10 films Beat Film Festival – Weekend
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On June 7, the Beat Film Festival kicks off in Moscow and online at Kinopoisk, traditionally introducing the Russian audience to hits from world documentary films. We talk about the main premieres of the festival.
“Lynch/Oz”
Alexander O. Phillip, 2022
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939) – the most popular film in history according to the US Library of Congress; the tape that, at least in North America, everyone has seen, as they say. Since its television premiere on CBS in 1956, Victor Fleming’s masterpiece has been played non-stop. One of the appreciative viewers of The Wizard of Oz is David Lynch, whose work, as Dr. Alexander O. Phillip convinces, is literally imbued with images from Judy Garland’s Dorothy’s journey. However, it is not the director himself who convinces the viewer of this, but six curators invited by him. From scrupulous film critic and podcaster Amy Nicholson, whose musings on otherworldly winds and the role of velvet curtains open the story, to conspiracy documentarian Rodney Asher, who collected fan interpretations of The Shining (Room 237). From the hilarious charismatic John Waters, who talks rather about his relationship with Lynch and The Wizard of Oz separately, to the tandem of horror makers Benson and Moorhead, who drew attention to the role of Judy’s name in Lynch’s creations. After the film, there is no doubt that the main visionary and conductor of nightmares really thinks about the “Wizard of Oz” every day.
“Cobra: Self-portrait of a street artist”
Lina Shamier, 2022
Brazilian Carlos Eduardo Fernandez Leo, known under the pseudonym Cobra, is the star of Brazilian and world street art (his graffiti dedicated to the 88th anniversary of Maya Plisetskaya can be found on Bolshaya Dmitrovka in the center of Moscow). Today, his works adorn the streets of 30 countries around the world and are as familiar as Andy Warhol images on the walls of offices and shops. How a young man from São Paulo, passionate about drawing, became a “giant of the fresco”, he himself tells. Brazilian documentary filmmaker Lina Chamier practically does not take her eyes off Cobra, sometimes illustrating the artist’s monologue with shots of the streets and his work, giving a first-person view in especially emotional moments or painting the frame in bright colors, like graffiti, of the hero himself.
“The Dreams of the Chelsea Hotel”
Maya Duverdier and Amelie van Elbt, 2022
Built at the end of the 19th century, the Chelsea Hotel in New York has seen many writers, musicians and artists. The beatniks huddled in it, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller cursed on the balcony, Milos Forman, who had just left Czechoslovakia, found refuge here, Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen had sex, and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas felt sick to death in room 205 after 18 servings of whiskey in a nearby bar . There were plenty of murders and suicides within these walls too: “There, there and on the first floor,” recalls the elderly choreographer Merle Lister, who once staged performances on the hotel stairs. She and other Chelsea centenarians are the real heroes of Maya Duverdier and Amelie van Elbt’s film. Artists who do not want to part with the golden myth of the sixties about the total freedom of creativity, despite their age and the overhaul carried out by the new owner of the building. They feel like the soul of this building, which has not yet become another emasculated “box” of modern Manhattan.
“Confessions of a Good Samaritan”
Penny Lane, 2023
Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane (For the Glory of Darkness? and Our Nixon) decides to become a voluntary kidney donor. She and her team capture the whole process on camera: how the idea arose, why she chose this particular medical center, what other altruistic donors say (and what altruism is in general), how transplantology arose and developed, how public opinion evolved from skepticism to support, and most importantly, what it’s like to save the life of a stranger for no particular reason. The procedure, which at first seemed safe and almost ordinary to the director, gives rise to a lot of complex questions: from the opinion of loved ones (Lane has a cat instead of a family) to the fear that the person you are helping is a Trump supporter.
Nam June Paik: The Moon is the First TV
Amanda Kim, 2023
Nam June Paik is a pioneer of video art and one of the first Asian artists in Western contemporary art, an eccentric and visionary whose idea of the Electronic Superhighway, describing the impact of television on people, today invariably evokes associations with the web of the Internet. The film by debutante Amanda Kim invites you to explore the figure of Paik in succession, from childhood in Korea under Japanese occupation and adolescence in a wealthy family to the status of the most influential artist of the 20th century. This superhighway has two key stops: Berlin, where classical pianist-trained Nam June Paik meets John Cage and begins to disrupt the Western notion of music, and New York, where the artist’s interest in technology and television reaches new heights. In particular, the work “TV-Buddha” appears here with a statue of Shakyamuni looking at his image on the box. Nam June Paik’s biographical itinerary is accompanied not only by the history of the art scene and stereotypes about Asia in Western popular culture, but also by entries from his diaries and letters, read by actor Steven Yan (The Burning and The Walking Dead).
