SIFF 2017: Centerpiece Roundtable

Josh: Hello friends! Here we are #Gathered just past the halfway point of the Seattle International Film Festival. Before we get into it, filmwise, general thoughts about how it’s going so far?

The Big Picture

Chris: This is something I thought about bringing up in our last roundtable, but wanted to see how I felt after being in the thick of things for a week or two. As long as I’ve been covering SIFF (this is my tenth SIFF), I’ve wondered if having the festival as large as it is a good or bad thing? Obviously I’m in favor of more movies than fewer, but with 400 short and feature films, we’re not going to be anywhere near close to comprehensive in our coverage, and it’s easy for films to get lost if they don’t have buzz from Sundance or SXSW ahead of their SIFF showings. When we’ve drunk our last mixed drinks with Don Q rum at the closing night party, I feel relieved it’s over, but also sort of disappointed I couldn’t cover more ground.

This year, though, it’s different. I think SIFF feels like an act of defiance against our ruling government. SIFF has done a remarkable job of bringing so many filmmakers from around the world to Seattle to show their films and tell their stories. During the press launch, I remember some SIFF staffers talking about bringing filmmakers here from countries affected by proposed (but clearly unconstitutional) travel bans. I haven’t heard of anyone not being able to get to Seattle for their screenings.

Tony: Well-stated, Chris. Downside: It’s pretty crappy to be living in a supposedly free country where this is even an issue. Upside: I (and all of you, I’m sure) have always seen art as a powerful, purposeful tool to enlighten, provoke, and speak the truth, and SIFF’s efforts to provide all of that resonate more strongly than ever, given the current timbre of the times.

Josh: I haven’t heard of any travel issues either (I’ve heard of a couple Skype-based Q&As but those may have been due to logistics rather than restrictions). Overall, though, I commend the festival for bringing such a strong program together and leveraging their sponsorships to get so many filmmakers in front of audiences.

Odawni: I third that, Josh. Despite the logistical nightmare (it must be) to put SIFF together, the SIFF team has done an amazing job. They exude boundless enthusiasm and passion about the festival and what it has to offer – I appreciate that. Amen, Tony! I think art is so important for communities and, as you say, is exceedingly important given the current political climate. How fortunate we are to be living in Seattle!

Josh: Even when filmmakers can’t make the visit, for logistical or funding reasons, the emphasis on bringing the world to Seattle through film is important and you can feel the sense of excitement in the room, particularly when audiences show up in droves to to see films that are from their country of origin, cultural background, or especially relevant to their local communities. I’ve had this experience with films from all over the world so far and it really gives you a sense of the broad audience served by SIFF’s programming.

That said, I do agree that the flipside is that the festival can come across as overwhelmingly unfocused. Whenever I talk to friends about going to the festival, deciding what to see amongst the mountain of options and long stretch of times is one of the biggest obstacles to a casual attendee. Many tell me that they give up rather than sorting through the massive array of options to see what fits into their schedule.

Odawni: Josh, it’s a bummer that your friends were turned off by the time-investment required to find a movie that 1) interests them and 2) fits their schedule. I hope they’ve reconsidered! Perhaps The SunBreak recommendations and reviews can help them (and others) to choose and check out some SIFF flicks?

Josh: I hope so! Festivalgoing is definitely a different mentality than the multiplex, where you pick something from a fairly short list and know that it will at least be playing multiple times per day for weeks. I’m not excusing their laziness, just pointing out that it’s a real phenomenon for novices.

Odawni: I wonder if the SIFF folks attempted to ease the movie selection process for potential viewers by categorizing the films by mood (e.g. Creative Streak, WTF, Provoke Me). Has the mood method been helpful for festival going peeps? It seems somewhat apropos given the push-and-pull of emotions I’ve experienced watching SIFF films thus far …

Josh:  I do think that’s what they’re trying to do, but there are so many pathways, programs, competitions, moods that even navigating those — those alone take up about a third of the big glossy catalogue — can become a challenge.

But I really don’t mean to whine — I realize that these are tough problems, complicated further by the extraordinarily long duration of the festival (a question to take up at another roundtable!) — I do enjoy choosing my own adventure. But from a purely social point of view, given the vast number of options, it’s hard to get a gestalt from the event because no matter how many movies you see, you’re lucky if the person you’re chatting with at the end-of-fest party wound up catching even a few of the same movies.

Odawni: I met a couple of lovely SIFF goers (Earl and Jonna — not sure about the spelling) at tonight’s Napping Princess showing. They shared with me their approach to picking movies – choose four movies from four different countries. They hadn’t noticed the mood categories. To some degree you have to do the whole close-your-eyes-and-see-where-your-finger-lands-on-the-map technique. The good thing is that there are plenty of great films in the festival on which your proverbial blind finger may land.

