An old man (Lochey) would rather sell himself than his canine companion in Pema Tseden’s Old Dog
OLD DOG (LAO GOU/KHYI RGAN) (Pema Tseden, 2011)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, September 7, 5:00
Series runs September 6-15
718-777-6888 movingimage.org
In June 2016, Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, who lived and worked in Beijing, was arrested by Chinese authorities at Xining airport in western China for “disrupting social order” supposedly over a luggage dispute, then was admitted to a local hospital with various injuries and illnesses. He was shortly freed following international outcry, and he went right back to making films about Tibet. Tseden died in May 2023 at the age of fifty-eight, and the Museum of the Moving Image will be paying tribute to him with a ten-day, ten-film retrospective running September 6-15. The series kicks off with a double feature of The Silent Manistone and The Grassland and will be followed by such works as The Silent Holy Stones,The Search,Balloon, and Snow Leopard.
Screening September 7 at 5:00 is Tseden’s 2011 drama, Old Dog, a beautifully told, slowly paced meditation on Buddhism’s four Noble Truths — “Life means suffering”; The origin of suffering is attachment”; “The cessation of suffering is attainable”; and “There is a path to the cessation of suffering” — that ends with a shocking, manipulative finale that nearly destroys everything that came before it. In order to get a little money and to save the family’s sheep-herding dog from being stolen, Gonpo (Drolma Kyab) sells their Tibetan nomad mastiff to Lao Wang (Yanbum Gyal), a dealer who resells the prized breed to stores in China, where they’re used for protection. When Gonpa’s father (Lochey) finds out what his son has done, he goes back to Lao Wang and demands the return of the dog he’s taken care of for thirteen years. “I’d sell myself before the dog,” he tells his son.
And so begins a gentle tale of parents and children, set in a modern-day Tibet that is ruled by China’s heavy hand. Gonpa’s father doesn’t understand why his son, a lazy man who rides around on a motorized bike and never seems to do much of anything, doesn’t yet have any children of his own, so he pays for Gonpa and his wife, Rikso (Tamdrin Tso), to go to the doctor to see what’s wrong. Meanwhile, the old man keeps a close watch on his dog, wary that Lao Wang will to try to steal it again. Writer-director Tseden (Jinpa, Tharlo, The Sacred Arrow) explores such themes as materialism, family, and attachment in a lovely little film that sadly is nearly ruined by its extreme final scene.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
RABBIT ON THE MOON
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
September 6-29
212-660-0312 metrograph.com
The Metrograph series “Rabbit on the Moon: Folk Tales, Tall Tales, and Local Myths” consists of a dozen international films inspired by folklore from around the world. The works explore traditional stories from Sweden, Japan, Thailand, Georgia, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and South Korea, by some of the most important auteurs of the last seventy-five years.
Among the films are Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron, Federico Fellini’s Fellini Satyricon, Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze’s The Legend of Suram Fortress, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea, Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing, and Lois Patiño’s Red Moon Tide. Below is a look at several favorites.
Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) sits down with Death (Bengt Ekerot) for a friendly game of chess in Bergman classic
THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Friday, September 6, 2:50
Sunday, September 8, 5:30 metrograph.com
It’s almost impossible to watch Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal without being aware of the meta surrounding the film, which has influenced so many other works and been paid homage to and playfully mocked. Over the years, it has gained a reputation as a deep, philosophical paean to death. However, amid all the talk about emptiness, doomsday, the Black Plague, and the devil, The Seventh Seal is a very funny movie. In fourteenth-century Sweden, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) is returning home from the Crusades with his trusty squire, Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand). Block soon meets Death (Bengt Ekerot) and, to prolong his life, challenges him to a game of chess. While the on-again, off-again battle of wits continues, Death seeks alternate victims while Block meets a young family and a small troupe of actors putting on a show. Rape, infidelity, murder, and other forms of evil rise to the surface as Block proclaims “To believe is to suffer,” questioning God and faith, and Jöns opines that “love is the blackest plague of all.” Based on Bergman’s own play inspired by a painting of Death playing chess by Albertus Pictor (played in the film by Gunnar Olsson), The Seventh Seal, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, is one of the most entertaining films ever made. (Bergman fans will get an extra treat out of the knight being offered some wild strawberries at one point.)
Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) makes his pottery as son Genichi (Ikio Sawamura) and wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) look on in Ugetsu
UGETSU (UGETSU MONOGATARI) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Friday, September 13, 2:00
Sunday, September 15, 9:30 metrograph.com
The Metrograph series includes one of the most important and influential — and greatest — works to ever come from Japan. Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 1953 Venice Film Festival, Kenji Mizoguchi’s seventy-eighth film, Ugetsu, is a dazzling masterpiece steeped in Japanese storytelling tradition, especially ghost lore. Based on two tales by Ueda Akinari and Guy de Maupassant’s “How He Got the Legion of Honor,” Ugetsu unfolds like a scroll painting beginning with the credits, which run over artworks of nature scenes while Fumio Hayasaka’s urgent score starts setting the mood, and continues into the first three shots, pans of the vast countryside leading to Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) loading his cart to sell his pottery in nearby Nagahama, helped by his wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka), clutching their small child, Genichi (Ikio Sawamura). Miyagi’s assistant, Tōbei (Sakae Ozawa), insists on coming along, despite the protestations of his nagging wife, Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), as he is determined to become a samurai even though he is more of a hapless fool. “I need to sell all this before the fighting starts,” Genjurō tells Miyagi, referring to a civil war that is making its way through the land. Tōbei adds, “I swear by the god of war: I’m tired of being poor.” After unexpected success with his wares, Genjurō furiously makes more pottery to sell at another market even as the soldiers are approaching and the rest of the villagers run for their lives. At the second market, an elegant woman, Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō), and her nurse, Ukon (Kikue Mōri), ask him to bring a large amount of his merchandise to their mansion. Once he gets there, Lady Wakasa seduces him, and soon Genjurō, Miyagi, Genichi, Tōbei, and Ohama are facing very different fates.
Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō) admires Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) in Kenji Mizoguchi postwar masterpiece
Written by longtime Mizoguchi collaborator Yoshitaka Yoda and Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Ugetsu might be set in the sixteenth century, but it is also very much about the aftereffects of World War II. “The war drove us mad with ambition,” Tōbei says at one point. Photographed in lush, shadowy black-and-white by Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Floating Weeds, Yojimbo), the film features several gorgeous set pieces, including one that takes place on a foggy lake and another in a hot spring, heightening the ominous atmosphere that pervades throughout. Ugetsu ends much like it began, emphasizing that it is but one postwar allegory among many. Kyō (Gate of Hell,The Face of Another) is magical as the temptress Lady Wakasa, while Mori (The Bad Sleep Well, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) excels as the everyman who follows his dreams no matter the cost; the two previously played husband and wife in Rashomon. Mizoguchi, who made such other unforgettable classics as The 47 Ronin, The Life of Oharu, Sansho the Bailiff, and Street of Shame, passed away in 1956 at the age of fifty-eight, having left behind a stunning legacy, of which Ugetsu might be the best, and now looking better than ever following a recent 4K restoration.
Tōru Takemitsu “wanted to create an atmosphere of terror” in Masaki Kobayashi’s quartet of ghost stories
KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Saturday, September 21, 9:30 metrograph.com
Masaki Kobayashi paints four marvelous ghost stories in this eerie collection that won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes. In “The Black Hair,” a samurai (Rentaro Mikuni) regrets his choice of leaving his true love for advancement. Yuki (Keiko Kishi) is a harbinger of doom in “The Woman of the Snow.” Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura) must have his entire body covered in prayer in “Hoichi, the Earless.” And Kannai (Kanemon Nakamura) finds a creepy face staring back at him in “In a Cup of Tea.” Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan is one of the greatest ghost story films ever made, four creepy, atmospheric existential tales that will get under your skin and into your brain. The score was composed by Tōru Takemitsu, who said of the film, “I wanted to create an atmosphere of terror.” He succeeded.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
“Did you know that most filmmakers spend their entire lives making some version of the same movie?” Vita (Odessa Young) says in Zia Anger’s My First Film, portraying the director’s onscreen doppelganger.
In 2010, Anger shot her first film, Always All Ways, Anne Marie, which was soon relegated to “abandoned” status on IMDB. In 2015, she made the nine-minute short My Last Film, starring Lola Kirke, Kelly Rohrbach, Rosanna Arquette, and Mac DeMarco, which screened at the New York Film Festival. In 2018, she toured her first movie as part of a live performance that slowly morphed into the feature-length My First Film, which has played numerous festivals and is being shown August 30 at the Roxy before streaming on MUBI. My First Film goes behind the scenes of Anger’s creative process as she revisits her earlier work; Reunion founder Sean Glass calls it “the making of the making of the making of . . .”
