Dangerous Liaisons Between Hamas and Shin Bet

This amazing German documentary (2014) is based on the autobiography of Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas, and is directed by Israeli Nadav Schirman.  Son of Hamas leader/founder Sheikh  Hassan Yousef, Palestinian protagonist Mosab was a spy for Shin Bet (Israel's internal secret service) for 10 years. Green is the color of Islam, and thus code name Green Prince.  Why would Mosab be motivated to spy for the Israelis ?  Revenge typical, with expectation of killing the Handler.  Sometimes, it doesn't work out that way.  Shin Bet handler Gonen ben Yitzhak is also interviewed.  Original footage from the Second Intifada is interspersed among testimonials.

Mosab and Gonen developed a strong boundary-breaching loyalty for each other, between source and handler. Raped as a young boy,  Mosab was jailed by the Israelis, so he had a chance to witness Hamas torture and kill fellow Hamas members who were suspected of recruiting.  These killings were so repugnant that he made the decision to spy for Israel.  Mosab's transformation makes a strong case for Stockholm Syndrome. Israeli politicians had no awareness of Mosab's role as spy.  Mosab did several stints in jail, so he could pass muster with fellow Hamas members and also to be safe from assassination.  As a spy, Mosab spent much of his life processing lies.

Archival footage of Mosab shows disfigured jaw from prison fight, the current Mosab had cosmetic jaw surgery in US.

Noujaim's Square Focuses on Unheralded Activists in Tahrir Square

The Square is a 2013 Egyptian-American documentary film by Jehane Noujaim, which depicts the ongoing Egyptian Crisis until 2013, starting with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 at Tahrir Square through Sisi's (Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi) ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards.  If you are looking for Gigi Ibrahim, forget it.  This film is about average people.

Tangerine

Tangerine is a 2015 American comedy-drama film directed by Sean S. Baker and written by Baker and Chris Bergoch, starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (Sin-Dee-Rella), Mya Taylor (Alexandra), and James Ransone (Chester). The story follows a transgender sex worker who discovers her boyfriend and pimp has been cheating on her. Both transgender hookers work the blocks around Santa Monica and Highland.  Ultimately, it's the warmth and absence of judgement or condescension toward its marginalized characters that make the film such a vibrant and uplifting snapshot.  The film was shot with three iPhone 5s smartphones using anamorphic clip-on adapters, on a microbudget.  These nonintrusive cameras play a significant role in the shoot.

Mark Duplass approached Sean S. Baker for a new project. Baker was inspired by films he saw at the New Zealand Film Festival. The film was executive-produced by the Duplass Brothers, and produced by Through Films, Darren Dean, and Shih-Ching Tsou.

Transgender sex worker Sin-Dee Rella, who has just finished a 28-day prison sentence, meets her friend Alexandra, another trans sex worker, at a donut shop in Hollywood on Christmas Eve.  Both are black.  Alexandra accidentally reveals that Sin-Dee's boyfriend and pimp Chester has been cheating on her with a cisgender woman. Sin-Dee storms out to search the neighborhood for Chester and the woman.

A parallel narrative track follows Armenian cab driver Raznik (Karren Karagulian) as he picks up random fares,when not sampling the trannies.  He is clearly partial to that something extra that the street sisters offer.  He slips away from Christmas dinner, but is tailed by harridan mother-in-law who converges at Donut Time hangout, soon followed by his wife and child.  This farcical ending is slapstick, where all is revealed.  Note the donut store server is producer Shih-Ching Tsou. 

Angela Watercutter reveals:

Producer/director/actor/writer Mark Duplass had made Baker a standing offer to make a micro-budget film under the Duplass Brothers Productions; as Baker remembers, “I said to him, ‘I want to make a film that takes place on the corner of Santa Monica and Highland [in LA] and I don’t know exactly what I want do to yet, but it’s about two people coming together at Donut Time.'”
The resulting film, Tangerine, hitting theaters Friday, was made with $100,000 from Duplass and plenty of ingenuity. The film got heavy buzz out of Sundance for being shot on the iPhone 5, but that’s just the start of the DIY tricks Baker used. His two main actresses—Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, the two who come together at Donut Time—Baker found just by hanging out at the aforementioned intersection and he used their real-life stories to inform his script. He also found some of his cast on Vine and Instagram, and even located part of the movie’s electrifying score through SoundCloud. He may have been forced to use the minimal tools available to him, but they ended up being invaluable.

Andrew Martin: Movies & TV Stack Exchange 

Question to Director: I’ve wondered about this ever since I saw the movie, and I’ve read a few different theories online, but why did you decide to call the movie “Tangerine”?

