Dam it? Brian Lilla's important new doc, PATAGONIA RISING, explains why not.

I have long imagined Chile's Patagonia region to be arid, windswept, dry and uninviting, but maybe I've taken most of my cues from the late Bruce Chatwin and his once-popular book. Seeing the new documentary PATAGONIA RISING -- directed, shot and edited by Brian Lilla -- certainly opened my eyes to the beauty of the place, and particularly to its two major rivers, the Baker and Pascua, and the water flow from each, which is currently planned to be stopped by dams, in order to provide better energy for the country of Chile. The fact that the company that owns this energy project is in Spain, immediately sets up a reg flag about the downside of globalization (is there an upside?), which those of us who have seen other documentaries from Last Call at the Oasis to Cool It and even narrative films like Quantum of Solace and Even the Rain will already be well aware of.

Mr. Lilla, shown at left, has given us a film of great beauty (the vistas here are incredible) and not a little interest and importance, for if these dams get built, the damage they will do to our already fractured environment (not just Chile's but the world's oceans and who knows how many more endangered and/or soon-to-be species) is staggering. This is hardly what our globe needs just now. Going into Patagonia Rising, TrustMovies didn't know all that much about dams and hydroelectric energy, except to note that where these dams have been built of late -- in particular China but also in the country of Chile itself -- terrible population displacement has been seen with little recourse for the people displaced.

There is much more that is negative about this kind of energy, and one of the strengths and pleasures of this doc is how well it helps the viewer understand what these negatives are, how they will affect the local area, and what energy alternatives are available (such as wind energy, above, and an even better source, solar power, that Chile has the ability to tap into, bigtime) that would create even more energy -- renewable, sustainable -- than the dams themselves, at almost no cost to the environment. (You'll learn here the difference between the terms "renewable" and "sustainable," too.)

The filmmaker allows the energy company and its representative to explain its side of the story, and we also hear from the local inhabitants, most of whom appear to be against the dams, though there is one fellow who tells us that -- yes, he knows his is an unpopular stance, but -- he is in favor of building the dams. His explanation of why has to do with his own economic gain, but you can't discount his right to "getting ahead."Another fellow who owns a business in one of the towna that will be affected is positive, to a point, but seems less sure of the overall effect of the dams.

As the film move along and we learn more about the proposed "project," it begins to take on some of the characteristics of the boondoggle laid out so well in last year's Oscar-nominated doc, Battle for Brooklyn. I wish that the filmmaker could have does more investigation into the Chilean politicians who are supporting the project. A look at their campaign coffers, or the connections certain people have to certain others in Spain, might explain a lot. But the movie never goes that far.

We hear mostly from those locals but also from various scientists who explains how and why the damage from the dams will occur. This, together with the great beauty of the documentary as it shows us the gorgeous, unspoiled landscapes is enough to make the film a must-see, as well as a cause worth taking up. Patagonia Rising -- from First Run Features and lasting 88 minutes --  opened today in New York City at the Cinema Village. Currently this is the only schedule playdate, but click here in the days to come, and perhaps there will be others. I hope so, for this is a quite an important documentary.

Heads up! Last chance to catch one of the best unreleased movies of the year--FREE!

The below is re-post of TM's take on a film first seen at Rendez-vous with French Cinema this past March. I and many of my compatriots loved the movie and imagined that it would be picked up for U.S. distribution (films by Robert Guédiguian usually are). No such luck. But thanks to The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and its yearly program of Films on the Green, New Yorkers have at least one more chance to see the movie. It plays tomorrow night, Friday, June 8, at 8:30 (admission is free but get there early and bring food and drink) -- in Washington Square Park, just below the end of Fifth Avenue by that big faux French arch.

Enjoy!