Comparing writing and directing to getting pregnant and giving birth, Anger and cowriter Billy Feldman employ split screens, voice-over narration, typewritten text, and other cinematic elements in blurring the line between fiction and reality, with exciting handheld phototography by Ashley Connor and a cast that includes Young, Devon Ross as the protagonist, Philip Ettinger as Vita’s boyfriend, Cole Doman, Sage Ftacek, Seth Steinberg, and Anger’s father, Ruby Max Fury.
The words “I’m not sure how to start this” are typed at the beginning of the film. “I am really happy you are watching, happier than you could ever know.” The 7:15 screening at the Roxy will be followed by a Q&A with Anger, Connor, Young, Ettinger, Doman, and Steinberg, moderated by actor and writer Annie Hamilton.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Femme fatale Jade (Louise Leroy) and private dick Gabriel (Olivier Rabourdin) are on the case in The Other Laurens
THE OTHER LAURENS (L’AUTRE LAURENS) (Claude Schmitz, 2023)
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Lower Manhattan
28 Liberty Street, Suite SC301
Friday, August 23, 10:15, and Saturday, August 24, 9:00 drafthouse.com yellowveilpictures.com
Claude Schmitz’s retro-noir The Other Laurens is a clever, often hilarious film that melds a 1970s sensibility into a contemporary thriller.
Olivier Rabourdin is a riot as Gabriel Laurens, a low-rent private detective who seems to have walked straight out of an Aki Kaurismäki movie. A slovenly, lonely man, he’s taking care of his dying mother (Jeannine Arnaldi), who thinks he is his far superior twin brother, François, who recently died in what might not have been an accident.
One night, Gabriel’s teenage niece, Jade (Louise Leroy), shows up unexpectedly, dressed in black leather and smoking cigarettes, wanting to hire her uncle to investigate her father’s death, but Gabriel appears to no longer give a damn about anyone, including himself. He turns her down, but when he learns she is being followed, he agrees to take her back to her father’s mansion in Perpignan, near the French-Spanish border, where he is suspicious of François’s widow, Shelby (Kate Moran), Jade’s stepmother, who has surrounded herself with a team of motorcycle-riding dudes, led by Valéry (Marc Barbé), looking like they’re just itching to kill someone.
Shelby is knee-deep in some dirty dealings with powerful mob boss Alberto (Vicente Gil), and for support she has recruited her brother, military vet Scott (Edwin Gaffney), who is also in the mood for a fight. Meanwhile, a pair of oddball detectives, Alain (Rodolphe Burger) and Francis (Francis Soetens), keep popping up in unexpected places, adding comic relief tinged with more than a little danger.
Gabriel desperately wants to get away from everything and return to his dull, miserable life, but there appears to be no escape until he figures out just what the heck is going on, as evidenced by this fab piece of dialogue:
Gabriel: What are you going to do with your life, Jade? Jade: I don’t know. Travel, maybe. Gabriel: Travelling is good. Travel and lose yourself. See, it’s good to lose yourself. Jade: Have you ever travelled? Gabriel: Not enough. I didn’t lose myself enough.
Schmitz (Nothing But Summer,Carwash,Lucie Lost Her Horse), who wrote the film with Kostia Testut, fills The Other Laurens with fab flourishes of Quentin Tarantino, Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, John Dahl, and Jean Renoir, enhanced by a pulsating score by Thomas Turine and a bold palette painted by cinematographer Florian Berutti.
Rabourdin is a revelation as Gabriel, his hulking figure sagging with malaise, while Leroy is mesmerizing as the unpredictable Jade, who is photographed like a femme fatale Brigitte Bardot. The supporting cast all perform their tasks exceptionally well, with Burger and Soetens standing out as an Abbott and Costello / Laurel and Hardy kind of duo, but with guns. Stick around for a Burger bonus after the credits start rolling.
