It's first time goings for most at the Manhattan international film festival, which includes the film makers as much as the audience. Indeed the festival is new and fresh and coming together as an occasion which is refreshingly un-marketed-there are few famous faces and even fewer press coverage’s. It makes a refreshing change, at times, from the overpopulation of modern film festivals, allowing you to sit back and enjoy in traditional New York cinemas, the best in unreleased independent cinema.
It would have made a nice change of pace in New York, stepping into an air conditioned theatre, being able to escape from the scorching heat of New York's unusual heat wave. On show at the festival you have range in quality and genre-from the Professional looking to the down right armature, from comedy all the way to horror. Yes, they weren't anything to shout about but there was, well a film, which was worth shouting about.
Run to the East an inspiring and professional looking 2009 production which has been circling the festival circuits throughout 2011 and was part of the official selection for the program. The documentary follows three senior high school cross country runners, who all have the chance to be the odds of their towns-they live in communities which are over run with violence, poverty and drugs. The film introduces you to three characters (all with different levels of compelling narrative) who go on their own journey’s, moving form the ups and downs, with hopefully the final goal of landing a scholarship.
We are introduced to Tails who early on tells us that she never thought of this as something she would ever get into when she was younger but now finds running as a way of escaping her poverty ridden community of Navaho to hopefully a better life. Closely afterwards we are introduced to Thomas Martinez who goes through a striking array of hairstyles all with different levels of success. He comes from a similar background-father addicted to drugs and trying to cope with the death of his mother-he finds the perseverance needed in running as a way of coping with issues and inevitable pain. Lastly Dillon Shije, who is seen as having a certain advantage compared to the other two’s seen as the fastest of the bunch-quick and determined with a loving and supportive family.
Throughout the film it becomes less about the running and more about the characters. We see where each of them lives-with them telling a little bit about there up bringing which seems a bit like tailored made questions which the director has asked them to answer. It moves through their lives for one year showing their homes (their homes are bare minimum and afford few luxuries) and it shows the depravity associated with the area in a respectful manner, and then we are back to running following who will get scholarships and who will get into the prestigious Wings of America running team. Henry Lu serves an inspired if by the numbers documentary, essentially about a story of hope. A little bit of middle class guilt sentimentality works itself through the film and it drags through spaces but nowhere near the same amount as Jig. It’s a modest documentary which ultimately succeeds in it's convictions, it’s pulpy, lively soundtrack with the like of the Phoenix's keeps the film moving at a good pace and the film has done it's trick on the community. It was good to see a film which ultimately was able to inspire some and uplift others from the communities in which these characters came from.
As it came to its end the Australian comedy The wedding party, directed and written by Amanda Jane, ultimately came to be a partly amusing farce which is almost entirely forgettable. The story is hard one. If I were to cut it short I would summarises it as a film about sex. The thing about sex is it shouldn't work but it is known for being so damn pleasurable. Your heart rate increases, your blood flow increases and your pupils dilate, you’re in an inch of your life and then it is all over. An exciting whirlwind is what I hoped early on with The Wedding party-with some funny riffs about marriage and keeping your love life inventive. Ultimately we get a shallow piece of work with same amount of well observed humour as a Dennis Dugan film-Just go with it for example. It’s relies too heavily on clichéd tropes which are never really played with and are more or less just played out in a straight manner. It’s obvious, overstuffed and slightly sexist towards both genders.
Did I forget to say that I absolutely love The Wedding party compared to the festivals next offering, a completely vapid, amateurish and laughable history drama based around a game of chess. It’s called Under Jakob's Ladder and if it were actually released on a nationwide scale it would surely be somewhere on every ones worst of the year list. As for just now however, you can just take my word for it that Under Jakob's ladder is one of the worst films to be screened in a cinema for all that 2011 will have to offer. The story is centred on a personal vendetta that one person has for another over a game of chess. When Jakob Seel defeats a Russian grandmaster of chess, Jakob hands the winning chess piece to the grandmasters son Nikoli, who doesn't take the chess piece as a compilation price but as an offence and vows to take revenge on Jakob somehow, somewhere, someday fade of into background. That sentence seems to fit the entire misjudged tone for the film. It takes it self seriously right the way through to its biter end, dragging the audience behind with it.
The film has an important issue at hand, in the same tone as films made by Rachid Bouchareb, in that it is trying to show a forgotten and powerful part of forgotten history. The story is set around an incident where people were kidnapped by a soviet regime during World War Two. The subject is never given any respect and hopefully you can think of this story being told in a better fashion by a director like Bouchareb,but the director here Mann Munoz, is more in tone with what I would presume Uwe Bolls Auschwitz would be like watching. As it stands it's a laughable mess, a jaw dropping, wrist-cuttingly awful experience of a film. It’s sporadically hysterical, over dramatic and overacted with the feeling of a film which you would watch as a treat in a history class from a very mean teacher. Thinking back I think I have seen better films in a history class, but at least it was funny, if unintentionally and for that reason it was better as a comedy than The Hangover part 2.
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