Students occupy offices in documentary The Unmaking of a College
THE UNMAKING OF A COLLEGE: THE STORY OF A MOVEMENT (Amy Goldstein, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, February 11 www.ifccenter.com
“One can worry that if Hampshire is failing, what does that mean for liberal arts education in general?” Sloan Foundation president Adam Falk asks in Amy Goldstein’s passionate documentary, The Unmaking of a College: The Story of a Movement. A graduate of the innovative, experimental independent Hampshire College, which opened its doors in 1970, Goldstein follows a months-long sit-in orchestrated by students upon learning that the institution was in danger of closing.
On January 15, 2019, new college president Miriam “Mim” Nelson sent out a letter advising of an important meeting being held in forty-nine minutes. At that meeting, which many people could not attend because of the late notice, she announced that the school was looking for a “strategic partner” and that there was likely going to be no incoming class in the fall. Students, teachers, and even members of the board of directors took action, demanding answers. When none came, the students occupied several offices, including Nelson’s, as they crusaded for their rights, attempting to save the liberal arts college, which had a relatively low endowment and relied primarily on tuition, which was high.
Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco explains, “We are about to see a great shrinkage in the number of colleges and universities in this country because only the wealthiest will be able to survive. And it’s inevitable, I think, that fragile colleges are going to face the possibility of going out of business.”
Among the students Goldstein talks to are Marlon Becerra; Cheyenne Palacio-McCarthy; Andrew Gordon; Moon West; Annie Wood; Joshua Berman, who took extensive footage of various events and gatherings; and Rhys MacArthur, who works in the admissions office. They are often photographed in front of a large screen with campus footage projected over them, evoking how all-encompassing the situation is; they are not just battling for their education but for their future careers and life.
“Students have always been a huge part of how this college runs. I remember occupying the president’s office, but I don’t remember why. I mean, that’s just in our blood,” Hampshire alum and master documentarian Ken Burns notes. “At one point it seemed like the story is that Hampshire College is dead. I am happy to say that rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated.”
Nelson doesn’t back down even as the press gets hold of the story and some questionable behind-the-scenes negotiations are revealed. Sitting on the floor of her office, surrounded by students, Nelson tells them, “I just have to say, I feel like I’m in an alternative universe here. I am working so f’ing hard. I am fighting like you can’t even imagine to maintain our independence. It’s critical. So I’m looking at all of these things.”
Student Nya Johnson immediately responds, “You get paid to work f’ing hard. So work. Do your work. We pay you to do this. I don’t know; I’m just confused. What alternative universe are you living in?”
Hampshire has a history of activism and providing students with a nontraditional education. Fear of a merger with one of its sister schools, Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, or UMass, worries students and faculty; professors are concerned with what would happen to them, particularly as potential layoffs loom. However, as Hampshire professor Salman Hameed declares about Nelson, “She picked the wrong college to mess with.”
Hampshire College president Miriam “Mim” Nelson finds herself under fire in Amy Goldstein doc
Goldstein (Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl,Self-Made Men) also speaks with Hampshire Gazette reporter Dusty Christensen, Science magazine editor in chief Holden Thorp, former college president Adele Simmons, lead fundraiser Cheri Butler, and Hampshire board of trustees member Mingda Zhao, who each offers a unique perspective on the conflict.
Hampshire professor Margaret Cerullo writes an article for The Nation detailing what is happening; she titles it “The Unmaking of a College: Notes from Inside the Hampshire Runaway Train,” a riff on the school’s original manifesto, The Making of a College. Yale School of Management associate dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld announces, “This was very badly handled.” The only person who speaks up for Nelson is Hampshire alum and conservative Subject Matter PR firm CEO John Buckley, who was hired by Nelson to help handle the crisis. “I saw a woman who was trying to do the right thing who got caught and made some mistakes, and then everything unraveled really, really badly,” he says.
Hampshire’s motto is “Non satis scire” — “To know is not enough.” The students’ nonviolent campaign for transparency, involvement, and agency, to know the truth and be part of the solution, is inspiring; many of them are learning lessons that will help them on their life’s journey while also finding out there can be lies and betrayal on that road. In many ways, the film serves as a primer for the future as the next generation prepares to eventually take over a torn and tattered America — and it all begins with education.
