ON A ROLL: THE HAMPTONS EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Ruth and Archie Perlmutter
The Hamptons, Broadway's Malibu on the Atlantic, hosted its eighth annual International Film Festival with the support of New York City's media, arts & entertainment community. Following a little too closely on the heels of major festivals like Montreal, Toronto, Telluride, Venice and New York, the Hamptons fest has been searching for a niche of its own, with a series of different programmers. This year, Linda Hansen and Linda Blackaby (the "two Lindas") have returned as co-programmers and their solid expertise lent an air of growing credibility. Although bolstered by the presence of many established celebrities to attract the affluent summer residents, there was an increase in the number of new and challenging works by young filmmakers. The main venue—a United Artists multiplex—is conveniently smack in the middle of the town of Easthampton. Prospects for the fest were so promising that the organizers were talking about expanding it from one to two weekends. Hopefully, it will retain its informality, efficient operation and the tradition of offering a broad array of emerging talent.
Not afraid to take risks with adventurous programming, the festival hosted a series called "Conflict and Resolution," devoted to new films from the Middle East. Co-sponsored by "The Nobel Peace Laureates Foundation" (as part of the United Nations proclamation that the first decade of 2000 will be the "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World") and a grant of $25,000 from the Abraham family (dedicated to 10-year grants to films of "hope"), the series proved to be a timely selection, since screenings took place during the very week that "peacebuilding" was unravelling and "conflict" loomed larger than "resolution." The tension was so palpable that the festival organizers hired extra police and bodyguards-which fortunately, proved unnecessary, since everything went smoothly. Even a panel consisting of the visiting Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers was civil, but probably due to the fact that young Israeli directors are generally adherents of the peace movement.
Many of the films dealt with displacement of Palestinian Arabs, like the subtly ironic Chronicles of a Disappearance, the name of the first film by Palestinian director, Elie Suleiman (1996), which dealt with the absurdities and indignities visited on a hapless people. Suleiman's new film, Cyber Palestine (2000), was less meditative and indirect. It updated the first oedipal story to modern times, with Joseph and pregnant Mary on a motorcycle, battling past Israeli checkpoints to get to Bethlehem. Joseph ultimately lands in jail and Jesus grows up in a Palestinian refugee camp.
A number of Israeli films dealt with similar allegorical polemics concerning "the land," "the home," and "the olive grove." Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi (1999), which took the prize for the series, is Avi Mograbi's impressive mix of documentary and fiction that mourns and satirizes the political gulf that separates Israelis and Arabs. Mograbi's mockumentary on Israel's 50th anniversary celebration alternates with three other narratives: his ironic story about losing his own ill-gotten "home" to recalcitrant neighbours; a sober documentary on "lost Palestine," the ruined abandoned habitats of Palestinians; and Mograbi's running differences with his producer about how to make his anniversary film. Deftly intercut with archival news material, Mograbi's film was more lively and innovative than The Jahalin (2000) by Talya Ezrahi and Lewie Kerr. A didactic piece, lensed in Jerusalem, about the spread of new West Bank settlements that force the eviction of a Bedouin tribe to a hillside near the city dump, the film seemed to omit relevant information to make its case against Israeli expansion of Jerusalem. Rain 1949 (2000), by Ilan Yagoda, chose a more even-handed approach, empathising with both Holocaust survivors who founded the Kibbutz Megiddo fifty years ago and the Arabs they displaced. Yagoda, who grew up on the Kibbutz, returned to explore his personal malaise and gave each group its own opportunity to express nostalgia for the same turf. The title refers to the film's brackets, opening with the memory of the rain that fell when the Kibbutzniks first arrived in 1949 and ending with rain falling (as a message of renewal?) on a budding branch. Again, the olive trees are metaphors not only for "home" that both groups cherish, but also the hope of a peaceful co-existence.
Although made at a time when there was that hope and viewed at a time of great discouragement, the series demonstrate the programmers' willingness to risk controversy with works that are relevant to important issues. It is this courage that makes film festivals worthwhile.
