Zeitgeist Films

Last Train Home

mandy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Zeitgeist Films, Canada Council for the Arts

The establishing longshot of this documentary tilts down to show a few policemen in an open, paved space. Slowly the camera pans left, and the entire frame fills with thousands of people standing in a drizzle. Many hold bright, pastel-coloured umbrellas. It’s a beautiful image. The following shot, from ground level, shows that huge crowd rushing in pandemonium past the camera into a train station. These two shots are emblematic of the film: beauty and chaos inextricably interwoven.

Earth’s largest human migration occurs in China at their New Year. One hundred and thirty million people who work in cities scuffle for prized train tickets to return to villages where they were raised. Last Train Home fuses a macro view of this migration as a social and cultural phenomenon with a micro view of one family that makes this annual trek. In so doing, it underscores the high price in domestic turmoil many Chinese families pay for the country’s so-called economic miracle. It also vividly contrasts the lovely countryside with the polluted, teeming, ugliness of urban China.

Changhua Zang and Sugin Chen, husband and wife, work as sewing-machine operators in a factory in Guangzhou. They have two kids—Qin, a girl in her teens, and a boy, Yang, about ten—who live with their grandmother in Huilong Village where the parents were born. The film was shot over a couple of years, so we watch the kids grow up a bit. The parents labour at their dreary work to give their children a chance at prosperity. “You shouldn’t be like us,” they say. To this end, they constantly remind Qin and Yang to stay in school and get good grades. The parents also reveal decidedly mixed feelings about being wage slaves 2,000 kilometres away from their kids. They insist their destiny (etched in their faces) will be worth it if the kids acquire a higher education.

However, Qin, angry and bitter with her parents for their protracted absence, quits school and moves to a city, thus frustrating Changhua and Sugin’s hopes. She goes to work in a strobe-lit dance bar where the music is industrial technopop and employees’ training includes chanting capitalist slogans: “Customers are always right!” and “The boss is always right!” (Mao is turning over in his grave.) Yang, the son, stays in school and remains the light of his parents’ lives. If he quits, their sixteen-year devotion will have been for naught.

A great thing about Last Train Home is how it makes family a common human denominator: the daughter angry with her mother; the likable, hard-working, worried, exhausted, guilty, self-sacrificing parents; the wise grandmother; the young boy who is academically inclined and is his parents’ last, best hope. We know these people. They are us. When Changua finally breaks from his impossibly stoic reserve and slaps his daughter for disrespecting him by using fuck in his presence, we deeply empathize with them both.

A word about the production of this film. Lixin Fan, the director, is Chinese-Canadian. The film was produced mostly by government funds from Canada. It’s a tribute to the country and its art organizations that they have the acuity to fund a film that may seem at first to have nothing to do with Canada. But troubled families, Chinese, Canadian, or anywhere else are legion. And China itself is omnipresent. One need only look at the planet’s retail shelves to see that. This superb documentary allows us inside a Chinese phenomenon to see how similar and connected we all are now.

Finally: Be sure to stick around to hear the plaintive, chilling, gorgeous, acapella aria sung over the end credits.

Written by: Neil Flowers, April 15th 2011

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss

mandy — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Felix Moeller

Zeitgeist Films

Harlan reworked brilliantly the Jew Suss film. This will be the anti-Semitic film. - From the diary of Joseph Goebbels, December 15, 1939.

You’re a talented, ambitious film director, lauded in your homeland and feted elsewhere for your movies. You can choose your projects. Producers throw money at you and don’t interfere with your work. You have final cut. You’re well paid. You lead a privileged life. You are married to a beautiful actress, who is your leading lady.

Suddenly: a political sea change. Ruthless men seize power. The Minister of Propaganda calls you in. He wants you to direct a film and use your wife and many another of your country’s famous actors in the cast so that the film will draw a large audience. He promises you a plentiful budget.

You read the script. It’s scurrilous propaganda that denigrates and villifies the government’s so-called enemies. Almost certainly, this film will inflame your countrymen against these perceived foes; many may die as a result. You can’t flee; you’re too famous, and they’d never willingly let you out. Don’t make the film and you might never work again; in fact, you might be killed and your family with you.

With some tweaks, this was the dilemma that faced Veit Harlan, a renowned German director of the 1930s. The Minister of Propaganda was Joseph Goebbels. The script he gave to Harlan in 1938 was anti-Semitic shit entitled Jew Suss (Suss the Jew). Harlan made the picture. It was a hit.

