Pass the popcorn

As much as I enjoy movies I’ve never really done the whole film festival thing. I’ve seen movies at the San Francisco International Film Festival, but I’ve never made a festival a destination or sat down and watched multiple movies a day for days on end. That was until last week when I went to the Palm Springs International Film Festival and saw 26 movies over eight and a half days. There were people there who saw more, but I feel like roughly three movies a day is the right amount. Any more than that and I imagine they all start to run together. The bulk of the films I saw were their country’s submission for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were the best film that country has to offer. The system is notoriously political. Each country has a governing body that is allowed to submit one film for Oscar consideration. This year 65 countries submitted films. Of those 65, nine have just been announced as the short list (six from Academy voters, three from the Academy’s Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee). The list is cut down further by committees in New York and Los Angeles to the final five nominees. All of which is to say that at each step in the process there’s a good chance a film you like isn’t going to make the cut. Controversy is common, though this year various pundits have said that there aren’t any glaring omissions. I have a quibble about one of the inclusions, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Overall, I was a good experience, while I didn’t see any films that just blew me away, I saw a lot of good films. I’ve listed them below in levels of “good” and a brief comment. Within each level of good I’ve listed them in descending goodness. Of course, all of this is subjective and it’s hard to compare films that are trying to do different things. I could probably come up with a dozen different lists based on different criteria.

VERY GOOD

Breathless (South Korea)
The cycle of brutality is vividly realized in the debut feature of writer, director, producer and star Yang Ik-june. Though not as extreme, fans of Chan-wook Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy should enjoy this nuanced portrayal of the life of a small time thug and those left in his wake.

Air Doll (Japan)
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows) puts a intricately intertwined spin on the sexual surrogate love story by bringing an air doll to life and having her afflicted with the human condition. How do people deal with loneliness, find a connection with another human being, or try to find another way to fill the void?

Mother (South Korea) Oscar Submission
How far will a mother go when her son is accused of murder? Pretty far according to Bong Joon-Ho in his feature follow up to the pleasing b-monster-movie fun of The Host. A fabulous performance by Kim Hye-ja in the title role.

The White Ribbon (Germany) Oscar Submission
Small town life is never as idyllic as it seems. While director Michael Haneke’s film is in black and white, the topics it’s dealing with aren’t as finely delineated. Set in an agrarian community in the run up to WWI Haneke is asking questions about what conditions prepare the ground for post-war Fascism. Just don’t expect any answers.

QUITE GOOD

Letters to Father Jacob (Finland) Oscar Submission
Using a limited number of locations and actors, director Klaus Härö tells the story of an ex-con working for a blind priest with quiet assurance. The two main actors give great performances.

Sergio (USA) Oscar Feature Documentary Short List
The heart breaking story of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the UN mission in Iraq, who died in a bombing of the UN headquarters. The film cuts back and forth between the rescue attempt and Sergio’s life, but is a bit too one-sided in lionizing its subject to be a truly great film. It touches on the fact that he was a bit of a womanizer and mentions his first wife and children, but doesn’t get their perspective on him.

I Killed My Mother (Canada) Oscar Submission
A bit self involved, but what else would you expect from a film written, directed and starring a teenager? In fact, only a teenager could have made this film and had it feel as real as it does. Based on his own explosive relationship with his mother Xavier Dolan and Anne Dorval, who plays his mother, battle it out with gusto. It’ll be interesting to see what his next project is.

A Bad Day to Go Fishing (Uruguay) Oscar Submission
A delightful tale of two men clinging to the margins that has the feeling of a fable. A former world champion wrestler and man claiming to be European royalty land in a small town and set about to make some money putting on an exhibition bout against local talent. Things don’t go as planned. Beautifully shot by Álvaro Gutiérrez.

Reykjavik-Rotterdam (Iceland) Oscar Submission
Sometimes it’s nice just to watch a good caper movie. An ex-con looks to do one last smuggling job to help his wife’s brother and to improve his own family’s circumstances.

Kelin (Kazakhstan) Oscar Submission
A foreign movie where I didn’t have to read any subtitles because there was no dialogue. Even without dialogue, this simple story of the life of a young bride on the steppe in the second century CE is easy to follow. As you would expect from a film without words (but not sound), the visuals are quite good and winter in the steppe looks daunting.

GOOD

Terribly Happy (Denmark) Oscar Submission
One of the themes of the festival (other than “don’t mess with mom”) was “bad things happen in small towns.” In this film a city cop gets reassigned to a town in the boondocks and has to deal with things hidden there and within himself.

Max Manus (Norway) Oscar Submission
A fairly standard, but well crafted war movie centered on the efforts of the Norwegian resistance during WWII and particularly, Max Manus.

Merantau (Indonesia)
This movie may be a bit high on the list for its actual quality, but I saw it near the end of the festival when it was nice to take a break from all the serious films to see a genre film. The focus of this particular genre film was the Indonesian martial art silat with some solid fight scenes.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (USA) Oscar Feature Documentary Short List
Well-crafted and interesting, especially in comparison to the run up to the war in Iraq.

Milk of Sorrow (Peru) Oscar Submission
With a touch of magical realism, director Claudia Llosa tells the personal story of Fausta as she tries to keep herself from being taken advantage of and the larger story of a generation of children of women raped in the turbulent 1970s.

Backyard (Mexico) Oscar Submission
A fairly standard police procedural enhanced by being set in Juarez, Mexico and focusing on a female detective investigating violence against women. Throw in corrupt government and uncaring multinational corporations to round out the mix.

Samson & Delilah (Australia) Oscar Submission
The monotony of life in central Australia runs off the rails for two Aboriginal teens. Played by non-actors with minimal dialogue this “love story” was beautifully shot, but I couldn’t help but wonder why the female lead stuck with Samson. He was a mess.

Garbage Dreams (USA) Oscar Feature Documentary Short List
The story of three young men growing up in the Coptic Christian community in Egypt that makes a living from collecting trash. As engaging as some of the subjects of this film were I just wished it could have been better somehow.

NOT QUITE GOOD

Reverse (Poland) Oscar Submission
Well-acted story set in Warsaw of the 1950s and present. A grandmother, mother, and daughter struggle to find a husband for the daughter. Ultimately unsatisfying.

For a Moment, Freedom (Austria) Oscar Submission
You would think that the story of Iranian families escaping to Turkey and dealing with the unexpected conditions there would be a compelling story, but it seemed like the film maker tried to cram too much into this movie.

Nobody to Watch Over Me (Japan) Oscar Submission
Felt like a series of tv dramas strung together. The premise was intriguing, just overly melodramatic and not very well executed.

Only When I Dance (UK/Brazil)
Great subjects. Uninspired film-making.

Baaria (Italy) Oscar Submission
I expected more from the director of Cinema Paradiso, but the best I can say about this film was that it was a visually appealing mess. And at 150 minutes, way too long.

NOT GOOD

The World is Big and Salvation Lies Around the Corner (Bulgaria) Oscar Submission
For me this was the biggest disappointment of the festival. There was a lot of buzz about it and it ended up as one of the “best of the fest”, but I found it completely predictable and uninteresting. There wasn’t anything special about the cinematography either. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I seem to be in the minority thought as it ended up making the short list of nine films for the Oscars.

Dawson, Island 10 (Chile) Oscar Submission
This film seemed to be stuck between the narrative and the poetic and failed at both which is too bad because the story of deposed Allende government officials being sent to a concentration camp on an island in Southern Chile is a story I want to know more about.

Grandfather is Dead (Philippines) Oscar Submission
I’m thinking this one was culture specific. A broad comedy that the Philippino audience members seemed to enjoy. I couldn’t get past the poor production values and on screen histrionics.

Travelogue(s)

Telling a story is both easier and more difficult than it has ever been before. Easier because there are any number of ways to get your story out in front of a large audience. More difficult because the number of stories out there is so great that it’s easy for yours to get lost. So whether you’re telling a tale of illegally crossing the border into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan or taking a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate your 40th birthday it has to be well told.

In 1986 the photographer Didier Lefèvre went into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan for the first time while covering a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mission. Of the four thousand frames he exposed only six images were initially published. Thirteen years later his friend Emmanuel Guibert suggested they collaborate on publishing the story of Lefèvre’s journey and, with the help of Frédéric Lemercier, Le Photographe was published in France in three volumes between 2003 and 2006. In 2009 the English version, The Photographer, was published in one large volume by First Second.

The Photographer, p. 74

Being based on actual events I don’t know if you would call it a graphic novel, but the illustration drives the bulk of the narrative with Lefèvre’s photographs working as accents. It’s similar to, though not quite as powerful as, the film Waltz with Bashir and its shift from animation to photographic images. In the film’s case, the change takes place at the end to maximize impact while in The Photographer Lefèvre’s images are sprinkled throughout allowing the viewer places to rest and contemplate. I also enjoyed how, in many places, we’re given the equivalent of a contact sheet where we can see a sequence of shots and the one that has been selected (or discarded). Seeing the contact sheets sometimes gives you a better idea of what the photographer is looking for. Another example that comes to mind is the Diane Arbus shot of the boy with the toy hand grenade in Central Park. Looking at the contact sheet the boy looks fairly normal in most of the shots, but the in the image she chose the boy looks mentally unbalanced. I don’t pretend to know why Arbus chose that particular shot, but, for me, seeing the shots she didn’t choose make that image all the more interesting.

