Tweet
Indie Wire
April 20 2004
Different Worlds Invade the Twin Cities; The 22nd Minneapolis & St.
Paul Film Festival
by Jeremy O'Kasick
A scene from Stephen Fry's "Bright Young Things," which screened at
the 22nd Minneapolis & St. Paul Film Festival.
With more than 130 films from 50 different nations and nearly 20 U.S.
premieres, the Minneapolis and St. Paul International Film Festival
(MSPIFF) wrapped up its second week on April 17. While they didn't
roll out the red carpets for the largest fest of its kind in the
Upper Midwest (After all, in Minnesota it often still snows in early
April!), dedicated filmgoers still found plenty of gems from April
2-17 in spite of naysayers who felt that the fest lacked last year's
flash.
In many ways, the 22nd annual MSPIFF's catchy theme, "Escape
Reality," and accompanying trailer served as paradoxical
foreshadowing of the fest's strongest selections among its
experimental and true-to-life documentaries. Nevertheless, the
festival opened with a gusto of glitz and decadence in "Bright Young
Things," a film that follows a pack of filthy rich Brits on the romp
in Depression-era London. As the directorial debut of the witty
British writer and actor Stephen Fry, the film shows promise but
wanders aimlessly at times much like the film's self-indulgent
characters themselves. Overall, "Bright Young Things" could have used
just a smidgen of the narrative drive from Stephen Frears' "Dirty
Pretty Things," the film's polar opposite on all levels.
Other prominent promotional screenings included Miramax's latest
foreign box-office contender, and yet another coming-of-age Italian
thriller, "I'm Not Scared," and a dark, atmospheric drama set in
Bangkok adapted from an Alex Garland novel, "The Tesseract." Yet
again, "Dogville" from Lars von Trier also had a well-received
screening and has since finally gone into wide release. Curiously
enough, von Trier's Depression-era drama set in a Colorado mining
town somehow ended up in the festival's Scandinavian Spotlight
series. The Danish filmmaker's experimental documentary "The Five
Obstructions" better exhibits true Scandinavian stock and exemplifies
multiple themes of the festival. As co-directed by von Trier's
moviemaking forefather and idol, Jorgen Leth, the doc follows the
action when the duo collaborate in remaking Leth's 1968 short, "The
Perfect Human," five times over under five different technical and
creative conditions. After screenings at Sundance and last year's
Toronto Film Festival, "The Five Obstructions" continued to delight
filmmaking aficionados in Minneapolis among the festival's many
stellar documentaries and notable Scandinavian selections.
With a huge population of Scandinavian descendants, Minnesota has
always kept Nordic culture dear to stoic heart. Other celebrated
films of the like included the Swedish-Finnish feature, "Elina: As I
Wasn't There" and the mid-fest gala screening of "Presence," a
documentary about the great Swedish photographer, Georg Oddner, as
directed by the great Swedish filmmaker, Jan Troell, who was present
himself for the screening. Troell, who famously captured the lives of
a Swedish émigré in Minnesota with "The Emigrants" (1971), received
the festival's award for outstanding artistic achievement. While
"Presence" was not Troell's most memorable effort as of late,
Oddner's brilliant photography and method keep the audience
captivated if sometimes torn between the seemingly competing imagery
from two Swedish legends.
Of the many other docs, "The Corporation" clearly stood out as the
audience favorite. Aptly enough from Canada, the hard-hitting doc
examines the very underpinnings of 21st century U.S. (and thus
Western and global) society: corporate structure, corporate thinking,
and corporate being. And in this hyper-politicized election year,
that's a whole lot more thrilling than it sounds. From CEOs to social
critics, such as Michael Moore and Naomi Klein, the film's poignant
historical analysis and commentary on the present-day dominance of
trans-national corporations has earned it numerous awards on the
festival circuit over the past year and is sure to do well in wider
release this summer.
Far removed from American corporate life lies the harrowing Armenian
doc, "The Documentarist," directed by Harutyun Khachatryan.
