Black and white disparity--again and forever it seems--in Chris Haley and Brad J. Bennett's short doc, UNMARKED

Here's a subject linked to systemic racism, like so many others coming to the fore of late, that my readers may not even have considered -- unless you happen to be Black, especially from the South but also, unfortunately, from the supposedly woke-earlier-North of these United States. That subject would be burial, and the treatment of that burial as something worth honoring and remembering. 

As the new documentary UNMARKED shows us, there are hundreds of slave cemeteries -- until now allowed  to disappear or slip into total disrepair -- seemingly unknown yet almost in plain view that dot our southern states, particularly in the area of Virginia, where this documentary takes place.

As directed by Chris Haley (shown at right) and Brad J. Bennett (below), the documentary is actually a short film which started out, according to its IMDB page, as only 27 minutes in length, now grown to 40 minutes. And yet, the subject itself calls for full-length treatment.

Perhaps because the venue is confined (probably by both the budget the location of the filmmakers to the state of Virginia), the ability to reach out nationwide was limited. And so we remain in and around that state, as these new/old graveyards are rediscovered and 

reinvigorated from the confines of the natural world that has grown around them and covered them.

Catch as catch can, we meet some of the folk who are helping unearth and then maintain these graveyards, and we watch them work and see how they manage all this. 

It's interesting, important, and -- when at one point we view the pristine and beautifully-tended Confederate cemetery in the area of Richmond, VA -- fucking enraging to compare this to the separate-but-unequal "disappeared" cemetery of the slaves.

Most of the documentary will not and is not meant to be enraging because it is clear that the folk working to regain these burial grounds and turn them into something that honors, records and remembers the dead want to do this as peaceably as possible.

This means using the help of mostly volunteers but also politicians and local institutions -- educational and otherwise -- in ways that might finally bring us together, at least somewhat.

So we watch as these volunteers, using only their bare hands against the under- and over-growth, discover more tombstones in more locations. One woman speaks movingly of finally traveling the road from shame to pride regarding the history of slavery, while another remarks on how important it is to possess "authentic history," rather than merely history (or the kind of revisionist history that would have us believe that so many of the slaves were such happy people, really.). 

If the doc jumps around into subjects barely covered, and even includes an apocryphal-sounding tale of a sad "Cinderella" love story, its heart is clearly in the right place. Let's hope that a full-length documentary may someday arrive covering more of the totality and history of these unmarked graves. Meanwhile, this short film will fill you in as a decent introduction.

From First Run Features and lasting but 40 minutes, Unmarked arrived on DVD and digital streaming this past Tuesday, April 27 -- for purchase and/or rental. Click here for further information.

The Black experience--from slavery onwards--is captured rather amazingly by Jeffrey Wolf's unusual documentary about an outsider artist, BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS

 Bill Traylor, the subject of the new documentary BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS, was already 86 years old back in 1941, the year that TrustMovies, the fellow who is writing this review, was born. Mr. Traylor himself was born in Alabama as a slave in 1853 (that's how far back this doc goes), and yet his art -- however you might describe it: "outsider" "folk" or "primitive" -- also resonates as surprisingly contemporary, if also somewhat befuddling. Traylor's story, however -- his history, his life and his art career -- resonates without a bit of that befuddlement.

The film's director, Jeffrey Wolf (shown at left), and its writer, Fred Barron, have put together in a mere 75 minutes, a movie that offers us as fine an example, via the life and work of a single individual, of the Black experience here in the USA as any I've seen. 

Whether this was the original goal of the film or not, I've no idea. But the achievement is certainly there. Of course, no single individual can truly act as a stand-in for an entire race. But, boy, does Mr. Traylor come close, thanks to the splendid archival footage, including interviews with folk long dead and some still alive -- especially, eventually, generations of the progeny of Mr. Traylor.

Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts is primarily about this man's art, which has, since the late 1970s and early 1980s, been recognized by the art establishment as significant. (MOMA, ever the sleazy institution, actually tried, via its then director, to purchase a chunk of  Traylor's art in the early 1940s at a ridiculously low price.) 