It's not Hemingway. No, it's better than that. The great strength of writer/director Robert Guédiguian is how he tells his stories from so many points of view, not in some stylish, what-is-truth? Rashomon manner, but intuitively, organically, from the inside out and so that we come to see how the people involved on all sides of a given situation understand that situation and will gain or lose from it. With THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO, the filmmaker has outdone himself. (I can't think of a better film from him, in a raft of very good ones.)  Snows takes a layoff of workers in a shipyard as a starting point for exploring responsibility -- to oneself, one's family, friends, co-workers and even beyond.

The events that spin outward from this layoff (above) are both expected and not, and how the pivotal, negative and lawless post-event changes everything -- but not just for the worse -- turns the film into one of the richest, most intelligent and moving experiences in all of this year's Rendez-vous. Guédiguian is a political filmmaker, and a left-leaning one, I believe. But he never shies from showing us the other side -- not the right-wing one -- but the side that takes our beloved shiboleths and turns them inside out, forcing us to struggle with right and wrong from new angles. Yet the filmmaker is also a supreme humanist who never allows a principle to trump a person. That's what makes his work such a joy: the people are deep and real, and the life around them is, too.

In Snows, that life is lived by husband & wife Michael & Marie-Claire -- the "greats" Jean-Pierre Darroussin (above, left) and Ariane Ascaride (above, right) -- oft-used by this filmmaker. We get to know them, their best friends, and their children (in all, including the elderly woman taken care of by Marie-Claire, we see four generations here). We also come to know one of those laid-off workers, Christophe -- played by one of France's fine, up-and-coming new stars Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet (below, center, of Love Songs: click and scroll down) and The Princess of Montpensier). How these people connect and what happens subsequently is the stuff of great storytelling.

Along the way, we meet everyone from a delightful waiter with an eye for Marie-Claire (the terrific Pierre Niney of this Rendez-vous' 18 Years Old and Rising) to Christophe's mom (played exceedingly well and nastily by Karole Rocher, who was also the mom in this Rendez-vous' Last Screening and the recently released Polisse: She's cornering the market on bad moms!). Ms Rocher has a scene with Ms Ascaride that had me so angry I wanted to slap her face and shout, "Then have your tubes tied, bitch!"  (Really, this is so unlike me.) But it's a stunner of a scene that, again, allows you to see things -- appallingly irresponsible as they are -- from the viewpoint of this exceedingly selfish woman who has managed to connect herself to some even worse men.

By the time The Snows of Kilmanjaro concludes, you'll have lived through a lot and come out of it with greater understanding of how our lives are shaped by so many opposing forces. It's a wise movie, and Guédiguian's a wise movie-maker.  Don't miss this one -- which as yet, shockingly, has no U.S. distributor so far as I know. Maybe some enterprising distributor will show up at Film on the Green in Washington Square Park tomorrow night -- Friday, June 8 -- at dusk, watch the film, note the audience response, and take a chance on it.  We can hope.  (Click here to view this year's entire Films on the Green program.)

Alice Rohrwacher's CORPO CELESTE views today's Italy by way of religion and family

Opening theatrically simultaneously with this year's Opens Roads festival of new Italian cinema, CORPO CELESTE, the first full-length narrative film from Alice Rohrwacher (sister of one of Italy's top actresses, Alba Rohrwacher), is exactly the kind of movie with which Open Roads often graces us. But this one quickly picked up its own theatrical release via Film Movement, an unusual distributor that spies quality films with immediacy for use in its DVD movie-of-the-month-club and occasional theatrical release. This one proves a good, if not great, film about Italy today and how the country's religion impacts its citizenry (and vice versa).

Ms Rohrwacher, shown at left, who wrote and directed the movie, tells the story of a 13-year-old youngster named Marta, who, though born in Italy, has lived in Switzerland for the past ten years, which comprises most of her life to date. Now, she and her mom and her big sister are back in Italy, living with mom's extended family, and Marta is not having a very good time.

