We will, however, except official submissions for our DANCE FILM SHOWCASE, proper correspondance and all:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS, Dance Film Showcase, 2013

For more details: http://reggaeponthemountain.com/

2011 LINE UP

• THE WAILING SOULS (Jamaica/LA)

• ROOTZ UNDERGROUND (Jamaica)

• ROCKY DAWUNI (Ghana)

• BODHI ROCK (LA)

• THE JAH BELOVED BAND ft. JAH AMEN MOBLEY & DAVID GAD (Long Beach)

• JAAM KWEST (San Diego)

• LIVITY SOUND SYSTEM

• THE DIRTY DEUCES

When thinking about documentary film-making, and perusing the classics in my library, I came across the 1975 film, Grey Gardens, and felt that it would be unjust of me to write on anything else having spotted it. Grey Gardens is one of the most hauntingly memorable and remarkably captured works of nostalgia in the genre; and accordingly, there’s a lot we can glean from it.

A story about Jackie Kennedy’s once noble, now forgotten cousin, Edith Beale, her daughter, and their 50 year-old East Hampton mansion gone under. Forced to vacate their home if they do not repair it (we’re talking racoons in the attic and cat food cans galore) -– the Maysles’ brothers truly capture the end of an era. The documentary not only shows us the history of a woman who has been through too much, and her daughter who has seen too much, but it shows us the ghosts that have haunted their past. A genuine look at a family’s story, and a profoundly sincere process of filmmaking on the part of the Maysles’ brothers.

I’m not sure if it’s the ever youthful, 56 year-old “Little Edie Beale” wearing skirts wrapped around her head while doing a baton routine, or the charm of her 80 year-old mother, “Big Edie Beale” singing “Tea for Two” while lying in her outdated bedroom surrounded by too many cats, but Grey Gardens captured my heart from the first time I viewed it, (even amidst a crowded, two-hundred seat lecture hall with uncomfortable desk-seats). Grey Gardens demonstrates a noble form of film-making, and truly captures the spirit of its subjects – making them the two most delectable women in the world, and making us wonder, how did Jackie O. end up being the star of the family?

Oh yeah, and one more thing to note.

In 2009 HBO came out with a remake Grey Gardens, and    while this remake demonstrated its loyalty to the 1975 masterpiece (..same settings, same costumes, same songs..), it seems to lack the biggest component – the Beales. While Drew Barrymore & Jessica Lange do an earnest job filling in their roles, they just don’t contain the depth and spirit that the real “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” spill out from their pores. And this why, though however good an idea it may seem – very rarely can a documentary be remade, because very rarely can you remake history.

“The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked. He wrote me: one day I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black.” [Sans Soleil, 1983]

Cinema, the historian forever condemned to capturing the memory of this world. Without a moment of hesitation, when asked what my favorite film is, I must confess my loyalty to Chris Marker’s 1983 film essay, Sans Soleil. With its seamless weaving between the documentary and the fictional, this film creates a hauntingly nostalgic memory of mankind at its moment of filming. In the form of a nomadic poet’s free-form travelogue, Sans Soleil shows us the world – a tradition that ultimately brings us back to the beginning of cinema, which began as an attempt to bring foreign parts of the world to those elsewhere. A film that brings its viewer to his knees, Sans Soleil rewrites memory, depicting a certain place and a certain time through the viewfinder of the filmmaker, who is ultimately able to shift the mind’s eye to see something differently – if only for a moment, to understand something about the way in which we exist.

The job of the filmmaker is ultimately to hunt its subject in silence. This comes with the belief that artists do not create art to express themselves, but rather, are inevitably expressed in creating. Marker professes in his own script, “I‘ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. On this trip I’ve tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter.” And this is where Marker presents to us the power of cinema – its ability to turn the banal into the critical, the mundane into the remarkable. For decades artists have written about these certain “moments suspended in time.” What Alexander Kluge has called “moments of blind happiness”, Roland Barthes has defined as “the punctum of a moment.” It is my belief that these metaphors all serve to the same end – the magic of cinema, the hope that we may actually see the world we live in. These rare, talked-about moments, these reasons for why we create new mediums, saturate the work of Chris Marker. Sans Soleil shows us the face of a Praia woman in a frame and tells us that it will only last a second. It screens an image of two planes crossing in the sky while giving us a list of things “that quicken the heart.” By the time Chris Marker has finished showing us the world, we are left stranded in a moment of awe, staggered by the realization that we don’t know the half of it.

Sans Soleil depicts to us a world yesterday that does not exist today; while at the same time, showing us a world yesterday that will never cease to exist. Again, the ultimate metaphor for what cinema is – a preservation of memory.

“He writes me from Japan. He writes me from Africa. He writes that he can now summon up the look on the face of the market lady of Praia that had lasted only the length of a film frame.” [Sans Soleil, 1983]

It goes something like this:

“Mama, I got to go to this free screening, of a movie that’s not even out yet, it’s called Beginners, and the director was there, his name is     Mike Mills, and so were some of the actors, and we got to play with the dog after the movie, the dog from the movie.”

“Oh, that’s so exciting sweetheart.”

“Right, Mama, but the movie was so wonderful, it was about this guy whose father is sick and he meets this French girl when he’s dressed up as Freud at a party, and they sort of fall in love, and his dad turns out gay, and when the boy’s little he and his mom make fun of art at a museum…”

“I’m so glad you’re getting out, dear.”

Etc. But when I tell my mother about a previous (free) Hammer event, a reading and book signing by author Karen Russell, I can hear her jealousy through the line. So, at face value, my mother loves and understands the language of books, and I love and (hope to) understand the language of books and movies. But the experience also, I believe, dredges up some more significant questions.

Ms. Russell is prodigiously young for the recognition her writing has received, and has been recognized nationally, but her reading was held in a smaller room of the Hammer, and despite my fears, it was not necessary for me to arrive early to get a seat right in the front – and many black folding chairs were left unfilled. Mills’s special screening, however, was shown before a full house of eager and well-versed moviegoers who showered the director with praise and respectful, knowledgeable inquiries into his craft.

I suppose it is not surprising that in Los Angeles, a movie screening generates more excitement than a reading. But the discrepancy got me thinking about the gap between literary storytelling and storytelling through film – a difference in mediums that Beginners exploits to the fullest and with utmost self-awareness.

To me, the most striking convention employed by Mills was his slideshow-like usage of photos paired with explanatory voiceovers: photos of scenes and sometimes-anonymous people, “This is 2003. This is what the sun looks like. And the stars. This is the president. And this is the sun in 1955. And the stars. And the president.” These “introductory vignettes” span the entirety of the film, showing telephones, fashion, houses, rooms, children, families, emotions – and so Mills asks us, what has changed? What is changing? What stays the same? And how is it, precisely, that we recognize and articulate these changes?

These introductions provoked much laughter and recognition from the audience, at least in part because of their didactic “This is Jane. See Jane run,” tone. Mills’s use of still images within a moving picture makes more apparent, and plays with, that which books cannot do: evoke time , and the passage of time, in a near-instant. His brilliance comes in the technique’s implications for human storytelling in everyday life – why does it feel so complete to capture a moment, and to identify it? Why do we continually seek to identify moments, in our personal lives and beyond? “These are my parents,” or, “This is Anna. This is what Anna looks like when she’s crying.” When is identification no longer objective? “This is what love feels like,” or, “This is how I’m supposed to feel.”

Mills’s concern with moments in history is further emphasized with protagonist Oliver’s “historical conscience” vandalisms, and with his humorous, fully disclosed misrememberings – those tiny details we could’ve sworn were one way but were just as likely another.

And so, amidst a gorgeous, honest story of love and avoidance and grief and growth, with beautiful music and hilarious, heartfelt dog-human conversations, Mike Mills has also constructed an open case study on how we record our own history – records that cannot simply be confined to the narrative word or to images alone. His non-preachy inquiry into constructing our histories is especially relevant in a 21st century defined by the rapidity of media sharing.

Perhaps this goes without saying, but despite my attempts to articulate the excitement of Beginners, I end the conversation with my mother with a well-worn line: “You just gotta see it.”

Neuroscience Converges with Independent Cinema

At the 7th Annual Topanga Film Festival (TFF), we’ve juxtaposed the neuroscience community and the filmmaking community to explore the science behind the art.  Our Salon Discussions will include three panelists from the filmmaking community and one neuroscientist or neurosurgeon who will  tie in the theme of the creative discussion
to the biology of creativity in our brain.

At a glance such topics explored will be:

How does the brain spatially perceive 3D films? Does it change our perception of reality?
Can a director really control an audience’s response to their film?
Where does laughter come from?
Neuromarketing – Invasive? Scientifically proven? Why are Hollywood Studios using this type of focus group technique? Will it change the way we tell stories?
What happens in our brain when we become emotionally involved in a film?

Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust is a Neuroscientist, says:  “Science needs art to frame the mystery – but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery.  Neither truth alone is our solution – for our reality exists in plural.”

IF FOUND PLEASE CONTACT THE TOPANGA FILM FESTIVAL