Chale Nafus's blog

Austin Polish Film Festival 2012 Preview (Part Two)

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Austin Polish Film Festival 2012 posterFor info about tonight's films, read Part One of Chale's preview.

This weekend the Austin Polish Film Festival continues with a variety of events, starting Saturday with a selection of children's films (1-3 pm). Then a workshop led by Austin artist Mig Kokinda will celebrate world-famous Polish poster designs, followed by a return screening of Marcin Latałło's illuminating documentary The Other Side of the Poster (2010).

Saturday evening showcases three gems of contemporary Polish cinema. Jan Komasa's 2010 movie Suicide Room (Sala samobójców) is a brilliant, harrowing portrait of a teenager who descends into a dark world. Dominik seems happy enough in high school, but a suggestion that he may be gay leads to merciless cyber-bullying and the boy's withdrawal from society. His parents, wealthy, well connected, and both engaged in extramarital affairs, seem oblivious to the boy's growing depression.

Finding a website called The Suicide Room, Dominik becomes immersed in a world of equally depressed people. Through online avatars, gracefully depicted through animated sequences in the film, these loners interact, while romanticizing suicide. By the time his parents seek help for their son, it may be too late. Suicide Room is a cutting-edge film, both in style and through its theme of children lost in cyberspace. The film and its director have received various international awards.

80 Million (80 milionów, directed by Waldemar Krzystek, 2012) will fortunately be introduced by University of Texas professor Dr. Gilbert Rappaport. I say "fortunately" because as much as I was intrigued by this complex thriller, I was somewhat at a loss to understand the complex characters or their actions. On the eve of the imposition of martial law in 1981, five anti-government activists legally withdraw 80 million złoty (US $25,000,000) from various trade union bank accounts in Wrocław, a Solidarity stronghold. They had been tipped off by a shadowy character who warned them of the coming crackdown.

This is no Hollywood heist, committed by a gang to enrich themselves. Instead, it is a political act designed to fund the underground activities of Solidarity during the impending darkness. As in other political thrillers, the cast of characters is complexly motivated, and friends may turn out to be spies. All of this adds to the intrigue and tension of 80 Million, which is rightly a candidate for Poland's 2013 Oscar submission.

Austin Polish Film Festival 2012 Preview (Part One)

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Austin Polish Film Festival 2012 posterThe seventh annual Austin Polish Film Festival starts tomorrow (11/1), and runs through Sunday. There are always plenty of wonderful films, discussions, Q&A sessions, posters and food, and this year will be no exception. All the fest's screenings and events will take place at The Marchesa Theatre in Lincoln Village.

Kicking off the festival's opening night is an (eventually) uplifting drama, Women's Day (Dzien kobiet), in which the Polish "solidarity" of the 1980s gains a feminist point-of-view in the 21st century. In the same vein as American cinematic characters Norma Rae, Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich, Halina Radwan reaches a point in her professional career where she won't "take it anymore."

What seems to be a great opportunity at first turns into a nightmare, as Halina is promoted from cashier to manager of a Butterfly grocery store, one in a nationwide chain of supermarkets in post-Communist Poland. As could be expected in any society, there is the inevitable jealousy on the part of some former colleagues, who now function as her employees. But Halina is told by her district boss that she has to be tough in dealing with them. He also makes it clear that she needs to do him favors of a sexual nature. She hasn't had a husband for four years, she hasn't dated because of long working hours and a daughter, so she eventually gives in to his demands, but without much feeling. What is harder for her to do is reprimand women who are late because of hangovers, absent with morning sickness or generally difficult.

After some managerial training exercises, which involve singing, running around outside in a circle and chanting "Productivity" as loudly as "Stalin" was yelled out 60 years before, Halina begins to accept her role as boss. After all, she is able to get a new apartment, buy a computer for her teenage daughter Misia, and pay some much needed attention to her own happiness. But then disaster strikes, and Halina sees that she is nothing more than a discardable tool in a very corrupt, inhumane business. Only when she succeeds in enlisting the aid of other women is she able to confront the powerful corporation.

Veteran actress Katarzyna Kwiatkowska, with over 30 films and TV shows to her credit since 1992, gives a flawless performance as Halina. Her face reveals a wide array of thoughts and emotions as she rises, falls, and rises ever higher (on her own terms) in this righteous film.

aGLIFF Polari 2012 Preview: Facing Mirrors

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Facing Mirrors

A dramatic film about transgender issues in Iran seems unlikely. A positively sympathetic Iranian film about a young woman desperately trying to secure gender reassignment seems impossible. And yet here is Facing Mirrors, made in Iran by a first-time feature director, Negar Azarbayjani, dealing with that very subject in a sensitive way almost unthinkable in an American film. The Austin Film Society is co-presenting a screening of Facing Mirrors as part of aGLIFF Polari on Thursday at 6:45 pm at Alamo Drafthouse Ritz.

Thanks to the 25th annual fest, we are reminded that global cinema presents a rich array of people so very different from the two-dimensional stereotypes shoved into our brains by "the news" or TV programs and movies. For at least 25 years, wonderful films have been coming from Iran, visually rich, humanistic, and profound, despite the socio-historical absurdities spouted by some of the leaders of that complex, ancient land. This 2011 feature is the most amazing recent one because of its subject matter and treatment.

At the heart of Facing Mirrors are two women. Rana is a young mother, forced to surreptitiously drive the family car as a gypsy cab to earn money while her husband is in prison for debts. The young couple had dreams of owning their own business, but an unscrupulous business partner stole the money and left Sadegh (and thereby his wife Rana) with a debt which might take 20 years to repay.

TIFF 2012 Dispatch: Around the World While Sitting in Toronto

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Antiviral

Toronto never disappoints. I have just returned from my fifth year at the Toronto International Film Festival, which featured over 300 films. Since most of those films are from many countries besides the U.S., I always feel like I am in paradise. At least one of these movies will screen in Austin soon, and I hope more will make their way here by next year.

Most of the time I avoid English-language films, since many of them will eventually make their way to Austin theaters or on-demand services. However, I broke my rule the very first day by going to see On the Road, Walter Salles's adaptation of Jack Kerouac's classic novel about young men driving through late 1940s America.

I went into the theater with the wrong expectation initially. I wanted a film that grabbed me by the arm and rushed me through a multitude of scenes and events, as had Kerouac's glorious novel and movies like Scorsese's Goodfellas. After 15 minutes I settled down and let the film work its own kind of magic as a character study of the charismatic Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady, gay Carlo Marx, and mama-ridden participant/observer Sal Paradise/Kerouac. I can hardly wait to see the film again -- it will feel like revisiting old friends in an America long gone. Please don't ask me about Kristen Stewart.

Why You Should See 'Anne Braden: Southern Patriot'

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Anne Braden Southern PatriotIt all started with a tract house in suburban Louisville, Kentucky. Andrew Wade, an electrical contractor and veteran of WWII, and his wife Charlotte tried to buy a new house. After countless rebuffs, one sympathetic realtor suggested that the young African-American couple get a white friend to buy the house and then transfer the deed to the Wades. This was a time when virulent segregation laws were still rigidly enforced in the South (and much of the rest of the U.S.). New suburban developments provided the landing space for white flight from inner cities.

Local journalists Anne Braden and her husband Carl bought the house, signed over ownership, and then the troubles began. First with rocks through the windows, followed by shotgun blasts and burning crosses planted by white-robed KKK members. A bomb explosion finally drove the young couple and their three-year-old child out of the house.

At other times that might have been the end of the whole affair, but it was 1954, the year of the Supreme Court's ruling against school segregation. White racists redoubled their determination to fight any form of integration.

Rather than find the actual person or persons who dynamited the Wade home, a Louisville grand jury charged the Bradens with sedition against the state of Kentucky. Proof? Purchasing a house for an African-American couple in a white neighborhood, explicitly against housing laws and contract restrictions. They were even suspected of blowing up the house themselves in order to enflame racial hatred and stir up a Communist revolution. In December 1954, Carl Braden was found guilty of sedition and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Furthermore, both Anne and Carl were branded "traitors to their race."

El Cine Latinoamericano y Yo

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The Exterminating Angel

The Austin Film Society's latest Essential Cinema Series, "CineSur: Films of Latin America," begins tonight at 7 pm with Zona Sur at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

In 1962 or 1963, when I still couldn't vote or legally drink in a bar, I lived just a few blocks from the Teatro Panamericano in Dallas, the principal Spanish-language movie theater in el barrio (often dismissively referred to by non-Spanish-speakers as "Little Mexico"). The Panamericano was a beautiful building constructed for the Dallas Little Theatre in the 1930s, and was later purchased by the enterprising J.J. Ródriguez in 1943. While I was more frequently at other theaters experiencing Fellini, Antonioni, Truffaut, Godard, Kurosawa and the products of a dying Hollywood, I have fond memories of seeing Mexican films at the Panamericano.

Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960) was haunting and mystical, while Los hermanos Del Hierro (My Son, the Hero, Ismael Rodríguez, 1961) was an unforgettable Western. While I didn't always understand the humor of Tin Tan and Resortes, I loved watching Cantinflas, who was somewhat reminiscent of Chaplin. There were also pre-post-modern movies featuring mashups of legendary monsters, beguiling space creatures and masked wrestlers, but I was still a novice cineaste, and thus far too snobbish to see the delight inherent in such films. That awareness wouldn't happen until 40 years later, but I still cringe when I meet people who think those hilariously awful movies are Mexican cinema.

Throughout the 1960s, I was in Mexico nearly every summer. Naturally my friends wanted to see foreign films (i.e., American films). The era of classic Mexican cinema (La Época de Oro, approximately 1936-1957) had passed. Only toward the end of the '60s would a more radicalized, sexually liberated, university educated, anti-Hollywood group of directors appear. I never could have imagined that one day I would be bringing those directors –- Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Arturo Ripstein and Felipe Cazals -– to Austin to present some of their powerful films. In 1966-1968, I was at UT Austin getting my M.A. in English, with a minor in film studies, reportedly only the fourth person in the history of the English department to be allowed that minor.

Interview: Vera Mijojlic of SEEFest, Part Two

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Vesna posterVera Mijojlic recently concluded the 7th annual SEEFest Los Angeles (Southeast European Film Festival), which she created and continues to direct. It is rightly called "the premiere cinematic showcase where films from 15 countries of South-East Europe are presented as an annual thematic snapshot of that turbulent region."

She also curated Austin Film Society's SEEFest Austin this spring, which includes seven films that have played at different times in SEEFest Los Angeles. Vera will be in Austin tonight (May 22) to present the Slovenian film Vesna (Frantisek Cáp, 1953) at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

I visited with Vera in August 2010 in Los Angeles, and recently asked her some questions via email. This is the second part of our interview -- read the first part if you haven't already.

Chale Nafus: Among all your film and cultural writing, I understand that you have also written short stories and children's plays.

Vera Mijojlic: My stories were about kids in complex situations. The one that got the most awards and ended up in a book was "Albertino," about a Jewish boy in a small Bosnian town whose friends are Serbian and Muslim kids, a perfectly natural thing in a place like Bosnia. Enter the Nazis and WWII. The world of these three kids changes, with Albertino disappearing and his surviving friends growing up really fast. I wrote it as a poetic first-person account told by a little girl who survives the war.

Other stories were about the tempest mirroring the internal turmoil of a teenager, and one was a semi-enigmatic story about a mirror and the person who breaks it after a silent interaction with her own image. I also wrote poetry and published some, but it never amounted to much.

Interview: Vera Mijojlic of SEEFest, Part One

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SEEFest 2012

Last week, Vera Mijojlic concluded the 7th annual SEEFest Los Angeles (Southeast European Film Festival), which she created and continues to direct. It is rightly called "the premiere cinematic showcase where films from 15 countries of South-East Europe are presented as an annual thematic snapshot of that turbulent region."

Vera Mijojlic curated Austin Film Society's SEEFest Austin this spring, which includes seven films that have played at different times in SEEFest Los Angeles. Vera will be in Austin tonight (May 15) to present the Romanian film Hello! How Are You? (Alexandru Maftei, 2010) and next Tuesday, May 22, to present the Slovenian film Vesna (Frantisek Cáp, 1953), both at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

I visited with Vera in August 2010 in Los Angeles, and recently asked her some questions via email.

Chale Nafus: You were born in Bosnia Herzegovina, which at the time was part of Yugoslavia. Tell us about your family history.

Vera Mijojlic: For as long as anyone can remember, every person in my family, on both sides, was born in Bosnia. They were Serbs, and the ancestral home was a quaint town of Bijeljina in north-eastern Bosnia. In the past 20 years it has turned into an overdeveloped monstrosity which I do not recognize at all.

Previewing Cine Las Americas 2012 Features, Part Two

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Mosquita y Mari

[Continued from Part One]

The 15th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival opens in Austin this Tuesday, April 24, and runs for six glorious film-filled days featuring narrative features, documentaries, shorts and animation from all over Latin America as well as the mother-tongue homelands of Spain and Portugal. Films are playing at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and the Mexican American Cultural Center. Check the CLAIFF website for details about screen times, festival badges and single tickets.

Since there are too many films to cover, here is a personal list of narrative features and documentaries I am most interested in seeing, including a few I have already enjoyed. The best thing to do is carefully explore the Cine Las Americas schedule and watch the helpful trailers in order to plot your own course through the overwhelming lineup.

Mosquita y Mari (USA, 2011; fest listing)
A sweet friendship between two 15-year-old Latinitas in Huntington Park, California turns into a tender romance, as sensitively unfolded by Aurora Guerrero in Mosquita y Mari (pictured at top).

Previewing Cine Las Americas 2012 Features, Part One

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Bonsai

The 15th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival opens in Austin this Tuesday, April 24, and runs for six glorious film-filled days featuring narrative features, documentaries, shorts and animation from all over Latin America (U.S. included, naturalmente) as well as the mother-tongue homelands of Spain and Portugal. Films are playing at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and the Mexican American Cultural Center. Check the CLAIFF website for details about screen times, festival badges and single tickets.

Since there are too many films to cover, here is a personal list of narrative features and documentaries I am most interested in seeing, including a few I have already enjoyed. The best thing to do is carefully explore the Cine Las Americas schedule and watch the helpful trailers in order to plot your own course through the overwhelming lineup.

Tuesday's opening night at Alamo South Lamar will feature two showings of Alguien ha visto a Lupita?/Have You Seen Lupita? (Chile/Mexico, 2011; fest listing). Gonzalo Justiniano's tenth feature film promises to be a sparkling comedy-drama about an innocently sensual young woman who escapes from family plotting in Mexico. On her journey Lupita meets a wide array of unusual characters, including one played by veteran actress Carmen Salinas, who can always be counted on to be hurling chingaderas while helping a young woman navigate the perils of modern life. The film's effervescent young star, Dulce Maria, will be in attendance for this Austin premiere. The movie was shot partially here in Austin.

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