this week in film and television

FILM SOCIETY FREE TALKS: RON HOWARD

Ron Howard will discuss his new movie, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on November 22

Who: Ron Howard
What: Film Society of Lincoln Center Free Talk
Where: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Amphitheater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5610
When: Sunday, November 22, free, 5:00
Why: Ron Howard visits the Film Society of Lincoln Center on November 22 for a free talk about his upcoming epic, In the Heart of the Sea. The film, which opens in theaters December 11, tells the story of the real nautical events that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick. The cast features Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, and Ben Whishaw as Melville. Howard, who has previously directed such films as Splash, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and Frost/Nixon, will bring along clips and trailers for this special conversation. (Free tickets are given out one per person starting at 4:00.)

NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI — A RETROSPECTIVE: BOUND FOR THE FIELDS, THE MOUNTAINS, AND THE SEACOAST

Nobuhiko Obayashi shines a light on wartime Japan in unusual coming-of-age drama

BOUND FOR THE FIELDS, THE MOUNTAINS, AND THE SEACOAST (NO YUKI YAMA YUKI UMIBE YUKI) (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, November 21, $12, 4:00
Series continues through December 6
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Over the opening credits of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast, the sweet sound of children singing can be heard over machine-gun blasts and explosions, immediately setting the tone for this unusual, highly stylized war-set drama. “It was a time of mischief in Japan. Even in wartime,” it says at the end of the black-and-white credits, before cutting to a shot of the red-and-white Japanese flag blowing in the wind. Kids slowly march to school to the beating of a drum, except for Sotaro Sudo (Yasufumi Hayashi), who skips down narrow streets by himself, wearing a pseudo-military outfit and carrying a pair of binoculars to help him spy on what’s going on. When he spots someone in the teacher’s (Jô Shishido) office who he’s never seen before, he wonders to himself, “She looks too young to be an adult, but too old to be a child.” That sets the stage for the rest of the film, in which Obayashi follows a group of boys and girls as they battle among themselves, experience bullying and budding sexuality, and grow up a little too fast, serving as a microcosm of twentieth-century Japan. “It is clear that reality and lies can divide people. We should not quarrel too hastily,” the teacher says. Sotaru becomes enamored with the young woman, Kawakita (Riki Takeuchi), whose younger brother, Sakae Osugi (Junichirô Katagiri), is new in school. “Please don’t be violent,” Kawakita tells Sakae, but it isn’t long before he may not have any other choice, especially when their parents (Taru Minegishi and Toshie Negishi) consider selling her into prostitution to pay off their mounting debts.

Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast is a fanciful fairy tale that has fun playing with Japanese storytelling conventions, mixing genres while utilizing over-the-top comic-book surrealism. Obayashi, who gained international fame for his cult hit House, instills this unique coming-of-age story with scenes that not only evoke cartoony manga panels but also the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Shuji Terayama. Not one for subtlety, he intercuts several drawings of animals from an odd kind of textbook that Sotaru carries with him, making humorously metaphorical comparisons between humans and beasts. Though often silly and patently absurd, Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast has an infectious, irresistible charm that will pull you right in even as you contemplate how ridiculous so much of it is. The film, adapted by screenwriter Nobuo Yamada from Haruo Satô’s novel A Time of Mischief, was made into black-and-white and color versions; the former no longer exists, but the latter is having a rare screening November 21 at 4:00 in the Japan Society series “Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Retrospective,” which continues through December 6 with such other Obayashi films as I Are You, You Am Me; Sada; The Discarnates; and his latest, the three-hour epic Seven Weeks, in addition to a special conversation and audience Q&A with Obayashi, moderated by series curator Aaron Gerow, on November 21 at 1:00 ($12).

DEMOCRATS

Douglas Mwonzora and Paul Mangwana try to find common ground when drafting Zimbabwe’s new constitution in DEMOCRATS (photo courtesy of Upfront Films)

