From the "On The Scene" Archives:

Carl Russo

(indieWIRE/5.23.2000) -- For fifteen days the political zeitgeist played to sold-out movie houses during the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival. From Argentina to Yugoslavia, a thread of globalization and the struggles that have arisen in its fallout, ran through many of the fest's 191 selections.

The May 4 closing awards ceremony reflected the spirit. Audiences chose Rituparno Ghosh's "The Lady of the House" (India) as Best Feature and Julia Query's "Live Nude Girls, UNITE!" (US) as Best Documentary, two films exploring the choices women make in the face of exploitation. The $10,000 Skyy Prize was given to Alice Nellis' "Eeny Meeny" (Czech Republic), a comic take on a meaningless election fussed over by a housewife while the town stays home. The winners of the Golden Gate Awards explored confused identities on US soil: Jasmine Dellal's "American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody's Land" (Best Documentary) and Deann Borshay Liem's "First Person Plural" (Best Bay Area Documentary).

As in past years of global tumult at SFIFF, the celebrity spotlight was eclipsed. True, Ethan Hawke hawked "Hamlet," Sofia Coppola and hubby Spike Jonze pushed "The Virgin Suicides," Winona Ryder and Esther Williams each got their splashy tributes, and the corporate-sponsored galas rivaled those of Hollywood's golden era. But the hottest tickets were for two films that dealt with politics of the sexual kind.

The first was tailor-made for SF's kinky night crawlers: "Lies," Jang Sun-Woo's notorious s/m love story, whose authentic beatings sent one critic fleeing and held a rapt audience overtime for a Q & A with the filmmaker currently fighting a censorship rap in South Korea.

The other film pleased activists and onanists alike. Julia Query, a dancer at the local Lusty Lady Theater, helped spearhead the battle at the peepshow to form the first strippers' union in the country. Picking up a Hi-8 camcorder for the first time, she interviewed her fellow employees about working conditions and alleged racist policies of management. The indie project became "Live Nude Girls, UNITE!" after she enlisted the help of co-director Vicky Funari (director of "Paulina" and a one-time Lusty Lady dancer). Although the film was picked up by First Run Features for a fall release, Query is not anxious shoot again.

"It's so much work to make a union and it's so much work to make a film and in my case I put my personal life out there," a tearful Query told indieWIRE after receiving the Audience Award. "It's extremely expensive. I sold my house and I'm in debt. I put all the money I have in this and all the hours I had for four years. I'm not willing to do that again until something is just as important to me."

While the Franco-centric programming (29 French titles plus seven co-productions) may reflect supply if not demand, several Gallic offerings echoed struggles depicted elsewhere in the fest. Unsexy issues like class disparity, downsizing and the 35-hour work week were all given bright, human faces in "Nadia and the Hippos," "Farewell, Home Sweet Home," "New Dawn," and "La Dilettante."

Claire Devers' "The Thief of St. Lubin" -- a North American premiere -- brings the weight of a hypocritical justice system crashing down on a young woman. Based on a true incident, the trial of a single mother caught shoplifting meat to feed her kids becomes a larger debate. As Dominique Blanc's exhausted, slightly unhinged character morphs into a national symbol, both the left- and the right-wing claim her as proof of a failed society.

Several more premieres scrutinize the built-in conflicts of their respective countries with colorful narratives. Randa Chahal Sabbag continues her critique of the moral ambiguities found in war-torn Lebanon with the ironically titled "Civilized People." In this absurdist comedy punctuated by machine-gun fire, Christians and Muslims kidnap each other and a Palestinian maid offers to kill the hostages starving in the basement because "Madame will hear their screams." Fundamentalism and a bullying, amorous school teacher upset the relationship between a working mother and her son in Atef Hetata's "The Closed Doors." Their ramshackle Egyptian village serves as a symbolic rat maze for the boy struggling with his emerging, Oedipal-tinged sexuality. The arbitrary nature of authority plays out to comic effect in Dimos Avdeliodis' "The Four Seasons of the Law" (Greece), when a succession of guards are sent to police an insular rural town and in Valery Ogorodnikov's "Barracks" (Russia) the setting for a clash of refugees, war criminals and perverts following Lenin's death.

As with the frantic citizens of "Eeny Meeny," a sense of confusion and loss haunts the Germans interviewed in the documentary, "After the Fall." The collapse of communism may have been the most celebrated event of this generation, but uncertainty stands in the place of the one-time "death strip" known as the Berlin Wall. That and a mega shopping complex. Berliners east and west explain with sadness that assimilation was simply a given in the government's haste to demolish the barrier. Using images of spinning carnival rides and ominous construction cranes, filmmakers Frauke Sandig and Eric Black ponder the ironies of a democratic victory that erased history overnight.

A proposed shopping mall disrupts a vibrant corner of Beirut when a family of settled refugees are presented with an eviction notice. Joana Hadjitthomas' "Around the Pink House" resounds with the familiar promise of gentrification: a shining future and an end to the old, inefficient ways. The battle lines are drawn, neighbors become enemies, and the extended family plans an uproarious revenge.

Perhaps the most devastating portrait of globalization at this festival was Jean-Marie Teno's "A Trip to the Country." Returning to his home town in Cameroon after 33 years, Teno finds that the promises of freedom and modernity his people were fed have been broken. The once thriving villages and fertile cocoa fields are now junkyards and squats following years of "colonizing missions." Tragically, the colorful communal gatherings of a village that marked the highlight of his childhood summers have degraded into an annual drunken brawl sponsored by Coca-Cola and various beer companies.

Yet a ray of hope dazzled audiences in an April 25 world premiere at the Castro Theatre. "Blossoms of Fire" discloses the way a Mexican village has coped with modernization: by mostly ignoring it and, when necessary, fighting it. The Zapotec town of Juchitan -- for eons rumored to be an indigenous matriarchy of sexually voracious women and henpecked men ‚ is revealed to be a completely egalitarian society. In the markets and fiestas saturated with the bright colors of flowers and local fabrics, veteran documentarian Maureen Gosling captured the nuances of a place where gender and sexual preference are "a fluid concept." Work, food, art and celebration are interwoven as elaborately as their beautiful skirts. The women make and market crafts while the men farm and fish. Gays, lesbians and the transgendered "third sex" are interviewed in family settings unthinkable in most macho Latin cultures.

"The definition of power in Juchitan is not the same as ours. Political power is not more than family or community power," explained Gosling in an interview with indieWIRE. "There's much more of a balance between those realms as well as between the sexes. It made more sense to me as a natural way for the world to be."

The Oakland-based Gosling honed her skills as an assistant to Les Blank in his celebrated series of Cajun and Latin American documentaries. "I got interested in indigenous peoples after being in Peru, especially when [Werner] Herzog was filming native people. That was just mind-blowing," said Gosling of her work as an A.D. on "Burden of Dreams," Blank's making-of-"Fitzcarraldo" doc.

Production started slowly as Gosling and crew arrived on the heels of a damaging article in "Elle" magazine that rehashed myths of promiscuous Juchitan women and their 16-year-old lovers. "They totally associated us with the magazine. There were people that canceled interviews, there were people that were afraid of us, that were hurt," she recalled. Trust was gained after Gosling played a short film she edited from camera tests taken at a local fiesta.

And how have market pressures played on this seeming utopia? "There were worries. The government and the multinationals wanted to build projects like mines, airstrips, salinization plants, oil refineries, development projects," said Gosling, who added that most of the projects backed off. "The people learned through teach-ins and began to mobilize. They want it to be good for them, or not at all."

Poignant words and subversive films in a city that might be the textbook example of hyper-gentrification during the dot-com gold rush. For a festival that prospers wildly thanks to corporate largesse, this much is true: below the spotlights and beneath the tuxes, SFIFF is as radical ever.

[Carl Russo is a radio producer and frequent contributor to indieWIRE.]