The idea of long-term polyamory seems to most often stagger its way to the American mainstream represented as a husband with multiple wives, where dynamics and hierarchies are expected to be firmly entrenched in a patriarchal structure. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family refreshingly avoids that trope in its examination of a male-male-female threesome. While twentysomethings living in New York City, the trio of Sam, Samantha and Steven establish a relationship that acknowledges the fluidity of human sexuality, while simultaneously thumbing their collective nose at the admittedly abstract conventions of romantic relationships. The threesome’s own struggles with the rarity of their bond are conveyed in a few telling moments, as when they trouble themselves for an appropriate nomenclature to describe what it is they’re doing (eventually resorting to the unwieldy “trinogomous”). In the end, however, the viewer learns that even these unconventional three are not immune to the bitterness that envelopes any jilted ex, as we watch the relationship collapse and the group’s members tread through moments of barely contained rage and pettiness. For anyone who’s lived through a failed relationship, that part of the story is all too familiar. Following the screening, Stranger Than Fiction Executive Director Raphaela Neihausen led a Q&A with Director Susan Kaplan. Click “Read more” below.
[Photo: Director Susan Kaplan, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
The link between language and culture is an indelible one, as is shown in Anne Makepeace’s film We Still Live Here. The film follows Mashpee Wampanoag Jesse Little Doe’s incredible efforts to resurrect the left-for-dead language of her people, despite having no formal training in linguistics. Although the Wampanoag language was thought to have lacked a fluent speaker for some 150 years, Little Doe in the early 1990s was besieged by a recurring dream in which Mashpee Indians sang to her in a language she didn’t understand. Through her efforts, she was able to realize a her own dream—one in which her daughter, Mae, became the first person raised in the Wampanoag language since the 19th century. In the ultimate irony, Little Doe and other linguists were able to use a body of texts created largely through the efforts of Christian missionaries—who effectively sought to destroy the native culture of the Wampanoag—as source material in rediscovering words that had not been spoken aloud for at least six generations, with a Wampanoag-language Bible serving as perhaps the most useful resource. Following the screening, Makepeace spoke with Stranger Than Fiction Executive Director Raphaela Neihausen. Click “Read more” below for the Q&A.
[Photo: Director Anne Makepeace, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
In retrospect, plumber Shawn Nelson’s fatal march toward his 1995 joyride in a stolen tank, which he piloted through a series of Southern California residential neighborhoods, seems almost inexorable. In Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story, director Garrett Scott nimbly spells out the confluence of social and historical trends that found Nelson, a former soldier and methamphetamine user, trapped in an armored vehicle on a highway at gunpoint. Police footage of Nelson’s rampage seems surreal in its absurdist juxtaposition of a tank loosed in generic suburbia, but the imagery is suffused with heavy—though unintended—symbolism. Fed on a mother’s milk of Pentagon defense contractor money, the enclave of Clairemont was only one of a number of cities that benefited from the lifting of thousands of blue collar workers into a comfortable middle class lifestyle. But when the flood of dollars ended, violence that was once exported as an industrialized good was instead left to fester in dying communities. Cul de Sac shows us the heavy burdens borne by some of those attempting to find their way in the deindustrialized remains of the U.S.’s post World War II boom. Following the screening, Stranger Than Fiction Artistic Director Thom Powers spoke with Cul de Sac editor Ian Olds, and filmmaker Jem Cohen, who had a role in helping the film gain a viewership. Click “Read more” below for the Q&A.
Also, work was shown by recipients of the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant, established following Scott’s death in 2006 in order to aid first time documentary filmmakers. Lofty Nathan showed an excerpt of Twelve O’ Clock Boyz, while Katharine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Warral showed a trailer for their film Call Me Kuchu.
