Category Archives: Film

A.45 at 50th – A Film About Actor James Cromwell and the Black Panthers in 1968

by Cimaxion

MATURE CONTENT AND LANGUAGE:

I got a nice surprise submission to my Vimeo Candlelight Stories Short Film group this week.  It’s a fascinating documentary about one famous actor’s experiences during the turmoil of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

John Cromwell, the son of actor James Cromwell, directed this short film with Joshua Bell. It’s about his father’s experience with members of the Black Panther Party civil rights organization in 1968. It’s a fascinating short documentary look at someone who finds himself in an unfamiliar world just trying to lend a decent helping hand. James Cromwell has been involved with the defense of the Black Panthers and other human rights causes for decades.  I like the film’s professional quality and easy capturing of the sixties look.  It presents its important and dramatic subject matter with a good dose of rather charming humor.

Here’s an article and interview with the director and his father.

Downtown 81 – A Film Starring Jean Michel Basquiat

by Cimaxion

Mature Content:

This is a 1980 film starring American artist Jean Michel Basquiat. It follows him around and through the downtown New York art and music scene, presenting real people and events in a barely fictionalized semi-documentary. It’s a fascinating look into the world of 1980 New York and the quickly rising star painter who was to pass away in 1988. It’s a glimpse of a New York just a few years before it was bombed by The Gap.  It was directed by Edo Bertoglio.

You can stare straight into the open face of Basquiat and find more mystery than Banksy could conjure with a black velvet cloak, top hat and a mask.

Monologue Under White Light! – A Film by Samira Eskandarfar

by Cimaxion

A ravishing beauty from Iran! Look at this mysterious and subtle film by director Samira Eskandarfar. Her figures drift through time and space in a stage setting that seems open-ended and universal. The underlying themes and messages are probably far more complex than I can ascertain without a proper understanding of Iranian culture. But the film stands as a mysterious and slightly harrowing glimpse into the progress of attraction, love and communication between individuals.  The characters, played by Kazem Sayahi Saharkhiz and Faranak Miri, engage in mundane conversation, offer each other drinks, smoke cigarettes, make eyes at each other, play music on a tape recorder and disappoint each other in all the little ways of a normal life.  But they seem symbolic of something greater and perhaps very much to do with the filmmaker’s Iran.  There are some amazing artists working with enormous expressive power in Iran.  Samira Eskandarfar is one of them.

By the way, the filmmaker is also a painter.

Visit the filmmaker’s web site.

Ménilmontant – 1926 French Film by Dimitri Kirsanoff

by Cimaxion

The film takes its name from a neighborhood in Paris. It was directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff and is considered to be his greatest work. It moves very quickly, using a montage technique that tells the story without a single intertitle.  It’s a riveting and powerful tale of disillusionment and violence.  The lead actress is wonderful and has some of the best eyes for silent film I’ve ever seen.

Everything is a Remix Part 2

by Cimaxion

Kirby Ferguson continues his Everything is a Remix series by showing us how many of our most cherished and familiar films combine elements taken from or inspired by other films to create their seemingly unique experiences. Sometimes, shots are reproduced almost exactly. Yet, the movie industry is extremely aggressive in prosecuting or suing anyone who tries to use their material.

Roland’s Adventures in Wonderland – A Film by Istvan Horkay

by Cimaxion

Artist Istvan Horkay made this strangely mesmerizing film that combines Alice in Wonderland, the elephant man, 19th century theater, silent film, modern computer graphics, children’s illustration and digital readouts.  There are three films going on at the same time in a beautiful triptych.

Culture Shock, Level One – A Film by Bill Mousoulis

by Cimaxion

Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film posted a film by Bill Mousoulis called The Experimenting Angel. I liked it. So I’ve posted another of Mousoulis’ films. It features Jennifer Levy who returns from a long absence to Australia and feels dislocated while visiting a city. She wonders why the people seem so ‘deflated’ as they wander through various public/corporate spaces like malls. The film captures something increasingly common worldwide which is that quiet, blank, but seemingly normal behavior encouraged by any structure designed and erected with a corporate idea behind it. We all know how we are expected to behave when we walk past a row of Gaps, Starbucks, Banana Republics and Wetzle’s Pretzels. We obey. We perform the routine and go about our business making sure that we are perceived as correctly normal. We are guests in someone else’s house, even in our public spaces. We behave like new guests, ingratiating ourselves to the dome camera in the ceiling.  The cell phone is the absolute symbol of complete obeisance to the corporate superstructure looming above us.  We are told to engage in meaningless chatter while we walk, drive, breathe, eat, date, watch movies, run, bike, and work.  We are told to do this until it seems like normal and seems to make perfect sense.  It is as logical as being told to drop a penny on the ground every third step for every day of your life.  Steve Jobs tells you to leave him a penny on the ground every third step of every day of your life… and you damn well do it.  You know how many times Steve Jobs uses a cell phone during an average day?  None.  Why?  Because he’s much smarter than you are.

It is Not the Same Thing – A Film by Kathy Choi

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

The Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles is posting films made in its youth film class structured around the concept of work. The students made films about how they view jobs and work. It’s a great idea for a film class and throws the students into a very mature thought process. I really like this very fine film by Kathy Choi, Ce N’est Pas La Meme Chose (It Is Not The Same Thing).  She lets a woman from France compare the working life there to the life in America.  There are fascinating and sharp observations made about how the French worker simply wants to be efficient and get the job done within the regular day contrasted with how the American worker is expected to show a willingness to stay longer and ‘look’ more busy or dedicated.

Having closely observed American corporate office life I can attest to the phenomenon that is the actual ruling principal behind the entire American economy: at all costs one must always look busy.

The sad fact of our current jobless recovery is that an enormous percentage – probably in the 50% range – of all corporate American jobs are totally and completely unnecessary and should not exist.  In other words, those jobs should not come back because they are fake.  They are occupied by people spending the vast majority of their time looking busy, talking busy, pretending, and doing next to nothing.

The French view which holds a job to be something limited and something to do efficiently and well, while not allowing it to overwhelm one’s life strikes me as a very mature and reasonable view.

This little film is exceedingly good and reminds me of Godard.