This HBO documentary, presented via Brett Ratner, presents an account of the distinctive video culture that emerged in Romania in the final years of the Ceacescu regime via a combination of interviews and reconstructions with both ordinary people and key figures in the samizdat video scene.
Up until the mid-1980s Romanian audiences had little access to western media. What was available was heavily censored by the authorities, sometimes for reasons that made sense only to them. One reconstruction, for example, presents the screening of a breakfast scene from a Hollywood film. The scene is cut because the amount of food on the table was in excess of what would be found in a comparable Romanian scenario and painted communism in a negative light vis a vis capitalism.
The VCR – imported and costing about the same as a car – changed this as a clandestine network of dubbing, duping, distributing and front room home screenings developed. Sometimes the multiple-generation copy would be so bad that viewers had to rely upon the dubbing track to tell what was going on, while the threat of a visit from the authorities was ever-present.
The main weaknesses of the documentary are the over-use of reconstructions and some failures of explanation. For instance, was not clear how everybody of a certain age seemed to know the name of one of the most prolific video dubbers, Irina Nistor, when the authorities apparently did not, all the more so since in her day job she worked for the regime.
I would also like to have had a bit more contextualisation and comparison. We see that the Romanian dubbing culture was one where an individual, male or female, would do all of the voices, providing a running translation of the English dialogue, but are not told whether this was standard practice. We also see that swear words would be replaced – which makes for amusing viewing when the film in question is De Palma’s Scarface – but are not told if this mirrored official practice and/or was a means of attempting to make the films family-friendly.
These things said, Chuck Norris versus Communism is worth watching for anyone with an interest in global video cultures. One parallel with the British case, for example, is how the act of banning something – Hollywood product there, the video nasties here – serves only to make it that more appealing.
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 July 2015
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
That Sugar Film
It’s impossible to watch That Sugar Film and not think of Supersize Me as an obvious progenitor and reference point.
Both are documentaries that see their director subject himself to a different diet for a period in order to chart the effects this has on his physical and emotional well being.
This said, there are sufficient differences between the two films to allow for the existence of both. In Supersize Me Morgan Spurlock took it upon himself to eat only at McDonalds and to always take the Supersize option if it were offered to him. As such he was taking in a lot more calories than he had under his pre-film diet. Here Damon Gameau, who had previously switched to a diet free from added and processed sugars, takes it upon himself to consume the same quantity of these as the average Australian. As such he takes in the same amount of calories as he had before, but just shifts the proportions of fats and sugars in particular.
If neither man’s new diet is one that the nutritional and other experts they respectively interview would recommend, Gameau’s is arguably more in line with dominant discourses. The film’s contention is that due to the debate over whether sugar or fat in the diet is (more) harmful having been won by the former lobby fats were removed from processed foods and replaced with sugars.
This leads on to another couple of points of differentiation. That Sugar Film goes into the science of food a bit more than Supersize Me, and increasingly brings in other voices besides the filmmaker’s.
So, for instance, Gameau visits an aboriginal community which began with its inhabitants following a traditional diet and then saw the introduction of western processed foods; as he community was alcohol-free changes in morbidity could not be explained away using that framework.
The science aspects are presented, like the rest of the film, in a light, breezy and undeniably slick way. This all keeps the film accessible, but also possibly a touch light on fibre.
Both are documentaries that see their director subject himself to a different diet for a period in order to chart the effects this has on his physical and emotional well being.
This said, there are sufficient differences between the two films to allow for the existence of both. In Supersize Me Morgan Spurlock took it upon himself to eat only at McDonalds and to always take the Supersize option if it were offered to him. As such he was taking in a lot more calories than he had under his pre-film diet. Here Damon Gameau, who had previously switched to a diet free from added and processed sugars, takes it upon himself to consume the same quantity of these as the average Australian. As such he takes in the same amount of calories as he had before, but just shifts the proportions of fats and sugars in particular.
If neither man’s new diet is one that the nutritional and other experts they respectively interview would recommend, Gameau’s is arguably more in line with dominant discourses. The film’s contention is that due to the debate over whether sugar or fat in the diet is (more) harmful having been won by the former lobby fats were removed from processed foods and replaced with sugars.