Winner of the Grand Prix and Best Actor at the Brussels International Film Festival, The Other Laurens is screening August 23 and 24 in Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest, which also boasts such films as JT Mollner’s Strange Darling, Tinto Brass’s Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, and a tenth-anniversary presentation of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook with special content.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson reimagine Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with clips from old films in The Green Fog
VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and THE GREEN FOG (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, 2017)
Paris Theater
4 West Fifty-Eighth St. at Fifth Ave.
Sunday, August 25, 1:10 Vertigo also screens August 23, 29, 31, September 1
Series continues through October 31 www.paristheaternyc.com guy-maddin.com
Last year, the historic Paris Theater in midtown Manhattan reopened with “Big & Loud,” a festival of classic films screened using state-of-the-art technology, in 70mm with Dolby Atmos sound. The festival is back, kicking things off with the debut of a 70mm print of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, joined at one show by Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog. The series runs through October 31 with such other greats as James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Phantom Thread, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, and John Ford’s The Searchers.
Winnipeg-based filmmakers Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson ingeniously reimagine Alfred Hitchcock’s psychosexual masterpiece, Vertigo, using clips from dozens of movies and television programs in the mesmerizing pastiche The Green Fog. When Maddin, who has made such previous films as Careful, The Saddest Music in the World, and My Winnipeg, which use early-cinema conventions and look like rediscovered, decayed old works, was commissioned by the San Francisco International Film Festival to make a film for its sixtieth anniversary, Maddin turned to the Johnson brothers, his collaborators on The Forbidden Room and Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, and began poring over movies and TV shows set in the City by the Bay. Along the way they were continually reminded of Vertigo as they recognized locations from the classic thriller about an agoraphobic detective obsessed with a woman who resembles his former love. So the trio decided to re-create Vertigo with found footage, not shot-by-shot like Gus Van Sant did with Psycho but by employing themes, places, pacing, mood, and tension similar to Hitchcock’s, and in about half the time. (The Green Fog runs sixty-three minutes, Vertigo slightly more than two hours.)
The Green Fog incorporates clips from such genre movies as Sudden Fear, starring Joan Crawford
In sections with such titles as “Prologue,” “Weekend at Ernie’s,” and “Catatonia,” Maddin and the Johnsons follow the general story line of Vertigo,, with the Jimmy Stewart role “played” primarily by Rock Hudson from McMillan & Wife, Vincent Price from Confessions of an Opium Eater, and Chuck Norris from Slaughter in San Francisco and An Eye for an Eye. There’s a rooftop chase, a visit to a flower shop, scenes in restaurants and with paintings in museums, and a trip up a tower. Occasionally a green fog threatens ominously. In the vast majority of the clips, the dialogue has been cut out, so the characters are seen in choppy edits looking at each other in offbeat ways, allowing viewers to infer their own Vertigo-esque narrative. Because viewers are likely not to be familiar with many of the scenes from the movies and thus don’t know the relationships between the characters, issues of sexuality, homoeroticism, and even incest arise as Maddin and the Johnsons redefine the male gaze — so prevalent in Hitchcock films — while passing the Bechdel test.
Snippets of conversation occasionally come through, usually involving people watching surveillance footage on film or monitors or listening to tape recordings, commenting with inside jokes and references to the making of The Green Fog. “What are we looking for, sir?” Sgt. Enright (John Schuck) asks Commissioner McMillan (Hudson), who responds, “I don’t know, but at this point I’ll take anything.” McMillan also says, “That’s the trouble with that old film,” and later sets fire to filmstrips, leading to a series of disasters of epic proportions. And Michael Douglas as Det. Steve Keller from The Streets of San Francisco watches Michael Douglas as Det. Nick Curran from Basic Instinct get out of bed and walk to the bathroom naked. “Boy, you look good, Mike. You ever thought about going into showbiz?” Keller says to Lt. Stone (Malden).
Vincent Price is one of many actors who “portray” John “Scottie” Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) in mesmerizing cinematic collage based on Vertigo
Many shots echo the doubling mirror image that is at the heart of Vertigo. In a scene from Nicholas Ray’s Born to Be Bad, Gobby Broome (Mel Ferrer) watches what appears to be twin girls looking intently at two paintings in a museum. In a restaurant, a daughter tells her father, “I’m trying to become somebody,” as if there’s another persona waiting to burst out of her. And Lt. Stone puts on clown makeup to try to catch a killer. Among the other actors who show up in the film are Mel Brooks, Lee Remick, Martin Landau, Nancy Kwan, Clint Eastwood, Meg Ryan, Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Donald Sutherland, Miriam Hopkins, Dean Martin, Fritz Weaver, Sandra Bullock, Claude Akins, Sharon Stone, John Saxon, Joan Crawford, Sidney Poitier, Humphrey Bogart, Joseph Cotten, and Veronica Cartwright, from such movies and TV series as Murder She Wrote, Mission: Impossible, Hotel, Bullitt, High Anxiety, Dark Passage, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, The Towering Inferno, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Barbary Coast, The Conversation, Flower Drum Song, The Love Bug, Dirty Harry, A View to a Kill, The Lady from Shanghai, Sans Soleil, Sister Act, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Pal Joey, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Ten Commandments, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs! as well as an *NSYNC video.
