Tag Archives: Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

“ONE DAY PINA ASKED…”

Rarely screened 1983 documentary delves into Pina Bausch’s creative process (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

“ONE DAY PINA ASKED…” (UN JOUR PINA A DEMANDÉ) (Chantal Akerman, 1983)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
June 6-12
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

In 1982, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman followed Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal on a five-week tour of Europe as the cutting-edge troupe traveled to Milan, Venice, and Avignon. “I was deeply touched by her lengthy performances that mingle in your head,” Akerman says at the beginning of the resulting documentary, “One Day Pina Asked…,” continuing, “I have the feeling that the images we brought back do not convey this very much and often betray it.” Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Je tu il elle) needn’t have worried; her fifty-seven-minute film, made for the Repères sur la Modern Dance French television series, is filled with memorable moments that more than do justice to Bausch’s unique form of dance theater. From 1973 up to her death in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, Bausch created compelling works that examined the male-female dynamic and the concepts of love and connection with revolutionary stagings that included spoken word, unusual costuming, an unpredictable movement vocabulary, and performers of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Akerman captures the troupe, consisting of twenty-six dancers from thirteen countries, in run-throughs, rehearsals, and live presentations of Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with Me), Nelken (Carnations), 1980, Kontakthof, and Walzer, often focusing in on individual dancers in extreme close-ups that reveal their relationship with their performance. Although Bausch, forty at the time, is seen only at the beginning and end of the documentary, her creative process is always at center stage. At one point, dancer Lutz Förster tells a story of performing Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” in sign language in response to Bausch’s asking the troupe to name something they’re proud of. Förster, who took over as artistic director in April 2013, first performs the song for Akerman, then later is shown performing it in Nelken. (Bausch fans will also recognize such longtime company members as Héléna Pikon, Nazareth Panadero, and Dominique Mercy.)

Documentary includes inside look at such Tanztheater Wuppertal productions as CARNATIONS (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

Documentary includes inside look at such Tanztheater Wuppertal productions as NELKEN (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

Akerman often leaves her camera static, letting the action unfold on its own, which is particularly beautiful when she films a dance through a faraway door as shadowy figures circle around the other side. It’s all surprisingly intimate, not showy, rewarding viewers with the feeling that they are just next to the dancers, backstage or in the wings, unnoticed, as the process unfolds, the camera serving as their surrogate. And it works whether you’re a longtime fan of Bausch, only discovered her by seeing Wim Wenders’s Oscar-nominated 3D film Pina, or never heard of her. “This film is more than a documentary on Pina Bausch’s work,” a narrator says introducing the film. “It is a journey through her world, through her unwavering quest for love.” As a bonus, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be presenting free 7:30 screenings of Gustavo Beck and Leonardo Luiz Ferreira’s 2010 documentary, Chantal Akerman, from Here, in conjunction with the June 6-12 theatrical run of ”One Day Pina Asked…”

WE ARE THE BEST!

Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), Bobo (Mira Barkhammar), and Klara (Mira Grosin) form a punk band in WE ARE THE BEST!

WE ARE THE BEST (VI ÄR BÄST) (Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Opens Friday, May 30
www.magpictures.com

Thank goodness Lukas Moodysson changed his mind. After his 2009 film, Mammoth, and the death of his father, the Swedish director of such indie faves as Show Me Love, Together, and Lilya 4-ever was extremely depressed and considering quitting the movie business. But he was eventually inspired to make a happy film, and the result is the absolutely delightful We Are the Best! A liberal adaptation of his wife Coco’s semiautobiographical graphic novel Never Goodnight, the film, set in 1982 Sweden, follows the adventures of thirteen-year-old best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), a pair of outsiders who think they are rebellious punk rockers, making statements by running down the up escalator at the mall and writing an anti-sports song. Joined by fourteen-year-old Christian classical guitarist Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), they form a punk band to rival middle school heavy metalers Iron Fist. Determined to show that punk is not dead, they futz with their hair, attempt to bond with a teen-boy punk trio, and try their darnedest to gel as a band, even though drummer Bobo and bassist Klara don’t really know how to play their instruments. All the adults in the film, primarily Klara’s parents (Lena Carlsson and David Dencik), Bobo’s mother (Anna Rydgren) and her strange friends, and the two youth recreation leaders (Matte Wiberg and Johan Liljemark, real-life members of the band Sabotage), are pretty goofy themselves, not exactly your prototypical role models, so silliness pervades in wonderfully funny ways. Writer-director Moodysson celebrates the sheer joy and utter ridiculousness of childhood throughout We Are the Best!, never getting overly serious and allowing his three young stars to improvise, which makes their characters that much more honest and endearing, both in small moments and within the overall narrative, which concentrates on having fun. And indeed, We Are the Best! is nothing if not a whole lot of fun.