This leads on to another couple of points of differentiation. That Sugar Film goes into the science of food a bit more than Supersize Me, and increasingly brings in other voices besides the filmmaker’s.
So, for instance, Gameau visits an aboriginal community which began with its inhabitants following a traditional diet and then saw the introduction of western processed foods; as he community was alcohol-free changes in morbidity could not be explained away using that framework.
The science aspects are presented, like the rest of the film, in a light, breezy and undeniably slick way. This all keeps the film accessible, but also possibly a touch light on fibre.
Friday, 19 June 2015
Future Shock! The Story of 2000 AD
No film or book should ever be described as the story or history of its subject, whether as a title or a subtitle. There is not The Story of Film, nor The Story of 2000 AD. Rather there are stories, histories, accounts, necessarily incomplete and intentionally or unintentionally biased.
One demonstration of this here is the absence of Alan Moore as one of the interviewees. His presence is felt, perhaps as a structuring absence, through comments from others, including his daughter Leah Moore and Neil Gaiman, on The Ballad of Halo Jones in particular.
Another, which makes Moore’s absent presence that bit more surprising, is that the filmmakers provide others associated with the comic plenty of scope to be critical of others, of one another and of themselves.
This, crucially, is in line with the anti-authoritarian mindset typical (or presented as such) of 2000 AD’s writers and artists. An irony here is that 2000 AD is shown as coming from the banning of its predecessor Action, whose mistake was to present its anti-authoritarianism in a contemporary rather than science fiction/fantasy guise. (Here I’d hope that in an extended DVD version Martin Barker was included amongst the academic commentators and that Battle's Charley’s War was mentioned.)
The most important question for 2000 AD’s creatives is presented as one of recognition. For whatever reasons -- likely worthy of a documentary in their own right -- most of those working in the comics industry were historically not acknowledged as the authors or given the rights according with this designation.
2000AD’s crediting of its creatives proved a triple-edged sword. For the creatives it meant the ability to move onwards and upwards to the USA, Marvel and DC if they wanted to. For the comic it meant talent increasingly using it as a stepping stone towards greater audiences and remuneration. For comics, especially in the US, it meant a greater breadth. (The influence of Japanese comics on 2000 AD, and/or vice-versa, if there are such, are not mentioned.)
The critical theme, and self-criticism, re-emerge. (In the spirit of self-criticism I don’t know if there is a chibi Dredd, say, but would like to.) One of 2000AD’s, and the comics industry’s failings, is given as the masculine focus. Halo Jones excepted the other key characters from the early days discussed -- Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, Johnny Alpha -- are male.
So too, however, do the limits of the critique: the 1995 Judge Dredd film is bad, the 2012 film good. Rebellion Developments, the current owners of the brand, are good.
Overall, though, a good documentary -- if you were not around in 2000 AD’s first decade you’ll likely learn something and, if like me, you weren’t around for much after that, you’ll likely also do so.
One demonstration of this here is the absence of Alan Moore as one of the interviewees. His presence is felt, perhaps as a structuring absence, through comments from others, including his daughter Leah Moore and Neil Gaiman, on The Ballad of Halo Jones in particular.
Another, which makes Moore’s absent presence that bit more surprising, is that the filmmakers provide others associated with the comic plenty of scope to be critical of others, of one another and of themselves.
This, crucially, is in line with the anti-authoritarian mindset typical (or presented as such) of 2000 AD’s writers and artists. An irony here is that 2000 AD is shown as coming from the banning of its predecessor Action, whose mistake was to present its anti-authoritarianism in a contemporary rather than science fiction/fantasy guise. (Here I’d hope that in an extended DVD version Martin Barker was included amongst the academic commentators and that Battle's Charley’s War was mentioned.)
The most important question for 2000 AD’s creatives is presented as one of recognition. For whatever reasons -- likely worthy of a documentary in their own right -- most of those working in the comics industry were historically not acknowledged as the authors or given the rights according with this designation.
2000AD’s crediting of its creatives proved a triple-edged sword. For the creatives it meant the ability to move onwards and upwards to the USA, Marvel and DC if they wanted to. For the comic it meant talent increasingly using it as a stepping stone towards greater audiences and remuneration. For comics, especially in the US, it meant a greater breadth. (The influence of Japanese comics on 2000 AD, and/or vice-versa, if there are such, are not mentioned.)
The critical theme, and self-criticism, re-emerge. (In the spirit of self-criticism I don’t know if there is a chibi Dredd, say, but would like to.) One of 2000AD’s, and the comics industry’s failings, is given as the masculine focus. Halo Jones excepted the other key characters from the early days discussed -- Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, Johnny Alpha -- are male.
So too, however, do the limits of the critique: the 1995 Judge Dredd film is bad, the 2012 film good. Rebellion Developments, the current owners of the brand, are good.
Overall, though, a good documentary -- if you were not around in 2000 AD’s first decade you’ll likely learn something and, if like me, you weren’t around for much after that, you’ll likely also do so.
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Doc of the Dead
As an introduction to the zombie film this documentary is a disappointment. There are two major reasons for this.
First, while the inaugural zombie film, White Zombie (1932) is referenced, the history presented is very much from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. Certainly, George A. Romero’s film inaugurated a paradigm shift in the nature of the zombie, from labourer-producer to flesh eater consumer, but this point could have been made clearer by referencing, for example, Plague of the Zombies (1966) as a point of contrast.
Second, all the films mentioned – others include Return of the Living Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and 28 Days Later (2002) – are Anglo-American. The contributions of continental European film-makers are entirely absent. This is a problem when you remember that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) was a co-production with Dario Argento and that the film’s success at the Italian box-office led to several tribute productions. Two of particular note here are Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), for its fusion of old school voodoo zombie and new school flesh-eater, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), for featuring running zombies more than 20 years before 28 Days Later or the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004).
With the film running only 82 minutes and feeling padded out even these these omissions are all the more striking.
And, finally, if you are going to feature Joanna Angel talking about her zombie-porn crossover shouldn’t you also mention that Joe D’Amato, was there first?
First, while the inaugural zombie film, White Zombie (1932) is referenced, the history presented is very much from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. Certainly, George A. Romero’s film inaugurated a paradigm shift in the nature of the zombie, from labourer-producer to flesh eater consumer, but this point could have been made clearer by referencing, for example, Plague of the Zombies (1966) as a point of contrast.
Second, all the films mentioned – others include Return of the Living Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and 28 Days Later (2002) – are Anglo-American. The contributions of continental European film-makers are entirely absent. This is a problem when you remember that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) was a co-production with Dario Argento and that the film’s success at the Italian box-office led to several tribute productions. Two of particular note here are Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), for its fusion of old school voodoo zombie and new school flesh-eater, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), for featuring running zombies more than 20 years before 28 Days Later or the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004).
With the film running only 82 minutes and feeling padded out even these these omissions are all the more striking.
And, finally, if you are going to feature Joanna Angel talking about her zombie-porn crossover shouldn’t you also mention that Joe D’Amato, was there first?
Friday, 17 June 2011
The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
According to her self-penned IMDB profile The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye writer-director-editor Marie Losier makes unconventional films about unconventional artists and views the subject of this film, Genesis P-Orridge, as a “musical genius”.
If you agree with and Losier, then you will probably enjoy this documentary, although it may not tell you much you do not already know about the artist born Neil Andrew Megson, better known for his work with Throbbing Gristle in the 1970s and Psychic TV in the 1980s under his new legal name.
If you don’t then you are unlikely to have your opinions altered and will probably find the film somewhat tedious and self-indulgent, characterised by often-predictable experimental tropes and images.
Personally I’m somewhat in the middle: Some of P-Orridge’s work is certainly interesting, but like many transgressive artists there’s a tendency for shock for its own sake to override other concerns. The danger of exhibiting a used tampon as part of an ICA exhibition is of being forever labelled as that tampon artist and of having to constantly live up to your reputation c(o)um past.
