Facets' Find

Wooooah! Let's start the holiday weekend off right with a trippy short from the grandfather of animation, Émile Cohl! Enjoy The Hasher's Delirium (Le Songe d'un garcon de cafe)! Yes, it's 100 years old!

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Faves! A Facets Exclusive!

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul won Cannes' Palme d'Or prize this year for his new film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Apichatpong, who also goes by "Joe", studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Facets fan from way back. He recently sent us a list of his top ten favorite films. Check them out below!

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Top Ten:

The Unchanging Sea (D.W. Griffith, 1910)
Luk e-san (Son of the Northeast) (Vichit Kounavudhi, 1982)
Women Workers Leaving the Factory (José Luis Torres Leiva, 2005)
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Valentin de las Sierras (Bruce Baillie, 1971)
Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)
Goodbye Dragon Inn (Ming-liang Tsai, 2003)
Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994)
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Palo Pasoloni, 1975)
Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol, 1966)


We highly, highly, highly (yes, three times) recommend his other films Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), Tropical Malady (2004), Blissfully Yours (2002) and Syndromes and a Century (2006). He creates dreamy landscapes that float through time unlike any other! And let's not forget The Adventures of Iron Pussy (2003)!

Facets' Find

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, The Annecy International Animation Film Festival teamed with Youtube for an original short film contest, with the creator of the jury-selected short winning a trip to Annecy in France and the honor of having the film screened at the fest.

The top entries are great (see them all here), but third-place winner Food About You (Alexandre Dubosc) is particularly impressive.

It also made us hungry.

Facets' Find

"I do feel that it's a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience...."

Woody Allen gets down on life at a Cannes press conference for his new film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

Inside Cannes: Part Five

Did you miss Facets executive director Milos Stehlik's live reports on the Cannes Film Festival for Chicago Public Radio's news program Worldview? Look no further!

Check out Milos'...

...Comments on Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s new version of Robin Hood. more

...Look at Iranian filmmakers being honored at the fest and how they deal with persecution from their own government. more

...Review of Draquila - Italy Trembles, a controversial Italian film that investigates a tragic scandal surrounding Italy’s eccentric but powerful Prime Minister. more

Stay tuned for more from Milos as the festival continues!

Facets' College Corner: Feeling Breathless

Editor's note: As one of their assignments in Introduction to Film at Oakton Community College, students were asked to watch a French New Wave film outside of class and apply what they learned about New Wave aesthetics to their movie selection. The students had not seen any New Wave films prior to taking the class, so the material and movies were new to them. Magdalena Wiech viewed Godard’s masterpiece Breathless, which, after 50 years, still looks astonishingly modern, and offered a solid account of the ways in which the film was radically different from what had come before.


The French New Wave: Breathless

The French New Wave was an artistic movement of French filmmakers from Paris who began their careers as critics in the 1950s then turned toward directing. Their work advanced and influenced the way movies are made. Some of these directors were Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Agnes Varda, and others. Influenced by film scholar Andre Bazin, many of the group wrote for the groundbreaking critical film journal Cahiers du Cinema. Cahiers promoted the auteur theory, which advocated the idea that the best films reflect a director’s personal artistic expression and should project his individual style and vision.

Breathless, a movie from 1960 directed by Jean-Luc Godard, is a story about Michel, who is fascinated with Humphrey Bogart’s star image as a criminal. Michel impulsively kills a policeman. Wanted by authorities, he turns to Patricia, an American journalism student at the Sorbonne. Michel is trying to get money owed to him so that he can escape to Italy. At the same time he is trying to seduce Patricia and convince her to go with him. Eventually, Patricia finds out that the police are searching for Michel, and she turns him in. Later she tells him about it, but Michel doesn’t want to hide anymore; he is tired of running away. Unfortunately, just as the police come, the man who owed him money throws him a gun. Michel gets shot down by the police, and he dies.

