this week in film and television

CANE FIRE

Activists fight for ancestral land in Kauaʻi in Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire

CANE FIRE (Anthony Banua-Simon, 2020)
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 20-26
www.bam.org

Not that it’s surprising, but colonialism is alive and well in the United States, as revealed in Anthony Banua-Simon’s poignant documentary Cane Fire, screening May 20-26 at BAM.

While doing research for his 2013 short, Third Shift, about the demise of the Domino Sugar Factory in South Williamsburg and its replacement with luxury condos and commercial properties, Banua-Simon became immersed in his family’s Hawaiian history; in the 1920s, his great-grandfather immigrated to Kauaʻi from the Philippines to work in the sugar and pineapple plantations. His great-grandfather eventually left, leaving family behind, but not before serving as an extra in Lois Weber’s long-lost 1934 melodrama, Cane Fire (aka White Heat), which was filmed on Kauaʻi and deals with sugar plantations, imperialism, and mixed marriages.

While searching for more information about the film, Banua-Simon became immersed in the history of Kauaʻi, from its use as a favorite Hollywood shooting location to labor strife, cultural appropriation, and the building of massive “plantation-style” resorts on land taken from the native population, particularly following its gaining statehood in 1959, primarily for military purposes.

Banua-Simon depicts how Kauaʻi has changed through the eyes of his elderly great-uncle Henry Bermoy, a former union leader who does not like what he sees happening to the land and the culture. Banua-Simon also speaks with his younger cousins River Bermoy, Micah Bermoy, and Dylan Silva, who are trying to make lives for themselves on the island; Henry’s longtime friend and colleague, Alfredo Castillo, who bemoans the end of unions; popular singer Larry Rivera, who will take whatever gig he’s offered; second generation sugar company manager Mike Faye, who believes that industrial growth benefits everyone and always has; union rep Pamela Green; Mike Wong, who works such long hours (for low pay) at Smith’s Tropical Paradise that he has no time for his family; activists Keʻala Lopez and Kamu “Charles” Hepa, who risk their freedom to protect ancestral land; and real estate broker Chad Deal, who promotes luxury living on the island with no sense of how that negatively impacts the families who have lived there for generations.

“For those who can afford it, the island continues to fulfill the escapist fantasy,” Banua-Simon explains about more than a hundred years of exploitation. “But for the working class and native resident, Kauaʻi is at a breaking point.”

Banua-Simon keeps close track of developer Tyler Greene, who is planning on restoring the old Coco Palms resort to its former glory, when Hollywood greats partied there, owner Grace Guslander appropriated Hawaiian culture to please white tourists, and locals were taken advantage of as part of the cost of doing business. Banua-Simon incorporates new interviews with archival photographs and video; clips of Charlton Heston, John Wayne, Kevin Costner, Yvette Mimieux, Frank Sinatra, Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and others in such movies and TV shows shot on Kauaʻi as Blue Hawaii, Jungle Heat, Diamond Head, South Pacific, Fantasy Island, Big Jim McLain, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Dragonfly, and Pagan Love Song; old commercials for luxury travel promising the heights of extravagance; and more that reveal the disconnect between the native Hawaiians and the white interlopers.

And it’s still happening today.

“There are forces out there that don’t want us to survive because our existence threatens directly their existence,” Keʻala says as a group of locals occupy a historic, important site that is going to be redeveloped. “The fact that the kingdom exists takes away from the legitimacy of the corporations that stole these lands.”

Banua-Simon directed, edited, and photographed Cane Fire and cowrote and produced it with Michael Vass. A member of the volunteer-run Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, Banua-Simon and Vass will be at BAM on May 20 and 21 for Q&As moderated by Alex Press and Steve Macfarlane, respectively, following the 7:00 screenings each night. In addition, documentarian Joan Lander is presenting “Eyes of the Land: Hawai‘i Shorts by Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina,” a special program at Spectacle on May 18 at 7:30 consisting of All Hawaiʻi Stand Together, No Tell Me Go, Waimanalo Eviction, and Na Wai E Ho’ōla I Nā Iwi — Who Will Save the Bones?

