In our new normal, the virtual cinemas built online by local theaters and niche distributors hum along with a steady stream (pun intended) of new and recent indie films. This week, however, the week that Sen. Kamala Harris became the first Black woman running for vice president, the civil rights movement-era short documentaries of pioneering Black director Madeline Andersonâstreaming for free at the BAMPFA website through Nov. 30âshould be top of your list.
Andersonâs 30-minute I Am Somebody (1970) recounts a pivotal 100-day strike against the Medical College of the University of South Carolina by some 400 Black women through the eyes of one worker. Itâs history, all right, but itâs not the past: Fifty years after National Guardsman with fixed bayonets faced peaceful marchers in Charlestonâs streets, tear gas and helicopters were used against Washington, D.C. residents protesting the killing of George Floyd.
You may dismiss the sniping at Sen. Harris from both sidesâthe lefty contingent lamenting that the former California attorney general is too Establishment for the times and the right wing pretending sheâs a radical threat to suburban wivesâas politics as usual. I Am Somebody is an instructive, infuriating reminder that there is no behavior, attitude or stance a Black woman can take that wonât be deemed inappropriate by a large number of white people.
Still from ‘Startup Embassy.’ (Courtesy ITVS)
The 2020 edition of the California Film Instituteâs annual documentary festival, DocLands, was derailed by the pandemic. Its older sibling, the Mill Valley Film Festival, plans to show some of those docs at its October bash. Right nowâtoday, Aug. 13, at 4pmâyou can hop aboard one of DocLandsâ most popular attractions when eight filmmaker teams square off in DocPitch.
Each of the works in progress is a winner, as a jury of industry professionals will award three big grants and five smaller prizes. Hereâs where you enter the picture: A $25,000 Audience Award is up for grabs, with online voting open through Aug. 19.
The projects include My Name is Andrea, Pratibha Parmarâs portrait of public intellectual Andrea Dworkin, and Startup Embassy, Kenji Yamamotoâs saga of three hungry Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Khadija Diakitéâs Black and Gold depicts another not-for-the-meek competition, that of elite Black women gymnasts vying for spots on the Olympic team.
Jazz On a Summerâs DayStreaming via local theaters
I begin the countdown of new releases with a golden oldie. Top-rank commercial photographer and Kubrick pal Bert Stern made just one feature-length film in his colorful life, but itâs an indisputable classic. A record of the last two days of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz On a Summerâs Day invented the concert film as we know it with its blend of electric performances, tight close-ups and candid audience reactions.
Important enough to be included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (as is I Am Somebody), Jazz On a Summerâs Day flits and darts like a feather on a breeze. The music isnât the only thing lifting our spirits; Sternâs compositions of carefree integration play like postcards from an ideal society. Last word: If youâve never heard of Anita OâDay, youâll never forget her after Jazz On a Summerâs Day.
Boys StateApple TV+
Local filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine wowed Sundance audience and won the Grand Jury Prize for their vivid rendering of Texasâ annual spectacle of youthful political participation. Separating a thousand high school seniors into two parties, Boys State immerses them in a week-long distillery of the best and worst aspects of electoral democracy. (Girls State also takes place, and while it probably devolves into a similarly frothy brew of speechifying, strategizing, team-building, generalized apathy and naked ambition, one hopes the gals are more sophisticated.)
Boys State gleans order and suspense from the chaos by using the Spellbound model: Focus on a handful of subjects, follow them through the competition (the ultimate prize is Governor of Boys State) and conduct candid interviews with them as the week unfolds. Needless to say, Moss and McBaine expertly shape the film to make it almost impossible not to root either for or against the spotlighted guys.
Consequently, the film works like a Pavlov chime in revving your sympathies and, during the climactic vote, heartbeat. Boys State is engaging entertainment, but if you arenât all that keen about being manipulated like a spaniel, and yearn for more insight into political systems or Lone Star psyches, set your expectations accordingly.
The Cordillera of DreamsBAMPFA through Aug. 16
Patricio Guzmán fled Chile after the Pinochet coup, finishing his landmark mid-â70s documentary The Battle of Chile abroad. Heâs returned to visit but never to live, yet the brutal history of his homeland informs every frame of his films. If you missed The Cordillera of Dreams when the Roxie showed it a few months ago, you have a couple days to watch it along with his other brilliant recent essay films, Nostalgia for the Light (2010) and The Pearl Button (2015).
Guzmán has the ability to evoke the ephemeralâmemory, most cruciallyâthrough the physical and the tangible. The Cordillera of Dreams takes the long range of the Andes Mountains on Chileâs eastern side and patiently and relentlessly probes its geographical, material and metaphorical dimensions.
This great filmmakerâs lifelong project might be described as ânever forget,â to borrow a phrase, but thatâs underestimating the scope of his mission. He knows that those who suffered under the military regime, whose parents and siblings and friends were tortured and murdered, are condemned never to forget. They do not need help remembering.
Justice and healing, however, are more elusive. (Pinochet lived to be 91, and was never convicted of his crimes.) Guzmán takes the long view of historyâa geological view, perhapsâthat, over the course of one film, let alone three, achieves majestic profundity.
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