Some of the groundbreaking techniques associated with the French New Wave films include the use of a non-heroic protagonist, abrupt shifts in time and tone, abrupt endings, the love of hommage to other films and art forms, jump cuts, location shooting, natural lighting, direct sound recording, hand held camera, freeze-frame, and direct address to the camera. Many of these techniques are used in Breathless.

The main character in the movie, Michel, is a non-heroic protagonist. (Note from the editor: The formula for a heroic Hollywood protagonist finds the hero to be attractive, insightful, the moral center of the film, and able to obtain the goal or resolve the problem presented by the narrative. The writer here is measuring Michel against that archetype.) Although Michel is not ugly, his attractiveness is debatable. It is also arguable if Michel is insightful. He doesn’t really seem like he knows what he is doing. He pretends to be tougher then he is, constantly imitating Humphrey Bogart’s gangster-like persona. Even when he kills the policeman, it seems that he does it by accident because he finds a gun in the stolen car. In addition, he gets killed in the end because he is holding someone else’s gun, while his initial intention was to give himself up. Michel certainly doesn’t have a moral center. He is a small-time thief who is self absorbed. Finally, he definitely doesn’t solve the problem presented by the film’s narrative, although in some ways, he achieves his personal goals. Michel seduces Patricia—she is even pregnant with his child—but for some reason they don’t really make a big deal out of it. Also, the man who owed him money does show up in the end to pay back the money he owes Michel. However, neither of those personal goals ultimately matter because Patricia gives Michel away to prove to herself that she doesn’t love him, and what is more important, he dies in the end of the movie. Final proof that he is not a heroic protagonist is offered by his own words: “After all, I’m an asshole.”

Another characteristic technique of the French New Wave that was used in the Breathless was frequent jump cutting. According to Godard, who can’t always be trusted in interviews and comments about his work in retrospect, the jump cuts weren’t intended. The final version of the movie was too long, so supposedly Godard cut the film where he thought it wouldn’t disrupt the story. True or not, there are countless jump cuts in the movie. One of the examples is in the scene with Michel driving in the car with Patricia. He is describing the physical features that he likes about her. As he names parts of her body, the camera cuts to close-ups of Patricia’s face, particularly, the back of her head. The jump cuts add to the dynamic flow of the scene. They underline everything he says.

Another feature of French New Wave movies is direct address. In the beginning of the movie while Michel drives a stolen car, he looks straight into camera and addresses the audience. He acknowledges the camera. By doing this, Godard reminds us constantly that we are watching a movie. Another example of employing self–reflexive techniques was the alias name that Michel used, Laszlo Kovacs. Laszlo Kovacs was a Hungarian cinematographer who would later become famous for his work on Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. There is also scene in which fellow New Wave director Jean–Pierre Melville masquerades as a writer being interviewed by Patricia, and Godard himself appears in the film as an informer. The constant referring to film reminds us that we are watching one.

Breathless makes references to other films and to other art forms. Michel’s constant lip rubbing and chain smoking is an hommage to Humphrey Bogart. There is a scene where Michel is standing in front of the movie theatre, staring at the lobby cards with Bogart. He says to himself, “Bogie.” At the hotel room, Patricia hangs a reproduction of a Pierre Auguste Renoir painting and reads William Faulkner. The painter was the father of Jean Renoir, who was an internationally acclaimed screenwriter and director. William Faulkner was an important American novelist but also a screenwriter. For Godard—and by extension, other New Wave directors—everything is somehow linked to the movies.

During a scene in the hotel room, viewers can hear jazzy music, and then after Patricia and Michel make love, they hear loud modern music. Patricia seems more educated then Michel, because he asks if Faulkner is one of her lovers. These scenes show us the collision between popular and high culture. Plus, Jean–Luc Godard is plugging his influences of art and literature into Breathless.

Godard shot the movie on location in and around Paris and often used natural lighting. Both of these techniques were characteristic for the French New Wave films, and they added to the realism of the movie. They made the movie look more like documentary.

With its rejection of the classic narrative style, which had been the standard mode for western filmmaking for decades, Breathless was very innovative when first released. It was not only a milestone of the French New Wave, but it was also a landmark in moviemaking history. It was definitely a challenge to watch Breathless; it’s not an easy film to watch. Patricia and Michel seem a little bit detached, and, with the offbeat pacing of the movie, it is hard to engage in their story. And, the ending is truly bizarre: While Michel is dying, he makes faces.

Earlier in the film, Patricia had told Michel: “I want us to be like Romeo and Juliet.” Well, Michel certainly ends up like Romeo.

Facets' Find

Facets Features continues its Cannes-a-thon with a brief look at Mike Leigh's latest, Another Year, which is generating strong buzz as a contender for this year's Palme d'Or prize.

Inside Full Frame: Part Four

We're taking a short break from our Cannes coverage to re-join Facets' Amy Boyd's series on the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which ran from April 8-11 in Durham, North Carolina.


This year at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Invited Program consists of a diverse group of nineteen features, most with a personal narrative at their core. One of the most moving is How To Fold a Flag (2009) by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker. This is not a story about war, but a story about how America deals with its soldiers returning home from war.

How To Fold a Flag follows four Iraq veterans as they return home to North Carolina, New York, Texas and Colorado. Epperlein and Tucker’s work is to film these sincere and personal stories and their work resonates because, despite all of our good intentions, yellow ribbons and bumper stickers, these stories aren’t being told in the news.

At dawn they lit up a car crossing through the checkpoint, only to find children now slumped and riddled with bullets in the backseat. This is what is seen on the news. A soldier cradling a girl in his arms as his hand sinks through the back of her head, cut to a shot of him back home, sliding his sleeping daughter out of the backseat of his own car. This is what is behind the headlines.

I spoke with Michael Tucker about filming combat soldiers in Iraq and the public’s perception of filmmakers who make a living in the war zone and he said that you want it to end, but “the war just goes on and on and on--and it’s something I’m good at.”

In 2003, Tucker (with Epperlein) shot the Iraq War doc, Gunner Palace (2005), and he managed to keep in contact with some of the soldiers profiled in that film. After they returned home, the soldiers reached out to him, asking to continue telling their stories. This is how How To Fold a Flag came about.

Asked about the profusion of “war films” in the marketplace, Tucker thinks that it’s a good thing. Our news has turned into entertainment. Network and cable news programs cover the war and our sacrifices in canned, dutiful sound bites or not at all. But Tucker points out that it’s not the public’s fault.

Fellow filmmaker Steve James (War Tapes, 2006) agrees, citing media fatigue as a potential cause for the drop off in coverage. “By now, you could almost program a whole festival of films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he says.

Reporter (2009), which screened at Full Frame last year, talks about the causes of this numbing of the public’s psyche to these images of war and mass suffering. Director Eric Daniel Metzgar follows New York Times investigative journalist Nicholas Kristof as he searches for moving stories in places like war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, which he hopes may stir the public to not only feel compassion, but to act.

Within films like War Tapes and How to Fold a Flag, we’re able to see how varied the experience of war (and the coming home experience) is for the men and women living and fighting through it. The media portrays the coming home experience for all soldiers as being the same, but How to Fold a Flag shows that their reintegration experiences are as diverse as they are themselves.

At home, I turn on the television to find that my favorite primetime crime shows all have plots involving an always-troubled soldier returning home from the Middle East. It makes me wonder: When news is entertainment and entertainment is taken for news, what are we--citizens, soldiers, families, workers--getting out of this cycle?

One of two Kartemquin produced films being screened at Full Frame this year is No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson (2010) directed by Steve James as part of ESPN’s 30 For 30 documentary series. It’s both a personal film about James’ home town of Hampton, Virginia and a film about race. James believes this is a subject that we don’t talk enough about, so he went back home and brought it up.

