Woody Allen examines personal and cultural identity in the hysterical but poignant ZELIG
ZELIG (Woody Allen, 1983)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, February 14, $16, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.stfdocs.com
The IFC Center’s Stranger Than Fiction series generally consists of classic and new documentaries, often with the filmmakers and/or subjects participating in postscreening Q&As. But on Valentine’s Day, it takes a slightly different approach, showing Woody Allen’s Zelig, a story of love and acceptance disguised as a historical newsreel. Allen stars as the fictional Leonard Zelig, a lonely little man who becomes known as the Human Chameleon for his ability to change not only the way he talks and acts but how he looks, based on whatever situation he is currently involved in. Zelig becomes a cultural phenomenon, hobnobbing with Charles Lindbergh, Al Capone, William Randolph Hearst, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many other famous figures of the 1920s and 1930s while also being studied by eminent psychiatrist Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow). Master cinematographer Gordon WIllis (The Godfather) earned an Oscar nomination for the way he was able to insert Allen and Farrow into existing footage, including literally stepping on the film to make it look older. As wildly funny as Zelig is, it is also an extremely insightful examination of identity, individuality, and the basic human need to be part of something. The STF series continues February 21 with Lisa Katzman’s Tootie’s Last Suit, February 28 with The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, and March 6 with Leon Gast’s Smash His Camera.
Swedish director Daniel Espinosa’s English-language debut roars out of the gate with the promise of the best of the Matt Damon / Bourne movies but ends up feeling like an average, dare we say “safe,” episode of 24. Ryan Reynolds stars as Matt Weston, a CIA newbie looking for a better gig than guarding a never-used safe house in Cape Town, complaining to his superior, David Barlow (Brendan Gleason), that he wants a chance to show his stuff. He quickly gets that opportunity when former agency star gone rogue Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) is brought to the house, having turned himself in to the U.S. Embassy after being hunted by gun-toting villains who are tracking down a microchip with damaging information on it. Frost’s been under the radar making secret, illegal deals for almost a decade, but Weston can’t help but still be in awe of the legendary figure, who is as cool as they come. Soon the two are on the run through the streets of Cape Town and Johannesburg, a sort-of riff on the classic 1958 drama The Defiant Ones but without any social relevance. The film then steadily devolves into an excuse for one inexplicable action scene after another until the last half hour, when Espinosa (Easy Money) slows things down a bit and David Guggenheim’s script — considered one of the hottest in Hollywood a few years ago — takes the easy way out every step of the way, from the revelation of the mole to what becomes of Frost and Weston (as well as CIA operatives played by Sam Shepard and Vera Farmiga). Reynolds (Green Lantern, The Proposal) more than holds his own going toe-to-toe with Washington, who gives a mesmerizing performance until the script lets him, and the audience, down at the end. It’s too bad that the story went haywire, because there was a lot to like through the first half of this well-made but ultimately disappointing espionage thriller.
Avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia) collaborated with Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in the elegiac The Miners’ Hymn, a tribute to the now-gone collieries, or coal mines, of Northeast England. The fifty-two-minute documentary opens with new aerial shots of the locations where the Durham coal mines were, since replaced by luxury housing and megastores. The film shows the birth and death dates of several collieries going back to the nineteenth century, then seamlessly blends into archival black-and-white footage of the miners at work underground, the community coming together for a local fair, and a union rally during a strike that includes a confrontation with the police. There is no text and no narration in The Miners’ Hymn; instead, Morrison’s savvy editing of the found footage, consisting of both moving pictures and still photographs primarily acquired through the British Film Institute and the BBC, brings the old-fashioned town and its old-fashioned ways to vibrant life even though they roll across the screen in slow motion. Jóhannsson’s score punctuates the proceedings with an occasional brassy flare when not sounding more funereal. Despite the lack of text and narration, Morrison’s point of view is clear and all too obvious, paying homage to something that has been lost, and he is never quite able to make an emotional or personal connection with the viewer. However, The Miners’ Hymns contains remarkable footage that still manages to tell an important story, even if it is one-sided and lacking at least a little more historical context. The Miners’ Hymns is playing February 8-14 at Film Forum, along with Morrison’s short films Release (2010), featuring footage of Al Capone’s release from prison, Outerborough (2005), which looks at the Brooklyn Bridge, and The Film of Her (1996), a documentary about a Library of Congress copyright office employee who finds a vault full of old paper movies. Morrison will be at Film Forum for the 8:00 show on February 8, which will also feature live violin by Todd Reynolds. 