Diane Arbus contact sheet

To be perfectly honest, I doubt I’d like The Photographer as much if it were just Lefèvre’s photographs. There is something about the combination of photos and illustration, and even the size and heft of the book (11.7 by 9.4 in., an inch thick, and over 2 lbs.), that makes it appealing. Though the line work is heavier and looser, the drawing style strikes me as Tintinesque. There’s a similar use of color and sense of adventure. Add to this Afghanistan being in the news a lot lately and I found myself devouring it in large chunks.

Finally, the use of the black and white reportage reminded me of something from Salman Rushdie’s novel Fury. He (or his character) found it curious that black and white photography, “the most unreal of processes,” now stood for “realism, integrity and art”. That may have been true when Rushdie originally wrote those words, or when Lefèvre shot the photos, but I wonder if today the ubiquity of color photography hasn’t left black and white photography seeming dated or, at the very least, self-consciously arty.

On a lighter note, Alec Soth’s slideshow of a trip to Las Vegas for his 40th birthday is another example of the flexibility of story telling media. People are more willing to experiment with ways of telling a story. In this case Soth, normally a still photographer, is experimenting with an A/V presentation.

One of the great things about Soth’s slideshow (other than the actual images) is how self-contained and almost circular the narrative is. It begins with him wanting to buy a limited edition of Bukowski poetry. He can’t afford the book, so being in Vegas, he tries gambling to raise the money. You can probably guess how that turns out. But don’t despair, he turns the experience into a piece of art that references both Vegas and a bit of poetry from the unattainable volume which he then sells for the price of said volume. Genius.

More Dollar Signs

I went to last Saturday’s SFCamerawork auction expecting to see a lot of photos being sold below the low estimate which is pretty much what happened. Of the 151 lots, 114 sold for below the low estimate, 33 sold within the range in the catalog, and only 4 exceeded the high estimate. As I said, this is what I expected given the state of the economy. What I didn’t expect was, when I went back and looked at my notes from the last auction I attended, that those numbers were roughly the same distribution as in 2006.

Though there were more lots in 2006, 180  to Saturday’s 151,  the percentage of pieces that sold for below the low estimate was actually greater 78% to 75%. There were more sold above the high estimate in 2006, 7% to 3%, but there were also fewer sold within the estimate range, 15% to 22%. It makes me wonder how they come up with their estimates. Does Camerawork come up with the estimates or are they provided by the person who donates the work? In Camerawork’s case it’s probably in their best interest to have the estimate high so that the buyer will feel more inclined to bid if they think they are getting a piece for within or below an estimate. With the donors, especially if it is a gallery representing the artist or the artist themselves, then it gets a bit trickier. You want the work to go for as much as possible, but you don’t want it to go for under the estimate and possibly effect future prices. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure that this auction has that much influence on prices.

The four pieces that sold for above the catalog’s high estimate were Richard Gilles’ Clement Ave. & Oak Street, Ann Hamilton’s book weight (human carriage), Dinh Q. Le’s Untitled, and Hank Willis Thomas’ Who Can Say No To A Beautiful Brunette?. The Dinh Q. Le actually went for $12,000 on an estimate of $5000/$8000 establishing a new record (according to the auctioneer) for a piece sold at a Camerawork auction.

Dinh Q. Le, Untitled, 2004

I’m missing data from 2007 and 2008, but Le’s work seems to be on the rise in terms of popularity. In 2003 a piece estimated at $850/$1000 sold for $1100. In 2004, on the same estimate a piece sold for $2600. In 2005, for a work the same size as 2004, the estimate moved up to $4500/$5500 and the work sold for $3200. Though it didn’t meet the estimate there was still an increase in the price reached compared to the previous year. The work on offer this year was the same size as both 2004 and 2005 and again the estimate had moved up and was exceeded. The bidding can down to two particular bidders. The winning bidder also bought lots from John Collier, Flor Garduno, Todd Hido, Pirkle Jones, Marion Post Walcott and Edward Weston. I don’t know if the winning buyer was a dealer or collector, but the underbidder was a dealer, who could have been bidding for a client, his gallery, or himself.