The intense, titillating score was composed by Jacob Garchik and is performed by the San Francisco–based Kronos Quartet. The Green Fog also evokes Christian Marclay’s The Clock and Telephones, in which the Swiss and American visual and sound artist edited together existing film footage to create narratives based on time and phone conversations, respectively. As with those montage-based works, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to identify the actors and the movies in The Green Fog, but don’t forget that the clips are all being employed to come up with something brand new that stands on its own. Maddin (Tales from the Gimli Hospital,Keyhole) and the Johnsons have made a dazzling love letter to Vertigo, to San Francisco, and to the history of movies themselves, offering a treasure trove of fun worthy of repeated viewings. Maddin has written a special introduction for the Paris screening.
James Stewart and Kim Novak get caught up in a murder mystery in Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 mind-altering, fetishistic psychological thriller, Vertigo, heavily influenced Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s San Francisco montage. Based on Boileau-Narcejac’s 1954 novel, D’entre les morts, the film delves deep into the nature of fear and obsession. Jimmy Stewart stars as John “Scottie” Ferguson, a police detective who retires after his acrophobia leads to the death of a fellow cop. An old college classmate, wealthy businessman Gavin Elster (Tom Holmore), asks Scottie to look into his wife’s odd behavior; Elster believes that Madeleine (Kim Novak) is being inhabited by the spirit of Carlotta Valdes, her great-grandmother, a woman who committed suicide in her mid-twenties, the same age that Madeleine is now. Scottie follows Madeleine as she goes to Carlotta’s grave, visits a portrait of her in a local museum, and jumps into San Francisco Bay. Scottie rescues her, brings her to his house, and starts falling in love with her. But on a visit to Mission San Juan Bautista, tragedy strikes when Scottie can’t get to the top of the tower because of his vertigo. After a stint in a sanatorium, he wanders the streets of San Francisco where he and Madeleine had fallen in love, as if hoping to see a ghost — and when he indeed finds a woman who reminds him of Madeleine, a young woman named Judy Barton (Novak), he can’t help but try to turn her into his lost love, with tragedy waiting in the wings once again.
Scottie experiences quite a nightmare in Alfred Hitchcock classic
Vertigo is a twisted tale of sexual obsession, much of it filmed in San Francisco, making the City by the Bay a character all its own as Scottie travels down Lombard St., takes Madeleine to Muir Woods, stops by Ernie’s, and saves Madeleine under the Golden Gate Bridge. The color scheme is almost shocking, with bright, bold blues, reds, and especially greens dominating scenes. Hitchcock, of course, famously had a thing for blondes, so it’s hard not to think of Stewart as his surrogate when Scottie insists that Judy dye her hair blonde. Color is also central to Scottie’s psychedelic nightmare (designed by artist John Ferren), a Spirographic journey through his mind and down into a grave. Cinematographer Robert Burks’s use of the dolly zoom, in which the camera moves on a dolly in the opposite direction of the zoom, keeps viewers sitting on the edge of their seats, adding to the fierce tension, along with Bernard Herrmann’s frightening score. Despite their age difference, there is pure magic between Stewart, forty-nine, and Novak, twenty-four. (Stewart and Novak next made Bell, Book, and Candle as part of the deal to let Novak work for Paramount while under contract to Columbia.)
