Sophie Fiennes' documentary, GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI, gives us the performer, the musician and the woman

TrustMovies has long felt that cinema has rarely, barely ever, shown off that most unusual performer/singer Grace Jones to good advantage. Of her three major movies -- the second-rate Bond film, A View to a Kill; a lesser Eddie Murphy vehicle, Boomerang; and the surprisingly entertaining vampire movie, Vamp -- only in the latter did the filmmakers put this strong and visually striking woman to anything approaching maximum use.

Now, in the new documentary, GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI, filmmaker Sophie Fiennes (of The Pervert's Guide to Cinema and Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow) manages to do this larger-than-life presence cinematic justice -- and then some.

Ms Fiennes, shown at left, seems to have been given remarkable access to Jones, her family, friends and co-workers -- and over a period of several years, at that --  and although the filmmaker does not identify time frames, or even places, her documentary provides a surprisingly good entryway into the life and times, as well as the music and performing abilites of this remarkable woman. Ms Jones turns 70 next month, but you would hardly know it watching and hearing her sing, prance, move and command whatever stage she is on.

As a young man, I found myself in awe but also somewhat frightened of this incredibly statuesque and sexual icon. With age and a better understanding and appreciation of who Jones is and what she is doing, I am now a major fan. You may be, too, once you've spent the nearly two hours of time that Fiennes, as both director and editor, has cobbled together in such a free-form but oddly gripping fashion.

There is no way around the fact that this entertainer cuts such as formidable figure -- the lithe/lean body, the bizarre head-gear, and those endless legs! The movie begins and spends a good deal of time in a musical number or two, and then lets us see her adoring fans, with whom she interacts  The music we hear seems more impressive than I remember from decades past. But, then, perhaps my tastes  have changed for the better over the years.

Fiennes spends a good deal of time with Jones' family -- mother, siblings, kids, even I think, a grandchild -- and almost as much behind the scenes as she works to bring about another concert. There's a little of her love life, too. And even some casual, full-frontal nudity (yes, she looks justs as fabulous unclothed).

She goes to church, where we hear (I think it's her mom singing) His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Later the preacher fills us in on Jones' history as a naughty little girl. Along the way, we get snippets of her philosophy: "Sometimes you have to be a high-flying bitch!" and "Deep love is like a beating with a cloth belt." Family history and her father's death crop up, too.

The documentary ends with the idea of possibly building a house in the hills of Jamaica (where Jones was born) and where an earlier house was destroyed by a hurricane. Set to this is one of her more recent songs, Hurricane, which is an impressive piece of music sung with all the strength and power one might expect of this phenomenon.

Watching the viewing link I was sent, I sometimes wished for English subtitles to help decipher the soundtrack's dialog that was occasionally hampered by too-loud ambient sounds and/or the Jamaican accents. Otherwise, this documentary proved engrossing and impressive -- a "must," I think, for any Jones fan, and a film that will most likely convert a number of newcomers, too.

From Kino Lorber and running 115 minutes, Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami opens tomorrow, Friday April 13, in New York City at the Metrograph and Film Society of Lincoln Center and at BAM in Brooklyn. On April 20 it hits Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt, and then over the weeks to come open in cities all across the country. Click here and scroll down to see the complete list of playdates, cities and theaters.  

Slavoj Zizek & Sophie Fiennes' THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY is the most fun your brain, memory and synapses will have at the movies

He's back. That philosopher/film critic/political theorist/culture maven/
theologist/psychoanalyst (have I left something out?) Slavoj Zizek, of The Pervert's Guide to Cinema has returned, along with his director, Sophie Fiennes, to bring us THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY. If you enjoyed the former, you're gonna love the latter -- which is every bit as film-oriented even as it tackles the thorny question of ideologies and which to choose: Communism, Capitalism, Religion and everything in between. No surprise, Mr. Zizek advises none of the above and makes is very clear exactly why, as he uses film (or fee-lum, as his Slovenian accent so charmingly pronounces it) to explain what the powers-that-be are feeding us, and how best to prevent digestion. (The glory moment here is the guy's take-down of Titanic: Who needs an iceberg when the Ziz is here!)

