Kaarina Hazard stars as a recently released prisoner trying to put her life back together in Finnish film LETTERS TO FATHER JACOB
LETTERS TO FATHER JACOB (POSTIA PAPPI JAAKOBILLE) (Klaus Härö, 2009)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St.
Opens Friday, October 8
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.ses.fi
Upon suddenly being pardoned after serving twelve years of a life sentence, Leila Sten (Kaarina Hazard) is offered a position as personal assistant to an elderly blind priest, Father Jacob (Heikki Nousiainen). A hard-edged woman not wanting anyone’s help, Leila has nowhere else to turn, so she accepts the job, although she’s determined to not make it easy for Father Jacob and insists she will be there for only a short time. But Father Jacob, who lives by himself in the country, far from anyone else, is not seeking a housekeeper or a nursemaid; instead, he merely requires Leila to read the letters he receives every day from people in need of a little hope and guidance, asking him to say a prayer for them. Father Jacob then dictates responses for Leila to write down and mail back to his epistolary flock. At first Leila simply throws some of the letters away, but as she warms to the kind, frail priest, she takes another look at her own life and is not sure she likes what she sees. Written and directed by award-winning Finnish filmmaker Klaus Härö (MOTHER OF MINE, ELINA: AS IF I WASN’T THERE), LETTERS TO FATHER JACOB is a gentle, moving story of faith and redemption. Cinematographer Tuomo Hutri shoots many of the interior scenes using only natural light, the characters mostly hidden in dark shadows. Dani Strömbäck’s piano-based score contributes to the slow pace and somber mood of a film that builds like steeping tea toward an emotionally powerful conclusion.
Olivier Assayas pays homage to François Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT in this piece of pseudoartistic fluff about a film crew’s attempts at remaking Louis Feuillade’s 1915 classic LES VAMPIRES. The great Maggie Cheung, who later married and divorced Assayas, is wasted as the star of the remake, and Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Léaud, playing the director, is frustratingly unintelligible when he speaks in English, which unfortunately is a lot in this high-falutin’ mess. The film is being shown as part of “Post–Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas,” consisting of seventeen films by the French writer-director, continuing through October 28.
John Bush’s Yatra Trilogy concludes with VAJRA SKY OVER TIBET: JOURNEY INTO AN ENDANGERED WORLD, a reverential documentary that examines the history of the Tibetan people, focusing on the long-standing battle with China. In 1959, the fourteenth Dalai Lama was forced into exile, finding safe haven in India. Although many Tibetans escaped with him, many stayed behind, where they practice their faith under the sharp watch of the Chinese government, which would like to name their own Dalai Lama in time. VAJRA SKY OVER TIBET is the third part of the Yatra Trilogy by producer/director John Bush, following DHARMA RIVER and PRAJNA EARTH, as Bush completes his Buddhist pilgrimage that previously took him to Southeast Asia. Bush, a Western Buddhist himself, gained remarkable access to some of Vajrayana Buddhism’s holiest palaces and sites of worship, including Jokhang Temple in Llasa, the Potala, and the Norbulinka. Bush winds his way through the Drepung Festival, traveling with a Tibetan guide whose name he can’t share because of possible reprisals. Bush narrates much of the film, along with Tenzin L Choegyal, the nephew of the current Dalai Lama, and Dadon, a popular Tibetan singer. The meditative score is by David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, supplemented with devotional music by Dadon and other Himalayan musicians. Although it often plays too much like a travel show on PBS or the Travel Channel, VAJRA SKY, which has been personally endorsed by the Dalai Lama, is an illuminating look into a fascinating culture that is in serious danger of disappearing. “Tibetan civilization,” writes the Dalai Lama as the film begins, “forms a distinct part of the world’s precious common heritage. Humanity would be the poorer if it were to be lost.” For nearly ninety minutes, with beautiful cinematography, captivating music, and gorgeous settings, Bush takes viewers deep inside a mysterious, peaceful, and threatened world that you will not soon forget. Bush will be on hand for this special screening at the Interdependence Project to participate in a postscreening Q&A — in addition, there will also be a prescreening optional meditation.
Named Best Documentary at numerous film festivals across the country, MARWENCOL offers a surprising look inside the creative process and the fine line that exists between art and reality. On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was nearly beaten to death outside a bar in his hometown of Kingston, New York. He spent nine days in a coma and more than a month in the hospital before being released, suffering severe brain damage that has left his memory a blur. To help put his life back together, he began using toys and dolls — Barbies, celebrity replicas, army men — to re-create his personal journey. He makes dolls of his friends and relatives, the people he works with, and others, constructing an alternate WWII-era universe he calls Marwencol, complete with numerous buildings and plenty of Nazis. He captures the detailed story in photographs that are not only fascinating to look at but that also help him figure out who he was and who he can be. This miniature three-dimensional world is reminiscent of the two-dimensional one carefully fashioned by outsider artist Henry Darger in his fifteen-thousand-page manuscript, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, which also features an alternate reality involving military battles set amid stunning artwork. Director, producer, and editor Jeff Malmberg makes no judgments about Hogancamp, and asks the same of the audience. In his first full-length film, Malmberg shares the compelling story of a deeply troubled, flawed man suddenly forced to begin again, using art and creativity to bring himself back to life. He speaks with Hogancamp’s mother, his old roommate, the prosecutor who handled his case, and others who are first seen proudly holding the doll Hogancamp made of them. And Malmberg doesn’t turn away from the more frightening aspects of Hogancamp’s daily existence. MARWENCOL is an unforgettable portrait of lost identity and the long road to redemption.
