During the summer, I was given the rather wonderful opportunity to assist in programming the experimental shorts program at the 20th Local Sightings Film Festival, which runs from tomorrow through the end of the month at the Northwest Film Forum. Though I wasn’t given a specific prompt, the shorts I helped select fell into two programs: Natural Experiments and Hurtling Through Space. Of the two, the one containing almost all of the shorts that genuinely excited me is the former. While I must say I am no expert in writing about the avant-garde, all of these shorts offer no small amount of visceral and visual pleasure.

Though I must reiterate that I approached this assignment with no set theme in mind, I gravitated towards shorts that showcased the ways in which development in the Pacific Northwest intermingles with other elements, whether they be natural surroundings or various cinematographic techniques. In this respect, “Erased Etchings” (Linda Fenstermaker) is the perfect introduction. Dreamy and hazy via the texture of 16mm, the depictions of both natural foliage and the houses in their midst don’t develop so much as unravel. Some context is introduced – a few pointed shots of housing development plans – but this is mostly purely experiential, with some lovely music choices to match.

My favorite of the shorts is “Lost Winds” (Caryn Cline), which reminded me much of what little Brakhage I’ve seen. Consisting entirely of damp plants, leaves, and flowers as seemingly seen through a microscope, the short manages to create a very appealing dynamism in the quick edits which invite the viewer in rather than disorient them. Coupled with the ambient sounds of water and fascinating inserts that create iris shots out of the leaves, it is calming in so many beautiful ways.

“Bell Tower of False Creek” (Randolph Jordan) is a curious case. It approaches documentary more than something purely experimental, and I must confess much of the context – which, per the summary, “uses the church bell as metaphor for the traffic on Vancouver’s Burrard Bridge” – went over my head. But the black and white 8mm images are lovely, and the way in which voiceover interviews and the natural (or not-so-natural) sounds are interwoven is fairly skillfully done.

Featuring two filmmakers already in this program, “Tri-Alogue #3” (Caryn Cline, Linda Fenstermaker & Reed O’Beirne) nevertheless feels like something different. The screen is divided into thirds, with each filmmaker taking a section and creating their own individual short, but all of the images take on a collective unity, all exploring the city and using a particularly active mode of shooting, all never-ceasing shots that bleed into each other. There is no particular effort to make the shots line up, from what I could tell, and that in itself gives the endeavor a certain interconnectivity.

One of my other favorite shorts in the program, “Shared Space” (Champ Ensminger), stands out from the others. Its approach is blatantly digital and virtual and focuses on individuals rather than their surroundings. Yet they tackle the notion of the city as well, as each person interviewed talks about the culture that they take part in and said culture’s various pros and cons. All the while, they are fragmented and almost abstracted into lines, pixels, and other digital constructions. The human figure is still there, but it is made into something both alien and familiar.

Perhaps the only truly abrasive short in the selection, “HearNW” (Ben Popp) continually puts hindrances in front of its images of the natural world, whether they be the outlines of the objects being represented, overlapping prismatic images, or just the relentless thrum of the soundtrack. But the experience is never assaultive, the techniques never distracting, and the experiments with the frame are wonderful.

My third favorite of the program, “Game Plan” (Lynn O C Thompson), takes a rather novel look at the modern industries. Vintage game boards are overlaid onto relatively normal shots of power lines, trucks, factories, and other industrial mainstays, and the effect strikes as exceedingly playful. One could read a potential critique (the use of games similar to Monopoly commenting on the ubiquity of money), but it seems like the most productive path is to appreciate this short’s inherent buoyancy and energy.

“A City in Four Parts” (Jon Behrens), in the context of the other shorts, isn’t the most adventurous of experiments, but the effect of its images still allows for some appreciation. Taking four different shots of the waterfront and overlaying them over one another, with occasional inversions, the short creates the illusion of buildings building on top of each other, ships sailing upside down on a water-filled sky, and while the impact may be slightly less surreal than hoped, the deep blues of the 16mm film speak for themselves.

The most far-flung of the shorts, “Silk Scream” (Brenan Chambers) uses a seemingly endless amount of overlays of similar shots to create a legible yet intensely blurred portrait of Tokyo city life, set to a wordless and shimmering instrumental track. The effect is indeed that of a city in motion, and a rather astonishing balance is struck between clarity and abstraction.

“Vernae” (Ethan Folk and other collaborators) is by far the longest film in the program at 28 minutes, and is by turns the most conventional and the most daring short. Comprised mostly of rhythmic dances by various figures in some clearly elemental and highly sensual state of being. By turns gorgeous and somewhat disturbing, the short seems clearly cloaked in some inner meaning, but the spectacle of numerous bodies in motion suffices.

