Edet Belzberg's WATCHERS OF THE SKY is all about the coinage and history of genocide

Raphael Lemkin's name and life are not that well-known to many of us Americans. Prior to watching this documentary about the man and his work, I happened to read an article about all this that appeared in an issue of last year's New Republic. It whetted my appetite for more, some of which this new film by Edet Belzberg provides. WATCHERS OF THE SKY (the film's title does not come clear until almost the conclusion) is one of the most dense documentaries in terms of information, ideas, timelines, people and places that I've have seen of late. The amount of notes I scribbled as the film was unfolding are more than I have taken while watching anything else in the past year.

Beginning with some beautiful and compelling animation (which returns from time to time throughout the film), Ms Belzberg, pictured at right, weaves together the life and work of Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959, pictured below), together with the stories of several present-day people whose lives are dedicated to the work that Lemkin -- who coined the word genocide and spent much of his adult life trying to stamp it out -- began. As someone notes early on in the film, "Everyone condemns genocide but they still commit it. You can only stamp it out by moving one stone at a time." Consider this documen-tary one of those stones.

The film focuses on various genocides -- from that of the Turks against the Armenians to Sudan/Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and of course the Jewish Holocaust -- and we hear from folk such as Benjamin Ferencz, below, right, who prosecuted the war crimes at Nuremberg, and now works toward making war and crimes of nation-state aggression prosecutable by international law.

We also meet Samantha Power, below, whose reporting on the genocide by the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia brings back all the anger, force, grief and horror of that ghastly period. Ms Power is now the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a place where she can use her skills toward further curbing genocide. (The movie was inspired by Power's prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.)

Luis Moreno-Ocampo (below), Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), whom we've seen in other documentaries, here explains his work and the importance of it in helping prevent more genocide, while Emmanuel Uwurukundo, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who lost his entire family talks about the need for hands-on work with survivors in order to change attitudes.

Among the shocking things we learn from the film is that genocide can occur within a country's own borders and still by seen as lawful (the ethnic cleansing in Darfur by the Sudanese is the ongoing and current example) and why only 22 Nazis were tried at Nuremberg (the reason is simply too simple and shocking to countenance). And we see, once again, how little force the United Nations really has.

I wish the documentary had better identification of its speakers (pace Jacqueline Susann: Once is NOT enough). And while the movie skips and jumps around like crazy, via fine use of its lovely animation (above) and some very smart editing (Jenny Golden and Karen Sim), it manages to unite all this into a cogent and compelling whole. Watchers of the Sky, via Music Box Films and running two full hours, opens tomorrow -- Friday, October 17 -- in New York City (Lincoln Plaza Cinema), Los Angeles (Laemmle's Royal and Town Center 5) and Orange Country (Edward's Westpark 8). In the weeks to come it will hit another half-dozen cities and theaters. Click here and then click on THEATERS to see all currently scheduled playdates.

Meet Philip Roth--digitally, but for free!--at NYC's Film Forum in this new documentary

The title may be PHILIP ROTH: UNMASKED, but since we're watching a documentary made for the uber-prestigious American Masters series for Channel 13 in tandem with Cinétévé, we know damn well that we're in for another worshipful view of someone who's been chosen to represent high art in whatever form s/he works. This time it's fiction. Unmasked? My eye. While there's plenty of history here, and family (in photos, at least) and a friend or two -- mostly Mia Farrow, who is charming and lovely, as usual -- almost nothing truly personal makes its way from the doc to its audience.

Not to say that the movie is a waste. Not at all. It covers Roth's life a propos his writing, and as such makes a lot of interesting connections and tells a number of fun stories about the man and his work. This is fascinating stuff -- but almost completely impersonal. Roth himself comes across as avuncular, very intelligent and well-spoken (no surprise there) and a man supremely comfortable in his skin, his life and his success. He seems happy to talk, and the filmmakers equally so to film and listen. (That's one of them, Livia Manera, shown with Roth, above; the other is William Karel.) Yet everything here is so graceful and easy, with not a subject raised nor a moment shown that in any way rankles, that one has the sense early on and for the duration that certain ground rules have been set and any deviation will not be tolerated.

