Nashville Film Festival

LA CHIMERA: six genres for the price of one

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Photo caption: Carol Duarte and Josh O’Connor in LA CHIMERA. Courtesy of Neon.

The star of the Italian genre-shifter La Chimera is really its director, Alice Rohrwacher, with her inventive storytelling. Rohrwacher’s story does have a protagonist, Arthur (Josh O’Connor – the marriage-age Prince Charles in The Crown); when we meet him, he is grubby, weary and returning to a Tuscan village where his heart has been broken by a woman and where he has been betrayed by friends. We wonder what has drawn this Italian-speaking Englishman back to a place that hasn’t treated him well.

He shows up at the villa of Flora (Isabella Rossellini), the mother of his disappeared girlfriend, Beniamina. Flora adores him, and her new housekeeper/companion/voice student Italia (Carol Duarte) is quite taken by him. He is also welcomed by a rabble of village ne’er-do-wells, as rowdy and vibrant as Arthur is surly, and as course as Arthur is cultured.

It turns out that these vulgar roughnecks are tombaroli – nighttime robbers of ancient Etruscan graves, who then sell the artifacts to a more sophisticated fence, to be trafficked in the shady marketplace of antiquity dealers, collectors and ethically-challenged museums. It turns out that Arthur, who seems to know a lot about archaeology, has a gift in water witching the locations of undiscovered tombs.

La Chimera, which has started out as a dramatic portrait of a man broken and alienated, becomes a heist procedural, and then a comic thriller, and a charming romance (as Italia gives Arthur “Italian lessons” in gestures, not vocabulary). There’s a sudden break in the fourth wall, a dream sequence with magical realism and even an homage to Mack Sennett. All the while, the tombaroli serve as a comic Grek chorus, right up to a neo-noir ending, dotted with yet more magical realism.

Here’s where La Chimera was a success for me. I always wanted to know what would happen next. I was continually surprised by the changes in tone. The Wife, however, thought that Rohrwacher threw in at least one genre too many.

But by bit, and rarely overtly, Rohrwacher unspools the mysteries of the backstory. Why is Arthur here? What happened to Beniamina? What is Arthur’s bond to these trashy scalliwags? Does Arthur have a professional training, a supernatural gift or both? By the end, we have a pretty good idea of the answers – well enough to make the story coherent without Rohrwacher spoonfeeding us all the exposition.

When I think about it, other than the novelty of the graverobbing, the plot points are individually familiar – a bitter release from prison, heartbreak from losing a love, the heist, the noirish fatalism. What keeps us on our toes is the inventiveness in the film’s evolving tone.

However, my head was also more involved than my heart, probably because I cared about the the Flora ad Italia characters so much more than I cared about Arthur.

The cast is very good, with Rossellini (what a treasure!) and Duarte as the standouts.

I appreciate a filmmaker who is always aware that she’s storytelling in cinema, instead of, for example, just filming a play. Rohrwacher takes full advantage of the opportunities to vary sequence, construction, and mood. La Chimera is a Must See for cinephiles.

CYPHER: the year’s most original movie?

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Photo caption: Tierra Whack in CYPHER. Courtesy of Hulu.

Filmmaker Chris Moukarbel toys with us in Cypher, an ingenious narrative in the form of a pseudo documentary about rapper Tierra Whack.

As in any music doc, we meet Whack (smart, genuine and naturally charming) and trace her artistic emergence. Whack’s real life team and Moukarbel’s real-life crew play themselves. Fifteen minutes in, they meet a fawning fan in a diner, an interesting woman who soon veers into conspiracy talk. Whack continues with a world tour, on the road to shooting a music video. Whack and Moukarbel are unsettled when secretly-filmed video of them shows up on social media. Moukarbel is hounded by the unbalanced daughter (Biona Bradley – perfect) of the woman in the diner. The intrusions become increasingly menacing, and are tied to the same conspiracy theory. Reeling, the film crew visits the daughter, but the threats only escalate, all the way to a showdown on a video shooting set.

