STORM

Hans-Christian Schmid

The Hague, the court, the events that lead to trial and beyond.

Women are the heroes in Storm.

They are the ones with the intelligence, the moral fiber, the strength to face life and fear and conquer the elements that hold people back from doing what is right. Women speak out, they cry quietly but scream when the moment becomes unbearable. it is the men who give up living(commit suicide) who suffer in this seemingly real court scene; the men who do the dirty compromises behind the scenes, the men who impede the quality of life from moving on rather than in the wrong direction for all the wrong reasons.

This is the story of what happens when rape became an official crime at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague along with deportation and later killing of dozens of Bosnian-Muslim civilians.

From the moment the film begins there is one almost expected incident after another. Very little variance to this compelling story and yet the viewer is frozen in the moment because it feels so true, so real, so deeply upsetting.

The acting, the timing, the slow movement add to the atmosphere of real trauma, one after another.

Storm is a pensive film that creates for the viewer the life, the fears of people who live seemingly far from us and yet they are us; our mother, our child, our family.


Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective

BAD Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans

Werner Herzog

There is something about re-doing a successful film that allows the director to be more relaxed with his product. Knowing that the fundamentals of the film are firm, the director can play with the product, have fun rather than agonizing about details that might not matter in the fullness of the film experience.

Bad Lieutenant is just such a film. Werner Herzog seems to have seen the original film and thought, I can do this better. And he has

He is having fun with his actors, (Nicolas Cage in particular) with the plot, with the material and this emotional mind set results in a gem of a film

Can you be a man without a big black gun affixed to your body? Do fish dream, do sharks, do you? And who is to blame for the financial political malaise that plaque us today?

Laugh with this film; relax, enjoy and have fun as Bad Lieutenant Port of Call plays with you, with me, with the serious issues of our time (including Katrina post flood). Herzog creates for the viewer a moment of enjoyment while gruesome death, murder, destruction and utter mayhem reign.

The Bad Lieutenant Port of Call portrays neither the Bad nor the Good. What more do we need to know about survival in this downward quality of life that has no end in sight.


Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective

New York Film Festival 2009

There are so many wonderful films being offered this year by the New York Film Festival, that rather than write an individual, long and too wordy review for each, I will list the films which I enjoyed and cherished and you can decide which one(s) to see when and where. (I was unable to see all films offered during the festival)

A particular note of praise:
This year the New York Film Festival seems to feature more films where the leading actor is a woman. And more women film directors than ever before. Woman are wonderful filmmakers, so why not let us be seen, be heard.

Thank you for allowing the best of our gender to come into prominence.

Mother
Bong Joon-Ho and Kim Hye-Ja and Won Bin South Korea
A mother and grown son bring home the meaning of who is a "murderer". Is it a special kind of person or is this a human trait with which we learn to live, hopefully, not always with a super abundance. of crippling guilt.

Lebanon: Samuel Maoz
Again the massacre in Lebanon by the Israeli Army. It you thought Waltz with Bashir was a compelling film, this film offers the voice of the stereotypical Jewish man within the confining Tank that protects them while they witness and partake in the murder of helpless civilians. Here guilt informs heavily on the film's narrative.

Antichrist: Lars von Trier
I am not religious which means that the meaning of the film, the intent that informed on the blood, the horror of how a man and woman relate to one another to emerge with the man triumphant was an experience I would not choose to have a second time. Was this a worth while film? I don't know.
Film already scheduled for public consumption. Check IFC listings

Life During Wartime: Todd Sokondz
I loved Todd Sokondz' film "Happiness" and I think this film is as good even though much of the impact of its theme is a redo.
The specific details differ from one film to the other, the father /son quasi sexual relationship so shocking in Happiness is brought back to life and the over all feeling of the son(s) remain intact ......I just want my father.

There is something beyond the labels we put on adults that resonates with children, our children: something so profoundly simply that in the confusion of becoming, we forget what is important.

Thankfully, our children don't


The Art of the Steal Don Argott's documentary
Takes a look at the controversial dealings over the Barnes Foundation's multi-billion dollar collection of rare artwork, which became the center of numerous litigations and questionable deals after his death in 1951.

A film worth seeing even though it seems to go on and on. What is missing is the human element, the view from the public who might now be robbed of the entire experience of "going to the Barnes", particularly if you herald from New York City.

What is offered instead is an overwhelming experience of ART as each frame has an artistic assemblage much as each of Dr. Barnes' works are put into a context that "makes sense" to the art viewer. Phillip Glass music added to this art/film experience of political, money hungry, art lovers struggle to survive intact.