Chronicling 1990s life in Armenia over eight years, Kharchatryan has
made himself the film's weary, silent protagonist. A U.S. premiere,
"The Documentarist" feels, sounds, and looks more like an
experimental horror film than a documentary of people whose genocide
has long been forgotten in the Western world. Via seven vignettes and
with sparse dialogue, the highly visual and symbolic film comments
with a disturbing montage that includes the systematic slaughter of
stray dogs in a village to footage of abandoned children a ghastly
orphanage.
Almost as equally as tense, but with a more conventional approach,
"The Letter" focuses on the divisions in Lewiston, Maine, over the
past several years as the dominantly white, Christian small town has
become home to a large community of Somali refugees. As the Twin
Cities have the largest population of Somalis outside of the
war-battered East African nation itself, "The Letter," whose director
Ziad H. Hamzeh led Q&As after both of the film's screenings, stirred
animated discussion and powerful responses.
For those who were looking for some docs on the lighter side, MSPIFF
offered such Americana pop-cultural forays as "Metallica: Some Kind
of Monster," "Overnight," which tracked the rise and fall of would-be
Miramax filmmaker, Troy Duffy, and "Slasher," a glimpse of the
nation's fastest used-car salesman via the direction of John Landis.
On the other side of the world, both geographically and
cinematically, "Alexei and the Spring" moves subtly through Budische,
Belarus, a town abandoned by all of its non-elder residents, sparing
the thirty-something young man Alexei, after the nearby Chernobyl
nuclear disaster. Visually as rich as the town's enduring old country
ways of life, the film has much in common with "The Story of the
Weeping Camel," which tracks the birth and life of an albino camel
among the nomadic shepherds in southern Mongalia's Gobi Desert. The
Mongolian doc's African cousin, "Asshak, Tales from Sahara" is a
stunningly beautiful exploration of the Tuareg nomadic culture
through the Sahara Desert in Niger. Unlike other overly narrated
documentaries of people who are much exoticized in Western culture,
"Asshak" lets the Tuareg themselves, the desert landscapes and skies,
and the camels do the talking.
As directed by José Manuel Novoa and produced by the Pedro and
Augustin Almodóvar's El Deseo films, "Eyengui, The God of Dreams"
delivered another strong African selection to the festival that, in
truth, is a fictionalized documentary acted out by a pygmy tribe, the
Baka, in the Cameroon jungles. While it carries all the stereotypes
of so-called "primitive" Africa, complete with grass skirts, spears,
cannibals and witchcraft, the film still stretches narrative and
documentary bounds and, like so many of the films at MSPIFF, takes
you to world you've never seen before.
MSPIFF showcased many inspiring docs this year, and so it's easy to
overlook some of the more notable feature selections, such as "James'
Journey to Jerusalem" and "Raja." Among the many filmmaker and
producer presentations, Barry M. Osborne, Oscar winner and producer
of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, gave a dialogue at sold out
'50s-retro Riverview Theater in south Minneapolis.
Instead of a competition, MSPIFF only gives out special awards and
screens a "Best of the Fest" extended run for those films voted as
the most popular by viewers out of those selection that the
festival's shoe-string budget will allow extended distribution
rights.
Further U.S. premieres that are also in the "Best of the Fest" series
include "Dutch Light" and "The Master and His Pupil" both from the
Netherlands, "Bored in Brno" from the Czech Republic, "Sibelius" from
Finland, and "Sabado," a real-time hour-long film from Chile that
mimics over-the-top reality TV.
"The Naked Proof" won debut director, Jaimee Hook, the fest's
Emerging Filmmaker award. It's a bit rough-edged and may only find a
cult audience among all of you whackos out there who read Nietzsche
and Hegel for fun. But the film still comes through with quirky
humor, wry narration from the evocative playwright, August Wilson,
and the inner mental workings of the 10-year-running grad student
protagonist who obsesses over the ontological conundrum: "Do other
people exist?"
After spending two weeks in the dark, watching an average of three
films a day, this Midwest critic isn't so sure about the answer to
that question.