We view plenty of this art (shown above and below) during the course of the film -- enough, actually, to be able to form our own conclusions about it. For me, the art is fascinating in its simplicity, even if its meaning proves more elusive than anything else. Instead, it is the life of this man -- as a slave who was greatly appreciated by his original "owner," so much so that that owner, the head of the "white" Traylor family, made certain that the further care of the black Traylor family was provided for in his will -- that resonates most strongly.

As one of the many highly intelligent and thoughtful narrators points out early on, as horrible as slavery was, "it had plenty of 'gray' areas, rather than always being, no pun intended, something black and white." These black and white Traylors were one such instance, as Bill Traylor and his family continued to work for the white Traylors for 40 years after slavery had been abolished -- and only left, once the white family was taken over by a particularly unjust Traylor offspring.

We see how Traylor's art came about, and how the man (shown above and below) -- quite the womanizer -- came to sire perhaps 20 offspring, all of whom he managed to care for as well as he could, while living and working during slavery, reconstruction, the Jim Crow south and beyond. 

Talk about a "survivor"! 

Once we meet the generations that came after him, while seeing and understanding how his art slowly accrued its reputation, we're simply amazed and ever more appreciative of his accomplishments. Bill Traylor: Casing Ghosts turns out to be a wonderful memorial to a man, his art and to a time long gone that has now been returned to us via this unusual and remarkable movie.

From Kino Lorber and running 75 minutes, the documentary opens tomorrow, Friday, April 16, in New York City at Film Forum, and the in Los Angeles area at Laemmle theaters, as well as elsewhere around the country. Click here and scroll down to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theatres (virtual or otherwise).                                                                          

VAZANTE: Daniela Thomas' trip to a time and place you'll not have experienced until now

An immersion -- so strong, specific and total -- into an experience you're not likely to have undergone elsewhere, VAZANTE, the new movie from Brazilian filmmaker Daniela Thomas (shown below), is one of a kind.

Ms Thomas has created a world of mid-1800s Brazil, photographed in the kind of sumptuous black-and-white cinematography (by Inti Briones) in which you will lose yourself completely.

Her movie offers a minimum of dialog and is slowly paced, but it is so beautifully and intelligently put together that you will have little difficulty following its action plot, or character motivation.

Briones and Thomas show us a small piece of Brazil's vast slave trade of that century, taking place in the countryside on the estate of a seigneur whose diamond mines have failed and who is too entitled and stupid to realize that his land can be profitably farmed (by those same slaves who worked the mines -- one of whom actually shows him how).

The film's leading character -- a near-perfect example of how entitlement creates inequity, injustice, stupidity and horrific waste -- is played quite well by Adriano Carvalho (below, right). Some time after his wife dies in childbirth, our anti-hero finds himself attracted to her niece, Beatriz, who is also the daughter of the fellow who runs his estate. The young actress (Luana Nastas, below, left) who plays Beatriz brings out everything from the girl's playfulness and disquiet (she is so young that she has not had her first menstruation) to her budding sexuality and her need for companionship of any kind.

The pair's marriage, as might be expected, is a disaster: one that accumulates slowly but inexorably, and we watch in fascination and finally horror as the inevitable occurs.

Ms Thomas, who directed and co-wrote (with Beto Amaral) sees to it that we also come to know surprisingly well the group of slaves, above, who work inside and outside the estate. Their own hierarchy and connections, as well as their sometimes surprisingly sense of morality and justice, adds immensely to the manner in which this compassionate and tragic movie engulfs us.

Beatriz's closest companion is also the son (Vinicius Dos Anjos, above) of the woman our seigneur has chosen as his sexual companion, which adds yet another dose of irony to the tale. The inequality here mirrors that of today's Brazil (the favelas, of course, are a lot more crowded), with Brazil's legacy of slavery simultaneously different and similar to that of the USA. Each country, it seems, would prefer to ignore this in perpetuity. Thank god for the artists working in both.