DEMOCRATS (Camilla Nielsson, 2014)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
November 18 – December 2
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Danish filmmaker Camilla Nielsson’s gripping thriller of a documentary, Democrats, is how unsurprising all of the revelations are, how we all have become inured to the pervasive power of the dictatorships that control so much of the world. Following the controversial 2008 reelection of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, who had been in power since 1980, when the country officially gained its independence from the British-led Rhodesia, Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front), and election runner-up Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition party, MDC-T (Movement for Democratic Change), agreed to form an inclusive coalition government and collaborate on a new constitution, to be drafted by COPAC, a committee co-chaired by former minister of information Paul Mangwana of ZANU-PF and human rights lawyer and parliament member Douglas Mwonzora of MDC-T. On the advice of Danish journalist Peter Tygesen, Nielsson requested access to the intense negotiations, and what she was given was an amazing, exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the process. Over the course of twelve shoots of between one and three weeks from 2010 to 2013, Nielsson alternately follows Mangwana and Mwonzora as they take their case to the people of Zimbabwe, traveling to rural communities and cities as their teams organize nearly six thousand town-hall-style meetings. Mangwana is a big, jolly fellow who believes Mugabe and his government are untouchable, that they will do anything and everything they can to maintain their leadership status. “Be seen as a man of peace. Even if you are not,” he brazenly says to the camera, adding, “The game of politics is pretending.” Meanwhile, Mwonzora, a much more deliberate man, explains, “We never imagined that a black man could suppress his own people.” As he makes his way across Zimbabwe, Mwonzora supports fighting back using pen and brains, not violence, imploring people to “tell us how much power we should have.” Amid claims of illegal busing and harassment by military veterans and the secret police on behalf of Mugabe, the entire constitution-making process is on the verge of falling apart, but the absurdity reaches a whole new level when the safety and freedom of Mangwana and Mwonzora are threatened.

Mangwana and Mwonzora find their own personal safety and freedom threatened in DEMOCRATS (photo courtesy of Upfront Films)

Nielsson (Good Morning Afghanistan, The Children of Darfur) and editor Jeppe Bødskov tell the eye-opening story like a fictional police procedural, with scenes beautifully shot by cinematographer Henrik Bohn Ipsen, underscored by composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen’s subtle score that keeps the tension mounting. Of course, Democrats is not a fictional police procedural but the very real tale of a young nation’s desperate attempt to end the suffocating rule of a military dictatorship determined to keep all of its power, despite its lip service in support of a new constitution. “Democracies in Africa . . . It’s a difficult proposition. Because always the opposition will want much more than what it deserves,” Mugabe is shown saying at the beginning of the film. But as Ernest Nyamukachi, Mwonzora’s personal assistant, says, “Everywhere you are you are afraid.” (Most of the dialogue is in English, with occasional forays into various Zimbabwe languages, sometimes within the same sentence.) In her director’s statement, Nielsson notes, “We in the West sometimes have a hard time understanding why it is so difficult to create a viable democracy in other parts of the world. The democratic values we ourselves accept in a democracy as a matter of course . . . are not taken for granted everywhere on the globe. Democrats is a sort of a primer, a form of basic research, into how difficult it is to create democracy.” What is happening in Zimbabwe might be extremely hard to swallow, but it makes for one hell of an important film. Named Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, Democrats begins a two-week run at Film Forum on November 18, with Nielsson in person at the 7:10 show opening night.

EXPLORATIONS: IRRESISTIBLE RESISTANCE

The New Negress Society will present a program of short films in conjunction with “Irresistible Resistance” exhibit at Made in NY Media Center

Who: Members of the New Negress Film Society
What: “Irresistible Resistance”
Where: Made in NY Media Center by IFP, 30 John St., DUMBO, 718-729-6677
When: Friday, November 20, free, 7:00
Why: Formed in 2013 by Frances Bodomo, Ja’Tovia Gary, Kumi James, Stefani Saintonge, and Dyani Douze, the New Negress Film Society identifies itself as “a core collective of Black woman filmmakers whose priority is to create community and spaces for support, exhibition, and consciousness-raising.” On November 20 at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP in DUMBO, the society is hosting an evening of experimental short films and discussions about power relations around the world, held in conjunction with the exhibition “Irresistible Resistance,” which runs through November 27. The lineup consists of Gary’s An Ecstatic Experience, Saintonge’s Seventh Grade, Bodomo’s Boneshaker, James’s savage, and Douze and Nontsikelelo Mutiti’s Pain Revisited. It is all part of “Explorations,” a series of programs examining the creative process from multiple angles.

NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI — A RETROSPECTIVE: HOUSE (HAUSU)

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s wild and crazy HAUSU kicks off Japan Society retrospective of the unique filmmaker

HOUSE (HAUSU) (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, November 20, $15, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.janusfilms.com