Correspondingly the “pandrogyny” project, by which Genesis and his wife Lady Jaye had plastic surgery that made them look like one another, could be considered as creating a body (of) work somewhat derivative of if still recognisably distinct from that of the French performance artist Orlan.
Likewise, we might wonder about the limits Genesis and Jaye set for themselves, in that this pandrogyny seems more about secondary than primary sex characteristics.
Unfortunately P-Orridge doesn’t really raise these questions here, nor Losier ask them.
Part of the issue, one suspects, may have been that the film appears to have had a long and somewhat troubled genesis of its own, maybe beginning as a film about pandrogyny but then becoming more about Genesis and his/her relationship with Jaye after her 2007 death.
Best enjoyed while “drinking German wine”
If you agree with and Losier, then you will probably enjoy this documentary, although it may not tell you much you do not already know about the artist born Neil Andrew Megson, better known for his work with Throbbing Gristle in the 1970s and Psychic TV in the 1980s under his new legal name.
If you don’t then you are unlikely to have your opinions altered and will probably find the film somewhat tedious and self-indulgent, characterised by often-predictable experimental tropes and images.
Personally I’m somewhat in the middle: Some of P-Orridge’s work is certainly interesting, but like many transgressive artists there’s a tendency for shock for its own sake to override other concerns. The danger of exhibiting a used tampon as part of an ICA exhibition is of being forever labelled as that tampon artist and of having to constantly live up to your reputation c(o)um past.
Correspondingly the “pandrogyny” project, by which Genesis and his wife Lady Jaye had plastic surgery that made them look like one another, could be considered as creating a body (of) work somewhat derivative of if still recognisably distinct from that of the French performance artist Orlan.
Likewise, we might wonder about the limits Genesis and Jaye set for themselves, in that this pandrogyny seems more about secondary than primary sex characteristics.
Unfortunately P-Orridge doesn’t really raise these questions here, nor Losier ask them.
Part of the issue, one suspects, may have been that the film appears to have had a long and somewhat troubled genesis of its own, maybe beginning as a film about pandrogyny but then becoming more about Genesis and his/her relationship with Jaye after her 2007 death.
Best enjoyed while “drinking German wine”
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Bobby Fischer Against the World
The trajectory of Bobby Fischer’s life is a difficult to put an upbeat fimic spin upon. In 1972, aged just 30, he was a national hero for defeating the incumbent Soviet chess champion Boris Spassky in their World Championship Match. But by the time of his death in 2008 his anti-US, anti-Semitic and other remarks had led to his being a zero living in exile.
That Fischer was able to find a home in Iceland in the 1990s, after an extradition warrant for his arrest was issued by the US government for his breaching sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing there during it civil wars nevertheless raises questions as to the objectivity of the film’s title: Was it really Bobby Fischer against the entire world, or was it ‘merely’ Bobby Fischer against the US government and – admittedly far, far more problematically – the international Jewish conspiracy that he perceived?
The filmmakers never really get to grips with this side of Fischer. Maybe they could not, but the formal approach they have chosen, that comfortable and familiar mix of talking head interviews and archival footage, frequently overlaid with period-setting music, does not help. Fischer’s grandmaster contemporaries like Larry Evans and Anthony Saidy are better at explaining his chess than their own responses to his eccentricities even in the 1960s, where there (and others’) pop psychologising is frequently in evidence. The musical choices also seem arbitrary – What does Gary Glitter have in common with Fischer, other than also becoming a pariah figure? Did Fischer listen to glam rock or to Booker T. and the MG’s or Isaac Hayes?
A contrast with another film about a troubled genius who retired at the height of his powers, namely 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould is instructive here: Its filmmakers seem to have had the sense that they could not explain everything about the enigmatic Canadian pianist, and so chose a more consciously fragmentary approach to convey an appropriate sense of otherness or even otherworldliness.
Here, by contrast, we belatedly learn of Fischer’s involvement with an Evangelical Christian group only at the point he decided to leave them in the mid-1970s, but not at the point when he first joined them over a decade earlier. It’s fragmentary, yes, but not in a clearly worked through, properly articulated way. Perhaps it could be a reflection of Fischer’s increasingly paranoid dislocation, but if so we again come back to the fact that the filmmakers make no attempt to explore how the ideas he came to hold made sense to him.