ART OF THE REAL 2014: SWEETGRASS

Sheep are on one of their last trips through the mountains in SWEETGRASS (Photo courtesy Cinema Guild)

SWEETGRASS (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2009)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Thursday, April 17, 6:30
Festival runs April 11-26
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.sweetgrassthemovie.com

Husband-and-wife filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash follow a flock of sheep herded by a family of Norwegian-American cowboys on their last sojourns through the public lands of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in the gorgeously photographed, surprisingly intimate, and sometimes very funny documentary Sweetgrass. In 2001, Castaing-Taylor, director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, and Barbash, a curator of Visual Anthropology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, found out about the Allestad ranch, an old-fashioned, Old West group of sheepherders who still did everything by hand, including leading hundreds of sheep on a 150-mile journey into the mountains for summer pasture with only a few dogs and horses. Director Castaing-Taylor uses no voice-over narration or intertitles, instead inviting the viewer to join in the story as if in the middle of the action, offering no judgments or additional information. The film begins with shearing and feeding, then birthing and mothering, before heading out on the long, sometimes treacherous trail, especially at night, when bears and wolves sneak around, looking for food. Slowly the focus switches to the men themselves, primarily an old-time singing grizzled ranch hand and a cursing, complaining cowboy. Castaing-Taylor and Barbash spent three years with the sheepherders and in the surrounding areas, amassing more than two hundred hours of footage and making to date nine films out of their experiences, mostly shorter works to be displayed in gallery installations or for anthropological reasons; Sweetgrass is the only one that has been released theatrically, offering a fascinating look at something that is destined to soon be gone forever. Sweetgrass is screening April 17 at 6:30 in the Focus on the Sensory Ethnography Lab section of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Art of the Real,” held in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, and will be followed by a Q&A with Barbash. The inaugural festival runs April 11-26, featuring more than three dozen works that push the boundaries of documentary film.

ART OF THE REAL 2014: MANAKAMANA

A mother and daughter eat ice cream in experimental documentary MANAKAMANA

MANAKAMANA (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, April 12, 1:30
Festival runs April 11-26
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.manakamanafilm.com

If you’re an adventurous filmgoer who likes to be challenged and surprised, the less you know about Pacho Velez and Stephanie Spray’s Manakamana, the better. But if you want to know more, here goes: Evoking such experimental films as Michael Snow’s Wavelength, Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma, and Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests as well as the more narrative works of such unique auteurs as Jim Jarmusch and Abbas Kiarostami, Manakamana is a beautiful, meditative journey that is sure to try your patience at first. The two-hour film, which requires a substantial investment on the part of the audience, takes place in a five-foot-by-five-foot cable car in Nepal that shuttles men, women, and children to and from the historic Manakamana temple, on a pilgrimage to worship a wish-fulfilling Hindu goddess. With Velez operating the stationary Aaton 7 LTR camera — the same one used by Robert Gardner for his 1986 documentary Forest of Bliss — and Spray recording the sound, the film follows a series of individuals and small groups as they either go to or return from the temple, traveling high over the lush green landscape that used to have to be traversed on foot before the cable car was built. A man and his son barely acknowledge each other; a woman carries a basket of flowers on her lap; an elderly mother and her middle-age daughter try to eat melting ice-cream bars; a pair of musicians play their instruments to pass the time.

A heavy metal band takes a picture of themselves in meditative documentary

Each trip has its own narrative, which must be partly filled in by the viewer as he or she studies the people in the cable car and the surroundings, getting continually jolted as the car glides over the joins. The film is a fascinating look into human nature and technological advances in this era of surveillance as the subjects attempt to act as normal as possible even though a camera and a microphone are practically in their faces. Produced at the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory at Harvard, Manakamana consists of eleven uncut shots of ten-to-eleven minutes filmed in 16mm, using rolls whose length roughly equals that of each one-way trip, creating a kind of organic symbiosis between the making and projecting of the work while adding a time-sensitive expectation on the part of the viewer. A film well worth sticking around for till the very end — and one that grows less and less claustrophobic with each scene — Manakamana is screening April 12 at 1:30 in the Focus on the Sensory Ethnography Lab section of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Art of the Real,” held in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, and will be followed by a Q&A with Spray and Velez. The inaugural festival runs April 11-26, featuring more than three dozen works that push the boundaries of documentary film.

