New Directors/New Films ‘09: Going Against The Grain

A scene from Marco Bechis's "BirdWatchers." Image courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

For Howard Feinstein’s previous ND/NF dispatches, click here and here. The 39th New Directors/New Films continues through April 5th.

Most of those displaying their wares in this year’s New Directors/New Films are outsiders by nature, aesthetic marginals, trendsetters. The characters these terrifically out-of-synch artists develop are, naturally, misfits too. We know that watching a film is akin to looking into a mirror, but writing and directing are also acts of reflection. The dramatic tension arises from the clash between the alluring odd (wo)men out onscreen and the social structure that hems them in or threatens to. The majority of the selections are not easily digestible. They are—and this is a compliment—hard to swallow.

Autumn (Ozcan Alper) In this masterpiece set in the 1990s, more than a decade after a repressive coup took place in Turkey, the protagonist is at war on several fronts: with the ruling regime—he has just been released from prison where he served time for unexplained political activism; with the restrictive traditions of village life after moving back in with his mother, having nowhere else to go; and with his own corporeality. He got out of jail on account of bad health, which is spiraling out of control, and his body hardly responds to the gorgeous Georgian prostitute he bonds with. We are allowed entrance to this barely verbal fellow’s mindset by a silent commentary emanating from his subtle gestures as well as from the majesty of the towering peaks and hovering clouds that surround him.

The Shaft (Zhang Chi) A superb debut, achingly gorgeous, this is a case of caged insiders yearning for the fresh air of free-range outsiders. Literally. Three members of a motherless family, whose stories are told chronologically (first the “eligible: sister’s, then the rock-star-wannabe brother’s, and finally the retired father’s), are, from birth, necessarily attached to the coal mine that disrupts an otherwise splendid western Chinese mountain setting. Graceful camera movements and striking compositions offset the dungeon that controls their life. Each time the elevator shaft descends, another layer of their dreams disappears.

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Parque Via (Enrique Rivero) Another addition to the resurgence of quality Latin American film, this revelation from Mexico is minimalism at its most effective, an assured work that shocks the blase viewer when it steps into thriller territory. An old man stays almost entirely inside the luxurious vacant home of a wealthy woman for whom he is a live-in guard, but whom he has served as a servant for decades with mutual—but solidly class-defined—affection. His world crashes when she decides to sell the place. Rivero creatively tests the limits of how far a person will go to maintain a comfort zone. BirdWatchers (Marco Bechis) In this highly original Italian/Brazilian production, Guarani Indians in Brazil, perhaps tired of their schizoid existence between two cultures, reclaim their legacy: enchanting forests now part of the ranch of a wealthy white landowner. He is leveling their sacred ancestral sites for purposes of cultivation (commerce rules). The director astutely observes not only the tension between the original inhabitants and the latecomers, but also the fissures within the tribe, borne of centuries of subjugation and displacement. A cute Guarani teen has a fling with the rancher’s spoiled daughter, but it is more a lesson in the near-impossibility of reconciliation than a promising love affair—an intimate anticipation of the movie’s increasingly tragic trajectory.   (1 of 2)  Next Page › posted on March 31, 2009 |Share