No Crossover examines the 1993 trial of the talented high school athlete Allen Iverson through newspaper articles, media coverage, family photos and interviews with hometown citizens from all walks of life. James talks with the people Iverson grew up with, the people that live on the other side of the tracks and the people who not only remember the trial but who had a stake in it.

Everyone says they saw what happened, or else they have a theory about what happened, one ordinary February night at the local bowling alley when a brawl suddenly broke out between a group of black kids and a group of white kids. Some place blame on one side; some, the other, and some expose an array of far-reaching conspiracy theories involving town officials and college recruiters. James’ real success with the film is bringing the conversation back around to a more nuanced and complex issue which nobody really wanted to acknowledge. He wants us to realize that we all have a stake in it.

As I watched the film, I find myself wanting a concrete answer; a who-what-when-where kind of answer. I want to find it in the trial, some overlooked evidence, new witness or repentant judge; something concrete coming from a very civilized and infallible process to explain the original and persisting inequalities and prejudices that Hampton reminds us all of.

But it’s not that easy. And it doesn’t settle-in until you’re on your way home or you have an ordinary, quiet little moment standing alone among strangers you stand amongst every day, either at the bus stop or in line at the grocery store where you have to run-in because you forgot to buy milk for your morning coffee. Then you look around and you recall the exchange between James and a doubtful Hampton resident when she defensively, suspiciously asks him why. What’s the purpose of this film?

He says he wants to understand, and if that’s not possible, then there’s no hope for any of us. Then her expression changes. Her face softens and the camera lingers on her for just a moment. And that’s the moment when the film leaves it’s mark; where it plants seeds that will build slowly like Thai spices until you’re sitting on the bus bench or handing a debit card to a cashier for a $2.00 carton of milk and all of a sudden you realize the power of the film and it’s immediate relevance.

This is not a call to action. This is a call for reflection, acceptance, understanding and, most importantly, dialogue. It seems as if the film’s audiences aren’t letting James down on that point. I asked him about his experiences taking No Crossover around the country and how the local audience received the film at Full Frame.

“At screenings both in the Hampton area and at Full Frame, the audience had a very strong and passionate response to the film. I fully expected it in Hampton, but to see it at Full Frame really spoke to the depth of feelings there are about issues of race in the South. At Full Frame, people wanted to give heartfelt speeches more than ask questions – most unusual in my experience for a film festival audience.

“Nonetheless, audiences in Austin, Cleveland, Chicago, and the D.C. area have commented on how the issues raised in this film also apply to their parts of the country. The film does seem to make people want to talk – something we don’t do enough of when it comes to race.”

Inside Full Frame: Part Five will feature Freedom Riders and a festival wrap-up. Stay tuned!

You can catch a reprise screening of No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson on ESPN U on May 20th, 2010 at 01:00pm EDT.

Click here to listen to an interview with How to Fold a Flag’s Javorn Drummond and The Story’s Dick Gordon.

Watch a NOW on PBS interview with Reporter director Eric Daniel Metzgar on the experiences of filming in a war zone and the challenges of getting the public’s attention here.

Facets' Find

Jean-Luc Godard discusses the enemy--the culture of television--at Cannes in 1988.

Inside Cannes: Part Four

Facets Executive Director Milos Stehlik is at the Cannes Film Festival. His observations will appear on Facets Features all week! Today, he ruminates on Cannes congestion and Takeshi Kitano's latest!


A paralysis hits the streets of Cannes on Sunday when the local people mix with 40,000 visitors on the streets. It takes a half hour to get someplace that should normally take 5 minutes. A Turkish journalist friend complained to me that there is not enough time left between screenings, particularly since the one philosophy everyone at the Cannes Film Festival quickly learns to subscribe to is “hurry up and wait.”

Wait in long lines, segmented and stratified by the color of your badge; wait to cross the street because of entourages of cars (the police make you wait); walk blocks to get around a particular blockage caused by who knows what.