Josh: Following a whim is one of the greatest perks of having a pass, and for that I’m deeply grateful! So far, I’ve been following a hybrid strategy of light serendipity and an attempt to be a completist for the second year of the festival’s “Official Competition”. If nothing else, I’m curious to see how the eight films screening in competition provide a sense of an artistic point of view from festival programmers. So far, this strategy has paid off — I’ve seen and enjoyed Hedi, Beach Rats, and Sami Blood — three very different stories of personal discovery, each centered around a young person on the verge of breaking with cultural expectations. I can’t wait to see the rest of the selections (and to find out which one takes the big prize).

Our Week at the Movies

Josh: Aside from these ‘big picture’ thoughts, how has the last week been for everyone in terms of actual moviegoing?

Tony: It’s been another slow-ish week for me, with only 4 SIFF movies under my belt, but my batting average this week’s been good–three really good-to-great movies and one solid (tho’ not quite spectacular) one.

Odawni: I’ve got you beat at having a measly 3 SIFF movies in my pocket for the past week, Tony! To use your rating scale, one movie was fantastic (fantastic, as in, I already know that it’ll be one of my festival favorites) and two good-to-great movies. For this round table, I’m going to focus on the fantastic one. (School work beckons.)

Josh: Well, then, let’s start out on a high note. What has been your favorite of the last week?

Golden SunBreak Contenders

Tony: The best of the miniscule batch of movies that I saw is definitely Small Town Killers, a jet-black, gleefully inappropriate Danish comedy about a couple of working-class smalltown schnooks who hire a Russian hitman to ice their wives. Watching it, it reminded me of something that surfaced during my viewing of the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers: The best comedy is not safe, and it often goes over the line of propriety.

There’s something  in this movie to offend homosexuals, the disabled, women, Russians, British people, Muslims, and several other groups I’m probably missing. But a removal of (or at least a glance over the frames of) politically-correct glasses reveals a howlingly funny movie with wonderfully-drawn characters, navigating through an incredibly sustained pocket universe. It’s also got a streak of compassion and sweetness that somehow never blunts the sharpness of the characters and the heartiness of the chuckles. If I laugh as hard at another movie this SIFF, I can pretty much die happy.

Chris: I haven’t been able to stop thinking about City of Ghosts, a documentary from Matthew Heineman about citizen-journalists in Raqqa, Syria who risked their lives (and their families lives) to report to the outside world on how ISIS has taken over their hometown and made it their stronghold in Syria. The group of activists and reporters call themselves “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.” The two things I keep thinking about are how truly heroic RBSS is, while much of what we call our elite media is made up of bootlickers to entrenched power, and how removing Bashar al-Assad as president has its own risks, particularly if ISIS moves in to fill the power vacuum that would surely happen with Assad’s removal from power.

Tony: No overlap on my end, Chris, though I was really sad to have missed City of Ghosts.

Josh: Me too. It was on my schedule, but I just couldn’t make that screening work. I’ve been dying to see It’s Only the End of the World since its Gran Prix winning premiere sharply divided critics. One of my usual standbys, Richard Lawson, went so far as to call it “the Most Disappointing Film at Cannes”. Other harsh reviews left the prodigious and young auteur director Xavier Dolan shaken and angry. So, I went into the screening with some trepidation and a lot of curiosity and left somewhat confused by the strength of some of the negative reactions. Sure, caustic family dramas aren’t for everyone, but this one worked for me. In this one, adapted from the Jean-Luc Lagarce play and set “some time ago”, a thirty-four-year-old playwright (Gaspard Ulliel) returns home after a twelve year absence, ostensibly to reveal that he is dying. His mysterious arrival upsets his family’s delicate balance, leaving them sniping at each other as they anxiously try to make sure that his visit goes well while also attempting to protect each other’s unspoken expectations. Playing out in intentionally claustrophobic close-ups, he gets alone time with each of them (the programmer intro may have dropped the phrase “the French Avengers”): an adoring younger sister playing it too cool (Léa Seydoux), his mother (Nathalie Baye) calling him out for his reliance on aloof charm, his working-class brother (Vincent Cassel) acidically annoyed by his famous sibling’s return, and new sister-in-law (Marion Cotillard) bizarrely flustered yet oddly perceptive through a combination of her outsider-status and one conveniently-overheard phone call. Although some relief from the tight framing comes in the form of a few lyrical and dreamlike flashbacks, tension mounts as to whether the collective avoidance of a denouement will survive to the end of the day. Yes, the melodrama is turned way up and the final shot is more than a bit indulgent (this is Dolan, after all), but I nevertheless found some very dry humor in their constant barbs and surprising tenderness buried beneath the harshest and inexplicable behavior.