Well, of course. Italy is going through a bad economic and political period, so turning to religion for any kind of intel-ligent comfort or outlet, as shown here at least, simply will not work. By making her protagonist a kind of immigrant -- which is certainly in keeping with one of the main themes of this year's Open Roads (and probably with much recent Italian cinema) -- the filmmaker sets up an interesting premise.

How different Marta (played quite believably by newcomer Yle Vianello, shown above) would probably be, had she spent her entire life in Italy. Would she question authority, particularly that found in religion, so fiercely? Probably not. Certainly none of the other of her classmates do, while the adults on view seem to take it as a necessary... well, not evil, exactly, but maybe a necessary drudgery. As one male family member tells Marta regarding the annoying Catechism she must practice for her upcoming Commun-ion, "Learn it now, and then you can forget it." Which is pretty much the attitude toward religion that everyone takes. But not Marta.

The local priest, bored nearly out of his skull and hoping for a transfer soon to a better parish, is at best unresponsive. As played by the fine actor, Salvatore Cantalupo (above, left), the moonlighting dressmaker in Gomorrah, and last seen in New York in two Open Roads movies: Whatsoeverly (click and scroll way down) and Lo spazio bianco (click and scroll way down again), the fellow is less a villain than simply part of an increasingly problemantic country where religion, as does so much else including television and the media, simply exists to keep the power structure in place and the populace complaining about it as little as possible.

The woman who teaches the Catechism and prepares the kids for their Communion is very well played by a new (and probably local) actress named Pasqualina Scuncia (shown above, center, from a rear view). The scene in which young Marta baits her teacher, together with the response Ms Scuncia gives, is terrible, resounding and sad. As is a later scene in which a litter of newborn kitten is dispensed with -- without a thought for life, caring or -- hey, what's that question Christians love to ask -- "What would Jesus (or better yet, St. Francis) do?" And this is the religion that gets so worked-up about abortion?

Corpo Celeste is a particularly ugly movie visually -- which is, I suspect, exactly what its filmmaker was after. The panoramas we see look desolate and uninviting, as do the characters when they are caught simply thinking or staring. This is an Italy on, if not its last legs, probably its penultimate. Ms Rohrwacher offers a religious critique via visuals and few words, as in the scene in which the Catechism class (below) imitates the blind man healed by their savior. Perhaps the loveliest shot in her film is that of Jesus on the cross, floating face-up in the sea (shown at bottom), that provides a few moments of surprising beauty.

So what makes the movie only good, rather than great? For me, its because everything we're going to learn from the film has been told us with the first ten or fifteen minutes. After that, despite all the further incidents, it's simply business as usual. Some have evidently found a grace note in what happens at the climax regarding another family member and Marta. Fine: You could see this as sweet and moving -- if not a little sentimental. It is certainly believable that someone who spent most of the time "downing" Marta would suddenly rise to her defense, should an "outsider" make a nasty comment.

Finally, Corpo Celeste strikes me as an almost typically bleak-and-real festival film that garners a lot of praise at various fests but doesn't strike a deep chord in general audiences. We shall see. Portions of The Catholic Church in Italy have denounced the movie as sacrilegious, while individual priests have defended it as an important critique of their institution. The filmmaker herself has been told that an organization that trains Catechism teachers has shown the film in its programs -- to better develop teaching skills. (We're hoping it's using the movie as a negative, rather than a positive, look at Catechism training.)

Corpo Celeste opens this Friday, June 8, in New York City at the FSLC's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. A few more screenings will be coming up around the country over the next few weeks. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters. As usual with Film Movement, a DVD will appear, along with possible Netflix and other streaming, eventually.

OPENS ROADS 2012, new Italian cinema, opens Friday at the FSLC's Walter Reade

If you imagined that nowhere else in the world is immigration as hot a topic as here in the good ol' USA, wait until you get a load of what this year's OPENS ROADS festival has in store. In nearly every film of the seven TrustMovies has seen in advance of the fest's opening, immigration is either front and center or hanging very noticeably around the exterior of the subject at hand. Even the festival's opening-night attraction -- Ferzan Ozpetek's new and quite enchanting Magnificent Presence (below) -- has a bevy of ghosts interacting with its hero. And, really, couldn't you consider these spectres a kind of extreme immigration problem, stuck as they are between one world and the next?

