It's the big night; Opening Night of the 45th New York Film Festival! While the public gets its first taste of the festival's offerings with two gala screenings tonight, Friday also marks the halfway point in the festival's Press and Industry screening schedule. After a seemingly slow start, things have picked up considerably the past couple of days; Stay tuned for reviews of Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Flight Of The Red Balloon and Lee Chang-Dong's Secret Sunshine all of which have knocked my socks off. With Bela Tarr tomorrow and the Opening Night festivities on tap, I am not sure how I am going to get everything I want to say onto the page. Things could be worse, no? How great is it to be alive, living in the city I love and spending my days taking in films? Having taken two years away from the film community back in 2000, I now know better; I wouldn't trade these humid autumn days for anything.

While I'll be rushing home to press my tuxedo for the festival's Opening Night party, most will be inside of the theaters taking in this year's Opening Night Film, Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. As a programmer, I know a little bit about the science of programming Opening Night; You want an upbeat, engaging film that will get things off to a fun, happy start. You want a crowd pleaser that will show the audience a good time and inspire them to sample more of the program in the remaining days. In my opinion, the Selection Committee at the Film Society has chosen a near-perfect film; Opening Night is the right spot for the latest from Anderson, whose melancholic comedies (melancomedies?) usually leave audiences and critics deeply divided.

I'm not sure I know of any comic filmmaker who inspires as much misguided vitriol as Wes Anderson. People like the Farrelly Brothers and Judd Apatow get roundly praised for their "humanity" despite their gross-out tactics and stereotyping, but as soon as critics enter the aestheticized realm of a Wes Anderson movie, the critical thesaurus gets a work out; "precious", "hermetically sealed" and my favorite of the bunch "Anderson's arch, highly artificial style gets in the way of character and emotional development, rendering pic piquant rather than profound". While the world continues to blow sunshine up the ass of the innumerable films in the long parade wrought by There's Something About Mary, Wes Anderson has created an uniquely comic sensibility and not-so suddenly, everyone's a cheap-shot artist.

The Darjeeling Limited is the story of the Whitman Brothers, suicidal Francis (Owen Wilson), grieving Peter (Adrian Brody) and broken-hearted Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and their reunion aboard the film's titular train as it speeds across India toward the foot of the Himalayan Mountains and an appointment with destiny. This being a Wes Anderson movie, the train provides enough chambers, rooms and passageways to create the now-expected series of tableaux, spaces in which the director's signature framing, color schemes and production design provide as many grins and laughs as the action that takes place within them. Interestingly, this film was presented in a 2.33 aspect ratio which, in my book, is perfect for the complexity of Anderson's visual strategy to shine; While faces and figures dominate the center of seemingly every frame, the outer thirds are given over to creating a purely aesthetic environment where a tremendous amount of insight about the story resides. I think that far too often, people are so distracted by this aesthetic strategy that they blame a lack of "character development" on the story itself, but this is hardly the case; A single frame of The Darjeeling Limited will tell you more about the longings, obsessions and desires of its characters than most monologues would ever dare dream. What most of these objections seem to represent is a frustration with Anderson's obsessively cinematic practice of conveying information through the image; His films create complete worlds through aesthetics and design instead of exposition and predictable plotting. Anderson's aesthetics are as instantly recognizable as, say, Guy Maddin's German expressionist worship, but criticism of Anderson's style always seems to misrepresent the depth of his storytelling ability by dismissing the visual information and ignoring the harmony of the relationship between the image, words and music in his films.

Oh, Brother: Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited

In the case of The Darjeeling Limited, there is a deep connection between the characters, the objects they carry and their inarticulable feelings, perspectives and interpersonal histories; The clositered environment of the trio's cabin on board the train acts as a pressure cooker for the unspoken tensions that lay beneath the surface of every interaction. What this film does so well (and what I think a film like The Life Aquatic failed to do) is to create a story in perfect harmony with the film's visual strategy; The movie's design is as deliciously, hopelessly inauthentic as the brother's seemingly improvised spiritual quest and yet provides the structure and order in which the story's note-perfect sibling chaos can unfold. This is, after all, a tale of three estranged brothers, and not since Bottle Rocket have Anderson's dialogue and story conveyed familial relations in such a convincing way. Whereas The Life Aquatic's story felt under-motivated because Steve Zissou's deadpan egoism and emotional isolation greatly outweighed the film's half-hearted, under-imagined attempts to make us believe he cared about a long lost son, the characters in The Darjeeling Limited wear their hearts on their sleeves; From the first look of longing and regret in Adrian Brody's eyes in the film's terrific opening sequence until the final group shot on The Bengal Lancer (the film's 'other' train), these characters express a desire to connect with one another, to change without compromising who they really are.

This need to connect and to transcend gives the film its narrative thrust, sending the fraternal triumvirate headlong on a quest for any kind of 'spiritual enlightenment' they can manufacture. This quest also provides the movie its comic heart, giving Anderson and the terrific cast the opportunity to excoriate this privileged strand of spiritual inquiry as nothing more than avoidance of life's bitter truths. In the first of these terrific moments, Francis tells the group that they are visiting The Palace of 1000 Bulls, "one of the most spiritual places on earth", where of course the guys decide to go shopping for shoes and deadly snakes before feigning devotion at a tiny shrine. Other rituals follow, none of them allowing for anything nearly as profound as the moment they share when they finally track down the mother who abandoned them in their hour of need (played by a wild-eyed Anjelica Houston). Bury all the feathers beneath all the rocks you can, but nothing can replace the bitter solidarity of sharing a breakfast cooked by a mother who doesn't know how to love you the way you need to be loved.

The Sacred And The Profane: The Brothers Whitman In Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited

In this regard, the film has as much in common with a film like I Heart Huckabees as it does with the oft-referenced (even by Anderson himself) Jean Renoir's The River (which, incidentally, is less about what A.O. Scott called 'village life in India' than it is about the experience of a privileged child who falls rapturously in love with an equally isolated, colonial world). That said, The River's influence on the film is profound; In a moving sequence, the brothers spontaneously work together to try and avert an unforeseen disaster down by the river. Here, when the boys are off the train and left to see India from the other side of their looking-glass compartment windows, wisdom is forged in the echoes of tragedies past and more closure is achieved than could have reasonably been expected. Real life intrudes, itineraries are crumpled into laminated balls and forgiveness is the hard-won path to reconciliation. Put the cynicism away; The Darjeeling Limited is absolutely lovely, a lot of fun and Anderson's best film since Rushmore.

The film is preceded both in presentation and in narrative time by Anderson's tremendous short film, Hotel Chevalier. The short serves as a prelude to the feature and tells the story of how broken-hearted Jack (Jason Schwartzman) became broken-hearted during a rendezvous with his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) at the titular Parisian hotel. This film is as romantic and devastating as anything Anderson has ever made and, although properly excluded from the main feature (for me, the tonal differences between the two films are what make them beautiful companions, yet not of the same cloth), I highly recommend seeing Hotel Chevalier before seeing the main feature. The way in which the two films speak to each other is a lovely innovation; I would love to see more of this type of interplay between movies in the future, especially if it is done with as much care as is on display in Hotel Chevalier. Two films sharing a character and an interwoven narrative; A terrific, appropriate beginning to an engaging month of cinematic exploration. Isn't that what Opening Night is all about?

It has been a long week and a half at the 2007 New York Film Festival; With social obligations, deadlines and a general sense of exhaustion settling over me this past week, I haven't been able to make the time to write about the films I've been seeing. As usual, my passions run toward talking about films I really admire and less toward those of which I am not fond, but in fairness, this year's New York Film Festival has been a decidedly mixed affair. As I have said before, I always think that is a good thing; If every movie in the festival aligned with my own tastes, desires and sensibilities, I don't think the programming committee would be doing their job of finding a broad array of films for a diverse audience. Although my own tastes are very broad, it's always a good exercise in thinking about films to unfold the reasons why I do not respond to this or that movie, but ultimately, I find far more pleasure in taking apart the things that I like and trying to discover why they move me. Which is why, as a newlywed, I was so surprised to find myself enjoying three very different films that approach the subject of marriage as a painful, sexy and confusing platform for cinematic exploration.

First up, Ira Sachs' Married Life, a polished black comedy about a man so afraid of hurting his wife with the revelation of his infidelity that he sets his mind to killing her to spare her the torment of losing him. Sachs gets great performances from Chris Cooper as the unfaithful husband, Patricia Clarkson as the doting wife with secrets of her own and Pierce Brosnan as the couple's dashing bachelor friend, but what is most surprising in this day and age of our country's non-stop hypocritical, sanctimonious ramblings about the 'sanctity of marriage' is how the film balances on the knife's edge between kitschy period pastiche and heartfelt melodrama. Looking at marriage as a series of near-homicidal self-delusions and unspoken lies, Sachs is able to expose the arrogance of idealism between lovers and to show that the suppression of individual desire in the name of keeping up appearances can lead down some very dark alleyways. That said, for all of the dark and brooding intentions, the film's cynicism about the ability of couples to act morally has a lovely, light touch that will appeal broadly to adult audiences everywhere. In other words, adults are going to recognize themselves in the cruel intentions on display in Sachs' film and laugh their asses off. Of course, the secret to laughing at a film like Married Life is to recognize our own desperation and doubt in the twists and turns of Sachs' plot; There is no finger wagging here. Instead, Sachs (much like he did in his breakout Forty Shades Of Blue) rolls the dice by humanizing everything; Our darkest impulses invest the story with enough regret, empathy and desire to bring the film into a harmonious balance.