Answer: We had a bunch of titles and that was one that everybody kept coming back to. It resonated with everybody, and everyone has their own interpretation. It doesn’t really stem from the dominant hue of the film, but there’s something about the title that reminds me of Christmas. I think I used to get tangerines in my stocking on Christmas, so there was a personal link for me. There are hints throughout the film, like the air freshener in the cab. It’s funny, filmmakers are the only artists who feel obligated to title their works of art. Musicians and poets and novelists don’t have to, but we’re the only ones who feel obligated, like we have to, and I want to get away from that. I’m fine with a title that’s open to interpretation.

Godard's Les Carabiniers Dated Look at Glamour of War

Les Carabiniers (1963) (the Riflemen) tells the story of two poor men called to serve in battle, lured by promises of the world’s riches. With grandiose names beyond the realm of identification, Ulysses (Marino Mase) and Michelangelo (Albert Juross), pasteboard buffoons devoid of psychological density, receive letters from the king of their fictional country that allow them to have complete freedom from consequence while fighting in the war, in return for anything they desire—swimming pools, Maseratis, women—at the enemy’s expense.  Viewer cannot identify opposing sides in battle.

Their wives, Venus and Cleopatra (Catherine Ribeiro and Genevieve Galea) encourage them to fight when they hear about the riches. They leave and cross the battlefields and villages, destroying and pillaging as they wish. The pair’s exploits are recounted through postcards sent to their wives, telling tales of the horrors of battle. The previously idealistic idea that the men have of war disintegrates, as they are still poor and now wounded. They return home with a suitcase full of postcards of the splendors of the world that they have fought for, and are told by army officials that they must wait until the war ends to receive their pay.  One day, the sky explodes with sparks, and the couples race into town, believing that the war has ended. Ulysses and Michelangelo are informed by their superiors that their king has lost the war, and that all of the war criminals must be punished. The two men are then shot for their crimes.

The renowned author and critic Susan Sontag referenced the film in her 1977 collection of essays On Photography. With respect to the "two sluggish lumpen-peasants" returning home bearing postcards of the treasures of the world instead of tangible treasure, Sontag noted that "Godard's gag vividly parodies the equivocal magic of the photographic image."

Godard's goal was to make a film that a child could understand, thus observations by Matthew Blevins (TIFF Review):

The longer I live, the more I tend towards simplicity. I use the most hackneyed metaphors. Basically, that is what is eternal, the stars are like eyes, for instance, or death like the sun.”

– Jorge Luis Borges

By opening his 5th film with a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Luc Godard establishes that Les carabiniers lives in a fabled reality and will use the warm metaphors built by the shared human experience as a universal shorthand, suggesting that the characters and events in the film are merely farcical archetypes that divulge universal truths about the absurdities of war. These are not the beguiled soldiers from any specific war from any specific nation, they are representative of the misguided and exploited peoples that have carried out actions for reasons they don’t quite fully understand in every conflict throughout history. They have been duped into action by the lies of recruiters that have promised them the riches of the world and volunteer to go to war to satisfy their bored opportunistic girlfriends and to mold themselves into men of action and heroism, something rare in a backwater land of outdoor bathtubs and wandering ducks.

See Robert Stam in Reflexivity in Film & Literature.

Celia Maysles Meets Resistance from Uncle Al while Making film about her Father

Al & David Maysles

Albert and David Maysles were the kings of documentary film making, culminating in the classic Gimme Shelter, where a death was captured at Altamont, where the Rolling Stones put on a free concert in 1969.  I love Al's voiceover that is available on DVD.  His brother David died in 1987, when his daughter Celia was 7 yrs old.  She made a valiant effort in 2007 to document her father's life.  Much of the film witnesses a teary-eyed Celia negotiating with her crotchety uncle Al for archival footage of her father.  Penetrating the dysfunctional Maysles maze is not for the faint-hearted.

Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople triumphant with 13-year-old Dennison

Kiwi director Taika Waititi has a winner here with Julian Dennison as misfit adolescent Ricky Baker, released from Child Welfare to join dysfunctional family of Hec Faulkner (Sam Neill) and Bella Faulkner (Rima Te Wiata).  Collision of cultures in NZ is total entertainment.

Taika Waititi

Antonioni's China Documentary Chung Kuo (1972) Rattles Chinese

cemetery

tombstone

mule lugging stone roller

Chung Kuo ("Middle Kingdom"), Cina is a 1972 Italian documentary directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, during Mao's cultural revolution.  The PRC invited him to come.  They disliked it so much that he was charged with being anti-Chinese and counterrevolutionary.