April 20 2004
Different Worlds Invade the Twin Cities; The 22nd Minneapolis & St.
Paul Film Festival
by Jeremy O'Kasick
A scene from Stephen Fry's "Bright Young Things," which screened at
the 22nd Minneapolis & St. Paul Film Festival.
With more than 130 films from 50 different nations and nearly 20 U.S.
premieres, the Minneapolis and St. Paul International Film Festival
(MSPIFF) wrapped up its second week on April 17. While they didn't
roll out the red carpets for the largest fest of its kind in the
Upper Midwest (After all, in Minnesota it often still snows in early
April!), dedicated filmgoers still found plenty of gems from April
2-17 in spite of naysayers who felt that the fest lacked last year's
flash.
In many ways, the 22nd annual MSPIFF's catchy theme, "Escape
Reality," and accompanying trailer served as paradoxical
foreshadowing of the fest's strongest selections among its
experimental and true-to-life documentaries. Nevertheless, the
festival opened with a gusto of glitz and decadence in "Bright Young
Things," a film that follows a pack of filthy rich Brits on the romp
in Depression-era London. As the directorial debut of the witty
British writer and actor Stephen Fry, the film shows promise but
wanders aimlessly at times much like the film's self-indulgent
characters themselves. Overall, "Bright Young Things" could have used
just a smidgen of the narrative drive from Stephen Frears' "Dirty
Pretty Things," the film's polar opposite on all levels.
Other prominent promotional screenings included Miramax's latest
foreign box-office contender, and yet another coming-of-age Italian
thriller, "I'm Not Scared," and a dark, atmospheric drama set in
Bangkok adapted from an Alex Garland novel, "The Tesseract." Yet
again, "Dogville" from Lars von Trier also had a well-received
screening and has since finally gone into wide release. Curiously
enough, von Trier's Depression-era drama set in a Colorado mining
town somehow ended up in the festival's Scandinavian Spotlight
series. The Danish filmmaker's experimental documentary "The Five
Obstructions" better exhibits true Scandinavian stock and exemplifies
multiple themes of the festival. As co-directed by von Trier's
moviemaking forefather and idol, Jorgen Leth, the doc follows the
action when the duo collaborate in remaking Leth's 1968 short, "The
Perfect Human," five times over under five different technical and
creative conditions. After screenings at Sundance and last year's
Toronto Film Festival, "The Five Obstructions" continued to delight
filmmaking aficionados in Minneapolis among the festival's many
stellar documentaries and notable Scandinavian selections.
With a huge population of Scandinavian descendants, Minnesota has
always kept Nordic culture dear to stoic heart. Other celebrated
films of the like included the Swedish-Finnish feature, "Elina: As I
Wasn't There" and the mid-fest gala screening of "Presence," a
documentary about the great Swedish photographer, Georg Oddner, as
directed by the great Swedish filmmaker, Jan Troell, who was present
himself for the screening. Troell, who famously captured the lives of
a Swedish émigré in Minnesota with "The Emigrants" (1971), received
the festival's award for outstanding artistic achievement. While
"Presence" was not Troell's most memorable effort as of late,
Oddner's brilliant photography and method keep the audience
captivated if sometimes torn between the seemingly competing imagery
from two Swedish legends.
Of the many other docs, "The Corporation" clearly stood out as the
audience favorite. Aptly enough from Canada, the hard-hitting doc
examines the very underpinnings of 21st century U.S. (and thus
Western and global) society: corporate structure, corporate thinking,
and corporate being. And in this hyper-politicized election year,
that's a whole lot more thrilling than it sounds. From CEOs to social
critics, such as Michael Moore and Naomi Klein, the film's poignant
historical analysis and commentary on the present-day dominance of
trans-national corporations has earned it numerous awards on the
festival circuit over the past year and is sure to do well in wider
release this summer.
Far removed from American corporate life lies the harrowing Armenian
doc, "The Documentarist," directed by Harutyun Khachatryan.