What's a Guy To Do?: Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) Arrives In Ira Sachs' Married LIfe

Playing at festival as part of Martin Scorsese's presentation of Technicolor Classics, John M. Stahl's 1945 classic Leave Her To Heaven was a lot of fun as well; The story of a manipulative bride who destroys everyone around her with an all-consuming need to be loved, the film felt extremely contemporary and was a hoot. I watched the movie with nothing but sympathy for Gene Tierney's portrayal of the 'crazy' bride and something just this side of eye-rolling contempt for über-stiff Cornel Wilde's 'marriage-by-numbers' groom. Of course, this seems the opposite of the narrative's intentions, with its parade of the gauzy, disappointed looks of shame on the faces of the characters as Tierney's Ellen looks for a little sugar in her bowl, but I couldn't help myself: What kind of husband forsakes a honeymoon to bring around his cluelessly optimistic disabled little brother and then invites the bride's family to come and share in the experience? Has Cornel Wilde never listened to any love songs? A woman has needs! Beneath Gene Tierney' s brooding sexuality smolders more deadly intent; Without being freed from the ties that bind, Ellen can't ever feel the fullness of sexual freedom with her lover. Despite a very, very dark 11th hour attempt to salvage the character's villainous purpose in the story (Ellen throws herself down the stairs to induce a miscarriage a few scenes before she is seen blissfully frolicking on the beach), the movie plays today as a barometric reading of a bygone era; Time has somehow , someway transformed the film into its own opposite, a campy look at a pre-feminist world where a woman's sexual desire was a threat to everyone around her. This print looked fabulous and really brought of the depth of design that went into every shot, but there was some controversy in the Q&A after the film when the 20th Century Fox representative was challenged on the studio's preservation strategy (which, in all fairness, was implemented years ago) and their decision not to strike the print from an actual Technicolor positive. Instead, the print came from a restored pre-Techincolor process copy. A lively discussion ensued, and while not all complaints were salvaged, the fact that the film was available and looked so great on the screen assuaged any reservations I had about the image itself; Why pick fights in a graveyard? We're all headed to a digital world anyway...

Girl Gone Wild: Ellen (Gene Tierney) Falls In Love In John M. Stahl's Leave Her To Heaven

The best of bunch and one of the best films I have seen at this year's festival is Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, the story of a love triangle set in the world of a Mennonite community in Northern Mexico. The film, which is in the medieval German Plautdietsch dialect, has been discussed in spiritual terms, probably because it features a faithful family at its core, but I didn't find anything remotely spiritual about it; The movie is absolutely carnal, deeply connected to the majesty and beauty of the knowable, physical world. Reygadas makes an immediate impact; The opening and closing shots, masterpieces in and of themselves, suggest the irrelevance of the human condition against the sprawling physicality of the cosmos and the natural universe, and the filmmaker spends the remainder of his film digging as deeply as possible into the most intimate and most profound of physical places, the human heart. Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) and Esther (Miriam Toews) are a married couple with a large brood of children living in modern-day Chihuahua, Mexico. After sharing breakfast with his wife and kids, Johan is left alone at the table and begins to sob. His plight is not unlike that of any unfaithful man; He is in love with Marianne (Maria Pankratz), a single Mennonite woman with whom he has been having a torrid extra-marital affair.

Being Alive: Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light

Esther, we discover, has known about this affair all along, and what initially appeared as worry and (I have to think) exhaustion on her face becomes, in the light of the film's revelations, a deep sadness and heartbreak; Here is the face of a woman who has created a loving family with a man, only to have his mid-life crisis call the entire enterprise into question. While the film's narrative rejects a traditional cheater vs victim structure, the emotional punch comes not from Johan's selfish crisis of faith at the film's center, but from the relationship (magically consummated in the film's climax) between the two material poles of his dilemma; Wife and mistress. I have read reviews which see the film as Johan's negotiation between faith/obligation/duty and love/passion/desire, but if the story were really about Johan's questions, the ending would make no sense to me; After dying of a broken heart, Esther is resurrected with a kiss from Marianne. Of course, this could be seen in terms of spiritual re-birth of Johan, a conquering of his dilemma through the power of female love. But I think Reygadas has something else in mind; This is an assertion of the women's recognition of their own real world concerns. Marianne, acting on her own conscience, restores Esther's heart. More magical realism than a sign of literal religious miracle, Silent Light's final moments assert an empathetic misdirection in the film. While Johan and the men console one another against an indifferent universe, it is Esther and Marianne who show us the beauty and power of human ethics at work in the real world.

Off to bed... More soon.

Monday morning arrived with the sound of an early alarm. I jumped from my bed, hit the off button on the clock-radio and grabbed a quick shower before a groggy, wordless walk with Holly to the subway and a relatively quiet D Train ride to Lincoln Center for the opening day of press screenings at the New York Film Festival. We were greeted by a line of equally early birds and after spotting a few familiar faces in the line, we all settled into the newly refurbished theater for the first screening of the festival and one I was dying to see, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. The film is an early contender for my favorite of the year and stands as the finest movie of Julian Schnabel's career.

What makes The Diving Bell and The Butterfly unique is that Schnabel has taken an idea that, while perfect for literature, seems antithetical to the cinema and turned it into a thing of absolute beauty; The story of an interior life, forged by a terrible medical condition, that is essentially an act of self-reinvention. After a gorgeous opening credit sequence which features a montage of antique x-rays, Schnabel immediately disorients with the camera, putting the viewer in the first person role of former Elle Magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) as he awakens from a weeks-long coma. The camera lens drifts in and out of focus as Bauby is probed and questioned by a battery of medical professionals while his unarticulated thoughts are used as dialogue. The immediate response is one of empathy as the audience experiences the feeling of disorientation, but it is not without purpose; Schnabel uses his opening gambit to shape the narrative purpose of the film.

Before: Jean-Dominique (Mathieu Amalric) in his Elle days in Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

This is Bauby's story exclusively and as he learns the tools he needs to communicate the rich complexity of his inner-life, the film's style and technique grows with him and our experience as an audience gets richer and richer the more we experience Bauby's development. Suffering from "locked-in syndrome" after suffering a massive stroke, Bauby is essentially an artistic mind trapped in a severely debilitated body; Like a diver sinking in a diving bell (a heavy, airtight underwater chamber), Bauby is vividly aware of his circumstances and the world around him. His motion, however, is limited to the use of one eye and, after some work with a therapist, he begins to communicate by listening to a series of letters and blinking to indicate the letter he wishes to use. Using this brilliant technique, Bauby is able to slowly articulate his thoughts to both his loved ones and his translator, unleashing an inner-world of deep feeling and poetry that Schnabel uses as a launching pad for his own beautiful cinematic ideas about the world of the artist's imagination.

And here, what seems the most terrifying of experiences for someone like me, the deep physical isolation of being unable to move or speak, becomes fertile ground for some of the film's most poetic and beautiful passages; When Bauby speaks of the way he imagines his own former physical appearance, Schnabel uses old stills of Marlon Brando horsing around (and Bauby's voice yells, as if to Schnabel himself, "That's Marlon Brando!"). When Bauby discusses his own mortality, Schnabel gives us images of glaciers collapsing into frozen seas, a gentle reminder that we all face extinction and death. Which is, in the end, the beautiful acceptance at the heart of the film; The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a lesson in living and dying, of being born and of being forced to let go. This places it perfectly within the realm of Schnabel's concerns as a Director; In both Basquiat and Before NIght Falls we see creative lives destroyed by the machinations of the external world. What makes this film so much more meaningful to me than Schnabel's two previous films is that he has inverted this idea and arrived at the same place; We see Bauby's interior life re-born, an artist forged in a kind of physical death with a new palette of experience blossoming inside of him.

Man Of Letters: Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

Here, it must be said that for all of Schnabel's best intentions and the brilliance of his formal technique, without the central performance given by Mathieu Amalric, I am not sure if the film would have worked. Thankfully, we'll never know. I must confess that, in usual cinematic circumstances, I consider able-bodied actors playing disabled people to be a sort of Oscar-baiting minstrel act that sacrifices empathy for showy, stagy emotional "moments" (I think of films like Awakenings, I Am Sam and The Other Sister and I shudder with embarrassment). In this case, Amalric is only able to use about 75% of his face to deliver one of the most heart-wrenching performances I have ever seen; He says more with his single eye than many actors can using an arsenal of technique. In a stand-out scene in the film, Bauby must communicate his sadness to his mistress with only his long-time partner (and the mother of his children) present to translate for him; Amalric's eye delivers the weight of both the gratitude and hurt of the moment with a depth and clarity that cuts to the bone.

Of course, there are those who will say that Schnabel's images have romanticized the situation (and Bauby's faith in his own imagination) at the expense of the loss and grief at the heart of Bauby's experience, but I thoroughly disagree; What makes this story possible as a film is Schnabel's dedication to matching Bauby's own poetry shot for shot, word for word. In lesser hands, I could imagine a cautionary juxtaposition of Bauby's halcyon days at the superficial world of Elle Magazine played against some sort of punitive post-stroke interiority. Thank god Schnabel is far too great an artist for such moralizing; In my opinion, this film is a near-perfect achievement in the art of cinematic empathy. Without an implicit recognition of the beauty in the world, a beauty matched equally by the horror of his condition and his own death, Bauby's work would be without meaning, and perhaps he would never have been able to complete the herculean task of composing his book. How could anyone create beauty under such trying circumstances if they didn't experience it deeply? In his writing, Bauby was fighting for beauty, for the validity of the inner-life of words and ideas, and Schnabel's visual translation is at once the Director's deeply personal interpretation of the spirit of Bauby's work as well as a profoundly moving presentation of the writer's hurt and loss. The movie is a heartbreaking celebration of the human will and it is a superlative accomplishment.

Recently, the inimitable AJ Schnack challenged a group of bloggers, myself included, to participate in a unique project. In his terrific new film About A Son (which, full disclosure, played in competition at the 2007 Sarasota Film Festival), Schnack uses the music that influenced Kurt Cobain as a form of musical biography; A way of defining Cobain's experience without the usual tactic of bringing some form of hokey psychoanalysis to Cobain's own music and lyrics, which is so often a fatal flaw of many a biographer. How many books and articles and fan appreciations have been written about Cobain where the writer mines the depths of songs like Drain You and Come As You Are for nuggets of imposed truth about Cobain's own feelings about his life? Schnack's film avoids it all with a lovely dose of spin which, for my own sake, I hope rings true; Sometimes, you are the sum of what you love.

In an effort to foster a discussion about the film's upcoming October 3rd release and to also throw in a little plug for the terrific soundtrack to the film (available now from Barsuk Records), I thought I would accept AJ's challenge a do a little musical autobiography of my own. It's about to get personal y'all, so buckle up! I promise only to tell the truth.

Tom Hall: A Portrait In 15 Songs

1. The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton

This song is my first musical memory, circa 1971 or 1972, certainly before dates or calendars meant anything to me. My dad is an avid collector of 45's and a huge fan of rock and roll and boogie woogie music from the 1950's and early-60's, and one of my earliest remaining memories in life is being held in my dad's arms and spun around the living room to Johnny Horton's The Battle of New Orleans. The song still reminds me of that soaring feeling of being a kid, safe in your parents' arms but laughing like crazy as the world blurs around you. It may also be why scenes like the ball in Russian Ark and the dancing sequence in Les Destinées Sentimentales always feel so exciting to me; A primitive memory of abandon.

2. Wake Up Little Suzie by The Everly Brothers

OK, so this one is implicitly tied to my first cinematic memory as well, and the story behind this song is a convoluted twisting and turning of memory, narrative displacement and parental guidance. This is probably totally wrong, which is why this song is here, but here is how I remember it (which is most certainly a good deal removed from reality). First, the facts. My mom's name is Susan, and although no one has ever called her Suzie, the chorus of this one is close enough. In November of 1973, right around my third birthday, my dad took me to see my first movie, Walt Disney's Robin Hood. In my mind the equation is: Seeing Robin Hood + "the movie's over it's four o'clock and we're in trouble deep" + "what're we gonna tell your mom" + "we gotta go home" + "Wake Up Little Suzie" somehow has become: My dad and I got in trouble with my mom for not being home on time when going to see Robin Hood. Go figure.

3. Reunited by Peaches and Herb

In 1979, I was eight years old and for the first time, in a long time, things had been settled; I was enrolled in my third (and final) elementary school in three years, my parents had divorced and both remarried and my brother and I had moved with my mom and step-dad into a new house in Flint, MI. This was the time when I finally had my own bedroom and I was given my own record player, a self-contained box with Winnie The Pooh on it (um, hello?) which came with, I am ashamed to say, the first piece of vinyl I ever owned; Peaches and Herb's album Reunited. I love my mom to death, but this record was the first in a long line of gift-giving mistakes where, on a simple word from me ("this isn't the worst song I ever heard"), she would misinterpret my ho-hum response as enthusiasm and try to make me happy. It is the thought that counts and here, in the early days when she was 0-1, all was forgiven.

4. Highway To Hell by AC/DC

When my parents re-married, the families were 100 miles apart, and I inherited a step-brother my same age who had a profound influence on my 'tween' years; He was unapologetically into metal. John and I would stay up late at night listening to comedy albums on eight-track (Richard Pryor was huge for us) and to AC/DC, Judas Priest, Van Halen and the late 1970's/early 1980's metal bands that defined the period. This song in particular holds two stories for me; A day at Flint's Small Mall (yes, it was called Small Mall) with my grandmother, a devoted activist in the Episcopal church, and she gives us each $10 tells my brother and I that we can each have any item we want in the mall that fits our budget. I bought Highway To Hell on vinyl and it caused a big stink, but I got to keep the record. I took it to school the next day for "music day" where two kids could bring in any record they wanted and my AC/DC record was booted in favor of Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight. The shame!

5. Wolves, Lower by R.E.M.

After a few years of enjoying early metal (still do) and loving the oldies of my youth (still do), I discovered R.E.M. on a trip to Sam The Record Man on Yongue Street in Toronto. My mom and step-dad are world-class bridge players, and we would spend every Easter break there for the Canadian National Bridge Tournament, held at the Royal York Hotel. My brother Chris and I would work at the tournament as "caddies"; Kids hired to carry the decks of pre-shuffled cards between tables so that all of the teams played the exact same hands. We would easily work twelve hour days, hustling for tips and earning a decent amount of money in a week. At the end of the week, my mom let us go shopping in Toronto and by 1984, when I was 13, I was spending pretty much all of my money on records. So, April, 1984, R.E.M.'s Chronic Town had been out for a couple of years, and was sitting in a cut-out bin in Sam's. It was an EP, so it was easy to take a chance on the lower price, and the image of the bored-looking gargoyle on the front was amusing to me, so I gave it a shot. The record was transformative for me and one of the great burdens of my teenage years was never really being able to fit in to any single subculture of teenagers; I liked metal but wasn't "metal", I liked rap but wasn't "hip-hop", but most of all, in my circle of friends, I liked country music because I liked R.E.M. By the time Document came out I was a visionary, but that was a long way away in 1984. I still have my original vinyl copy of this record, which must be inaudible at this point for having been played so often, and this record opened up new worlds to me. Punk would follow, but in the early/mid-1980's, I was all about Athens, GA.

6. Celebrated Summer by Hüsker Dü

1985 was the summer of New Day Rising, my introduction to the power punk of Hüsker Dü. It was a band that would come to define my love of punk rock; I was 14 at the time and a little late to the game, but it was Hüsker Dü who showed me the way. I made a tape of this record immediately and popped it into my Walkman, where it literally reigned for months. It was also the summer of R.E.M.'s Fables of The Reconstruction which was side B of the tape, and these albums dueled in my brain for my hormone-riddled trip to summer camp where, in a fit of teenage pique, I sat by the lake and watched the sunset while listening to Celebrated Summer and pining for the girl at camp I dreamed of kissing. This live version shows the ferocity of the band at their finest. Years later, I would meet and spend a few years hanging out with Bob Mould, and though we have pretty much lost touch since he moved to DC and made some changes in his life, having the opportunity to befriend one of your teenage heroes is something I'll never forget, and though we haven't spoken in a while, I hope all is well with Bob.

7. Handsome Devil by The Smiths

Summer, 1986. My then-best-friend's older sister is dating a drummer and as a couple, they introduce me to The Smiths. I'm now 15 and I have my driving permit. On a trip up to my dad's house, we make a pit stop at the Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw, MI and I have some money on me. I invariably duck into a record store because I want to pick up a copy of The Dead Kennedys' Frankenchrist (sans banned poster); I had lost my cassette version and there in the Imports section (ah, the good ol' days) was The Smiths' debut record, The Smiths. I loved that record, and nothing the band ever did hit me more than Handsome Devil, which had a great guitar line and seemed so transgressive at the time. This was a band with which my brother Chris also fell in love, and the band seems like a bridge between us as well, something passed from sibling to sibling, across friendships and families.

8. Impressions by John Coltrane

I grew up playing saxophone. My dad had played the instrument in high school and college and I got his hand me down alto saxophone when I was in the 3rd grade. I took private lessons (thanks, Mom) and by the time I was on my way to my sophomore year in High School (summer 1986), I was given a scholarship at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp to travel to Europe as a soloist in the camp's concert band. I had recently discovered jazz when my best friend's father pulled me aside one afternoon and said" I think you're ready now" before dropping the needle on John Coltrane's My Favorite Things. After I heard it, I immediately started saving my money to buy a soprano saxophone. It was tough for me not to include My Favorite Things on this list, but thinking about which Coltrane record meant the most to me and was the most deeply felt experience, it has to be Impressions. My friend's dad used to live a few blocks from my high school, and I would often skip class, walk over to his place (a creative utopia for me as a kid) and, since the door was unlocked (he was a school teacher too), put on Impressions and just blow my brains out trying to keep up with it on my alto. I love this YouTube clip because it features Eric Dolphy, who was one of my favorites, on alto playing along, and it reminds me of winter days with the stereo cranked, sweat pouring down my face as I tried to learn to improvise.

9. Inca Roads by Frank Zappa

If Coltrane opened up my mind to new possibilities in improvisation, Frank Zappa was all about composition; The amazing musicianship, humor, and extremely dense arrangements that Zappa created were other-worldly; The first time I heard Inca Roads (the first Frank Zappa song I ever heard), I literally could not believe my ears. How was this music possible? What the fuck?!? My friends and I loved the early-1970's Zappa records (One Size Fits All and Overnight Sensation were our touchstones) and if you can imagine a group of teenage guys sitting around playing a game of Hearts or Spades while blasting Frank Zappa records and eating Lay's potato chips after an exhausting day of playing cut-throat on the basketball court or hitting tennis balls, you have an excellent picture of an average Saturday night for me in Flint during my junior high school and high school years. I miss those nights.

10. Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine

On to college, and one of the great musical revelations of my life; Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. I kissed girls to this record, I walked down the street alone at night to this record, I played this record when I tried serious drugs for the first time, I played this record when I was driving home to Flint for Christmas after skipping another final exam, I played this record when I was writing term papers and poems, I played this record when I was on my way to work, I played this record when I came home from work. For about 18 months, I played this record to the exclusion of almost everything else. I got to see MBV at St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit on this tour, and when the house lights came up for 10 minutes while the band played a single note at the loudest volume I've ever heard, I was destroyed; I simply knew that it could not get any better than this moment. No rock and roll show since has even come close. This record is the sound of college; Of not giving a shit, of wanting to do my own thing, of learning new ideas on my own terms and of afternoons in movie theaters, discovering that my true love was in being in a cinema.

11. Lines and Lines by The Spinanes

Manos and Strand by The Spinanes remain two of my favorite records of all time, and after I had been conquered by Loveless, they remain the soundtrack of transition and change in my middle twenties. They're also two of the most under-appreciated records of that decade and very important for me. Driving to Saginaw Valley Community College (where I was working on getting a teaching certificate) in a torrential snowstorm in February of 1996, I had just picked up Strand on CD, and had a portable CD player hooked up to the car stereo via a tape deck converter. The sound of thunder, of quiet lost love, was overwhelming to me at the time; I had waited three years for this record and it was so much more.... grown up. This was literally the exact moment I made up my mind to leave Michigan, to return to Washington, DC and see what I could do there. Listening to Strand on I-75 in a snowstorm somehow gave me determination that it was time to change, to take my life into my own hands. I left Michigan three months later, never finishing my teaching program, and I have never lived there since. Strand (and Lines and Lines in particular) marks that change.

12. Dvořák Cello Concerto by Mstislav Rostropovich

I love classical music, and no other instrument exists for me above the cello. On the cello, no player I have ever heard moves me as much as Mstislav Rostropovich. Yes, the Britten Cello Suites are perhaps my favorite of his performances, but I think in terms of autobiography, there is no music more beautiful to me than his definitive performance of the Dvořák Cello Concerto. This is one piece of music that still haunts me because I think it is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. I don't associate this song with any specific experience, but I see it more as an ideal; This is the standard to which I would hope my own life's work would one day aspire. I encourage you to seek out the entire piece, as it is absolutely incredible, and this performance is as good as it gets.

13. French Disko by Stereolab

No band has had a more profound influence on my listening patterns as an adult than Stereolab and French Disko is probably my favorite of all of their songs. I have followed them religiously since I first heard Peng! almost fifteen years ago (good lord) and as the band have evolved, it seems that their progressions have moved in lock-step with my dreams. If anyone could be said to have a personal score for the adult years of their life, mine would have most certainly been composed and performed by Stereolab. Nineteen albums, sixteen Ep's, 35 singles; I own a majority of the music they've created (though nowhere near all) and the band have been my audio companion from Walkman to Discman to iPod, record player to CD player to computer hard drive and, like my own life, marked by the years and changes along the way.

14. Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney

One of my favorite bands of the last decade, the tragically defunct Sleater-Kinney were a constant revelation for me, and Dig Me Out was their best record. I saw the band many many times, and they were always epic. This record, and this song in particular, remind me vividly of the two years I lived in Washington, DC; A constant barrage of government work, having my car broken into, a doomed love affair, apartment shares with large group of underpaid friends, D.C. was also the place where I saw the band for the first time. My twenties were tough; I was finding myself, figuring out what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be. Sleater-Kinney were the muscular, rocket-fueled soundtrack to the mean streets of D.C.

15. Rhapsody In Blue by George Gershwin

The perfect representation of my dream of coming to New York City. Now that I have officially lived here for a decade, it remains the definition of the ideal of this city. This is my home, the place where I fell in love and got married, the place where I am happiest in the world. None of it would have been possible without Manhattan and the dream it inspired in me. "Everybody gets corrupted... You have to have a little faith in people..." My favorite Woody Allen film, ever.

My turn to pass the buck:

Holly Herrick
Mark Rabinowitz

Get to it.

Despite spending the majority of my time taking in fiction films at this year's Toronto Film Festival, I did make plenty of time to see some of the good work that Thom Powers assembled in the festival's non-fiction program. This year's crop of docs (at least the ones I saw) was remarkably consistent, featuring relatively conventional storytelling but some amazing stories. In that respect, I was a little disappointed that, after a year which saw the visual storytelling in documentaries achieve new heights (and I am thinking here of films like About A Son, Zoo, The Unforeseen and Into Great Silence etc., all of which were visually stunning), most of the non-fiction films I did see at Toronto seemed more interested in telling their stories in a palatable way than re-imagining the form. If Errol Morris' influence is the reigning sensibility in the best new documentary features (again, a film like Manda Bala seems a direct descendant of Morris' style), his influence was nearly-absent from the films I saw in Toronto. Which is not to say that "direct cinema" ruled the roost either; Most of the films I saw followed a tried and true formula and, while their stories delivered the goods (for the most part), many films' formal limitations prevented them from becoming something greater. I have already talked about Callas Assoluta, which allowed Callas' gifts to triumph over some of the movie's limitations, and that dichotomy seemed to me to be at the heart of most of the non-fiction films I saw.

I don't mean to protest too much, as the movies were very good in and of themselves, but didn't 2007 to this point feel like we were on the verge of a non-fiction sea change, where documentaries were giving us more poetry than most of the fiction films we saw? Take a movie like Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor's Obscene, which tells the story of Barney Rosset, who bought a small publishing company called Grove Press and turned it into a champion of modernism in literature. The story is fascinating, full of the greatest literary characters of the second half of the twentieth century (Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, etc.) while simultaneously a riches to rags story that refuses to be played as a cautionary tale. Ortenberg and O'Connor were given access to great material, including the 8mm and 16mm footage that Rosset has been shooting since his childhood and the pair tell the story well. Visually, however, the film never treads into the territory of he innovation and modernism that embody Rosset's life's work, instead limiting the story to an orthodox, chronological summary of what happened. I liked this movie a lot, especially because I believe so strongly in Rosset's principled stance that adults should be able to make up their own minds about what books they read and images they care to take in. I also enjoyed seeing the period footage of some of my favorite writers and I think the directors did an admirable job of capturing the spirit of the times; It's a movie I would be proud to show to an audience. The film's highlight (and anchor) is an interview on Screw Magazine founder Al Goldstein's Midnight Blue public access TV show, and while this footage is perfectly integrated into the movie, I felt it could use an extra "oomph" that more concern about the visual strategy (and the better integration of some of the film's talking heads in to the movie's storyline) might have delivered.

Howling: Grove Press Author Allen Ginsberg Gives A Reading

Doug Pray's Surfwise is a sun-drenched portrait of the nine children (eight boys and one girl) and two parents that make up the Paskowitz family. Living in an RV on the beach and surfing their the days away in the golden sun of the 1970's, the family ends up fractured and scarred by their collective experience. Keeping track of the myriad of characters is well handled, and their story, much like that of Barney Rosset's, is a phenomenal tale of living an unconventional life for all of the right reasons (and with the best of intentions). Pray had access to some great archival footage as well (the family competed in several surfing competitions, winning seemingly at will) and the film is a moving story of time conspiring with action to heal old wounds. Living outside "the system" includes never going to school, sleeping like "puppies" in a cramped RV while mom and dad work on their reproductive prowess in the bed above, eating healthy all the time and working out family problems in a manner that has more in common with Lord Of The Flies than The Brady Bunch. Pray interviews the adult children and their parents and their romantic understanding of their collective childhood experience is conveyed with the same conviction as their resentments and frustrations. In that way, the Paskowitz family is pretty much like any other in the world. But the film stood out as one of the best in the festival, a sort of Crazy Love as a family's social experiment gone awry.

In terms of political documentaries, I did see five films that I found to be provocative. I don't have time to talk about all of them, but I did want to discuss Kevin Macdonald's My Enemy's Enemy, which is the story of how the CIA and the US government worked with the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in post-war Europe and Bolivia to destabilize leftist movements throughout the world. An unrepentant Nazi who advised the Bolivian government on the torture of union organizers, leftist political figures and unsympathetic journalists, Barbie's post-war crimes were as audacious as his wartime reputation as The Butcher of Lyon would suggest. Of the four political films, this was my favorite because of its clarity of purpose and the clear-eyed interviews with former CIA agents (whose nonchalant attitudes about Barbie are deeply disturbing) and those who knew and worked with (and against) Barbie. The movie's sense of outrage is muted a little by Barbie's story, which is so insidious and shadowy that the movie raises more goosebumps than eyebrows. The cowering, blank-eyed elderly man who is finally tried in France for his vicious repression of the Resistance is proof that terror is often embodied in the most benign-looking among us.

I also saw Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate which I found to be absolutely infuriating, not because of the film making, but because of the subject (and isn't that the point?). Jacques Vergès is not so much a civil libertarian in his approach as he is a moral apologist for his incredibly unpopular clients (who included Klaus Barbie, another cinematic rhyme at the festival). His arguments do not seek to propose the innocence of his clients but rather to equivocate his client's actions with those of the deeply hypocritical institutions that are trying a the cases. So, instead of showing how, say, an Algerian who bombed a civilian nightclub as an act of revolution against the French state is not guilty of her crimes, Vergès argues that blowing up a civilian nightclub is an equivalent and therefore justifiable response to the colonial situation. While he may be right in principle, his approach to these cases comes off (to my mind) as childish gamesmanship instead of a principled, engaging stance against a corrupt system, and that approach was both fascinating and infuriating. It also feels deeply dismissive of the victims of his client's actions, relegating their suffering to the status of collateral damage in the war of ideas. But can two wrongs ever make a right? Schroeder for his part only covers the biographical highlights, forsaking an in depth look at Vergès' cases in favor of his personality and history. So, we never see him defending the butchering dictators of Africa or Slobodan Milosevic or even discussing their cases. Instead, Schroeder literally flies through Vergès' life, using shorthand (A man named 'Carlos' in passing ends up being noted terrorist Carlos The Jackal, etc) to describe the biggest moments in the man's career. Pay attention, or you'll miss something, and you won't want to miss anything.

The lawyer Jacques Vergès

Two of the five films focused on Africa; Darfur Now which, despite its best intentions, plays more like an activist recruitment tape that one would show to wealthy potential donors than a detailed telling of the story of Darfur, and The Dictator Hunter which focuses on a human rights lawyer seeking to bring the Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to justice after his exile in Senegal. While an impassioned look at the almost hopeless process of trying to bring a former head of state to justice, the film also focuses rather narrowly on the personal life and dilemmas of its subject, the human rights lawyer Reed Brody. While his drive, dedication and passion to see justice done are a powerful statement about what is required to even have a chance at seeing the dictator forced to answer for his crimes, the film also spends a little too much time on Brody's personal life, from his separation from his family to his decision to either join the U.N. as an attorney or stay put with Human Rights Watch and see the case against Habré through. We hear far too little from the victims of Habré's regime (one subject, who works on the case and lives in New York is someone of whom I would have liked to have seen more) or from Chadians living under the cloud Habré's regime left behind. Instead, Brody's constant proclamations that the case against Habré "would be impossible without me" and scenes of his dogged determination (which equates to little more than showing up at the appointed times to make pronouncements) are the only frame of reference we're given; We only get one glimpse at the actual process for hearing Habré's case, and that moment leads to a differed decision, leaving the quest for justice (and the film) in an unresolved limbo. Again, a good movie, but it feels like there is so much more to say.

Finally, I would be remiss without commenting on the delightful Herzog-lite of Encounters At The End Of The World, which features beautiful cinematography and one of the great voice-over narrations in recent documentary film. Herzog is utterly hilarious in his questioning of the inhabitants of Antarctica, and his impressions of the footage that he assembled has the benefit of being simultaneously haunting and funny; A stand-out moment features a lone penguin, racing inland toward the continent's mountains with his wings spread as if he were embracing some invisible force, as he is headed for a certain death. Herzog interprets the act as one of "madness", as if the penguin were consciously rejecting the monotony and conformity of life among the penguin colony. Brilliant. That said, some of the grand themes and formal conceits that made films like Fata Morgana and Lessons Of Darkness so beautiful and so haunting are absent here, replaced by a pithy, humorous narration that feels more like the travelogue of a curious and cranky uncle than a profound statement on the human condition. Which is fine; Not every film needs to be equally profound. Instead, Herzog puts on his entertainer's cap once again; With Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn and now Encounters At The End Of The World (I'll keep The Wild Blue Yonder out of this generalization), Herzog is moving closer and closer to becoming a populist of the highest order. I think his career is entering a new phase, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him produce a big box-office hit sometime soon.

Antarctic Tale: Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World

I'm home in Brooklyn finally, and Toronto was a terrific kick-off to the year. Congratulations to the Programmers, staff and volunteers for once again making the festival a very special event. I'm taking a couple of days off, and then I'm headed to the IFP Market and the New York Film Festival's Press screenings, which begin in earnest on Monday with The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. No rest for the wicked, I guess. Here's to the continuation of a great season.

A string of terrific films has me buzzing and, despite my lack of a proper meal in the past few days, my energy has been really good. Let me get to the films before I run out of time...

Munyurangabo by Lee Issac Chung

To this point in the festival, my favorite of the entire week has been Munyurangabo, which more than lives up to the weighty expectations I had for it. The director Lee Issac Chung has done something absolutely remarkable, creating a moving, powerful film about the Rwandan genocide that combines hope and reconciliation with a visual and narrative style that wouldn't be out of place in George Washington; It's an African film that doesn't feel like an "African film", a hybrid of styles (American independent film aesthetic and an African storytelling sensibility) that against all odds works magically. The film itself, shot in eleven days using improvised dialogue by non-professional actors pulled from the streets and villages of Rwanda, tells the story of two friends, Munyurangabo, (Rutagengwa Jeff), a Tutsi on a mission to avenge his father's murder and Sangwa (Dorunkundiye Eric), a Hutu whose own absence from his family conflicts with his promise to help Munyurangabo complete his bloody mission. The two young men leave the mean streets of Kigali on a journey to find the killer, but before too long, they take a detour at Sagnwa's parents house, where the family reunites and the tensions surrounding Sangwa's absence (and his skirting of his familial obligations) leads to an extended passage about family life, labor and the importance of a father's guiding hand in the life of his son. Sangwa's need to curry his father's favor echoes Munyurangabo's own loss, and after a betrayal, Munyurangabo leaves Sangwa behind to go finish his quest alone.

And here, the movie absolutely soars with poetry and humanity; Taking a break from his long walk to buy a meal, Munyurangabo encounters a poet (Uwayo Bamporiki Edouard) who, noticing the boy's machete in his backpack, takes the opportunity to deliver a poem about the liberation of Rwanda that is so immediate and so achingly beautiful (the film is the first to be made in the Kinyarwanda language), it had me in tears. Chung's decision to focus solely on the poet's face as he recites his verses creates an hypnotic experience. The film's final moments, when Munyurangabo tries to reconcile his decisions and actions with his own past and that of his nation, are heartbreaking and transcendent. I haven't seen much at the festival that I have loved, but Munyurangabo is an absolutely flawless movie. I will do everything I can to help this movie find its way in this country and it is one of the best and most unique American independent films I have ever seen.

Angel by François Ozon

Before I begin with my defense of what is one of the most misunderstood movies of the year, I wanted to quote one of the reviews of François Ozon's Angel. I love doing this... Let's look, shall we?...

"...Stripped of any irony, let alone wit, the movie ends up as empty and flowery as the literature (and person) it should be satirizing. Worse, the dialogue sounds like an English translation of a French edition and the performances, by a largely talented cast, seem curiously out of synch throughout. (Same problem affected Ozon's mixed-dialogue Swimming Pool, though to a lesser degree.) Delivery is closer to the simplistic, declamatory style of a kidpic or a British pantomime, topped by a lead perf from up-and-comer Romola Garai that would be more at home on the London legit stage of the period. At no point does Garai make the fame-struck, self-absorbed Angel likable or even sympathetic."-- Derek Elley, Variety

Having seen the movie, all I can say is "Eh?!?" It is one thing to not like a movie, but another thing not to acknowledge the formal strategy that the movie is employing. People don't seem to get this movie at all. Angel is the film that someone should have shown to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan a few years ago, before things turned ugly; The story of an absolutely tasteless wretch of a provincial teenager named Angel Deverell (a very over-the-top performance by a terrific Romola Garai) whose solipsism allows her to create drivel-laden novels which sell like wildfire in turn of the century England, Angel is a movie that is as of our cultural moment as any of the myriad of finger-wagging films about Iraq playing here. The film is a pastiche of every melodramatic style imaginable, from the trash of Victorian era theater and literature through mid-century "women's cinema" to early twenty-first century celebrity meltdowns while Ozon's lush visualizations and cribbing of everything from Douglas Sirk to Merchant Ivory create a hilarious piss-take on the melodramatic form. It is one thing to not find the joke funny, but quite another to not have the sense of humor to recognize a joke is being told, and all of the negativity surrounding Angel seems to support the idea that some people simply didn't get what Ozon was up to here.

Feeding the Hand That Bites: François Ozon's Angel

The story is such a mechanical, traditional melodrama that it seems disposable and barely worth a mention, but again, that is the point; A young woman who writes trashy novels and whose self-opinion is beyond comprehension, Angel hits the big time and marries Esmé (Michael Fassbender), a painter of absolutely no talent, a K-Fed of the Victorian art world if you will, and then employs Nora (Lucy Russell), Esmé's lovesick (for Angel, naturally) lesbian charlatan of a sister, to be her personal assistant. This is the world of celebrity writ large, a world of hacks, hangers-on and the cruelly vainglorious who wouldn't know art if it stood naked in front of them. In his best moments, Ozon gets the attitude of our times perfectly right, as in the moment of Angel's furious hostility when England joins WWI and one of her in-laws suggests turning her enormous estate into a veteran's hospital ("I will not open my home to war mongers and criminals!!!!" she shrieks); Unable to see past the ridiculousness of her own petty, self-serving concerns, Angel echoes the selfish complacency and reversion to fantasy that has shaped popular culture over the centuries. As withering a condemnation of mediocrity as it is an hilarious send-up of our most popular concerns, Angel is terrific fun and it fits squarely within Ozon's works, sharing much with films like Sitcom, Water Drops On Burning Rocks and, most closely, Criminal Lovers as a fantasia about the absurdity that ensues when the wrong people discover a will to power. I hope people get a chance to see this one and make up their own minds, because I think it's a camp classic waiting to happen.

Mister Lonely by Harmony Korine

Standing alongside Angel as perhaps that film's more thoughtful cousin, Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely is by far the filmmaker's most imaginative movie yet featuring a story that feels more traditional than anything he has ever directed. This is a good thing; The tale of a band of misfit celebrity impersonators who form a community "where everybody's famous", Mister Lonely is both a celebration of private dreams and a tragicomic representation of the pathos that ensues when those dreams come true. Mister Lonely also feels like Korine's most personal film, perhaps an expression of his own feelings about the modicum of celebrity he has himself achieved and, as I mentioned in my preview of the film, his own sense of being an outsider in world full of fraudulent values.

The story itself is very simple; A Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) on the streets of Paris and she convinces him to join her on an island where a group of celebrity impersonators have formed a self-sustaining community; Abe Lincoln, The Pope, Buckwheat, The Three Stooges, Madonna, Charlie Chaplin and Queen Elizabeth all live there (among others) and in between days spent raising diseased livestock, the group works together to build their own theater and put on "the greatest show on earth." Of course, things are not as simple as they seem; Michael loves Marilyn, but Marilyn loves Chaplin, while Buckwheat loves sexy ladies and sexy chickens. When things go wrong, and they invariably do, tragedy ensues and Michael leaves both the community and his impersonation behind to become another anonymous face in the crowd. In between, Korine gives his characters a few lines that hint at his purpose, including a lovely monologue for Michael that expresses his feeling of not understanding the world, of being an outsider to the joke at which the world laughs. It is some of Korine's best writing and it, along with a speech by "The Pope" that blesses the impersonators for being the people whose identity rings the most true, seems to eloquently underline his point; In our culture, where we dream of being someone else to the point that we barely forge an identity for ourselves, impersonation of the dream seems more true to life than not having the courage to take a single step toward the inauthentic inner-worlds we create for ourselves. The impersonators may not be themselves, but they're alive.

Who Are You?: Samantha Morton as Marilyn in Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely

And then there is Werner Herzog; Playing a mad priest who takes a battalion of flying nuns on an airborne food delivery mission, he is absolutely hysterical and holds together a subplot that seems to have no narrative relationship to Michael and Marilyn's tale. The point of each story is, however, completely relevant to the other; While the impersonators live out their fantasies of being someone else, the miraculous nuns of the Herzog brigade subjugate their own incredible gifts to God, only to be dashed upon the rocks on their way to sainthood. Instead of understanding their ability to fall from the sky and survive, the nuns give thanks and praise to God, the same God who doesn't save them when their plane crashes into the sea. There is magic in the world, Korine seems to be arguing, but don't be fooled; We're all responsible for making it happen and appreciating it for what it is. I don't understand why Korine's work has been misunderstood by so many people, but his maturing concerns about the way in which we delude and alienate ourselves from our dreams and desires takes another evolutionary step forward with Mister Lonely. Prep your Tivos; the film has been picked up by IFC First Take and will be hitting TVs (and presumably the IFC Center) soon.

I am planning on spending some serious time in the festival's Tape Library in the coming days, working on seeing some of the things I have missed. Running off now... More when I can....

This past spring, I was fortunate enough to be able to host Toronto's own Norman Jewison at the 2007 Sarasota Film Festival as the recipient of our festival’s highest honor, the Regal Cinemas Career Achievement Award. In addition to the festival’s black-tie dinner honoring Mr. Jewison, I was able to work with him to program a small retrospective of his films (which included The Thomas Crown Affair, A Soldier’s Story, Fiddler On the Roof and Moonstruck among others), but the highlight for me was a special taping of Turner Classic Movies’ Private Screenings series, hosted by Robert Osborne.

Taped for the first time in front of a live audience at Sarasota’s Historic Asolo Theater, Private Screenings: Norman Jewison will air on TCM on Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 8:00 pm. It was a great event, and we were absolutely thrilled to be able to work with TCM to make this happen. I’m hopeful that we can continue our relationship with what is my favorite TV network; Hopefully we can announce another Private Screenings taping this year. It is, more than anything else, a great experience for our audience to be able to see a sampling of an artist’s work and then to have this interaction with someone like Normal Jewison well, what a treat.

Click Here To Watch The Video Promo For The Program

I know a lot has been made of festivals premiering new work (and the small, ridiculous turf battles that ensue), but one of the great pleasures for me as a programmer is to be able to take some time to look back at great work. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to program a fairly comprehensive Werner Herzog non-fiction retrospective in 2006, a more modest Norman Jewison program in 2007 and classic films like Stuart Cooper’s Overlord, Tati’s Playtime and Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis along side our program of new films, all of them shown on the big screen with stadium seating and wonderful sound. The best part? Seeing people’s faces when they leave the theater, smiling and discussing the films as if they had discovered them for the first time. I can’t wait to get cracking on our retrospective screenings for 2008; I already have some plans in the works. Stay Tuned….

Another couple of days, another pile of screenings, meetings, conversations and perennial discussions of “what have you seen that you’ve liked?” and I’m doing just fine, thankyouverymuch. I feel in a somewhat uncomfortable position making any pronouncements about Toronto this year, mainly because I have chosen to steer clear of the bigger, most highly praised titles at the festival because my mission here exists outside of the glitz and glamour of the festival’s main screenings; Since my festival’s in April, and the biggest, high-profile titles are coming out before December, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t here taking chances. In return for focusing on my mission, I have been in a cycle of trying out several films I just didn’t appreciate (they’ll always remain nameless) while finding a few films here and there that I truly enjoyed. The last couple of days, I have been avoiding the party circuit altogether (we threw our own party tonight) in order to try and sample as much of the festival as possible. My perception of the overall reaction here is very mixed, which tells me the programmers are doing something right, taking chances on unknown films and presenting a diverse array of movies for this very tough audience at the Press and Industry screenings.

In the past couple of days, a few standouts; Callas Assoluta, a highly conventional documentary portrait of the great American soprano Maria Callas, has moments of absolutely searing beauty, almost always when we hear the great woman singing. Her tragic life story, which seems the archetype of the tormented artist cliché, is told using the usual “archival footage/still photo/interview with friends and admirers/voiceover narration” technique, but there is something about Callas’ gift as a singer and a painfully honest artist that pushes past the films’ limitations and really soars. There is a quality to Callas’ face that absolutely harbors no bullshit and like any great performer, her face betrays her mind; The result is a person as fascinating as her gift, a life lived nearly as tragic as the great Medea Callas portrayed on the greatest stages in the world.

La Divina: Maria Callas

As promised, I also took in Michelange Quay’s Eat, For This Is My Body which was a very unexpected (and appreciated) detour into a completely different sensibility; Think Matthew Barney meets L’Untouchable with a healthy dose of 1970’s African cinema’s political symbolism in the style of Med Hondo. Not everyone’s cup of tea by any stretch, the film had some moments of overwhelming beauty (the opening aerial shot montage, for example) and some truly great moments (old women performing a hip-hop remix of traditional Hatian singing while Quay’s camera does non-stop 360 degree pan). This is an art film with a capital ‘A’, and its technical choices are stellar, but it's also a somewhat difficult movie, if only because of Quay’s decision to tell his story exclusively through metaphor, a decision that places the film in a grand cinematic tradition, is one that is almost extinct in movie theaters today. For many, especially those who have not seen the Cremaster series, I think the film was too much, but for me, it was wildly entertaining, primarily because I wanted to see what Quay would do next, which slice of colonialism he would expose, how much history he could condense into beautiful images that were at once highly theatrical and telling the truth.

A film that I found extremely moving was Jacques Nolot’s Avant que j'oublie (Before I Forget), the story of an aging gay hustler and his search for meaning in his own life when his lover (and sugar daddy) passes away. The film is, I think, a profound meditation on the way in which routines and roles in our lives end up defining us; When Pierre Pruez (Nolot, in a terrificly droll performance) loses his lover, he is left out in the cold of his own experience and facing an inner-crisis. No longer young and beautiful, he is too old (and too wise it seems) to hustle for sex, but desire (and the need to be desired) lingers within him, giving way to a humorously sad lifestyle involving writing, paying young hustlers for sex and visiting with old friends to remember the good times and compare notes on their lives today. The film has an air of deep experience and inarticulate longing at its core, and the humanity of Nolot’s performance and writing gives the film a sense of profound loss, as if time itself had stripped everything away. I agree with some of my colleagues that the film’s final few moments feel incongruous to the story as a whole, but that doesn’t come close to undermining the deep emotional reaction the film inspired in me. We all want to be young and beautiful forever but we, like all things, fade away. Strand Releasing picked the film up, and I hope to see it in a theater again soon.

Céline Sciamma’s Naissance des pieuvres (Water Lillies), although I much prefer the literal translation “The Birth of the Octopuses”, was picked up by Koch Lorber and Red Envelope at Cannes and was one of the highlights of the festival for me. At once funny and troubled, the film is a note-perfect examination of teenage desire, a genre that is so common these days that to be able to praise the film is no small feat in and of itself. What Sciamma gets right are the pace and tone of teenage longing, vulnerable and unable to be spoken, which is a universal hormonal experience. Sciamma understands all of her characters, from Floriane (Adèle Haenel), the gorgeous object of male and female desire to Marie (Pauline Acquart), the younger, boyish admirer who will do whatever is required to please the object of her sexual fixation and even the pudgy wild-child Anne (Louise Blachère), who places herself squarely into Sciamma's triumvirate of need. There is a palpable chemistry between the Floriane and Marie, and the movie’s credibility rests on the small, intimate moments that pass across their faces. The film, set in the world of synchronized swimming (which is a terrific metaphor for conformity and the competitive urge among the characters), is a small marvel that features moments of visual transcendence, none more so than when Marie slides under the surface of the water to watch the synchronized movements of the seemingly disembodied swim team (a moment which probably gave the film its French title).

Water Lillies: The Girls of Céline Sciamma’s Naissance des pieuvres

I am finally off to bed after our festival’s party tonight; A nice event that featured many familiar faces and a lot of excellent conversation. Thanks to Keri Nakamoto for making it all possible. Sleep now, and more tomorrow…

As many times as I try to remind myself that a film festival is a marathon and not a sprint, choices and professional obligations conspire to keep me going at top speed all of the time. I'm nowhere near fatigued yet, as I made a good decision by not socializing outside of the cinema last night, but after seven movies yesterday, my eyes still burn with the lingering visions of the images I had taken in. If there are twenty four frames per second, yesterday I saw 1,090,080 frames of film. No wonder my dreams seemed to flicker ever so slightly from behind my eyes.

The day was bookended by films I really liked; Kevin Macdonald's intriguing examination of Klaus Barbie's career in My Enemy's Enemy and Jason Reitman's terrific Juno (one for pleasure, always a good idea to keep things going) played as polar opposites, one in the morning and one before bed, that bracketed some regrettable choices and some modest successes. A lot of ink has been spilled on both of these films, and rightfully so as they were both very enjoyable, but one film I saw yesterday had me thinking long after I turned down the sheets and buried my head in the pillow.

Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin' (Endless) played to a spare Press and Industry audience during its only P&I screening at 8:00 pm, but for those of us in the theater, what a delicious digestif after a day of the undercooked and somewhat bland. The film, which is Nemescu's only feature (he was killed in a car accident last summer while still in post-production on the film), won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival and for the screening to have been so lightly attended here, I certainly hope that most of the press and industry saw the film in France. I have since read some articles and comments that have compared Nemescu's work on the film to that of Emir Kusturica, but I don't see any of Kusterica's black pessimism here at all, and while California Dreamin' is an absurdist vision of international relations, a fantasy about holding the powerful accountable for their transgressions, the movie feels hilarious, generous and warm as opposed to that feeling you get when watching a Kusturica film that you're being subjected to a little bit of propaganda. Nemescu has no agenda here except to reject all claims to power and authority in the name of stolen kisses.

The plot, what there is of it, revolves a round an impossibly absurd scenario which, once you resign yourself to the impossibility of it, works like a charm in spite of itself; When a NATO train carrying radar equipment for the war in Bosnia pulls into a small Romanian village in 1999, the local station master named Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu) forces the train to stay put until "the proper customs papers arrive." This decision infuriates Captain Doug Jones (a hilarious Armand Assante), an American C.O. with a company of Marines who have little choice but to wait out the misunderstanding. And so, Nemescu uses the stranded soldiers, the corrupt station master, his beautiful daughter (a special mention here for the actress Maria Dinulescu, who is phenomenal in the film), the powerless small town mayor (12:08 East Of Bucharest's terrific Ion Sapdaru) and the helpless Marine commander to showcase his own vision of international relations between a small town and its superpower guests.

It's A Small World, After All: Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin' (Endless) (© Marian Hanciarec)

And here, the film shines; A re-hashed celebration is planned, and the local girls and the Marines, unable to communicate with words, dance the night away to the music of a local Elvis impersonator, inspiring outrage and jealousy among the local lads. Meanwhile, bureaucrats in no hurry to resolve the situation, drink together and fax paperwork from office to office, passing the buck and washing their hands clean. Romances form, friendships are forged, and soon, everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. Nemescu uses the stasis of the situation to make his arsenal of cinematic tricks seem plausible; From flashbacks in black and white to magical realism, the film achieves its power from its good-natured use of a wide-array of techniques and the Director's vibrant humanism. While each character acts in a self serving way, Nemescu's film never points fingers, instead embracing the complexity of his character's motivations.

The film does, however, have a few flaws; Nemescu having died before post-production was completed, there must have been a sense of responsibility to put every idea in the script into the final film, and the movie ends up being too long by about a half an hour or so. The film never loses momentum, but the final third seems held together by a less rigorous understanding of the material than the middle third (and particularly the town celebration sequence) seems to indicate. That said, the movie shows more ideas and vibrancy in its flawed passages than most films do at all, and so while I was left thinking that a gentle tightening of the story could have made it into something transcendent, I was also grateful to see the Director's ideas on the screen, a fitting response to tragic events.

After the blissful reminder of the greatness that is coming out of Romania these days (can they make a bad film?), a late night treat of Jason Reitman's Juno was a perfect way to end my seven film day. As I said, this one is going to be written about ad nauseum because it is a very special little movie, but I did want to say that Reitman himself is to be praised (as is screenwriter Diablo Cody) for making a politics-free movie about the freedom of choice that never wags a single finger in any direction. What is so refreshing, aside from Ellen Page's fuss-free, star making turn as the titular teenager, is the film's decision to be funny while taking its characters and their feelings seriously; Which is to say, Juno is a movie that understands what it means to have a sense of humor. There isn't a mean-spirited frame in this film, not a single joke or crack is made by any character that they first wouldn't say about themselves and yet Juno still delivers big laughs because we care about these characters and their feelings. It is a rare talent that is able to embody a foul-mouthed teenager with such a deep-felt humanity (that word again), but Ellen Page's small frame and wide open face add a palpable sense of vulnerability to Juno that make her barrage of bon mots seem like little love letters spoken by a friend who cares too much to let you not "dream big". I am deeply out of touch with teen culture, but if people out there care as much about one another as they do in Juno, I think the kids will be alright. Again.

Time to run... Today's third screening awaits...

Toronto is exploding. Everywhere you look, cranes are hunched over the husks of buildings, feeding construction workers their materials like baby birds in nests of made of steel and glass. Condos, office space, so many reflective surfaces everywhere that the city seems to be admiring itself. The value of the Canadian dollar, which yesterday exchanged at the airport for a rate higher than my US currency, must have something to do with this growth, but as the lake shore begins to look like Miami Beach and the population seems to be climbing straight up into the sky, there is no denying that there is an energy here that feels almost unstoppable. Even the Toronto Film Festival is getting in on the action, with the recent naming of their very own contribution to the proliferation of new spaces, The Bell Lightbox. As a festival programmer, the enormity of a building project like this is not lost on me, and as this annual event (and their year round programs) begin their migration into a beautiful, permanent home, the Toronto Film Festival, already a behemoth, seems to be growing while its roots grab more tightly to the city's firmament.

My first day, and already, something subconscious is taking place in front of my eyes; Four films today, and all of them about families and death which, naturally, seems far too coincidental to be chance and maybe simply an extension of my own fears and desires? Maybe so. First up, and the best of the bunch, Fatih Akin's The Edge Of Heaven which tells the stories of three families stricken by heir tragic interconnections. What films like Babel, Crash and Amores Perros get wrong, with their ham-fisted scenarios and their metaphysics of coincidence, Akin has gotten oh so right because he understands that the film's BIG IDEAS are not about the politics of global interplay reduced to a lowest common narrative, but about the deeply personal connections forged between everyday people across the expanses of an ever-shrinking world. The Edge Of Heaven is a powerful story that weaves together the search for reconciliation between three sets of parents and children; A father and son who have emigrated to Germany from Turkey, a mother and daughter living apart, the mother in Germany and the daughter in Turkey, and a German mother and daughter who follow a different path altogether. Instead of telling us that life has become untenable in the brave new world, Akin shows us that life is as it always was; That connections are made between strangers in strange countries, tragedy strikes with a foreseeable suddenness (each of the film's three sections are given very revealing titles), and that, no matter what, life goes marching onward despite the indelible marks that our experiences make on us. There is no hokey metaphysical nonsense here (despite my concerns when the film won the Ecumenical Jury Prize in Cannes) and the writing and performances are masterful while the direction is terrific and rarely hits a false note (one of the film's 'reveals' in the final minutes of the movie goes over like a lead balloon, but only for overstating what we already know). There is a generosity and humanity to Akin's work that makes these stories universal, and his refusal to allow anything grandiose in his narrative and his visuals to interfere with the reality of his character's lives sets this film apart. It simply feels like the intimate truth. As a first film at this year's festival, I am not sure I could have done much better, but it will be hard to top this one. Tremendous.

Fatih Akin's The Edge Of Heaven

Next, I took in Amos Gitai's wildly disappointing Disengagement, which is basically two films sharing a cast and neither of them convincing. Despite a very promising opening scene which, upon its conclusion, is never referenced again, the first half of the film plays like Cries and Whispers had it been written by Jean Genet. Juliette Binoche, who gives herself over to her director's demands, is given a character that is told to travel from blithe nonchalance to deep guilt and grief in a single sentence (spoken here by Jeanna Moreau), and while she does what she can with it, the scenario fails her miserably. The daughter of a wealthy Jewish Parisian who has recently died, Binoche's character flits around his well-appointed apartment like a butterfly, dancing, laughing and doing her best to make the dialogue sound something like passable. Her brother, an Israeli Special Forces soldier, arrives and their share a moment of reconciliation that is ruined by sexual overtones, before Moreau tells Bincohe that her father's will left a sizable sum to Binoche's long-lost daughter who is, living on the very kibbutz in the West Bank from Binoche's brother must execute a "disengagement", or a forced removal of Jewish settlers. Of course, that means its time to pack up the Volvo and head to Israel, where the lithe, "comic" refusal of the characters to grieve their father's death is replaced by guilt, love and an extended sequence where very religious Jewish settlers are forcibly removed from their kibbutz by the Israeli forces. The second half works much better than the first, particularly a scene in which Gitai himself appears on screen and chides some soldiers into allowing him to pass through a checkpoint, but the two halves are wholly independent, and the extended nonsense in Paris doesn't raise any stakes in Israel because it follows no narrative logic; Everything here feels like a mood swing, which ultimately undermines the gravity of the moment when Binoche and her daughter (the lovely Dana Igvy, who I last saw in Or ) finally reunite. There is the seed of something powerful here, but the connections never feel true. Another family, more death, less convincing.