Two moments stand out here. The first is a talking head piece from Henry Kissinger. Undoubtedly his presence was a coup for the filmmakers and he was obviously a major player in the geopolitical chess games of the Cold War that form the backdrop to the Fischer’s story. But Kissinger’s presence also inadvertently makes it clear that Fischer’s anti-Americanism was never going to be seriously engaged with and also offers anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists proof of what they are looking for in that “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you” manner. The second, is a fragment from a US television news programme at the time of the Fischer-Spassky match. It is the first item on the agenda. Watergate is relegated to second.
Fisher may have been the greatest chess player ever and the man most important for raising its profile, particularly in the west, but ultimately I was left wondering how important chess itself is in the grand scheme of things and whether the tragedy presented might be attributed to too little rather than too much chess. Had Fischer literally lived solely for chess and shown absolutely no interest in anything else, most notably politics, would he have been okay? Obviously it would be wrong to expect the filmmakers to answer this question in a serious way, but taken on its own terms Bobby Fischer Against the World raises too many questions and offers too few answers.
That Fischer was able to find a home in Iceland in the 1990s, after an extradition warrant for his arrest was issued by the US government for his breaching sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing there during it civil wars nevertheless raises questions as to the objectivity of the film’s title: Was it really Bobby Fischer against the entire world, or was it ‘merely’ Bobby Fischer against the US government and – admittedly far, far more problematically – the international Jewish conspiracy that he perceived?
The filmmakers never really get to grips with this side of Fischer. Maybe they could not, but the formal approach they have chosen, that comfortable and familiar mix of talking head interviews and archival footage, frequently overlaid with period-setting music, does not help. Fischer’s grandmaster contemporaries like Larry Evans and Anthony Saidy are better at explaining his chess than their own responses to his eccentricities even in the 1960s, where there (and others’) pop psychologising is frequently in evidence. The musical choices also seem arbitrary – What does Gary Glitter have in common with Fischer, other than also becoming a pariah figure? Did Fischer listen to glam rock or to Booker T. and the MG’s or Isaac Hayes?
A contrast with another film about a troubled genius who retired at the height of his powers, namely 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould is instructive here: Its filmmakers seem to have had the sense that they could not explain everything about the enigmatic Canadian pianist, and so chose a more consciously fragmentary approach to convey an appropriate sense of otherness or even otherworldliness.
Here, by contrast, we belatedly learn of Fischer’s involvement with an Evangelical Christian group only at the point he decided to leave them in the mid-1970s, but not at the point when he first joined them over a decade earlier. It’s fragmentary, yes, but not in a clearly worked through, properly articulated way. Perhaps it could be a reflection of Fischer’s increasingly paranoid dislocation, but if so we again come back to the fact that the filmmakers make no attempt to explore how the ideas he came to hold made sense to him.
Two moments stand out here. The first is a talking head piece from Henry Kissinger. Undoubtedly his presence was a coup for the filmmakers and he was obviously a major player in the geopolitical chess games of the Cold War that form the backdrop to the Fischer’s story. But Kissinger’s presence also inadvertently makes it clear that Fischer’s anti-Americanism was never going to be seriously engaged with and also offers anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists proof of what they are looking for in that “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you” manner. The second, is a fragment from a US television news programme at the time of the Fischer-Spassky match. It is the first item on the agenda. Watergate is relegated to second.
Fisher may have been the greatest chess player ever and the man most important for raising its profile, particularly in the west, but ultimately I was left wondering how important chess itself is in the grand scheme of things and whether the tragedy presented might be attributed to too little rather than too much chess. Had Fischer literally lived solely for chess and shown absolutely no interest in anything else, most notably politics, would he have been okay? Obviously it would be wrong to expect the filmmakers to answer this question in a serious way, but taken on its own terms Bobby Fischer Against the World raises too many questions and offers too few answers.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Addio ultimo uomo / Cannibalo brutalo / The Last Savage / World of the Last Man / Farewell to the Last Man
If watching exploitation films can sometimes be described as a kind of macho endurance test, akin to seeing who can order the hottest curry on a drunken night out, then Addio Ultimo Uomo is one of those films that will sort the men out from the boys.