With many other disparate events, the schedule was jam-packed. Over 20,000 film buffs crammed the theatres to see the more than one hundred films that, for the most part, fulfilled the programmers' interest in "character-driven human dramas." Not counting the many excellent shorts programs, there were: nine first features, over twenty-three new American works, about fifteen foreign films and at least six features made by women. Each morning there were "close encounters" with a celebrity representing one of the films screened, like Aidan Quinn (Songcatcher, 1999) and Danny Aiello (Dinner Rush, 2000), as well as panels on current cinematic issues. In a large white tent on the main drag, a "digital cafe" offered coffee and computers with direct access to the internet. Two archival films from the silent era—Eternal Love (Ernst Lubitsch, 1929, with John Barrymore as a rugged lovelorn mountaineer) and Stella Maris (Marshall Neilan, 1918, with Mary Pickford in two roles)—added early cinema bravura. At least three "Spotlight" films were sure-fire big numbers. State and Main, by David Mamet, is about a film crew in a small New England town and features a terrific cast: Alec Baldwin, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rebecca Pidgeon, William H. Macy and Sarah Jessica Parker. Shadow of a Vampire (2000) by E Elias Merhige, is an audacious and eccentric black comedy on the making of the first and for most cineastes, the best vampire movie, Nosferatu (1922), by renowned German director, F.W. Murnau. An actorly, reflexive movie on the order of Ed Wood (Tim Burton, USA, 1994) and Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon, UK, 1999), it centres on perfectionist Murnau who, guided by the notion that only art matters, hires as his star an actor who may be a real vampire. As compensation, the vampire is promised the opportunity to ravish the lovely heroine. John Malkovich is in his element as the obsessed director, while Willem Dafoe's vampire (Stanislavsky at his zenith) is effectively scary with his pointy ears, clicking fingernails and menacing gestures. Production values are of high quality, with skilful blending of black-and-white re-enactments and actual scenes from Nosferatu. Pollock (2000) was a special presentation by actor, Ed Harris, in his first directorial effort and in the title role as the artist, Jackson Pollock. The film was especially appropriate since Pollock's home/study Center was in the Hamptons.
Although there was no general theme, at least four films were about male-bonding, father surrogates and working men, and remarkably, all of them were first features from the USA. They also reflect a trend in recent films towards confronting male anxiety and vulnerability. Diamond Men (2000), by Dan Cohen, earned special recognition for the performance of Robert Forster (As Good as it Gets [James L Brooks, USA, 1997]). A "death of a salesman-like" drama, it concerned the dangerous lonely life of a travelling jewellery broker who is phasing out of the business and trying to train a rambunctious novice replacement. Flashes of wit, effective rural Pennsylvania landscapes and some racy adventures demonstrate Cohen's considerable promise. Roads and Bridges (2000) by Abraham Lim and produced by Robert Altman, is a film that crosses racial boundaries in a story about an all-male crew that works on road signs in rural Kansas. With deceiving simplicity, Lim tells a powerful tale as he follows rookie Asian American, Lyndon Johnson Lee and his ally, a veteran crew member and the only black man, as they encounter small-town working class racism.
Spring Forward (2000), the closing film, was an impressive debut for playwright/theatre director, Tom Gilroy. It featured talented Liev Schreiber and veteran Ned Beatty as two loveable misfits. A surrogate father/son relationship is developed in seven episodes largely in real time, each crafted like a short story and each preceded by slowly paced tableaux that signal both a change of season and a change of heart. Short-fused Paul (Schreiber), on parole from an armed robbery charge, works side by side with paternal Murph (Beatty), a smalltown groundkeeper. As they exchange witticisms, regrets, intimate social confidences, self-help homilies and tragic truths, they discover each other—and ultimately, themselves. A must-see for its simple humanistic honesty.
Dinner Rush (2000)by Bob Giraldi (Manhattan restaurateur and successful maker of commercials) is a fine addition to the genre of films about the art of food preparation—Babette's Feast (Gabriel Axel, Denmark, 1987); Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (Ang Lee, Tawain, 1994); Like Water for Chocolate (Alfonso Arau, Mexico, 1992); The Big Night (Stanley Tucci, USA, 1996). With glamorous elan, colourful array of secondary characters, it is enhanced by the magnetic presence of Danny Aiello as Louis, the owner of a trendy restaurant, trying to retire from "the mob." The relatively commonplace story concerns a generational conflict which ends in the reconciliation of Louis with his son, Udo, the talented chef. The 'meat' of the film is the furious balletic teamwork of the kitchen help that prepares aesthetic mouth-watering dishes, while the in-crowd, exemplified by Sandra Bernhard as a ruthless food guru/critic, fights for special treatment personified in the dining area.
Balancing these male-oriented movies, the opening film was the strongly feminist Songcatcher (2000) by Maggie Greenwald. Janet McTeer plays a female musicologist at the turn of the century whose fight for deserved tenure is lost to a man. When she relocates in frustration to an Appalachian mountain environment, she becomes the "song-catcher" when she discovers that the local people have been preserving ancient English and Scottish folk ballads. Unfortunately, the city-country melodrama was a cliched feel-good movie (typical of many opening night films) that lacked the edgy conviction of Greenwald's earlier Ballad of Little Jo USA, 1993).
