movies

The least interesting movie of the festival was Helvetica, a documentary about the font Helvetica.

The topic "Helvetica" was an nice choice and the movie maker found a lot of different angles to talk about the font. But that was exactly the problem: the movie consisted of nothing but talking heads and this got really boring after the first 30 minutes.

A number of the interviewees were Dutch. In the 1950s Dutch artists used Helvetica in their work and the documentary had interviews with them and footage of Amsterdam.

Gary Hustwit, the film's maker was at the screening, and I feel a bit bad for not liking the documentary. He seemed like a nice guy, and he said he "spent every free minute and very available dollar on the documentary".

The Full Frame Festival had a number of documentaries on the American South. The first of the two I saw was Banished, a film by Marco Williams on ethnic cleansing in the late 1800's and early 1900's in the United States.

Some of the cities where these "banishments" occurred a 100 years ago are still all-white, and Mr. Williams visits those cities with decedents of the black people that were expelled from their homes. It is dumbfounding to see the Confederate flag flying on public buildings in 2007.

The interviews with the Klan members are gripping enough ("no, I wouldn't want a black person to live next doors. I believe we have a valuable legacy to protect") but as a historian in the film points out, the real scary part is the attitude of the general population in some towns: "No Sir, the Klan is here because they feel welcome here".

See also http://www.banishedthefilm.com.

The main feature after A Son's Sacrifice was A Table In Heaven, a documentary about the Maccioni family that runs the famous La Cirque restaurant in New York.

The documentary gives a very personal insight in the life of the Maccioni family, and their work to re-open the La Cirque restaurant in a new location in New York. The film maker was able to film private moments of the family, while they are living their life -- laughing, arguing, working and discussing all the details of the new restaurant.

My personal favorite scenes were when Mr. Sirio Maccioni, the founder of the restaurant, visits his son in Las Vegas who operates a successful La Cirque branch there. The son tells his kids: "keep the house tidy while grandpa is here!". When he later shows his father an elaborate Excel sheet with a business plan, the father ignores him and you can see the generation gap and differences in approaches.

The father and son from the movie were at the Q&A session, together with the Andrew Rossi, the director of the documentary. The director said that the he started working with the family in October 2004, and this afternoon was the first time the father and son saw the movie ("I am still stressed").

It was nice to see the main characters in real life, and it makes your realize again that this not a fiction movie but a real documentary. A funny question from the audience: "Do you still have the same real estate agent and does he still advice you on your regular business also?" The real estate agent the lady referred to can be seen in the film advising the family on restaurant matters, almost as a consigliere.

Honestly, I had not heard of the La Cirque restaurant before, but the film gives some background on how Mr. Maccioni grew the restaurant to the place to be seen. When the family had a grand reopening at the new location, an incredible amount of celebrities paid a visit. When Mr. Maccioni couldn't decide between 2 locations to open the new restaurant, he followed the advice from a regular guest, Henry Kissinger.

It was a good decision of Full Frame to show these 2 movies, both about family businesses, together.

A Son's Sacrifice is a wonderful short movie about a man in New York who gave up his job in advertising to take over his father's halal slaughterhouse business.

The main character, Imram, is a very savvy, 27 year old modern guy and the relation with his traditional father is somewhat strained at times. This is a up-to-date movie that provides a glimpse of a traditional Muslim community living in New York, and the shows the differences between first generation immigrants and their children.

Nice quote: "We're closed to prepare for Qurbani so we don't slaughter chickens now -- why don't you order pizza or something?"

Delightful, made with humor and beautiful visuals. I thought this is the best short of the 2006 Full Frame Festival. See also http://www.sonsacrifice.com/.

Uganda Rising is a documentary about the horrible impact of the wars and rebellions in Uganda and its neighboring countries since the 1970s. It shows the fate of child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel army that contains thousands of children who were abducted from their families.

What is the right balance between justice and truth in a society such as in Northern Uganda? An amnesty is in place for former child soldiers, and they are forgiven for the atrocities they performed. This is pretty successful and allows children to go back to a somewhat normal life. But what do you do to the top commanders? To end the war an amnesty would help, but that is flying in the face of justice.

There is a somewhat hopeful thread in Uganda Rising, on how how children bring hope and want to learn and study.

The documentary format was old fashioned with a traditional voice over and an excessive uses of freezing frames half way interviews. However, the story told by the documentary was extremely powerful. I saw the movie right after Surfing Soweto. I must admit that I was glad I was going to see more happy documentaries after seeing 2 movies that showed the lives of children in Africa.

The first two movies I saw on Saturday morning were part of the "Africa Stories" of the festival.

Surfing Soweto is a short documentary on the life of kids in Soweto, South Africa who ride on top of trains for fun and to get fame and attention in their world.

It's sad to see the circumstances these kids live in. The scene were they are waiting hours for their teacher to show up is telling -- they want to learn, but it's very hard.

The movie is available to view online for free.

Friday evening after seeing South of Ten & Radiant City I went home to have dinner, but two hours later I was at the Full Frame Festival again to see The Right To Be Left Alone.

This is a documentary about the life of Larry Flynt, a publisher of a pornographic magazine and a life-long activist for the freedom of speech. There is a fiction movie about Larry Flynt that I had never seen, and this documentary was interesting. The movie made a case that it is important that every generation learns and remembers how crucially important the right for free speech is.

Larry Flynt was scheduled to attend the movie (a world wide premiere) but couldn't make it for health reasons.

Tonight I went to the Full Frame Festival right after work. I saw two movies in a session that started at 5.45 pm: South of Ten followed by Radiant City.

The first one, South of Ten, was only 10 minutes long. It showed daily lives being picked up after hurricane Katrina -- a little girl bicycling through a littered landscape, boys looking at a broken bridge...

I selected this session for the 2nd movie, Radiant City. This was an entertaining film about living in the suburbs in North-America. Conversations by experts on urban planning were mixed with interviews of a family that lives in a suburb in Canada, and what influence living in a suburb has on their daily life. It was a fun but thought provoking movie that was about much more than just the urban planning aspects of the suburbs.

At the end of the session there was a Q&A session, but I was getting pretty hungry so I went home right after the movie ended.

Tonight Sasha and I saw an absolutely delightful movie, Castells. It's a documentary about people in Catalonia, Spain who create large human towers.

The movie has breathtaking visuals, but it offers much more than spectacular images of this intriguing sport. The movie shows the social life of the villagers and the preparations by the colle, the participants in these Towers, workings towards big festivals and holidays (see the movie trailer).

These human towers are truly fascinating and I had never heard of them before. A Tower can be up to 9 stories high, and the upper layers are formed by small children. In the movie there is one little girl , Zoraida, who is scared and only climbs to the 8th layer in a training. These little kids are completely incorporated in this sport and are expected to perform with the adults-- Zoraida is perhaps 4 years old.

Every now and then the tower would collapse and everybody will fall on top of each other. True harm seems to be rare, although the children sometimes get bruised and cry. The movie is touching, funny at times and an absolutely recommended film to see.

Castells is the opening night movie of the Full Frame festival here in Durham, which is the largest documentary film festival in the U.S. I'll be watching a lot of documentaries this weekend, and even if they're only half as good as Castells then this will be a great weekend.

A scene from the movie where the colle is building a castell, a human tower.

Yesterday we went to see Dreamgirls in Southpoint's cinema.

The movie won 3 Golden Globes last week. One of the awards went to Jennifer Hudson, and deservedly so because her performance was stellar.

It was a pleasant movie to watch with beautiful camera work and great acting. The movie is based on a Broadway musical and there is a lot of singing in the movie.