Writing by Megan Scanlon. Megan works at the American University of Beirut. She is a frequent contributor to the DOC NYC and Stranger Than Fiction blogs; program coordinator at the Bronx Documentary Center; and teacher at Yoga to the People. She has written for the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @meganscanlon5
People are weird. How weird, is a subjective question inextricably linked with social and cultural norms, personal preference, and whether one has questioned if some of those norms happen to be a razor thin veneer masking the charade of civilization. (The jury is still out). It is reasonable to claim though, and will likely remain uncontested, that TICKLED, STF’s third film of its winter season, is phenomenally weird in scope. Directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, the inception of the film motors on innocuously enough as New Zealand journalist Farrier, the film’s narrator, explains, “I’ve made a career out of covering the strange and bizarre side of life.” Left turn here, right turn there, Farrier comes across an advertisement for a tickling competition, and in the name of career and curiosity, opens the door to a house of mirrors that curves beyond a mere tickling fetish and into a distorted maze of power, harassment, and money.
Writing by Megan Scanlon. Megan works at the American University of Beirut. She is a frequent contributor to the DOC NYC and Stranger Than Fiction blogs; program coordinator at the Bronx Documentary Center; and teacher at Yoga to the People. She has written for the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @meganscanlon5
“I’m not demonstrating to be suffocated I’m doing it to breathe.”
These verbs are the chains and the choices of the Assad regime that sank Syria.
Stranger Than Fiction unleashed its winter season with the THE WAR SHOW, a sobering, up close encounter that chronicles the beginning of the end of Syria. Directed and narrated by Syrian radio host Obaidah Zytoon, the film is framed through the eyes of young filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, revolutionaries, and most of all, friends who were inspired to action during the Arab Spring in 2011. THE WAR SHOW provides a desperately needed narrative, a throbbing pulse of personal truth that brings the audience to the front lines of the conflict, reminding us that war, grief, and destruction cannot be sanitized. Produced by Alaa Hassan and co-written by Spencer Osberg, the two spoke with STF host Thom Powers and the STF audience for a riveting and relevant post-screening conversation.
Writing by Megan Scanlon. Megan works at the American University of Beirut. She has written for the DOC NYC blog and the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Megan is a volunteer at the Bronx Documentary Center where she contributes to documentary programming. Follow her on instagram and twitter @meganscanlon5
“Some things sure can sweep me off my feet.”
-Burning Down the House
Stranger Than Fiction kicked off its six-week Jonathan Demme retrospective on Tuesday night, welcoming a full house of Talking Heads fans ready to experience Stop Making Sense on the big screen. The last time the Heads ever performed for an audience, Stop Making Sense Was filmed over the course of four Hollywood nights. Demme’s 1984 classic is a living, breathing testament to the power of music, the brilliance of David Byrne and the Talking Heads, and how the next best thing to a live concert is a beautifully shot film of a live concert.
The story of Kitty Genovese is emblematic for modern day society. There have been lectures given on the topic, books written on the significance, and psychological research taken in pursuit of explanations. Behavioral psychologists have coined phrases like “diffusion of responsibility” and “the bystander effect” largely stemming from the tragic case. And while it may now be a symbol for bystander apathy, the story is not what was written.
A documentary 11 years in the making, THE WITNESS recounts the March 1964 murder of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese. The infamous murder captured the world’s attention. A girl brutally stabbed to death in Queens, New York only half a block from her home, while 38 witnesses watched the attack in silence. Or so was reported on the front page of The New York Times, an iconic piece for the paper that led to the story’s notoriety.
But audiences soon come to find that parts of the narrative that would offset the premise of a murder witnessed by silent bystanders were dropped from the story. Indeed, the entire documentary comes to revolve around the idea of flawed narratives and how they come to control one’s life.
“Have I told you about my train film?” –Albert Maysles
“It’s not down in any map; true places never are.” –Herman Melville
A fitting farewell, Albert Maysles’ last film, IN TRANSIT, follows the Empire Builder, an Amtrak passenger train stretching from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. The three day journey is a moving panorama that rolls through, around, and with the ecological textures and manmade thumbprints of the United States. Towns and cities that mark the route are dwarfed by sweeping prairie fields, plains, rivers, and mountain ranges that keep time for passengers traveling to begin new lives, leave old stories, and for others, to take one last ride.
Directed by Lynn True and Nelson Walker, and produced by Erika Dilday, IN TRANSIT is a film Maysles pitched for thirty years, fueled by his love of trains. During the post-screening Q&A Dilday said, “He felt that there was this intimacy on the train. You’re in this space that’s so shared and so private yet so personal, and you have this ability to be so close to someone but know that the moment is fleeting, that this intimacy is going to disappear quickly, and that it allows strangers to become friends–he loved capturing that intimacy.”