The Unmaking of a College: The Story of a Movement opens February 11 at IFC Center; Goldstein will be on hand for a Q&A with some of the film’s subjects following the 7:50 show.
Nozomi (Bae Doona) dreams that there’s more to life in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll
AIR DOLL (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, February 4 www.ifccenter.com
Over the last twenty-five years, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has compiled a remarkable resume, directing more than a dozen narrative features and five documentaries that investigate such themes as memory and loss. His 2009 film, Air Doll, examines loneliness through the eyes of a blow-up doll come to life. Bae Doona stars as Nozomi, a plastic sex toy owned by Hideo (Itsuji Itao), a restaurant worker who treats her like his wife, telling her about his day, sitting with her at the dinner table, and having sex with her at night. But suddenly, one morning, Nozomi achieves consciousness, discovering that she has a heart, and she puts on her French maid costume and goes out into the world, learning about life by wandering through the streets and working in a video store, always returning home before Hideo and pretending to still be the doll.
Adapted from Yoshiie Goda’s twenty-page manga The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl and inspired by the myth of Galatea, Air Doll is a compelling contemplative study of emptiness and connection. Nozomi’s wide-eyed innocence at the joys of life comes sweet and slowly, played with a subtle wonderment by South Korean model and actress Bae (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,The Host); the cast also includes Arata, Joe Odagiri, Susumu Terajima, and Kimiko Yo. Gorgeously photographed by Mark Lee Ping-Bing (In the Mood for Love,Flowers of Shanghai), the film does take one nasty turn, but it’s still another contemplative gem from the masterful director of Maborosi,Nobody Knows,Still Walking, and Like Father, Like Son.Air Doll has played numerous festivals over the years but is finally getting its long-overdue official US theatrical release courtesy of Dekanalog, opening February 4 at IFC Center.
Kurt Vonnegut travels through his extraordinary life in Unstuck in Time,
KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME (Robert B. Weide & Don Argott, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, November 19 www.ifccenter.com
“I had never seen him so at ease; they had found each other, as the subject and the filmmaker. It felt like a friendship,” Nanny Vonnegut says about her father, author Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and director Robert Weide in Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, an extraordinary documentary opening November 19 at the IFC Center.
In 1982, twenty-three-year-old Weide wrote a letter to Vonnegut, wanting to make a film about him. Much to Weide’s surprise, the award-winning author of such novels as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle wrote him back, agreeing to the project. Shooting began in 1988 and continued through Vonnegut’s death in 2007 at the age of eighty-four and beyond. During those years, the two men became good friends, so much so that Weide began doubting his ability to complete the film. “I don’t even like documentaries where the filmmakers has to put himself in the film. I mean, who cares?” he asks in one of several sections where he talks to the camera, concerned that he was becoming too much a part of the story.
After a moving moment in which he discusses putting the camera down and simply enjoying his time with Vonnegut, Weide admits, “Prior to that, I had always been concerned that the friendship might infringe on the film; this was the first time I realized that things had flipped so entirely now that I was worried about the film infringing on the friendship. That was a realization for me that I was maybe in trouble.”
Fortunately, however, Weide and codirector Don Argott, who was brought in to help navigate through Weide’s fears of having grown too close to Vonnegut, keep the main focus on Vonnegut, who opens up about his childhood, his schooling, his early jobs, and, ultimately, his writing career, reflecting on a life well lived yet filled with tragedy, from the death of his sister and her husband to his mother’s suicide and his experiences in Dresden during WWII. Vonnegut is shown giving a lecture in a church, taking a train with Weide, driving through his hometown of Indianapolis, visiting the house where he grew up — and getting sentimental when he sees the casts of his and his siblings’ hands on the top of a small cement wall — and attending his sixtieth high school reunion.
Vonnegut’s brother, Bernard, gives Weide boxes and boxes of home movies and slides, while their sisters, Nanny and Edie, and Vonnegut’s nephews, Jim, Steve, and Kurt Adams — who Vonnegut and his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, took in after the deaths of his beloved sister, Alice, and her husband, James Adams — speak openly and honestly about him, including their extreme disappointment when, upon finally gaining success as a writer, he dumped the devoted Jane for younger photographer Jill Krementz. Over the years, Vonnegut kept sending Weide tapes of his numerous public appearances, so the film includes a treasure trove of clips from speeches, television appearances, and commencement addresses as well as early, annotated drafts of Vonnegut’s writing.
