Cameramen do whatever is necessary to capture thrilling surf competition in HIGH WATER
HIGHWATER (Dana Brown, 2008)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Opens Friday, August 27
212-995-2000
www.vanssurf.com/highwater
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
Surfing is in Dana Brown’s blood. His father, Bruce, was a champion surfer who made such documentaries as SLIPPERY WHEN WET, SURF CRAZY, and the 1966 classic THE ENDLESS SUMMER. The elder Brown revisited that last film in 1994 in THE ENDLESS SUMMER 2, which he cowrote with Dana, who went on to make the exciting STEP INTO LIQUID in 2003. Dana has headed back to the beach for HIGHWATER, bringing along his son, Wes, to continue the family tradition. (Wes serves as associate producer and cowriter and coeditor with his dad.) The film ostensibly follows surfing’s Triple Crown on the North Shore of Hawaii in 2005, but it’s not really about winners and losers; it’s about the life — and, sometimes, the loss of life or limb — of the men and women who hop on surfboards and take on some of the most fearsome and beautiful waves ever seen. Brown, who proves as narrator that he’s never met a cliché he didn’t like, speaks with such champion surfers and up-and-coming stars as Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Pat O’Connell, Rochelle Ballard, Carrissa Moore, and Pancho Sullivan, who talk about their personal relationship with the Seven Mile Miracle (along the North Shore) and their love of the water. The film is somewhat scattershot, giving relatively short shrift to the women and not explaining nearly enough to audiences, most of whom will probably need many more details about how the contests are scored and what the rules are. That said, cinematographer Steve Matzinger and his team of cameramen do a good job of capturing some great rides, risking their own safety to go after the perfect shot, just as the surfers are after the perfect wave. And the subplot involving Brown’s pursuit of the elusive, enigmatic Eric Haas is wonderfully wacky. HIGHWATER primarily preaches to the converted, but it does so with heart, especially when tragedy hits.
After its much-hailed one-week run in June at Film Forum, the 35mm restoration of Michelangelo Antonioni’s LE AMICHE returns by popular demand, playing August 25-31, and there’s just no reasonable excuse for missing it again. Winner of the Silver Lion at the 1955 Venice Film Festival, the sublimely marvelous LE AMICHE follows the life and loves of a group of oh-so-fabulous catty, chatty, and ultra-fashionable Italian women and the men they keep around for adornment. Returning to her native Turin after having lived in Rome for many years, Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) discovers that the young woman in the hotel room next to hers, Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer), has attempted suicide, thrusting Clelia into the middle of a collection of self-centered girlfriends who make the shenanigans of George Cukor’s THE WOMEN look like child’s play. The leader of the vain, vapid vamps is Momina (Yvonne Furneaux), who carefully orchestrates situations to her liking, particularly when it comes to her husband and her various, ever-changing companions, primarily architect Cesare (Franco Fabrizi). As Rosetta falls for painter Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), who is married to ceramicist Nene (Valentina Cortese), Clelia considers a relationship with Cesare’s assistant, Carlo (Ettore Manni), and the flighty Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani) considers just about anyone. Based on a novella by Cesare Pavese, LE AMICHE is one of Antonioni’s best, and least well known, films, an intoxicating and thoroughly entertaining precursor to his early 1960s trilogy, L’AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE, and L’ECLISSE. Skewering the not-very-discreet “charm” of the Italian bourgeoisie, Antonioni mixes razor-sharp dialogue with scenes of wonderful ennui, all shot in glorious black and white by Gianni Di Venanzo. LE AMICHE is a newly rediscovered treasure from one of cinema’s most iconoclastic auteurs.
In THE END OF POVERTY? director Philippe Diaz speaks with Nobel Prize winners, economists, writers, politicians, researchers, and other experts, attempting to get at the heart of international poverty — particularly by tugging at the audience’s heartstrings. He intercuts shots of talking heads discussing slavery and colonialism, the World Bank, the free market, the International Monetary Fund, and government bailouts with portraits of men, women, and children living in squalor in Africa, Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere. He supplements the film with a barrage of statistics that, individually, are infuriating but, taken as a whole, get lost in a whirlwind of numbers. Adding to the overkill is Martin Sheen’s over-the-top narration, which piles on yet more information and outrage. But even as the film sometimes feels like a Sally Struthers save-the-children infomercial, its crucial message does manage to pull through and take root — the money is out there, but its incredibly lopsided distribution in a warped system is basically set up to keep the imbalance that has led to such a tragic situation. THE END OF POVERTY? is being screened August 25 at the Action Center to End World Hunger as part of the monthly Films for Change series, followed by a free wine and beer reception and a Q&A with Monisha Bajaj, assistant professor of international and translational studies at Columbia University Teachers College. 