Yesterday, waiting at the cashier of Monoprix, the French department store chain, with one person ahead of me, something happened. The young cashier picked up the phone and called someone. Then, minute after minute went by. I thought she had run out of change. But no one came. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "Blockage."

Back to the Turkish friend: All the films are too long. She is absolutely right. There is almost no such film as a 100, 105 minute, let alone a 90 minute film. Virtually every film is over 2 hours long. It would almost always be a better film if it were shorter. Her explanation for it makes very good sense: “No more 35mm. So no more producer watching the production costs mount. In one word, it’s HD--high definition digital filmmaking.”

___

Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage--not one of his best films--seems hastily put together. It is difficult to keep track of the shifting alliances and disalliances between the various yakuza clans vying for control. Beat Takeshi, who plays an old-style yakuza on the downward slide, is his usual stone-faced self, but seems oddly tired.

Outrage pushes the violence level to an extreme degree. Among Kitano’s contributions to the repertoire is a particularly nasty number done on a yakuza client with a dentist’s drill, and the number of fingers which are chopped off as apologies for infractions seems like a growth industry. But the violence seems an odd substitute for the irony and edgy attitude which made the early Kitano yakuza films like Violent Cop and Boiling Point so fresh and exciting.

Inside Cannes: Part Three

Facets Executive Director Milos Stehlik is at the Cannes Film Festival. His observations will appear on Facets Features all week!


Day 2: Journalists here speculate whether or not the Cannes opening of Robin Hood was “risky” in view of the lukewarm reviews--none nasty, but most had reservations. It seems to matter because Robin du Bois (literally, Robin of the Wood) has already opened here commercially.

Most of the packed streets were reserved not for Russell Crowe, but last night for Mathieu Amalric’s film On Tour. Amalric plays a former TV producer who returns to Paris to stage a burlesque show. I skipped the screening, giving in to my prejudice toward Amalric, whom, with his frozen toothy grin (which remains the same from film to film), I find one of the most irritating actors in history. Those who lasted through or part of On Tour said they appreciated the “real” burlesque sequences. Obviously my personal response to Amalric is not shared--the streets of Cannes were packed waiting for his entourage’s arrival prior to the official screening.

Much more interesting was a hard-hitting, free-wheeling agit-prop of a film which is taking Italy by storm, and over which the Italian culture minister said he is boycotting the Cannes Festival.

Sabina Guzzanti’s Draquila: Italy Trembles aims the stake at the heart of Silvio Berlusconi. The center piece of the film is the 2009 earthquake which devastated the medieval city of L’Aquila (and in which over 300 people died). Guzzanti accuses Berlusconi and his cronies as an excuse to usurp extra-emergency powers to enrich themselves and regain Berlusconi’s sagging popularity. Even more broadly, Guzzanti charges Berlusconi with leading a corrupt government mired in scandal involving bribery, sex parties with escorts, misuse of funds, and ties to the Mafia which, one economist in the film cites, now represents 150 billion euros a year and over 10% of Italy’s gross annual product.

Facets' Find

Facets Features' Cannes-a-thon continues with wonderful footage from the Dutch documentary, De weg naar Bresson (Leo de Boer/Jurriën Rood, 1984), of Orson Welles, Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky sharing the stage at Cannes in 1983.

What a dream team!

Inside Cannes: Part Two

Facets Executive Director Milos Stehlik is at the Cannes Film Festival. His observations will appear on Facets Features all week!


Day 1: I have a headache from sitting through the press screening of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. It’s very noisy film, filled with music-video type set-pieces filled with rousing and manipulative orchestral scores meant to build the tension in the battle scenes. Despite this noisy background and the fact that the story of this Robin Hood is kind of a prequel to all the other Robin Hoods from Douglas Fairbanks onward, there is not much that is original in Ridley Scott’s adaptation. Between the now-standard, viscerally-filmed battle scenes, there is a bit of new-pop psychology with Robin Hood (Russell Crowe), who believes his father deserted him when he was 6 years old, but actually died a noble death as a visionary of England as a land of liberty.