Chronicling 1990s life in Armenia over eight years, Kharchatryan has
made himself the film's weary, silent protagonist. A U.S. premiere,
"The Documentarist" feels, sounds, and looks more like an
experimental horror film than a documentary of people whose genocide
has long been forgotten in the Western world. Via seven vignettes and
with sparse dialogue, the highly visual and symbolic film comments
with a disturbing montage that includes the systematic slaughter of
stray dogs in a village to footage of abandoned children a ghastly
orphanage.
Almost as equally as tense, but with a more conventional approach,
"The Letter" focuses on the divisions in Lewiston, Maine, over the
past several years as the dominantly white, Christian small town has
become home to a large community of Somali refugees. As the Twin
Cities have the largest population of Somalis outside of the
war-battered East African nation itself, "The Letter," whose director
Ziad H. Hamzeh led Q&As after both of the film's screenings, stirred
animated discussion and powerful responses.
For those who were looking for some docs on the lighter side, MSPIFF
offered such Americana pop-cultural forays as "Metallica: Some Kind
of Monster," "Overnight," which tracked the rise and fall of would-be
Miramax filmmaker, Troy Duffy, and "Slasher," a glimpse of the
nation's fastest used-car salesman via the direction of John Landis.
On the other side of the world, both geographically and
cinematically, "Alexei and the Spring" moves subtly through Budische,
Belarus, a town abandoned by all of its non-elder residents, sparing
the thirty-something young man Alexei, after the nearby Chernobyl
nuclear disaster. Visually as rich as the town's enduring old country
ways of life, the film has much in common with "The Story of the
Weeping Camel," which tracks the birth and life of an albino camel
among the nomadic shepherds in southern Mongalia's Gobi Desert. The
Mongolian doc's African cousin, "Asshak, Tales from Sahara" is a
stunningly beautiful exploration of the Tuareg nomadic culture
through the Sahara Desert in Niger. Unlike other overly narrated
documentaries of people who are much exoticized in Western culture,
"Asshak" lets the Tuareg themselves, the desert landscapes and skies,
and the camels do the talking.
As directed by José Manuel Novoa and produced by the Pedro and
Augustin Almodóvar's El Deseo films, "Eyengui, The God of Dreams"
delivered another strong African selection to the festival that, in
truth, is a fictionalized documentary acted out by a pygmy tribe, the
Baka, in the Cameroon jungles. While it carries all the stereotypes
of so-called "primitive" Africa, complete with grass skirts, spears,
cannibals and witchcraft, the film still stretches narrative and
documentary bounds and, like so many of the films at MSPIFF, takes
you to world you've never seen before.
MSPIFF showcased many inspiring docs this year, and so it's easy to
overlook some of the more notable feature selections, such as "James'
Journey to Jerusalem" and "Raja." Among the many filmmaker and
producer presentations, Barry M. Osborne, Oscar winner and producer
of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, gave a dialogue at sold out
'50s-retro Riverview Theater in south Minneapolis.
Instead of a competition, MSPIFF only gives out special awards and
screens a "Best of the Fest" extended run for those films voted as
the most popular by viewers out of those selection that the
festival's shoe-string budget will allow extended distribution
rights.
Further U.S. premieres that are also in the "Best of the Fest" series
include "Dutch Light" and "The Master and His Pupil" both from the
Netherlands, "Bored in Brno" from the Czech Republic, "Sibelius" from
Finland, and "Sabado," a real-time hour-long film from Chile that
mimics over-the-top reality TV.
"The Naked Proof" won debut director, Jaimee Hook, the fest's
Emerging Filmmaker award. It's a bit rough-edged and may only find a
cult audience among all of you whackos out there who read Nietzsche
and Hegel for fun. But the film still comes through with quirky
humor, wry narration from the evocative playwright, August Wilson,
and the inner mental workings of the 10-year-running grad student
protagonist who obsesses over the ontological conundrum: "Do other
people exist?"
After spending two weeks in the dark, watching an average of three
films a day, this Midwest critic isn't so sure about the answer to
that question.