this week in film and television

DOC NYC: THE PUNK SINGER

Riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna opens up about her life in intimate documentary (photo courtesy of Pat Smear)

SONIC CINEMA — THE PUNK SINGER: A FILM ABOUT KATHLEEN HANNA (Sini Anderson, 2013)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eight & Ninth Aves.
Saturday, November 16, 7:15
Festival runs November 14-23
212-924-7771
www.thepunksinger.com
www.docnyc.net

A cofounder of the riot grrrl movement, Kathleen Hanna was an outspoken feminist as she toured the world with Bikini Kill and then Le Tigre starting in 1991. But it all came to a mysterious halt in 2005 when the Portland, Oregon, native suddenly went on what became a long hiatus for undisclosed health reasons. Director Sini Anderson gets to the heart of the matter in the intimate, revealing documentary The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna. Incorporating rousing archival footage and photographs along with new interviews, Anderson, in her feature debut, gets Hanna to open up about her life and career, discussing such influences as Kathy Acker and Gloria Steinem as well as the serious health problem that kept her out of the public eye for five years. Hanna also talks about her childhood, a sexual assault that happened to her best friend, her photography and fashion work in college, her zine writing, and the formation of her bands, along the way always pushing her message. “We didn’t give a shit,” she says about the beginnings of Bikini Kill. “We weren’t making money; we knew we were never going to make money. And it was really important that we made our music. We were on a mission. We were going to do what we did whether we got attention or not.” Anderson also speaks with such former and current Hanna bandmates as Johanna Fateman, JD Samson, Kathi Wilcox, and Tobi Vail, musical icons Joan Jett and Kim Gordon, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, and Hanna’s husband, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz; many are interviewed in the back of a snazzy van during a Hanna tribute concert at the Knitting Factory in 2010.

Kathleen Hanna gets her message out with Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and the Julie Ruin

Anderson weaves in plenty of music clips that display Hanna’s powerful stage presence, including snippets of such songs as “Rebel Girl,” “White Boy,” “Distinct Complicity,” “Hot Topic,” “Deceptacon,” and “Aerobicide” from Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and the Julie Ruin. The Punk Singer is a gripping portrait of a fearless, talented woman who continues to do whatever it takes to get her message out. “What is the story of my life?” Hanna says near the end. “I have no fucking idea.” But now, thanks to Anderson, we do, even if that story is still being written. The Punk Singer is having its New York City premiere November 15 at 9:45 at the SVA Theatre as part of the “Sonic Cinema” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Hanna on hand to talk about the film. DOC NYC, which seeks to “curate [by] guiding audiences toward inspiring work,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Sonic Cinema” selections are Rodrigo H. Vila’s Mercedes Sosa: Voice of Latin America, Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner’s Harlem Street Singer, Joe Angio’s Revenge of the Mekons, and Jeremy Xido’s Death Metal Angola.

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: THE LIFE OF OHARU

Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) lives a life filled with misery after misery in Mizoguchi melodrama

THE LIFE OF OHARU (SAIKAKU ICHIDAI ONNA) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, November 16, $12, 6:00
Series runs monthly through February
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

We used to think that Aki Kaurismäki’s The Match Factory Girl was the saddest film ever made about a young woman who just can’t catch a break, as misery after misery keeps piling up on her ever-more-pathetic existence. But the Finnish black comedy has nothing on Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu, a searing, brutal example of the Buddhist observation of impermanence and the role of women in Japanese society. The film, based on a seventeenth-century novel by Ihara Saikaku, is told in flashback, with Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) recounting what led her to become a fifty-year-old prostitute nobody wants. It all starts to go downhill after she falls in love with Katsunosuke (Toshirô Mifune), a lowly page beneath her family’s station. The affair brings shame to her mother (Tsukie Matsuura) and father (Ichiro Sugai), as well as exile. The family is redeemed when Oharu is chosen to be the concubine of Lord Matsudaira (Toshiaki Konoe) in order to give birth to his heir, but Lady Matsudaira (Hisako Yamane) wants her gone once the baby is born, and so she is sent home again, without the money her father was sure would come to them. Over the next several years, Oharu becomes involved in a series of personal and financial relationships, each one beginning with at least some hope and promise for a better future but always ending in tragedy. Nevertheless, she keeps on going, despite setback after setback, bearing terrible burdens while never giving up. Mizoguchi (Sansho the Bailiff, The 47 Ronin, Street of Shame) bathes much of the film in darkness and shadow, casting an eerie glow over the unrelentingly melodramatic narrative. Tanaka, who appeared in fifteen of Mizoguchi’s films and also became the second Japanese woman director (Love Letter, Love Under the Crucifix), gives a subtly compelling performance as Oharu, one of the most tragic figures in the history of cinema.