It’s hard to tell when the story dips in and out of fiction, and this is definitely not a movie you’ve seen before. Cypher reminds us that we can enjoy and appreciate moies, even when we’re not sure what’s going on.

I screened Cypher for the Nashville Film Festival. Cypher is now streaming on Hulu.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE: revoking one’s own celebrity

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Shere Hite in THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE. Courtesy of IFC Films.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite: This film, a triumph for director Nicole Newnham (Crip Camp), explores the life and times of the groundbreaking sex researcher and best-selling author. A woman of uncommon confidence, determination and resourcefulness, Hite sailed into the face of the patriarchy. Denied resources and respect by the academic establishment, her guerilla research uncovered pivotal truths of female sexuality and spoke them for the first time. The resulting sensation brought fame, acclaim and notoriety to Hite, accompanied by both financial success and a vicious backlash. The persistence of that backlash, and its personal toll, caused Hite to essentially revoke her own celebrity. Hite did not suffer fools, and was fearless until she wasn’t.

We meet a slew of Hite’s intimates in this superbly sourced film and gain insight into her personality. Shere Hite speaks to us directly in file footage and in her writings, voiced by Dakota Johnson.

For those of us who were roaming the earth in the 1970s, it’s still jarring to see the cultural resistance to what we now accept as biological fact. For those experiencing this story for the first time, it’s astonishing and powerful. I understand that women under age forty-five, having missed Shere Hite’s moment of ubiquitous media presence, are responding strongly to this film.

I screened The Disappearance of Shere Hite for the Nashville Film Festival, and it topped my Must See at NashFilm. It opens in theaters this weekend.

Under the radar at NashFilm

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Raymond David Taylor in CATERPILLAR. Courtesy of NashFilm.

While the Nashville Film Festival has its share of high-profile movies, don’t miss the gems that are screening under the radar. These movies are why we go to film festivals. Here are my top picks.

  • Caterpillar: In this riveting documentary, we meet David, an engaging man who is consumed by changing one aspect of his appearance – the color of his eyes. He decides to seek cosmetic iris implant surgery at a shady clinic in India. Is his problem the color of his eyes, or that he is obsessed with the color of his eyes? David’s loving but unfiltered mother is very important to him, but she is damaged herself and ill-equipped to communicate with or support him emotionally. In India, David meets other patients, who seem to have more superficial rationales for the surgery than does David. They have all been enticed by commercials on YouTube, and neither David or his fellow patients have asked the question – why is this procedure not legal in the US or any developed nation? Caterpillar becomes a profound exploration of body image, swirling amid issues of race, sexuality and gender identity. David is easy to root for, right through a series of MOG moments. David’s intensely personal and harrowing journey is expertly told by director Lisa Mandelup in her second feature. NashFilm hosts what is only the second screening for Caterpillar, which premiered at SXSW.
  • A Strange Path: With a trippy beginning, writer-director Guto Parente lets us know that we’re in for a bizarre, often absurd, but ultimately redemptive experience. After growing up with his mother in Portugal, the twenty-something filmmaker David (Lucas Limeira) returns to his native Brazil to premiere his first feature at a film festival. It’s the very onset of the COVID pandemic, and the festival is postponed, his flights are canceled, his hotel closes, and David finds himself marooned in the lockdown. He shows up on the doorstep of his long-estranged father, and has increasingly surreal interactions with him. It turns out that David is on a strange path to a destination that he does not, and the audience cannot, anticipate. A Strange Path, which swept the international film awards at Tribeca, is like a COVID fever dream. In a good way.
  • Cypher: Filmmaker Chris Moukarbel toys with us in this ingenious narrative in the form of pseudo documentary about rapper Tierra Whack. As in any music doc, we meet Whack (smart, genuine and naturally charming) and trace her artistic emergence. Whack’s real life team and Moukarbel’s real-life crew play themselves. Fifteen minutes in, they meet a fawning fan in a diner, an interesting woman who soon veers into conspiracy talk. Whack continues with a world tour, on the road to shooting a music video. Whack and Moukarbel are unsettled when secretly-filmed video of them shows up on social media. Moukarbel is hounded by the unbalanced daughter (Biona Bradley – perfect) of the woman in the diner. The intrusions become increasingly menacing, and are tied to the same conspiracy theory. Reeling, the film crew visits the daughter, but the threats only escalate, all the way to a showdown on a video shooting set. It’s hard to tell when the story dips in and out of fiction, and this is definitely not a movie you’ve seen before.
  • Dusty and Stones: For an unadulterated Feel Good movie, it’s hard to beat this little documentary that layers on the improbabilities. It’s about a Country Western duo from Swaziland (since renamed Eswatini) who get a chance to visit Nashville and compete in a Texas country music festival. Who knew there was a Country Western music scene in Swaziland, complete with line dancing and Stetsons? There are plenty of nuggets here., beginning with the guys’ unbounded joy at hearing their music recorded with the very best Nashville studio equipment and session musicians. And they explain to the denizens of an African-American barbershop that they are headed for a country music festival in a small East Texas town. And, sitting in a Nashville motel, they contemplate their first Taco Bell cuisine. It’s a little movie, but it’s a hoot. Dusty and Stone will appear in person at NashFilm.

Also see my Previewing the Nashville Film Festival and Must See at NashFilm . Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. 

Lucas Limeira in A STRANGE PATH. Courtesy of NashFilm.

Must See at NashFilm

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Shere Hite in THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE. Courtesy of NashFilm.

The Nashville Film Festival opens tomorrows and runs through October 4. Overall, it’s a strong program, but here are two films that you shouldn’t miss.

  • The Disappearance of Shere Hite: This film, a triumph for director Nicole Newnham (Crip Camp), explores the life and times of the groundbreaking sex researcher and best-selling author. A woman of uncommon confidence, determination and resourcefulness, Hite sailed into the face of the patriarchy. Denied resources and respect by the academic establishment, her guerilla research uncovered pivotal truths of female sexuality and spoke them for the first time. The resulting sensation brought fame, acclaim and notoriety to Hite, accompanied by both financial success and a vicious backlash. The persistence of that backlash, and its personal toll, caused Hite to essentially revoke her own celebrity. Hite did not suffer fools, and was fearless until she wasn’t. We meet a slew of Hite’s intimates in this superbly sourced film and gain insight into her personality. Shere Hite speaks to us directly in file footage and in her writings, voiced by Dakota Johnson. For those of us who were roaming the earth in the 1970s, it’s still jarring to see the cultural resistance to what we now accept as biological fact. For those experiencing this story for the first time, it’s astonishing and powerful. I understand that women under age forty-five, having missed Shere Hite’s moment of ubiquitous media presence, are responding strongly to this film.
  • Caterpillar: In this riveting documentary, we meet David, an engaging man who is consumed by changing one aspect of his appearance – the color of his eyes. He decides to seek cosmetic iris implant surgery at a shady clinic in India. Is his problem the color of his eyes, or that he is obsessed with the color of his eyes? David’s loving but unfiltered mother is very important to him, but she is damaged herself and ill-equipped to communicate with or support him emotionally. In India, David meets other patients, who seem to have more superficial rationales for the surgery than does David. They have all been enticed by commercials on YouTube, and neither David or his fellow patients have asked the question – why is this procedure not legal in the US or any developed nation? Caterpillar becomes a profound exploration of body image, swirling amid issues of race, sexuality and gender identity. David is easy to root for, right through a series of MOG moments. David’s intensely personal and harrowing journey is expertly told by director Lisa Mandelup in her second feature. NashFilm hosts what is only the second screening for Caterpillar, which premiered at SXSW.

Also see my Previewing the Nashville Film Festival and Under the Radar at NashFilm. Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. 

CHARM CIRCLE: you think YOUR family has issues?

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Raya Burstein and Uri Burstein in CHARM CIRCLE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the superbly structured documentary Charm Circle, writer-director Nira Burstein exquisitely unspools the story of her own bizarre family. At first, we meet Burstein’s father, a sour character who inexplicably is about to lose his rented house, which has become unkempt, even filthy. He is mean to Burstein’s apparently sweet and extraordinarily passive mother, and the scene just seems unpleasant.

But then, Nira Burstein brings out twenty-year-old videos that show her dad as witty, talented and functional. We learn a key fact about the mom, and then about each of the director’s two sisters.

Some of the publicity about Charm Circle describes the family as eccentric, but only one daughter is a little odd – three family members are clinically diagnosable. Charm Circle is a cautionary story of untreated mental illness and the consequences of failing to reach out for help.

This is Nira Burstein’s first feature, and she has two things going for her: unlimited access to the subjects and a remarkable gift for storytelling. Charm Circle works so well because of how Burstein sequences the rollout of each family member’s story.

The Nashville Film Festival returns in a few days, and I attended a screening of Charm Circle, with a Nira Burstein Q&A at NashFilm two years ago. It went on to play both the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and Cinequest, and can now be streamed on the Criterion Channel.

Previewing the Nashville Film Festival

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Photo caption: Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Raoul Peck’s FOE, screening at the Nashville Film Festival. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.

The Nashville Film Festival opens on Thursday, September 28 and runs through October 4 with a diverse menu of cinema. The Nashville Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the South (this is the 54th!) and is an Academy Award qualifying festival. The program includes a mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres.

The Nashville Film Festival embraces its home in Music City and emphasizes films about music, like Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, Fanny: The Right to Rock, The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile and Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues from the two most recent fests. That’s the case with this year’s fest opener: Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive.

The closing night feature is Foe, a drama from Oscar nominated director Raoul Peck (I Am Not a Negro) that stars fellow Oscar nominees Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal.

See it here first: several films in the program have already secured distribution and will be available to theater and/or watch-at-home audiences. Before just anybody can watch them, you can get your personal preview at the Nashville Film Festival: Foe, La Chimera, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Fingernails, Flora and Son, Eileen, The Taste of Things, Silver Dollar Road and The Disappearance of Shere Hite.

I love covering Nashfilm in person, but I’ll be covering remotely this year; that just leaves more pig-forward delicacies from Peg Leg Porker and Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint for you.

Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. Watch this space for Nashville Film Festival recommendations. I’ll be back in a couple days with my recommendations.

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK: triple-threat trailblazers

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Photo caption: Fanny in FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

Fanny: The Right to Rock documents the first all-female rock band to get signed by a major record label and churn out five albums. Fifty years ago, the band Fanny was breaking ground for women musicians – and for lesbians and Filipinas. Women rockers were a novelty in the early 1970; imagine layering on LGBTQ identity and Asian-American heritage.

Although you probably haven’t heard of them, this was no garage band. They had a major label record deal, European tours, and hung out with big name peers. Unlike many male bands of the period, Fanny didn’t crash and burn due to drug use or clashing egos. They just never caught on with record-buyers.

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

It’s pretty clear that sexism in the music industry and media, combined with maybe being a little ahead of their time to deny Fanny stardom. Too bad – I would have loved to listen to them in their heyday.

Their music fits right into the stuff I was listening to in the 1970s. I’m guessing that the reason why I hadn’t heard of them is that they didn’t get played on FM radio in the Bay Area.

These women can still really rock in their 70s, and they’re a hoot. Tomorrow night, May 17, they’ll perform for one time at the Whisky A-Go-Go to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of their now infamous club performance at the Whisky.

Fanny in FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

Fanny: The Right to Rock is filled with colorful anecdotes from back in the day. Todd Rundgren, an important early associate of Fanny, and Bonnie Raitt appear as eyewitnesses. Cherie Curry of the Runaways, Cathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s and Kate Pierson of the B-52s testify to Fanny’s trailblazing status.

I screened Fanny: The Right to Rock last year at the Nashville Film Festival. On May 22, you can watch it on your very own television when It will be broadcast on PBS and begin streaming on on PBS.ORG and the PBS APP.

HANNAH HA HA: what makes for human value and fulfillment?

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Hannah Lee Thompson in HANNAH HA HA. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

The indie Hannah Ha Ha is an extraordinary film about an ordinary person. Hannah (musician Hannah Lee Thompson in her first film) is content with her life in a small town – helping her dad (he would be lost without her) and giving music lessons. She touches lives, and townfolks eagerly help celebrate her 26th birthday,  But her brother Paul (Roger Mancusi) points out that she is comfortable with a path that will leave her without a career or, critically, health insurance.

Here’s the rub – Hannah’s family and her community recognize her contributions, but our economic system doesn’t.

Paul wants what is best for Hannah, but every time he talks to her, he makes her feel bad about herself, finally shaming her into finding her place in the conventional economy (which is not at the top of the pyramid). Paul’s advice is sensible – if she wants health insurance and secure housing, she will need a job; it’s just that the entry level jobs in the small town’s fast food chains are so soul-crushing for her. (The movie was filmed in Sharon, Massachusetts.)

Thompson, whose Hannah is smart, witty, capable and utterly ill-suited for life as a corporate pawn, is excellent. With her sarcastic charm, she’s sympathetic and relatable. Thompson perfectly captures how defeated even a talented person can feel when forced into a harsher environment.

Mancusi lets the audience glimpse that Paul himself is not as upwardly mobile as he thinks or portrays. Paul has bought into the “work hard and get rich” ethic, and there’s a hint of desperation and self-loathing that he’s not further up the corporate ladder. He’s like a two-bit insurance salesman who votes Republican because he thinks he’s a “businessman”; in reality, no one in the 1% is going to let Paul control capital.

Filmed in a cinéma vérité style, Hannah Ha Ha is the first feature written and directed by Joshua Pikovsky and Jordan Tetewsky, and it’s masterfully edited by Tetewsky. The 75-minute running time allows for the characters and the plot to meander without dragging.

We are our choices – but who frames those choices? Hannah Ha Ha is a thought-provoking film that explores the profound question of what makes for human value and fulfillment.

Hannah Ha Ha premiered last year at Slamdance, played Tribeca, and I screened it for the Nashville Film Festival, where I featured it in Under the Radar at Nashville. It’s now streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube. Hannah Ha Ha is one of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far.

THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER: FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE: she’s still a handful

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THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER.: FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile is a portrait of a music legend with sapped confidence, whose career is jumpstarted by admiring younger musicians. The audience gets a glimpse into the creative process of writing of a song, an Emmy winner at that.

Tanya Tucker, in showbiz from age 9, exploded onto the country music scene with the monster hit Delta Dawn at 13. After stardom in her teen years and a Wild Child period in her twenties, her career dipped, setting up a comeback in her thirties. Now sixty, by 2019 she hadn’t released any recording for 17 years.

In 2019, Shooter Jennings began a project to showcase Tucker’s talent with new material (a la Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash) and invited Brandi Carlile to help. Carlile, a huge Tanya Tucker fan, became central to the project, coaxing Tucker along, pumping up her confidence and riding the roller coaster of Tucker’s reliability issues. The Return of Tanya Tucker is essentially a “making of” documentary about the project.

Now 60 and looking older, Tucker has a lot of mileage on her (and has launched her own brand of tequila, named with the Spanish translation of Wild Thing). Carlile finds out that Tucker is a handful.

Tucker is still a formidable song stylist, though, with a distinctive cry-in-her-beer break in her voice. The project goes better than anyone could have expected, and there’s a Feel Good ending. The Wife particularly enjoyed this film.

I screened The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile for the Nashville Film Festival. It is now in theaters.