Justice delayed (and delayed and delayed) in Almudena Carracedo & Robert Bahar's very necessary documentary about Spain's ongoing fascist history, THE SILENCE OF OTHERS

How long has this justice been delayed? Just ask (if only you still could) María Martín, shown below, the 83-year-old woman we meet first in THE SILENCE OF OTHERS. María's mother was taken by fascist dictator Francisco Franco's followers during the Spanish Civil War, shot and killed and then buried in a mass grave. María has spent the rest of her life trying to obtain -- no, not even a shred of justice, let alone vengeance -- only her mother's remains in order to give the woman a proper burial. Good luck with that.

María is only one of the several people we meet in this new documentary, directed and co-written by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar (shown below with Ms Carracedo on the left), all of whom are awaiting justice. José María Galante (two photos below), for instance, lives just down the street from the man who tortured him (and others) over and over again during the Franco regime, yet has thus far been meted out no punishment for his crimes against humanity. How creepy and disgusting is that?

But filmmakers Carracedo and Bahar are not the type to unduly raise their voice or dabble in heavy melodramatics. Instead they present their case (compiled over a period of six years) quietly and methodically, in which only a few of these justice-seekers are shown us, along with the folk (lawyers and so forth in both Spain and Argentina) who are helping them along. Spanish justice, it would seem, moves at the pace of a snail on tranquilizers and includes what some of these people refer to as "the law of forgetting."

When, at the end of Franco's dictatorship back in the 1970s, amnesty was finally given to political prisoners, this amnesty only came with the requirement that equal amnesty be given to those to tortured, murdered and stole both the babies and even some of the older children of the vanquished. Where, for god's sake, is the "justice" in any of this? And yet, as the documentary makes clear, those seeking justice have kept pushing for it down the decades.

The filmmakers also offer us enough history to at least partially understand the background of what happened in Spain and why it so divided this nation. Which remains, by the way, as divided as ever. We see the Spanish equivalent of America's dumbed-down, hate-filled and utterly "conned" right-wing populace (above), as well as those who keep fighting for some semblance of justice, along with some of the testimony -- staggering, moving and surprising -- of those who were tortured.

One elderly woman (I believe her name is Ascensión Mendieta), above, center, must travel at her very advanced age to Argentina and back because the Spanish courts refuse to even take up the case of the victims here in Spain. Yet, according to the Argentine lawyer who does take the case, if the Spanish courts would or could only hear the testimony of these survivors, they might finally be moved to action.

Will Spain ever confront its fascist past in any probing, meaningful manner? We shall see. Meanwhile, this new and award-winning documentary provides yet another step in what is sadly a very long process. That the first and only monument/sculpture (below) dedicated to these victims was itself riddled with bullet holes by the evening of the first day of its unveiling speaks volumes about a Spain still halfway in thrall to fascism.

From Argot Pictures, in Spanish with English subtitles, and running 96 minutes, The Silence of Others has its U.S. theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, May 8, in New York City at Film Forum for a one-week run. Other playdates? There'll be plenty. Among them: Laemmle's Music Hall in Los Angeles on May 24, and here in South Florida at the Tower Theater, Miami, on June 7. Click here to learn if there's a theater near you.

Christian Petzold's PHOENIX explores post-Holocaust love, identity, guilt and avarice

That old standard, "Speak Low," gets quite the workout in PHOENIX, a new film from German movie-maker Christian Petzold, who seems, with each addition to his oeuvre, to be journey-ing further and further back in time and history. His Yella and Jerichow were relatively modern-day tales; Barbara took us back to East Germany in the 1980s; now his new one reaches all the way to immediately post-Holocaust, as the few Jews left were returning to their former homes throughout Europe -- or heading for Palestine.