In general the lots are quite affordable. Whether it was a boom year like 2005 or a bust year like this year a majority of the lots went for $500 or less (roughly 60% in 2006 and just over 50% in 2009). So, if you are looking for affordable art or just want to watch the show, the SFCamerawork auction is a good place to start.

I also mentioned Sarah Thornton’s book, Seven Days in the Art World in my last post and wanted to follow up with a mention of the special report on the art market that she co-wrote with Fiammetta Rocco in the Nov. 28th–Dec 4th of the Economist. The report considers the art market in light of the current economic conditions and addresses issues like primary vs. secondary markets, Andy Warhol as a “bellwether”, and the flow of Chinese art back to China. It’s worth checking out as either an addition to the book that deals with more current events or as an introduction to the topic.

Dollar Signs

If you were wondering how the recession has changed the art world, judging from the $43.7 million payed at auction for a Warhol painting (fittingly a painting of money) the answer is not very much. At least not at the top end of the market where, like any other part of the economy, the people with money still have money and are looking to consolidate or expand their holdings. This is the world that Sarah Thornton is largely dealing with in her book Seven Days in the Art World, an entertaining introduction into various facets of a very insular world. Anyone looking for an expose will most likely come away disappointed. It’s not that kind of book. Instead you’ll get snapshots of a Christie’s auction, a crit at CalArts, the “feeding frenzy” at Art Basel, the presentation of the Turner Prize, the workings at Artforum, Takashi Murakami’s studio, and the Venice Biennale which end up showing how small and connected the art world is at the very top.

Most of the research for this book took place before the bottom fell out of the economy. The auction she covers was in 2004 and the most recent entries (the studio visit and the Biennale) are based on events in 2007 so reading it now adds an interesting twist. One point made in the book was that the most recent boom in the art market was fueled largely the work of living artists, the Damien Hirsts and Jeff Koons’ of the world. And that, like other sectors of the economy, there was a lot of speculation. Like the housing market, the art market was distorted by the huge amounts of money flowing into it. The money had to find a place to go and, with the fixed number of Monets and Van Goghs in the world, it flowed into living artists and the search for the next big thing. With the downturn I imagine there will be a return to the blue chip artists like Warhol. As a side note I also recently saw the documentary Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?, a film about one woman’s quest to sell what she believes to be a Jackson Pollock painting that she bought in a thrift store for five dollars. As you may imagine, this film portrays the art world in a somewhat different light.

On a completely different scale, it’ll be interesting to what kind of economic indicator SF Camerawork’s benefit auction (Saturday, December 5, 1 pm) will be this year. Will it be positive like the Sotheby’s auction, an indication that there are still people willing to spend money on art? Or will it be another grim reminder that the next boom is still a long way off? Let’s hope it’s the former.

Verbal Vivisection

Brian Dettmer, Amerigo, 2007

On the front of the Week in Review section of this week’s NY Times, illustrating an article on National Book Award nominations, was a photo of a book with part of the cover removed revealing a latticework of words and images carved into the interior. The work, Modern Progress by the artist Brian Dettmer,  gives the impression of  a body with the skin peeled away laying bare the veins, bones, tendons and organs hidden within. It also reminded me of some of the pieces from a Maya Lin show where she carved topographies into old atlases. A quick search led to more book works as well as modified maps and sculptures made from old audio and video tapes. There’s a great selection of images on Toomey Tourell’s site where I also learned that I missed his September show. Rats.

The Age of Stupid

Pete Postlethwaite in The Age of Stupid

I just saw a brilliant combination of documentary and fiction at the San Francisco International Film Festival called The Age of Stupid. The topic of the film is climate change looked at from the vantage point of the year 2055.

It’s not often that you see a film successfully combine serious subject matter with a futuristic element, but this film does so amazingly well. It would be unfortunate if this combination allows people to write the film off as either not serious or as overblown scare mongering because I think it needs to be seen by a wide audience.

Learn more about it here.

“Items I Thought I Needed”

Have you ever been seized by the urge to just rid yourself of all your possessions? You may not actually do it, but there’s this desire to purge that’s a counterpoint to the urge to collect. In a recently opened show at the Haines gallery called The Relative Value of Things Nigel Poor examines these two competing desires. The work on display was created during a residency at the San Francisco Center for the Book, but reflects the ongoing examination of the idea of collecting. By collecting things that have no value (hair and lint) and keeping a record of all the things she has discarded for a number of years she prompts the viewer to examine their own choices about what they keep and discard.

