New York: New Directors / New Films, 2016 

For the last 45 years curators from the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art have programmed the annual New Directors / New Films selection showcasing the most innovative films breaking the boundaries of traditional cinema. Held this year from March 16-27 ND/NF offered 27 feature and nine short films spanning a broad thematic spectrum and divergent film making approaches. This included, to name but a few, ghost stories, meditations abut the environment, presentation of the conflicts emerging from the clash between tradition and modernity, conceptual thrillers, anxiety generating religious beliefs, and cinema verite ventures. Socio-political issues were present in many films ranging from the ravages of drugs in Mexico or battles in Afghanistan to the depiction of settings for divergent social and ethnic groups. The festival certainly delivered on its promise of introducing unknown but influential directors from all over the world and presenting new films unlikely to find elsewhere.

NAKOM, T.W.Pittman and Kelly Daniela Noris, Ghana USA, 2016

A superbly filmed and well enacted film with a non-professional cast featuring generational conflict and the clash between traditional modes as prevalent in rural agricultural areas and modernity of urban life in Ghana’s city Kunasi. Iddrisu a medical student is forced to return from Kusani and university studies to his remotely located native farming village Nakom. His father has passed away and he must participate in the funeral and settle the affairs of his family living in a mud-hut compound.  He is confronted by the struggle of his mother with his father’s second wife, his brother Kamal refusing to work, debts to his uncle Napoleon from loaning large amounts to his father to fund Iddrisu’s studies, the challenge of losing the farm to settle the debt aggravated by the pregnancy of Fatima who used to live with his uncle for which Kamal is responsible. To make matters worse, his father’s farm is in bad shape having suffered from the drought which afflicted the region for the last years. While retaining the compulsory respect for the elders Iddrisu has to extend his stay to the end of the harvest. He is torn between obligations to the family and the desire to return to the university. He negotiates successfully the squabbles encountered, copes with the near death of Fatima in a premature birth, restores the family’s farm successfully and stays until the next harvest, though conflicted by the desire to return to his studies. The chief of the village tries to convince him to remain promising a job and the hand of his daughter and his uncle plans to waive the debts, because they both realize that the village needs his help to survive. But Iddrisu, in his quest for independence in spite of serving now as the  head of the family  decides to leave to continue his studies.   Nakom provides authentic insights into the life of the villagers and shows the tensions of inevitable changes.

DEMON, Marcin Wrona, Poland/Israel, 2015

When this feature of a haunted wedding premiered at a film festival its director M. Wrona was found in his hotel room apparently having committed suicide, an ominous sign.  In Wrona’s story Piotr returns from abroad to the village of his fiancée Zaneta and takes over a decrepit family home to get married here but discovers a skeleton on its grounds. While the wedding proceeds with most guests getting drunk he seems to be seeing an attractive female ghost dressed for a wedding. He dances with her and calls her by her name Hana. Piotr slowly unravels with epileptic attacks diagnosed by the doctor as a physical malady and by the village priest as mental illness. Zaneta’s father who has been suspicious of Piotr tries to cover the mysterious events through an unending stream of vodka for the guests, in his words “what we witnessed is just a collection of hallucinations”.  He suggests having Piotr committed. A search for the skeleton cannot uncover it and   the celebration continues.  Hana possessing Piotr’s body says that he has seen her family, that she is not dead and that she has come to marry him.   Suddenly Piotr is gone.  The retired village teacher who has stayed there all of his life refers to the Jewish community which once lived there, to the synagogue which is now a butcher’s shop and to the family of Hana. She disappeared mysteriously never to be found.  Jewish folklore comes alive in Demon, the Dybukk, an evil demon which invades a body, as Hana has possessed Piotr. In the film’s opening scene a woman drowns herself, in the closing the mostly drunken guests leave during the early morning hours crossing a funeral procession. Demon is an attractive feature combining a chilling mystery tale with absurd overtones against the serious but subtly shown background of the disappearance of the Jewish community from the village.

