This year's Starz Denver Film Festival is right around the corner, commencing November 3rd,and is standing strong after 30 years as one of Denver's cultural touchstones that speaks to an enthusiastic and diverse audience. While the festival has numerous opportunities for more profitable and high-profile mainstream films (and an exceptional recent history of academy award nominees and favorites filling the bigger slots), it is the specialty subjects and more remote features that really make it resonate. So while the queueing may still be heaviest for Governor, I mean Mayor John Hickenlooper's brother's film "Casino Jack" or Danny Boyle's latest "127 hours," there are plenty of opportunities to find a seat for some of the more obscure pleasures such as this years focus on Iranian cinema, the Martin Scorsese profile of director Elia Kazan, or even "Pelada," the expose on soccer's universal stature in the sporting world.
I always start each festival by looking into films that might have a direct connection to contemporary visual art, the lineup generally offering a handful of features with enough zest to satisfy. While this year's slate is limited in that category, the three I previewed are all solid and in the case of the documentary Marwencol, most likely one of the most unusual and engaging of the entire program. Jeff Malmberg's depiction of artist Mark Hogencamp's unforeseen artistic journey is so astounding that it almost seems preposterous. Hogencamp and his art isn't exactly endearing on the immediate surface, the man was an alcoholic (and likely difficult human being) prior to being beaten within inches of his life, and made his artistic mark on the world with doll-based photography. But every single aspect surrounding those two key elements is simply fascinating, the project itself any documentarians dream to reveal. The title is derived from the universe Hogencamp created entirely from a collection of vintage dolls and whatever other materials he could put together for a very unusual therapy, and is an amalgamation of three real-life figures of great importance to the man. Of course Mark never had any desire or ambition to share this universe with others outside of his immediate environment, like most artists would, and so the authenticity of the work as well as how he came to find his creations displayed in a prominent NYC gallery is riveting from start to finish. The subject is treated with the utmost respect, Hogencamp himself offering much in the way of personal depth and sensational honesty that would be highly unlikely without the supreme trauma that created his situation. And from my own experience in the art business, his work easily reaches way past the best of the genre. Those who are well versed in the field might recall the 2005 issue of the excellent contemporary art journal Esopus which first featured Mark's story with a limited visual essay and interview. The film takes the seed from that feature and develops it to thoroughly robust proportions, in essence delivering a gift to everyone who understands that depth of the human experience is of major importance in understanding any single work of art.
I can't recall the Starz Denver Film Festival featuring a screening that is actually a pure work of visual art, at least in a feature-length format, but Phil Solomon's American Falls is just that. Colorado's reputation as a place for experimental cinema to be made and appreciated can be attributed primarily to the late, great Stan Brakhage, with the festival offering a yearly tribute in Stan's honor to filmmakers exploring the experimental and avante garde. Perhaps the respect in a sleepy western state such as Colorado wouldn't be the same without Brakhage, but his legacy does seem to have inspired a pure following of both filmmakers and enthusiasts of the genre, including CU Boulder professor Phil Solomon, who was commissioned to create American Falls by Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art for their grand rotunda, in honor of their most celebrated painting "Niagra" by Frederick Owen Church (1857). The result is a three-screen abstraction that includes a ton of sumptuous emulsion manipulation, historic sepia-toned imagery and a bevy of techniques culled directly from the experimental filmmakers handbook. It is a striking piece of work that undoubtedly only resonates on a large screen or exhibition space such as a museum, and another gift to the film community here in Denver compliments of Starz. As a feature, it's relatively brief at 55 minutes but also preceeded by another Solomon short based entirely on imagery from the video-game Grand Theft Auto. But I must warn, those who don't have a taste for motion-based art may want to stick to the Hickenlooper film.....
Another intriguing work proposing the impact of visual art on society and culture is the US/Russia collaboration The Desert of Forbidden Art, a grand and highly implausible story of a very singular art museum in the remotest of regions, the desert of Uzbekistan. As with most propositions, the Nikus Museum is the legacy of a visionary and obsessive individual, Igor Savitsky, who fancied himself an artist at a young age but went on to become a most inspiring and important collector of "lost" art. Through many savvy techniques that involve wooing artists as well as soviet agents to support his endeavor, Savitsky managed to create a singular collection that would obviously never have materialized in any other way. The film imparts many important concepts towards this endeavor, mainly that Savitsky didn't care so much about his own health and well being, as well as that once established it would be up to others to somehow hold it together. Though that striking ring of familiarity to it, particularly in these parts, the era and location make it a profoundly rich and moving story, one that most anyone with a soul for art should easily enjoy and relate to. The fact that artists would often give their work up to this madman/visionary is also keen to note, and makes me think a lot about art scenes like Denver's where there is little genuine appreciation for what is being created here, at least in the contemporary vein. Oddly enough the film includes voice talent by Ben Kingsley, Sally Field and Ed Asner to fill out the historic narrative, proving that at least three individuals based in the mainstream actually do have that soul.
AUTHOR, AUTHOR!