He would come to rue his decision, perhaps not so much for the film itself but for the repercussions that followed the Nazi defeat. He was twice tried, twice acquitted for contributing to the holocaust by directing Jew Suss. That wasn’t the end of it. The court of public opinion denounced him. After the war, he couldn’t find work; when he did, he had to direct under pseudonyms for a number of years.

This documentary about Harlan employs the customary mix of period photographs and movie footage, and talking heads, to examine Harlan’s case. Part of what makes the film unique is that the talking heads are mostly not pundits and historians proffering distanced or academic opinions. Harlan had five children by two wives. His kids, now elderly, and his grandchildren, mostly young women in their twenties, were filmed at length. Their responses manifest divided feelings about his actions and about being related to him by blood.

Harlan claimed he was forced to make Jew Suss and denied that he understood the possible deadly consequences. His apologists claim that he made the film well because he was a true artist and could not make a movie any other way. Some family members believe this. Some reject these avowals and say he knew what he was doing, he was responsible for the deaths of many Jews, and his crime was inflected by never confessing he had erred grievously in accepting Goebbels’s and Hitler’s commission. This division in the family—and some who speak are conflicted within themselves about Harlan’s guilt—lets us see how problematic, complex, and emotional the question of his culpability is.

So which way Harlan? Dupe under duress with no real clue about what he was doing? Skilled filmmaker who morphed into a stinking Nazi propagandist with buckets of blood on his hands? Somewhere in between? Have a look at this engrossing piece of work, a significant contribution to the cinema of fascism and the holocaust, and decide for yourself.

Written by: Neil Flowers, February 19th 2011

The Horse Boy

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Michel O. Scott

Zeitgeist Films

The Horse Boy is an emotionally stirring, thought-provoking examination of autism and its effects on familial life. Based on the autobiographical book of the same name, this powerful documentary examines the life of Rowan, the autistic child of journalist and horse trainer Rupert Isaacson and his wife, psychology professor Kristin Neff. The film documents Isaacson and Neff’s struggle to understand autism and bring comfort to their son.

Rowan suffers from severe tantrums, but his anxieties seem to disappear when he approaches horses. After countless Western treatments fail to ease Rowan’s symptoms, Isaacson decides to seek Eastern therapies. Isaacson and his wife travel with Rowan into the heart of Mongolia on horseback, seeking the spiritual aid of shamans. The film is, as Isaacson himself says, “a story about how, as a family, we did something crazy…in search of a miracle.”

The Horse Boy follows the family’s journey through the steppes of Mongolia. Their hope is that shaman’s can help heal Rowan—not to ‘cure’ his autism, but to ease his painful and dysfunctional behaviors. At its most basic level, The Horse Boy is about understanding autism, but the film is really about the bond between parent and child. The success of the film (and the power of the couples love for their son) is that the spectator understands why Isaacson and Neff are willing to be whipped by a shaman during a ceremony merely for the hope of bringing comfort to their son. The love they have for their child is evident in every frame of this film.

The Horse Boy offers no solutions or answers, but it does offer hope. Rowan’s transformation during this trip is powerful and real—he returns to the States a happier, calmer child. Whatever the cause of Rowan’s healing, it is clear that he has found some element of peace during the trip. The Horse Boy suggests there is hope of understanding autism and providing healing to autistic children.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, June 2nd 2010

Afghan Star

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Havana Marking

Zeitgeist Films

One of my favorite bands, The Avett Brothers, have a lyric in one of their songs claiming, “May you never be embarrassed to sing.” Since viewing Havana Marking’s documentary, Afghan Star, this lyric has been on repeat in my brain, reminding me, as Afghan Star aptly illustrates, if embarrassment is all that we have to risk, then we are risking very little. In her feature length directorial debut, Marking journeys into recently independent Afghanistan to explore the newly created television program Afghan Star. Following four contestants as they compete for the $5,000 prize, Marking exposes the inspiring and passionate citizens of a country shrouded by war, violence, and tyranny.

The film opens with a close-up of two little boys. One, whose face and eyes appear to have been violently damaged, sings sweetly into the camera and when he finishes the other states simply “If there was no singing the world would be silent.” From this point on Afghan Star weaves a complicated narrative that instigates dialogue about the power of having a voice, and the ideologies that determine what voices are heard and by who.