The film discusses the aforementioned books in addition to The Sirens of Titan,Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night, which was turned into a 1996 movie written by Weide, and explores such favorite Vonnegut characters as the author’s alter ego, Kilgore Trout, and Billy Pilgrim. The title of the film comes from the first line of the second chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five: “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” The concept of time is a leitmotif of the documentary, highlighted by the comparison between the decades it took Weide to complete the film, which is significantly about the making of the film itself, and the years it took Vonnegut to finish his last novel, Timequake, which ended up being significantly about the writing of the book. And just as Vonnegut and his children share poignant memories, Weide inserts some of his own, particularly about his wife, Linda. The parallels between Weide and Vonnegut are striking. “How fucked up is that?” Weide says after noting another coincidence.
Robert B. Weide and Kurt Vonnegut became close friends while making documentary over several decades
Weide also speaks with Vonnegut’s friends and fellow writers John Irving and Sidney Offit, his publisher Dan Simon, his biographer Gregory Sumner, novelist Dan Wakefield, and In These Times editor Joel Bleifuss, who gave Vonnegut a forum in his final years. Actor Sam Waterston reads from several of Vonnegut’s works. “He made literature fun. That was huge,” critic David Ulin says.
Along the way, two elements stand out: Vonnegut’s love of laughing — his infectious laughter is sprinkled throughout the film — and his ever-present Pall Mall. In a cute touch, Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm,Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth) and Argott (The Art of the Steal,Believer) animate smoke coming out of his cigarettes in still photos.
On the first page of chapter two of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut also writes of Billy Pilgrim, “He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.” Weide and Argott have captured the essence of Vonnegut the person and Vonnegut the writer in Unstuck in Time, a must-see, utterly fun portrait of a man who never knew what part of his life he was going to have to act in next but always did so with a contagious sparkle.
Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave closes the 2021 DOC NYC festival
DOC NYC 2021
In-person: November 10-19, $19 per screening
Online: November 11-28, $12 per screening
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
SVA Theatre, 333 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves. www.docnyc.net
The twelfth annual DOC NYC festival emerges from the pandemic with a hybrid collection of more than two hundred films and events that offer an alternative to the continuing rash of fake news and truthiness found on cable and social media. Of course, documentarians have their own agendas as well, but they lean strongly in favor of highlighting important issues through facts and celebrating legitimate feats accomplished through individual determination, both public and private.
This year’s sections include “Coming of Age,” “Fight the Power,” “Luminaries,” “Personal Journeys,” “Sonic Cinema,” and “Focus: Journalists,” covering more than seventy themes, from Food & Wine, History, and Music to Activism, Outsiders, and War & Conflict. The 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award winners are cameraperson, cinematographer, and director Joan Churchill (Gimme Shelter,Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer,Shut Up & Sing) and Raoul Peck (Fatal Assistance,Moloch Tropical,I Am Not Your Negro).
Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe is the centerpiece selection of this year’s DOC NYC fest
Among the many portraits are explorations of such figures as entertainer and Rat Packer Dean Martin, singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, chef Julia Child, actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, singer Dionne Warwick, cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, restaurateur and TV host Anthony Bourdain, rapper DMX, actress Selma Blair, basketball star Kevin Garnett, and author Kurt Vonnegut, with works by such luminaries as Stanley Nelson, Liz Garbus, Eva Orner, Alison Klayman, Jon Alpert, Andrea Arnold, and Todd Haynes.
The festival opens with Penny Lane’s Listening to Kenny G, with director and subject participating in a postscreening discussion; the centerpiece is the New York City premiere of Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe, a look at tennis great and activist Arthur Ashe, with Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave, about the beginning of the pandemic in New York City’s hospitals, the closing-night selection. Keep watching this space for more recommendations and capsule reviews as the festival continues, both in person at the IFC Center, Cinépolis Chelsea, and the SVA Theatre and online.
Todd Haynes will discuss his latest film at DOC NYC
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes, 2021)
IFC Center
Wednesday, November 10, 9:30 www.docnyc.net
The Velvet Underground was more than just a music group; they electrified a generation, and continue to do so today, half a century later. Todd Haynes, whose 1998 Velvet Goldmine was set in the world of glam rock and whose 2007 I’m Not There explored the career of Bob Dylan through six characters and a nonlinear narrative, now turns his attention to the true story behind the Velvets. Haynes details the history of the band by delving into leaders John Cale and Lou Reed’s initial meeting, the formation of the Primitives with conceptual artists Tony Conrad and Walter DeMaria, and the transformation into the seminal VU lineup at the Factory under Pop icon Andy Warhol’s guidance: singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed, Welsh experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and German vocalist Nico. Much of Haynes’s documentary focuses on Warhol’s position in helping develop and promote the Velvets. “Andy was extraordinary, and I honestly don’t think these things could have occurred without Andy,” Reed, who died in 2013, says. Haynes will be at the IFC Center to introduce the November 10 screening.
The life and career of Anthony Bourdain is explored in Roadrunner
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Morgan Neville, 2021)
IFC Center
Thursday, November 11, 9:45 www.docnyc.net
Director Morgan Neville goes behind the scenes to share the story of beloved restaurateur and TV show host Anthony Bourdain in Roadrunner. Neville, whose previous films include The Cool School,20 Feet from Stardom, and Won’t You Be Neighbor?, will be at IFC to introduce the November 11 screening.
Two Minnesota high school teams battle it out in Tommy Haines’s Hockeyland
There’s the Stanley Cup playoffs for the NHL pros and the Frozen Four for the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Championship, but Tommy Haines focuses on a pair of rival Minnesota high school teams, the underdog Eveleth-Gilbert Golden Bears and the far more successful Hermantown Hawks, as they prepare to perhaps meet in the playoffs. Haines follows the very different approach of the two coaches, delves into the lives of the teams’ best players, talks to the parents, and goes inside the locker rooms as the teenagers balance education with the game and their future. The film contains lots of good hockey action, along with intimate moments as injuries occur and pro scouts come to watch. The November 13 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Haines, producers JT Haines and Andrew Sherburne, cinematographer Benjamin Handler, and film subjects Elliot Van Orsdel, Indio Dowd, and members of their families.
Fatima Shaik searches for a critical piece of family history in The Bengali
“Why would anybody come from the other side of the world to find somebody who doesn’t even exist anymore?” author Fatima Shaik says at the beginning of The Bengali. “Why not?” asks director Kavery Kaul. Armed with a partial ship’s registry and a photograph of her grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, who left his small village in India in 1893 to make a new life in the United States, in New Orleans, where he married a Black woman, Fatima travels to her ancestral country, wanting to know more about where she came from and to see a patch of land that he owned. Joined by Kaul, who is Bengali, and cinematographer John Russell Foster, who is white, they have very little information and face roadblock after roadblock until success is in reach, but everywhere she goes, Fatima is met with resistance, as Indians view her with suspicion, thinking that she, a Christian in a Muslim community, might be there to reclaim her grandfather’s land. The Bengali is an emotional, deeply personal search for identity, almost to the point of obsession, of seeking out one’s family history in a land where you don’t speak the language and are not immediately welcome. The November 13 New York City premiere at IFC will be followed by a Q&A with Kaul and producer Lucas Groth.
UNITED STATES vs. REALITY WINNER (Sonia Kennebeck, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 9:50
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 4:15 www.docnyc.net www.codebreakerfilms.com
The Broadway play Is This a Room is a verbatim re-creation of the FBI’s interrogation of Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran who was suspected of leaking classified documents. Award-winning documentarian Sonia Kennebeck, whose previous films include Enemies of the State, about a family under siege when their hacker son gets into serious trouble with the government, and National Bird, which revealed the devastating story of the military personnel pushing the buttons in America’s drone war, now goes behind the scenes to tell what really happened with Winner, the Intercept, and other parties involved in the complex situation. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kennebeck, the latter moderated by Jo Livingstone of the New Republic.
An amateur British theater group consisting of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers adapt a Ridley Scott classic in Alien on Stage
In 2015, a group of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers in Dorset, England, banded together to put on an amateur theatrical adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien a benefit for the Allendale Community Centre and the Guillain-Barré Syndrome Charity. Calling themselves Paranoid Dramatics, the men and women took a DIY approach, creating the costumes and special effects from scratch and learning their lines to the best of their abilities. After seeing the show, Danielle Kummer and Lucy Harvey became obsessed with it and decided to document the play’s surprising move to London’s West End. The result is an extremely fun film about human ingenuity against all odds; just as Ripley had to face the monster, will this group survive as opening night approaches? And will Scott be there to cheer them on? The November 14 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kummer.
An eleven-year-old blind boy seeks to become a board game champ in Go through the Dark
GO THROUGH THE DARK (Yunhong Pu, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
Saturday, November 13, 7:10
Tuesday, November 16, 9:30 www.docnyc.net www.instagram.com
First-time filmmaker Yunhong Pu serves as director, producer (with Jean Tsien), cinematographer, editor, and publicist for the subtly captivating Go through the Dark. Yunhong travels with eleven-year-old Guanglin Xu, a blind Chinese boy who has a remarkable affinity for Go, which might be the world’s oldest board game, as he participates in competitions and seeks special coaching far away. He is being raised by a single father who adores him but might not always understand what is best for his son. As father and child meet more people, new options arise for Guanglin, who does not know how to ask for what he truly wants and needs. The game Go involves turning over small, circular black and white stones, but there’s nothing black-and-white about this unique and moving story. Yunhong will participate in Q&As at the November 13 and 16 screenings.
Gary Oldman has a lot to say about Eadweard Muybridge’s photos and personal life in stirring documentary
EXPOSING MUYBRIDGE (Marc Shaffer, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 7:05
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 2:00 www.docnyc.net www.muybridgethemovie.com
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge is most well known for taking some of the earliest, most influential pictures in the history of the art form (and sometimes animating them), including The Horse in Motion, his shots of redwoods in Yosemite, and his plates of nude men and women walking, running, and stepping over plates. But writer, director, and producer Marc Shaffer focuses on Muybridge’s bizarre life as well as his photography in the documentary Exposing Muybridge, highlighting an existence filled with murder, betrayal, naked ambition, legal and political wheeling and dealing, alchemy, and immense talent and ingenuity. Among those sharing their thoughts about Muybridge are actor and collector Gary Oldman, who must play the photographer in the eventual film, and author Rebecca Gowers, who is related to the man Muybridge killed. The sordid doings grow more and more intriguing as Shaffer cuts between the speakers, archival photographs and letters, and dozens of Muybridge’s pictures. My only quibble with the film is that I was hoping to learn the proper way to pronounce the photographer’s chosen surname (he was born Edward James Muggeridge), but not everyone in the film says “Muybridge” the same way. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Shaffer.
ASCENSION (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday, November 16, 4:15
Thursday, November 18, 4:45 www.docnyc.net/film/ascension ascensiondocumentary.com
Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension is one of the most beautifully photographed documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Evoking the mesmerizing visual style of such photographers as Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and Jeff Wall, director, editor, and producer Kingdon and producer and cinematographer Nathan Truesdell, who rarely moves his camera, explore Xi Jinping’s promise of the Chinese Dream, what the leader calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people,” in a three-part film about capitalism and consumption, poverty and wealth in China. The biracial Chinese American Kingdon first explores the job market, as men and women in outdoor booths shout out hourly wages, responsibilities, and housing opportunities to those in need of work, who are then shown toiling in factories, sewing, plucking fowl, and building sex dolls.
In the second section, workers are indoctrinated into the company lifestyle, learning how to climb the ladder through very specific and often demeaning business etiquette; the film concludes by showing the luxuries success and wealth can bring. One of the most memorable shots in a film filled with them is of a glamorous young woman being photographed at a seaside resort as a worker, unnoticed by the model and photographer, tends to a lush green lawn; the differences between her posh bag and chapeau and his garbage bag and straw hat, his face hidden as hers pouts for the camera, speak volumes. Featuring a pulsating score by Dan Deacon, Ascension might be specifically about China, but it also relates to what is happening in America today, particularly with the current supply chain issues as so many workers decided not to return to work as the pandemic lockdown lifted while income inequality continues to grow at obscene levels. The November 16 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kingdon.
Bill Morrison explores Russian and Soviet cinematic history from a unique angle in The Village Detective
THE VILLAGE DETECTIVE: a song cycle (Bill Morrison, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
September 22-30
212-924-777 www.ifccenter.com
In the 1970 documentary Zharov Tells, longtime Russian film favorite Mikhail Zharov says, “Remembering my life, I am trying to follow, to find for myself, and for others too, especially the young, the answer to the question of how life gets woven into art and how art reflects life.” When it comes to cinema, Chicago-born, New York City–based filmmaker Bill Morrison has been excavating this connection for more than thirty years, in such masterworks as Dawson City: Frozen Time and Decasia.
Morrison uses found footage, often in terrible shape, the celluloid practically disintegrating in his hands and before our eyes onscreen, to examine sociocultural issues and film history itself. So when his friend Jóhann Jóhannsson, the Icelandic musician and composer who passed away in 2018 at the age of forty-eight, emailed him in July 2016 about a lobster trawl that had scraped up a film canister, Morrison jumped at the opportunity to explore its contents. Fishing in Faxaflói, about twenty nautical miles southwest of the Snæfellsjökull glacier, near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates meet — what Morrison calls in the film “the deep divide between East and West” — the lobster boat Fróði had scooped up four reels containing an incomplete copy of Ivan Lukinsky’s 1969 Soviet crime comedy Derevenskiy Detektiv (Village Detective), starring Zharov as local rural policeman Fyodor Ivanovich Aniskin, who is investigating the theft of an accordion.
While there is nothing special about the movie, which is not some long-lost treasure but just a mediocre-at-best tale that led to two sequels, Morrison decided to become a kind of detective himself, doing a deep dive into Zharov’s oeuvre, producing a unique look at twentieth-century Soviet and Russian history as seen through its cinema. And he centers his film on the found reels of Derevenskiy Detektiv, with all their glips, blotches, dirt, and grime instead of using a cleaner print (which is available), adding an extra layer of commentary on the changes occurring from multiple revolutions, two world wars, and the transition from tsars to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.
Serving as producer, director, and editor, Morrison includes numerous clips of Zharov, who was born in 1899 and died in 1981, having appeared in more than five dozen films and a hundred theatrical productions, beginning with his debut as a soldier in 1915’s Tsar Ivan the Terrible and including 1931’s Road to Life, in which Zharov, as a thief named Zhigan, became the first actor to sing in Russian on camera. Morrison concentrates on the clips themselves; there are only a few moments of commentary, from Erlendur Sveinsson, the former director of the National Film Archive of Iceland who supervised the preservation of the discovered reels, and George Eastman Museum curator Peter Bagrov, who compares Zharov’s popularity to that of Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable in Hollywood.
“Once you were a prince. Now you are a nobody,” Zharov says as Menshikov to the title character in 1937’s Peter the First. “I am not Soviet,” he declares as Dymba in 1939’s New Horizons. He displays his loyalty to Comrade Stalin as Perchikhin in 1942’s Fortress on the Volga. He plays a former soldier for the tsar who is now a Bolshevik in 1942’s He Will Come Back. The next year, in In the Name of the Fatherland, he proclaims as Globa, “I hate these Bolsheviks. I hate them more than I hate you!” And in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1958 Ivan the Terrible Pt. 2., Zharov states as guard Malyuta Skuratov, “I would give my soul for the tsar.”
The soundtrack, composed by Pulitzer and Grammy winner and Oscar nominee David Lang, also takes us back to old Russia with a sly nod to the plot of Derevenskiy Detektiv; the compelling score was written for one accordion and is played by Norwegian musician Frode Andersen, with vocals by Shara Nova. Not only is the accordion a traditional Eastern European folk instrument but it was used by Tchaikovsky, Sterligov, and others in their orchestrations. The final seconds of the film bring it all together beautifully.
