Words You Can Use: The BAVC BLOG

by Jen G, Lead Developer, BAVC Strategic Initiatives

If you get to go to Sundance for only a few days, it is imperative to focus on what you’ve seen, not what you’ve missed. I went for four whirlwind days, and spent time at the Queer Lounge, New Frontiers on Main, the Queer Brunch, the Adobe party, the CineVegas party, Film Arts’ condo, the fireplace in the Slamdance lobby, and of course, holed up in the BAVC condo trying to warm my -1°F toes. I skipped Paris Hilton and the US Weekly version of Sundance, but saw a few of my kind of celebrities: Killer Films’ Christine Vachon, speaking on an unadvertised panel about social issue in film at the Queer Lounge, Patti Smith, representing a film about, well, Patti Smith, and Jamie Babbitt, chatting happily on the shuttle on the way to her first screening of the festival. And of course, I focused on seeing as many films as possible. Here are a few documentary gems that glimmered against the bleak white snow in Park City.

Art Star and the Sudanese Twins [New Zealand, 2007, 109 mins]
Directed by Pietra Brettkelley
Edited by Irena Dol, who received the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at the festival

Brettkelley’s complex, though not entirely critical portrayal of international “art star” Vanessa Beecroft is one of the most thought-provoking documentaries you’ll see this year. Beecroft is known for her controversial participatory photography, in which she arranges human subjects to her liking. Every artist who deals with human subjects struggles with representation, but few do so with such controversy. A scene in the film depicts, for example, Beecroft staging several dozen naked female models as suit-clad art (or naked lady) appreciators sip wine and look at them. Is this feminist, or anti-feminist? If you do ‘the thing’ with minimal commentary, do you become ‘the thing’ itself – objectifying, mysogenist, racist? Beecroft claims to be asking these questions, but the moral question becomes the thrust of the film and of Beecroft’s dilemma.

The film chronicles Beecroft’s journeys in Southern Sudan, where she falls in love with two (partially) orphaned Sudanese twins and latches onto them, incorporating them into her artwork and attempting to adopt them. The iconic photo of her breast feeding the babies drew a plethora of both criticism and praise. The artist compares her struggle to that of Angelina Jolie – one of salvation and struggle – but who is saving whom? It is painful to watch her grasping the babies as a town elder argues that they should not be photographed naked in a church. It is Beecroft’s incomprehension of the words and the scene, and her conviction that she is the babies’ righteous guardian, that makes her most detestable. And yet, while watching her deceive others (including her husband, who isn’t exactly privy to the adoption attempts) is difficult, watching her deceive herself is excruciating, but almost redemptive. Whatever you think of Beecroft as the curtain comes down, you won’t leave without an opinion and a sense of ethical curiosity. In leaving you wondering where the filmmaker herself stands, Brettkelley has accomplished this with flair and powerful storytelling.

Nerakhoon (The Betrayal) [U.S.A., 2008, 87 mins]
Directed/shot by Ellen Kuras, Co-directed/Edited by Thavisouk Phrasavath

This epic film by world-renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras, in collaboration with her subject and Co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath, is a poetic and visual delight. The film chronicles Thavi’s childhood in war-torn Laos, the disappearance of his father, his escape to the United States, and his family’s struggle to make it in Brooklyn as Thavi assumes the role of his siblings’ father. Because the film was in the making for twenty-three years, the two evolved professionally and personally during the course of its capture. And yet, they achieve a consistency of style, image, and quality that marks Kuras’ work and is a testament to her acute vision.

Like Patti Smith: Dream of Life (which also premiered at Sundance this year, and took the Excellence in Cinematography Award), Nerakhoon is a direct collaboration between subject and author. Both films chronicle a portion of a life, and both include heavy narration and staged images of the subject/Co-director. These are carefully selected moments of exposure, interspersed with glimpses of “real life” and chosen by the Co-Directors for their significance. The level of participation leaves your viewing experience somewhere between portrait and first-person narrative, and you can’t help but wonder what the films would’ve been like as one or the other.

Nerakhoon isn’t without verité scenes or emotional moments – it has several of both. More emotional, though, were the contagious tears that were shed by its makers just after this filmic birth. Witnessing this is a Sundance moment I won’t forget. But the first audience member to pose a question seemed to miss the point of imparted cultural understanding entirely. “How did you meet those people?” she asked innocently, addressing Kuras while Thavi (“that person”) stood next to her. The insensitivity of the question wasn’t lost on the snickering audience. It was politely rephrased by a Sundance moderator: “The question was, how did you two meet?” It was something I wondered, too, and this is a film whose epic making is nearly as interesting (though probably not as cinematic) as the story itself.

La Corona (The Crown) [2007, 40 mins],
Directed by Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega
Sundance award: Honorable mention in short filmmaking.

La Corona drops you into one of the craziest places you’ll ever have the opportunity to visit, in real life or through documentary cinema. It depicts a beauty pageant in a women’s prison in Bogotá, Columbia, and all of the heartache, violence, antics, and street-smart determination that go along with such a scene. In the rare opportunies they had to document inside the prison walls, Micheli and Vega manage to zero in on intimate moments that take place in the midst of this chaos, as well as allow the viewers to participate in the chaos of the pageant itself. The result is like standing in the middle of a vibrant, violent, passionate Disneyland or witnessing a moment of connection between strangers. La Corona has deservedly made the short list for the Academy Award.