For away from instructional films on surgical and autopsy procedures, the art of the Vienna Aktionists or certain niche / fetish pornography, it is quite possible the most extreme film you will ever see – and that statement includes more usual Italian exploitation suspects like Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, Buio Omega and Emanuelle in America.
The opening sequence, that of the killing and butchering of an elephant by African tribesmen, sets the scene, being unflinching and yet comparatively sombre and reasoned compared to the more usual mondo film.
There is still some maudlin musical commentary, most notably in the plaintive theme song why – “Why? Don't ask me why” – but also more apparently diegetic / authentic music.
Likewise, there is again that familiar mondo juxtaposition of 'primitive' and 'modern', whether of the unexplored surface of the moon and the African desert; the clubbing to death, cooking and eating of a dog with vivisection footage; ritual scarification and breast reconstruction surgery, or the spearing to death and severing of the hand and penis of an enemy tribesman with stock Vietnam combat and aftermath footage.
But the mondo's sneering, supercillious aspect is lacking in the voice-off commentary, which appears rather more factual and serious than most of its type, with the various rites of passage shown – which include funeral and burial rites and coming of age and fertility ceremonies – being treated with dignity and respect.
A dead elder is prepared for burial
Always assuming, that is, that you don't regard the very presence of a camera recording and representing such material, details of which include young women in one tribe being ritually deflowered with a dildo and an deceased elder of another being partially skinned, for gain to be unacceptable, full stop.
While I don't feel this myself, where I felt the filmmakers, Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni, didn't quite succeed was in contextualising the different peoples depicted: we're told their names often mean the people or similar in their own languages, but at times there is that awkward tendency to jump from one group to another without fully identifying where we are in Africa and the more specific details pertaining on this occasion.
We see one tribe building huts and then jump to another where the constructions are evidently different; note the differences in dress, ranging from those tribes who are essentially naked to those who wear the odd western-style cap or sunglasses; or even the way in which a steel fishhook and disposable razor blade are used to perform scarification.
We may ask why. But, alas, the filmmakers have already implicitly answered that question with a don't ask us.
Nevertheless, I must again reiterate that Addio Ultimo Uomo goes further than most of its counterparts in presenting something other than just mondo shockumentary.
In this regard it is perhaps most fascinating to see the body modification material and feel that, rather than merely witnessing a one-way passage of thoughts and practices, that they have become like us as seems implied by the farewell of the title, we have also become that bit more like them, recovering atavistic aspects of our shared human past – or modern primitive future?
[A video-sourced AVI copy of the film is available from Surrealmoviez]
For away from instructional films on surgical and autopsy procedures, the art of the Vienna Aktionists or certain niche / fetish pornography, it is quite possible the most extreme film you will ever see – and that statement includes more usual Italian exploitation suspects like Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, Buio Omega and Emanuelle in America.
The opening sequence, that of the killing and butchering of an elephant by African tribesmen, sets the scene, being unflinching and yet comparatively sombre and reasoned compared to the more usual mondo film.
There is still some maudlin musical commentary, most notably in the plaintive theme song why – “Why? Don't ask me why” – but also more apparently diegetic / authentic music.
Likewise, there is again that familiar mondo juxtaposition of 'primitive' and 'modern', whether of the unexplored surface of the moon and the African desert; the clubbing to death, cooking and eating of a dog with vivisection footage; ritual scarification and breast reconstruction surgery, or the spearing to death and severing of the hand and penis of an enemy tribesman with stock Vietnam combat and aftermath footage.
But the mondo's sneering, supercillious aspect is lacking in the voice-off commentary, which appears rather more factual and serious than most of its type, with the various rites of passage shown – which include funeral and burial rites and coming of age and fertility ceremonies – being treated with dignity and respect.
A dead elder is prepared for burial
Always assuming, that is, that you don't regard the very presence of a camera recording and representing such material, details of which include young women in one tribe being ritually deflowered with a dildo and an deceased elder of another being partially skinned, for gain to be unacceptable, full stop.
While I don't feel this myself, where I felt the filmmakers, Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni, didn't quite succeed was in contextualising the different peoples depicted: we're told their names often mean the people or similar in their own languages, but at times there is that awkward tendency to jump from one group to another without fully identifying where we are in Africa and the more specific details pertaining on this occasion.
We see one tribe building huts and then jump to another where the constructions are evidently different; note the differences in dress, ranging from those tribes who are essentially naked to those who wear the odd western-style cap or sunglasses; or even the way in which a steel fishhook and disposable razor blade are used to perform scarification.
We may ask why. But, alas, the filmmakers have already implicitly answered that question with a don't ask us.
Nevertheless, I must again reiterate that Addio Ultimo Uomo goes further than most of its counterparts in presenting something other than just mondo shockumentary.
In this regard it is perhaps most fascinating to see the body modification material and feel that, rather than merely witnessing a one-way passage of thoughts and practices, that they have become like us as seems implied by the farewell of the title, we have also become that bit more like them, recovering atavistic aspects of our shared human past – or modern primitive future?
[A video-sourced AVI copy of the film is available from Surrealmoviez]
Monday, 30 June 2008
Storie di vita e malavita / The Teenage Prostitution Racket / Prostitution
I've watched this 1975 film from Carlo Lizzani three times now and still can't quite get my head around it and whether it's offering serious social commentary on its subject, is exploiting it for sensationalist purposes, or – most likely on balance – a bit of both.
Certainly the first few moments pull no punches and make for decidedly uncomfortable viewing, as we get a grandmother pimping her purportedly 13-year-old granddaughter to passing motorists, with the girl exposing her breasts and pudenda before quickly moving to perform implied fellatio on the van driver who had thought he was only giving them a lift only a few moments earlier.
Their run-ins with a group of pimps who don't take kindly to incursions onto their turf forms a running thread through the remainder of the film, which presents a series of documentary-style reconstructions, each based on co-writer Marisa Rusconi's research.
The first of these case studies also works well, mainly because it seems more typical and credible. In it a naïve 16-year-old, Rosina, arrives in Milan from Sardinia. Her father died in an industrial accident, leaving Rosina to support the rest of the family. Being reluctant to marry a family friend several decades her senior, she has come to the city to take up work through her cousin. The job Rosina gets is, however, marginal at best, putting together bootleg tapes at piecework rates – if, that is, she even gets paid at all. At the weekend, another of the girls in the house-cum-workshop suggests that they go dancing. At the disco Rosina meets Salvatore, AKA Velvet. A pimp on the lookout for fresh meat, he turns on the charm and sweeps Rosina off her feet. By the time she realises his true nature, it is already too late...
The subsequent case studies have a tendency to be more sensationalistic and mondo-eseque. In one a girl from a good home, Gisella, is blackmailed into having relationships with men after she is photographed in a compromising situation. While one doesn't doubt that it could happen, it seems a somewhat inefficient and risky way of working compared to targeting others in Rosina's situation. In another a second respectable middle class girl prostitutes herself to express her contempt for her parents, before eventually confronting her father over his own liking for underage girls. Again, it seems too much like choosing the rarer specific case over the more routine and general one.
These later stories are also more explicit, with borderline hardcore footage of fellatio, pseudo-lesbian activity with a strap-on and penetration shots inserted into the narratives.
Insofar as this takes the film coming perilously close to itself exploitation what it is purporting to expose and condemn, it's difficult to know what director and co-writer Lizzani and his collaborators were thinking of here. Two possibilities do however spring to mind. One is that, like Salo as a whole or the final act of Di Leo's To Be Twenty, they are using a bait and switch approach, luring the spectator in with the promise of more routine exploitation pleasures before giving us rather more than we had bargained upon. Another is that it represents another part of Lizzani's political critique, that he wanted to universalise things more for the middle class audience than a succession of Rosina-type scenarios would have allowed for, with this allowing for a running theme of exploring and exposing the exploitative relationships inherent within capitalism society at all levels. (Or, to allude to another relevant but more straightfowardly generic title here, is it what have 'they' done to 'their' daughters, what 'you' have done to 'your' daughters or what 'we' are doing to 'our' daughters collectively?)
