Slamdance

THE COMPLEX FORMS: what did he bargain for?

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David Allen White in Fabio D’Orta’s THE COMPLEX FORMS. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The visually striking atmospheric The Complex Forms is set in a centuries-old Italian villa, where Christian (David Allen White) and other down-on-their-luck middle-aged men sell their bodies for a period of days to be “possessed”. Possessed how? By who or by what? As the dread builds, Christian resolves to pry the answers from the secretive masters of the villa.

Director Fabio D’Orta unspools the story with remarkably crisp black-and-white cinematography, a brooding soundtrack and impeccable editing. In his astonishingly impressive filmmaking debut, D’Orta wrote, directed, shot and edited The Complex Form.

David Allen White is excellent as Christian, who begins resigned to endure whatever process that he has committed to, but becomes increasingly uneasy as his probing questions are deflected. So are Michael Venni as Christian’s talkative roommate Luh and Cesare Bonomelli as the impassive roommate simply called The Giant.

Like his countrymen Fellini and Leona, D’Orta has a gift for using faces to heighten interest and tell the story. He makes especially effective use of Bonomelli’s Mt. Rushmore-like countenance.

Slamdance is hosting the United States premiere of The Complex Forms. The Complex Forms is the my favorite among the dozen or so films I screened in covering this year’s Slamdance. The Complex Forms won Slamdance’s Honorable Mention for Narrative Feature.

THE ACCIDENT: she’s too nice, until…

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Giulia Mazzarino in THE ACCIDENT. Courtesy of Slamdnce.

In The Accident (L’Incidente), Marcella (Giulia Mazzarino) is a meek, good-hearted young woman who in quick succession, loses her partner, custody of their daughter, her car and her job. Desperate for financial survival , she buys a tow truck, but she is utterly unsuited for the cutthroat Italian towing industry, where no good deed goes unpunished. Marcella is trapped into a downward spiral of an increasingly disadvantageous situations, until she happens on a logical, but outrageously amoral, solution.

Marcella is empathetic and kind, which are qualities we all should aspire to have. But she’s the type of person destined to always be pushed around, exploited and bullied by those more venal and ruthless. The Accident is acid social commentary on how society rewards selfishness, an allegory which could have been titled The Parable of Marcella.

The Accident is the first full-length narrative feature for documentarian Giuseppe Garau, who describes it as an “experimental film” because virtually the entire movie is shot from a camera in the front passenger seat of Marcella’s vehicle. That may be an experiment, but it’s not a gimmick because it drives our attention to Marcella’s incentives and disincentives.

Giulia Mazzarino is very good as Marcella. Anna Coppola is hilarious as Anna, the deliciously shameless owner of the towing company.

Slamdance hosted the North American premiere of The Accident where it won the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize.

DEMON MINERAL: environmental justice, indigenous voices

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DEMON MINERAL. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The environmental justice documentary Demon Mineral explores the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo people. In her first feature, director and co-writer Hadley Austin uses indigenous voices to tell the story, including her co-writer, environmental scientist Dr. Tommy Rock. It’s the testimony of Navajo people themselves that traces the history of uranium mining, subsequent health problems and the science connecting the dots. Some of the first-person narratives are heart-breaking.

This real life story takes place in one of the most iconic locations in American cinema – Arizona’s Monument Valley. (The Navajo themselves have complicated feelings about the legacy of John Ford Westerns made in their homeland.) Cinematographer Yoni Goldstein’s black-and-white photography soars, bringing out the majesty of the harsh landscape and imparting a gravitas to the story.

There’s even a cameo by hard right Congressman Paul Gosar, who is so stupid that he doesn’t comprehend just how stupid he is.

Demon Mineral has enjoyed a robust film festival run and won the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the 2024 Slamdance.

SLAMDANCE: discovering new filmmakers

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Photo caption: David Allen White in Fabio D’Orta’s THE COMPLEX FORMS. Courtesy of Slamdance.

It’s time for the 30th Slamdance Film Festival, which is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. It’s a hybrid festival with events in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah from January 19th to 25th and online on the Slamdance Channel from January 22nd to 28th. All Slamdance feature films selected in the competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million. The 125 films in this year’s program were selected from 9,004 submissions.

Slamdance was founded in 1995 by filmmakers reacting to the gatekeeper role and growing marketplace focus of a nearby film festival with a similar name. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres.

Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento, Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In, Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).

MUST SEE

Here are three films from the 2024 Slamdance program that you shouldn’t miss. Each features at least one original and fresh element:

  • The Complex Forms: This visually striking atmospheric is set in a centuries-old Italian villa, where Christian (David Allen White) and other down-on-their-luck middle-aged men sell their bodies for a period of days to be “possessed”. Possessed how? By who or by what? As the dread builds, Christian resolves to pry the answers from the secretive masters of the villa. Director Fabio D’Orta unspools the story with remarkably crisp black-and-white cinematography, a brooding soundtrack and impeccable editing. In his astonishingly impressive filmmaking debut, D’Orta wrote, directed, shot and edited The Complex Form. US premiere. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
  • The Accident: Marcella (Giulia Mazzarino) is a meek, good-hearted young woman who, in quick succession, loses her partner, custody of their daughter, her car and her job. Desperate for financial survival , she buys a tow truck, but she is utterly unsuited for the cutthroat Italian towing industry, where no good deed goes unpunished. Marcella is trapped into a downward spiral of increasingly disadvantageous situations, until she happens on a logical, but outrageously amoral, solution. The Accident is the first full-length narrative feature for documentarian Giuseppe Garau, who describes it as an “experimental film” because virtually the entire movie is shot from a camera in the front passenger side of Marcella’s vehicle. That may be an experiment, but it’s not a gimmick, because it drives our attention to Marcella’s incentives and disincentives in this allegory, an acid parable of social criticism. North American Premiere. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
  • Demon Mineral: This environmental justice documentary explores the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo people. This real life story takes place in one of the most iconic locations in American cinema – Arizona’s Monument Valley, and cinematographer Yoni Goldstein’s black-and-white photography soars. The story is told by indigenous voices, one of whom, environmental scientist Dr. Tommy Rock, co-wrote Demon Mineral with director Hadley Austin. First feature for Austin. (Full review goes live on January 22.)

And here’s a bonus recommendation: Slide is a firehose-in-the-face of anarchic cynicism from the veteran animator Bill Plympton. Set in a 1940s backwater town hoping to become a location for a Hollywood movie, Plympton harnesses all the tropes of movie Westerns to send up human corruption. The music by Maureen McElheron and Hank Bones is pretty cool, too. Here’s a taste of the fun.

Remember, even if you don’t travel to Utah, you can sample these films on the Slamdance Channel from January 22nd to 28th.

Here’s the trailer for The Complex Forms.

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE: friendship tested

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WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE. Courtesy of Slamdance.

In the reflective and contemplative indie drama Waiting for the Light to Change, five twenty-somethings meet for a long weekend at a secluded lakeside vacation rental – decidedly off-season. Two of the women, Amy (Jin Park) and Kim (Joyce Ma), were originally very close friends, but their lives (jobs in different cities and Kim’s new boyfriend) have moved them apart in recent years.

The three other friends (Sam Straley, Erik Barrientos, Qun Chi) impact the story, but mainly to reflect what is going on between Amy and Kim. I very much appreciated this fresh dynamic in the screenplay – Amy has recently lost a lot of weight and consequently is now much more attractive to men that she has previously been during her friendship with Kim.

The film was shot near Port Austin where Michigan’s Thumb juts into Lake Huron. There’s a boathouse, a dock, some woods to hike in and not much to do when the weather is bleak and chilly. The five, mostly in combinations of two, take measure of their lives, and they already have a lot of regrets for people so young. Waiting for the Light to Change has been pitched as an Asian-American The Big Chill, but the talky tone is more like Whit Stilman’s early films (albeit not about preppy slackers with inherited wealth).

As Amy and Kim probe and spar, and we wait to see how and whether their relationship will survive, Waiting for the Light to Change is a slow, slow burn. So slow that, twice, I thought that I had accidently paused the screener.

Waiting for the Light to Change is the directing debut for Linh Tran, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Tran shows a gift for framing shots, and the audience can’t tell that the film was made for just $20,000.

Waiting for the Light to Change won Slamdance’s Narrative Feature Grand Jury prize.

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE. Courtesy of Slamdance.

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”.

WHERE THE ROAD LEADS: gotta get out

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Jana Bjelica in WHERE THE ROAD LEADS. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The Serbian feature Where the Road Leads opens with a single shot of very long duration – the protagonist Jana (Jana Bjelica) is running, in and out and all around a remote Serbian village.  Is she running away from something or toward something? It turns out that she is racing to prevent something, but this is a film about escape. 

The village is so secluded and devoid of commerce and culture, that there is no reaon to visit it – or to live there, which is Jana’s conclusion, too. Whenever an outsider drifts through, it is a major occasion – and, for some, an occasion for suspicion. In Where the Road Leads, when a stranger wanders through, everyone calls him “the new guy”, but Jana fixates on whether he can become her ticket out of town.

Technically, the story is a tragedy, but Ognjanović lightens its telling with wry deadpan humor, showing why Jana finds village life so stifling. There are bickering old marrieds, two determinedly stupid drunks, and the one veteran government official who is weary of dealing with the villagers’ foibles. 

Jana Bjelica in WHERE THE ROAD LEADS. Courtesy of Slamdance.

What makes Where the Road Leads powerful is its construction, with the pivotal beginning of the story placed at the end of the film. Ognjanović explains, “From the start, I knew I wanted the film to end with that scene – even though, chronologically, it is the beginning of the story. It is the one moment in our protagonist’s story where she could have changed the course of the events that followed.”

The opening shot of Jana running and running and running ain’t Touch of Evil or Goodfellas, but it’s impressive filmmaking, especially for a film of this budget.

Where the Road Leads is a promising debut feature for writer-director Nina Ognjanović. World premiere on January 22. Slamdance narrative feature competition.

UPDATE: Where the Roads Leads won an Honorable Mention (essentially second place) for Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance.