Scanners: The 2005 New York Video Festival
Such disparate filmmakers as George Lucas, Michael Mann and Spike Lee have made recent films in this medium. Also, other world filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard (who has been an innovator in the medium since the 1970s), Agnes Varda, Eric Rohmer, Abbas Kiarostami and Jia Zhang-ke have created compelling and provocative works in this medium. “Scanners,” the newest edition of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New York Video Film Festival, will play at the Walter Reade Theater from July 27 through July 31. This year’s edition reveals the richness and variety of work currently being done in the video medium, featuring a diverse set of filmmakers advancing the medium and expanding its possibilities.
Perhaps the most deliriously unhinged of this year’s offerings is Damon Packard’s ultra-underground, years-in-the-making opus, Reflections of Evil (2002). Packard evokes myriad ephemera of trashy 70’s late-night television such as cop shows, horror films, and period commercials. The film is “introduced” by Tony Curtis, with Damon Packard’s name obviously dubbed by another voice. Shot on a mix of formats, including 16mm, Super 8, and digital video, and liberally employing fish-eye visual effects, Reflections of Evil affects the look of a faded video of a taped TV program.
The film’s extreme channel-surfing visual and aural aggressiveness may try the patience of some viewers, but Packard’s conviction and invention definitely come through. Using a mix of found footage and scenes shot clandestinely at Universal Studios, Packard’s film boldly baits and confronts those twin pillars of blockbuster Hollywood filmmaking, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, using them as objects of homage/parody.
The film’s hulking, muttering, schizophrenic protagonist (played by Packard himself) sells cheap watches on the street, while frequently exhibiting his compulsive eating disorder. At every turn people on the street scream and curse at one another, and other unpleasant soundtrack sounds such as vomiting and noisy eating are heard.
Reflections of Evil is a relentless assault on the senses, pausing at points for a flashback featuring a drug-dispensing hippie guru, and Spielberg parodies, portraying a young Spielberg directing a schlocky TV horror film, and featuring a new Universal Studios attraction, “Schindler’s List: The Ride.” Packard’s poison-pen letter to Hollywood is a singular experience that has to be seen to be believed.
The short film programs, featuring animation, documentaries, and experimental films, offer some fascinating highlights. The program Animate!, consisting of animation shorts from interfilm berlin, contain a few outstanding shorts. Keith Bearden’s “The Raftman’s Razor” (2004) is a concise coming-of-age tale that is a witty evocation of the nature of fandom.
In this film, two young comic-book fans become obsessed with an existential comic depicting a man drifting on a raft in the middle of the ocean, with thought bubbles over his head offering Zen-like random musings. Carl Steadman’s “Contamination” (2003) is a dystopian vision of genetic mutation gone awry, observing the behavior of jigsaw-puzzle creatures mixing and matching human and avian body parts. Daniel Greaves’ “Little Things” (2003) is a hilarious interlocking collection of seven sketches featuring odd characters with supernatural powers whose respective conflicts build to an absurd apocalyptic denouement.
Another program of shorts, As Far As the Eye Can See, features politically charged films that explore landscapes and borders, and various divisions and transgressions across these borders. Laura Waddington’s “Border” (2004), the best film in the program, concerns Iraqi and Afghan refugees who escape from the Red Cross Sangatte refugee camp in France and attempt to cross the channel tunnel into England. This passage is arduous and fraught with many dangers, not the least of which are capture by border guards and loss of limbs from passing trains.
An absurd cat-and-mouse game is played out here, as those caught make another attempt to cross a few hours later. Waddington films the refugees’ movements with her shutter wide open to compensate for the near total darkness. She films them in slow motion, creating a blurred, grainy effect that obscures the faces of the refugees. Visually, they represent a desperate mass trying to escape to what may or may not be a promised land. Making effective use of a mournful electronic score by Simon Fisher Turner, Waddington evokes the quiet terror of the border crossing, which eventually explodes into violence when police clash with refugees after the camp’s closing.
Yan Ying Yuen’s documentary Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Model Works (2005) looks at Maoist operas created for the stage and screen, which were the only forms of theater allowed to be seen in China during the years 1966 to 1976. Chairman Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, “Madame Mao,” was in complete control of all cultural products during this period. All traditional art forms were outlawed. Such works as The Red Women’s Detachment and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy were all-singing, all-dancing paeans to Mao and the Communist Party. The film versions of these operas, clips of which are interspersed throughout the documentary featured dancers with mask-like faces of bliss, singing the praises of the Cultural Revolution.
The dancers performed their routines in geometric formations, dressed in stiff military uniforms and carrying rifles, looking up at a red sun. Paradoxically, these films were influenced by Hollywood musicals, a cultural icon of the capitalist West.
A number of interesting interviewees are featured in the film, including two of the stars of filmed versions of the Yang Ban Xi. All of the subjects are introduced with a title card with their name, profession and age, and the actors are interviewed against recreated backdrops of the film sets. Xue Qing Hua, an actress who starred in the film of The Red Women’s Detachment, tells of her experiences making this film.
The film made her a star, especially after her film won a prize in Venice. However, she was also a victim of Madame Mao’s mercurial whims, and was negatively affected by her associations with these operas after the Gang of Four fell from power. Nevertheless, she is now rehearsing to perform The Red Women’s Detachment on stage again for the first time in many years. Tong Yiang Ling, a lead actor in Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, also speaks of his experiences.
We see him on the set of a commercial for a diet supplement. Jin Yang Qin, the screenwriter of Taking Tiger Mountain, and Huang Xiao Tong, a conductor who performed many of the operas on stage and was jailed for daring to disagree with Madame Mao, are also interviewed. Yuen also speaks to younger people who have been influenced in various ways by the Yang Ban Xi. Zhao Wei, a rock guitar player, creates updated and remixed versions of songs from the opera. These songs form the basis of two choreographed dance sequences in the film featuring young people in hip-hop gear dancing in formation to these new versions of the operas.
However, despite the considerable verve and visual style Yuen brings to her film, and as entertaining and fast-paced as it is, the film is ultimately unfocused and surprisingly uninformative. Yuen’s film is lacking in basic information, such as identifying what exactly are the “8 Model Works.” Only three of the operas – Red Women’s Detachment, Taking Tiger Mountain, and The White-Haired Girl – are discussed in any detail. There is also little attempt to explicate how these works functioned in the context of the Cultural Revolution, as art or propaganda. Presumably there are scholars or cultural critics available who could provide some context, but none are to be found in the film.
Despite having a screenwriter and conductor on hand, Yuen consistently fails to explore the works themselves with any depth. Yang seems to regard the Yang Ban Xi as little more than camp artifacts, but this seems to me a questionable stance, considering the enormous damage the Cultural Revolution wrought on the Chinese people, the effects of which are still being felt today. The lack of this sort of context or engagement with the operas themselves as cultural objects is this film’s greatest weakness. Yuen’s lack of follow-up and elaboration with her interview subjects is also baffling. We gain no insight into why, for example, Xue Qing Hua wishes to perform the opera she starred in, since this seemed to have brought her considerable heartache. The most positive thing she offers about her experience is that she met her husband as a result. Also, there is no explanation of why these operas fascinate the younger generation. There is a potentially illuminating film to be made on this subject, but Yuen’s film unfortunately seems content to only skate the surface.
A much more accomplished and substantial evocation of recent history is offered in two films by British artist Jeremy Deller, winner of the 2004 Turner Prize. The Battle of Orgreave (2001) documents a re-enactment of the titular 1984 confrontation between striking miners and police in the South Yorkshire mining town of Orgreave. Deller conceived this recreation in order to break the silence about this incident, and to correct misconceptions that arose as a result. This incident marked a major turning point in the history of labor relations in England.
The Thatcher government seized upon this opportunity to violently suppress the labor movement and to demonstrate the ruthlessness with which she would crush social protests which opposed her economic and social policies. Thatcher infamously referred to the striking miners as “the enemy within,” who were “dangerous to liberty.” The media also conspired to paint these workers who had legitimate grievances as savage troublemakers. The BBC TV news footage deceptively edited the tapes to make it appear that the miners threw rocks at the police, causing then to charge the crowd, when in actuality it was the other way around. In 1991, the BBC belatedly apologized for this misrepresentation of events, claiming that this transposition of events was the result of “haste.”
Deller used a professional re-enactment company consisting of actors who had experience recreating Roman and medieval battles to meticulously recreate the conflict. Getting the details right was of great importance, in order to avoid the biased coloring of events that plagued previous accounts. Local people, including miners who were involved in the actual events, also participated. Interestingly, some of the miners portrayed policemen in the re-enactment. Police trainers are shown demonstrating the intimidation tactics police used, such as ominously banging their riot shields. Dirctor Mike Figgis filmed the proceedings for the TV documentary.
The Battle of Orgreave functions as a fascinating meditation on history and the ways the media and politicians filter these events. Deller creates a complex matrix of documentary, fiction, history, and memory, and makes clear, as Deller states, the importance and relevance of this episode to a present government that continues to look askance and with suspicion on people expressing their right to dissent.
Memory Bucket, the short playing with The Battle of Orgreave, also examines recent history, this time in the U.S. This film, which won Deller the Turner prize, connects two closely linked towns in Texas. Both towns, despite their close proximity, have radically different associations in the public consciousness: Waco, the scene of the infamous raid of David Kores and the Branch Davidians; and Crawford, where George W. Bush owns his ranch.
Deller interviews people in bot towns, including a survivor of the Waco disaster, and a waitress at President Bush’s favorite coffee shop. Also, a man tells the story of the Alamo, and we see an anti-Iraq war protest. But the heart of the film is in the extraordinaty final scene, featuring a swarm of bats escaping a cave and taking to the skies. The violent flapping of the bats’ wings, and the sight of the thousands of bats staining the skies represents a primal, elemental force transcending uman concerns, leading us to contemplate the natural landscape.
Other notable programs on this year’s slate include some promising films from Japan. Cop Festival and Cop Festival Reloaded are series of satirical shorts commissioned by director Makoto Shinozaki. The shorts follow three basic rules: the protagonist must be a cop; The maximum running time is 10 minutes; and there must be at least one gag per minute. Also from Japan are two programs dedicated to the “pink film,” the term for te Japanese soft-core sex film industry.
Kenjiro Fujii’s Pink Ribbon (2004) offers a thorough look at the history of the sex film industry in Japan, featuring clips, interviews with notable directors, and a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of a pink film, the finished product screening after the documentary.
This film, with the priceless title Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice (Meike Mitsuru, 2004), aka The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, follows the adventures of a sex-role play club call girl, who after being shot in the head during an arms deal between a North Korean and an Arabic man, is able to decipher foreign languages and mathematic formulas. She also holds in her possession the finger of the U.S. President, capable of launching a nuclear apocalypse. If this plot description is any indication, this film may prove to be even more deranged than even Reflections of Evil. And apparently with lots of hot sex to boot!
New York Press critic Armond White returns with his always provocative study of recent music videos. Also, there is a world premiere of Nicolas Rossier’s documentary Aristide: And the Endless Revolution (2005), about the aftermath of the ouster and exile of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a complete retrospective of the video works of photographer Robert Frank. In all, Scanners offers a remarkably varied demonstration of the depth and vitality of video art today.
