>
<p>Titi is a mother of three. Her children are scattered in three different cities. She sends money for her sickly father’s medication and for her child’s education in the village. Titi stresses how important it is that her children “not be a busker” as she is, signifying the importance of making the leap in social class. </p>
<p>The other busker, Ho, sings his political songs with a rugged voice, suggesting that his listeners “hang the corruptors”. He lives alone and tries to find true love. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jalanan is screening at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With these aspirations, the documentary subjects qualify as protagonists in a neo-classic Hollywood story: an individual tries to achieve something and faces obstacles in the process. Jalanan benefits from this model of storytelling. It avoids didactic forms and, rather, asserts some kind of audience self-identification. Wanting a better place to live, improving social status and finding true love are universal aspirations. </p>
<p>Just like in Hollywood, Jalanan also brings closure to the protagonists’ venture, keeping the audience from seriously questioning what happens to them after the screening. </p>
<p>Beyond the film, the filmmakers have started a <a href="https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/dgEM6">crowd-funding initiative</a> to provide houses for the buskers. </p>
<h2>Watching poverty in luxurious malls</h2>
<p>Viewers in Indonesia won’t escape the irony when they go to cinemas in luxurious shopping malls to watch Jalanan. But filmmakers have no choice but to screen their work in this way if they want their films to reach a larger audience in Indonesia. Gentrification of Indonesian movie theatres since the 1990s has seen small cinemas fold and mega-cinemas thrive. </p>
<p>Jalanan provides enlightenment and entertainment, of some sort, for the middle and upper class of Jakartans who are willing to spend their money on a diverting spectacle. In Indonesia, it has a limited distribution in 21 Cinepelex, the cinema chain that dominates the country’s film distribution. </p>
<h2>From the screen to public policy</h2>
<p>Despite its limited distribution, Jalanan has benefited from its status as a documentary film. Audiences often perceive arguments presented in a documentary as undeniable truths. Sometimes, the documentary form can prompt viewers’ social and political engagement.</p>
<p>Jalanan managed to do this when acting Jakarta governor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basuki_Tjahaja_Purnama">Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama</a> watched the film with his staff (the governor, Joko Widodo, now president-elect, was taking leave for his presidential election campaign). Ahok saw many things that fell under his responsibility go wrong in the documentary. Seeing the “jail”, which is actually a social rehabilitation institution where Ho was locked up, disturbed Ahok. In the film, Jakarta public order officers arrested Ho for busking and for not having his identification card. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://rollingstone.co.id/read/2014/05/26/152225/2592564/1093/dampak-film-jalanan-wakil-gubernur-jakarta-ubah-peraturan-daerah">Rolling Stone Indonesia</a>, Ahok immediately discussed with his staff what he saw in the documentary. He instructed them to close down the “jail”, expedite the development of apartments for the poor and ease regulations for newcomers to get their Jakarta ID card. He also ordered his staff to eradicate corruption in public offices, especially the religious affairs agency responsible for providing marriage certificate.</p>
<p>Jalanan’s influence on public policy in Jakarta might be a one-off. It’s hardly a typical outcome for a documentary, after all. Documentary films work hard to promote social or political engagement – or at least an awareness – with their subject. For the next level of engagement, it helps to have “reformist” public officials in the audience.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Sasono does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Daniel Ziv’s documentary feature Jalanan (Streetside), currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, is a film that seeks to move its audience. Documentaries sometimes invite viewers…Eric Sasono, Executive board secretary , Indonesian Documentary Film CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/300232014-08-07T20:28:51Z2014-08-07T20:28:51ZThese Heathen Dreams: rage and tenderness at MIFF 2014<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55823/original/zk572ywr-1407286851.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian poet and dramatist Christopher Barnett is the subject of These Heathen Dreams, a documentary screening at MIFF.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I met the Australian poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-australian-poet-youve-never-heard-of-19269">Christopher Barnett</a> in Nantes in 2009. He strode the narrow streets in his long leather coat, occasionally crossing the road in front of cars, staring drivers down. When I asked him if he would ever return to Melbourne he said no, because “here, I am magnificent”. It is true.</p>