Japan Society kicks off its retrospective of pioneering Japanese experimental filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi with one of the craziest movies ever made, Obayashi’s 1977 cult classic, House (Hausu), which took more than three decades to get its U.S. theatrical release, in a new 35mm print in 2009. Truly one of those things that has to be seen to be believed, House is a psychedelic black horror comedy musical about Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and six of her high school friends who choose to spend part of their summer vacation at Gorgeous’s aunt’s (Yoko Minamida) very strange house. Gorgeous, whose mother died when she was little and whose father (Saho Sasazawa) is about to get married to Ryoko (Haruko Wanibuchi), brings along her playful friends Melody (Eriko Ikegami), Fantasy (Kumiko Oba), Prof (Ai Matsubara), Sweet (Masayo Miyako), Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), and Mac (Mieko Sato), who quickly start disappearing like ten little Indians. House is a ceaselessly entertaining head trip of a movie, a tongue-in-chic celebration of genre with spectacular set designs by Kazuo Satsuya, beautiful cinematography by Yoshitaka Sakamoto, and a fab score by Asei Kobayashi and Mickie Yoshino. The original story actually came from the mind of Obayashi’s eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi, who clearly has one heck of an imagination. Oh, and we can’t forget about the evil cat, a demonic feline to end all demonic felines. The film was released in 2009 prior to its appearance on DVD from Janus, the same company that puts out such classic fare as Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot’s Holiday, François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa Vie, so House has joined some very prestigious company. And who are we to say it doesn’t deserve it? House is screening at Japan Society on November 20 at 7:00 with Obayashi’s 1964 silent short, Complexe; Obayashi will introduce the films and participate in a Q&A afterward, followed by what should be a wild Hausu Party. “Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Retrospective” continues through December 6 with such other films as Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast; I Are You, You Am Me; Sada; The Discarnates; and Obayashi’s latest, the three-hour epic Seven Weeks, in addition to a special conversation and audience Q&A with Obayashi, moderated by series curator Aaron Gerow, on November 21 at 1:00 ($12). As a special early bonus, on November 18, Japan Society will present the New York premiere of Chigumi Obayashi’s 2014 documentary, A Dialogue: Living Harmony, followed by a discussion with the debut director and Richard McCarthy of Slow Food USA and a reception.

DOC NYC: HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT

Documentary examines the extraordinary interview sessions between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock (photo by Philippe Halsman)

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (Kent Jones, 2015)
Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves., 4:45
Saturday, November 14,
Festival runs November 12-19
www.docnyc.net
cohenmedia.net/films

“In 1962, while in New York to present Jules and Jim, I noticed that every journalist asked me the same question: ‘Why do the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma take Hitchcock so seriously? He’s rich and successful, but his movies have no substance,’” French Nouvelle Vague auteur François Truffaut wrote in the preface to the second edition of what he called “the hitchbook,” the seminal film bible Truffaut/Hitchcock. “In the course of an interview during which I praised Rear Window to the skies, an American critic surprised me by commenting, ‘You love Rear Window because, as a stranger to New York, you know nothing about Greenwich Village.’ To this absurd statement, I replied, ‘Rear Window is not about Greenwich Village, it is a film about cinema, and I do know cinema.’” Truffaut was determined to change the prevailing belief that British director Alfred Hitchcock was a maker of studio fluff. “In examining his films,” Truffaut continued, “it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.” The tome compiled a weeklong series of conversations between the thirty-year-old Truffaut and the sixty-three-year-old Hitchcock — the talks began on Hitch’s birthday — in the latter’s Hollywood studio office, with Helen Scott serving as translator. Although the interviews were recorded for audio, no film was shot; instead, Philippe Halsman took still photos. The story of the unique relationship between Truffaut, who as of 1962 had made only The 400 Blows and Shoot the Piano Player (he was in the midst of finalizing Jules and Jim), and Hitchcock, who was preparing his forty-eighth film, The Birds, is told in the splendid documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut. Writer-director Kent Jones (head of the New York Film Festival), cowriter Serge Toubiana (former editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinéma) and editor Rachel Reichman lovingly combine Halsman’s pictures, audio clips from the original sessions, scenes from many of Hitchcock’s films (and a few of Truffaut’s), close-ups of dozens of pages from the book, rare archival footage, and new interviews with ten directors from around the world who weigh in on what makes Hitchcock’s work so special, so illuminating, so influential.

Sharing their praise are Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Arnaud Desplechin, James Gray, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Richard Linklater, and Paul Schrader, as they shed light on such classic films as Vertigo, Psycho, I Confess, The Wrong Man, Sabotage, Marnie, Rear Window, and others, with detailed shot-by-shot analysis while also praising the importance of “the hitchbook” itself. It all makes for an eye-opening crash course in cinema, and it’s likely to change the way you look and think about motion pictures. “It was a window into the world of cinema that I hadn’t had before, because it was a director simultaneously talking about his own work but doing so in a way that was utterly unpretentious and had no pomposity,” Gray (Little Odessa, Two Lovers) says about the book. “There was starting to be these kind of erudite conversations about the art form, but Truffaut was the first one where you really felt that they were talking about the craft of it,” Schrader (American Gigolo, Mishima) points out. “It’s not just that Truffaut wrote a book about Hitchcock. The book is an essential part of his body of work,” Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria, Carlos) explains. “I think it conclusively changed people’s opinions about Hitchcock, and so Hitchcock began to be taken much more seriously,” Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) asserts. And Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) sums up, “It was almost as if somebody had taken a weight off our shoulders and said yes, we can embrace this, we could go.” Of course, the book not only created a critical reassessment of Hitchcock but also helped Truffaut’s budding career. Narrated by Bob Balaban, the film places the work of the two men, who remained good friends until Hitchcock’s death in 1980 at the age of eighty (sadly, Truffaut died four years later at the age of fifty-two), in context of the history of cinema. “Why do these Hitchcock films stand up well? Well, I don’t know the answer,” Hitchcock is heard saying at the beginning of the documentary. By the end of the documentary, you will surely know the answer. Hitchcock/Truffaut is screening on November 14 at Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas and will be followed by a Q&A with Jones and Scorsese, who collaborated on My Voyage to Italy. DOC NYC runs November 12-19, opening with the U.S. premiere of Barbara Kopple’s Miss Sharon Jones! and continuing with more than two hundred films and special events, including new and classic documentaries, master classes, panel discussions, and a keynote conversation with Jon Alpert and Sheila Nevins.

DOC NYC: DADDY DON’T GO

DADDY DON’T GO follows four fathers as they attempt to raise their children without their mothers

DADDY DON’T GO (Emily Abt, 2015)
Saturday, November 14, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves., 9:45
Tuesday, November 17, Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas, 260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves., 4:45
Festival runs November 12-19
www.docnyc.net
www.daddydontgothemovie.com

In Daddy Don’t Go, making its world premiere this week at DOC NYC, director and producer Emily Abt takes a unique look at single-parent households, focusing on four New York men attempting to raise their children without their mothers. “Being the product of a fatherless household, Daddy Don’t Go delves into an issue that’s close to my heart,” executive producer Omar Epps explains on the film’s Kickstarter page. “The media inundates us with the notion that men from impoverished areas are absent fathers but meanwhile there are millions of men fighting to be active in their children’s lives.” Daddy Don’t Go follows four such men as they battle the odds to succeed. Nelson AKA “Macho” Serrano is a former Latin King from the South Bronx, living with Rebecca, who has two kids from different fathers and now a third with the twenty-six-year-old Nelson, himself a product of the foster-care system whose mother was a coke addict and who has never met his father. “I’m my own father now,” he says. Omar Kennedy, a thirty-four-year-old father of three, is on disability in the North Bronx, trying to raise his kids without their mothers; one mother physically abused her two children with Kennedy, while the mother of his other child is in prison. One of his daughters, Milagros, suffers from a severe mental disorder that occasionally requires extended hospitalization. “As much as I’ve been trying to hold everything together, it’s like it’s slipping away from me,” he notes. Roy Puntervold is a twenty-eight-year-old Long Island man with a young son, Caiden, whose mother is still a party girl, unable to fulfill her duties as a parent, so he is raising the boy with his own mother and father while attending Forestdale’s Fathering Initiative so he can become a better dad. He is having difficulty finding a job because of a jail stint when he was a troubled teenager. “Not everything’s always what it seems,” he says, pointing out how hard it is, even with the support he’s getting from his folks. And twenty-six-year-old Alexander Charles Jr. is fighting the system as he takes classes to become an automotive technician while raising his young child in Harlem; the boy’s mother was declared unfit to be a parent. “I told myself, I’m not going to be no deadbeat father,” he says. “For me to be a deadbeat father, I gotta be dead, and somebody gotta beat me up for me to be a deadbeat. I’m not letting that happen.”

Abt (Take It from Me, All of Us) spent two years following the men’s heartbreaking stories, interspersing illuminating facts (“1 in 3 American children grow up without their father,” “There are over 1.1 million incarcerated fathers in the U.S.”) while casting no judgments, even when the men veer off track, making bad decisions that can have serious consequences. The men give Abt and codirector, coproducer, and cinematographer Andrew Nam Chul Osborne remarkable access to their lives, holding nothing back as they pursue their goal of succeeding as single parents, dedicating themselves to their kids no matter how tough things get. And while things get mighty tough, the men avoid blaming the system or society, doing just about whatever they can to try to make things right. Daddy Don’t Go is a powerful, emotional film, one that you won’t soon forget. It’s screening on November 14 at the SVA Theatre and November 17 at Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas, with both shows followed by Q&As with Abt, executive producers Epps, Jennifer Fox, and Malik Yoba, and the film’s subjects. DOC NYC runs November 12-19, opening with the U.S. premiere of Barbara Kopple’s Miss Sharon Jones! and continuing with more than two hundred films and special events, including new and classic documentaries, master classes, panel discussions, and a keynote conversation with Jon Alpert and Sheila Nevins.