The film is 220 mins in 3 parts, covering Beijing; Suzhou/Nanjing; and Shanghai.  Antonioni is clear from get go that they were not trying to understand the Chinese.  His commentary is very sparse.  Many of the images are unflattering.  Part 1 has an amazing operation on pregnant woman doing a C-Section only using acupuncture anesthesia at a gynecological hospital in Beijing.  On a visit to the Great Wall, he comments that it is the world's largest cemetery, as the slaves died working on it. In general, China favors cremation, although rural cemetaries arae occasionally seen.  Permission is easy to obtain. 

This film was brought to my attention in Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977), pp. 168 - 170.  Antonioni was reproached for  things that were old-fashioned.  He chose a donkey pulling a stone-roller, etc., instead of showing new tractors.

Mauritanian Movie’s Oscar Nomination Is a First

Toulou Kiki and Abderrahmane Sissako

Toulou Kiki and Abel Jafri

Timbuktu is a 2014 French-Mauritanian drama film directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.  It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.  The film looks at the brief occupation of Timbuktu, Mali by Ansar Dine. Parts of the film were influenced by a 2012 public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok.  It was shot in Oualata, a town in south-east Mauritania.

Wenders' Wrong Move (1975) Turns Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship on it's Head

The Wrong Move is a 1975 German road movie directed by Wim Wenders. This was the second part of Wenders' "Road Movie trilogy" which included Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976).  With long carefully composed shots characteristic of Wenders' work, the story follows the wanderings of an aspiring young writer, Wilhelm Meister, as he explores his native country, encounters its people and starts defining his vocation. His thoughts are occasionally presented in voice-over. The work is a rough adaption of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, an early example of the Bildungsroman or novel of initiation. 

According to Wenders, although Wrong Move is based on Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, screenwriter Peter Handke did not use any of the book’s dialogue and incorporated a minimal amount of its action, mainly borrowing its concept of a young man "on a journey of self-realization." Wenders also toyed with the idea of whether such a journey would be a mistake, and hence Handke and Wenders made the film as a refutation of Goethe's novel and German Romanticism, in which their character suffers because of his travels.

The film marks the debut of Nastassja Kinski, who Wenders' wife discovered in a disco in Munich.  She appeared topless in Wrong Move and was 12 years old at the time of filming.  Later, she played one of the leading roles in Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984), as well as appearing in his Faraway, So Close (1993).

Audiard's Dheepan no Match for Rust & Bone

Indian actress Kalieaswari Srinivasan seduces Dheepan

A Sri Lanka Liberation Tamil Tiger Warrier, Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan) teams up with phoney wife, Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and phoney daughter, Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) to acquire dead family's passports and head for France.  In fact, he did arrive in France with fake passport in 1993.  That was after trip to Thailand, where he was jailed with no papers.  And after he flew to Czechoslovakia with fake Malaysian passport but was deported to Bangkok. 

This film is set at conclusion of Civil War (1983 - 2009) between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils, in which SL Military defeated Tamil Tigers after 26 years.

Dheepan was a firmer Tamil Tiger soldier.  He burns his Tamil Tiger uniform at start of film.  They end up in housing project in Le Pre-Saint Gervais, NE suburb of Paris.  The new home turns out to be new conflict for him.

Abu Nowar'sTheeb Explores 1916 Bedouin Arabia

Stunning location work in southern Jordan has the grandeur of Monument Valley, is the backdrop for story of young Bedouin boy, Theeb ("wolf") who outwits potential enemies.  Film supported by Abu Dhabi's Sanad fund and Doha Film Institute.  Recently orphaned brothers Hussein (Hussein Salameh) and Theeb (Jacir Eid) meet up with British soldier and escort, asking to be guided to Ottoman train tracks so as to destroy them. The two men are ambushed and killed.  Soon Hussein dies as well.  The young boy Theeb witnesses his beloved broother's death.

Kelly Reichardt's Murder Mystery Wihout the Murder

Kelly Reichardt's first feature film (1994) "River of Grass" is a love story without the love, a murder mystery without the murder, and a road movie that never gets on the road.  Cozy (Lisa Bowman) spends whole film thinking she killed innocent bystander while pool hopping, only to learn later that she did not, much to her chagrin.  Which she resolves in final scene. 

Sebastião Salgado follows same trajectory as Leni Riefenstahl

Wim Wender's hauntingly beautiful documentary traces Sebastião Salgado's evolution from social photographer, a witness of the human condition, to nature photographer.  This is a motion picture director making a film about a still photographer, such an interesting dynamic.

Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's photographer followed the same trajectory, disenchanted with propaganda films, she devoted her life to studying African native cultures and at age 71 was certified as a scuba diver in Malindi, Kenya just about when I was there snorkeling.  Her coral reef books capped her amazing career.

Salgado loses his faith in mankind, as extraordinary witness, yet his wife acts as a silent partner offering a kind of in absentia companionship.  

Chloé Zhao Walks Thin Line Between Documentary and Drama in "Songs my Brother Taught Me"

The directorial debut of Chinese-American filmmaker Chloé Zhao, Songs my Brother Taught Me,  can easily be mistaken at first as a documentary of the Lakota Indians on Pine Ridge Reservation in the South Dakota Badlands. Until the first kiss.  This film is about isolation and the challenges of breaking away from home.

Nonprofessional actors mumble dialogue that sounds improvised.  First-time native kids populate this film, lending it an authenticity that would be missing in a tighter screen play.  You pick up information as the film proceeds, which can impede comprehension.

This style calls to mind the Taiwanese film The Assassin, Hou Hsiao-Hsien (2015), much more obscure yet filled with breathtaking panoramic cinematography like this film (Joshua James Richards).

horseback riders dwarfed by landscape in The Assassin

horseback riders dwarfed by landscape in Zhao film

Hou's Assassin Caught Between Creed and Conscience

mirror reflection of water

Lady Tang views mirror

Princess Jiacheng plays the zither.  Voiceover follows - The King of Kaphen's bluebird failed to sing for 3 years.  One day the Queen remarked birds sing only to their own kind.    Set the bird before a mirror! The King heeded her advice.  The bluebird saw its own image, and sang of its sadness, and danced, until finally, it expired.

   

Princess-nun Jiaxin delivers Yinniang to her mother Nie Tian

Nie's mother presents jade to Nie

Jade was given to Princess Jiacheng when Nie was betrothed to marry Lord of Weibo, a gift from the Emperor to secure Weibo.

Nie left jade amulet for Lord Tian to discover her identity.  Huji, concubine, at his side.

landscape from Hubei province

Yinniag's mother Nie Tian and father Nie Feng commiserate about exiling daughter

Lord Tian informs Lady Tian not to meddle in exile of Tian Xing

mirror polisher tries to stall melee before Yinniang arrives

Silver birch forest in Inner Mongolia provides extraordinary parallax effect, Lady Ti'an (AKA Jing Jing) sports gold mask.

Tian Xing tends to Yinniang's wounds from the masked assassin

Sorcerer Kong Kong with voodoo dolls in cahoots with Lady Tian, ultimately csasts spell on Huji causing her to miscarry

Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien's 2015 film is certainly beautiful to watch on 35mm film.  It won best director Cannes.  Cinematography by Mark Lee Ping Bing is sublime in places like Shennongjia district in northwestern Hubei province.  But Hou gives away little plot-wise and the impenetrable nature of the film makes even seasoned cinephiles feel like Philistines.  He joins a growing list of filmmakers embracing wuxia, the medieval sword-fighting genre.

During the Tang dynasty, kidnapped at age 10 in the year 809, Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) is taught to be an assassin by Princess-nun Jiaxin (twin sister of princess Jiacheng), to kill corrupt officials.  Jiacheng sends her on a mission impossible to her hometown Weibo (Hebei province, bordering Inner Mongolia), to kill her cousin the governor Lord Tian Ji'an (first love to whom Nie was once betrothed as her intended husband). It is a case of provincial rebellion against the Tang court imperial authority.  It is interesting to contemplate the relation of Weibo to the Imperial court vs. Taiwan to the PRC.  Her indecision is construed as a mark of power, able to dictate her own destiny.

At the end of the day, Yinniang couldn't do it, empathy cannot be obliterated, the assassin's creed bows to the pangs of conscience.

Let's go back to the bluebird tale.  Yinniang reveals that this applies to Princess Jiacheng , no one like her in all of Weibo.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Mustang Channels Truffaut's 400 Blows

Window bars reminiscent of 400 Blows iconic image

Turkish film director Deniz Gamze Ergüven has made a beautiful film reminiscent of Truffaut's 400 Blows.

Gomes's Tabu Challenges Colonial Africa Misgivings

Mario lip syncs (of course, it's silent film !) Joey Ramone poolside

poolside dancing so "Blue is Warmest Color"

local joyous children surround devastated Ventura with tribal "call & response" choir blasting, sublime moment

Murnau's 1931 film

Tabu is a 2012 Portuguese black & white film directed by Miguel Gomes, the title in honor of and  referencing F.W. Murnau's 1931 silent film, which took place in the South Pacific.  Both films have a bifurcated structure.  Tabu is in two parts, with intertitles Paradise Lost, and Paradise, the first part taking place in contemporary Lisbon and the second part a flashback of 1960s Portuguese Africa.  The implication is that life was much better in colonial times.  Murnau's film was also in two parts, but chronological, flipping the chapter headings. Portugal was the last surviving colonialist country in Europe, finally relinquishing Mozambique (and Angola) in 1975, where Tabu was filmed.  The overarching theme is obsessive love and eternal pain that results from its extinction (think Blue is the Warmest Color featuring Lykke Li's song "I Follow Rivers").

The film is wildly inventive in the use of sound (and lack thereof).  Richard Brody, who calls this one of the most original movies in years, brilliantly summarizes Gomes's vision in The New Yorker (my bold):

Gomes’s vision, realized in calmly expansive, keenly perceptive compositions in a charcoal black-and-white, is two-fold. First, he reveals a rational modern Europe of noble yet sterile passions, of moderate pleasure, impotent principle, and economized energy; of an aestheticized dignity that is ever so slightly out of sync with the tawdry mercenary activity of daily life. Several moments leap out—there’s a magnificently sensitive tracking shot that moves in on Pilar during an awkward moment outside a movie theatre, when her suitor wants to offer her a painting; as he dashes off, the chirp of his remote car key is heard, twice. There’s also a delicately sardonic aperçu in a shopping mall, where, at a moment of high emotion, Pilar and two others head for a café through a corridor where Gomes discerns, in jolting centrality, a sad little ride for children. 

Second, Gomes sees the predatory injustices of colonial life as a sort of Wild West of anarchic self-indulgence and self-reinvention, a perfect environment for romance to flower and to grow to monstrous, untenable dimensions. Nothing suggests nostalgia for or ambivalence about Portugal’s colonial empire. The narrator of the second part, an Italian immigrant, is clear-eyed about the indecent inequities that he took advantage of, and it’s among the sins for which the modern Portugal of Pilar’s circle is in lasting penance. But the very vastness of its cavalier moral obliviousness is one of the things that vanishes with the clarity of vision; amour fou comes off inextricably linked to diabolical evil (which is explicitly invoked in the narration), and the humanist’s circumspect, responsible politics appear also to put relationships on an ethical footing and to put a brake on the emotional life—without completely extinguishing the inner spark of spontaneous extremes.

Derek Smith observes (Tiny Mix Tapes):

In Africa, young Aurora lives a carefree life as a spoiled white girl with a caring, successful husband and is known as the most talented big game hunter around. With the entrance of Ventura, a handsome playboy extraordinaire, the flames of illicit love begin to crackle and the two begin a torrid love affair. The aforementioned techniques used in this part of the film, particularly the soundscapes playing against muted dialogue, give the characters a feeling of disembodiment that reflects both the two lovers’ states as they enter and proceed with their obsessive affair and the sense of dislocation and disillusionment as Ventura nostalgically recounts the tale he’s revealed to no one for 50 years.

Soundtrack is excellent:

Variações Pindéricas Sobre a Insensatez by Joana Sá

Cosi Come Viene by Conjunto Oliveira Muge

Baby I Love You by The Ramones (another connection with Blue is the dance sequence)

Tú Serás Mi Baby by Les Surfs

Lonely Wine by Mickey Gilley

The eldest 6 of 12 children were Coco, Pat, Rocky, Dave, Monikya (Monique) and Nicole Rabaraona. Born in Madagascar the four brothers and two sisters performed as the vocal group "Les Surfs" from 1963 to 1971.

Grupo de Canto e Dança do Povoado de Coconhoa (Mozambique) performed the "call & respond" tribal chanting.  This mesmerizing sound takes center stage when Araura's husband fetches her and takes a wack at Ventura.


In an interview with Gomes, he reveals the role music plays in his films:

In fact, when Pilar was going to the cinema—and in the script, she went three times, in the film only two—it was intended that you would never see the screen but would hear a song. Maybe this is my emotional link with cinema, that I wanted to materialize it by not showing whatever Pilar is seeing, only portraying it as a song. For me as a viewer of cinema and a listener to music, I wanted to have the same response to the sequence as I would if I were hearing a great song, not being moved by the lyrics but by a more abstract feeling one has in response to music. It’s the melody, and something that works in your system in a very abstract way. Sometimes you don’t know why the hell you’re so moved. I’ve dreamed of making films that would evoke this kind of emotional response.