Some of our favourite films had more bite. Aberdeen (Hans Petter Moland, Netherlands, 2000), which won the audience award for best feature, was a taut road movie about the redemption of a confirmed alcoholic. Stellan Skarsgard (Breaking the Waves [Lars Von Trier, 1996] and Good Will Hunting [Gus Van Sant, USA, 1997]) is superb as the substance-abuser, whose daughter (played brilliantly by Lena Headey) pulls him kicking and screaming on a frustrating journey to her dying mother's (Charlotte Rampling) deathbed, all in a last ditch effort to restore the unity of a fragile nuclear family.
Civilized People (2000), a first feature shot in Lebanon and written by woman director, Randa Chahal Sabbag, takes place during the 1975 Civil War in bombed-out ruined Beirut. Like so many recent antiwar movies, the film is a bitter droll satire about so-called "civilized people" who participate in an absurd chaotic war. A deftly woven fragmented narrative with a cast of fully developed characters, it cuts across class, race and ethnic lines. With the premiere of Our Song, Jim McKay has made two low-budget social realist movies about teen-age girls. The first was the more didactic Girls Town (1996), with Lili Taylor. Our Song, which only cost $70,000, features three unknowns who are members of a remarkable high school band (the real-life Jackie Robinson's Steppers), and whom McKay feels represents role models for the development of self-esteem by minority women. By avoiding heavy-handed drama and "girlz in the hood" luridness, McKay gives the film a quasi-documentary feeling of authenticity. Lensed on location in Brooklyn, the film skilfully portrays the complex relationships and problems in an inner city high school.
The festival's forte has always been in its documentaries. This year there were eight features which included a revised Gimme Shelter (Maysles Brothers, USA, 1970). We admired three high-quality docs. Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story (Vincent Fremont and Shelly Dunn Fremont), a kind of maladaptive food film, deals with the rebellious fetish of Brigid Berlin, one of Andy Warhol's favourite performers/groupies (Chelsea Girls, USA, 1967). Provocative and self-indulgent, Brigid recounts her refusal to conform to the wishes of her socialite parents (her father was head of Hearst Corp. and her cousin was Patty Hearst) Her revolt included outrageous self-promotion; amplifying her mother's inane complaining phone conversations on stage; creating paintings out of her breast imprints and kept what she called "trip" books (decidedly not travelogues), which included drawings of penises by famous arty folk. Now 60 and equally compulsive, she oscillates between weight-loss and key- lime pie binges, while adorning every corner of her home with kitchy replicas of her pugdogs. A monologuist of sometimes scintillating comic flashes, her stream-of-consciousness insights are juxtaposed with Andy's icy gnomic witticisms and the flavourful anecdotes told by her friends, eg, John Waters, who gave her a minor role in Serial Mom (USA, 1994).
Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale (David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro, USA, 2000) received the Documentary award. The film follows New York painter/ethnographer, Tobias Schneebaum, now 80, as he returns to Papua, New Guinea in 1998, where he had been adopted in the 50s by an aborigine tribe. He is also pictured returning to the Peruvian Amazon, where he lived with Asmat, a tribe of practising cannibals. Witty and engaging throughout, Schneebaum, displays an unusual optimistic outlook on life and even now, disabled with Parkinson's disease, he remains vital and beloved. The joyous welcomes he receives upon his return to each location (especially by one of his gay lovers) are interspersed with TV appearances with Mike Douglas, Charlie Rose, and an interview with an admiring neighbour, Norman Mailer. Five years in the making, the film was propelled by fascination with the joie de vivre of its subject and the exotic search for fulfilment.
Fighter (Amir Bar-Lev, Czechoslovakia, 2000), a superb doc, received the audience award and is another male bonding film concerning an ambivalent "odd couple" who return to Czechoslovakia after having survived the holocaust and the Soviet occupation in 1968. The differences in interpretation of memory between 77-year old boxer and former pilot, Jan Wiener, and fractious author, Arnost Lustig, strain their relationship as they revisit the past. A survival story about surmounting incredible obstacles, Fighter, like Keep the River on Your Right, is also a testament to the remarkable resilience of the ageing protagonists.
Just a limo away from Broadway, the Met, Lincoln Center and dozens of other cultural sites, the Hamptons film festival provides New Yorkers with a window on the world of cinema—a screening room with a view.
Ruth Perlmutter teaches film at the University of Pennsylvania and has published widely on film-related issues in both scholarly and popular journals. Archie Perlmutter teaches at Beaver College, is president of the now twenty year Philadelphia Jewish Film festival. Together, they roam the earth checking out international film festivals.