White Material: Claire Denis
There is something magical with Claire Denis films. ... Chocolat / Chocolate (1988) was superb and this film is well worth seeing. The struggle of being a strong, independent woman is so tangibly depicted. One wonders if this is her personal struggle to survive and rise into fame and fortune as a woman film producer in a male dominated competitive endeavor.


Kanikosen a film by SABU
Japanese crab ship where the essence of revolution comes to the screen.

This film is at the top of my list.

It brings to life an underwater world where life is very intense and human interactions are funny, painful and profound.


Min Ye: Souleymane Casse, Mali/France
I don't have to understand every film to appreciate the effort, the experience of entering into an unfamiliar world where nothing makes sense to me. The questions that plagued me in this sand, stone world, the background of the film are such elementary concerns as

Where did their food come from, where did they sleep, defecate. Where was the water to drink with which to bath. The sound of the wind blowing was very effective and the clothes....now I understand the importance of the Hijab, or Veil (Burqah, Chador), to protect not from the sun as much as from the endless blowing sand. Sand hills and dales, sand slopes and tunnels. Sand without seeming definition but the actors knew where to go, what hill was where, what valley was within their reach.

The plot: the origins of Egyptian national identity. If I knew more about Egypt before I saw the film I would have had a different, a richer experience.


Many more films of note were offered at the New York Film Festival this year. they are all offered within a three week period and by the end of the festival fatigue triumphed.

Spread over time, the wealth of entertainment will keep New Yorkers rich with noteworthy films when they come to local theaters

The NY Film Festival 2009 runs through 10/11. More information about the NY Film Festival is online at: FilmLinc.com

Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective

Rage Sally Potter DVD

RAGE
Sally Potter Director/Writer (Orlando, 1992)

A young blogger at a New York fashion house shoots behind-the-scenes interviews on his cell-phone. In viewing the footage the audience is confronted with the process of marketing products, the brutal rise to the top in a sucessful company, and the use of perfumes to hide us from ourselves.

Commentary:
From the moment the film started I knew it was written by a woman because I identified with the method of writing, the typing, going back and forth to correct what was put up on the screen. This process drew me into the film and its theme of public versus private; of being famous and being invisible was a profound message. This is such a woman's issue, wanting to be seen, to be sexy and attractive while simultaneously wanting to be Invisible, to be "safe".

I loved the peeling of the onion layers approach to the plot, the change in the characters to reveal not the "I" but the "me" as they confront a moment of trauma, of inevitable reality with the death of one of their own.

I felt drawn to the story, the frightening look at fashion, at manipulation of words to promote a scent. A scent, a perfume for children! Is there nothing sacred, nothing pure, nothing of worth left now that the Internet captures the moment formerly private and sends it out into the Universe of the unknown.

I am not a script writer nor a film director but if I were I would want to have created this film.

Rage: As a film it works. As a live drama on Broadway it will also be tauted as great.

Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX An Oscar 2009 winner!

Director: Uli Edel (Last Exit To Brooklyn, Christiane F)

A Cast of Stars:
Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others, The Good Shepard), Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run), Johanna Wokalek (Aimee and Jaguar) and Bruno Ganz (The Reader, Downfall). The film is directed by Uli Edel (Last Exit To Brooklyn, Christiane F) and was written and produced by Bernd Eichinger (2005 Academy Award nominee Downfall), based on the book by and in consultation with Stefan Aust.

PLOT: A lengthy history of the far-left terrorist group that shocked Germany from 1968 onwards. Their search is for a life we can all embrace, their method is what we instinctively reject.

Guilt is not on the side of violation of law and order in this film. The guilty are those who make the laws, who enforce the law in this conflict ridden post WWII Germany. The war of the concerned courageous citizens, is unrelenting as the viewer watches the interactions of the group who go into banks to rob and into buildings to bomb, to steal, to plunder what they need to further their "cause".

Their cause is to bring to the attention their agenda of Stop the War in Vietnam, stop killing innocent citizens. But what do they embrace?

There is an invisible line between those who kill and those who don't. A gun is not requisite equipment in every one's wardrobe. This makes the free wielding of this object of murder, in a seemingly quiet domestic environment disturbing, not easy to understand. But then, that is the point of the film; To bring to our attention the thoughts, the ways of Revolutionaries who we might not know and can't understand. After the full experience of two and a half hours of The Beeder Meinhof Complex, one can not continue to think we are all knowing, all caring, all right.

This is not a summer evening's casual date flick. It is a provocative and brilliant creation that will remain in the viewers mind.

Whether or not we want to remember, we will.


LindaZises
WBAI Women's Collective

AMERICAN CASINO: SUB-PRIME MORTGAGES MADE SIMPLE?

