asterisk (*) = recommended
National Film Board of Canada: Animation program
By the time he died in 1987, James Baldwin had almost been forgotten, although he was only 63. His greatest creativity, and fame, encompassed the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-’60s when he was a pioneer: novels and essays such as Another Country, Giovanni’s Room, and The Fire Next Time expressed black outrage before the full force of the black liberation movement, and articulated gay love and experience before gay liberation. But by the late 1960s, seen by liberal whites as frighteningly truculent but by black radicals as not sufficiently militant (he was scorned by Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice as one who hated both his blackness and his manhood), and disillusioned by both the continuing racism of white America and the direction the black movement was taking, he retreated to the south of France. He’d gone abroad before–to France, Switzerland, and Turkey in the 1950s–but now his writings found little response, either critical or popular, and when he returned to the U.S. to teach, it was almost as a relic of the past. Yet, as this well-constructed documentary makes clear, throughout his life Baldwin retained a host of personal friends. They are seen in large numbers, in the scenes from his dramatic funeral that open and close the film, and individually–from writers Maya Angelou, Ishmael Reed, William Styron, and Amiri Baraka to former Parisian lover Lucien Happersberger to pianist Bobby Short–testifying to his power to move and influence. Eschewing spoken narration, the film (its title not only echoes that of a collection of Baldwin’s essays, but was a favorite phrase of his) tells his story through interviews, readings, dramatizations, and an astonishing array of archival footage that documents not only public appearances but many private moments of his life. Although the film rings a bit false and defensive when dealing with his period of apparent decline, all in all director (also cowriter and coproducer) Karen Thorsen has created an authentic and moving portrait of one who believed that “it is not a romantic notion–it is an unalterable truth: all men are brothers.” (JS) (Three Penny, 7:00)
Mary Forever
The second feature by John McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) is an SF comedy about an exiled extraterrestrial, starring Rae Dawn Chong and Chicagoan Tom Towles. (Univ. of Chicago, 11:00)
A retrospective look at some of the National Film Board of Canada’s best documentaries. (Music Box, 3:00)
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One of the best things about a film festival is the opportunity to look in on other countries and cultures–to see how people look and act in foreign settings, and to experience different national styles of filmmaking. Unfortunately in this case Hungarian director Gyula Gazdag has fashioned something very like an American made-for-TV docudrama–a film not only uninspired in itself but dull and familiar in form. The story, based on an actual incident of some years ago, concerns two youths, sons of a border-guard commander, who seize a high school girls’ dormitory, demanding a million dollars and a charter flight to the country of their choosing (“London–Paris–night life–freedom forever” the older one rhapsodizes). Soon a familiar hostage-situation standoff develops, and soon all-too-familiar cliches rear their heads: the wise old police chief, the humanistic doctor (played by director Istvan Szabo [Mephisto]), the distraught parents (the disciplinarian father moving quickly from bluster to stupor). There are some nice suggestions as to personalities and their depths in the acting of the youths and hostages, but the script allows for little in the way of either revelation or development of character. Although the director seems to have intended the film to represent a microcosm of Hungarian society, showing how its social relationships engender tragedy, he really hasn’t been able to fulfill that intention here. (JS) (Village, 3:00)