As usual, Open Roads, offered up by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is bringing us some old-favorite filmmakers -- like Ozpetek, Olmi, Crialese (a photo from whose Terraferma is shown at top) and Vicari -- along with some, of whom we've never heard but whose work seems extraordinary, like the brothers Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio and their Seven Acts of Mercy, shown below.

Of those seven films, there's not one I'd have missed. One of these made me so angry at Italy and its police, I thought I had lost all love for the country (Vicari's Diaz: Don't Clean Up This Blood (below) -- a brilliant piece of agitprop cinema and one of the most harrowing films I have ever seen) but then that evening we watched the Ozpetek gem, and all the love I usually feel for Italy, its people and films, came flooding back again.

I'll begin my usual Open Roads round-up/checklist tomorrow and will hope to add to this as the days continue and I am able to view more of the series. Should we be lucky enough to have any or many of these movie open theatrically, I'll post my usual, longer review at that time. So consider this your heads-up: Get tickets ASAP, as the films are shown but twice (sometimes only once) and may never hit these shores again. You can peruse the entire Open Roads series by clicking here.

FORBIDDEN QUEST screens--free--at the Korean Cultural Services' "Tribeca" night

Juicy? Oh, honey, you don't know the meaning of the word. FORBIDDEN QUEST (Eumranseosaeng in the original language) is a South Korean ode to pornography that takes the shape of a combination costume spectacle, history lesson, love story, comedy, western, action film, torture fest and martial arts movie. I think I've left out a few genres, but feel free to fill them in when you view the film. The above is a lot to pack into any film, even one, such as this Quest, that runs just over two and one-third hours (South Korean audiences do love their length). I'm not sure, however, that I'd have easily given up even one of the movie's succulent, moist minutes.

First released in its home country in 2006 (it was never released theatrically over here), the film was clearly more than a tad ahead of its time. Written and directed by Kim Dae-woo (shown at left) in a style that manages to be at all times surprisingly calm, philosophical and elegant (even when it's doing action, comedy and, yes, torture), Mr. Kim corrals a quiet, soothing tone (the music is particularly lovely) that belies the irony and humor that is going on almost all the time, just below the surface, except when it bubbles up.

That irony comes from both the hypocritical nature of man (and woman), on display overall, and from the enormous difference between the lewd words and actions we hear and see on paper, and the shock and near-terror the various parties feel when faced with the possibility of turning words and visuals into action. Eventually words do become deeds, and the fun, of course, occurs on the journey to reaching that pinnacle.

The plot involves a nobleman Yun-Seo, played by the legendary and so versatile Han Suk-kyu (shown above, from Green Fish, The President's Last Bang, Tell Me Something and the recently screened White Night), who randomly comes across an indecent novel. Hesitant, frightened nearly, to read it, he’s soon hooked and then inspired to write his own, persuading a crack artist and infamous captain of guards, Gwang-Heon (Lee Beom-Su, of My Wife Is a Gangster 3), to illustrate it for him. Of course the book becomes a hot seller, making its way to the purview of Jeong-Bin, the king’s favorite concubine, played by Kim Min-jung (below, left).

Complications ensue (of many types), all along the way. We be-come complicit in the difficulties of creating art (just what makes a work great?) and in the viewing of what may be the world's earliest pair of celebrity sunglasses, even as ambition, the male ego and how the female wields her power all come into play. There is also a ennuch (below, right) hanging about with his own naughty agenda.

The movie ends on an absolutely lovely grace note to, shall we say, the possibility of describing an even more exotic sort of love story in a future that might be -- who knows? -- "dirtier than ever." Forbidden Quest does not compare to much of anything else TrustMovies has seen. And considering that New Yorkers can view it absolutely free on the big screen in its original Korean language with English subtitles -- tomorrow night, Tuesday, June 5, at 7 pm (remember: first come, first served; doors open at 6:30) at the Tribeca Cinema, 54 Varick Street in Manhattan, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service -- I'd call this a very good deal.

Marc Smolowitz's THE POWER OF TWO tracks twins struggling with cystic fibrosis

Doesn't that headline sounds like heaven? I am being ironic, but documentary-lovers should give THE POWER OF TWO a chance, for filmmaker Marc Smolowitz, the twins who are his subject, their lives and that of their community that he explores rather well all combine to make the movie a more uplifting experience than the downer you might have expected. Not that Smolowitz prettifies things over much: We get a look into the lives of those suffering with cystic fibrosis (from this point, I'll refer to it as CF), which comes off as one of the more ugly, debilitating and -- unless a lung transplant can be found -- eventually fatal diseases in the lexicon.

Smolowitz, shown at right, begins with his twins underwater, below, swimming their hearts (and maybe their lungs) out. When we meet them and learn their story -- starting from babyhood (see the photo further below) right through to recent times -- what most impresses is their twin-ship: how this has made their ability to deal with CF since childhood a somehow easier task, for they were never alone. Born of a Japanese mother and a Caucasian father, Anabel and Isabel, though growing up in America, were nonetheless instilled with the culture of Japan and its "perseverance," along with an unusual understanding of how things really are. As one of the twins tells us during her younger days, "I hope to someday go to college. If I can last that long."

We learn about the disease and how it is caused; we visit a CF support group for people who need -- and some who have already had -- transplants; and we go to CF "camp," a place that Isabel tells us, changed her life. One of the most wrenching experiences -- and I do wish we had seen and heard more about this -- occurs when Isabel meets and falls in love with Andrew Byrnes (the young man who married her and went on to become producer of this film). It was not easy, Anabel tells us, to have to separate from her sister after a life of being always together. (Love comes to Anabel, too, but it's quite a distance down the road.)

When the girls publish a book about their life experience and are asked to go to Japan, Smolowitz takes us along, and we learn of the Japanese bias against organ donation. ("We'd be heroes in America," notes one Japanese donor, "but we are not valued in Japan.") Probably the most startling scene comes when the young women -- in their own Lyndon B. Johnson moment -- show us their scars. Initially shocking, this scene is also relevatory, and takes us full circle to the beginning of the movie, when the girls first told us about wishing that people might see past the scarred outside of a person to the beauty within. Mr. Smolowitz and his young ladies help us do just that. And it's our privilege to see them so fully.

No less a personage than actor Jack Black has raved about this film, calling it "An inspiring triumph.... over unfathomable adversity. A brutal and beautiful tale of shared survival." The Power of Two will be available beginning this Tuesday, June 5, from GoDigital -- on all major digital platforms. Click the GoDigital link above to see which platforms these might be....

The photos above are from the film itself, except the one immediately above, which comes courtesy of the IDA, and shows, left to right, producer and husband Andrew Byrnes, Isabel, Anabel, 

director Smolowitz and Trent Wallace (Anabel's husband).

ALBATROSS: Jessica Brown Findlay shines in Niall MacCormick's & Tamzin Rafn's film

A quick post today to give you a heads-up on a lovely little movie titled ALBATROSS that most of us missed when it opened (briefly, in a very limited theatrical run) to mixed reviews and not much business. As coming-of-agers go, this one is up there with the better ones, thanks to immaculate perfor-mances all round; a light, speedy directorial touch from Niall MacCormick (The Song of Lunch); and a smart, spiffy screenplay debut from Tamzin Rafn. A young, free-spirited lass comes to work as a cleaning girl at a bed-and-breakfast run by a couple and their daughter, who's on the cusp of an Oxford education. 