THITHI, Raam Reddy, India/USA, 2015

Filmed with digital equipment using mostly non-professional actors this first time feature by Raam Eddy is a celebration of Indian filmmaking outside the Bollywood parameter. The audience learns more about traditional Indian village life and the stressful transition to the contemporary world than college text books can teach. In this vibrant and colorful presentation the characters play themselves in their natural village habitat uninhibited by formal constraints staying in the realism of their own lives. The narrative and its subplots explore three generations, a grandfather aged 101, his sons, and grandchildren. The story encompasses the 11 days between the passing and the Thithi, his funeral ceremony. During that period the oldest son, Gadappa refuses to sign over the property he inherited from the patriarch to his son Thamahanna who wants to sell it but he agrees to disappear after the son pays him off having taken out an expensive loan. Gadappa wanders off and joins a band of shepherds in their simple life. Using costly forged documents attesting his father’s death the son finds a buyer and is under pressure to repay the loan. But when the Thithi is about to begin the shepherds cross the path of the funeral. Gadappa is found and joins the celebration. His son’s plot falls apart and he is dishonored. He cannot repay the loan and Gadappa has already distributed the money among the shepherds who he now joins again. Raam Reddy has successfully embraced realism as his principal cinematic approach and certainly demonstrates its merit. All elements are fused and the characters are vibrant in their self-presentation.  Thithi gained top awards in Locarno and Mumbai.

REMAINDER, Omer Fast, UK/Germany, 2015

This feature debut by the video artist Omer Fast, an adaptation of the 2005 novel by T. McCarthy is a conceptual thriller about Tom an individual standing next to a mysterious suitcase who is suddenly struck by an object falling from the sky. It induces an apparent amnesia which prevents him from recollecting what happened and who he is. Compensated by a large settlement obliging him to remain quiet about the accident he starts living as a recluse trying to remember his past with some fleeting memories of a few characters. He attempts to reconstruct his past following mental images up to the smallest details such as smells and an enclosed rooftop area for cats. Tom fills a building he bought with actors who have to follow precisely defined scripts. We do not know the source of his meticulously executed projects, possibly memoir traces, or hallucinations, or artistic creations. There is his fragmented consciousness balancing reality, reconstruction and mental imagery, the inside and the outside world in a never ending series of puzzles for the audience. The work is completed through a successfully staged bank heist  with the robbers killed by him and his escape to the beginning of the story, to the suitcase placed next to him when struck, completing the circle.

BEHEMOTH, Zhao Liang, China France, 2015

In this extraordinary documentary meditation about the environmental catastrophe in Inner Mongolia Zhao Liang presents a persuasive visual and poetic interpretation of the ravages the toxic coal and iron industry imposes on nature and the human consequences. Behemoth franks among the best films I have reviewed over the last year because of its superb cinematography, the creative structural approach and the inspiration Zhao derived from Dante’s The Divine Comedy. There are very few verbal exchanges in this film, but the subtext quoted verbatim from Dante offers a meaning structure. Sometimes the text is difficult to follow due to the stunning visual imagery of the film covering nature and the industries destroying it. Explosion of mountains to get at the coal, the deafening noise of steel mills, the silence of diminishing pastures with animals long gone, and the wheezing of invalid workers suffering from coal lungs vainly requesting compensations accompany the story. Skilled cinematography by Zhao Liang who lensed the film on 4K record the destruction of the eco-system presaging a termination of the civilization and cultures formerly homed in Inner Mongolia.  Zhao divides Behemoth in three parts. First, black and somber colors dominate the images. We encounter the coal mining industry transforming hillsides and pastoral areas into a dead gaping landscape, juxtaposing destruction with the few living on the borders of destruction.  Depiction of heavy machinery and the deep carving of coals and its extraction prevail. In the second part bright red colors of molten iron prevail presenting vividly Dante’s inferno of hell.  In the last part human consequence are shown ranging from miners hooked to oxygen tanks since their dust filled lungs no longer permit breezing to the stunted growth of children and images of newly built urban high rises without people and empty streets. As a documentary, Behemoth excels with a startling visual delivery which reinforces its questioning message of destruction of nature as driven by the quest for unrestricted economic growth.

Claus Mueller

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