Odawni: The fantastic film I alluded to earlier is a documentary by Jairus McLeary called The Work. This project took fifteen years to complete; that, in itself, is an amazing accomplishment!  In a nutshell, we witness groups of incarcerated and nonincarcerated men who are voluntarily sequestered in a room at a maximum security prison to participate in a group therapy program. Over the course of four intensive days, they work together to summon each person’s inner demons that he’s hidden away and perform a sort of emotional exorcism. If that sounds hardcore – it is. The way the film is directed really immerses you in the men’s stories. You feel as though you are in the room. The camaraderie, compassion, vulnerability, integrity, and commitment we see from the men is heartening and inspiring.

At a pivotal point in the film, I almost doubled-over and my eyes started leaking. These were not the run-of-the-mill tears that gently roll down cheeks. My face was leaking. It’s an emotional punch-in-the-gut kind of movie, but please don’t shy away from checking it out if emotional movies aren’t your thing, particularly if you are cisgender male. One major theme of the movie is the cultural expectation of men having to avoid exploring their inner emotional selves and “be a man”.

As a trained-ish therapist, I noticed that a lot of the approaches the incarcerated peer facilitators (and group therapy veterans) used to guide each group are parallel to some core competencies in my Psychology master’s program. This is not to say that therapy schooling doesn’t involve a sh*t ton of work. What it really comes down to is finding the humanity in self and others; something we humans tend to forget.

I’ll stop here or else my fastidious popcorn-typing will continue into the night, but not before I let ya’ll know I’ll be interviewing the film director soon. I look forward to sharing that with you beautiful SunBreakers!

Non-Wows

Josh: As much as I hate to admit it, Endless Poetry, Jodorowsky’s cinematic memoir of his time in Chile discovering himself as a poet was just too much for me. By definition, memoirs require a degree of self-indulgence, but no matter how striking the visuals — the streets of modern Santiago transformed into a theatrical set with papercraft, large-scale artwork, and circus performers; a voluptuous muse with bright red hair, rainbow painted legs, and a tattered fur coat leading our hero through the streets by his crotch; a surreal tarot card reading atop a nude man; a group home for extreme artists; a sexual betrayal with his best friend’s suicidal dwarf girlfriend; the poet as circus clown atoning for his sins; to a vibrant street parade before confronting his older self, constantly disapproving father, and ever-singing mother before setting sail for Paris — they never added up to any real identifiable human characters.

Tony: I’m bummed that Endless Poetry fell short of expectation for you, Josh. As I said during a previous batch of SIFF recommendations, I’m a big Jodorowsky fan and was quite struck by 2013’s Dance of Reality. As a damn-near-completist Jodorowsky admirer, I still intend to see it, but my expectations are now a little more guarded.

Josh: Oh, I’d definitely encourage you to see it, particularly if you’re already a fan! This was my first entry into his world and my lack of fluency with his heavily stylized filmmaking. The choice to explore the past as a series of stylized images and broadly portrayed characters rather than a naturalistic portrait was surely the point, but it made me feel every minute of the two hour running time feel long. I’m sure that for those who love his work, it felt like a Fellini-influenced valentine that flew by too quickly.

Tony: My only non-wow (but still solid) viewing of the week was Finding Kukan, Robin Lung’s documentary on the search for an Oscar-winning 1942 documentary about China’s resistance against Japanese brutality during World War II. It’s an involving bit of film archaeology that also tries to bolster the case for the late Ling-Ai “Gladys” Li, the Asian-American woman who was most likely the movie’s uncredited producer. It’s basically a formula doc structurally and aesthetically, but the story’s inherently absorbing, and Li is a mythic figure who I’d have loved to hear even more about.

Other Standouts

Chris: Most of the films I’ve seen were ones with guests I was interested in talking to, so I’m not sure if there is much overlapping with what I’ve seen versus the rest of you.

Tony: Chris, based on your (great) interview with Crowell and Delmore, I know we both saw Rocketmen, which ran almost neck-and-neck to Small Town Killers’ entertainment factor for me. Watching Webster Crowell’s labor-of-love web series the first time on a small laptop screen, I was already pretty smitten: It takes a potentially one-joke premise (rocket-pack-wearing retro heroes as working schlubs, idling their time because their program’s been long-forgotten, until a real threat rears its head), and it really runs with it, maintaining a lively balance between dry wit, silliness, and a sense of old-school wonder and verve.

But I was blown away by how great it often looked on a big screen. Some of the CGI (per budgetary restrictions) was a little iffy, but Crowell’s wonderful stop-motion lends a refreshingly hand-crafted, lovingly-assembled quality to things. It was old-school exhilarating to see a giant, rusty robot clanking its way through Seattle in lovely stop-motion.