[Photo: From left, Jem Cohen, Ian Olds and Thom Powers, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
Stranger Than Fiction co-presented the film Cinema Komunisto at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. Viewers of Mila Turajlic’s film Cinema Komunisto might be surprised to learn that Yugoslavia’s state-run Avala Film Studios was not dedicated solely to enlarging the cult of personality surrounding Joseph Broz Tito, although it certainly did not shrink from that task. Relying on copious amounts of research and a trove of archival material, Truajlic’s film shows us Comrade Tito the cinephile—one who watched a film almost every day, and transformed his Yugoslavia into a prolific locus of filmmaking, for both artistic and propagandistic purposes. The heart of the film lies in the scenes bearing Tito’s personal projectionist, Leka Konstantinovic. In a powerful moment, Konstantinovic is shown arriving at Tito’s old estate in Belgrade for the first time in decades, where he ceremoniously hands over his key to the property to its current caretaker, who receives the gift with relative indifference. From the front, the house, though lacking a door, appears to be relatively intact. It’s only when Konstantinovic goes inside that he, and the viewer, discover that the projected reality of the edifice’s facade masks a hollowed out shell of little substance. Following the screening, Turajlic held a Q&A with the audience. Click “Read more” below.
[Photo courtesy of Cinema Komunisto]
Stranger Than Fiction co-presented the film Bombay Beach at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. The U.S. government doesn’t even consider Bombay Beach a city, instead describing it as a census-designated place (with the population in 2000 recorded at a scant 366 people) comprised of one square mile of land in the California desert that hugs the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, a rift lake whose salinity now exceeds that of the ocean. Once touted as a vacation destination for Southern California’s well-heeled, the area today scans like the physical manifestation of the death of the American Dream. Alma Har’el’s film Bombay Beach is an intimate portrait of those living in this impoverished afterworld, who strive mightily for survival at society’s margins. In some of its most powerful scenes, the film shows the children of a post-apocalyptic landscape wandering the salt-encrusted detritus of a middle-class existence that no longer exists, appropriating from abandoned houses whatever they can to aid their amusement. The film is a needed reminder that poverty in America takes on a number of forms, and is too often ignored as a topic of discussion in mainstream media outlets. Perhaps it’s the sort of story that be best relayed with clear eyes by someone like the Israel-born Har’el, someone with some objective distance on the myths of America. Following the screening, Har’el and the film’s music composer Zach Condon (who performs under the band name Beirut) held a Q&A with the audience. Click “Read more” below.
[Photo: From left, director Alma Har’el, film subject Benny and musician Zach Condon, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
The idea of long-term polyamory seems to most often stagger its way to the American mainstream represented as a husband with multiple wives, where dynamics and hierarchies are expected to be firmly entrenched in a patriarchal structure. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family refreshingly avoids that trope in its examination of a male-male-female threesome. While twentysomethings living in New York City, the trio of Sam, Samantha and Steven establish a relationship that acknowledges the fluidity of human sexuality, while simultaneously thumbing their collective nose at the admittedly abstract conventions of romantic relationships. The threesome’s own struggles with the rarity of their bond are conveyed in a few telling moments, as when they trouble themselves for an appropriate nomenclature to describe what it is they’re doing (eventually resorting to the unwieldy “trinogomous”). In the end, however, the viewer learns that even these unconventional three are not immune to the bitterness that envelopes any jilted ex, as we watch the relationship collapse and the group’s members tread through moments of barely contained rage and pettiness. For anyone who’s lived through a failed relationship, that part of the story is all too familiar. Following the screening, Stranger Than Fiction Executive Director Raphaela Neihausen led a Q&A with Director Susan Kaplan. Click “Read more” below.
The link between language and culture is an indelible one, as is shown in Anne Makepeace’s film 
In retrospect, plumber Shawn Nelson’s fatal march toward his 1995 joyride in a stolen tank, which he piloted through a series of Southern California residential neighborhoods, seems almost inexorable. In 
Viewers of Mila Turajlic’s film 
The U.S. government doesn’t even consider Bombay Beach a city, instead describing it as a census-designated place (with the population in 2000 recorded at a scant 366 people) comprised of one square mile of land in the California desert that hugs the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, a rift lake whose salinity now exceeds that of the ocean. Once touted as a vacation destination for Southern California’s well-heeled, the area today scans like the physical manifestation of the death of the American Dream. Alma Har’el’s film