NYFF: Syria Plays Itself in 'Self-Portrait'

New York Film Festival is going strong and here is Glenn on one of the finest works of non-fiction at the fest.

A young boy named Omar walks through the rubble-strewn streets of Syria followed by a woman with a camera. He picks flowers, his eyes pop at something as simple as the size of a plant’s leaves, and giggles as his inquisitive mind asks questions to his unseen follower. The boy then tells the woman with the camera that they shouldn’t go down a certain street because there are snipers down there. It is spoken with such nonchalance by the child that one might assume he’s just re-enacting dialogue from a computer game or perhaps a movie. Rather it's just an average day in the life of this child as he navigates his way through his hometown of Homs.

This is a moment, a very confronting one, from Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait and the woman with the camera is Wiam Bedirxan. She is a young Kurdish activist and school teacher trapped in her home-country under heavy fire and also the co-director of this rather exceptional documentary who worked in collaboration via Facebook, Gchat and Skype with the politically exiled Ossama Mohammed who had previously fled to France and made this movie by compiling video from a reported 1001 Syrians who filmed the deadly revolution of their country on mobile phones and with photographs, uploaded to the internet platforms like YouTube, effectively creating a patchwork of a self-portrait of this nation under siege.

The conceit is a brave one especially given the quality of many of the images – footage, especially early on, is taken by Syrian men and women on the run from bullets, shelling and blood-loss; in one scene somebody gives chase after their phone, constantly filming, is nabbed by a passerby only to turn a corner and discover the thief has been shot and killed – and yet it is one that entirely works. It’s perhaps crude and the boxy, mis-shapen, heavily pixilated footage is rough around the edges, but it’s that very personal take from the frontlines that makes the documentary work. The assemblage is captivating and paints a picture that feels both broad and intimate at the same time.

Punctuated by somewhat cryptic title-cards and interspersed with even-harder-to-watch footage of maimed felines and youths being tortured that should wrench tears even out of audiences who feel desensitized by the onslaught of grim Syrian news. I could have done without the familiar bubbling sound of Skype that appears increasingly in the film’s tail-end, but the way it presents a country at a terrible crossroads is fresh and unique, penetrating through the glut of war documentaries in much the same way as The Square (albeit less accessible – Netflix won’t be acquiring this one). B+

Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait screens on Wednesday Oct 8 (6.15pm)

Steve Martin: 2015 AFI Life Achievement Award Honoree

Manuel here with some Steve Martin news.

Did you all hear? Not content with having been pegged for an Honorary Oscar just last year (and a Kennedy Center Honors back in 2007 as well as an American Cinematheque honor in 2004), our favorite silver-haired comedian slash banjo enthusiast has been named the 43rd recipient of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. This past June, they feted Jane Fonda, only the eighth woman to receive the honor, a statistic that would look surprising if it only it weren’t so familiar. Did you know women comprised 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 (domestic) grossing films of 2013 while females accounted for 15% of protagonists, 29% of major characters, and 30% of all speaking characters of said films? No wonder Reese, Gillian, heck even John Cusack, have been so vocal about this issue lately, following Geena Davis’s example.

But I got side-tracked.

We are here to celebrate Martin’s AFI Life Achievement news which will surely be a raucous affair come June 2015, and a well-deserved one at that. From The Jerk (1979) to Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), from Parenthood (1989) to It’s Complicated (2009), Martin has been delighting big screen audiences for decades. His silky smooth sense of humor, which can be quietly self-deprecating or explosively excoriating, is one of a kind. I’m personally attached to the Father of the Bride films, and while lately Martin has been playing it quite broad (Cheaper by the Dozen, Pink Panther), I can’t be the only one who hopes he has another Shopgirl in him, for those furrowed brows can definitely sell pathos as much as they can barter laughs. That wisp of a film is much too fragile (ever since I first saw it and was enamored by it I’ve been afraid to see it again lest it turn to salt) but it’s the type of small-scale human examination that so much of Martin’s humor can seamlessly tap into.

What’s your favorite Martin performance? Who are you hoping will be tapped to host; may it be frequent AFIer Mary Louise Streep? And who would you suggest AFI look into for next year?

NYFF: Mike Leigh's Exquisite and Frustrating 'Mr. Turner'

NYFF coverage continues with Michael C on Mike Leigh's latest 

When a film like Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner comes along you find yourself wishing you could take back all the “great cinematography” praise you tossed around so cavalierly on other films so that the words can carry more weight now that you really need them. Ideally, so far in 2014, one would have only applied the same praise to Darius Khondji’s work on The Immigrant. OK, yes, Under the Skin’s Daniel Landin also. It’s been an exceptional year.

Not content to merely display his paintings, Leigh and cinematographer Dick Pope manage to permeate the air with the aura of J. M.W. Turner’s art. Some of the film’s images produced audible gasps at the screening I attended. The glory of the visuals grant Leigh and company the freedom to dispense with the many of the usual biopic clichés since we understand so much about Turner’s passion just by looking at the screen. Mike Leigh’s latest simulates what it might be like to see the world through the eyes of the great painter. This element alone makes Mr. Turner essential viewing.

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Interview: Matthew Warchus (Pride, God of Carnage, Matilda The Musical) on Stage and Screen Transfers

Portions of this interview originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad discussing "Pride," the year's most adorable movie. This is the full interview with additional topics, Matilda the Musical's upcoming film adaptation chief among them.

If you didn't get to cinemas these past two weekends, the year's most adorable movie is still waiting for you, eager to please. Pride has been playing New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco but will add new cities next Friday. I expect all Film Experiencers to turn out for it! If you've read my review (aka paragraphs of me drooling on the movie) you'll know it's the true life LGBT story of a group of activists in the 1980s that stood up for striking miners during Margaret Thatcher’s bullying reign. The film is looking to be a "word of mouth" hit in miniature, but CBS Films plans to nurture it towards larger sleeper status. They'll be expanding carefully.

Two weeks back I had the opportunity to talk with the director Matthew Warchus who had just attended a pre-release screening with a "tumultous reaction" in LA. The 46 year old director, a stage veteran and Tony winner, recently replaced Kevin Spacey as the artistic director of the Old Vic so he isn't leaving the boards, he's just multi-tasking. He's already working on his follow up to Pride, a big screen adaptation of the Tony nominated hit Matilda: The Musical.

I talked to him about both projects, his stage directing skill set and how it affects his film work and how he approaches moving a property across mediums.

NATHANIEL R: You’ve done a lot of stage work before this. What do you think most prepared you for to tell this particular story and on film? 

MATTHEW WARCHUS: One great bit of preparation: I grew up in a village in the middle of nowhere in the North of England surrounded by coal mines and massively isolated. We had moved into that village so we were outsiders, wanting to to assimilate and be accepted. That gave me an understanding of how those communities work and the positives and minuses.

[Adapting musicals, sharing Pride, and more after the jump...]

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NYFF: Beloved Sisters

"...and that is why you should nominate us for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars."Our NYFF coverage continues with Nathaniel learning a 'don't procrastinate lesson'

This will be brief though the movie is not. IMDb lists the running time of Beloved Sisters, a fine new costume drama, as 138 minutes. The version that screened this past week at NYFF was 170 minutes long or nearly three hours. I do not know which version AMPAS  foreign language film committee will be screening but as soon as I find out I'll share. I do know this: a 170 minute long movie in which you can't read any of your notes (due to scribbling on the same line repeatedly in the dark) should be written up immediately and not left to swiss cheese memory. 

Beloved Sisters is a true(ish) story about sisters Charlotte (Henriette Confurius) and Caroline (Hannah Herzprung) and the talented man they fall for (Florian Stetter as Friedrich Schiller). The sisters are the best of friends but for financial reasons they have to part; Their mother widowed, Caroline marries for money to help support her family. As the movie begins, Charlotte is now old enough to be shopped around town... excuse me "introduced into high society" as well. Though Charlotte is lovely and (mostly) obedient, she doesn't have the right temperament to acclimate to stuffy society events, aristocratic mores, and arranged marriages. Instead she wants to marry the penniless poet Schiller who will eventually become famous, hence the interest in making a movie about this at all over 225 years later. Her mother, in need of money, doesn't approve.

Soon married Caroline is also in love with Friedrich but, in stark contract to most love triangles, the sisters are happy to share him. One near-drowning which ends with Friedrich scandalously naked and warmed by the sisters sets this odd triangle on its two-decade course. Since history is not at all explicit about what went down between Schiller and the sisters he became so close to, there are many theories and Dominik Graf's film fills in the blanks with a kind of lush romanticism that wouldn't be out of place in a swoony romance novel albeit one without the bodice ripping salaciousness. The film is interested, though not heavily invested in the life of the mind and rather timid about sex actually. This doesn't feel like a misstep exactly since Charlotte's ideas of romance is naive and youthful and the character arcs largely involve the three of them accepting the compromises and difficulties of marriages and friendship.

Though many of the details of the film have slipped by me two weeks later (blame a month of constant film festivalling, not the movie itself) I still remember evocative production design from rich wallpaper to a the delapidated ruins of a family house,  and the wonderfully complicit reading of letters directly to camera. Most of all I remember the first half (which flies by) when love is new and all consuming. Beloved Sisters feels more ordinary the longer it plays, unfortunately, but the first half has a charming youthful idealism and a firm grasp on illicit if modest thrills that come from soulmate devotion, and secretive infatuations like a Heavenly Creatures without the blood spattering psychosis.

Previous NYFF Reviews here. Oscar submission charts here. 
16 Foreign Oscar Submissions Reviewed:  Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba,France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Mauritania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Venezuela