Not much happens, yet the movie seems to gallop along, due to the sensible understanding of character by the writer and director, and especially by spot-on acting from all. Sebastian Koch (above, of The Lives of Others) makes a randy, lazy but still quite likable dad; Julia Ormond is his angry, put-upon wife; and Felicity Jones (below, left, and currently in Hysteria) is the shy daughter. All three are just fine, but the movie justifiably belongs to Jessica Brown Findlay (below, right), who manages to make her "free spirit" as beautiful and special, layered with sadness and desire, as any you've seen. We didn't even recognize this actress, who plays Lady Sybil (the daughter on Downton Abbey who's being courted by that chauffeur) until we checked out her name on the IMDB. Ms Findlay turns a very good film into a must-see. 

Albatross is available now on DVD and high-def streaming -- from Netflix and elsewhere.

5 BROKEN CAMERAS: Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi's occupation doc opens at Film Forum

For those of us who've by now watched a number of films about life in Israel's occupied territories and/or Palestinians under the Israeli thumb -- from documentaries like the bile-raising This is My Land...Hebron (click and scroll down), which was part of the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Fest, and Simone Bitton's film about Rachel Corrie to narratives such the Oscar nominated foreign film Ajami and Eran Riklis' Lemon Tree-- viewing yet another movie about this gross injustice (which will not, it appears, cease anytime soon) might seem like the filmic equivalent of lengthening one's prison sentence.


5 BROKEN CAMERAS, which opened this past Wednesday, but which I am only just able to cover now, fits this bill to a T and yet manages to make the horrible story it tells worth viewing by turning the personal into the political -- and both into a kind of recorded history. The filmmaking team responsible for the documentary consists of first-timer Emad Burnat (above, right, and in mirror), the Palestinian owner of those titular cameras, and Guy Davidi, an Israeli filmmaker and film professor (shown above, left).

Over the period covering 2005 through 2010, Burnat used his camera(s) to record both the life of his family (above), starting with the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel (shown in close-up in the photo at bottom), at the same time as he is recording the life, and its increasing difficulties, of his village Bil'in. Here, the Israeli forces have put together a kind of barrier/fence, along with other "constructions," in addition to trailers belonging to the "settlers" that suddenly appear overnight -- all of which manages to confis-cate much of the Palestinian's land. During all of this, as Burbat is recording events and family, Davidi is recording Burnat (or so I am assuming, for somebody has to be behind that other camera).

The consistently aggressive moves of the Israeli army towards the peacefully demonstrating Palestinians of Bil'in, even to the extent of refusing to let the filmmaker film (this accounts for four of those five broken cameras), should anger viewers, just as it does the villagers, building toward harder and more awful scenarios, as this anger grows. At the same time, little Gibreel is growing, too, and we celebrate birthdays and family gatherings along with the ever-present demonstrations, as the baby becomes a child, and the child becomes one of the disenfranchised.

In any ninety-minute movie that attempts to cover five years, selection is all important. Generally speaking, the filmmakers seem to have selected pretty well although there are times when I wanted more information. How, for instance, does Burnat earn his living? The word journalist is mentioned, but for whom does he work? There is a car crash -- good-bye camera number four -- that seems to come out of nowhere and is never explained very well. While Burnat tells us that it may have saved his life, one also wonders if it was not a bit suicidal.

Toward the conclusion, everything seems to speed up -- from the intensity of the Israeli attacks to the filmmakers' frustrations. And when death comes, it is still as shocking and unexpected as ever. After five years of protests, there finally is a little progress to be seen: that fence/barrier comes down. Then up goes a cement wall. "Film-making is healing," notes Burnat, but TrustMovies didn't exactly see it that way. Filmmaking is certainly a record of atrocity, and of a family beginning to fracture. Either or both ways, this remains film-making worth experiencing.

Five Broken Cameras, from Kino Lorber, opened this past Wednesday, May 30, for a two-week run at New York City's Film Forum. Click here, then scroll down, to see the playdates and theaters scheduled for another ten cities across the country.