A quick break, and then on to Christophe Honoré's Les Chansons d'amour, his follow up to Dans Paris, which I really loved. The new film reunites Honoré with Louis Garrel and also reunites Garrel with his regular Lovers co-star Clotilde Hesme. Les chansons d'amour is a love song to sexual freedom in the literal sense of the word; As if living in a musical, the actors break into songs (written by Alex Beaupan) and express their innermost feelings through some lovely music. That said, Honoré refues the route of, say, a Tsai Ming-Liang (whose work on The Hole and The Wayward Cloud were homages to big, period musical numbers) and instead stages rather mundane performances, where actors simply walk down the empty streets of Paris and rarely engage in anything more dramatic than a teasing wink. This makes sense on paper (if you're going to build songs into the narrative, why change the narrative to accommodate something showy?), but after a while the songs tend to become little more than glorified monologues and dialogues, where the actors simply state their feelings into the void of everyday life. This has the effect of making the songs seems almost immaterial, since the words could be spoken or sung without any interruption in the film's visual flow, and since the narrative feels almost like a re-invention of a 19th century novel, I wish that Honoré would have chosen to go big with these feelings or to avoid the songs altogether, because the story itself is very interesting. A love triangle among some beautiful young Parisians is broken up when one of the trio dies (again, a title card tells us what we need to know well in advance) and the impact is felt deeply in the relationship and in the deceased girl's tightly-knit family.

You'd Think That People Would Have Had Enough Of Silly Love Songs: Christophe Honoré's Les Chansons d'amour

Once his lover is gone, the film belongs to Louis Garrel's Ismaël, and Garrel once again provides enough rakish charm to channel Jean-Pierre Leaud and easily carry the movie in his quest to re-connect with his feelings and an unexpected lover. But again, his transformation feels a little too sudden and his grief too understated to convey the depth of his character's need and again, the script lets him down. Honoré does get in many of his signature references to movies of the past (a delicious nod to La Dolce Vita sets Ismaël down the road to emotional recovery) and his stylish look at the generosity of love is really a charming film that I really enjoyed. If only the middle path had not been taken and Honoré had the courage of his convictions, the film might have been exceptional. Cest la vie. Again, a dead sister, a family loss. Three for three.

Final movie of the day was Baltasar Kormákur's Jar City, an Icelandic noir procedural about cops working hard to solve the murder of a very shady character. The film, which, for all its style points is something that is easily solved, does have its moments of grace and lyrisicism, especially when it lets its main hero, a down-on-his-luck detective named Erandur ( a terrifically gruff Ingvar Sigurdsson) and his team work with the other actors; Against the gorgeous, desolate landscape of Iceland they are no match! The film, which I place in the "no crime where we usually work" genre of films like Fargo, Memories of a Murder and L'Humanite, is significant for making its narrative intentions clear very early on and providing very few unforeseen suprises, yet working as a movie because its characters are so finely drawn and its juxtapositions so clever. Several sequences make light of the Icelandic diet of 'whatever meat is available' and the good work of Björn Hlynur Haraldsson as Sigurður Óli provides plenty of comic relief. What no American audiences would buy as an American procedural set in, say, Montana, the exoticism of Iceland makes palatable and, once the film's family ties are finally (and obviously) revealed, the story is at once credible, modern and somehow a fable. It's a fun movie, one that holds few surprises but delivers its family drama perfectly. Four of four. A theme confirmed.

A full day tomorrow; Dinner with my fellow programmers and bloggers tonight was a lot of fun. Sleep now, and five more tomorrow. Must rest.

The night before the Toronto Film Festival begins and I'm back into my old routines; Checked in at the hotel, sushi with Holly as we map out each day of screenings and events, and now back in my room for a good night's sleep before the madness begins. As always, everything has been well-organized; From our on-time arrival into YYZ airport, to my luggage being the first piece on the conveyor belt (which is undoubtedly the first time that has ever happened to me) to the ever-efficient Industry check-in, things have been smooth sailing. Now, it's time to get some rest, to watch the rest of Anthony Adverse on TCM (oh, and To Sir, With Love is on next...how can I go to bed now?) and prepare for the five or six films a day that I'll be taking in. First up is the 9:00 am screening of Fatih Akin's The Edge Of Heaven, which I can't wait to see. But first, sleep. Sydney Poitier must wait for another day. A long day today, with longer days to follow.

In the final installment of this modest little film festival preview, I wanted to take a moment to talk about one of the films in the Toronto Film Festival that I knew very little about, but which a little bit of research (and the power of persuasion) have me very interested to see; Michelange Quay's Eat, For This Is My Body. One of the first things film festival goers learn in their travels is how to recognize the signs of promise in an otherwise overwhelming program of movies; In the case of Eat, For This Is My Body, there were several factors that piqued my interest. First and foremost, the subject matter (a white women confronting her outsider status in Haiti) appears to me to be related to several other films in the festival (see my write-up of Santosh Sivan's Before The Rains for only one example), but also, in terms of its interest in the anti-colonial/revolutionary impulse, it seems to be a look at a history about which I know very little. So, a movie with a big idea that appears to be in the zeitgeist. Check.

Then, with a little digging (it's my job, what can I say?) I saw that the cast list includes one of my favorite actresses, one whose appearance almost guarantees that something engaging will be happening on-screen; Sylvie Testud. I have been a big fan of hers since I saw her in Jean-Pierre Denis' Murderous Maids back in 2000 and I've been following her work ever since. I think she is unique in that she has the ability to be both treacherous and hilarious at the same time, which is no small feat. And while Eat, For This Is My Body doesn't seem to promise any laughs, her ability to generate empathetic responses in me, even in a film like Murderous Maids, is something I am always looking for in a performance. So, double check. I'm looking forward to seeing this one.

Sylvie Testud in Michelange Quay's Eat, For This Is My Body

Last week, the director Michelange Quay e-mailed me with a press kit, and having reviewed it, I thought it might be of interest to publish his Director's statement, which obviously captures his intentions better than I could (not having seen the film yet) and does a fantastic job of articulating the ideas that I find so compelling. If the movie can deliver on these ideas, well, I'll be very interested to hear more from Quay. As it stands, I'm looking forward to seeing it and deciding for myself.

"Although some of the scenes for this film where also shot in other places, its absolute reference point is the country of my origins, Haiti. The film was nourished by what I’ve seen, heard or felt there, and these impressions rearranged themselves into a invisible world with its own language. It’s a completely subjective vision, a dialogue between present day images and ancestral memories, an exchange between the generations inside me... a repository of unconscious themes – much like a dream. The icons and actions that contribute to this atmosphere should, like in poetry, allow each viewer his own dialogue with the image on the screen as well his or her image of himself – an infinite double mirror of meanings and identities most appropriate to the ambiguous political and spiritual situation that Eat For This Is My Body illustrates. The film plays out in a filmic “no time” somewhere between documentary and surrealism, a space somewhere between the terrain of the political pamphlet and the realm of lyric poetry, where contemporary iconography and ancient archetype should intermingle in a way that is, in my sense, typical of Haiti, a country that has been swallowing and reinventing icons, “creoleizing” them, since its beginnings, in the nightmare years of slavery, a country whose Vaudou religion melds the most concrete elements of everyday past, present, and future into one twisting, turning tree of dreams.

First and last, Haiti is the land of my fathers, the land of my mothers. They told me that this little island, tiny in the shadow of the American colossus, is where something new happened – 1804, a revolution – slaves, killing their masters, reinventing their names, creating new Gods, rewriting History. They told me we turned distant forgotten Africa into a Nirvana a bridge of resistance between the ancestors and the unborn. That we turned the shame of slavery into a badge of honor, an arrogant, glorious flag declaring each year to be the Year Zero. Now, it seems that this island is a lost phantom boat, abandoned in the middle of the diplomatic sea, cursed, adrift in its own dreams of glory, nightmares of submission. Perhaps while some dreamed of conquest, building castles, and pillaging the treasury, others where patiently dreaming of a good harvest, hoping to win a cockfi ght, or that week’s lottery, dreaming the road from the obscure countryside to the nearest big city, from the capital, Port au Prince to New York or Miami, or Philadelphia, or Paris. From far away, I hear many call Haiti a hell, a nightmare – they call it a nation that does not exist, but is a nation a president, a throne, a financial aid package, an interim government, a Constitution, or is it more than anything, the land of our fathers, the land of our mothers?"

--Michelange Quay

The time for previews has ended for me. As I pack up my bags and get ready for Toronto, I am looking at my calendar and staring down four consecutive weeks of film screenings. Reality is setting in; The season is starting again! I took a walk outside this morning and felt September in the air, and while I am more than ready, I also feel reflective. My way of preparing for watching, thinking and writ