<p><a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/these-heathen-dreams">These Heathen Dreams</a>, which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) on Tuesday, documents Barnett’s lifetime of writing, performing poetry and creating experimental theatre. Art historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/anne-marsh-106473">Anne Marsh</a> describes the lack of recognition of Barnett’s work in Australia as a national crime – and this film may go some way to addressing that.</p>
<p>The film begins with a grainy image, an extreme close-up of his ear, his face and then a glimpse of his mouth forming words in silence as the discordant, frenetic sound of the violin dominates the soundtrack. Barnett is a performance poet. His work is passionate, political, transformative – and above all else furious. The fire that colours the title text signals this fury from the start.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t2KY7qwWmas?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for These Heathen Dreams.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the film, Barnett talks about working constantly in a state of war, his voiceover revealing that “fighting” is what interests him. Songwriter Paul Kelly chimes in to add that while Barnett might not deliberately pick fights, he certainly is involved in upping the ante. Later he describes Barnett’s performances as a combination of rage and tenderness. </p>
<p>A similar rage and tenderness is at the heart of the narrative and aesthetic of These Heathen Dreams.</p>
<h2>Listen to this voice</h2>
<p>The documentary features sequences of Barnett performing poetry, rhythmically reciting the work. He performs as if in a trance – but is also completely present in the moment. He is a charismatic figure on stage with a strong, compelling voice – a commanding presence. His voice is central and heard in a range of intonations. </p>
<p>Black-and-white footage shows Barnett leading the chant at an anti-Vietnam war moratorium in Adelaide in the early 1970s. Later, he sings as he wanders down Brunswick Street in Melbourne. While Barnett’s voice is deliberate and rhythmic when he reads his poetry, it is also tender, softening in moments when he reunites with colleagues, straining slightly when he reads poetry in memory of his father. This documentary asks us to listen. </p>
<h2>In transit</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55662/original/q6bxttj7-1407135656.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These Heathen Dreams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This film begins in transit, on a road trip to Bavaria. Barnett is on his way to visit his contemporary <a href="http://www.edition-filmmuseum.com/product_info.php/language/en/info/p58_Thomas-Harlan---Wandersplitter.html">Thomas Harlan</a>. Harlan is a pioneer docu-drama filmmaker, in Barnett’s description, “a revolutionary communist”, creating “films of resistance”. </p>
<p>Harlan was the first to translate Barnett’s book <a href="http://christopherbarnett.weebly.com/the-blue-boat.html">The Blue Boat</a> into French. Symbolic images and prosaic moments build anticipation of the reunion for two ailing, creative men. In transit, the green neon light illuminating tunnels and the softer green images of abstracted landscapes appear to rush behind Barnett as he travels. The camera maintains focus on his face, pitting stillness against movement. He observes the passing landscapes through the window, smoking – always smoking. </p>
<p>Later, the car is immobilised by a problem with the fuel line. Movement and delay, clarity and abstraction build an impression of a shift towards an other worldly space.</p>
<h2>Friends and collaborators</h2>
<p>In this discursive documentary, Barnett both speaks and is spoken about. This is a narrative built on Barnett’s words interspersed with impressions from many who collaborate and are inspired by his work. The film invests in the relationships that surround Barnett – present and past. Harlan, for example, is devoted to Barnett’s creative life, describing his work with new writers as a miracle.</p>
<p>Barnett is the co-founder of <em>Le Dernier Spectator</em> (with Stéphane Anizon), a theatre laboratory in Nantes dedicated to working with people on the margins of society. Barnett understands this as returning to his origins, using “the same equation of what is creation” to facilitate survival and transformation. A participant in his workshops, Lucette Dubuc, talks about the transformative potential of the writing process, saying that “once it’s written, it’s not the same. It’s a relief”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55663/original/5rczbq39-1407135781.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These Heathen Dreams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These Heathen Dreams includes beautiful footage of the Adelaide suburbs shot by John Cumming. Cumming films Barnett’s return to his family home after decades of absence. </p>
<p>The framing is intimate, the spaces shallow, exposing the depth of connection between Barnett and his brother Michael. In the small space of the kitchen the brothers talk about Michael’s writing. They are connected by proximity and both move uneasily beneath the gaze of the camera. Slightly wavering eye contact hints at the histories of presence and absence in this family. These men are connected intimately within space, within the family and as writers. </p>
<p>Other sequences show Barnett’s mother Dorothy retreating into the kitchen to make some tea and to escape the camera. Later, she describes the difficulty of standing, monitoring her son, fearful of the impact of drugs on his body.</p>
<h2>Absences and memory</h2>
<p>There is more than a spectre of absence in These Heathen Dreams. The documentary is structured around memory and the continuing influence of those absent. Barnett describes the absence of his father who was ill throughout most of his life. He recalls how during his infrequent visits home, his father would set him writing tasks. Barnett recounts his memory, as a 12-year-old boy, of trying to wake his father in vain. </p>
<p>Another absent presence is the Turkish-American activist Furkan Dogan, who was shot in close proximity in Gaza in 2010. The memory of Dogan inspired <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-australian-poet-youve-never-heard-of-19269">the creation and publication of the epic poem</a>, When They Came/For You: Elegies/of Resistance (2013). </p>
<p>These Heathen Dreams identifies Barnett as a deliberate exile, an exile by choice. He says that he arrived with $200 in France, a place where “the breathing is easier”. Nantes, where he now lives, is on the Loire River in the north-west of France. In the 18th century it was a principal port for the slave trade.</p>
<p>In the second world war, German forces occupied Nantes. It was bombed and then liberated by US forces. It is a site of turbulence and struggle, a place where Barnett’s work is appreciated deeply and where he feels at home. </p>
<p>Directed by Anne Tsoulis, produced by Georgia Wallace-Crabbe, funded by a crowd-sourcing campaign and supported by the South Australian Film Corporation, These Heathen Dreams is an eloquent and passionate documentary that provides some very late recognition of the importance of Christopher Barnett’s work for Australian and global literary cultures. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Haslem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I met the Australian poet Christopher Barnett in Nantes in 2009. He strode the narrow streets in his long leather coat, occasionally crossing the road in front of cars, staring drivers down. When I asked…Wendy Haslem, Lecturer - Screen Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297622014-08-07T04:37:23Z2014-08-07T04:37:23ZDeath begets life in Rajesh Jala’s Children of the Pyre<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55241/original/ftq3vjpg-1406691513.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New Indian documentary cinema: Children of the Pyre.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rajesh Jala’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1347314/">Children of the Pyre</a> (2008) is one of seven documentary features in the <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/streams/india-in-flux-living-resistance#article271">India in Flux: Living Resistance</a> strand at the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). </p>
<p>The film is a finely balanced ethnography, which oscillates between matters of life and death, between tragedy and optimism. Reminiscent of Mira Nair’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096028/">Salaam Bombay</a> (1988) and Justin Peach’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1507965/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2a">Lonely Pack</a> (2009), the film chronicles the lives of seven adolescent boys who live and work at India’s most sacred cremation ground in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi. </p>
<p>The promise of Moksha, or salvation, means that hundreds of thousands of Hindus are cremated on wood pyres at Manikarnika Ghat, the open-air crematorium on the banks of the river Ganges. The crematorium never shuts. Once the priests and the families have retired after saying their prayers, it is the boys who step in. They turn over the slow-burning corpses, fanning the pyres and pilfering the resalable shrouds to make a meagre living. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OTVJCC4IYK4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Children of the Pyre (2008).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The filmmaker</h2>
<p>Jala’s unsentimental film is the product of two years of filming and a relationship of immense trust between him and his young film subjects. A political refugee from militancy torn Kashmir, Jala fled to Delhi in 1990 and lived in a refugee camp until 1998. The traumatic experience of exile shapes his philosophy of art; he aspires to make cinema that reveals the human aspect of conflict. </p>
<p>Thus what could have been a shrill or voyeuristic gaze into an unfamiliar world is, in Jala’s film, an even-handed but unflinching look at the conditions in which the boys work. Jala is particularly interested in their labour and in translating the conditions of the extraordinary space in which they work into the idiom of cinema.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55243/original/fvqcp6xs-1406691532.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children of the Pyre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jala approaches the narrative of labour through multiple angles. Stealing shrouds is a form of petty crime but Jala accords it the status of labour in a space where the boys are in fact shown working extremely hard and for long hours. </p>
<p>Jala’s camera stands by and watches the petty fights and arguments that erupt as each shroud is snatched from a burning corpse. The camera dwells at length on the inferno-like conditions in which this labour occurs. Often the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-mise-en-sc-ne-27281">mise-en-scène</a> is composed with the young subjects in the foreground positioned against a burning pyre in the background, the visual arrangement at once disturbing and evocative.</p>
<p>The factors that produce the inner state of the young subjects form a vital area of Jala’s inquiry. Manish and Ravi speak at length about the frightening dreams and the ghosts – but it is the silence, gestures and body language that interest Jala. </p>
<p>The sadness, the premature wisdom, the lies, the violence, aggression and hopelessness testify to the social construction of human nature and human self. With an unflinching but deeply sympathetic gaze, Jala captures an interiority that shifts the film from merely a record of the visible towards a complex realm of the psychological.</p>
<h2>A new Indian documentary cinema</h2>
<p>Moving away from the classic historical aesthetics of Indian political documentary such as juxtaposition, talking heads and collective speech, Jala treats the space, film subjects and issues with considered artistry, a hallmark of new Indian documentary cinema. </p>
<p>Cinematic techniques, contrasting colour palette, tonal music, meticulous close-up cinematography and variable film speed impart a poetic visual texture to the film and create space for subjective modes of spectator engagement. Without resorting to exoticism, Jala conveys the paradox between the quotidian and the extraordinary through well-placed observations. After watching a public dance performance, Manish quietly notes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the girls were dancing on one side, the bodies were burning on the other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The compelling narrative raises several questions of both local and universal importance. </p>
<p>In relation to India, the film exposes the irregularity of “growth” and claims of economic development in relation to one of its most vulnerable social groups. It pointedly refers to the ongoing caste-based discrimination in a nation that prides itself on its expanding middle class. But the universal questions it raises are about the relativist notions of childhood – and about the acceptance of brutality.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shweta Kishore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rajesh Jala’s Children of the Pyre (2008) is one of seven documentary features in the India in Flux: Living Resistance strand at the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). The film is a finely…Shweta Kishore, PhD Cndidate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297512014-08-06T04:37:36Z2014-08-06T04:37:36ZSeeing sounds, hearing images: Experimental Shorts at MIFF 2014<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55347/original/sjndv8jr-1406763334.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from Pablo Mazzolo's Photooxidation, one of the films on the Experimental Shorts program at MIFF.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The nine films that comprise the Melbourne International Film Festival’s <a href="http://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/category/Experimental+Shorts">Experimental Shorts</a> program confront viewers with questions about image, form and genre. The Experimental Shorts program is an annual feature of the festival, one that is eagerly anticipated by aficionados of the avant-garde – and it challenges audiences to reflect on what’s real onscreen.</p>
<p>Daylesford-based filmmaker <a href="http://www.nanolab.com.au/biography.htm">Richard Tuohy</a>’s 20-minute black-and-white flicker film Dot Matrix opens the night. It features two 16mm projectors firing at the same 4:3 screen space over the heads of the audience. The ornate EIKI 16mm projectors are the first thing the audience sees upon entering the cinema. </p>
<p>Tuohy and his partner Dianna Barrie are preparing to monitor the performance – and when the lights go down, projector reels and hands are silhouetted by flashlights upon the cinema’s ceilings and walls.</p>
<p>The film’s white and black dots begin to pour out onto the screen in front of us. The images you see are also what you hear in this expanded cinema work. Skittering runs of stereo blips stutter out of the cinema’s sound system. The dots appear not only on the screen but across the optical soundtrack of the film. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55349/original/63mqwkgt-1406763453.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Tuohy’s Dot Matrix opened the Experimental Shorts program at MIFF2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s so experimental about this short?</h2>
<p>The Experimental Shorts program is one of eight sessions devoted to short films at MIFF this year. It is easy to wonder, as the nine shorts in this session are screened, sometimes in complete silence, what ties them together. What makes a film “experimental” – as opposed to “animation” or simply “<a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/wtf-shorts">WTF</a>”?</p>
<p>Between them, the Experimental Shorts sessions present a crooked history of artist-made cinema – and they remind us just how unhelpful the term “experimental” can sometimes be as a qualifier. </p>
<p>The tradition of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking ensures it is always at least aware of its proximity to modern art. This is especially the case with the final film of the program, <a href="http://www.laureprouvost.com">Laure Prouvost’s</a> digital assemblage Grandma’s Dream. </p>
<p>Prouvost won the Turner prize for her earlier work, Wantee (2013), the precursor to this nine-minute account of contemporary art as a post-conceptual and cultural-consumer dystopia. The sky appears to blush as lo-fi images of a white BMW pop up and a child-like voiceover narrates the imagined wishes of a fictional and ironically absent older generation.</p>
<h2>Nine shorts, one feature?</h2>
<p>All of the films shown are premiering to Australian audiences. Unsurprisingly, they’re short too, being anywhere between five to 20 minutes in length. The length might seem somewhat arbitrary – but they add up to a total program that is about the same length as a common feature film, just right for efficient consumption by a festival audience. The result is often a confusing collection of disparate images.</p>
<p>The selection panel for this year’s program have done a good job of creating some sense of continuity between the films. This means there is also a kind of meta-narrative linking the program. Familiar themes of space and time emerge after New Zealand filmmaker <a href="http://www.ramirfilms.co.nz/">SJ Ramir</a>’s grainy No Place To Rest is followed by <a href="http://www.sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/filmmaker/4196">Eve Heller</a>’s cut-up of found footage sci-fi and kitsch. </p>
<p>The black and white of Dot Matrix gently gives way to colour. The penultimate work on the program, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/photooxidation">Pablo Mazzolo</a>’s Photooxidation, shows a young boy, who appears to be blind, staring out unfocused at the camera while chaotic scenes and images in <a href="http://artistfilmworkshop.org/2012/10/quadroscope-workshop-notes/">quadroscope</a> flow around him. </p>
<p>Rainer Kohlberger’s digital experiment in colour and sound, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/humming-fast-and-slow?stream=Short+Films">humming, fast and slow</a>, like cinema-assisted synaesthesia, recapitulates Tuohy’s more classic cinematic pose, now with digital raster effects. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55348/original/ygd6rxyw-1406763420.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rainer Kohlberger’s humming, fast and slow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Narratives for our time</h2>
<p>The centre of the program is American filmmaker <a href="http://nathanieldorsky.net/">Nathaniel Dorsky</a>’s silent film Song. Shot on glorious 16mm colour stock from the beginning of October 2012 through to the northern winter solstice of that year, the stunning vision of this master filmmaker reduces the form of experiment to one of neat composition, framed only by the lens onto the world. </p>
<p>Double exposures are produced through reflections of San Francisco streets in shop windows while interiors appear so muted they become otherworldly. Following directly in the lineage of the independent American cinema of the 1950s and after, Dorsky’s cinema is tied to the post-Emersonian landscape idealised by film critics such as <a href="http://global.oup.com/academic/product/eyes-upside-down-9780195331158;jsessionid=C4342BF1C796A34E5B69CD3B8E837DA5?cc=au&lang=en&">P. Adams Sitney</a>. The film is a poem of images, the expression of an artist whose medium is the industrial stuff of modern movement.</p>
<p>Michael Robinson’s looping <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/6379">The Dark, Krystle</a> follows, providing a kind of comic relief as Dynasty-era soapstars are ordered to play the same scenes over and over again. In <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/6380">45 7 Broadway</a>, Tomonari Nishikawa’s colour-separated images of contemporary New York reveal the cinema’s deep link to an image culture that retreats to the surface and feeds only on light.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the same questions are being asked here again and again: what is time in the age of the cinema? What space do we inhabit collectively in the screen and together in the half light of this industrial apparatus? </p>