Nigel Poor, 18 Years of Date Books

The show consists of three twelve book sets, eight triptychs that combine text and image, and a wall of compositions made of either hair or lint set up salon style. All three sets of books are mounted on the wall in a way that there covers combine to form a single large compositions. Like the salon wall, one set of book covers is compositions done with lint and the second is done with hair. The final set of books displays the shared back covers that form a single large image called Someday I will be as Insignificant as a Swarm of Summer Insects. This piece is composed of the same tiny handwriting that appears in the triptychs.

One frustration I had with this, and pretty much any show of book art, is the inability to turn the pages*. In this case the books are mounted on the wall, the only hint we get about the interior is from the cell phone tour. It states that the interiors are much like the triptychs which combine two photos of discarded items with a fraction of the written list of discarded items. Which brings me to my second quibble, I wanted to see more. There are only eight triptychs to represent the entirety of years of discarded objects. I don’t know if it was a function of the space available (Poor’s work is in only a small section of the gallery), but I would be interested in seeing more of this facet of the project and, even if I can’t turn the pages, at least one spread of a books interior.

Nigel Poor, S’Rilla #2

That said, I appreciate the way in which Poor’s work is often a combination of the intensely personal and the participatory. For this work, in addition to keeping track of everything she has discarded, she is inviting people to contribute their own stories and images of discarded items at www.nigelpoor-relativevalue.com. The lint and hair were also gathered from other people, putting yet another strange spin on the idea of collecting.

I knew going in that, both visually and conceptually, the work would be right up my alley and my minor quibbles with the set up of the show did nothing to change that. I’m looking forward to see how this project evolves and what will catch Poor’s collector’s curiosity next.

The show runs through June 13 with an opening Saturday, May 2 from 3:00pm to 5:00pm.

*Correction:
I went to the opening this afternoon and maybe I missed it the first time, but there were copies of the book available at the front desk that you could look through upon request.

Nice

Last weekend I received a package containing the first issue of It’s Nice That, the biannual companion publication of the blog of the same name. It seems a bit strange to be blogging about a printed compilation of blog content, but I have to say I was quite pleased with the experience of opening the package, smelling the ink, leafing through the pages, and even seeing the brief hand written thank you note. If you have read my previous posts you’ll know that I’m a bit of a bibliophile so I definitely appreciate the compilation with its added features and interviews. I was thinking that I would go into a whole print versus web deal here, but that has been done to death. It suffices to say that if you’re interested in contemporary art and design you should, at the very least, check out the blog and, if you like that, consider ordering the publication. It’s nice.

Spring Cleaning

The first full day of spring seems to be as good a time as any to clean out my drafts folder of the various fragments I have written over the past couple of months.

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if you get there before me, will you save me a seat?
if you get there before me, would you save me a seat?
but if i never get there at all,
would you leave the seat empty?

My favorite thing about the Mountain Goats is the poignancy and occasional strangeness of the lyrics. By his own admission, John Darnielle isn’t the greatest guitarist, but he more than makes up for any lack of musicianship with the poetry of his words and the conviction of his delivery. It seems fitting, therefore, that he would sit down for an interview with a writer like Tobias Wolff as he did last night (Feb. 24) at San Francisco’s Herbst Theater. They seemed to share a mutual admiration for each others work that went beyond the usual interviewer-interviewee relationship. At several points Darnielle was much more interested in asking Wolff questions than he was in answering.

The conversation was fairly wide ranging and covered topics from initial creative influences to downloads of digital music. I was particularly interested when they talked about the difference between being a working artist and being an artist while working some other job. Both were thankful that they are able to earn a living doing their art, but also feel pressure to produce something great with that opportunity. They also spoke of the almost elicit excitement they felt working on their art while holding down a regular job. How it felt like stealing time.

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From Maya Lin’s Systematic Landscapes at the de Young

On my way to Maya Lin’s Systematic Landscapes show at the de Young earlier this year I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for, but that didn’t make it any less fascinating. While you could call the work reductivist, in that the pieces are abstracted explorations of landscape, that would neglect the thorough nature of the exploration. Lin is able to work in a wide range of media including wood, glass, metal, pins, and paper while still keeping faithful to the clarity of her vision. She also manages to stay true to each of the materials. None of the choices seem arbitrary and there is something transformative, for example, in the way she uses simple 2×4s cut to different lengths to create the wave/hill that dominated the museum’s atrium. I got the feeling that each piece, though varied in size, material, or execution, was part of a unified whole.

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Still from Götz Spielmann’s Revanche