The production was fraught with problems: The screenplay went through Maxwell Anderson, Alec Coppel, and finally Samuel A. Taylor; shooting was delayed by Hitchcock’s health and vacations taken by Stewart and Novak; a pregnant Vera Miles was replaced by Novak; Muir Matheson conducted the score in Europe, instead of Herrmann in Hollywood, because of a musicians’ strike; associate producer Herbert Coleman reshot one scene using the wrong lens; Hitchcock had to have a bell tower built atop Mission San Juan Bautista after a fire destroyed its steeple; and the studio fought for a lame alternate ending (which was filmed). Perhaps all those difficulties, in the end, helped make Vertigo the classic it is today, gaining in stature over the decades, from mixed reviews when it opened to a controversial restoration in 1996 to being named the best film of all time in Sight & Sound’s 2012 poll to a recent digital restoration. Amy Taubin will introduce the August 23 screening of the new 70mm print at the Paris.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Ralph Arlyck explores aging and death in intimately personal I Like It Here
I LIKE IT HERE (Ralph Arlyck, 2022)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
August 23-29
212-966-4510 www.dctvny.org timedexposures.com
“I wanna stay here forever,” a young boy says in his grandfather’s latest documentary, I Like It Here. But as that grandfather, Ralph Arlyck, points out throughout the film, life comes to an end for us all.
Made over the course of several years, I Like It Here is a wistful, painfully honest exploration of aging and death, written, directed, photographed, and narrated by Arlyck, who was born in Brooklyn in 1940 and raised in Suffern, New York. It started out as a documentary about Arlyck’s upstate neighbor, Erno Szemes, an elderly hermit from Hungary, but the gruff Erno decided he didn’t want to share his life in front of a camera.
The project then morphed into a deeply personal story about facing the end, as Arlyck, whose previous films include 1968’s Natural Habitat, 1980’s An Acquired Taste, 1989’s Current Events, and 2004’s Following Sean, visits friends, lovers, and colleagues from his past, some of whom he hasn’t seen in more than half a century or more, while spending time with his wife, children, and grandchildren. In addition, he speaks with unique strangers he meets along his journey.
“I’m wondering how much my friends are thinking about the upcoming end of the days we’re all walking through, about the absolute finality of what will soon happen,” Arlyck says.
He encounters an Iranian man named Homer attempting to cheat death by walking along the side of a road and pulling a tire connected to his body by a chain. Fellow filmmaker Jack Baran is boisterous about life even though he has suffered two major losses. Arlyck visits his first serious girlfriend, writer Linda Chase; his Colgate buddy Mel Watkins; nonagenarian ski instructor Lou Ambrico and his wife, Pat; graveyard caretaker Jackie Szatko; childless artist couple Harry Roseman and Catherine Murphy; Upstate Films cofounder Steve Leiber; filmmakers Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker; and therapist Terry Antman. Ralph and his wife, Elisabeth Cardonne, return to their old campus house at Vassar, which is in danger of being torn down, and travel to Paris, where they are surrounded by youth.
Arlyck has the unique skill of being able to get people to share intimate moments from their lives, often with humor. As Leiber laughs while detailing his heart attack, Arlyck tells us, “As I’m questioning him, it strikes me that documentary filmmaking is almost as invasive as the quadruple bypass he had.” At various times, Erno, Elisabeth, and a neurologist ask Arlyck to turn off the camera, but it seems to be infused into his very being, part of his body. He just cannot stop filming.
Despite dealing with numerous types of severe illness and death, I Like It Here is a lovely and poignant record of one man taking stock before he dies. Editor Emmet Dotan weaves in archival footage, clips from some of Arlyck’s films, and, in the second half, many scenes, old and new, of the director enjoying time with his family, from his parents to his grandkids. The title is somewhat misleading; at one point, Arlyck declares, “I love it here. Maintaining it is a bitch, but I must like that too.” He’s talking about more than just his upstate farm as he contemplates being put out to pasture.
Spoiler alert: I Like It Here runs August 23–29 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with Arlyck, who is very much still alive, participating in five Q&As opening weekend, joined by Dotan at two and moderated by Alan Berliner, Kent Jones, Gabrielle Glaser, Phillip Lopate, and Chloé Trayner.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
“I will never disappear / For forever, I’ll be here,” Swedish electropop musician and composer Fever Ray sings in their 2009 song “Keep the Streets Empty for Me.” The tune plays a key role in Swedish filmmaker Mika Gustafson’s heart-wrenching debut feature, Paradise Is Burning.