HBO’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: SPECIAL SCREENING AND CONVERSATION

Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac will talk about their HBO series at the 92nd St. Y

Who: Jessica Chastain, Oscar Isaac, Hagai Levi, Amy Herzog, Michael Ellenberg
What: Screening and discussion
Where: 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. at Ninety-Second St.
When: Thursday, May 19, $27-$45, 7:00
Why: If you missed HBO’s English-language adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s six-part Scenes from a Marriage, you can get a special chance to watch one of the 2021 episodes on the big screen, followed by a conversation with members of the creative team, at the 92nd St. Y on May 19. Bergman’s 1973 miniseries detailed the slow, heart-wrenching fracture of the relationship between Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson). Directed and executive produced by Hagai Levi (The Affair, In Treatment) and written by Levi and playwright Amy Herzog (4000 Miles, Mary Jane), the remake turns the tables on such issues as infidelity, truth, gender, responsibility, and identity, with Oscar Isaac as Jonathan and Jessica Chastain as Mira. The 92Y screening will be followed by a discussion with Isaac, Chastain, Levi, Herzog, and producer Michael Ellenberg that goes behind the scenes of the making of the almost painfully intimate show.

VISIONS OF OKINAWA: CINEMATIC REFLECTIONS

Go Takamine’s Paradise View kicks off Japan Society series about the Okinawan transition

VISIONS OF OKINAWA: CINEMATIC REFLECTIONS
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 13 – June 3, $15 in-person screenings, $10 online rentals (three-film pass $24)
www.japansociety.org

“Did you have your fortune told?” a character asks in Go Takamine’s Paradise View. “Yes, things are looking good” is the answer.

On June 17, 1971, the last of the Ryukyu Islands was returned to Japanese control. Japan Society began its celebration of that pivotal event in March with “Waves Across Time: Traditional Dance and Music of Okinawa.” The tribute continues May 13 to June 3 with “Visions of Okinawa: Cinematic Reflections,” consisting of five in-person screenings and three streaming films, all set around the transition of power. Part of the “Okinawa in Focus: Globus Film Series,” the festival begins May 13 at 7:00 with the North American premiere of the 2021 edit of Go Takamine’s Paradise View, followed by a reception; the 1985 work, which deals with a funeral, a wedding, dangerous snakes, and painful dentistry, will be available for streaming starting May 14.

Chris Marker’s 1996 Level Five, a French film involving a computer game restaging the Battle of Okinawa as part of an investigation into the Japanese tendency to bury the past, will be shown May 14 at 4:30, followed at 7:00 by a rare archival 35mm print of Nagisa Oshima’s 1972 Dear Summer Sister, in which Oshima, who appears in Level Five, takes viewers on an unusual tourist trip across Okinawa. Sadao Nakajima’s 1976 Terror of Yakuza, inspired by actual gang warfare on Okinawa and starring the great Sonny Chiba, screens May 20 at 7:00; an imported 35mm print of Go Takamine’s 1989 Untamagiru, an adaptation of the uchina shibai play and featuring John Sayles as a US military commander who really loves his dog, will be shown May 21 at 7:00.

Motoshinkakarannu explores the complicated transition of power on Okinawa

The virtual screenings also include the special “Focus on the Nihon Documentarist Union (NDU),” a pair of black-and-white guerrilla-style nonfiction works by the NDU, which was founded in 1968 at Waseda University. The 1971 Motoshinkakarannu and 1973 Asia Is One are screening for the first time outside of Japan, with new English subtitles, taking on immigration, socioeconomic issues, labor protests, and other complex issues.

MAI ZETTERLING: TORMENT

Tobacco-shop clerk Bertha Olsson (Mai Zetterling) is terrified of life in Alf Sjöberg’s Torment

TORMENT (FRENZY) (HETS) (Alf Sjöberg, 1944)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Saturday, May 7, Monday, May 9, Friday, May 13, Tuesday, May 17
Series runs May 6-19
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Film Forum pays tribute to Swedish actress, director, and novelist Mai Zetterling with a two-week, twenty-one-film retrospective featuring works directed by Basil Dearden, Nicolas Roeg, Ingmar Bergman, Alf Sjöberg, Christina Olofson, Ken Loach, and Zetterling, among others, ranging from 1944 to 1990. A passionate feminist, Zetterling studied at the National Theater in Sweden, became a star in England, had affairs with Herbert Lom and Tyrone Power, left Hollywood (avoiding the blacklist), and passed away in 1994 at the age of sixty-eight. “It feels like I’m a long way away from pretty much every norm there is,” she said.