Donald Richie called THE LIFE OF OHARU “one of Mizoguchi’s most elegantly beautiful films”

Winner of the International Prize at the 1952 Venice International Film Festival, The Life of Oharu is screening on November 16 at 6:00 at Japan Society, introduced by filmmaker and scholar Joel Neville Anderson, as part of the monthly tribute series “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” which honors Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February at the age of eighty-eight. Richie was a tireless champion of Japanese culture and, particularly, cinema, and the series features six works by five of his favorite directors. Here’s what Richie said about The Life of Oharu: “Based on a light and picaresque novel by the seventeenth-century writer Saikaku, the film takes a more serious view of the decline and fall of the heroine — from court lady to common whore. Yoshikata Yoda’s script, Tanaka’s performance as Oharu, Hiroshi Mizutani’s art direction, and Ichiro Saito’s score — using Japanese instruments — help make this one of Mizoguchi’s most elegantly beautiful films.” The series continues in December with Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Autumn (screening on Ozu’s birthday, which will also mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death), in January with Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Himatsuri, and in February with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, appropriately on the one-year anniversary of Richie’s passing.

WELCOME TO COMPUTER AGE: DEMON SEED

Julie Christie is trapped in a suburban nightmare in Donald Cammell’s DEMON SEED

COMPUTER AGE — EARLY COMPUTER MOVIES, 1952-1987: DEMON SEED (Donald Cammell, 1977)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, November 15, $12, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Based on the novel by Dean R. Koontz, Donald Cammell’s creepy, claustrophobic 1977 futuristic thriller Demon Seed offers a very different look at motherhood. The film stars a surprisingly game Julie Christie as Susan Harris, a frustrated housewife whose husband, Alex (Fritz Weaver), is the leader of a team that has built a master computer known as Proteus (voiced by Robert Vaughn). When Alex goes off for several months to further Proteus’s already impressive attributes, the supercomputer starts developing a mind of its own, locking Susan in the house and deciding she must give birth to its child. Cammell, who codirected Performance with Nicolas Roeg, fills Demon Seed with trippy, psychedelic visuals and cool technological flourishes, along with an electronic score by Ian Underwood and Lee Ritenour supplementing Jerry Fielding’s central musical themes. The film delves into suburban paranoia with Toffler-esque flare and an Orwellian fear of artificial intelligence. The film harkens back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project while influencing such future films as John Badham’s WarGames, which also names its supercomputer “Joshua” and casts Weaver look-alike John Wood as computer creator Dr. Stephen Falken. Demon Seed is screening with Ron Hays’s 1981 Earth, Wind & Fire video Let’s Groove on November 15 at 7:00, kicking off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Computer Age: Early Computer Movies, 1952-1987,” which continues through November 17 with such other computer-prescient films as Steven Lisberger’s Tron and Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter, several shorts programs (including one featuring works by Larry Cuba, John Whitney, and John Whitney Jr.), and a conversation with computer artist Lillian Schwartz.

DOC NYC: HUNGRY

Takeru Kobayashi fights to get back his crown in HUNGRY

MIDNIGHT DOCS: HUNGRY (Jeff Cerulli & Barry Rothbart, 2013)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, November 15, 11:59 pm
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.hungrythefilm.com
www.docnyc.net