Zizek writes and delivers his, well, pretty-much-a-monologue, while Ms Fiennes (shown at right) directs the film (with terrific help from her usual editor Ethel Shepherd), which offers dozens of movies and Zizek's theories about how these impact on our history, culture and thinking. The result is the most eye-to-the-screen/ear-to-the-soundtrack piece of cinema you will have seen since this threesomes's last collaboration. As much as I urge you to rush to theaters to experience this amazingly intelligent, fun and funny piece of work, I admit that I was more than happy to be watching it via screener, so that I could backtrack and listen to what Zizek says one more time to make sure I understood it properly.

Because this guy, shown below and further below, is first of all a philoso-pher, this sort of sets him in a special class. Yet, though I wouldn't exactly call him "mainstream," neither is he highfalutin. He's accessible. His ideas are often surprising, but he offers them up with precision and a lot of back-up, especially of course via movies -- once again seeming to appear on or in the sets of many of the film he discusses, from the bed Robert DeNiro used in Taxi Driver to the pristine lavatory that gets so bloodied up in Full Metal Jacket (below), from Jaws to Triumph of the Will.

Zizek opens the fee-lum with one of my favorite movies (and I hope yours, too; seek it out if you haven't seen it), They Live, during which he challenges us to say why a particular fight scene goes on for so long and is so violent (It's hard giving up the view of the world we've been taught to see), and then moves on the The Sound of Music, in which he tackles the idea of enjoyment versus pleasure. For his musing on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony alone, the movie is must. (Funny how, this very week, another film called Following the Ninth opens here and shows us exactly what Zizek means about how this fabulous work can be made to mean all sorts of thing -- and used for evil, as well as good. (I'll have more to say about that film soon).

He covers popular culture and the the Neo-Nazi phemonenon, explaining in passing why he doesn't consider the rock group Rammstein to be Nazi propaganda. It's all here: Ideology as a kind of bribe, a very fluffy cat, and why capitalism is all the time in crisis. "This is precisely why Capitalism appears almost indestructible," he tells us. (I guess because it seems to somehow weather all those crises?) And then he goes on to show us the invisible side of Capitalism, which is... ah, yes: waste.

Religion takes its licks, too: His lengthy look at Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (a movie I didn't much care for) makes me want to see it again. His explanation of how, in its way, Christianity as a religion is actually much more atheistic than your typical atheist, is something to hear and then ponder. Seconds, Zabrieskie Point, and a number of other films get the Zizek approach, as well, and come out the better for it.

Perhaps his most splendid moment comes when he asks, "Why it is easier for us to imagine a huge change -- like an asteroid hitting earth -- than even a modest change in our economic order?" Why indeed. See The Pervert's Guide to Ideology and you'll be asking that question, too. Maybe even answering it. And then rushing out to see a few movies you thought you understood and appreciated (or not)--now with a whole new viewpoint.

The movie -- from the indispensable Zeitgeist Films, and running 2 hours and 16 minutes (not one of which I'd have wanted to miss) opens this Friday, November 1, in New York City at the IFC Center, and in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center. For all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, click here and scroll down.

Art about art that's also a form of performance art: Sophie Fiennes' odd OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW

Better come right out and tell your readers, TM: If you find yourself sitting in the dark, watching the new documentary, OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW and growing very antsy, do not get up and leave. Stick it out for around 20 minutes and your rewards -- if you appreciate art, film, artists and filmmakers -- will accrue. Up until that time, however, your patience may wear thin. Mine certainly did. The film begins with a title card that tells us that, in 1993 German artist Anselm Kiefer left his native land for La Ribaute, a derelict silk factory near Barjac in Southern France. From 2000, he began a series of elaborate constructions there -- everything from sculpture to tunnels, bridges, amphitheater, lake, towers and buildings (47 of 'em). Immediately, one wonders, why?

