Chale Nafus's blog

AFS Essential Cinema Preview: Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman, Painfully Connected

Chale Nafus — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 18:30:39 +0000

The next Austin Film Society Essential Cinema Series, "Liv and Ingmar," will run on Thursdays at 7:30 pm from July 3-31 at the Marchesa. The following column from programmer Chale Nafus provides some context for the films.

Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, John Wayne and John Ford, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater. Throughout film history there have been directors who frequently work with one particular actor through whom they can realize their cinematic dreams. Familiarity with an actor's face, body, voice, mannerisms and psychological depths can provide a director a preview of how a movie might look and sound even before the cameras roll.

Such was the 12-year relationship between Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann and Swedish writer/director Ingmar Bergman. Together they made eight feature films and one television miniseries, beginning with Persona (1966) and ending with Autumn Sonata (1978). They also fell in love during the production of their first film together.

The filming of Persona (which screens July 3) took place on the remote Swedish island of Fårö, an island off the coast of an island, a place Bergman had loved ever since filming Through a Glass Darkly there in 1961. He was drawn to its solitude and stark natural beauty. It easily served as a setting that forced people to confront their own inner demons as well as those of the people around them. Such would happen with Bergman and Ullmann.

AFS Essential Cinema Preview: Films of WWI

Chale Nafus — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 18:30:52 +0000

The latest Austin Film Society Essential Cinema series, "Films of World War I," runs on Thursdays at 7:30 pm, from June 5-24, at the Marchesa. The following column from programmer Chale Nafus offers some background on the movies selected to screen.

In August 1914, World War I broke out in Europe, ostensibly because of the assassination of the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But Germany and France had been itching for war, the former to extend her territories, the latter to regain Alsace-Lorraine, lost to the Prussians in 1870. A series of interlocking treaties pulled Great Britain, Italy and Russia into the maelstrom until the entire continent was up in flames and running red with the blood of millions. Each side thought it would win and be home for Christmas.

Four years later, when the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 (because of American military power entering the war in 1917 and exhaustion on the part of all combatants) nearly 10 million people (soldiers and civilians) had died. Three empires (Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman) fell and were carved up by greedy neighbors or ethnic groups with long memories. Monarchies disappeared, to be replaced initially by well-intentioned attempts at parliamentary governments, but many of those would turn fascist in the 1920s and 1930s. Diseases, especially influenza, traveled home with soldiers and decimated civilian populations. The world was forever changed by The Great War, only to begin the entire process over again on an even larger scale 20 years later.

Motion pictures were in their adolescence when World War I began. Italy started making feature films in 1913 about the glorious Roman empire, and in the US, D.W. Griffith was filming his racist masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915). By the end of the war, the feature-length film was the new norm for film producers all over the world. World War I inevitably became a subject for narratives. Many such movies would question the entire endeavor. One of the first to do so was by French filmmaker Abel Gance.

Austin Jewish Film Festival 2014 Starts Tomorrow

Chale Nafus — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:30:42 +0000

The 12th annual Austin Jewish Film Festival will run from Saturday, March 29 (tomorrow!) through Friday, April 4 at Regal Arbor, with a great lineup of feature narratives, documentaries, and shorts. Some of the films will be followed by Skype interviews with the filmmakers. Many of the movies are free to the public.

Austin Film Society and Cine Las Americas will be co-sponsoring a chilling fictional film about the infamous Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi "doctor" who conducted non-Hippocratic experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz before fleeing to undeserved survival in South America at war's end.

For the narrative film The German Doctor (Argentina, 2013), writer-director Lucía Puenzo adapted her own novel about an Argentinean family running a hotel in remote Patagonia. They innocently welcome a German doctor as a guest and only become concerned when they detect his inordinate interest in their young daughter. There will be a Skype-facilitated Q&A with Lucía Puenzo following the film.

AFS Preview: The Institute

Chale Nafus — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:00:32 +0000

The Institute screens as part of Austin Film Society's monthly Avant Cinema series this Wednesday, October 30 (tickets) at 7:30 pm in the AFS Screening Room (1901 E. 51st St).

Around 15 years ago, a friend and I saw a flyer about some performance art experience that would take place in a building on E. 6th Street. We followed the directions, which took us up to the second floor of some 19th-century building. Tacked onto the locked door of the designated room was a hand-printed note that thanked us for participating in the performance by finding the building, walking up the stairs, and reading the note. At first we felt duped and wondered if "they" were watching us and laughing. But when we got back down to the street, we started laughing ourselves at the realization that we really had been part of a performance, not a hoax of some sort.

Watching The Institute (Spencer McCall, 2013) makes me feel much the same way. How much is "real," how much is fiction? What do we mean by those words, and is there really a strong line dividing one from the other?

We are first introduced to people defined as participants and "ex-inductees" in something ostensibly called The Jejune Institute in San Francisco. They had read strangely worded flyers that began appearing around town. Telephone calls led them to a building in the financial district, where they individually were sent to a room with cheap furniture and a video that explained "The Institute," its history and accomplishments, and its goal of reducing human conflict, violence, and heartbreak.

Experience 'Jazz on a Summer's Day' This Week

Chale Nafus — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:00:10 +0000

If you lived in New York City or anywhere else along the East Coast in the 1950s, the place to go to fix your "jazz jones" was the funereal old-money resort town of Newport, Rhode Island. Started in 1954 by socialites Elaine and Louis Lorillard, the Newport Jazz Festival had grown by 1958 into a four-day event attracting 60,000 music lovers ready to snap their fingers and bob their heads to the sounds of America's top jazz artists. Fortunately, that same summer Bert Stern and a small filmmaking crew captured the essence of those performances on 35mm color film accompanied by impeccable sound recordings.

In the 1950s, Bert Stern was best known as the photographer who combined art with advertising, as seen in the recent Austin FIlm Society Doc Nights presentation: Bert Stern: Original Mad Man. The gifted artist also created TV commercials, took fashion photos for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and uncovered hidden aspects of celebrities in studio portraits. In 1962, he would create the famous "Last Sitting" series of revealing photos of Marilyn Monroe, only a few months before her death.

But on July 4, 1958, Stern was only into the Newport Jazz Festival. He wasn't a filmmaker (other than TV commercials) and he didn't know a lot about jazz, but with his artist's eye for composition, movement, color, and lighting, Stern and his team created the first experimental music documentary, Jazz on a Summer's Day. AFS Avant Cinema is screening the film this Wednesday, July 31 at 7 pm in the AFS screening room (1901 E. 51st St, Gate 2).

A Peek at the Cine Las Americas Lineup

Chale Nafus — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:30:58 +0000

It's unfortunate that Austin Jewish Film Festival and Cine Las Americas International Film Festival overlap for four days this week, but you can treat yourself to a whirlwind of images, stories, music, and themes by jumping back and forth between the two. AJFF is already underway (my preview). Cine Las Americas starts tomorrow night and runs through Sunday with a full and varied lineup.

You can buy film passes and tickets from the fest's website, or individual tickets at the theaters before the screenings (space available). Films at the Mexican American Cultural Center are free; other venues (where you need tickets) include Stateside at the Paramount and Alamo Drafthouse Village.

As it has since the initiation of each festival, Austin Film Society is co-sponsoring films in both fests. For Cine Las Americas we are helping to present a fascinating elegiac documentary, Carriere: 250 Metros (Juan Carlos Rulfo, Mexico, 2011) at Stateside Theatre on Thursday, April 18 at 7 pm. The director should be available for a Skype Q&A after the screening.

Austin Jewish Film Festival Starts Tomorrow Night

Chale Nafus — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:30:31 +0000

The always-popular Austin Jewish Film Festival is back with a selection of stimulating films. The fest starts tomorrow night (Saturday, April 13) and runs through Friday, April 19 at Regal Arbor. Tickets and festival badges are still available, and some noon screenings are free.

Austin Film Society is co-sponsoring two of the fest's movies this year:

The Other Son (pictured above) (Lorraine Levy, France/Israel, 2012) is a powerful, yet hopeful, portrait of two young men -- one Palestinian, one Israeli -- switched at birth. They learn to transcend cultural, national and religious boundaries after they meet. [screening info]
Out in the Dark (Michael Mayer, Israel, 2012) joins the growing list of well-made Israeli films exploring gay life in Israel. In this film, we see the difficulties of love between a young Palestinian student and a slightly older Israeli lawyer. In a well-acted but tough role as a homophobic cop, new Austin resident Alon Pdut proves his ability to inhabit unflattering roles, just as he did in The Long Journey, which AFS and AJFF screened a few weeks ago. [screening info]

Watch the Out in the Dark trailer below:

AFS Essential Cinema Returns to the Middle East

Chale Nafus — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:30:12 +0000

The Middle East continues to be a hotbed of socio-political upheaval, sometimes with cautious hope, more often with sorrow and loss. Nonetheless many of the countries of the region continue to provide a fertile ground for the imagination of filmmakers. In keeping with what has become an Austin Film Society programming tradition, we present our seventh consecutive year of the Essential Cinema series, "Children of Abraham/Ibrahim: Films of the Middle East and Beyond" (Feb 19 – April 9, 2013).

We begin tomorrow night with one of the most important films to come out of Iran, one made by an Iranian filmmaker forbidden to write screenplays, direct movies, discuss cinema publically or travel to other countries for film festivals for a period of 20 years. This Is Not a Film (2011) is Jafar Panahi's answer (and shrill raspberry) to his repressive government's decree.

With the help of his friend and technical assistant Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Panahi shares a day in his life with us as he talks about the film he was planning to make before his arrest and harsh sentence. He transforms one room of his large apartment into the bedroom of a young woman forced to remain captive in her own home while her parents are away. In a crucial moment in his acting out of the script, Panahi suddenly stops as he finds this exercise frustrating and unfulfilling. Never have we so clearly seen such a creative mind gagged and bound by such an idiotic law charging an artist with demeaning the image of Iran and Islam. Perhaps the point of making this "non-film" is that the attempt to silence his artistry is what demeans the image of the country and the religion. This Is Not a Film is an absolute must-see for all people disturbed by censorship and inspired by unbridled creativity.

Sundance 2013: The Omnivorous Cinephile's Wish List

Chale Nafus — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:30:39 +0000

I can't abide prolonged cold weather, so I have avoided the Sundance Film Festival every year. Until now. Austin Film Society Associate Artistic Director Holly Herrick has persuaded me to go this time. After looking over the titles, I have gotten excited about the prospects. So, off I go today to Dillard's to add to my paltry "winter wardrobe" rarely worn in Austin. On Thursday, I fly to Utah for six days of movie-watching. Among the 21 films I propose to watch are a dozen (eight documentaries, four narratives) that I must see, provided I don't slip on the ice or get deterred by a flash mob surrounding a celebrity.

When I Walk -- Filmmaker Jason DaSilva had been making films since he was 17, but when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 25, he kept on making films. In his latest, he has turned the camera on himself and his struggles to pursue his craft.

Running from Crazy -- Born four months after her famous grandfather's suicide, Mariel Hemingway eventually followed her older sister Margaux into acting. After Margaux committed suicide in 1996, Mariel began to contemplate the self-destructive family trait. Veteran documentarian Barbara Kopple (Shut Up & Sing, Harlan County U.S.A.) explores the Hemingway family history and Mariel's mission to prevent suicide.

Holiday Favorites 2012: Chale and the Noir Side of 'Scrooge'

Chale Nafus — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:00:02 +0000

Christmas was the most wonderful holiday for my mother. Not for religious reasons, since she adamantly avoided organized religions, but for the opportunity to decorate the house. Her specialty was "the village," covering two long tables with a wintry scene of miniature buildings, people, animals, ponds and my small train set. Some of our most joyful moments were spent setting up this miniature idealized community.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was also part of that season's celebration, first with my mother reading it aloud over several nights and later by listening to a radio version (Lionel Barrymore's). Having spent six of her teenage years in a Texas State orphanage in the 1920s, my mother loved and understood Dickens in ways I could not yet fathom. When the British film production of A Christmas Carol arrived in Dallas in December 1951, my parents took my niece and me to see it. I honestly can't remember my initial reaction, but I have thoroughly enjoyed repeated viewings over the intervening 60 years. Putting nostalgia aside and ignoring the awkward special effects of the time, I still consider it a remarkable film.

One might have expected David Lean, the master of Dickens adaptations, to have brought A Christmas Carol to the screen. With Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Lean had revealed an eye for the grimmer aspects of Dickens' view of industrial Britain. Perhaps the Christmas story wasn't really big enough for Lean's imagination. Instead, a less sparkling director, Brian Desmond Hurst, received a contract with Renown Pictures Corporation to turn Noel Langley's screenplay of A Christmas Carol into Scrooge.