OPINION | NEW MOVIES: ACS Filmland 5 Features A Few Standouts
The Arkansas Cinema Society's Filmland event (this year it's called Filmland 5) returns next week.
Looking at their schedule, perhaps the film I'm most looking forward to is Christian R. Hill's documentary God Said Gives Us Drum Machines, which explores the roots of techno music in the black communities of Detroit and downtown Chicago and what that culture was like. appropriated and commercialized by European artists in the 1980s.
As regular readers of this column know, I hate reviewing films I haven't seen, and although Drum Machines was on the short list of films I wanted to see at this year's Tribeca Festival, I didn't make it. But I'm interested in his argument because what we now call cultural appropriation is one of the ways in which art develops organically. There is a moral difference between Pat Boone covering "race records" to cash in on white audiences who are deprived of access to reality and Keith Richards wanting to be Elmore James.
In general, I am not in favor of dictating the artist's tools or medium. White can play the blues. You don't have to listen to them.
And of course, when I think of Techno, I immediately think of Kraftwerk, which was founded in Dusseldorf in 1970. Kraftwerk started out as part of the "Krautrock" scene, meaning they were a fairly standard rock band that mixed psychedelic rock and art (think Teutonic King Crimson) before fully diversifying in the 70s. evolved into electronic noise makers. They had a very successful pop series. Recordings 1974-1981: Autobahn, Trans-Europa-Express, The Man-Machine and Computer World. Their sparse arrangements and hypnotic drum machines were seen in some circles as an Apollonian antidote to the Dionysian punk rock scene.
But I don't think Kraftwerk has any role in this particular history of techno, which, from what I've read, focuses on the genre's Detroit "origins" and the simultaneous rise of house music in Chicago. . The film's thesis is that techno was largely invented by six black Detroit artists who revolutionized black music in the 1980s and was later heavily imitated in the early 90s by the efforts of Richie Hawtin, an Englishman raised in Ontario who grew in Detroit Spread across Europe. as a techno popularizer.
I think Hawtin is portrayed as a money launderer in the movie, and the movie claims he was hated in Detroit for profiting off pirate ideas.
While I'm no technical expert, I'm interested in hearing that argument. Most of the reviews I've read, and most of the people who have written about God Said Give 'Em Drum Machines, seem to have, or at least claim to have, some experience and are likely to cut my eyes. naivety in Kraftwerk reference - Acknowledges the film's usefulness, but notes that it mostly functions as a love letter to the Detroit scene. With delicious rhythms.
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I'm much better off with Empire of Light, the Sam Mendes film (opening in early December) that opens the festival on Wednesday. Because I actually saw that movie.
The virtues of Empire of Light include an excellent cast, beautiful visuals and a wonderful setting: a faded but still beautiful seaside cinema in Margate on the south coast of England in 1981 (one of the film's key scenes takes place at the premiere of “Wagwaens van Vuur.” I haven't read much about it, but this is another film similar to Alfonso Cuaron's Roma (2018) and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019): a Rerun of the director's personal experience.
That said, Empire of Light feels like a piece of memory, at least in its best moments. Mendes grew up in North London, but over the Easter weekend of 1981 there were several "sea riots" where youths, including punks and skinheads, some of them fascists or Nazis, attacked various seaside resorts, including Margate, where they were arrested 39 people. .exciting. . Mendes would have turned 16 that spring and he would have been aware of the Brixton riots taking place in south London and the coastal disasters. (This was one of the Spring Festival holiday traditions in England in 1981, starting around 1964 when mods and rockers began to collide. Check out the 1979 film version of Frank Roddam's Quadrophenia.)
The biggest problem with Empire of Light is that it can never be tied to a specific type of film. It's by turns a dark workplace comedy, a quirky May-October romance, a beautifully crafted exercise in nostalgia, a platform from which Olivia Colman can launch another Best Actress campaign, and practical style magic of Cinema Paradiso." Movies. While any movie would be, well, great, the end result here is an insufferable cable viewer who changes channels suddenly and too often. It's good cinema, and cinematographer Roger Deakins pulls off his usual visuals. excellent, but not the most satisfying or safe cinema.
Still, it should pull in decent audiences and some Oscar nominations. I'm not good at this, but I think Deakins and Coleman are pretty much in the running; while Colin Firth has a chance to win Best Supporting Actor. (Though I'd rather see Toby Jones as the old wise-cracking projectionist who takes the offer.)
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Also on Filmland 5's opening night, In Nikyatu features Jussou's debut Nanny, in which Anna Diop works as a Senegalese nanny for an undocumented Manhattan couple (Morgan Spector and Michelle Monaghan) as they prepare for the arrival of their son. He abandoned them when a violent supernatural presence began to infiltrate his dreams and his waking life.
OK. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was well received by critics, noting Diop's performance and Jussou's effective storytelling.
Other films in this year's lineup include Neil LaBute's thriller House of Darkness, shot mostly in Northwest Arkansas; The Inspection, Elegance Bratton's drama about a gay black man who joins the Marines; the 1998 Farrell Brothers comedy There's Something About Mary; and Turning Red, a well-received film from the Pixar family earlier this year.
Announced guests who will participate in Q&A sessions following the film include House of Darkness director LaBute and actor Gia Crovatin; Mark Irwin, cinematographer and cinematographer of Something for Mary; and Drum Machines director Christian R. Hill and producer Jennifer Washington.
Several seminars and round tables are also planned. Information on the schedule of events and admission prices, as well as how to purchase tickets, can be found at Filmland.org. ACS members receive 50% off all Filmland events.