It’s genuinely funny, and the actors all pretty much nail it top to bottom, but my favorites were Basil Harris (who really knows how to use his expressive comic features to wring out laughs), Alycia Delmore (a great fit for a role that might’ve been assayed by a spitfire like Rosalind Russell if this were set in or made in the past), and the sweetly-lunkheaded supporting turn by Ian Fraser. I also really liked the short film preceding it, Haskell, a strong and affecting examination of a time-travelling psychic’s travails.

Chris: I was glad I was able to catch Zoe Lister-Jones’ directorial debut Band Aid. It had some of the biggest laughs I’ve experienced this year, particularly from Fred Armisen, who I often found exhausting on “Saturday Night Live” and “Portlandia,” but here he’s reined in here. I don’t want to give away too much about his character’s quirks, but he had a uniquely funny part in a sharp, and well-written comedy. Zoe Lister-Jones deserves a lot of praise for writing, directing, and starring in this very good film.

Josh: That’s funny, Armisen also showed up in The Little Hours as a vaguely Portlandian medieval bishop checking in on a convent in disarray. Starring Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Kate Micucci, and a long cast of indie comedians, Jeff Baena’s Decameron-inspired (really!) and largely-improvised story about the funny business that ensues when a sexy fugitive hides out among a convent of not altogether satisfied nuns turned out to be both entertaining and at least somewhat historically accurate to the sorts of people who found themselves bound to these religious institutions.

Tony: I was utterly charmed by Vampire Cleanup Department, a Hong Kong spoof of the very big-in-China hopping vampire horror sub-genre (that is a thing, y’know). It starts out as Ghostbusters, (which I expected), then becomes (surprisingly) Warm Bodies, as a goofy young member of the VCD spirits away, and falls in love with, a female vampire (Min Chen Lin, whose wonderfully physical performance suggests a cross between Pinocchio, the Bride of Frankenstein, and the world’s most adorable schoolgirl). It shouldn’t work, but its sentimentality never gets in the way of the belly laughs and action.

Josh: Also on the lighter side, I caught Weirdos, in which a pair of young Nova Scotians hitchhike to a beach party on America’s 200th birthday. He’s inexplicably hoping to run away to live with his mysteriously absent mother; she’s hoping to at least get some “goodbye” (or even “hello”) sex out of their parting. Along the way, they’re forced to confront inconvenient truths, via the occasional intervention of a “spirit animal” who acts a whole lot like a sheltered teenager’s conception of Andy Warhol. Shot in black and white with nostalgic haze, even the the difficult revelations and cathartic moments come across as gentle developments.

A more thoroughly modern take on this front was Prom King, 2010, starring, written, and directed by Seattle U graduate Christopher Schaap. Deemed an “anti-coming out story” in the Q&A, this charming romance (or maybe anti-romance, since in Schaap’s Millennial-ese, “romance is problematic.”) skips dramatic revelations and skips straight to the part where sex in the city remains an ongoing challenge even for the young and handsome. A series of vignettes that play out over four years with passage of time is marked only by awkward visits home for Thanksgiving. In between, our hero stumbles through anxiously playing it cool with an older friend-with-benefits, pining after an unavailable friend, trying to be the assertive one in a cute relationship with a younger guy, seducing a waiter, and re-staging a meeting with a LTR to be a better and more cinematic story. Without reaching for any grand conclusions, the light efficiency of the storytelling and the strong production values (New York looks and sounds fantastic) don’t betray that the shoestring Kickstarter budget and first time filmmaking.

Chris: Latvian coming-of-age movie Mellow Mud (Es esmu šeit) wasn’t the easiest movie to watch for me, because it cut so close to the bone. It is about a young woman, Raya, whose mother abandoned her and her younger brother and she’s forced into adulthood faster than advisable when her grandmother passes away. Raya has to look after herself and her brother, while trying to win a competition for airfare to London to confront her mother, and carry on an ill-advised romance with a teacher. Playing Raya, Latvian actress Elina Vaska turned in a performance better than anything else I’ve seen on screen this festival, and I expect that to be true when we give out our Golden SunBreak Awards. It’s a quietly powerful role about a young woman trying to hold her life together while trying to find her own path to do it.

Tony: I’m really aching to see Mellow Mud in light of the positive evaluations I’ve heard. Looks like it has one more screening tomorrow (Friday June 2) at 1 pm.

Josh: Sounds like we all have a few new movies to add to our lists! For those not getting another screening at the fest, we’ll have to cross our fingers for US distribution (or at least an encore performance at SIFF’s ‘best of the fest’).

Until then, let’s head back out and enjoy the back half of this year’s festival! Keep track of the SunBreak’s SIFF coverage on our SIFF 2017 page, plus news updates and micro-reviews on Twitter @theSunBreak.