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME II

Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) continues her search for sexual pleasure and pain in NYMPHOMANIAC VOLUME II (photo by Christian Geisnaes)

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME II (Lars von Trier, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5600
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, April 4
www.magpictures.com

Two weeks ago, when the first half of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac opened at the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Center, I reserved judgment until I saw Volume II, which begins April 4 at the same locations. Now that I’ve experienced the second part of von Trier’s four-hour graphic exploration of feminine sexuality and the very nature of storytelling itself, I’m at last ready to render my opinion and publicly declare my admiration for this masterfully crafted, often deadly dull and repetitive, but, in the end, gloriously inventive work. Volume II picks up right where Volume I concludes — it’s actually one film that has been broken into two parts in theaters and on VOD, forcing people to pay twice to see the whole thing — with Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the midst of telling her brutally in-depth tale of sexual addiction to the sincere and respectful Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), who brought her into his home upon finding her badly beaten in a dark alley. In the flashbacks, Joe is now played with mystery and complexity by Gainsbourg, after the young Joe had been previously portrayed by the bland and boring Stacy Martin, and the change of actress is one of the key reasons why Volume II works so much better than Volume I. Joe shares details of trying to make a sex sandwich, giving group therapy a shot, becoming obsessed with a violent sadist (Jamie Bell), and accepting a dangerous job with L (Willem Dafoe).

L (Willem Dafoe) offers Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) a dangerous job in second volume of controversial Lars von Trier epic (photo by Christian Geisnaes)

L (Willem Dafoe) offers Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) a dangerous job in second volume of controversial Lars von Trier sexual epic (photo by Christian Geisnaes)

In between her stories, which are divided into such chapters as “The Eastern and the Western Church (The Silent Duck)” and “The Mirror,” Seligman delves into various intellectual theories to help explain her exploits, discussing religion, paradox, democracy, language, mythology, Freud, and such dichotomies as suffering and happiness, pleasure and pain, Wagner and Beethoven, and the virgin and the whore. Cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro’s camera is far more steady in these scenes, in contrast to the moving, handheld shots that dominate the flashbacks. The interplay between the calm, gentle Seligman and the lonely, lost Joe is beautifully acted and inherently touching, but, this being von Trier, the film’s ending will further controversies that already involve episodes of extreme violence and actual sexual penetration (the latter performed by body doubles). I certainly would have preferred seeing Nymphomaniac in one complete sitting rather than in two parts, one of which stands head and shoulders above the other (although they do need each other); however, I’m not sure what I’ll do when the five-and-a-half-hour director’s cut is released later this year.

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME 1

Joe (Stacy Martin) learns about sexual pleasure in Lars von Trier’s controversial NYMPHOMANIAC

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME 1 (Lars von Trier, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5600
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, March 24
www.magpictures.com

