THE SKYJACKER'S TALE: Jamie Kastner's fascinating update on a 1970s robbery/ massacre and a 1980s airplane hi-jacking

Giving you a plethora of opinions -- including that of the skyjacker himself (who now resides in Cuba) -- about an event that happened in the U.S. Virgin Islands decades ago and that resulted in lengthy prison sentences and finally the hijacking of an airplane during the following decade, THE SKYJACKER'S TALE is a crackerjack story that many of us may not recall, since that initial event happened "overseas," as it were, at one of those Caribbean Island paradises-for-the-wealthy-at-the-expense-of-the-locals.

Filmmaker Jamie Kastner, shown at right, does something that almost seems unusual in these days of take-your-side-and damn-well-stay-there politics and movie-making: He doesn't unduly push us to accept either the view of the skyjacker (Ishmael Labeet, aka Ismael Muslim Ali) or those of his antagonists, the police, politicians (one of whom is shown below) and investigators who rounded up the suspects and made damn sure they were found guilty by and via the powers-that-were back in the day.

The documentary is narrated for the most past by Mr. Labeet/Ali from his home in Cuba, the country to which he made certain that the hijacked plane was routed and where he has lived ever since 1982. (One of the number of small surprises that keep this film so interesting has to do with exactly where Labeet spent the first of his first years in Cuba, and how he felt about all this.)

Although the skyjacking itself made big news in the USA, it was the direct result of that Virgin Island robbery and murder of eight people a decade earlier that led to Labeet's actions on the plane. Once we learn some of the history of the "U.S." Virgin Islands (purchased from Denmark back in 1916), and of the robbery/massacre itself, so many questions arise about the procedures -- legal and otherwise -- used to first identify the perpetrators, obtain their confessions, and then take them to trial and sentencing that the documentary begins to seem like a kind of "prequel," Virgin Islands-style, to the later tale of The Central Park Five.

Sure, it's possible that Labeet (shown above, below and at bottom) and his pals were indeed the killers. But it is just as possible that they were not. and no effort seems to have been made, at any point, to find any other suspects. This, together with the lack of any real evidence of guilt provided by the authorities, is suspicious, to say the least. The movie also comes close to proving that the "confessions" were tortured out of the guys -- which would make them illegal in any normal U.S. court of law, which this Virgin Islands, with its lynch mob mentality, clearly was not. (The deep south, along with Black Lives Matter, will come to mind more than once during these "festivities.") The media, together with the help of the Islands' white overseers, pushed the massacre as a race issue (even though one of the eight killed was black), starting a typical wave of fear on the Islands -- oh, my god, we can't have anything draining our tourism -- so these men were caught/tried/sentenced/imprisoned in pretty much record time.

Listening to the testimony of so many of the "investigators," then and now, does not make one sense that seeking real justice was on anyone's mind. (One particular cop is clearly lying, as we learn by film's end.) On the other hand, Labeet himself does not push very hard to gain our sympathy. He, along with the filmmaker, tells his story quietly and compellingly but with no special pleading. He doesn't appear to care much whether we believe him or not. We also hear from Labeet's defense attorneys (that's Margaret Ratner Kunstler, below, the wife of another of his defense attorneys, the late William Kunstler) and these people seem quite a bit more reliable than does the prosecution.

Kastner, who earlier gave us that enjoyable doc, The Secret Disco Revolution, uses staged re-enactments of both the robbery/massacre and the airplane hijacking, and his capable handling of storytelling and actors would indicate that he might do well in the narrative mode, too. Meanwhile, we have this oddly fascinating movie to contend with. Although it is scheduled to open in our own Virgin Islands at the end of August, I can't imagine that it will be warmly embraced there -- at least not by the usual suspects. (You can read an early review from a Virgin Island newspaper here. By the way, the review gives away a spoiler that the filmmaker quite succulently saves for the very end.)

Hitting theaters via Strand Releasing and running just 76 minutes, The Skyjkacker's Tale arrives Friday, June 30, in New York City at the Village East Cinema; in New Orleans at the Zeitgeist Arts Center on July 7; and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center on July 14. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here, and then click on Screenings on the task bar halfway-or-more down-screen.

THE SECRET DISCO REVOLUTION: Jamie Kastner's nostalgic doc with booty & a beat

A very fun, pretty funny, uber-nostaligic documentary that offers up an interesting theory -- political, social, revolutionary -- of the 1970s disco craze (and then politely puts it to rest), THE SECRET DISCO REVOLUTION is shoo-in viewing for gays of a certain age, celebrity addicts or anyone of any sexual persuasion who liked to dance themselves crazy back in the day. It combines everything from talking heads to archival footage, social theory (most noticeably and intelligently from Alice Echols) and -- ah, yes -- those famous disco songs and performers to silly, sweet effect that will probably have you tapping your toes and grinning fairly often throughout.

The brainchild of one Jamie Kastner (shown at left), who wrote and directed, perhaps the oddest and most interesting feature of the doc is his introduction of a trio of "masterminds," as he calls them (shown below and at bottom) -- a black man, a gay man and a woman, supposedly representing the three groups for whom disco accomplished the most "liberation." These three appear regularly throughout the film, though it seems more and more clear as the movie progresses that Kastner sees these masterminds as pseudo: comic material rather than anything remotely real or genuinely important. And for those viewers who might have taken all this seriously, his question to many of the talking heads at the film's close makes it more than clear that the disco revolution may have been fun and different and ground-breaking in certain ways, but it had little to do with revolution or protest.

Instead, it and the film that covers it, are all about beat, drugs, the expending of energy, and selling records (those, junior, are what we had to listen to, back in the day). Reference is made to France under the Nazis, Swing Kids and other historical matters, but what we really want to hear and learn about are all those great songs.

Fortunately, the filmmaker gives them to us, if not full-length, with enough time so we recall why they were such hits. Here come Gloria Gaynor (in the penultimate photo, below), Thelma Houston (at right), Martha Wash and Maxine Nightingale -- to name a few, showing us their style, then and now.

And while reference is made to other big names ("To get from Aretha Franklin to Lil' Kim, you can't understand this without disco!"), we pretty much keep with the disco beat.

The funniest section, in fact, may be that involving The Village People (above) trying to convince us that their songwriters/
composers had no ability to handle double entendres. We always suspected these guys were on the dumb side, but, please!

We also learn that, for maybe the first time in modern music history, songs found themselves listed on the Billboard magazine chart due to their being played not on radio but in the clubs that were forming around the country. After that, of course, radio DJs joined in the celebration. When, as ever, the music industry -- just like the movie industry regarding any popular new idea -- tried to jump on the disco bandwagon, the music grew shoddier and shoddier. And when the nation's, maybe the world's, most famous disco club, Studio 54, came on the scene (with its paean to celebrity, drugs, and shutting "ordinary" people out) one day, nearly overnight it seemed, disco disappeared.

The movie finally evokes all of this -- plus a nod to Ecclesiastes ("There is a time to expand and a time to contract") -- as it combines history, sleaze, music, energy, dance and drugs. It's a lot of fun, a crock of shit, and above all a great nostalgia trip, and it opens this Friday, June 28, in eleven cities across the country.

Here in New York City, it plays at the Quad Cinema and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's NoHo 7. Look for it, as well, in San Francisco at the Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema, in Berkeley atthe Landmark Shattuck Cinemas, in Minneapolis at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema, in Seattle at the Landmark Varsity Theater, in Miami at the O Cinema, in Fort Lauderdale at the Cinema Paradiso. in  Palm Springs at the Camelot Theater, in Portland at the Clinton Street Theater and in Columbus at the Gateway Film Center.