“Girls Living on the Web”
Suzanne Regina Moires, 2022
14-year-old blogger Leonie lives in a quiet suburb of Berlin. Together with her parents, she daily creates content for her social networks, where she talks about the ordinary life of an ordinary teenager, reviews food and cosmetics, participates in popular challenges, and periodically travels to fan meetings throughout Europe. How “ordinary” life really is is a rhetorical question. Each step is calculated with the social marketing manager, “everyday affairs” are rehearsed several times, and the brands flashing in stories are the fruit of long agreements with her mother, who is her commercial director. The director of “Rave in Iran”, one of the biggest hits of the Beat festival of the past, Suzanne Regina Moyres spent a total of four years with the heroine and her parents trying to understand what drives people who have turned their family life into a long-term reality show.
“And God gave them a drum machine”
Christian Hill, 2022
“It is often said that this music came from somewhere in Europe. Nah, she’s from here, from Detroit,” says one of the narrators of this polyphonic picture. If techno seems to you a somewhat impersonal music (is the author really important for monotonous swotting with a frequency of 140 beats per minute?), then “God gave them a drum machine” will try to convince you of this. Although Detroit techno appeared in the late 1980s, director Christian Hill begins a detailed countdown from the middle of the last century, recalling, for example, that the city was one of the centers of American “black” music (blues, soul, rockabilly) along with the New Orleans and Chicago. This is what the author considers the main key to success: there was electronic music before, but, unlike smart people like Kraftwerk, black guys made it really danceable, having not only an innate sense of rhythm, but also free space for organizing semi-underground parties. After all, this movie is about the genius of the place. The guys moved the entire music industry far ahead, but remained Detroit boys, who once chipped in on a synthesizer and a drum machine.
“Revival 69: The Return of a Legend”
Ron Chapman, 2022
In 1968, Woodstock died down, and almost immediately after that, Canadian promoters thought about it and decided to do it the same way, only better. The main conceptual difference was in an attempt to unite artists of different generations: to gather on the same stage the stars of the latest rock music (Alice Cooper, Kim Foley) with dinosaurs (Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent), who still remember electric guitars without overloaded amplifiers. The idea seemed like a win-win exactly before the start of ticket sales: demand was below all expectations. But since the boat could still sink, why not try to catch a big fish and call The Doors and John Lennon? The course of the festival was once carefully recorded by the classic of documentary D. A. Pennebaker, but, unlike his “Sweet Toronto”, Ron Chapman does not look at the stage, but behind the scenes and at those people who organized one of the brightest music festivals of the times, when “LSD was consumed as easily as penicillin”. However, the heroes, remembering their turbulent youth with glasses of wine in their hands, in no case do not want to repeat anything.
“My name is Alfred Hitchcock”
Mark Cousins, 2022
Believe it or not, as the opening credits assure, this film is “written and voiced by Alfred Hitchcock”. Can’t a director who died 43 years ago make a film about himself? Yes Easy! “I know that I have been dead for four decades. Oh, is the microphone already recording? “Alfred Hitchcock” flirts. Mark Cousins is the most famous cinephile documentary filmmaker, who has been making films about cinema for most of his professional life, and does not hide his intentions. The voice clearly belongs to him, diligently parodying the maestro of suspense. But I don’t want to catch the author’s hand, and I don’t need to. This is almost the same game as the films of Hitchcock himself, who almost always made it clear that on the screen is an illusion that for one and a half to two hours becomes more real than any reality. Can the same words be said about Cousins’ film? Not a fact, but being in his company is at least not boring. He is not at all boring, not high-browed and knows how to declare his love literally on his fingers: perhaps the best moments of the film are the most accurate stylizations made in DIY style for Hitchcock’s editing techniques. The master himself would probably have grunted in response to all these “how the director shoots”, but this is also a movie about the relationship between the author and the interpreter, which cannot live without each other.
“The Zombies: Dream Possessed”
Robert Schwartzman, 2023
Once they competed on equal terms with the beatles and rollers, but today they are more associated with samples for tiktok and hip-hop, soundtracks for TV shows and advertising. The Zombies are not a forgotten or underestimated band: they have a lot of fans all over the world, and reissues of their vinyls disappear from the shelves instantly. An inexperienced listener may not react to the name of the band, but from the very first notes he will start singing along to “She’s Not There” or snapping his fingers to the beat of “Time Of A Season”. Well, it turns out that the band members are still alive, and even in great shape, they still sing great and joke wittily. How did it happen that almost nothing has been heard about them since the sixties? This and other questions are consistently answered by Robert Schwartzman’s most tender intonation document, reminiscent of leafing through the family archive of people close to you. Moreover, it touches regardless of whether you have even heard about this group before.
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