documentary

SANSÓN AND ME: a life discarded in a moment

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Gerardo Reyes as adult Sansón in Rodrigo Reyes’ documentary SANSÓN AND ME. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.

In the documentary Sansón and Me, director Rodrigo Reyes explores how an unremarkable 19-year-old living a decidedly non-monstrous existence could be locked up for life. Reyes, one of our most imaginative filmmakers, has a day job as a courtroom interpreter and met his titular subject at his California trial. Sansón, a Mexican immigrant, although apparently not the triggerman, was convicted of a murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Reyes travels to Sansón’s hometown, a modest fishing village between Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco and enlists Sansón’s family members to re-enact pivotal moments in Sansón’s childhood. It turns out that the family has more than its share of troubles and that the village is less than idyllic. Reyes then uses local, non-professional actors, to depict Sansón’s sojourn in California’s Central Valley, up to the killing in the grubby agricultural town of Dos Palos. It doesn’t take Sansón very long to get in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sansón made a bad decision and was also profoundly unlucky. For that, the remaining decades of his life have been discarded by the state, which Reyes paints as an unfathomably disproportionate consequence.

Two years ago, Reyes invented his own genre of documentary in 499, what I call a “docu-fable” because it is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for a fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable). That movie’s title reflects a moment 499 years after Cortés’ conquest of the Aztecs in 1520; the conquistador and the audience discover that the dehumanization inherent in colonialism has persisted to plague modern Mexico – essentially the legacy of Mexico’s Original Sin. I’m hoping that Reyes’ permanent day job becomes filmmaker.

Sansón and Me is rolling out in theaters and plays the American Cinematheque on March 24.

BROTHERS BROKEN: it was the cult

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The Levin Brothers during their time with People! in BROTHERS BROKEN. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The documentary Brothers Broken contains a singularly refreshing aspect on a familiar phenomenon – the breakup of a 60s rock band. But here, the band breaks up, not because of drugs or ego, but because of a cult. And the estranged band members are brothers. The band doesn’t last long, but the brothers’ arc covers a 58-year arc.

Those brothers were the creative force behind the San Jose band People!, which was poised for future success after their hit I Love You in 1967. But at that point, one brother joined Scientology, and was forbidden to have contact with the rest of the band, including his own brother.

That former Scientologist brother, Geoff Levin, has co-directed Brothers Broken and says, “This has been a 75 year journey. 8 years ago I was on the verge of death. A deep depression caused by close to fifty years in Scientology almost ended my life. I came out of the cult and I am very grateful to my family and friends who have helped me recover. “

People! band members today in BROTHERS BROKEN. Courtesy of Cinequest.

There have been excellent Scientology documentaries, most notably Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: The Prison of Belief. Here, the Scientology aspect benefits from the brothers’ relatability and authenticity.

Not all is happy in Brothers Broken, because Geoff’s decision is still costing him dear family relationships. But Brothers Broken is an audience pleaser.

Brothers Broken is the first feature for co-directors Geoff Levin and Lily Richards. Cinequest’s online-festival Cinejoy hosts the US premiere of Brothers Broken. Fitting for Cinequest, the brothers and the band are from San Jose!

DESTINY ON THE MAIN STAGE: anything but exploitative

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Photo caption: DESTINY ON THE MAIN STAGE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the brilliant documentary Destiny on the Main Stage, a female director (and almost all-female crew) chronicle three years in the lives of Dallas-area strippers – and it’s authentic and NOT sensationalist or exploitative. The strippers include both a 20-year veteran very comfortable in her vocation and a former stripper organizing to help women exit the business. And, of course there are the very young women who are puddles of bad choices. Over the three years, the subjects’ lives take some very gripping turns.

This is not an advocacy film that seeks to criticize or promote the industry. This is cinéma vérité, and the pivotal events in the women’s lives are depicted as they happen. Hearing the strippers’ voices through a female lens/gaze/perspective is both novel and insightful. Director Poppy de Villenueve says, “These events are revealed as part of life, filmed in a nuanced way, reflecting something these women rarely are given the opportunity to have revealed.“

What Destiny on the Main Stage is filled with, instead of titillation, is humanity. De Villenueve says, “It is difficult to find real intimacy and connection these days, but by highlighting it in the darkest environments, I believe we move the world towards a better, kinder place.”

This is a serious film that could become an audience favorite, too. Destiny on the Main Stage is the second feature for director Poppy de Villenueve. Cinequest’s online festival Cinejoy hosted the world premiere of Destiny on the Main Stage, and it’s playing the in-person Cinequest in August..

DESTINY ON THE MAIN STAGE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

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MOTEL DRIVE: where you don’t want children to be

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A scene in Brendan Geraghty’s MOTEL DRIVE. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The searing documentary Motel Drive is set in a place none of us would want to be – a clump of three downtrodden motels on a single block in Fresno. The motels have become de facto brothels, emporiums of drug sales and housing-of-last-resort for the otherwise homeless. Registered sex offenders, who are barred from living elsewhere, have been placed in one of the motels. Early in Motel Drive, we learn that over 150 children live there, too, with their mostly meth-addicted parents.

Documentarian Brendan Geraghty has spent seven years following the area’s residents, especially focusing on the Shaw family and their son Justin. The Shaws’ journey is a compelling story, a roller coaster ride of poverty, recovery and relapse with a major stroke of good luck and a shocking consequence to relapse. Addiction is a family disease, and we get a closeup look at the impact on Justin of his parents’ addiction and persistent homelessness.

Justin Shaw in MOTEL DRIVE. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The neighborhood itself is another character in the film, with its own arc driven by neglect and underinvestment, the California High Speed Rail project and changes in government programs on homelessness. We meet saintly do-gooders along with the prostitutes, druggies and the impoverished human flotsam.

Motel Drive is Geraghty’s first feature as a director, and it’s a promising debut; he’s clearly mastered cinéma vérité. Slamdance hosts Motel Drive’s world premiere. As I said in my festival preview, Slamdance: discovering new filmmakers, Justin Shaw was slated to appear on the Slamdance red carpet for Motel Drive’s world premiere, and I couldn’t be happier that this young man could have this experience.

STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF: more than an exposé

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In the documentary Starring Jerry as Himself, a Florida senior sees himself recruited as an operative by Chinese police. The story is told in a re-enactment with the subject playing himself. We later learn why the filmmakers chose re-enactment, and what could have been a conventional true crime exposé or a weeper, is illuminated by the subject family’s humanity.

Starring Jerry as Himself is the first feature for director Law Chen, who also edited, co-produced and shot some of the footage. Law Chen and his co-producer and subject Jonathan Hsu were responsible for the decision on how to structure the film. That decision turned what could have been a heartbreaking downer into an engaging and satisfying family story, albeit a cautionary one.

I highlighted Starring Jerry as Himself as a MUST SEE in my Slamdance: discovering new filmmakers, and it won Slamdance’s Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize. 

SEXUAL HEALING: gentle naughtiness and sensitivity

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SEXUAL HEALING. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The Dutch documentary Sexual Healing traces the experience of Evelien, a 53-year-old woman, afflicted from birth with spasticity, who needs substantial assistance to live independently. Evelien has never enjoyed sexual fulfillment, and now she’s curious. Sexual Healing follows her quest with sensitivity, gentle naughty humor and taste.

Evelien has supportive friends and the good fortune to live in the Netherlands, where there’s an agency established to fill this need for the disabled, essentially a therapeutic escort service. If you’re like me, you’ll be surprised at the age of Evelien’s sex therapist.

Sexual Healing is the second 50+ minute feature for writer-director Elsbeth Fraanje.

[Note: I advisedly used the word ”spasticity” to describe the subject’s disability, to avoid the term that the film uses, “spastic”; in researching the appropriate language, I got no useful guidance from the various sources wagging their fingers at the use of “spastic” but offering no alternatives more specific than “disabled” or “differently abled”.]

Slamdance hosted its US premiere, which I highlighted as a MUST SEE in my Slamdance: discovering new filmmakers. Sexual Healing was programmed in Slamdance’s Unstoppable category, a “showcase of films made by filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities”.

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED: justice by erasure

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Photo caption: Nan Goldin in ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED. Courtesy of NEON.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a profile of photographer Nan Goldin and her leadership of Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (PAIN), the advocacy group seeking to punish the Sackler family for profiting on the addiction and overdose carnage from oxycontin. Purdue Pharma, a privately held company owned by the Sacklers, intentionally oversold oxycontin to doctors and misled the public on its addictive qualities. The saga ended up in bankruptcy court because the Sacklers drained the profits from Purdue Pharma before it could be forced to reimburse its victims.

It’s unusual to have a public controversy so without nuance – the Sacklers are clearly bad people who acted badly and irreparably injured thousands of others. As a result, we aren’t bothered when Nan Goldin, an addict in recovery herself, evenly says, “It’s personal. I hate these people.”

Up against a malevolent, heavily-resourced corporation, PAIN inflicted pain on the Sackler family by turning their own philanthropy against them, shaming major art museums into refusing gifts from the Sacklers and even removing the Sackler name from the buildings and galleries they had sponsored. The museums were the institutions with the very highest profiles: the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, [British] National Portrait Gallery and even the Louvre. To make things even more uncomfortable for the museums, Goldin’s own work is in the permanent collections of some of these museums.

A PAIN action in ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED. Courtesy of NEON.

PAIN’s actions were themselves works of performance art, often involving PAIN members feigning death en masse, surrounded by prescription bottle. To reflect Richard Sackler’s self-damning email that greedily rejoiced at the “blizzard of prescriptions”, PAIN members created a confetti blizzard of prescription slips in a major museum atrium.

The beginning and end of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, about a third of the film, follows Goldin and PAIN’s campaign against the Sacklers. The rest of the film is the self-narrated life story of Nan Goldin, much of it illustrated by slide shows of her photos. Goldin became a key figure of the New York avant garde of the 70s, 80s and 90s, and she has led a colorful and oft turbulent life. There’s a major focus on the story of her older sister Barbara, and how the two reacted to their family by rebelling against conformity.

The bottom line is that I found the shaming of the Sacklers much more engaging that the Nan and Barbara Goldin story.

In the highlight of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, the Sacklers on Purdue Pharma’s corporate board must themselves sit for two hours and listen via Zoom to the testimony of their victims, including one harrowing 911 call.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed was directed by noted documentarian Laura Poitras, Oscar winner for Citizenfour. The film has been included in various critics’ top ten lists and is a contender for the Best Documentary Oscar. It’s good, but I’ve seen better docs this year.

MADOFF: THE MONSTER OF WALL STREET: adding some jawdroppers to a familiar story

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Photo caption: Bernie Madoff in MADOFF: THE MONSTER OF WALL STREET. Courtesy of Netflix.

Netflix’s documentary Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street is a pretty good watch. Most folks, like me, thought they understood the now 15-year-old story of Madoff’s house of cards collapsing at the same time as the 2008 mortgage meltdown, ruining hundred of investors, including pensioners and non-profits. But Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street contributes a comprehensive perspective and some jaw-dropping nuggets, to wit:

  • How the SEC whiffed MULTIPLE TIMES, even when the case was giftwrapped for them by a credible Wall Street expert;
  • The moment when the SEC and FBI learned that the fraud was not in the millions, but in the TENS OF BILLIONS;
  • How Bernie Madoff banned his own sons from the separate office in which the fraud was committed;
  • How Madoff concealed the fraud in plain sight with brazenness alone;
  • The one zillionaire investor who must have known about the Ponzi scheme and kept bailing Madoff out; and
  • What happened to the main characters in the saga, including Madoff’s family and confidantes – it is operatic.

We benefit from Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street‘s comprehensive look at the scandal because our knowledge of it come from the news coverage at time of his arrest, which focused on the plight of Madoff’s victims. That’s a key part of the story, but it helps to (in my case) learn that Madoff’s stature was earned by his building two entirely legitimate Wall Street businesses, co-founding the NASDAQ and becoming a sage adviser to the SEC. It also helps to revisit the scale of his fraud (the largest Ponzi scheme in world history) and how it differed from other Ponzi schemes – NONE of his victims’ money was ever invested.

One of the key themes is the contrast between the two suites of Madoff offices – with only Madoff himself having access to both. His sleek 19th floor suite housed the two legitimate businesses, was immaculately decorated in black and silver, and primarily staffed with well-educated Jews. The 17th floor, which housed the fraud, was staffed by high-school-educated Italian-Americans, and was a messy warren of cardboard boxes and a DOT MATRIX PRINTER.

Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street is well-sourced with the federal agents who arrested Madoff, his personal secretary and employees of both his legitimate and his fraudulent businesses, and clips of Bernie himself in prison garb, ‘fessing up, We also meet the guy who proved as early as 2000 that Madoff had to running a Ponzi scheme, only to be rebuffed by the SEC five times between 20000 and 2008.

Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street was directed by Joe Berlinger, who has directed some of the 21st century’s very best documentaries – the Paradise Lost series and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. This time, I did not care for his odd technique of using look-alike “actors” in “re-creations”, obviously to fill in for a scarcity of file footage, but it ultimately did not detract from telling a great story. Anyway, hopefully, Netflix will keep hiring Berlinger to make films, which is a great thing.

Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street is streaming on Netflix.

LOVING HIGHSMITH: intimate and revelatory

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Photo caption: Patricia Highsmith in LOVING HIGHSMITH. Courtesy of Frameline.

In the revelatory biodoc Loving Highsmith, documentarian Eva Vitija reveals intimate perspectives on the iconic author. Patricia Highsmith’s novels were turned into twisted movie thrillers that include Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and all the Tom Ripley movies, as well as the queer memoir Carol.

Vitija has sourced Loving Highsmith with the firsthand memories of Highsmith’s last live-in lover Marijean Meaker, her Berlin lover Tabea Blumenshein, her Paris friend Monique Buffet, and members of Highsmith’s rodeo-focused Texas family. The insights include:

  • Highsmith’s Texas roots.
  • Her heartbreakingly one-way relations with her mother.
  • The origin of the Tom Ripley character.
  • Her intentionality in crafting the ending of Carol.
  • Her obsession with her married secret London lover.

Even those who are familiar with Highsmith will be impressed with this 360-degree portrait. I screened Loving Highsmith for this year’s Frameline in June; it’s now in theaters.

THE AUTOMAT: nickels in, memories out

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Photo caption: THE AUTOMAT: Actress Audrey Hepburn photographed by Howard Fried in New York City as part of a multi-day photo shoot for Esquire magazine, 1951. Courtesy of A Slice of Pie Productions.

The charming documentary The Automat traces the fascinating seven-decade run of the marble-floored food palaces where one could put nickels in a slot and be rewarded with a meal. The story of the automat is essentially a business history of Holt & Hardart, which pioneered the automat concept in Philadelphia and New York, and dominated the market for years, at one point the nation’s largest restaurant chain. Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Colin Powell speak to how the automat touched their lives, and Starbucks founder Howard Schulz credits the automat as his inspiration; (Mel Brooks even wrote and performed a song for the film).

The Automat is the first film for director Lisa Hurvitz, who spent eight years on the project. Along with the celebrities, Hurvitz has sourced her film with longtime Holt & Hardart employees, members of the founding families and even the guy who titled his Ph.D. dissertation, Trapped Behind the Automat: Technological Systems and the American Restaurant, 1902-1991.

The Automat is filled with unexpected nuggets, including:

  • The New Orleans origin of Holt & Hardart’s signature coffee.
  • The astounding percentage of the NYC and Philly populations once fed by Holt & Hardart.
  • The devastating impact of a nickel price increase.

Above all, The Automat features the automat as a democratic institution – a place and an activity enjoyed by a diverse collection of customers from all classes, genders and races.

The Automat gives voice to those nostalgic about the automat, but it is clear-eyed about why it didn’t survive – a business model based on volume when the volume of customers moved to the suburbs, along with social changes in post-war America.

The Automat had a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical run in March, but now you can stream it from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and KinoNow.