At virtual Film Forum: Art, justice and family coalesce in Catherine Gund's doc, AGGIE

Having kept myself a deliberate outsider to both the appreciation of and the world of contemporary art, TrustMovies has heard the name Agnes Gund mentioned over the years but had not paid much attention to it. That has changed with the release of the new documentary, AGGIE, directed by Gund's daughter Catherine Gund and starring -- if  rather reluctantly -- her mother. More important, the film co-stars her mom's contributions to not merely contemporary art (she's a wealthy collector of the stuff) but to the constant and necessary struggle for justice in this ever-fraught world of ours. Aggie, it turns out, puts her money -- and much else that's important, too -- where her mouth is. 

Filmmaker Gund, shown at right and at bottom with mom, lets us know from the get-go that Aggie is not particularly happy to have this film made. 

Agnes Gund is clearly quite a private person (we don't learn much at all here about her personal life), and so the documentary concentrates on the art she loves and finds important, and how this impacts and interacts with the need for justice. (The film begins with quote on the subject from another filmmaker Aggie has championed, Ava DuVernay, below.) 

Early on in the film, we see one of  those famous comic-book inspired works by Roy Lichtenstein (below) and learn that it was somehow important in ways others than merely being an expensive piece of art. Later we learn exactly how all this happened and why. 

The junior Ms Gund mixes her mom's family history with the various artists and their art that has been important to her down the decades (the elder Gunn is now in her 80s), and with the struggle for justice she fought for on so many different fronts.

These fronts include everything from the fight for LGBT rights and feminism (that's artist Xaviera Simmons, below, left), to prison reform and most interestingly, for the full rights of people of color here in the USA. Aggie had a conversation years back in which she asked how and why the German people could claim not to have known about the Nazi atrocities during World War II. "Were you alive back in the 1950s?" her companion asks. When her answer is Yes, of course, he asks her how she and all the other Americans did not seem to know or care about the lynchings, murders and general abuse of Negros in here in the USA.

Yes, The elder Gund is one of those "white innocents" -- just like me and so many others I know -- who managed to not really see and understand what was going on in our own country at that time. Gund does not excuse herself. But her life seems to have been dedicated to helping right many of the wrongs she did not or could not fully grasp as a younger person brought up in a society and culture that implicitly consented to all of this as, if not "right," still somehow acceptable.

We meet glancingly so many of the artists she has helped and championed over the years -- from the famous to simply some school-kids she's encouraged via the in-school art programs she has funded. Even John Waters is here. (Gund went to bat for MoMA's acquisition of his bad-taste masterpiece, Pink Flamingos.) By the time we see her work during the AIDS crisis right up and through our current times of Black Lives Matter and the need for prison reform, I suspect you will agree with me that this movie is one of the few recent documentaries you can call genuinely inspiring.  (That's Gund's grandson, Rio Hope Gund, above, left.) 

From Strand Releasing and running just 91 minutes, Aggie opens at New York City's Film Forum virtual cinema tomorrow, Wednesday, October 7. Click here for more information on how to view. Will the documentary screen elsewhere? Click here and then scroll down to click on SCREENINGS in the task bar for the latest update.

CHAVELA: Catherine Gund & Daresha Kyi's bio-doc offers us a chance to learn about a famous Latin American diva/chanteuse

What was it like to be a lesbian in Costa Rica and then Mexico nearly a century ago -- while at the same time being one of that latter country's most famous "cult" singers? The new documentary, CHAVELA, produced and directed by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi, explores this iconic performer, Chavela Vargas, her early history and musical debut, struggles with alcohol, enforced retirement and eventual return to performing and finally enormous international acclaim. This is a wonderful and rich tale, and it's told here well enough, if you hold on through the very moving finale, to make the experience worthwhile, even for those of us, like TrustMovies, who had never before heard of this unusual woman.

The film-making team of Gund and Kyi, shown above with the former on the left, have assembled enough archival material to give us a visual approximation of Chavela's early years, along with the kind of parenting experience no child should ever have to endure.

This would insure the sort of loss and betrayal -- by both her family and the local priest -- from which the singer, shown at left in her younger years and below in the older, would never recover and which would set the stage, it seems, for all future relationships.

We hear about and see some of those relationships, via photos and film of the day, and in the interviews with a few of the folk who knew her then and are still around to tell us about her.

Chavela was a lesbian in a time and in a country when and where one simply did not acknowledge this. Still, she managed to live a rather remarkably "free" life -- performing, drinking and womanizing like any male celebrity of the day.

Rumors about her life and loves probably outdid her actual exploits -- but perhaps by not very much. Part of the film's fun comes from never quite being sure which is which.

Along the way we meet famous Mexican celebrities of the time -- from singer José Alfredo Jiménez to Frida Kahlo (there's some surprising archival footage of the latter!). Chavela's alcohol addiction is given its due, as is her triumphal return to cabaret that involves a nice Judy Garland moment. But as the tell-it-all documentary makes clear, this was one a hugely difficult, even violent woman, directing that violence to those around her, including the companion, below, right, who appears to have been most responsible for her success in later years.

Once film director Pedro Almodóvar appears on the scene as a huge fan of the singer (he used her songs in several of his films), Chavela makes her successful debut in Spain, and then, thanks to the "push" of the filmmaker, in Paris, too. Even to the Bellas Artes in Mexico. Finally, after some 40 years, the singer has moved from cabaret to actual theaters and concert halls.

The film's weakest point is that it never is able to let us experience the performer's songs at all fully. We see clips of her performing and see the lyrics translated into English, but the experience, both visually and aurally, is too distanced and puny to give us anything like full access so that we can understand why she is said to have commanded the stage so thoroughly. Yet her struggle, a continuing thing, proves tremendously moving -- in particular her life-long yearning for the love of a mother who never gave it. That, it would seem, was the single constant in Chavela's sad but long and full life.

From Music Box Films and running 93 minutes, the documentary has its theatrical premiere this Wednesday, October 4, at New York City's Film Forum, and then on Friday, October 6, opens in Los Angeles (at Landmark's NuArt), San Francisco (at Landmark's Opera Plaza), Berkeley (at Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas) and Santa Barbara (at the Riviera Theatre), and subsequently at another dozen cities across the country. Here in South Florida, it will play Miami's Tower Theater, Regal's South Beach and The Classic Gateway in Fort Lauderdale starting Friday, October 27. Click here and then click on THEATERS to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.