Vazante, from Music Box Films, in Portuguese with English subtitles and running 116 minutes, opens this Friday, in New York City at the IFC Center, and on January 26 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. Over the weeks and months to come it will play at least another ten cities across the country. Click here (then scroll down and click on THEATERS in the task bar) to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Chris Eska's Civil-War-cum-black-bounty-hunter drama, THE RETRIEVAL, opens at Film Forum

Some seven years have passed since writer/director/editor Chris Eska gave us his quietly wondrous August Evening. That's a long time to wait for his next full-length feature, but at last it is upon us. THE RETRIEVAL, set in 1864 during the Civil War, it is all about betrayal -- of a specifically nasty sort. The film, along with (though not as good as) 12 Years a Slave, makes another fine bookend about the history of slavery here in the USA. It also points up the difference between a genuine, small-budget, indepen-dent movie and one like 12 Years, that is estimated to have had a budget of twenty million. Eska's film probably cost not even one-tenth of that. (A blockbuster like The Avengers -- boasting a budget of $220,000,000 -- ran up finances of more than ten times what McQueen's canny movie cost.)

The film's initial scene is quietly shocking, as what appears a runaway slave of teenage years is given shelter in the barn of a nearby house by a white woman with a rifle. And then....  What happens, asks Mr. Eska (shown at right), who also wrote, edited and directed this new film, when blacks are used to entrap their own kind? This will bring to mind Holocaust tales of a century later, such as those of Benjamin Murmelstein in Claude Lanzmann's recent documentary, along with other Jews who betrayed their own kind for money, or possible safety, or simply out of necessity during the Second World War.

All three of these reasons come into play during the course of The Retrieval, as the teenager, Will (Ashton Sanders, above, right), and Marcus, the adult with whom he works (Keston John, above, left) do the bidding of some very nasty bounty hunters, led by Burrell (Bill Oberst Jr., shown below).

Unlike the earlier August Evening, an everyday-life character study almost perfectly realized, The Retrieval -- because it has to do with a life-and-death situation in which to earn money and be allowed to live, these two must find and betray another man named Nate (played by the exceptional Tishuan Scott, below) -- is filled with suspense and moral choice. "What if he was you?" asks the boy of his older compatriot. "Well, he ain't," comes back the immediate reply. So much for morality.

The question that haunts the movie, almost from its inception, is how stifled is our boy Will by the importance of money over kindness, friendship and trust. The war, while never in the center of things, is also never far away. Death, when it comes, is surprising and swift, leaving Will, in a sense, in the care of Nate. A father/son bond develops, but that nagging question -- is it fear or money that's pushing Will's button? -- crops up throughout.

This is part of the problem with Eska's film, and it is never resolved properly. Why does Will wait -- and wait and wait -- to warn Nate of what lies ahead? Perhaps Eska wanted to wring maximum suspense from the situation, but his handling of simple plot mechanics beggars belief. There are any number of opportunities along the way for a decisive chat, none of which are taken until, of course, it's too late.

This ensures the finale Eska must have wanted but it creates a pre-determined outcome that is far too heavy-handed. Certain details seem out of place, too: houses look too modern for the setting, and much is made of a footfall and a twig snapping to give away the presence of an outsider. A few moments later two horses are led away without any worries about the much louder sounds that they might make.

One must commend Eska on his willingness to struggle with the idea of the Social Contract and how it applies to this time and these people. The performances are excellent, as well -- every last one of them. But finally, the film seems too simple, given the gravity of the situation at hand.

The Retrieval, after making its theatrical debut in Atlanta two weeks ago, will open this Wednesday, April 2, in New York City at Film Forum, after which it will play Houston, Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities, and theaters.

Note: filmmaker Chris Eska with actors Tishaun Scott, 

Keston John & Christine Horn (who gives 

an excellent performance as Nate's woman) will appear on Wednesday, 

April 2, at the 7:45 show, on Friday, April 4, at the 7:45 show, 

and on Saturday, April 5, at the 3:15 show.