In Breaking the Waves, Danish Dogme 95 cofounder Lars von Trier’s 1996 breakthrough, Stellan Skarsgård plays a paralyzed man who convinces his wife (Emily Watson) to have sexual liaisons with other men and then tell him about the encounters in graphic detail. In von Trier’s latest controversial, polarizing work, Nymphomaniac: Volume 1, Skarsgård stars as Seligman, a single man who takes in a woman named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who is soon sharing her own sexual adventures with him, in extremely graphic detail. After finding Joe severely beaten in an alley, Seligman nurses her back to health while carefully listening to her life story. She repeatedly says she is a bad, irredeemable human being because of the things she has done, which started to go off the rails when she was a small child discovering the pleasure sensations to be had in her nether regions. Her sordid tale is told in flashbacks, as her younger self (Barking at Trees’ Stacy Martin) goes from lover to lover to lover to lover to lover ad infinitum. (The specific numbers are plastered over the screen.) Along the way, Seligman offers his own interpretation of her life, praising her sense of freedom while comparing her sexuality to fly-fishing, which von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Melancholia, Antichrist) relates in a playful way that is at first absurdly silly but actually ends up coming together. Unfortunately, however, Martin is far too bland as Joe as she beds victim after victim, including Jerôme (a miscast Shia LaBeouf), perhaps the only one who truly loves her. And then the film abruptly ends, showing clips from Volume 2, which opens on April 4. As it turns out, there are multiple versions of Nymphomaniac: The four-hour edit, which has been shown internationally and at festivals, has been broken up into two parts in the United States, while a five and a half hour director’s cut will be released later this year. The result is that Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 feels like an unfinished movie, like something is missing, and indeed two hours (and more) are yet to come. The official press notes proudly confirm that “the films contain graphic depictions of sexuality to a degree unprecedented in a mainstream feature film,” while a disclaimer in the credits says that all scenes involving actual penetration, and there are several, were performed by body doubles. What does it all mean? We’re not really sure yet, because until we see Volume 2, we don’t feel comfortable either recommending or dismissing Volume 1 (which also features Christian Slater and Connie Nielsen as Joe’s parents and Uma Thurman as a scene-stealing wronged wife). But perhaps it says something that we still even want to see the second half, but then again, we’ve always been completionists, as well as gluttons for cinematic punishment.

HIMIZU

Yuichi Sumida (Shota Sometani) and Keiko Chazawa (Fumi Nikaido) face similar situations in different ways in Sion Sono’s HIMIZU

HIMIZU (Sion Sono, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
March 14-20
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.sonosion.com

“I know all things. I know pink cheeks from wan. I know death, who devours all. I know everything. Everything but myself,” Keiko Chazawa (Fumi Nikaido) says at the beginning of Himizu over a sweeping shot of the destruction wrought by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Keiko is a strange, deeply troubled teen stalking another strange, deeply troubled teen, Yuichi Sumida (Shota Sometani), following him around school, covering her bedroom walls with things he has said, and hanging out at his family’s extremely low rent boat basin. Yuichi’s mother (Makiko Watanabe) tramps herself out while his father (Ken Mitsuishi), who owes money to yakuza boss Kaneko (Denden), regularly shows up drunk and tells Yuichi that he blames his terrible life on his son, that he wishes Yuichi were never born. Meanwhile, Keiko’s mother (Asuka Kurosawa) is building a gallows in her house, hoping that her daughter will use it to kill herself. Somehow, amid all this craziness and pain — and extreme violence — writer-director Sion Sono (Bad Film, Suicide Club) manages to tell a poignant tale of adolescence as the older generation in Japan is leaving a discouraging future for the younger generation, which is fraught with hopelessness and fear of what will be left for them. The horribly abused Yuichi walks through life like a zombie, not fighting back as he is beaten up by his father and the yakuza. He is surrounded by an unusual group of adults who he allows to live on his property in tents, as they have lost everything in the economic crisis. They’re a wacky bunch, led by the somewhat sage Yoruno (Tetsu Watanabe), that serves as a kind of surrogate family for both Yuichi and Keiko, wanting only the best for them despite Yuichi’s coldness and unwillingness to accept any kind of help. But Yuichi soon simmers until he ultimately explodes, and when he does, everyone had better watch out.

Teens face an uncertain future in HIMIZU

Himizu, the title of which refers to a species of Japanese mole, is based on Minoru Furuya’s manga, with Sono making major changes to the script after the earthquake, incorporating yet more disaster into the lives of Yuichi and Keiko. Sometani (Parasyte) and Nikaido (Sono’s Why Don’t You Play in Hell?) excel as the teens, her character’s obsessiveness working well against his laissez-faire attitude; the two were named Best New Actors at the Venice Film Festival for their performances. The supporting cast, which also includes Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Megumi Kagurazaka, Yosuke Kubozuka, Taro Suwa, and Setchin Kawaya, contributes to the film’s cultlike charm, although it is too long, with several false endings, and Tomohide Harada’s score tends to be overly sentimental. But those drawbacks are more than offset by Sôhei Tanikawa’s beautiful cinematography, which is filled with lasting images, perhaps none so memorable as the tilted shack that sticks out from the middle of the lake, a constant reminder of what was — and perhaps what will be. Himizu is having a special engagement March 14-20 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, accompanied by Sono’s Guilty of Romance, the conclusion of his Hate trilogy, which began with Love Exposure and continued with Cold Fish.