In 1996, the Taliban rule in Afghanistan created a ban on music, dancing, and singing. The ban was lifted in 2004, but as history has taught us all too well, a change in politics doesn’t always result in changing people. Most of those interviewed in the film, from the show’s producers to townspeople, equate singing with freedom; however, the concept of freedom is abstract and intangible. It is defined within the boundaries of Afghan politics and Islamic religion, leaving little room for the inclusion of Western liberties and autonomous behavior.

This is most evident in the subtle, yet disturbing, fulfillment of traditional gender roles. Both of the male contestants whom Marking chooses to focus on are met with great hope and respect by their communities. But when interviewing the families and supporters of the female contestants the responses are overwhelmingly concerned and fearful, or rife with ulterior motives. As the male contestants campaign openly in public and receive adoration from fans, the women are hidden by their burqas, unable to be recognized.

The contradiction is striking, yet the women are complicit and seemingly unaware of their alienation. However, the most drastic display of sexism occurs when Setara, one of the two female finalists and by far the most dynamic of all the contestants, is eliminated. While performing her final song, Setara “dances” on stage while also allowing her head scarf to fall revealing her hair. The result is scorn from her fellow competitors, eviction from her apartment and death threats so fierce and overwhelming, she fears returning to her hometown.

For those of us in the West, Afghan Star presents a thoughtful exploration of the life we so often take for granted: freedom of speech, the privilege of choice, and the unnecessary luxury of television and its star-making programs. But, above all, this film is a riveting reminder of the power, freedom and endless possibilities we hold in our voice and that no matter how we may use it, we must never be embarrassed to sing.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, May 30th 2010

Act of God: Meditations on Lightning, Life and Chance

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Directed by Jennifer Baichwal

Zeitgeist Films

What happens to a person whose life is touched by lightning? How does getting struck by lightning—or losing a loved one to lightning—change a person’s world view? Are such events random acts of nature or are certain people destined to be struck by lightning? Questions of fate, destiny, God’s will, and nature’s intention permeate Act of God: Meditations on Lightning, Life and Chance, a 2008 film directed by Jennifer Baichwal.

Baichwal says the idea behind the film was a simple question: how do people find meaning in randomness? Getting struck by lightning is the “quintessential example of the paradox of being singled out by randomness,” she says in an interview also included on the DVD. So what are different responses to that event? she wondered. “Is it possible to experience something so violent... and not ascribe meaning to it?”

The question, as it turns out, has a lot of different answers.

Getting struck by lightning feels like an act of destiny, intentional, speculates one of the film’s participants, a writer who feels he was forever changed by his close encounter with lightning when he was fourteen. Ultimately, though, he concludes that “there’s no meaning to this. It’s absolutely meaningless. And yet this is the way the world works.”

Every participant in the film has a different interpretation of what lightning means. One suggests that his fascination with lightning, his pursuit of it, allowed him to gain his soul. Another participant says that getting struck by lightning taught him what life was all about. He claims to have died, to have met some spiritual beings who showed him the shame of his past, but who reminded him that he has free will and he can change his life. “Lightning and change go hand in hand,” he says. “And in a single moment, I was changed.” One participant suggests that lightning and thunder indicate Shango’s anger (Shango is a Yoruba god, and likened to Santa Barbara in Santeria); the faithful must provide sacrifices to propitiate him, he suggests. Yet another of the film’s participants feels only grief about her children, who were killed as they knelt and prayed in front of a cross at the top of a mountain in Mexico. Finally, she decides that what God does is for the best. “The Lord doesn’t make mistakes,” she says.

The film’s premise is fascinating, the stories told compelling, and the speculations worth considering. It would have helped to have a narrator linking the scenes and meditations together, instead of a disembodied and disconnected voice occasionally providing some narration. I ached for more information on lightning itself, though Baichwal says that she deliberately avoided the physical and scientific aspects in order to focus on the metaphysical questions. Ultimately, the film feels fragmented and unfinished. But of course, this is another aspect of the film’s artistry. There are no answers to the metaphysical questions in this movie, only speculations. Is it possible to do anything but hypothesize about destiny, fate, nature’s intention, the will of God?

Written by: Jessica Powers, March 8th 2010

Trouble the Water

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:17:00 +0000

Directed by Tia Lessin, Carl Deal

Zeitgeist Films

If you missed the exhaustively, deservedly lauded Trouble the Water in theaters last year, now you can catch it on the small screen. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (it lost to Man on Wire), Trouble the Water follows New Orleans residents Kimberly "Kim" Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts from the day Katrina makes landfall to a year and a half afterward, when Kim and Scott have moved back to the city.