“Every person has a basis desire to eat,” Takeru Kobayashi says at the beginning of Jeff Cerulli and Barry Rothbart’s tasty documentary, Hungry. “There is also the desire to sleep, to have sex,” he continues. “That’s why it’s difficult to see eating as a sport.” From 2001 to 2006, Kobayashi almost single-handedly put the sport of competitive eating on the map by winning the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest six straight times. But as interest around the world grew, a seemingly irreparable gap grew between some of the sport’s champions and the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), which runs Major League Eating (MLE) and is owned and operated by brothers George and Richard Shea. In the film, Cerulli and Rothbart explore the controversy over contracts that led to Kobayashi, Dave “U.S. Male” Goldstein, Brad “the Lunatic” Sciullo, and other rather unique characters being cut off from MLE and taking part instead in unsanctioned events. Goldstein opens up his home to the filmmakers, sharing personal moments with his family, while the rebel Sciullo discusses his battle with a twenty-pound hamburger. Cerulli and Rothbart also speak with such competitive eating champs as Mike “the Scholar” Devito, Furious Pete Czerwinski, Crazy Legs Conti, and El Wingadore, in addition to Dr. Christopher Dimaio, a gastroenterologist who has a word of warning for all of them. But they do what they do because they can’t stop the need to compete, just like any other athlete, and also because some of them don’t have anything else. “Normal life is dreadful,” says jalapeño master Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti. The film gets both exciting and disgusting as Goldstein and others prepare for Wing Bowl, followed by Kobayashi coming up with his own plan for July 4. Whether you consider competitive eating a true sport or not, Hungry will make you hungry for more. Hungry is serving up its world premiere November 15 at 1:45 at the IFC Center as part of the “Midnight Docs” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Cerulli, Rothbart, and Kobayashi on hand to talk about the film. The festival, which seeks to “cross fertilize [by] gathering practitioners of many fields — filmmakers, writers, photographers, and other storytellers — to inspire each other,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Midnight Docs” are Christina Voros’s Kink, Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math’s The Final Member, and Morgan Matthews’s Shooting Bigfoot.

THX BKLYN: REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

Delusional dreams turn into dark nightmares in Aronofsky film

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
November 15-16, 12:05 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream is a devastating portrait of addiction, featuring one of the most brutal endings in cinema history. Based on the novel by Hubert Selby Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn), who cowrote the screenplay with Aronofsky, the Coney Island-set film focuses on four central figures: Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), a lonely widow living in Brighton Beach who learns that she might appear on a television program so is desperate to lose weight to fit into her red dress, ultimately getting lost in a haze of prescription drugs; her son, Harry (Jared Leto), a junkie looking to make a big score; Harry’s girlfriend, Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), who dreams of becoming a fashion designer but has to decide how far she will go for her next taste; and Harry’s partner in crime, Tyrone Love (Marlon Wayans), who shoots up while remembering the warm comfort of his mother’s arms. Using repetitive fast-paced editing, enhanced sound effects, and a harrowing score by Clint Mansell, Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler, PI) creates a nightmare world where delusional dreams come crashing down with horrific consequences. The acting throughout is a veritable tour de force, led by Burstyn’s Oscar-nominated descent into hell. Requiem for a Dream is screening November 15-16 at 12:05 am as part of the Nitehawk Cinema series “November Brunch & Midnite: Thx Bklyn,” a month-long collection of films either set in Brooklyn or written and/or directed by Brooklynites, being shown on weekend mornings and midnights, continuing with J. Michael Muro’s Street Trash, Morris Engel’s Little Fugitive, Sidney Lumet’s Serpico, and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.

DOC NYC: REVENGE OF THE MEKONS

Sally Timms and Jon Langford fight the curse of the Mekons in stirring documentary

SONIC CINEMA: REVENGE OF THE MEKONS (Joe Angio, 2013)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Friday, November 15, 9:45
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.mekonsmovie.com
www.docnyc.net

Called “the most revolutionary group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll” by Lester Bangs, the Mekons have been making some of the best music on the planet for more than thirty-five years. But despite a rabid fan base and constant critical adoration, the band, which formed at the University of Leeds back in 1977, has never quite made the big time. Joe Angio captures the wild, DIY spirit of this unique music and art collective in the stirring documentary Revenge of the Mekons. Angio (How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company [and Enjoy It]) follows the self-deprecating band — the members of which are quick to joke about their lack of financial and popular success, especially when they’re onstage and learn from fans that an upcoming gig has been canceled — as they celebrate their thirtieth anniversary and record their most recent excellent album, Ancient and Modern. Angio talks with the current Mekons lineup, which includes cofounders Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford along with Susie Honeyman, Rico Bell, Lu Edmonds, Sarah Corina, Steve Goulding, and Sally Timms, as well as such former members as Kevin Lycett, Mark “Chalkie” White, Andy Corrigan, and Dick Taylor, as they recount the band’s rollicking history, beginning with its Leeds days as a socialist punk band battling over shows with Gang of Four through its mid-1980s transformation into alt-country folk rockers.