You will be able to answer that question (and a number of others you may not have even asked) by the time the film ends, some hour and 45 minutes later. But initially, with no dialog, explanation or further title cards, the film's director Sophie Fiennes, at left, simply takes her camera into what we can only presume must be this strange area where the artist has built his constructions. We wend our way down passages, into and out of rooms, hallways and strange spaces, with an amazing array of shapes and textures on display. Not much color, though -- mostly off-white to gray with a little blue and maybe some browns thrown in. "Well, this must be art," you think to yourself, and the experience of moving with the camera into these spaces may remind you of that of Werner Herzog's current Cave of Forgotten Dreams, but without the nitwit narration and with some 30,000 years spanning the work of the artists on display. (Fiennes' film also provides much better camerawork and visuals -- which is not a fair comparison, of course, as Herzog was somewhat stymied by all the rules and regulations of the Chauvet Cave, together with his decision to use 3D cameras).

For the first twelve minutes, the only motion, other than the constant forward movement of the camera, is suddenly provided by shards of falling glass -- a mirror, maybe? -- that descends onto a pile of what looks like more of the same. Fiennes' manner here is to have us simply stumble upon the place and then take an unguided tour, so that we must make of it what we will. She doesn't even translate Into English the various captions on the art. You will probably be able to figure out Les femmes de la révolution, the name of the series that presents what looks like a group of dark, combination beds/bathtubs representing women such as Charlotte Corday, but others, not so easily.

You'll have noticed that somewhere along the line, early on as I recall, music -- much of it by György Ligeti -- kicks in, making our tour a little more dramatic. At fifteen minutes or so, the music stops and ambient sound appears. Just about the time our patience is thinning noticeably, we see someworkmen, and perhaps the artist himself. Snippets of dialog between them occur as they work, and the movie suddenly becomes a kind of performance art about art. Look -- there's a cat! And children! Whose are they? We don't learn the answers to these questions, but around 45 minutes in, the artist begins to explain his work to a visitor -- perhaps a journalist -- and, boy do things pick up considerably.

From Kiefer's thoughts (the artist is shown gazing at a nearly finished piece, above) on evolution and where this fits into his art ("We are essentially water, we come from the sea.  This is the warm sea, to which we want to return, that takes us back to a single cell being in the ocean...") and how his art is filtered through his own psychology ("I fundamentally believe that through my work I can fill an empty room created in my childhoood -- a room which was devoid of things from the outside, as we had no internet nor television.") Then there's some philosophy, such as this, on the important of boredom: "You don't experience yourself when you are not bored, and thus begins consciousness of one's own existence. How incomplete I am and know nothing. We all are. But I can't reach the core, the law that keeps the world together."

I apologize if I am misquoting to some extent -- trying to scribble fast as I watched and listened -- but from this talk comes enormous understanding of what Kiefer's art means and why he engages in it. There is real, thoughtful philosophizing going on here, and, circle-like, art leads to it and comes from it. We could easily be that questioner/journalist, and Kiefer is both brave and kind in trying to answer our probably rather typical questions. (The artist's job, after all, is to create not explain.)

At around 55 minutes, we experience another ten minutes or so of following the camera and just looking, once again -- with music, and then more workmen, and another project, this one to do with liquifying some kind of metal into the ground (below), followed by a burst of flame (the movie's big "special effect"), cement filling up a large hole and...  are those giant, sculpted teeth? Yes.

Another project (or maybe it's part of the same one) offers ugliness, pain and jagged glass, with a child's slicker and glass protruding from its pockets.  During this section, we learn that Kiefer is swapping his Barjac headquarters for a studio in Paris. (The film should certainly make you want to visit Barjac in person!) Then we're on to the final project, below, inspired by The Bible, the artist explains, and by Lilith, who lived in ruins.

This series of towers, above, is certainly the film's most impressive creation (to my mind, at least), and the movie ends with more slow camera movement over and around the art as the music -- discordant yet somehow beautiful -- swells.

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow offers the creation of art -- sculpture, architecture -- before our eyes, along with our understanding of how that art arrives. One does not experience something like this film at all often, which is reason enough for folk of a certain mindset to seek it out. (That's the artist, with Fiennes, above.) The documentary opens, via Alive Mind Cinema and Kino Lorber, this Wednesday for a two-week run at Film Forum in New York City. (You can find the FF screening times here.)  To learn where else Fiennes' film will be playing -- with cities, dates and theaters -- click here.