According to the brochure, the Raindance Film Festival (a spin-off from Sundance) is in its l5th year in the UK (news to me, since I don't recall hearing anything about it for more than a couple of years). Anyhow we decided it was time we supported this celebration of independent cinema and chose two likely films from the many being screened.
The first of these was a Japanese film, "Uncle's Paradise" (2006), and positively, horrendously awful. I hadn't realised that it was a so-called "pink" film which is not, as it might suggest, a gay movie, but rather a cheaply-made sex film, rather akin to Category III from Hong Kong, but without any semblance of production values. The blurb ran that the young hero had to rescue his uncle from the clutches of Hell, but all we got was the tale of his randy uncle who did his best to control his insatiable sexual urges by chug-a-lugging vitamin drinks and a whole lot of very uninspired bonking. I can't even say that it was fun!
However our second choice, the above film from Argentina, which translates as 'The Aerial' was an amazing experience, quite unlike anything I've ever seen. Again the blurb was a little misleading as it suggested that this largely silent film was a homage to German Expressionism and Murnau; it in fact was more reminiscent of the rather weird output of the Canadian Guy Maddin, especially in its delicate use of black and white cinematogaphy. The gist of the story is that a tyrant has robbed the inhabitants of a city of their voices and totally controls all words and images. Communication is by text bubbles with the words incorporated into the layout of the composition; in a way it was a shame that we had the requisite subtitles under the picture which distracted from the visual impact of the design. Only a beautiful (and faceless) singer is known to still have a voice, but so does her son who is literally eyeless; a sound engineer, his estranged wife, and their young daughter who befriends the lad attempt to broadcast sound before the population are robbed of their words as well.
I haven't really done justice to this remarkably-conceived film from director Esteban Sapir. It is a fairy-tale, an allegory, a political statement, and a work of art all rolled into one.
In closing I must briefly mention another recently viewed silent, "Finis Terrae" a French film from 1929. This was a mock documentary of the sort produced by Robert Flaherty following the fortunes of some isolated fishermen on the Brittany coast (I think), but it was so beautifully photographed in the crispest black and white, with the magical eye of an experimental film-maker, that the banal story became something surreal. Another treat!
1 comment:
I don't know that 'Finis Terrae' was a mock-documentary a la Flaherty but rather
a simple tale of Breton fishermen though the plot was a rather thin one. It was,
as you say, a tribute to the restorers that the images were so crisp to the extent
that one almost wishes colour photography had been left uninvented.
'La Antena' is a decided curio: other reviews refer to German expressionism but
I thought the outlines were not as harsh as they can be in many of those films.
Your reference to Guy Maddin hits the nail on the head. Whether the film is an
allegory on the political situation then prevailing in Argentina or simply the work
of an ingenious and inventive mind is immaterial. I somehow think that other
films by Sapir are likely to be appreciably different, however.
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