As is the case in all of Petzold's work I've seen -- the co-writer (with Harun Farocki) and director is shown at left -- the plot relies on a very interesting, and usually only partially believable twist, played for all it is worth. And with this filmmaker, that means it's worth at least a watch. Phoenix, in my estimation, proves his most fully satisfying work to date because it takes the several themes at hand -- the Holocaust, self-identity (with emphasis on those of both Judaism and feminism), physical appearance, loyalty and love -- and blends them into a surprisingly effective whole.

If Herr Petzold could be said to have a muse, it would be his lead actress in several films: Nina Hoss (above, right, below, left and poster, top), who is as fine here as she always is, maybe even better. Ms Hoss has the ability to convince us that reams of subtext, as well as an enormous and roiling past exists within her slight frame and beautiful, expressive face -- all of which is true in the case of her character, Nelly.

Nelly has just returned from a concentration camp, where she was left for dead from a gunshot wound to the skull. In addition to being resuscitated, she has also undergone a major face lift, hoping to get something like her original face but coming up with a visage that is similar but also different enough to be a tad confusing.

Her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf, above) is making arrangements for the two of them to leave for Palestine, but Nelly is not ready for that. She wants to find her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld, below), a pianist who used to accompany her on the piano when she sang professionally.  Clearly still head-over-heels about the man, Nelly can't abide the idea, planted rather firmly by Lene, that her husband ratted her out as a Jew to the Gestapo so he could play the get-out-of-jail-free card.

The set-up is clear and the movie proceeds from that set-up, full speed ahead but with enough ambiguity and mixed signals to keep us -- and its characters -- on our toes. Nelly's identity is locked into her love for Johnny more strongly than anything that happened to her in the camp as a Jew (this fact riles Lene not a little).

And though Johnny appears pretty much as Lene paints him, so obsessive and enormous is Nelly's love for the guy that she has us wondering if, maybe hoping that, she could be right. The movie rises slowly to some excellent suspense, some striking visuals, and to a finale that is absolutely on the mark -- emotionally, psychologically and dramatically sound.

Performances are fine from all involved, and one of the pleasures of the movie is that, while providing suspense and entertainment, it never slights the importance of the Holocaust to history (and German history), and in fact offers up a few choice ideas about human behavior and our ability to all too easily forget and even forgive.

Phoenix, from Sundance Selects -- the title refers to a club in which cabaret and other post-war amenities (above) are offered and at which our Johnny has a job, as well as to that famed Firebird rising from the ashes -- opens this Friday, Just 24, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. In the Los Angeles area, look for it at various Laemmle theaters beginning July 31.

In Joe Berlinger's HANK: 5 YEARS FROM THE BRINK, Mr. Paulson tells his side of the meltdown

With so very much to view out there in Netflix streaming-land, TrustMovies is not sure he'd have watched HANK: 5 YEARS FROM THE BRINK -- the story of how Hank Paulson helped this country and the world avoid a complete financial meltdown -- were it not that its filmmaker is Joe Berlinger, the guy who gave us the Paradise Lost trilogy, Crude, and other worthwhile documentaries. TM is glad he did because -- even after all the many documentaries and docu-dramas that have tackled one or another aspect of this hugely harmful fiasco, from the Cockburns' American Casino to Chasing Madoff -- this one remains of interest, worth seeing and hearing (yes, it's mostly talking heads again) as much for the fact that it seems to sink its own protagonist and torpedo his scenario as anything else.

Mr. Berlinger, shown at left, appears to be investigating here only his subject's side of the story, allowing the much (depending on which camp you occupy) reviled or loved Mr. Paulson to explain, with occasional questions from the filmmaker, what happened and why. Paulson's wife Wendy is also on hand to explain and second some of this banker/administrator's ideas and actions, as well as his "character." Wendy, shown below, is impressive as a no-nonsense woman who has stood by her man for decades now.

We learn more about Paulson here than we have elsewhere, though there is no mention of his religion -- Christian Science, again! -- and how it might have affected his ideas and actions (and believe me, as an ex-Christian Scientist, this odd religion surely does). We get some history -- how he and Wendy met and did not, initially, hit it off; his first "bailout," of Lockheed, back in the 70s; his work in and with the Nixon administration; and his tenure at Goldman Sachs, which led eventualy to his job as CEO; and his appointment by George W. Bush (who asked several times before Paulson agreed: evidently his family members were not that keen on the activities of the Bush administration) as Secretary of the Treasury.

Of course, it's the story of the meltdown -- how it happened and who did what (or often didn't) -- that is most "grabbing" here, and though we've heard it before, notably well in the cable TV movie Too Big to Fail, Paulson's story still rivets. I wish Berlinger had been more forceful in finding out why Bear Stearns was "rescued" while Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse. (Could Richard Fuld really be that big an asshole, or was Lehman Brothers simply small enough to fail?)

While Paulson pays lip-service to the need for better regulation of the banks and Wall Street, somehow this is all it ever sounds like: more tiresome blather, too-little-too-late. This co-joined industry, as we have learned and still learn daily from information that continues to leak out of this soiled sieve, is rotten to the core -- just as are the would be regulators who "service" it instead of regulating it, and the agencies that "rate" its trash as triple A.

The section on those famous loan carriers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and whether they are indeed part of the government or not, is fascinating and necessary to consider, while Paulson's talk of how the Domino Theory of failing banks (and shadow banks) should instead be thought of as a Popcorn Theory makes little sense and in any case is not explained well at all. And why include such a lengthy discussion of a cashmere coat Paulson once bought at Bergdorf's (and then returned, upon some nagging from Wendy) unless one is dead set on proving what a thrifty and non-material-possessions-loving family this is?

We sense an anger in Paulson (below) regarding the hypocrisy of these CEOs, none of whom at the time of the crisis and their acceptance of a government bail-out like TARP wanted to admit that their firm was in trouble. But when Paulson make a statement like "People generally believe that Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner (shown above) and I tell the truth," one is a bit taken aback. By not telling the whole truth but only using selective portions, Paulson and that whole gang were more part of the problem than any solution. Yet he needs to see himself as some kind of savior. (He also completely ignores what Goldman Sachs was doing in derivatives when he was in charge of it and how much money he walked away with during those years.)

The man certainly has some fine qualities, and he finally comes across as a relatively decent guy in the service of much worse men. What should make you particularly angry at this movie is how Paulson manages to side-step so well. "We will always have financial crises, no matter what the regulatory system is," he insists. Oh, Please. Let's put some real regulations back first, and then talk about it. He tells us that he left a blueprint for regulation of the industry. Lovely -- but what is it, exactly, and is anyone acting on it?

Available now via Netflix streaming, Hank: 5 Years from the Brink is a good movie to get your blood pressure back up while taking yet another walk down an all-too-recent and ugly memory lane. I suspect Berlinger has somehow acted here as a stealth agent, allowing Paulson and crew to "explain" themselves and then compiling and editing it all their "innocence" into something a little less than benign.

None of the photos above are from the film itself. 

I couldn't find any (the movie is not being given 

much of a marketing push), and so I

just grabbed a few off the internet....

In TV MAN: The Search for the Last Inde-pendent Dealer, filmmaker Steve Kosareff does exactly that -- with surprising results

Nostalgia's a funny thing, for sure, and it comes in all kinds of shapes and forms. One look at the poster art for the new documentary TV MAN: THE SEARCH FOR THE LAST INDEPENDENT DEALER, and plenty of us who remember the early days of television will be immediately hooked. And yet the movie and the man who made it are interested in more than merely looking at or addressing early TV per se. Instead, Steve Kosareff and his oddball little film take a look at, first, some of the guys who sold -- and serviced -- those original TVs and then move on to the few remaining "independent dealers," mostly in the Pacific Northwest, who continue to do so -- at no little peril to their pocketbooks and, consequently, their lives.

Mr. Kosareff (shown at right), who wrote, produced and directed this film -- his first -- is also said to be a TV expert and author of the book Window to the Future: The Golden Age of Television Marketing and Advertising. His ostensible reason for making this movie was to find a present-day dealer who could repair the first TV set he owned: a 12-inch black-and-white portable "Jetline" made by Zenith that Kosareff has his hand through the handle of, at right. The set no longer works, but for nostalgic reasons, he wants it to. Clearly, he could not actually watch much of anything on it, since, these days, reception is received digitally and shown on wide-screen flat-screens.

So bear with the filmmaker and his odyssey, please, because it very soon becomes a genuinely fascinating look at a few of the folk, shown above and below, who still run (or in some cases ran: We learn updates as the end credits roll) independent shops where televisions are sold and serviced. Service, in fact, is key to why most of them still survive.

These people are fun, funny and sometimes unintentionally but beautifully moving, and Kosareff allows them to explain their lives as best they can, which is often quite well. He also seeds his film with some wonderful archival footage, below, of some early television, and also of some early TV-set salesmen, like the guy in that American Indian headdress (so not-at-all politically correct for our day).

We see everyone from comedian Jonathan Winters to early Sally Field (below), find out why women were so important to TV manufacturing (small hands!), learn about how the barter system worked for early TV repair ("One day I came home with a load of pigs....") and so much more that's sweet, charming, nostalgic and, considering where we're headed, sometimes unbearably sad.

To hear these workers talk about their customers and their lives is something we don't get much of these days. The movie is a paean to small retailers, and some of you will wish that you could visit their stores, rather than walk into yet another Best Buy or Walmart.

As a filmmaker, Kosareff is functional but occasionally surprises us with some treats: using that old TV "snow" to cut between scenes and offering us some wonderful old artwork from the 1950s where it seems that couples got dressed in their finest attire -- to sit down and watch their tiny little black-and-white TVs! He even has one set of dealers view clips (above) from the old Frank Sinatra thriller, Suddenly, that features a terrific little section all about a repairman and electrocution via TV!

So does our traveler ever get his little old Zenith repaired?  You'll find out, and the moment when you do will produce, for anyone old enough to remember a few decades past, a frisson of delight and déjà vu. (Zenith's own story is here, too, which, different from Detroit's, seems to have more to do with America's view of fair trade and less with a product that was inferior or non-competitive.)

TV Man -- running 82 minutes -- turns out to be a rich combination of nostalgia and present-day concerns. It's unlike any other documentary out there, and so deserves to be seen, enjoyed and mulled over. It opens this Friday, September 6, in Los Angeles for a week's run at Laemmle's Monica 4. What about New York City? A film this good and this different ought to have a run here, too. So let's hope. If I discover another opening, here or elsewhere, I'll update this post to include it.

Lilly Rivlin's ESTHER BRONER celebrates the gal who gave us the first feminist seder

TrustMovies knew nothing about Esther Broner (1927-2011) when he sat down to watch the new documentary ESTHER BRONER: A WEAVE OF WOMEN. But he did know something about the filmmaker, Lilly Rivlin, for he had seen her earlier and excellent documentary, Grace Paley: Collected Shorts, when it played the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival back in 2010. Rivlin's new film on Broner plays this year's SFJFF, which begins on Thursday, July 25. That her film on Paley has still not opened theatrically here in New York (or even been seen on our PBS station) where the famous author lived, worked and protested, borders on the criminal -- culture-wise, at least.

If Esther Broner: AWOW proves perhaps a tad less interesting than the Paley film, that may be due to the fact many of us will know much less about Broner or her work that we do about the late Ms Paley and hers. This has an upside, however; by the time we've finished watching Esther in thought and action, we're certain to have learned a lot. Director/producer Rivlin, shown at right (the film's co-producer is Margaret Murphy, shown below), was present at the creation (or near to it), so to speak, when Esther came up with her idea for the very first feminist Seder, during the time when (to my mind, anyway) feminism was on the rise and approaching its peak.

While I actually wish this were not so, as feminism still has a long way to go, I suppose that we must be patient and wait for that pendulum to finally swing back, allowing the rights of women to be taken more seriously again.

So, what's the reason behind -- and the need for -- a feminist Seder? (That's an early version, shown below.) As one of the women here explains it, "Those of us who gathered for that first feminist Seder understood that the equality we were fighting for in society had to extend to the traditions of Judaism." Notes another, dryly: "The original exodus didn't even mention women." Or, as Gloria Steinem, one of the attendees, explains it, "That first Seder really felt like rebellion."

Throughout this documentary, which jumps back and forth in time, we get a pretty good history of Esther, as well as her husband, Robert, who became a well-known American artist. We learn that Esther traveled to and lived for awhile in America's south, where she broke the front door of her home so that all visitors -- not just "coloreds," as was the custom then -- had to use the back door.

Late in life, after the financial meltdown, Broner had this to say: "I thought we'd have Socialism by now, at the least. I never thought that the rich would grow richer and the poor poorer. That's not what we were studying for." Regarding the feminist Seder, with growth and popularity came problems -- mostly about whom to invite. "And Esther just wouldn't fight about this," notes one of the women interviewed here.

Considering the documentary's short length (just 62 minutes, including credits), we get a fairly rounded view of this unique woman. A novelist, playwright, ritualist and feminist writer, Broner was very much into "magic" and witch-like rituals. But, as writer Vivian Gornick, who was not into this sort of thing, explains: "It was her genuineness. She came through for people in ways that were just right for them. And just at the moment they needed it."

One of the most interesting sections of the film involves Broner's father, after the death of whom, Esther searched for an orthodox synagogue in which she would be allowed to recite the prayer for the dead. It wasn't easy to find a synagogue that would allow this; when she finally did, she still had to recite behind a curtain.

As the movie points out, in Jewish tradition, male lineage dominates identity, from son to son to son. Yet you can't even be a Jew unless the woman who gave birth to you was, too. What's with that? Just more patriarchal hypocrisy I suppose. Whatever, it took 17 years of pushing before Esther finally was able to see her Women's Haggadah published in 1994.

Stay through the end credits, please, or you'll miss a wonderful moment, as Michele Landsberg talks about Esther's unique laugh -- and then gives us a pretty wonderful imitation of it.

Esther Broner: A Weave of Women plays at the SFJFF at the California Theater on Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 1:50 pm. Let's hope it makes its way here to New York, and elsewhere. (And that Rivlin's terrific Grace Paley movie finally does, too.)

Photo credits: 

just above, courtesy of Wayne State University; 
the penultimate shot, by Bob Vigelletti;  

three photos above, by Willy Clay; 
six photos above, by Joan Roth.

Further 'enemies of the people' explored in Joshua Oppenheimer's The ACT of KILLING

Back in 2010, we covered a small but piercing documentary entitled Enemies of the People (that review can be found here) about Cambodia, in which its filmmakers record the words and actions of, among other "murderers," one of the top Khmer Rouge officials under Pol Pot, responsible for countless deaths of his countrymen, as he and others confess, right in front of us, on-screen. The film was grueling, informative, moving and hugely effective -- unlike anything that I had seen previously. Now, with THE ACT OF KILLING -- a new documentary that explores similar behavior in a very different country, Indonesia -- filmmakers Joshua Oppenheimer (below, left), Christine Cynn (below, right) and Anonymous (who, if s/he were identified, might risk death to him/herself and family) take this confession of genocide even further into the realm of, dare we say it, art.