The final short, “Disjunct” (Brian C. Short), is a rather appropriate closer to this stunning program. Adopting a highly free-wheeling and almost everything but the kitchen sink approach, the short moves through modes with abandon, synthesizing nearly every technique in this program to create some portrait of the Pacific Northwest. But nothing feels necessarily inorganic to the short, such is the general deftness with which everything is unveiled.

Though all of these shorts may confound, delight, and move in certain measure, what connects all of them above all is the spirit of experimentation, a willingness to render familiar sights with new resonances and filters. In this regard, the program is utterly remarkable, and a very worthy experience.

Among the aspects most crucial to the creative success of a documentary is one that should be all too obvious: the subject. This isn’t necessarily to say that there are a preponderance of documentaries that fail because of their material, or that there are many topics that are ill-suited to the medium. But, as with narrative films, the right subject almost always must be paired with the right filmmaker in order for the venture to truly get started.

So it is with Escapes, one of two films premiered this year from the eclectic director Michael Almereyda, the other being his science-fiction drama Marjorie Prime. Though he is better known for his fiction works, including Hamlet and Experimenter, the filmmaker (from whom I’ve sadly seen no other film) has made several documentaries, including one with the late Sam Shepard, and he turns in something quietly spectacular, stylish, and moving.

Continue reading “Escapes (2017, Michael Almereyda)” →

Cultural context, even as it relates to single films, is a difficult issue to fully unpack. In the case of Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, which plays this week for one night only at the Northwest Film Forum, this idea is especially relevant, given the curious nature of its reception both here and across the pond in its home country of France. This is perhaps to be expected, on account of its incendiary subject matter, but all of these reactions, praise and criticism alike, stem from the extravagance, the seemingly inappropriate ways in which the film presents its ideas. But, crucially, Nocturama is less a film of ideas than of images, of mindsets that remain just out of focus.

The scenario itself is fairly simple: a group of terrorists – all of whom are young adults, half white upper-class and half Arabic lower-class – execute a highly coordinated series of simultaneous attacks around Paris, and hole up for the night in a popular, cavernous shopping mall, à la Dawn of the Dead. The motivations are purposefully left largely unstated: many mentions of capitalism and its ill-effects are made in two extended flashbacks during the film’s first half (there is even a statement that states that the existence of capitalism is a precondition for the downfall of capitalism) but no affiliation with any specific ideology is otherwise named, and each and every member of the crew slowly succumbs to the decadent pleasures of the mall’s many products and accoutrements. In a structural gambit that pays many dividends, especially during the harrowing climax, Nocturama is conducted from so many perspectives that the action is somewhat jumbled; despite the frequent use of on-screen timestamps, the main thread of coherence lies in the rush of movement and motivation from the cast (all of whom possess astonishingly emotive faces, presenting varying levels of fear and determination).

Such a bare-bones description is fundamentally inadequate for any competently-directed film, but especially for this movie and the films of Bertrand Bonello in general. Bonello, as evinced in previous works such as House of Tolerance and Saint Laurent, is known and justly praised for his sense of space and flair, largely expressed through snaking Steadicam long takes. While those other two movies are all about languor (I cannot speak to the contents of his films prior to those), Nocturama takes tension and mounting dread as its modus operandi, in both the first half, dedicated to the execution of the bombings, and the second, which takes place almost entirely inside the mall, with only a few brief sojourns to the eerily quiet city just outside the soundproofed walls. At least in a film this focused, such an approach fits like a glove, moving with a precision that often mirrors that of the characters, at least until they slip up.

It was almost inevitable that Nocturama would come under some form of scrutiny for utilizing such flagrant cinematic techniques, including the use of both Bonello’s own pulsing electronic score and some choice cuts that run the gamut from a show-stopping lip sync of Shirley Bassey’s rendition of “My Way” to Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” to Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” But it is as much a victim of poor timing: attacks occurred in Paris both during production (which caused the change in title from the phenomenal Paris Is a Party) and leading up to the release, and as a result it was received with roundly mixed reviews in that country, with some labeling the film as irresponsible. These reactions were much less prevalent when the movie opened here, perhaps because no “significant” attack has occurred in the past few months.

But at the same time, there is an increased urgency in the present, modern moment, a darkness and pessimism that is mirrored and amplified in this film. After my slightly more mixed view of the film when I saw it at SIFF, I rewatched it this past week in New York, and I was struck anew by how vivid, how confidently sleek Nocturama feels, on its own and in comparison to many of the more pedestrian films this year. Seen in a city whose intestines are made of subways not so different from the ones that are so crucial to the first half of the film, more and more resonances emerge from the elegant surfaces, whether it be thematic or purely on a gut level. And, at the end of the day, perhaps only the body matters, whether it is alive in ecstatic motion or silenced by the efficient crack of a gunshot.