One of the series highlights is Sjöberg’s intense 1944 expressionistic noir, Torment, which had its US premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962. Although directed by Sjöberg, Torment, also known as Frenzy, was written by Bergman, who also served as assistant director and made his directing debut in the final scene, which Bergman added at the insistence of the producers when Sjöberg was not available. A kind of inversion of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, the film is set in a boarding school where high school boys are preparing for their final exams and graduation. They are terrified of their sadistic Latin teacher, whom they call Caligula (Stig Järrel), a brutal man who wields a fascistic iron fist. He particularly has it out for Jan-Erik Widgren (Alf Kjellin), the son of wealthy parents (Olav Riégo and Märta Arbin) who think he should be doing better in school. One night Jan-Erik helps out a troubled woman in the street, tobacco-shop clerk Bertha Olsson (Zetterling), who is being mentally and physically tormented by an unnamed man who ends up being Caligula. The stakes get higher and the teacher becomes even harder on Jan-Erik when he finds out the young man is having an affair with the wayward woman. When tragedy strikes, Jan-Erik’s soul is in turmoil as lies, threats, and danger grow.

A sadistic teacher (Stig Järrel) torments a student (Alf Kjellin) in Ingmar Bergman–written Torment

The twenty-five-year-old Bergman was inspired to write his first produced film script by his experience in boarding school, which led to a public disagreement with the headmaster. In a public letter to the headmaster, Bergman explained, “I was a very lazy boy, and very scared because of my laziness, because I was involved with theater instead of school and because I hated having to be punctual, having to get up in the morning, do homework, sit still, having to carry maps, having break times, doing tests, taking oral examinations, or to put it plainly: I hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticize my own school, but all schools.” Throughout his career, Bergman would take on institutions, including religion and marriage, but his defiance began with this hellish representation of education, which oppresses all the boys in some way, including Jan-Erik’s best friend, self-described misogynist Sandman (Stig Olin), and the geeky Pettersson (Jan Molander). While the headmaster (Olof Winnerstrand) knows how frightened the boys are of Caligula, he is willing to go only so far to protect them. The opening credits are shown over a dreamlike sequence of Jan-Erik and Bertha desperately holding on to each other, but Torment is so much more than a treacly melodrama, as if Sjöberg (Miss Julie, Ön) is setting us up for one film before switching gears into an ominous, haunting thriller.

Järrel, who played an evil, jealous teacher in his previous film, Hasse Ekman’s Flames in the Dark, is indeed scary as the devious, malicious Caligula, while adding more than a touch of sadness. Zetterling, in her breakthrough role — she would go on to star in such films as Dearden’s Frieda and Roeg’s The Witches and direct such feminist works as Loving Couples and The Girls — brings a touching vulnerability to Bertha, a young woman who can’t find happiness. It’s all anchored by Kjellin’s (Madame Bovary, Ship of Fools) central performance, so rife with emotion it evokes German silent cinema. Torment suffers from Hilding Rosenberg’s overreaching score, although it is usually offset by Martin Bodin’s cinematography, filled with lurching shadows and deep mystery. The film was produced by Victor Sjöström, the legendary director of The Phantom Carriage, The Divine Woman, The Wind, and so many others in addition to his work as an actor, starring as Professor Isak Borg in another Bergman masterpiece, 1957’s Wild Strawberries, and as the conductor in 1950’s To Joy.

“Mai Zetterling” includes such other films as Sidney Gilliat’s Only Two Can Play, Bergman’s Music in the Dark, Sjöberg’s Iris and the Lieutenant, Loach’s Hidden Agenda, and Gustaf Edgren’s Sunshine Follows Rain in addition to Zetterling’s own Loving Couples (her debut as a director), Night Games (based on her unfinished novel), We Have Many Names, The Moon Is a Green Cheese, several shorts, and other features, many in new restorations courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute. Cinema historian Jane Sloan will be at Film Forum for a Q&A following the 1:00 screening of The Girls on May 7, while avant-garde filmmaker and curator Vivian Ostrovsky will introduce the 6:10 showing of the film on May 8; in addition, actress Harriet Andersson and Kajsa Hedström of the SFI will record intros for special screenings.

FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN

Star Chaim Topol and director-producer Norman Jewison kid around on the set of Fiddler on the Roof

FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN (Daniel Raim, 2022)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, April 29
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
zeitgeistfilms.com

Daniel Raim takes viewers behind the scenes of the making of one of the most beloved musicals of all time in Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen, opening April 29 at the Angelika. Raim follows the development of the 1964 Broadway smash Fiddler on the Roof, which ran for 3,242 performances and won nine of the ten Tonys it was nominated for, into the classic 1971 film that was up for eight Oscars and won three.

The documentary is anchored by a series of talks with Fiddler’s director and producer, Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison, who had previously made The Cincinnati Kid, In the Heat of the Night, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and would go on to direct and produce Jesus Christ Superstar, A Soldier’s Story, and Mooonstruck. One of the first things we learn about Jewison is that he isn’t Jewish.

Recalling the initial meeting he had with United Artists executives, Jewison recalls, “[Studio head] Arthur Krim looked at me and he says, ‘What would you say if we were to say we want you to produce and direct Fiddler on the Roof?’ And my heart came up into my mouth and I thought, Oh my G-d. And I looked over, waited, and they waited, and they all kind of leaned forward. They thought, What is he waiting for? And then I said, ‘What would you say if I told you I’m a goy?’” He got the job because, as Krim explained, “We want a film for everybody.”

Documentary goes behind the scenes of the making of Fiddler on the Roof

Raim incorporates old and/or new interviews with vibrant lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who turns ninety-eight on April 30 (the score was composed by Jerry Bock, who passed away in 2010); musical director and conductor John Williams, who is featured extensively; production designer Robert F. Boyle, who was Raim’s professor at AFI; cinematographer Oswald Morris; American film critic Kenneth Turan; and Israeli star Chaim Topol, who nabbed the role of Tevye from Zero Mostel, who played the anguished, deeply religious father on Broadway. The film is worth seeing just for the lovely interviews with the three actresses who portrayed the three oldest daughters, none of whom marry the men their parents prefer: Rosalind Harris (Tzeitel), Michele Marsh (Hodel), and Neva Small (Chava). “What a gift I was given,” Marsh, nearly in tears, remembers.

Discussing his approach to the cross-cultural nature of the story, which was based on the 1894 Yiddish tales of Tevye the dairyman by Sholem Aleichem, Jewison points out, “Themes of family is universal; everybody has a family — good or bad, right or wrong, we all have a family, and we all have our little problems. But we all end up sitting around the table. And I thought, this is so common, this is something people can understand. They can understand a family. They can understand Golde. They can understand Tevye; they can understand his problems with life and his relationship to G-d. I think all of these things, all put together, make the story of Fiddler on the Roof so compelling.”

More than a dozen years in the making, Fiddler’s Journey can be a bit scattershot and is supplemented with occasional narration by Jeff Goldblum that feels like filler, consisting primarily of excerpts from Jewison’s This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, Alisa Solomon’s Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, and Morris’s Huston, We Have a Problem: A Kaleidoscope of Filmmaking Memories. Unfortuntely, these distract from the main narrative, which is packed with fabulous details about everything from the construction of the synagogue, Frank Sinatra’s desire to play Tevye, and the stocking Boyle placed over the lens of the camera to the influence of Marc Chagall’s paintings, Harris understudying Bette Midler onstage, and the involvement of Isaac Stern.

The wealth of material includes archival stills and film footage, Mentor Huebner’s storyboards, and photos by Roman Vishniac that inspired the look of the movie, which was shot in Lekenik in what was then Yugoslavia. There are also in-depth looks at such treasured songs as “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and “Do You Love Me?”

The Fiddler on the Roof movie might be fifty years old now, but its impact is as powerful and, sadly, as relevant as ever. “One of the things that Fiddler is about: Nothing is permanent,” Turan says. Long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine — Aleichem was born and raised in Kyiv — the show (most recently revived in Yiddish by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage) and the film captured the pain of refugees forced to leave their home. Raim’s (Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, The Man on Lincoln’s Nose about Boyle) documentary was completed prior to the invasion, but it’s impossible to watch it without thinking about all the Anatevkas we see on the news every day, in Ukraine and around the world.

(Raim will be at the Angelika on April 29 and 30 for Q&As following the 7:25 screenings, joined by Small and Harris.)