“You know, when I heard about the reels being found, I was expecting a lost silent masterpiece and not a film which we have in our collection on camera negative from which it’s been shown on television from month to month,” Bagrov recounts. Lukinsky’s Derevenskiy Detektiv might not be a masterpiece of any kind, but Morrison’s (The Miners’ Hymns,The Great Flood) The Village Detective is another masterful triumph from one of America’s most ingenious filmmakers.
Yû Aoi and Issey Takahashi star as a couple caught up in intrigue and suspicion in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy
WIFE OF A SPY (スパイの妻) (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2020)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, September 17
212-924-7771 www.ifccenter.com
Japanese master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa follows up his gorgeous, haunting To the Ends of the Earth with the tense and gripping thriller Wife of a Spy, opening September 17 at IFC. Photographed in 8K — though screened in 2K — the striking film is set in Kobe, Japan, in 1940, where successful merchant Yusaku (Issey Takahashi) lives with his devoted wife, Satoko (Yû Aoi); the two have also just made an amateur movie together.
With Yusaku off on a business trip in Manchuria with his nephew, Fumio (Ryôta Bandô), Satoko is visited by her childhood friend, Taiji (Masahiro Higashide), who has just accepted a position as head of the military police in Kobe. He is suspicious of Yusaku and advises Satoko that it is not proper for her to wear modern clothing instead of kimono. After a long delay, Yusaku and Fumio return to Kobe with the mysterious Hiroko Kusakabe (Hyunri), but something clearly has changed. Satoko begins to think that her husband might be a spy and a traitor, so she must decide whether to stand by him while under the suspecting watch of Taiji. When she first confronts Yusaku, demanding that he tell her exactly what is going on, he responds, “Don’t ask. I beg you. I haven’t done anything shameful. I’m not made to lie to you, so I’ll be silent. Don’t ask, because I’ll have to answer.” Satoko soon makes her choice, but there are eloquent twists and turns galore as dangerous secrets unfold.
In Wife of a Spy, Kurosawa, who has made such well-regarded suspense films as Pulse and Cure as well as the moving Tokyo Sonata, evokes elements of such classics as Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs trilogy, Masako Kobayashi’s ten-hour The Human Condition, and several Alfred Hitchcock standards — including Suspicion,Notorious, and North by Northwest — none of which makes it feel derivative but instead fits in with the use of film itself in the narrative. The deliberate pace is wholly effective, with a tight screenplay written by Kurosawa, who won the Silver Lion as Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, with Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Tadashi Nohara, two of his students at Tokyo University of the Arts. Although the story is fictional, the information about what the Kwantung Army was doing in Manchuria is based on fact, something Japan tried to keep under wraps for many decades.
Aoi (Hula Girls,Birds without Names) and Takahashi (Kill Bill,Whispers of the Heart), who previously starred together in Yuki Tanada’s Romance Doll, are both terrific, slowly allowing their characters’ motives to come out as the cat-and-mouse game between Yusaku and Sakoto, Yusaku and Taiji, and Taiji and Sakoto continues. And it’s always a treat to see Takashi Sasano (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s Casting Blossoms to the Sky and Labyrinth of Cinema, Kurosawa’s Bright Future and Creepy), who makes a cameo as Doctor Nozaki. The period piece is beautifully filmed by Tatsunosuke Sasaki, successfully capturing the era, and highlighted by an unforgettable moment near the end involving Sakoto, part of what makes Wife of a Spy much more than just another WWII espionage drama.
New documentary delves into who Adolf Hitler was and how he rose to power, with rare color footage
THE MEANING OF HITLER (Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave.
Opens Friday, August 13 www.ifccenter.com
“Has history lost all meaning?” a narrator asks in The Meaning of Hitler. “Is it possible to make a film like this without contributing to the expansion of the Nazi cinematic universe?”