While films relating purely to contemporary visual arts are fewer this year than in previous festivals, there is a nice range of exposes on major literary figures and other topics relating to a historic dialogue on the arts. The trio of docs on writers is specifically welcome, each offering a meaty perspective for their respective audiences and collectively delving deeply into the nature of how to approach such topics when the very nature of the subjects isn't exactly visual. In the case of William Burroughs: A Man Within you are dealing with a figure whose very presence and persona is almost cinematic enough. At first I questioned the necessity for this treatise on Burroughs, but the effort quickly proved of value in both its perspective of this figure's deeper influence on our culture as well as his emotional gravity as a unique and complex individual. The access that the young director is given for the project is remarkable enough, particularly as his bio notes his status of film-school dropout. It's hard to imagine Burrough's spending his final years in Kansas, but his relationships within that state are ultimately what led to this doc and it's as fine an effort as one can ask for. The historic footage is a real treat and a number of the subject's interviewed to flesh things out will also be of interest to most audiences primed for the subject (particularly Gennesis P. Orridge). The director employs some simple animations to turn each chapter, they come across as somewhat mildly fancy displays of creativity but definitely don't take away from the bounty of insite revealed throughout. Unless someone unveils some footage of Burroughs at a much younger age, this will likely stand as the final take on this fascinating man and his life.
That might not be the case with the biography Norman Mailer: The American, which is I believe is the first on this distinguished author. It is also quite a fascinating journey, I can't claim to have much personal depth with Mailer but it's clear that he's as historic a figure of 20th century literature as Burroughs and a thoroughly different beast to relate to. The story is told through a progression of his many published novels, as well as a lengthy series of wives through his numerous failed marriages. One gets the sense that were Mailer alive he might not completely approve of the treatment at hand (he dabbled rather unsuccessfully as a filmmaker himself), and at times the documentary relies on symbolic footage to carry the visual message, but the story of this writers life and impact is strong enough for that to be forgiven and it should prove effective in possibly cultivating a new generation of readers.
Rounding out the focus on authors, and definitely the most remote of the lot, is the essay on writer and activist Grace Paley in the film Collected Shorts. I will admit to not having any direct prior knowledge of Paley, she's definitely a figure embedded in a specific time and genre. I can also admit that I was a teetering a bit on watching the piece, it's the most straightforward doc of the lot. But it is also strong in its own way, at least for those who consider the historic value of the documentary medium. Paley was obviously an important and daring woman, one who quietly followed a consistent path that resulted in greater standing for women in both literature as well as society at large. There's even a great sequence that juxtaposes well with the Mailer doc, not to mention terrific footage of the author throughout her years. Now if only the filmmakers had asked Sonic Youth to score the soundtrack like in the Burroughs doc, it might have a better shot at a larger audience.
WASN'T PUNK JUST SO COOL?
Indeed it was, and at least two documentaries are around to prove that, or at least suggest that the term punk will never die. The most obvious of the lot is the documentary Blank City, which portrays NYC's hip transgressive culture scene from the 70's, providing a deep and lengthy analysis of how music, art and a certain low-brow spirit led to a number of important movements in film. While it's certainly a relevant prospect to show how the ascendancy of No Wave and the Cinema of Transgression led to the formal basis of indie film, it all seems just a bit taxing on the viewer, even at only the hour and a half mark. But there is good solid historic analysis going on here, and ultimately one gets a sense that one thing led to another in a city that rightly cultivated movements and talent across every cultural sphere of importance at a time when lower Manhattan looked like a war bunker. It's not too much fun to watch snippets by some of the DIY pioneers, their aesthetic barely above the level of most of today's you-tube culture, but there is a ton of relevance when you see the material transform at the hands of an auteur like Jim Jarmusch, who actually had both skill and a hip persona to become a truly relevant and distinguished career director. But there are some good stories along the way, and it is nice to note that some of these individuals really were not cut out for mainstream success in any way but were also, well, kind of just normal people?
Barbershop Punk takes the term in a different direction, one that in my opinion is a bit of a mistake for the filmmakers. There is very little that is punk about barbershop, and maybe even less-so surrounding issues of net neutrality. But somehow the two terms come together to paint a picture of a modern-day hero who found himself one minute on his death-bed, the next as the individual who forced the FCC, Comcast and the federal government to take a closer look at perilous issues of freedom and net neutrality. It's actually a bit confusing to relate in a paragraph, let alone a full-length documentary, and unfortunately the first half hour of this piece made me question bothering at all. But the further Barbershop Punk rolls along, the better it gets and the more it makes us gasp at the complexities and uncertainties facing our current internet-based universe. It's a human interest story for sure, with the hero being a normal, good natured citizen with nothing really to gain and a lot to lose by going out on a limb, bolstered by a number of interviews from old punks who take this shit very seriously and thus provide something more glamorous for the audience to relate to through the proceedings. Perhaps someone will decide to give this the Hollywood treatment and jazz it up just a bit, a little fictional context certainly wouldn't hurt!
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
Or maybe not, Europeans have been tossing out ludicrous narrative features by the bucketful for ages, and thus the term "Art House" somehow seems to derive from their better attempts. But every year the festival is full of efforts that miss the more popular art-house screens here in America and undoubtedly don't make much of an impact in their own stations. But at least they try, and the Hungarian feature Bibliotheque Pascal seems to at least be some kind of contender. While well filmed and acted (for the most part) and claiming the mantle of Hungary's nominee for Best Foreign Language Film for the upcoming 2011 Academy Awards, it's doubtful to give the Romanians much of a run for their money as the "it" thing in current world cinema. But this hallucinatory tale of dreams and debasement does have its higher merits, and when considered, say, in relationship to this year's unlikely blockbuster "Inception" I'd have to say I spent a lot more time trying to make sense of it all after the fact. It's pretty good, slightly demented fun that feels a perfect fit for the international narrative portion of the festival.
We'll have more reviews and notes on additional films from Starz next week, we recommend getting tickets now for any features you might want to see.
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