When Daniel McGowan was arrested by federal agents in 2005 as part of the largest domestic terrorism case in the history of the United States, the Environmental Liberation Front was deemed America’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.” The audience meets former ELF member McGowan during his house arrest, when he is facing life in prison plus 335 years for his crimes committed under new terrorism enhancements implemented after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Using rare archival footage, directors Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman in their film If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front capture the frenzy of youthful protesters striking out against any and all corporate offenders on the streets and in the national parks of Washington, Oregon and California, following the emergence of the radical black bloc during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. To continue reading, click “Read more” below.
[Photo: from left, directors Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
On paper, a rundown of the masterful film Undefeated reads like a reboot of the 1986 Goldie Hawn vehicle Wildcats—a white coach takes on an underfunded, predominantly black high school football team in the inner city, and manages to show them how to succeed in life both on and off the field. But Hollywood retreats to the sports film genre only to trot out hackneyed plot points and mawkish scenes that leave viewers gagging. In making Undefeated, filmmakers T.J. Martin and Dan Lindsay instead relied on an immersive approach to documentary that recalls the sort of work practiced by the writers of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 70s (the George Plimpton book Paper Lion sprang immediately to mind). Martin and Lindsay relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, for nine months to produce the film, accruing some 500 hours of footage over that period, in true verite style. In volunteer coach Bill Courtney, the filmmakers also found a character whose charisma makes it difficult to turn one’s head from the screen. Too often our understanding of sports is filtered through the actions of overpaid athletes and coaches, as well as a massive marketing machine intent on selling us jerseys, beer and exorbitantly priced tickets. Undefeated is a window into the powerful transformative effect that something as simple as a game can have on people and communities who otherwise might not have anything else. Following the screening, Stranger Than Fiction Artistic Director Thom Powers spoke with Martin and Lindsay. Click “Read more” below for the Q&A, which contains plot spoilers.
When United States Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger’s daughter Janey fell ill and died of leukemia at the age of nine, he was devastated. For years after, he found himself seeking answers to how such a sudden illness could occur in a healthy child. After watching a local news broadcast detailing possible water contamination during his family’s time at Camp Lejune, the largest military installation on the east coast and home base of the U.S. Marine Corps, he began to dig for answers and uncovered one of the largest water contamination incidents in U.S. history.
After years of painstaking research, and relying on only a second-hand computer and a dial-up modem, Ensminger built his case and eventually brought it to Washington. Venturing from his single-wide trailer to Capitol Hill for the first time, he recalled that he “felt like a vacuum cleaner salesman.” His initial efforts led to a full-page article in the Washington Post, and a slot testifying before Congress in 2004. The film, Semper Fi, which follows his journey, is a intensely crafted narrative that captures the raw emotion of the loss of loved ones to a completely preventable tragedy, the fight against government bureaucracy and one father’s search for truth. To continue reading, click “Read more” below.
[Photo: from left, director Rachel Libert and Jerry Ensminger, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
Initially uninterested in attending what he surmised would be a boring dance recital, a 1985 performance of Pina Bausch’s “Cafe Mueller” changed filmmaker Wim Wenders’ preconceptions about dance. Wenders was soon proposing a film collaboration with her company, but felt he lacked the technical skill to capture the movements on-screen. Twenty years later, in 2007, he finally discovered the technology that would allow him to capture the enchanting and engrossing performances he had seen decades earlier on film.
Intercutting archival footage of Bausch in performance and in her studio with solo and group performances, Wenders’ film Pina allows the length and intensity of the pieces to follow the tone that each of his interviews takes with members of Bausch’s dance troupe. We watch as they reminisce, celebrate and exalt the woman who had drawn so much from them, and given so much back to them as performers and as people.
The dancers are shot in locales as varied as the precipice of a massive canyon in Germany’s Bergisches Land region, to the Wuppertal suspension railway for the solos in “Kontakthof.” All the while, Alain Derobe’s 3-D sterographic cameras move effortlessly from the interior stages at the Wuppertal Opera House to the exterior expositions with an eye to movement, sound and pacing that only Wenders could produce.
Renowned dance critic Deborah Jowitt joined Stranger Than Fiction Artistic Director Thom Powers for the post-screening audience question and answer, and said that what was most unique about Bausch was that “she was created worlds on stage.” Bauch’s introduction to U.S. audiences occurred during a period in which modern dance had moved away from narrative, but the worlds that she created were different than any Jowitt had previously seen.
When asked what her reaction to Bausch’s initial New York appearances was, Jowitt explained, “I thought it was alarming, I thought it was playful, I didn’t really know what I thought about it at first. I was apprehensive, but there was so much strangeness and humor in it, right away you could see that she had certain structural ideas that you can see in how Wenders uses it in the film.”
Jowitt gave details on how exactly Pina was able to master “the idea of bringing stories out of her dancers,” by drawing on the experiences of each individual performer. “She would say, ‘Tell me the worst birthday you ever had,’ and she would then weave that into something, with talking, singing or gesturing.”
With regard to the challenge of capturing dance on film, Jowitt remarked that the success and strength of Wenders’ work lies in the fact that “he wanted to bring the audience into it, he wanted you to feel that you were in it. I think that is particularly suitable to Pina, because she does create these specific environments on stage.”
IFC opens “PINA” in limited release December 23.
You can read Deborah Jowitt’s article on Pinahere.
What happens when Frank Gehry wants to, as he says, “build a community from scratch,” on top of your existing community? Battle for Brooklyn chronicles that struggle as Prospect Heights residents wake up to find themselves living in the footprint of the planned Atlantic Yards development, a subsidy-soaked high profile construction project backed by a veritable whos-who of New York heavy hitters: Mayor Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, Marty Markowitz, Jay-Z and the megaproject firm Forest City Ratner. The film serves as an important study of just how the lumbering juggernaut of crony capitalism moves through economic, social and political realms, flattening all opposition.
What drives the film are the machinations of these soundbite-dropping familiar faces, and the strong characters on both sides who lay out the facts as they see them. On the side of the long-time neighborhood residents, the cameras track Daniel Goldstein as he fights the strange battle that comes when powerful people want to take your home and build a stadium on top of it with your tax dollars. Bruce Bender, Executive VP at Forest Ratner, ostensibly makes the other side’s case, but somehow ends up making a pretty good argument that the dealings with those being driven from their homes are far from ethical. Bender looks close to winking when he’s singing the praises of the jobs to be created in telemarketing, VIP services and concessions by relieving small business owners in the project’s path of their property and livelihood. There’s also a meta-character hovering around in the background—Eminent Domain—that is both seen and unseen, a figure with nearly limitless potential to destroy that only shows up in the text of court rulings and the cute jokes that elected officials make about stealing property.
There’s an implicit honesty to the film’s lack of slickness. The camera shakes, the audio drops out at times or gets drowned by the truck horns and demolition crews. These flaws mark it as a document made by a situation, a response to a crisis, and not a detached eye hovering above the little people. Flawed in no way means inept: I challenge any other filmmaker to eke as much tension out of a shot of a man sitting at his computer, hitting ‘refresh’ on a web browser over and over. It all adds up to a careful, patient refutation of the claim made by Bloomberg at the film’s midpoint, “You have Bruce Ratner’s word; that should be good enough.”
After the film, primary subject Daniel Goldstein described the film as being essentially about the government and developers “working together to deny people their rights…. an issue that cuts across the political spectrum.” Director Michael Galinsky concurred, citing the strange allies the struggle brought together. (Both conservative columnist George Will and civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel appear in the film.) “It’s not left, it’s not right. It’s just wrong.”
[Photo: from left, director Michael Galinsky and producer David Beilinson, courtesy of Simon Luethi]
When Daniel McGowan was arrested by federal agents in 2005 as part of the largest domestic terrorism case in the history of the United States, the Environmental Liberation Front was deemed America’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.” The audience meets former ELF member McGowan during his house arrest, when he is facing life in prison plus 335 years for his crimes committed under new terrorism enhancements implemented after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
On paper, a rundown of the masterful film 
When United States Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger’s daughter Janey fell ill and died of leukemia at the age of nine, he was devastated. For years after, he found himself seeking answers to how such a sudden illness could occur in a healthy child. After watching a local news broadcast detailing possible water contamination during his family’s time at Camp Lejune, the largest military installation on the east coast and home base of the U.S. Marine Corps, he began to dig for answers and uncovered one of the largest water contamination incidents in U.S. history.
Initially uninterested in attending what he surmised would be a boring dance recital, a 1985 performance of Pina Bausch’s “Cafe Mueller” changed filmmaker Wim Wenders’ preconceptions about dance. Wenders was soon proposing a film collaboration with her company, but felt he lacked the technical skill to capture the movements on-screen. Twenty years later, in 2007, he finally discovered the technology that would allow him to capture the enchanting and engrossing performances he had seen decades earlier on film.
What happens when Frank Gehry wants to, as he says, “build a community from scratch,” on top of your existing community?