In a working-class Swedish suburb, sixteen-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo) is doing everything she can to keep her and her two sisters, twelve-year-old Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and seven-year-old Steffi (Safira Mossberg), together despite an absent father and a mother who disappears for long periods of time. When social services schedules a visit, Laura is worried that the three girls, who are very close, will be separated and put into foster care. Laura seeks help from her aunt Vera (Andrea Edwards) and their neighbors, Sasha (Mitja Siren) and Zara (Marta Oldenburg), an older couple who run a karaoke bar, but there’s not much they can do; Laura is on her own to preserve her family.
It’s summer, so school is not an issue. Laura comes up with elaborate plans to steal groceries from the supermarket. She avoids social services’ phone calls. She gives her sisters plenty of room to roam but fiercely protects and defends them if there are any problems. All three are going through major life events. When Mira gets her period, a group of friends hold a dramatic ritual celebration. Steffi is waiting for her first baby tooth to fall out. As Mira grows friendly with Sasha, “managing” his karaoke singing aspirations, Steffi collects stray dogs and meets Micai (Ellie Ghanati), another disaffected youth; they set up a unique little outdoor “home” where they can both let their rage out and find peace and privacy.
Laura enjoys breaking into other people’s houses and pretending to live like they do, eating their food, swimming in their pools, and trying on their clothes. She never takes anything from them; instead, she finds a kind of freedom, tinged with danger. In one house, she watches bullfighting on television; she is both matador and charging animal. Meanwhile, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker is on in their own home, a film about a journey into a mysterious forbidden Zone where it is believed that people can achieve their most inner desires.
Running away after being chased out by the angry owner of a house and looking lost, she bumps into Hanna (Ida Engvoll), a thirtysomething woman who is instantly intrigued by Laura. The two quickly grow close; Hanna joins Laura on her fantasy adventures into houses, becoming friend, confidant, and maybe more. Hanna is a kind of mother figure — the type of parent Laura wishes she had — before the teenager finds out more about Hanna and her quest for freedom.
It’s no mere coincidence that the title, Paradise Is Burning, evokes Jennie Livingston’s award-winning 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning, about BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ ball culture in New York City, where anyone and everyone can feel safe and secure being whoever they are and whoever they want to be. In nearly every scene, Laura looks like she’s ready to explode, to break free of the life she has been forced into. The sacrifices she must make are too much for any teenager to be asked to do. In one telling moment, she brings home T-shirts for her and Mira; Mira initially chooses the one with an eagle on it, but when she sees Laura put on the other one, with wolves, she asks to switch, which Laura does without complaint. Mira, who also thinks she’s ready for her mother’s fancy white high heels, aspires to be more like her older sister, who she considers tough and strong, not acknowledging that Laura is just a kid too, one whose ability to soar is being suppressed. In fact, animals figure prominently throughout the film, from rats and dogs to a Botero-like cat and three white flamingos hiding their heads in the water, emphasizing the wild nature of the sisters’ less-than-standard domestic existence.
Laura (Bianca Delbravo) finds an unexpected new friend in Hanna (Ida Engvoll) in Paradise Is Burning
In her first film, Delbravo is absolutely brilliant as Laura — she was discovered six years before shooting by Gustafson’s cowriter, Alexander Öhrstrand (who also has a small but key part in the movie), when he overheard Delbravo screaming at someone over the phone. With her pouty lips, puppy-dog eyes, and button nose, she’s a mesmerizing figure, a young woman trapped between being a child and an adult, best exemplified by subtle changes she makes in her movement and mannerisms when Laura is with her sisters as opposed to when she is with Hanna — superbly portrayed by Engvoll — who is also caught between two worlds.
Named Best Director and Best Screenwriter (with Öhrstrand) at the 2023 Venice Orizzonti, Gustafson exhibits an impressive talent in her first full-length narrative film; she previously made such works as the short Mephobia and the documentary Silvana. Her grasp of character development packs an emotional punch, as does the tempting sense of freedom lurking just around each corner for every character, reminiscent of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey and Fish Tank, while injecting a bit of David Lynch into the karaoke scenes.
“There’s no room for innocence,” Fever Ray also sings in “Keep the Streets Empty for Me.” Both Gustafson and Delbravo bravely navigate innocence and experience in their feature cinematic debuts, marking them as two to watch.
Paradise Is Burning opens this weekend at the IFC Center, with Gustafson participating in Q&As at the 7:00 sneak-peek screening on August 22 and the 7:15 shows on August 23 and 24.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