Kim’s video footage of her neighborhood just before and during the storm, shot on a Hi-8 camcorder, provides the anchor for the beginning of the film. The dramatic arc of the storm’s landfall is witnessed by the viewer through the eyes of a resident in its path: talking with the neighbors under a blue sky; sheltering from sheets of rain on the porch; watching the water come up to the back door; watching from the attic as the water comes in through the windows; sharing fruit juice and food with neighbors in the attic; and shouting out an attic window to a neighbor swimming through stop-sign-high water, who’s using a punching bag as a flotation device to help ferry neighbors to higher ground. A clip of footage shot from a helicopter at the time of the storm is spliced in, showing the overwhelmed levees of the Ninth Ward, three blocks away from Kim and Scott’s house.

The vintage news coverage interwoven throughout the film provides a contextualizing counterpoint to Kim and Scott’s story as they assume places in front of the camera; simultaneously, their story works as a powerful antidote to the coverage of the hurricane as seen from above, lorded over by pundits. The viewer hears the story of the storm, and the story of a city chronically afflicted by poverty cheek by jowl with its chipper tourist industry, from those who have lived it.

The viewer follows Kim partway into an uninspected house in which there lies the body of one of her neighbors, two weeks after the storm, while outside National Guardsmen appear to loll in the street. The viewer hears Scott tell the story of being directed to a nearby Naval base by the Coast Guard to seek shelter for displaced neighborhood residents; once there, guards cocked their guns at the crowd. (The viewer then witnesses guards at the Naval base, being interviewed, deny this.)

Throughout the film, Kim comes across as a confident woman and leader, and Scott as a loving and supportive husband unthreatened by her strength. This would be a refreshing depiction in any film, but is especially remarkable given the extreme circumstances under which Kim and Scott share their story with the filmmakers. In an interview with Richard Roeper included in the DVD, director Tia Lessin says, “You’re looking up at [Kim and Scott] most of the film, which I think is beautiful, because that’s not how the media portrays people… metaphorically, we really tried to make a film that looked up to Kimberly and Scott.” Certainly, they’ve succeeded.

Written by: Kaja Katamay, November 20th 2009

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:09:00 +0000

Directed by Marion Cajori, Amei Wallach

Zeitgeist Films

“You have to be very aggressive to be a sculptor,” Louise Bourgeois announces at the start of The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine, a fascinating, but flawed, ninety-nine-minute documentary about the Parisian-born artist’s life and work.

Later, she confesses that aggression alone is insufficient and implies that trauma and loss are equally essential. “I make in my work unconscious connections. All of my work of the last fifty years has found inspiration in my childhood,” she says. Indeed, as the now ninety-seven-year-old Bourgeois ruminates on the past, her pain is obvious, clearly visible to the viewer. Robert Storr of the Yale School of Art says it best: “She generates energy, psychological energy, and she sucks up psychological energy.”This makes Bourgeois a complicated character. A wildly successful artist and sculptor—she was the first woman to have a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; she represented the U.S. at the 1993 Venice Biennale; and she was the first artist to fill Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern—her work has been exhibited throughout the world, from Havana to Tokyo.

That her impetus to create comes from emotional turmoil wrought eighty-plus years ago, is surprising—and revealing. In fact, her father’s incessant womanizing, including a ten-year relationship with the family’s live-in nanny, continues to wound his disappointed daughter. In addition, a memory involving her father’s running commentary—in which he compared a beautiful tangerine to the daughter he found less than comely—still has the power to bring Bourgeois to tears.

As we voyeuristically watch this response, the elegant Bourgeois we see on screen is juxtaposed with the person she sees in her mind’s eye—a tiny being filled with insecurity, self-loathing, and doubt. That said, Bourgeois can also be imperious, and we simultaneously hear her sharp-tongued replies and demands. “You need to read between the lines when I talk,” she quips, her impatience evident.

And herein lies the film’s major flaw. In allowing viewers to read whatever they want into her statements, we’re left to wonder about an enormous number of things. How, for example, does Bourgeois feel about the feminist art movement and groups like the Guerrilla Girls that have made her an icon of female ascension? Her thoughts on women’s liberation and other 20th and 21st century movements would have allowed her on-screen persona to become more fully-dimensional. In addition, she says virtually nothing about either motherhood—she bore three sons—or marriage, leaving the viewer to wonder how she juggled the multiple demands on her time. A passing comment about her career taking off after the deaths of her father and spouse is not explored, leaving a crater where explication could have gone.

These flaws are substantial. Nonetheless, Bourgeois’ sculptures—whether constructed of cloth, glass, metal, stone, or wood—are so majestic that spending time in their presence is enriching. The film ends with a panoramic look at her world-famous Maman pieces, enormous spiders Bourgeois says represent her mother. The magnificent giant arachnids combine playfulness with something terrifying, emblematic, perhaps, of the artist herself.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, July 15th 2009

Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:06:00 +0000

Directed by Kirby Dick

Zeitgeist Films

Private Practices is the story of a sex surrogate, Maureen Sullivan Ward, who teaches men with sexual dysfunctions how to improve their sexual communication, physical expression, and experience pleasure.

Maureen "Mo" Sullivan Ward approaches sex in a clinical fashion, seeking ways to make clients more comfortable and assisting them in exploring their personal fears and phobias. The documentary features two men, Kipper, a twenty-five-year-old novice in graduate school who cannot advance beyond verbal communication with a female and John, a forty-five-year-old divorcee who is grieving the reality of his wife’s twenty year displeasure with their sex life.

The beginning of the movie acknowledges the moral and ethical conflicts that may arise with the field of sexual surrogacy, but redirects the viewers to focus on the lives, not the tension, in the film as they confront an underground topic of supreme sensitivity that is sexual awkwardness and hardship.

Private Practices gives peripheral insights from the families, friends, and neighbors who observe Ward in her profession. Naturally, as the film unfolds, questions begin to surface about Ward how her work affects her personal relationships and lovemaking. Briefly, we see the complications of Ward’s own life as it delves into her family dynamics and history.

Initially, I thought the film would primarily focus on the two men and their perceived inadequacies. However, as the story deepened, new revelations came slowly and with compassion. The film is not just about John and Kipper as clients, but rather, they are symbolic of insecurities and problems that most adults face at one time in their sexual development. It is a careful dissection of sexuality and the relationships we build in our families and in childhood that lead us to falsehoods, myths, and assumptions about how we will be as partners and lovers. Ward’s role as a surrogate and her background is every bit explored as Kipper and John, which tantalizes and blurs the lines of right and wrong in these controversial therapeutic relationships.

A psychological and clinical lens frames the three lives and helps keep the story contained and moving. The slight doctor’s office feel helps navigate the explicit scenes that practice caressing in full nudity. With boundaries and directness, the clients are carefully guided, never being pushed or hurried in their process. Each story is unique, but reveals a common truth that Ward sums up with as she reflects on her journey: "We're all in the same boat." They are all searching for a place of understanding, comfort, and healing.

This film, in the field of sexual surrogacy, explores the safety, richness, futility, and dangers of sex therapy. If our societal mental disorder of sexual schizophrenia is as prevalent in 1985 as it is today, Private Practices remains a useful tool and talking point when considering the lines of human relationship and sexual frailty.

Written by: Lisa Factora-Borchers, April 8th 2009

My Country, My Country

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:16:00 +0000

Directed by Laura Poitras

Zeitgeist Films

I admit that I popped My Country, My Country into my DVD player with genuine trepidation. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this film and had prepared myself for the agonizing boredom that is inflicted by a truly awful movie. Fortunately, My Country, My Country was a captivating and heart wrenching tale that exposes the truth behind war. When we watch the evening news, we see images of soldiers, tanks and insurgents, but what we seldom see is the toll that is levied on the people living under these conditions on a daily basis. These are regular people who are forced to survive in an unimaginable situation. After watching My Country, My Country, I have a deeper understanding of the hardships that the people of Iraq face every day.

Although I enjoyed this movie immensely, I must admit that there were elements that made my blood boil. Before I elaborate, I would like to state for the record that I was never in favor of George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. However, my respect for the men and women of the armed forces is unwavering. The various scenes that portrayed U.S. servicemen and women as bloodthirsty warmongers left a very bad taste in my mouth. I don’t doubt that there are a few bad apples among our military personnel, but I believe that the majority are descent individuals serving their country.

If you can keep an open mind and understand the political intent behind the negative portrayal of our military, you will find a deeper empathy for the Iraqi people after watching My Country, My Country. Regardless of your feelings about this war, you will be mesmerized by the exquisite cinematography that highlights the beautiful landscapes in Iraq. At the same time, you will be horrified by sights of a war torn country, as well as some of the apparent injustices being levied on the Iraqi people. My Country, My Country left me with many questions needing to be answered by U.S. officials. In the end, it is a movie well worth watching, but be prepared to have your feathers ruffled.

Written by: Becky Barry, April 5th 2007