Born in 1945 in rural Georgia to a mother who abandoned him when he was three months old, Winfred Rembert grew up picking cotton, dropped out of high school, spent time in jail and on a chain gang, and lost nearly all his teeth. But it was his years behind bars that turned him into a new man, as he learned to read and write and developed a unique art style that soon had him carving out the tales of his life on leather. Longtime journalist, producer, and writer Vivian Ducat tells Rembert’s amazing story in her engaging feature-length debut, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert. Ducat follows the oversized Rembert, who regularly bubbles over with joy, as he returns for a show in Cuthbert, Georgia, and prepares for a big opening in New York City. “I know he’s here for a reason,” his sister Lorraine says in the film. “To help people and to be a witness through his art.” Throughout All Me, Rembert discusses many of his works, in which he uses indelible dyes on carved leather, in great detail, each one representing a part of his life, focusing on being a poor black man in a white-dominated society. It is quite poignant late in the film when he points out that his art seems to be most appreciated by whites even though it is meant as a visual history for blacks. But what really makes the documentary work is not just that Rembert is such an enigmatic, larger-than-life figure but that his art is exceptional, his self-taught, folksy style reminiscent of such forebears as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, capturing a deeply personal, intensely intimate part of the black experience in twentieth-century America. Rembert, one of the most fascinating characters you’re ever likely to come upon, will be at the Pelham Fritz Recreation Center on February 9 at 1:00 with Ducat and producer Mark Urman for a free screening of All Me, and what should be an enlightening Q&A afterward. (Rembert and Uman will also be at the Montclair Art Museum on February 16 at 7:00 as part of the fifth annual Montclair African American Film Festival, which is also free.) And if you’re as captivated by Rembert’s story as we are, you can see more of his work in his “Amazing Grace” exhibition, running through May 5 at the 
Longtime music video and photography editor Laura Israel’s debut feature documentary, Windfall, is filled with a lot of hot air. In the exposé, Israel delves into the battle over the potential installation of multiple wind turbines in the poor farming village of Meredith in upstate New York, where Israel has a small cabin. Several years ago, developers started approaching Meredith residents, many of whom had moved there to escape the crowded, polluted madness of the big city and bond with nature, and offered them money in order to start placing four-hundred-foot-tall wind turbines, weighing more than a thousand tons apiece, on their property. As some people signed on, others looked askance at the corporations’ proposals, leading to ongoing fights over the safety, aesthetic look, and overall value of the green alternative energy source, pitting friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor. Israel places herself firmly on the side that wants to ban wind turbines from Meredith, a conceit that results in a clearly biased documentary that plays more like a presentation to be shown at a local town hall meeting than in movie theaters around the country. Israel is successful, however, in revealing several unexpected side effects of wind turbines, including affecting the physical and mental health of families who live near them. “I started to tell my friends back in New York City what I had found out about potential negative aspects of industrial wind energy. I was shouted at, called a NIMBY (not in my backyard) and a whiner,” Israel states in a production note. “I realized that if people won’t even question the status quo when it comes to this issue, then it really requires further scrutiny and in fact would be a great reason to make a film.” While it might be “a great reason to make a film,” Windfall, winner of the Viewfinders Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 DOC NYC festival, ends up being far from a great film, although it does achieve one of its main goals of urging people to think twice before jumping on some green bandwagons.