Mekons doc is one heckuva wild and crazy show

Mekons doc is one helluva wild and crazy ride, just like their long career

Angio mixes in amazing raw footage from the 1970s with more contemporary scenes as the Mekons, with their usual reckless abandon and utter joyfulness, play such songs as “Where Were You,” “The Hope and the Anchor,” “Ghosts of American Astronauts,” “Millionaire,” “Hello Cruel World,” “Hard to Be Human,” “Memphis, Egypt,” and “The Curse.” Sharing their love of all things Mekons are such wide-ranging pundits as Jonathan Franzen, Greil Marcus, Gang of Four’s Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill, Will Oldham, Greg Kot, Craig Finn, Luc Sante, Mary Harron, and performance artist Vito Acconci. Back in October 2011, we wrote that “a world that includes the Mekons is just a better place for everyone,” and that still holds true. So start by watching this wonderfully crazy documentary, about a group of crazy characters who have formed a crazy kind of family, then go out and pick up such seminal records as Fear and Whiskey, The Mekons Honky Tonkin’, So Good It Hurts, The Mekons Rock‘n’Roll, Natural, Ancient Modern, etc., and be sure to catch them live when they come anywhere near your town. Revenge of the Mekons is having its world premiere November 15 at 9:45 at the SVA Theatre as part of the “Sonic Cinema” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Angio, Langford, Timms, Bell, and Goulding on hand to talk about the film. DOC NYC, which seeks to “cultivate new audiences [by] attracting newcomers with the excitement of a festival atmosphere,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Sonic Cinema” selections are Rodrigo H. Vila’s Mercedes Sosa: Voice of Latin America, Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner’s Harlem Street Singer, and Jeremy Xido’s Death Metal Angola.

DOC NYC: THE ACT OF KILLING

Proud mass murderers envision themselves as movie stars in Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE ACT OF KILLING

SHORT LIST: THE ACT OF KILLING (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, November 15, 1:45
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.theactofkilling.com
www.docnyc.net

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is one of the most disturbing, and unusual, films ever made about genocide. In 1965-66, as many as a million supposed communists and enemies of the state were killed in the aftermath of a military coup in Indonesia. Nearly fifty years later, many of the murderers are still living in the very neighborhoods where they committed the atrocities, openly boasting about what they did, being celebrated on television talk shows, and even being asked to run for public office. While making The Globalization Tapes in Indonesia in 2004, the Texas-born Oppenheimer met some of these self-described gangsters and, struck by their brash, bold attitudes, decided to create a different kind of documentary. In addition to following them around as they go bowling, play golf, sing, and dance, proudly showing off how happy their lives are, Oppenheimer offered them the opportunity to tell their story as if it were a Hollywood movie. The men, whose love of American noir and Westerns heavily influenced the stylized killings they perpetrated, loved the idea and began to restage torture and murder scenes in great detail for the camera, getting in period costumes, putting on makeup, going over script details, reviewing the dailies, and playing both the violent criminals and their victims. The leader is master executioner Anwar Congo, who is perhaps the only one haunted by his deeds; although on the surface he is proud of what he did, he is tormented by constant nightmares. Such is not the case for the others, who laugh as they go over the gory details, especially paramilitary leader Herman Koto, Congo’s protégé and a man seemingly without a conscience. Meanwhile, fellow executioner Adi Zulkadry wonders whether telling the truth will actually negatively impact their legendary status. “Human rights! All this talk about ‘human rights’ pisses me off,” Congo says in one scene. “Back then there was no human rights.” Oppenheimer also depicts how frighteningly powerful the three-million-strong, government-connected Pancasila Youth is, ready to fight for the very same things that led to the genocide in the first place. It’s hard to comprehend how these men continue to walk free, and one can argue whether Oppenheimer should indeed be giving them the platform that he does. Watching these gangsters — or “free men,” as they like to call themselves, since the Indonesian word for gangster is “preman,” derived from the Dutch “vrijman” — artistically re-create scenes of horrific violence is both illuminating and infuriating on multiple levels that will leave viewers angry and incredulous. A selection of this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, The Act of Killing is screening November 15 at 1:45 at the IFC Center as part of the annual DOC NYC fest in the “Short List” category, which consists of films expected to make an impact come awards season; among the other “shortlisted” documentaries, all of which have already been released theatrically, are Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet from Stardom, Dawn Porter’s Gideon’s Army, and Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell.