Split Decision: Kurosawa Week
In honor of what would have been his 111st (eleventy-first for you Tolkien readers) birthday on March 23, what is your favorite film directed by Akira Kurosawa?
Split Decision: Date Night
This week’s question: What is a film you love that premiered at any year's Sundance Film Festival?
Split Decision: Sundance Faves
This week’s question: What is a film you love that premiered at any year's Sundance Film Festival?
Stand!
Written by Rick Chafe and Danny Schur
Directed by Robert Adetuyi
Starring Marshall Williams, Laura Slade Wiggins, Gregg Henry, Lisa Bell and Haley Sales
Running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes
MPAA rating: PG
by Jenny Swadosh
A confession: I admit that, despite my pretenses of worldliness, I am such a parochial American that, upon encountering publicity for Stand!, I incorrectly assumed the events upon which the historical musical is based occurred in New York City and I had somehow failed to take note of them, despite recently completing a year-long project on the year 1919 in the United States. It was only after realizing that several of the stars are alumni of Canadian Idol and that writer Danny Schur is based in Winnipeg, did it dawn on me that perhaps this film is set in our Neighbor to the North. The Canadian Encyclopedia entry on the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 clarified the rest. I stand humbled before you, Canada.
Read MoreThe Walrus and The Whistleblower
Written and directed by Nathalie Bibeau
Featuring Phil Demers (as himself)
Running time: 1 hour and 29 minutes
Unrated with footage of animal abuse, tasteful human nudity
by Jenny Swadosh
“There comes a point where suddenly you used to make sense of things you can’t no more.” -- Phil Demers, The Walrus Whisperer
Some 30 years ago, after decades of working in road construction, my animal-loving dad submitted his name to help out at a local aquarium. He was invited to a behind-the-scenes orientation for incoming volunteers, where he was dismayed to discover that he shared a prescription with a Beluga whale or a porpoise (I can no longer recall which). The medication was for ulcers. When he inquired further, he was devastated to learn that the aquarium’s marine mammals found performing in shows and aquarium life in general stressful. Ulcers aren’t caused by stress though; stress exacerbates ulcers. Taking other medications, particularly pain relievers, are major causes of ulcers. Dad never returned to the aquarium as a volunteer. This experience profoundly changed our view of aquariums and the animals who involuntarily live in them. So I approached The Walrus and the Whistleblower with a particular viewpoint.
Read MoreDriving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America
Directed by Gretchen Sullivan Sorin and Ric Burns
Featuring Gretchen Sullivan Sorin with Eric Avila, Tamara Banks, Herb Boyd, Leah Chase and Craig Steven Wilder
Running Time: 1 hour and 54 minutes
Unrated: Explicit violence and archival images of racist imagery
by Jenny Swadosh
“White people don’t have to think about it because the myth of the open road was created for them.” -- Alvin Hall
At this point in American history, most Americans have encountered the phrase,“ driving while Black,” even if they themselves are not. I would guess that a good percent of Americans also recognize the now iconic 1991 video footage of LAPD officers attacking African American motorist Rodney King. Likewise, while they may not be able to identify each victim, the familiar narrative of Black drivers pulled over in their cars by law enforcement and the subsequent tragic results is quintessentially American. How did we arrive at this awful destination? Driving While Black comprehensively answers that question, starting at the beginning of the journey, which is to say the arrival of enslaved Africans on the shores of what would become the United States of America. The twists and turns of a national, real life dystopian road trip make the two-hour documentary well worth the discomfort for non-Black viewers and a comprehensive illustration of what systemic racism looks like for anyone who is still trying to figure it out.
Read MoreA Step without Feet
Written and directed by Lydia Schamschula and Jeremy Glaholt
Featuring Zaher al Taher, Layla Bayazed, Freddie Bechara, Mudar el Sheich Ahmad, Anis Hamdoun, Saja Noori and Abdallah Rahhal (as themselves)
Running time: 45 minutes
Language: English, German, Arabic
Unrated
by Jenny Swadosh
Imagine how it might feel to realize that you have been tricked into believing a two weeks walk from Turkey into Bulgaria will only take a few hours...and that your guide has run off into the night with your money. Or what goes through your mind as you say goodbye to your father and become aware that you will never see him again. Think about how your happiest moments are drinking coffee with your mother on the balcony and the possibility that forever after, these moments may only exist in memories, consigned to a past life. Now, imagine being informed that you should feel grateful.
Read MoreWonders in the Suburbs (Merveilles à Montfermeil)
Written and directed by Jeanne Balibar
Starring: Jeanne Balibar, Ramzy Bedia, Emmanuelle Beart, with Mathieu Almaric, Mounir Margoum, Marlene Saldana, and a supporting cast of hundreds
Running time: 1 hour and 49 minutes
Language: French, Arabic, Soninke, and many others
Not-rated, with a tender sex scene and a suicide attempt
by Jenny Swadosh
NOTE: This film is part of a triad of new releases curated by French Institute-Alliance Francaise of New York and screening online through Symphony Space Virtual Cinema (NY) and Laemmle Virtual Cinema (LA).
I first fell in love with Jeanne Balibar through the French Institute-Alliance Francaise, where I attended weekly after work film screenings in the Nineties. I didn’t care what was showing, it was a ritual and I was religious in my attendance. From the moment she appeared on screen as a slightly menacing documentary filmmaker and romantic interest in the Podalydes brothers’ comedy, Only God Sees Me (1998), I was transfixed. Over two decades later, here is Balibar as a real life director, writer and star of an absurd romantic comedy about an ambitious New Deal-style (or maybe Great Society?) local government administration and the screwball couple at its core. If you watch the credits, you can also evaluate Balibar’s singer-songwriter credentials with music by veteran collaborator David Neerman.
Read MoreLand of Little Rivers
Directed by Aaron Weisblatt
Featuring Dave Brandt, Bruce Concors, Rachel Finn, Rob Lewis, Ben Rinker and Joan Salvato Wulff
Producer, narrator, musician and vocals: Bruce Concors
Running time: 92 minutes
by Jenny Swadosh
“I am a fly fisherman; that’s my world...It is the black hole that I’ve fallen into and I like it here.”
-- Mike Canazon, self-taught bamboo rodmaker
During the days immediately following September 11, 2001, I spent a lot of time walking the Raritan Bay shoreline of Staten Island after multiple unsuccessful attempts to reach my office in Midtown Manhattan. On one occasion, I accidentally came upon a solitary fisherman in a secluded stretch of wooded beach, seated on an upturned milk crate, heaving and shuddering in grief. That was the image I had in mind when I agreed to review Land of Little Rivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I imagined 92 minutes of lone anglers in remote sylvan settings, lots of sweeping panoramic views, possibly set to classical music that would put me to sleep in an IMAX theater. I was wrong. This is a documentary first and foremost about a community lovingly built around the all-consuming passion for catch and release fly fishing.
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