The film is exposition, exposition, exposition-–even in the relationship between Robin and Marian (Cate Blanchett)--no doubt to make it palatable to the entire family (though the film’s dabbling in pseudo-historical background will make it a snore not just for those under 12). It made me wish that they would, please, just get it on. No such luck. Marian is a better warrior than a lover--at least from what was on the screen.

Facets' Find

The Cannes Film Festival kicked off last night! All this week, Facets Features is digging up clips from the fest's past and present.

Let's start with rare, heated footage of Francois Truffaut, Milos Forman, Claude Lalouch, Jean-Luc Godard, Roman Polanski and more calling for the cancellation of the 1968 Cannes Film Festival in solidarity with the student and worker protesters who rocked France that year.

Inside Cannes: Part One

Facets Executive Director Milos Stehlik is at the Cannes Film Festival. His observations will appear on Facets Features all week!


A day before the Cannes Film Festival begins, they just closed the Nice airport because of the volcanic ash around 3 p.m. local time Tuesday. No idea if the “team” for the Cannes opening night film (Robin Hood), including Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and director Ridley Scott, are already in Cannes. If not, perhaps they can borrow Lars von Trier’s camper? A few years ago he was driving to Cannes in his camper, but never made it–-he turned around someplace midway between Denmark and southern France and went back.

Facets' Find

Lena Horne, the groundbreaking actress/singer/activist who died yesterday at age 92, was one of Facets Features' heroes. We're remembering Lena with one of her most memorable movie moments--singing the eponymous title song to the 1943 film, Stormy Weather.

Facets' Find

Oh man, I hope Horror-Vision is the next cinematic craze to catch on after 3-D!!

Facets' Find

Luis Bunuel discusses his Un Chien Andalou collaboration with Salvador Dali, from a 1986 made-for-TV documentary!!

Enjoying Ebertfest

Facets' Susan Doll reports on Ebertfest, which was held in Champaign, Illinois from April 21 - 25!


Originally called the Overlooked Film Festival, this small but extremely popular film fest programmed by Chicago’s high-profile movie critic has been dubbed Ebertfest in recent years. The fest takes place at the historic Virginia Theater in Champaign, Illinois, where Roger Ebert attended the University of Illinois. Ebert’s idea for his festival was to showcase movies he felt had been overlooked or not given a fair shake in distribution and exhibition, a major problem in today’s film industry. The festival still retains a taste of that original idea; this year, Michael Tolkin’s The New Age, Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, and James Mottern’s Trucker all fit that agenda. But, over the years, the event has expanded to be a celebration of films by a community of Midwesterners who appreciate good movies of all types. As Ebert wrote in the festival booklet, “I don’t have a set of criteria in my selections. It’s more that I see a film and am seized with the desire to share it with the Ebertfest family.” The entire line-up included: Pink Floyd The Wall, You, the Living, Munyurangabo, The New Age, Apocalypse Now Redux, Departures, Man with a Movie Camera, Synecoche, New York, I Capture the Castle, Vincent: A Life in Color, Trucker, Barfly, and Song Sung Blue.

Though programmed by one man, and reflective of his tastes, the fest keeps in mind its audience by featuring a variety of films—classic and contemporary, studio films and indies, domestic and foreign, narrative and documentary. Quite a diverse selection for a five-day event of 13 films.

Remarkably, three of the 13 films had played exclusively at Facets’ cinematheque last year—Munyurangabo (directed by Lee Isaac Chung and shot in Rwanda), You, the Living (Roy Andersson, Sweden), and Trucker (James Mottern, USA). Hats off to our programmer Charles Coleman for finding some amazing films on a broken-shoestring budget. I am always annoyed when people who are fed up with Hollywood’s dismal adolescent-driven drivel complain, “There are no good movies in the theaters anymore.” There are indeed good films to see; they just don’t have 8-figure marketing budgets to beat you over the head with ads and promos. Actually, Charles’ cinematheque schedule is akin to a 364-day, year-round film festival (Facets is closed on Christmas.)