The brutality fest DJANGO UNCHAINED? Better to refer to it as Tarantino bound.

You gotta hand it to this guy. Quentin Tarantino (shown below) is at it again, homaging himself silly. Not content with doing it, three years back, to WWII movies and those naughty Nazis, and this year to Spaghetti westerns and the slave trade in the USA, now he's even homaging himself! And repeating himself. (How many times must our Django gaze off into the distance and see a vision of his slave-traded woman?) All this takes extra time, of course: two and three-quarter hours to be exact. TrustMovies managed to last out two full hours of the film before heading out to the lobby to finish an article he'd begun reading (prior to entering the theater) in the current issue of Cineaste -- a magazine you should take a look at, by the way, if you don't know it already: It's the best of any in terms of connecting movies to our society, past and present).

After being unable to sit through either Inglourious Basterds or DJANGO UNCHAINED (and I almost never give up on any movie), I suppose it is time to reconsider the oeuvre of Mr. T. Later for that. Right now, I'll just say that Tarantino is doing in his most recent work exactly what he did in his penultimate one. He's giving us the questionable pleasure of thrilling to and egging on ultraviolence against folk who so obviously deserve the worst that can be dished out: those WWII Nazis who so abused the Jews, and now the disgusting white slave traders who so abused the blacks. Talk about straw men (women, too).

This kind of on-screen shit -- and that is exactly what it is -- is crass and simple-minded, not to mention fake history, as nothing like what is seen in either of these two films actually existed. Excuse me? Yes, there was a WWII, and slavery flourished here in the good ol' USA. But all our Quentin has managed to do is let us free our inner bullies and cheer on the violence against the villains, who, in the actual day pictured in both of QT's films, were generally accorded praise and fealty, even by their victims who would have otherwise been all the sooner killed. So here's your fantasy chance to even the score! How paltry, pitiful and beneath the level of intelligent audiences. And yet, I guess, it is not. Our current audiences are even more cretinous than I had suspected.

Yes, Django Unchained is pretty to look at -- dat's one big budget up dere on da screen!), is in most cases extremely well-acted, especially by Christoph Waltz (above) as a semi-moral bounty hunter and Samuel L. Jackson (below, left) as the Uncle Tom of all time, and tosses around the word "nigger" like it was about to go out of style and so must not, on any account, be forgotten.

The "n" word, as so many journalists offer it up these days, is used especially often and "well" by Django himself (Jamie Foxx, below), and so gussies itself up ironically -- but so consistently and repeti-tiously that any irony is finally long gone. As violent as the movie is, however, Tarantino actually cuts away from some of the beatings, blood and gore. So this could have been a lot worse. But were not the filmmaker so enamored with himself and his "style," the movie could have been so much better. Shorter, too. There is enough content here for maybe 90 minutes rather than its current 165.

One set piece after another passes before our eyes until, eventually, the eyes begin to glaze over. I cannot vouch for anything in those last 45 minutes that I missed, but I saw only one visual moment I thought very creative on QT's part in the first two hours: the scene in which Django -- dressed in his light blue, silken, Little Lord Fauntleroy attire -- walks quickly across the huge plantation to try to stop a slave being whipped and happens to pass a young black woman swaying beautifully on a swing.  This was a graceful, surprising moment, unlike anything I have seen. Lovely. For the rest, it's just business as usual.

Django Unchained is playing all over town in just about every town. Click here to find the theater nearest you -- and go crazy. Maybe, if you're really lucky, you live in a location where you can legally carry a concealed weapon into the local theater and have yourself some fun. I'll tell you: This movie'll rev you up to it. But remember: You can only shoot the really, really bad guys. 'Cause that's just A-OK.

The photos above are from the film itself,

except that of Mr. Tarantino, which is 

by Donald Bowers, courtesy of Getty Images