Over the last several decades, the word “Nazi” has been used as a derogatory comment not only for mean-spirited people who enforce their own bizarre rules — think Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi character — but also when political figures don’t like what they believe to be controlling legislation and ideals from a rival party (see Marjorie Taylor Greene). As the word begins to lose its historical reference and becomes normalized — the Nazis are responsible for the senseless, brutal murder of more than thirteen million people, which is anything but normal — so does the name of the man who was the leader of the National Socialists, Adolf Hitler. But the current rise of antisemitism, the election victories of far-right candidates around the world, and the inability of the populace to see through the shady veneer of these demagogues drove husband-and-wife documentarians Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein to make The Meaning of Hitler. You probably have seen a lot of films about the Holocaust, but not one like this, which delves into who Hitler was, what made him that way, and how we can prevent another similar personality from taking power.
Tucker and Epperlein use Sebasian Haffner’s 1978 book of the same name as a guide as they follow Hitler’s trajectory, from his childhood home, to his failure as an artist, to his first, unsuccessful coup attempt, to his successful march to domination. Do we need more books and films about Hitler? “Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Hitler is how he resists understanding. There is not one historian, apart from Haffner, who claims to understand him,” says author Martin Amis. “Our understanding of Hitler is central to understanding ourselves. It’s a reckoning you have to make if you’re a serious person.” Professor Yehuda Bauer opines, “You cannot put Hitler on a psychologist’s couch,” while professor Saul Friedländer wishes the filmmakers “Good luck,” intimating that trying to figure out Hitler is a lost cause.
But try they do. In chapters such as “Chaos,” “Legend,” “Hitler Had No Friends,” “The Orator,” “The Hitler Cult,” and “The Good Nazi Years,” taken from Shaffner’s short volume, Tucker and Epperlein travel to Hitler’s ancestral village, the Berlin bunker where he killed himself, Vienna, his Wolf’s Lair headquarters, Flanders, Munich, Berchtesgarden (where Hitler “vacationed” for important photo opportunities), Paris, Warsaw, and Israel, locations where Hitler either lived, visited, or had a major impact on as he utilized the media to spread his message of hate. Forensic biologist Dr. Mark Benecke talks about his examination of Hitler’s skull fragments. Audio guru Klaus Heyne discusses how a new microphone, which became known as the Hitler Bottle, allowed the führer to shout out to impossibly large, adoring crowds, comparing it to the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek describes how they will be digging at the former location of the Sobibor death camp, known as the Unknowable Spot, in order to account for the victims of the Nazis.
The filmmakers (Gunner Palace,Karl Marx City), who wrote, directed, edited, and produced the documentary, with Tucker serving as cinematographer and sound designer as well, give ample time to Holocaust denier David Irving, who offers tours of Nazi sites, celebrating Hitler; while claiming he is not antisemitic, he makes several slurs on camera. He adds, “Forget about Auschwitz; it’s unimportant.” They also speak with professor Deborah Lipstadt, who was sued by Irving for libel but won the court case.
Among the others who share their thoughts on Hitler and the Nazis are Dr. Peter Theiss-Abendroth, historian Sir Richard Evans, author Francine Prose, professor and sociologist Klaus Theweleit, and Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld; they don’t paint a pretty picture, which is how curator Sarah Forgey describes Hitler’s artwork.
Throughout the film, there are short clips of how Hitler and the Nazis have been portrayed in cinema, including scenes from Mel Brooks’s The Producers — yes, “Springtime for Hitler” — The Bunker, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be,Hitler: Dead or Alive, Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, and others. But it takes a critical turn when the focus shifts to the current wave of nationalism, anti-immigration, online radicalization, and public demonstrations, particularly related to Donald Trump and the United States. The historians are quite clear about how Trump uses the Hitler playbook in his rhetoric and actions. Professor Ute Frevert notes about Hitler, “It’s consent. He never found anybody who objected. They all said, ‘Well, we believe you. We trust you. We love you,’” which echoes not just how Trump’s cult unconditionally support the former president but what the former TV reality show host said about the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6. And Dr. Mathias Irlinger warns us, “Every year, lots of people come [to Berchtesgarden] because they still believe in Hitler, they still believe in Nazi ideology. The discussion ‘How to deal with the history’ will never stop.”
The revision, whitewashing, and erasure of so much history is why films like The Meaning of Hitler must continue to be made, especially as the last generation of Holocaust survivors and witnesses pass away. If we don’t figure out “What made Hitler Hitler?,” as the film asks, how can we say it will never happen again, even in our own backyard?