Highlights of Ebertfest for me included watching a restored Apocalypse Now Redux on the Virginia Theater’s mammoth screen with a packed house of 1500 in attendance. The colors were vivid and the sound extraordinary thanks to the restoration efforts of director Francis Coppola, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and editor Walter Murch. Running a close second was the screening of Man with a Movie Camera by Soviet silent filmmaker Dziga Vertov. Though made in 1929, the film looks and feels contemporary because of Vertov’s mastery of montage editing. As Ebert pointed out in the festival booklet, the film has an average shot length of 2.3 seconds—the same as the shot length in Michael Bay’s Armageddon. While Bay and Paul Greengrass are often credited with something called “post-classical editing,” as though their rapid, nonlinear editing is a new technique, it really is a variation of Soviet montage—except in Bay’s case, it’s done with such a lack of talent or intelligence that it gives this type of editing a bad name. I haven’t even gotten to the best part of Man with the Movie Camera—the Alloy Orchestra, which offered live accompaniment to the film with a specially written score consisting of drums, percussion, and sound effects.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Charlie Kaufman’s first directorial effort, Synecdoche, New York—a profound mediation on the complexities of living life. The film speaks to artistic types who are given to prolonged self reflection. It’s a film that should be seen several times, and depending on where you are in your life, it will mean something different to you. Other films I watched included Barfly, Trucker, and a short film called The Plastic Bag by Ramin Bahrani, who directed the highly acclaimed Chop Shop a few years ago. The story of a plastic grocery bag told from the perspective of the bag, the short made for an effective environmental message without preaching. The bag was voiced by Werner Herzog, who met Bahrani at Ebertfest a couple of years ago. Their meeting resulted in their collaboration on this project.

Each film was followed by a panel discussion that included reviewers, scholars, and some of the cast or crew. The most useful and informative panels were those in which the director participated; it’s helpful to understand film as an art form when the director talks about his thoughts and artistic perspective. Even if you don’t like the film, you can appreciate the efforts of the director trying express his/her vision. I heard the directors of Trucker (Mottern), Synecdoche, New York (Kaufman), and Barfly (Barbet Schroeder) speak passionately, humbly, and intelligently about their ideas and work. I didn’t care for Barfly, but I could appreciate Schroeder’s talents and perspective after hearing him talk about it.

The least useful panel members were movie reviewers, who tended to be opinionated rather than informed and egotistical rather than gracious, in addition to Ebert’s “Far Flung Correspondents,” who are young movie buffs from around the world that have corresponded with the critic over the years. He invites them to attend and participate in the panels, which is a nice gesture, but they add very little insight into the proceedings. The best panel moderator and participant bar none was David Bordwell, retired professor of film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of several textbooks. Straightforward and down to earth, Professor Bordwell proved adept at relaying insights and tidbits about the films that truly helped the audience’s understanding and appreciation.

This was my first year attending Ebertfest, and I highly recommend it. Not only does it include something for everyone, it is affordable, relaxing, well organized, and attended by film lovers as opposed to film snobs. The festival employees and volunteers are friendly and helpful; the town of Champaign is incredibly easy to get around in, and the locals are pleasant to outsiders. In other words, it is everything the Chicago International Film Festival is not.


*Virginia Theatre photo shamelessly stolen from the internet. If it's yours and you'd like us to remove it, please let us know.

Facets' Find

Oscar-winning and -nominated editor/sound designer Walter Murch (Julia, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, Cold Mountain) on the beginning of cinema.

For more from Murch (and other legendary editors/sound designers), I highly recommend the documentary The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing. It will change the way you look at cinema.