Leslie and Andrew Cockburn

I went to see American Casino with all the anticipatory urgency that this complicated subject of mortgages gone awry and left feeling even more confused. Only now I am certain I will never understand the world of finance that has seriously diminished the quality of my life and destroyed the lives of many I know and have heard about.

Why:

For starters, the film makers never defined the sub-prime mortgage. An entire film/documentary based on a term without defining it. Or maybe the definition was there, amid all those words and ideas and talking heads(no simple graphs) but I didn't get it. So I asked a knowledgeable friend. What is sub-prime because I can't find anything that is sub(meaning less) in the mortgages.

The words left out told the story. They are sub-prime interest rate mortgages meaning that if the prime or the set mortgage rate is 5% the borrower is offered a mortgage at 4% or one interest rate point less than the going rate.
Great. I now know that the variable rate mortgage and the sub-prime interest rate mortgage or not one and the same instrument.

A veritable rate mortgage is one that every few years gets reset dependent on..........well, that is not defined What factors do and what factors don't get counted. When the cost of living goes up does the veritable rate when calculated three years later go down or does it go up with the rest of the bills I have to pay? Is this the reason why I can't pay my mortgage or is it the hidden costs that the seller didn't tell me about when I bought the mortgage.

This is just some of the elementary definitions that the documentary assumed the viewer knows.

Then there is the problem of what happens to my money. For instance, if I buy a mortgage I am giving a set sum of money that is then bundled with other money and sold over and over again. This way I don't know who owes my mortgage. And neither does anyone else.
I understand, because of this film that each sale means someone makes money from my original purchase and I understand that many clever people, people who don't have to be told the difference between the sub-prime rate and the veritable rate mortgage, can and do bet on my inability to pay back my mortgage.

I am not without some knowledge of finance. I remember when my parents bought the car and paid car payments and if or when they failed to pay the car payments, the car was repossessed. This applied to furniture as well.

I remember thinking about this and realized that the "down payment" was usually sufficient to pay for the cost of the car or the dining room table and every payment made by my parents was profit for the seller. I understand that every payment I DO NOT make on my mortgage is profit to the seller and the buyer, neither of whom I know or ever will.

Is this what is still going on with mortgages today? Going on without laws to curb the practice?

When "the men" come with the foreclosure and I ask, where is the mortgage, the papers to verify who actually owns my house and they can't produce the owner, then how can they take back what they can't prove is theirs? Or when they auction my house, who are they auctioning it for? The bank? But the Bank doesn't have the mortgage papers. Or does it. And are the mortgage papers different from the ownership documents?

These are questions worth full exploration but unfortunately the authors of this film were so intent on exposing the key players that they forgot about you and me, the buyers of their product.

American Casino reinforces the now well understood reality that the power elite who are deemed crooks,(not in jail but free range in all the high places in Government) are operating American Financial Casino(s) without the American public or the world financial complex aware of what they are involved in.

I understand that the poor, the black, the upper striving people of color were for a single moment called "stupid"in the film because they got caught in this night-mere of fulfilling the "American dream" that they might never have had if it hadn't been for ex-president Bush calling the ownership of a home of one's own an American goal; a fantasy to strive towards. I understand that the makers of this film had no idea who their audience is and to put a group of people on the screen to show the devastating impact of this scandal without presenting the fundamentals borders on........... an act of intellectual snobbery.

That said, many will talk about American Casino. And if you should ask, what is it really all about, be prepared to feel once again how "stupid" you and I really are. But then again maybe there is something good to be said about being stupid. We are in good ethical, upstanding citizen company suffering from the fall out of financial giants.


Linda ZISES
WBAI Women's Collective

What's The Matter With Kansas?

Joe Winston's
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS is a documentary, (loosely based on the Thomas Frank book of the same name) on the verge of being released to an audience who may not know what is on the minds of the people who are forming a proto fascist movement in the United States.

We are afforded a close up view of the people's home life, their pains, failures and the source of what makes them smile involuntarily.

What drives the masses who stampeded upon the abortion doctor, the great courageous Dr. George Tiller and who is making the life of today's politicians a living night mere as they go to "the community" to be heard, to discuss the new health care reforms and are met with the Pacifica Radio WBAI style disruption by mobs of "loose canons" who question if in fact Obama is an American citizen. It isn't the American flag on the lapel that bothers the likes of the Kansas City denizens who are being pushed off of their land(still) and drowned in a flat, barren environment of the Mid West. It is the pressing issue of abortion,
God's will and Obama who is now their enemy, the Devil in our midst.

This is what we learn from the documentary What's the matter with Kansas. A lesson that will defy your ability to curb your sympathy but curb it we must or be consumed by the likes of violent vigilantes in all the wrong places.

See it when it comes out, be horrified, be informed.

Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective