Foreign Parts

Showing at MoMA: Foreign Parts, directed by Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki


Synopsis from the MoMA website:

With the support of Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, anthropologists Véréna Paravel and J. P. Sniadecki spent two years filming this intimate portrait of the auto repair shops and junkyards that lie in the shadow of the New York Mets’ Citi Field Stadium, in Willets Point, Queens, and the hardscrabble community of immigrants who work and live there. Once ignored and neglected by the city government, these residents recently became the target of a $3 billion redevelopment project of malls, offices, and high-rise condos. The rezoning and gentrification of the area, while perhaps less notorious in the annals of aesthetic crime than the destruction of Manhattan’s Penn Station, has been no less destructive to the vitality and diversity of New York City. Foreign Parts was awarded Best First Feature and a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival, and was a highlight of the 2010 New York Film Festival.

Stonewall Uprising

Opening at the Film Forum this weekend: Stonewall Uprising, directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner

Synopsis from AllMovie:

Filmmakers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner team up to explore the Stonewall riots, an event that served as a sharp turning point for gay rights in the United States. The setting was a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn; the date was June 28, 1969. It was a time when homosexuality was still seen as a dangerous mental illness, and raids on gay gathering spots were commonplace. When New York City police raided the mafia-run establishment, they figured the patrons could be herded into paddy wagons without a fight – they were wrong. Over the course of the next three days, gay protestors clashed with police in an uprising that made headlines across the world. In this film, participants from both sides of the conflict offer firsthand testimony about the social climate of the era, and the riots that sparked a revolution.

What’s in a Name

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: What's in a Name, directed by Eva Küpper

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

What’s in a Name is a riveting portrait of 52-year-old Jon Cory, a charismatic New York City body-art performer whose raw and provocative acts—and their meticulous preparations—challenge society’s limited views on gender. Jon, a carpenter by day, lives out of his small workshop. He uses a cramped closet to store his numerous costumes and wigs, to prepare for his performances, and to sleep. Jon’s artistic dedication to challenging current gender norms is portrayed by the laborious process of transformation he undergoes for one 2-1/2 minute show. From taping his testicles to his bum to combing out his wig, the film smartly zeroes in on intimate moments of body manipulation, giving us unique insight into Jon’s world. When Jon decides to get breast implants for one of his performances, he struggles again with his identity and his place in society. - Shannon Abel

The film's Facebook page is here.

Blank City

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Blank City, directed by Celine Danhier

Synopsis from the film's Facebook page:

Uncovering New York’s underexposed filmmaking movements circa 1977 to 1987, this provocative documentary begins when New York City was ripe with cheap rent, cheap drugs, a summer hit by “Son of Sam,” and a 25-hour blackout. Captivated by the newly emerging downtown music scene, and inspired by Amos Poe’s 1977 punk documentary Blank Generation, two distinct groups of novice filmmakers emerged, hell-bent on capturing the volatile world around them.

The first group, a rebellious group of artists, musicians and writers, came together to create films soon to be labeled “No Wave Cinema.” Stark and confrontational, the films mirrored the rising “No Wave” music scene as well as referencing French New Wave, Film Noir and the films of John Waters and Andy Warhol. Filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, Eric Mitchell, Beth B, Charlie Ahearn, and Lizzie Borden showcased the city’s grittiness, bearing witness to the early East Village art and music scenes and the birth of hip hop. Short, long, color or black-and-white, the films portrayed themes of alienation and were all made on the fly with virtually no budget. Although several filmmakers broke out with more accessible independent films, the No Wave Cinema movement burned out quickly.

The second group exploded onto the downtown scene in 1984. "Cinema of Transgression" filmmakers Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Tommy Turner, and Casandra Stark incorporated harsher realities of sex, violence and drugs. Theaters banned the films and the Wall Street Journal denounced them. When these films screened outside New York, prints were often confiscated or protested against. But just as quickly the downtown filmmaking community further disintegrated as jealousy and circumstance tore the group apart.

Though short-lived, the indelible and lasting impression these strange and exciting film movements created continues to play a part in inspiring a new generation of independent filmmakers.

The film's website is here.

Stages

Showing at the Portland Women's Film Festival: Stages, directed by Meerkat Media Arts Collective

Synopsis from the PWFF website:

In New York City's changing Lower East Side, a group of older Puerto Rican women and inner-city youth come together to create an original play out of the stories of their lives. Over twenty weeks, the participants confront stereotypes and examine their own histories, exploring themes of immigration, relationships, aging and coming of age. Woven together, their stories take on new meaning, first as they are spoken across generations, and later when they are performed for a sold-out show. In response to a political climate that assigns little value to community arts initiatives, Stages offers an intimate portrait of an unlikely ensemble, transformed by the liberating power of their own stories.

The Imperialists Are Still Alive!

Showing at Sundance: The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, directed by Zeina Durra

Synopsis from the film's website:

A successful visual artist working in post-9/11 Manhattan, Asya lives the life of the hip and glamorous, replete with exclusive art parties, supermodels, and stretch limousines while she carefully follows the situation in the Middle East on television. Asya learns that her childhood friend, Faisal, has disappeared-the victim of a purported CIA abduction. That same night, she meets Javier, a sexy Mexican PhD student, and romance blossoms. Javier finds Asya's conspiracy theories overly paranoid-but nothing in Asya's world is as it seems. Asya's life is reflective of the themes of cultural fusion, and the complications and humor that arise simultaneously out of everyday life.

Zeina Durra's atmospheric debut feature is an alluring and intelligent look at the way the war on terror seeps into the texture of everyday American life. Gorgeous 16 mm grain imbues the film with an anachronistic feel that interestingly evokes times past. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is an exceptional work and heralds the arrival of Durra as an exciting new directorial talent.

There is a trailer at the link above; here is more Durra:

New York, I Love You

Opening this weekend: New York, I Love You, directed by a whole bunch of people, including Mira Nair and Natalie Portman

The whole exercise seems a bit myopic (apparently only one of the segments recognizes a city outside Manhattan), so maybe we should not be surprised that of ten directors, just two are women. Still, it could be worse.

Synopsis from the New York Times website:

New York, I Love You is the second installment in a franchise of urban anthology films that began in Paris and is scheduled to touch down soon in Rio, Shanghai, Mumbai and Jerusalem. My own sentimental heart is holding out for Dayton, Ohio. Eventually, like a cinematic version of Google Earth, these movies, the brainchild of the producer Emmanuel Benbihy, will cover every inch of the globe with big-name actors and tiny romantic epiphanies. It may not be a project that will make the world smaller or friendlier — only, perhaps, a bit more precious. Not that the 11 shorts in “New York, I Love You” are all that bad. It’s a nice-looking city, after all, even if the interstitial skyline and traffic montages assembled by Randy Balsmeyer are about as fresh as the postcards on sale in Times Square. Each vignette was shot in two days, and the roster of directing talent includes Mira Nair (“The Namesake” and the forthcoming “Amelia”), Fatih Akin (“Head-On” and “The Edge of Heaven”) and Natalie Portman, making her debut behind the camera. (She also plays a Hasidic diamond broker in Ms. Nair’s contribution.) But in spite of some attempts at human and neighborhood variety, the stories have a self-conscious sameness, as if they were classroom assignments in an undergraduate fiction-writing class.

(Let this lackluster synopsis serve as a warning to web designers for the movie websites: make your own synopses easier to cut and paste! New York, I Love You's own synopsis can be found on its website.)

Rooftop Films: Romance

Yes, a scad of really intriguing-looking women-directed films are being shown in Cannes right now, but let's face it: Cannes is really far away. And, I'm just taking a wild guess here, but it's probably extremely hard to get tickets, unless your name is Marion Cotillard or George Lucas or something. There is, however, a much closer, much cheaper alternative: this Friday (May 22nd) at 8pm at 350 Grand Street (Grand & Essex), Rooftop Films is showing a slate of short films about romance,  many of which are directed by women.

 

The full lineup:

 

Receive Bacon (James M. Johnston | Ft. Worth, Texas | 7:00) 
James Johnston is the Producer of David Lowery’s St. Nick, which will be playing later this summer at Rooftop Films. He also directed this naughty little short about a bathroom tryst that gets interrupted by a case of the giggles. 



 

Sweet Dreams (Kirsten Lepore | Maryland | 9:56) 
Whatever our dietary preferences, we pretty much all love food of some sort. And most of us love cupcakes. But what kind of food do you think your cupcake loves? 

 



The Kinda Sutra (Jessica Yu | Los Angeles | 8:00) 
Academy Award Winner Jessica Yu sat down with kids, asked them how babies are made, and animated their responses. 

 



Young Love (Emily Carmichael | New York City | 9:20) 
Two lovers lie in bed, tentatively exploring the first stages of sexual role playing. But soon the game gets a little too serious to be simply fun. But maybe that is the point of role-playing? We all remember how naïve we were about sex when we were little, but in Young Love, Emily Carmichael reminds us just how difficult it can be to figure out what we can and can’t handle in bed. 

 



The Blindness of the Woods (Martin Jalfen, Javier Lourenco | Argentina | 11:00) 
Partly a parody of 1970’s Nordic porn, partly a lesson in crocheting, this unforgettable Argentinian short marks the birth of a new genre: Cute Porn. 



 

Don McCloskey “Mister Novocaine” (Peter Rhoads | New York | 4:00) 
In a fever dream where hands are people, one hand fights the pleasure of the bottle by telling his story through song. 



 

2 Birds (Runar Runarsson | Iceland | 15:00) 
A group of young teenagers embark on a journey that transports them too quickly away from innocence and towards the stark realities of sex, adulthood, and sacrifice. 



 

Sister Wife (Jill Orschel | Utah | 10:00) 
Over time, we all come to realize that a long-term relationship requires us to make substantial sacrifices. But how many of us are willing to share our spouse with another person? And what if that other person were our sibling? Jill Orshel's powerful documentary gives voice to a woman in a polygamist marriage and asks us to question our own attitudes about love, commitment, and selflessness. 



 

Please Say Something (David O’Reilly | Ireland | 10:00) 
A 10 minute short concerning a troubled relationship between a Cat and Mouse set in the distant Future. The final film was completed in January 2009 and contains 23 episodes of exactly 25 seconds each. Images from it can be seen on the Flickr Page. The film won the Golden Bear for best short at the 2009 Berlinale.

 

Babeland (the women-owned sex shop) is a co-sponsor, so free condoms and other accessories are probably in the mix. Plus, open bar afterwards. This is really a gift to New York singles, a whole date night wrapped up in a bow for $9. More details here. Enjoy!