The press kit for the film calls Roth "arguably America's greatest living novelist," though TrustMovies has never felt that way. But clearly a lot of folk do. I've read but four of Roth's works, and one of the things that this documentary might very well manage is to send viewers, myself included, back to the novels and stories themselves -- which I should think will please Roth immensely.

Interestingly, we get reams of information about Roth's early life, which if we believe psychologists, sets the tone for the man to come. And if we take the writings and his male characters as extensions of himself, this Roth is quite a sexual being. Or not. (The writer tells us that his Zuckerman character may or may not be his alter-ego.) "Shame isn't for writers," he tell us at one point, along with "I love to write about sex. It's such a vast subject." Indeed.

One of the more charming and funny tales is that of the cab ride the author once took, not long after the publication of his most successful (sales-wise) book, with a cab driver whose last name was, yes, Portnoy. In reference to the dark side, we are told, "You don't have to go looking for suffering if you are a writer. It will seek you out soon enough."  True. As it will all those non-writers, too.

In addtion to Ms Farrow, those interviewed about Mr. Roth include writers Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Englander, attorney Martin Garbus, a couple more friends and The New Yorker's Claudia Roth Pierpont. All have interesting points to make which, again, may send you back to the work itself.

But "unmasked"? Hardly. Instead, Roth and his filmmakers seem to have crafted a second skin to place over the subject and then suck the air out of so that it adheres perfectly to the man, in the process creating a kind of, yes, mask....

Philip Roth: Unmasked opens this Wednesday, March 13, at Film Forum in New York City, prior to its American Masters broadcast on March 29 at 9pm on PBS.  And yes, as the headline above notes, these Film Forum showings are free to the public, thanks to a grant from the Ostrovsky Family Fund. Tickets will be available at the box-office on day of show only, on a first-come/first-served basis. For more information, click here.

Barbara Celis' SURVIVING AMINA: a child dies, parents struggle, filmmaker records

If death is always difficult, untimely death is more so, and that of a small child worst of all. The situation at the heart of SURVIVING ANIMA is a one-year-old with leukemia cared for by her Swiss mother (who has adopted Italy as her home country) and her Italian father. With uncommon empathy and simpli-city, filmmaker Barbara Celis leads us immediately into the heart of things. She does nothing fancy; she simply shoots and shows.

Ms Celis, shown at right, came to this project without remotely knowing the extent of it. She was initially asked by her friend Anne to record the birth of her second child. A few months after that birth, the baby Amina was rushed to the hospital and emerged with a diagnosis of leukemia. Celis continued filming over a period of nearly three years, and what she records takes us into unusual territory.  We get to know Anne, her husband Tommaso, and their son Francesco and of course little Amina -- a baby everybody seems to love, and it's easy to see why. Plump and adorable, she is -- from what we gather here, at least -- almost always in a good mood.

Raising two kids is hard enough, but this situation proves taxing in ways for which no parent can be prepared. And Anne (above with Amina) and Tommaso (below with both children) aren't. They squabble, withdraw, cry, reach out, then begin the cycle all over again.  In the midst of it all, a month behind with their rent, they discover their landlord wants to evict them.

Through this Ms Celis navigates the line betwen watching and prying with surprising grace. Only once or twice, coming in close, then closer on Tommaso, are we even much aware of her camera. She also shoots the city in Italy where the husband and wife first met with such beauty that you know why this place is so important to them both.

Anne is a performer and theater director, Tommaso a sculptor (one of his pieces is shown in the foreground, above); New York would seem the perfect place for the couple and their family, but after the death, they return to Italy.  We see a family gathering at which Anne insists on showing videos of Amina; Tommaso, who says he does not need these, departs.

Title cards explain what happened to this famiy -- it's bittersweet -- and then comes a charming, surprising epilogue, in which an old relative, also called Amina (below), explains the meaning of the name. If nothing else (and there's a lot "else"), Celis' documentary should stand as the record of a situation that no family ought to have to endure -- and of the little girl who proves one of the most memorable babies this viewer has encountered.

Suviving Amina (65 minutes long), which has now been shown in two documentary festivals -- Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid, Spain, and Visions du Reel Film Festival, Nyon, Switzerland -- as well as on Swiss TV, is having its New York debut this comng Tuesday evening, April 5, at Anthology Film Archives as part of the New Filmmakers Series. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 pm that day. See you there?

SCN: José Luis Guerín's delightful, thought-ful new kind of travel documentary, GUEST

The title character in José Luis Guerín's new documentary GUEST, it seems to me, is Señor Guerín himself. And what a fine, kind, smart and caring guest the director proves to be. In town (and in country) at various film fests across the world to plug his popular 2007 movie In the City of Sylvia (you can view TrustMovies' take on that interesting film here), the filmmaker uses his free time to seek out each city's most basic citizens: the poor, the downtrodden, the outsiders, the elderly, those people you find on the street. While his film begins with a couple of very attractive models -- maybe actresses -- who sing a snatch or two from The Young Girls of Rochefort (soon after we hear a bit of Nino Rota via a talented accordionist), we're then tossed amidst the hoi-polloi -- and probably much the better for it.

Guerín, pictured at left, has shot his entire film in black-and-white, and this, too, proves a blessing for those of us who still appreciate the way blacks can enfold, whites glisten and greys do all sorts of wonderful things. I am not certain why, but black-and-white film also seems to bring out faces in a manner than makes us pay better attention to their features and composition. The very unreality of black-and-white seems conversely to make certain things more real. In any case, the filmmaker's series of "home movies" shot on the road proves, thanks to his well-chosen subjects, unusually energizing and full of raw life. Because Guest was my fourth film to be viewed in a single day, one immediately after the other, the first beginning at 2pm and this one ending around 11, I was wondering if I would make it through with my eyes still open. Thanks to Guerín and his many "hosts," I left the Walter Reade Theater as alert and enthused as I'd been when I first walked in.

I rather wish that, with each new location the filmmaker visited, he had elected to post the name of the city upfront.  Instead, he gives us the date -- which seems to me to be much less important, except that this helps us realize how he is flipping back and forth, all over the globe, occasionally with very little time between cities. If we listen carefully, we can usually determine where we are, yet a simple title card would have helped.

As we move along we get all sorts of interesting visuals and talk, from a young couple in Chile (she's pregnant) simply devouring ice cream to Colombia, where it's all about politics and social unrest; in Macao, where a very old photographer (shown below) shows us his ancient photographs and talks of history and life; in Cuba, we meet a homosexual who is HIV-positive but asymptomatic, who seems happy as a clam at the health care and other help he's receiving from his country. There are a few down times (even in his brief appearance, Jonas Mekas begins to bore us to death) -- and the amount of time given to Jesus-freak street preachers strikes me an pretty unconscionable. Is Guerín religious (which I doubt)? Or is he trying to show how religion holds the population down?  Either way, some stern editing here would have helped. We can appreciate how the streets of Latin American cities are filled with preaching, but -- really -- we don't have to spend such an inordinate amount of time with each preacher.

As we turn the corner to 2008 (the movie begins mid-2007), we're in the Philippines, where the economy is bust and the government is doing nothing to help. One interview here accomplishes infinitely more than the entire length of a movie such as Lukas Moodysson's crappy Mammoth. We meet a 110-year-old women in Mexico; in Peru, we sees the sights and sounds of the Shining Path devastation; and finally, in Jerusalem (below) the kids want to know when what Guerín is filming will be on TV, but due to the language barrier, he can't explain to them what his filming is for.

There is so much that is so vital and appealing here, that I must ask: What's with the lousy and often unreadable white-on-white subtitles? If Guerín is any kind of a moviegoer (unless he speaks five languages fluently), he must know how despicable is this kind of subtitle. How much more expensive could it have been to have the white lettering surrounded by black or appear in yellow, so as to be always legible, as most foreign-language films nowadays do? Still, as angry as I occasionally grew -- due to my inability to read what people were saying -- this remains a quibble. Guest is full of life and thought, sadness and delight, and the thrill of seeing and hearing real people who have something to say. With all the talk these days of how so many films blur the line between narrative and documentary, here's one that's truly and absolutely a doc. And all the better for it.

Shown only once during the recent FSLC Spanish Cinema Now series, Guest, I hope, will reach theaters, DVD, streaming, or whatever -- very soon.