The young actresses look the age of their characters (“As far as make up goes, put on as little as possible – you always want to look younger than you are,” as Velvet instructs Rosina) making it the kind of film that it's hard to imagine someone contemplating making in today's climate and which, were it to somehow get backing, would in all likelihood still experience distribution and censorship problems; in this regard it is also worth noting that the Italian Raro Video release as Storie di vita e malavita omits the harder footage found in the Greek English-dubbed VHS as The Teenage Prostitution Racket.
Ennio Morricone provided the soundtrack and Franco Fraticelli was the editor.
Certainly the first few moments pull no punches and make for decidedly uncomfortable viewing, as we get a grandmother pimping her purportedly 13-year-old granddaughter to passing motorists, with the girl exposing her breasts and pudenda before quickly moving to perform implied fellatio on the van driver who had thought he was only giving them a lift only a few moments earlier.
Their run-ins with a group of pimps who don't take kindly to incursions onto their turf forms a running thread through the remainder of the film, which presents a series of documentary-style reconstructions, each based on co-writer Marisa Rusconi's research.
The first of these case studies also works well, mainly because it seems more typical and credible. In it a naïve 16-year-old, Rosina, arrives in Milan from Sardinia. Her father died in an industrial accident, leaving Rosina to support the rest of the family. Being reluctant to marry a family friend several decades her senior, she has come to the city to take up work through her cousin. The job Rosina gets is, however, marginal at best, putting together bootleg tapes at piecework rates – if, that is, she even gets paid at all. At the weekend, another of the girls in the house-cum-workshop suggests that they go dancing. At the disco Rosina meets Salvatore, AKA Velvet. A pimp on the lookout for fresh meat, he turns on the charm and sweeps Rosina off her feet. By the time she realises his true nature, it is already too late...
The subsequent case studies have a tendency to be more sensationalistic and mondo-eseque. In one a girl from a good home, Gisella, is blackmailed into having relationships with men after she is photographed in a compromising situation. While one doesn't doubt that it could happen, it seems a somewhat inefficient and risky way of working compared to targeting others in Rosina's situation. In another a second respectable middle class girl prostitutes herself to express her contempt for her parents, before eventually confronting her father over his own liking for underage girls. Again, it seems too much like choosing the rarer specific case over the more routine and general one.
These later stories are also more explicit, with borderline hardcore footage of fellatio, pseudo-lesbian activity with a strap-on and penetration shots inserted into the narratives.
Insofar as this takes the film coming perilously close to itself exploitation what it is purporting to expose and condemn, it's difficult to know what director and co-writer Lizzani and his collaborators were thinking of here. Two possibilities do however spring to mind. One is that, like Salo as a whole or the final act of Di Leo's To Be Twenty, they are using a bait and switch approach, luring the spectator in with the promise of more routine exploitation pleasures before giving us rather more than we had bargained upon. Another is that it represents another part of Lizzani's political critique, that he wanted to universalise things more for the middle class audience than a succession of Rosina-type scenarios would have allowed for, with this allowing for a running theme of exploring and exposing the exploitative relationships inherent within capitalism society at all levels. (Or, to allude to another relevant but more straightfowardly generic title here, is it what have 'they' done to 'their' daughters, what 'you' have done to 'your' daughters or what 'we' are doing to 'our' daughters collectively?)
The young actresses look the age of their characters (“As far as make up goes, put on as little as possible – you always want to look younger than you are,” as Velvet instructs Rosina) making it the kind of film that it's hard to imagine someone contemplating making in today's climate and which, were it to somehow get backing, would in all likelihood still experience distribution and censorship problems; in this regard it is also worth noting that the Italian Raro Video release as Storie di vita e malavita omits the harder footage found in the Greek English-dubbed VHS as The Teenage Prostitution Racket.
Ennio Morricone provided the soundtrack and Franco Fraticelli was the editor.
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