HIT THE ROAD

Panah Panahi’s Hit the Road tells the story of a clandestine family journey

HIT THE ROAD (Panah Panahi, 2021)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opened Friday, April 22
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Panah Panahi’s debut feature, Hit the Road, is a gorgeously told tale about a family’s secret journey across the vast hinterlands of Iran. Writer-director Panahi lets the details filter out in dribs and drabs, like air whistling through a barely opened window on their drive down deserted paths through brown and gray mountainous, past arid landscapes toward lush green vistas with flowing rivers. Every shot is magisterial in scope, from the confines of their crowded car to the seemingly endless countryside that threatens danger as much as it offers freedom.

Fear hovers over the family as their trip continues, as they worry about being followed or that they can be discovered through a forbidden smartphone. Names are seldom used, except for their ailing rescue dog, Jessy; all the other characters are relatively anonymous, as if our knowing too much about them would increase the threat level. The father, Khosro (Hassan Majnooni), sits in the back, his itchy, broken left leg in a long cast; his ridiculously adorable and extremely smart six-year-old boy (Rayan Sarlak) is almost always by his side or on top of him, chattering away, understanding more about the world than six-year-old boys should. In the front, the concerned mother (Pantea Panahiha) anguishes over their every move while their grown son (Amin Simiar) drives on in virtual silence. They cheerily sing to old Iranian pop tunes on the radio while avoiding mentioning the specifics of their odyssey as they get closer to their destination.

“I think I’m losing it. What next?” the mother tells her husband, asking, “Do you ever think about the future?” He replies, “This is my future.”

They make several stops on the way, which cinematographer Amin Jafari often photographs from a far distance, with little or no camera movement, as if a landscape painting with people in the background has come to life. A handful of scenes last between three and six minutes without any cuts, especially later in the film, lending it a feeling of reality that transcends mere artifice. (The seamless editing is by Ashkan Mehri and Amir Etminan.) A long talk between the father and the older son is beautifully touching, as is a fantastical moment between Khosro and the younger child that evokes a previous mention of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The temporary break from the tense reality was signaled from the very beginning, when the boy touches piano keys drawn on his father’s cast and we can hear the music, which also introduces us to Payman Yazdanian’s lovely, evocative score.

Beautiful landscapes appear throughout Panah Panahi’s Hit the Road

Panahi is the son of Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi (Offside This Is Not a Film), who apprenticed under Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami (Close-Up, Taste of Cherry), both of whom have made films that take place primarily in cars, including his father’s Taxi and 3 Faces, on which Panah served as coeditor with Mastaneh Mohajer, and Kiarostami’s Ten. But with Hit the Road, which Panah produced with Mohajer, the younger Panahi finds his own path, balancing high comedy with the hard choices his characters have to make, taking viewers on a memorable cinematic adventure that doesn’t have to spell everything out to hold us firmly in its poetic grasp.

BETTER THINGS: ADVANCE SCREENING / PAMELA ADLON IN CONVERSATION WITH ISAAC MIZRAHI

Who: Pamela Adlon, Isaac Mizrahi
What: Advance screening and discussion of Better Things (92Y Recanati-Kaplan Talks)
Where: 92nd St. Y, Buttenwieser Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. between 91st & 92nd Sts., and online
When: Saturday, April 23, $25 in person, $20 online (talk only), 7:00
Why: One of the best virtual talks during the pandemic was 92Y’s conversation between Better Things cocreator, producer, director, cowriter, and star Pamela Adlon and actor and comedian Mario Cantone. Emmy winner Adlon, who plays Sam Fox, a single mother of three girls and a former child star still working in the business, and Cantone, who plays her agent, Mal Martone, cracked up each other, and the online audience, as they talked about the hit comedy and dealt with Zoom issues. After five seasons that began in 2016, Better Things is concluding its run on April 25 with its final, fifty-second episode, entitled, “We Are Not Alone.”

But on April 23 at 7:00, you can say goodbye to Sam; her daughters, Max (Mikey Madison), Frankie (Hannah Riley), and Duke (Olivia Edward); Sam’s expat mother, Phil (Celia Imrie); Rich (Diedrich Bader), Sam’s best friend; Mal; and other characters when the 92nd St. Y presents an advance, in-person-only screening of the finale, followed by a live discussion between Adlon (King of the Hill, Louie), herself a single mother of three daughters, and Brooklyn-born fashion designer and television presenter Isaac Mizrahi, that can also be accessed online. Better Things is an extraordinarily funny and moving show that is, first and foremost, about family, dealing with familiar issues in unique ways as three generations of women face the challenges of daily existence with charm and humor. If you haven’t been watching, start bingeing now.