Despite the similarity in subject matter, the extreme differences between these two films can be placed on the doorstep of both the countries in question and the people making the two movies. Indonesia has a squalid and disgusting history of genocidal dictatorship, death, torture and a populace most likely by now inured to this kind of slavery and lack of change. Cambodia's is otherwise. I am no expert here, but I believe that the revolutionary, horrific and relatively short

reign of the Khmer Rouge was a one-off thing for a people who had, like so many others, endured colonization and unfair rule, but whose religion of Buddhism, inflected with Hinduism, had endowed it with a certain inner peace (OK: I'm being a little simple-minded here, but culture, history and even -- gasp! -- religion do matter. Indonesia, by the way is almost entirely Muslim: over 87 percent, according to the 2010 census.) And while the filmmakers of Enemies -- Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath (the latter's family was killed by the Khmer Rouge) -- took a simpler, more direct and personal approach that resulted in a purer look at people and events, Killing's crew have seen fit to quite heighten their film's rather surprising entertainment value.

Among other enticements, Oppenheimer et al. give us a "film" within the film (above) meant to somehow obscure the events; family celebrations; rehearsals and recreations of murder, mayhem and wives and children pleading for their loved ones' lives; tepid choreography amidst nature's grandeur (also above), accompanied by the famous pop song, "Born Free," which will never have been heard quite so full of irony; and a whole lot more.

Yes, this gussies up the film (it also lengthens it: 122 minutes against Enemies' 93), while making us better under-stand why two famous doc-makers -- Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, who also employ the art of gussying -- are credited with "presenting" this film. If The Act of Killing ends up entertaining us a tad shallowly against our better judgment, it also enriches, making us explore from different angles, while alerting us all over again to how human beings seem best built for killing, hypocrisy and denial.

The two main men we meet in the film, and who would have to be considered its stars, are one who calls himself Anwar Congo and another named Adi Zulkadry. Both -- shown in "make-up," above, with Anwar on the right -- are mass murderers. But the way they've handled this, down the decades, is quite different. Anwar is the more outgoing of the two, a real "family" man (shown below with his grandkids), but he's also the one who appears to be having trouble putting the past to rest. (Though I'm not quite sure I believed in his nightmares and "guilt." In the end scene, he seems to be wretching badly, but no vomit ever comes up. He may simply be the supreme "actor.")

Adi has a much better handle on it all. More direct and initially "honest," it turns out he believes in putting everything behind him and just leaving it there. Supposedly, because of the statute of limitations, the men can no longer be charged. But this has more to do with the current-and-as-ever political situation in Indonesia, where criminals, whether politicians or gangsters like these two guys, rule entirely. (The term "gangster," we're told again and again by the murderes on view, actually means "free man," which is yet more bullshit, just like much else spouted by Anwar and Adi.)

This movie, often disgusting and stomach-churning, will make you about as angry as any documentary you've experien-ced. (The Indonesian TV talk show, below, provides just one of these moments.) And then, as it goes along, you may find yourself beginning to identify with these two men. Just a little. But enough to possibly admit to the humanity we share. Oh, you'll still want them dead -- and maybe tortured a lot beforehand -- to somehow make up for every last one of those poor Communists, Chinese, or any other of the "other" deemed worthy of killing, whom they ushered into oblivion.

This is never broached in the film, but watching Anwar, I couldn't help but wonder if he isn't gay. I mean he looks, acts and dresses that way. But then, as we're in a Muslim country, this must of course go totally unexplored. At one point, early on, I think it was Anwar who explains, "We have to show who we are so that, in the end, people will remember." Uh... Yes, indeed, honey. And you and Adi -- along with Oppenheimer, Ms Cynn and Anonymous (the end credits here, unlike those of any motion picture I've seen, are chock full of this word) -- have done exactly that.

The Act of Killing, from Drafthouse Films, opens this Friday, July 19, exclusively in New York City at Landmark's Sunshine Cinema, where director Joshua Oppenheimer will appear in person on 7/19 at the 7:30pm showing and on 7/20 at both the 4:50 and 7:30pm showings. In the following weeks, the movie will roll out across the country in most major cities. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.