<p>Without experimental cinema, unafraid to break with the suspension of disbelief, the cinema effect would not have a ground zero.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giles Fielke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The nine films that comprise the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Experimental Shorts program confront viewers with questions about image, form and genre. The Experimental Shorts program is an annual…Giles Fielke, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/300432014-08-05T04:33:31Z2014-08-05T04:33:31ZTwo Days, One Night: working hard for the Dardennes brothers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55725/original/99r83nkc-1407193351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marion Cotillard stars in Two Days, One Night, currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Audiences familiar with Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes won’t need any recommendation to see their latest film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2737050/">Two Days, One Night</a>, which is on the program of the Melbourne International Film Festival. The brothers have twice won the Palme D'Or at Cannes, first for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200071/">Rosetta</a> in 1999 and then for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456396/?ref_=nv_sr_2">L’Enfant</a> in 2005, and have produced yet another feature in their brittle signature style.</p>
<p>The question for many will not be whether Two Days, One Night is worth watching, but whether there’s something to learn about the Dardennes that we don’t already know. I think there is.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/06BNjqSsGqo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Two Days, One Night.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Dardennes Device</h2>
<p>Every Dardennes film has what sci-fi villains call a Device: selling a baby, a bike, fake marriages, a child murdering a child, crepes. </p>
<p>The Device in Two Days, One Night is a workplace ballot, and it swiftly sets a dramatic tone for a film about precarious labour. Sandra (Marion Cotillard) is returning to work after a period of leave and finds that her co-workers have been given a choice for a collective vote: keep Sandra or keep their annual bonuses.</p>
<p>Acquiring colleagues’ votes becomes Sandra’s mission across the weekend. The time middle-class people usually set aside for leisure is consumed by the labour of staying middle-class. The film is littered with awkward signifiers of social aspiration - pizzas, ice-cream, a patio renovation, afternoon football. Some thicken the mood, others are just distracting.</p>
<p>Through telephone calls and home visits we come to understand the complexity of Sandra’s circumstances. Lower-income workers cannot afford to sacrifice a bonus to support others. The retention of an additional employee on a team of 16 could further jeopardise the renewal of existing fixed-term contracts.</p>
<p>The fear of unemployment overwhelms the workplace itself, eroding social bonds and distorting the relationships between managers and the managed. Sandra is expected to resolve a problem that can only be addressed through collective action and industrial reforms. </p>
<p>This is not the first foray into social commentary for the Dardennes brothers. Their <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/feb/09/features.xanbrooks">film Rosetta provided the title</a> – if not the content – for labour reform legislation in Belgium designed to protect adolescent workers on the minimum wage.</p>
<h2>A cinema of industrial relations?</h2>
<p>What could be the function of a storyline for which any satisfying resolution must exceed individual decision-making and the characters we encounter on screen?</p>
<p>This is a technical problem for film-makers because it is hard to make industrial dramas – well, <em>dramatic</em>. Work-related conflicts rarely exhibit poetic elegance. While fans of the Dardennes have been weaned onto startling sketches of post-industrial malaise, few have come to crave <em>unstartling</em> sketches of that same malaise. The startling bit matters.</p>
<p>Let’s imagine a world where career trajectories follow vertical lines upwards and eventually downwards. It would make sense in this world for films to be preoccupied with themes of maturity, leadership and self-improvement. </p>
<p>Most gangster movies work this way. Lowly mobsters get toughened up so they can pass through the ranks and become self-governing moguls. Hollywood has produced a raft of storylines modelled on this pathway: apprenticeship, mastery, despotism.</p>
<p>This is not the world in which most people live. It is certainly not the world in which the Dardennes make movies. </p>
<p>Two Days, One Night has little to say about mobility and aspiration, but much to say about immobility and retention. Retain your job. Retain your bonus. Retain your relationship. Consolidation through repetition is central. </p>
<p>Sandra’s desperation and humiliation is restaged with each co-worker, producing agonising repetitions loosely reminiscent of the direct cinema classic, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064921/">Salesman</a> (1968). Time does not expand or shrink with the turbulence of human emotion - the same thing happens twice, and then again and again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55655/original/bx6hv5y4-1407134229.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Timur Magomedgadzhiev and Marion Cotillard star in Two Days, One Night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Too many twists?</h2>
<p>But the Dardennes become restless. As if in homage to Charlie Kaufmann’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268126/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Adaptation</a> (2002), the film erupts in sudden bursts. Two Days, One Night is soon shot through by unwieldy attempts at emotional excitation: overblown conflicts, sentimental vignettes, quickly forgotten character revelations. </p>
<p>For want of a better term, the film becomes too cinematic. Rather than letting the mechanics of the situation play out, situations are multiplied to form a loose and unsatisfying web of personal dramas.</p>
<p>Along the way our protagonist acquires new qualities. At first, Sandra is not presented as a charismatic lead. Her situation could be that of any worker whatsoever in a post-industrial economy. But then, alongside revelations about her experience of depression, Sandra becomes a conspicuously good person. </p>
<p>For an ungenerous viewer, Two Days, One Night could be yet another film about self-determination and generosity. Perhaps the long-play of television is better suited to situations that cannot be wrapped up by confrontations between good and bad motivations. The wrapping in Two Days, One Night is certainly not neat, but it does feel over-wrapped nonetheless.</p>
<p>This film is a good example of the Dardennes’ trademark undecorated and unsentimental style. It constructs its depleted social reality with ease. For fans, though, it’s hard to watch this film without making comparisons to their earlier works. </p>
<p>A casual examination of shots, cuts, montages, soundtracking and cast members reveals too many similarities between Two Days, One Night and Rosetta, L’Enfant or Le Gamin Au Vélo. In previous films we barely noticed the impeccable fussiness of the screenplay; by comparison, Two Days, One Night can feel lumpy.</p>
<p>Despite some striking and funny moments, there’s too heavy reliance on a single gimmick – the Dardennes Device – to flesh out overlapping concerns about labour, depression, domesticity and social reciprocity. As a result, compared with previous offerings from the Dardennes, Two Days, One Night feels like hard work.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30043/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Laurie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Audiences familiar with Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes won’t need any recommendation to see their latest film, Two Days, One Night, which is on the program of the Melbourne International…Timothy Laurie, Lecturer, Screen and Cultural Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297482014-08-04T05:29:11Z2014-08-04T05:29:11ZKumiko, the Treasure Hunter enchants at MIFF 2014<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55202/original/68vb5hbc-1406680305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rinko Kikuchi stars in Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the most part we live in disenchanted times: everyday life and the political landscape seem increasingly dried of their magical possibilities. Instead they are filled with dross and drone, the relentless violence of war and the pursuit of individual material gain. </p>
<p>That is not to say we don’t still gather around our storytellers and myth-makers to help us re-enchant this disappointing present. Film, of course, remains one of the most beautiful storytelling art forms. Re-enchantment takes on complex trajectories and encounters, beguiling us with its tall fantasies and richly evocative impressions.</p>
<p>If there is one recent film that captures this sublime dance between the anomic present and hopeful questing, then it is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3263614/">Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter</a>, one of the standout films of this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.</p>
<p>The film tells the “true story” of Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi), a lonely and isolated “office girl” who believes, or at least invests in the magic possibility, that the suitcase of stolen cash that was buried in the classic 1996 Coen brothers movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116282/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Fargo</a> is really there to be discovered. </p>
<p>Kumiko watches the loot “burial” scene over and over on a disintegrating VHS tape. With careful precision she makes a cloth map where she thinks X marks the exact spot where the treasure can be unearthed. Stealing her condescending boss’s credit card, she travels from the atomised concrete jungle of Tokyo to the white winter wastelands of Minnesota with the sole intent of discovering the cash. </p>
<p>However, her journey is as much psychological and sensorial, as she crosses between the liminal borders of the real and the illusionary. Fact and fiction are woven together like a mystical tapestry in this film. The utopian possibility of film’s dream-state is drawn upon to create encounters of hope and longing, and mentalscapes of desire and belonging.</p>
<h2>Tokyo to Minnesota</h2>
<p>The film’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-mise-en-sc-ne-27281">mise-en-scène</a> moves from the closed and tightly framed spaces of a teeming but disconnected Tokyo to the expansive if primal spaces of a bleached Minnesota. </p>
<p>These spaces, however, are not filmed entirely for their logics of difference. </p>
<p>Kumiko’s cramped Tokyo apartment seems to weep its own malcontent, while the tundra forest she is found in at the end of the film ensnares her in its own crown of barren thorns. She is lost in both Tokyo and Minneapolis – even if by journey’s end she undergoes a beautiful resurrection in the depths of the snow.</p>
<p>Shot in anamorphic widescreen and with a subjective point of view, we experience the world through Kumiko’s eyes and ears. </p>
<p>In the Tokyo settings, everything in her peripheral vision is rendered a blur and the sounds that she hears are amplified, distorted and estranged. This is internal diegetic sound, emanating from the mind of a character, which squarely draws us into her wayward subjectivity in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55203/original/59zh4d2w-1406680386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kumiko the Treasure Hunter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Listening with Kumiko</h2>
<p>In one scene in the film, as she sits in a café with a friend’s child she has only just met, the discordant sound of a coffee espresso machine becomes a distressed wailing child. As Kumiko takes physical flight, so do we mentally - our taut imaginations bent out of shape by the world turned sonically upside down.</p>
<p>The sound design for the film is magnificent, scored by the experimental indie pop group, <a href="http://www.theoctopusproject.com/">The Octopus Project</a> - who were awarded the Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Their score is then mixed or blended with the actual Fargo soundtrack. It is as if we are hearing two films simultaneously, both being played out in Kumiko’s psyche.</p>
<p>The closer that Kumiko gets to the mythical treasure the more the sonic textures seem to bleed out from her own conscious embodiment. In the winter storm she is finally engulfed in we witness her breakdown and the breakdown of the sound and image in the film as momentarily everything turns to darkness and silence.</p>
<p>Rinko Kikuchi’s performance as Kumiko is simply extraordinary. Mostly silent, communicating through gesture, facial expression and the liquid impressions of her doleful eyes, she captures the innocence of the protagonist struggling to make sense of her own alienation in the modern world. The close-up shot that is employed to capture her bewilderment is heartrending – all we have is her tears and melancholy to feel. </p>
<p>Her relative silence draws attention to power inequalities in the world, and to cultural differences such as the one she encounters with the old lady who offers her the book Shogun as an example of excellent Japanese literature. </p>
<p>This is also, then, a film of constant allusion and tiered self-reflexivity: the red coat that Kumiko wears throughout the film is reminiscent of both Little Red Riding Hood and the girl/killer from Nicholas Roeg’s 1976 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069995/">Don’t Look Now</a>. The blanket she wears at the end of the film calls to mind the spaghetti western and the kabukimono of Kabuki theatre, while Takeshi Kitano’s 2002 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330229/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Dolls</a> registers as one of its textual references. The film’s strong central character pays homage to the cinema of Werner Herzog, while the ski-lift ride Kumiko takes at the film’s end is a direct allusion to his 1977 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075276/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Stroszek</a>. </p>
<p>Truth, of course, haunts the film, as it does much of contemporary life. In an age of sound bites, misinformation, propaganda and news agenda setting, truth seems to be in short supply. Cinema, of course, creates believable worlds and demands of us our suspension of disbelief.</p>
<p>Kumiko distrusts the possibility of there being truth in the real world but imagines she can find it in the fictitious folds of film. She cannot distinguish between the real and fiction, and neither perhaps can we, as the image-makers of the world flood us with their own terrible fictions.</p>
<p><em>Note: a thank you to Tania Lewis for seeing and hearing the film, and for discussing its beautiful truths with me.</em> </p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Redmond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For the most part we live in disenchanted times: everyday life and the political landscape seem increasingly dried of their magical possibilities. Instead they are filled with dross and drone, the relentless…Sean Redmond, Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.