The Loft Film Festival 2017
Better than ever, now in its seventh year, the spectacular program with its filmmaking guests and a committed community of dedicated and intellectually alive filmgoers invigorates the mind and activist tendencies already in play.
Take for instance, University of Arizona Professor Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, speaking with Regents’ Professor Toni Massaro about social justice and the environment. Here he is, in person, being honored as every word he speaks is treated as a jewel. Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his most recent being Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. An ardent free speech advocate, Chomsky has published and lectured widely on U.S. foreign policy, Mideast politics, terrorism, democratic society and war. Chomsky, who joined the UA faculty this fall, is a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. He also holds the title of Agnese Nelms Haury Chair, which is sponsored by the Agnes Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice.
Following with the 25th anniversary screening of the documentary, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media , directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, these two events are the first time official welcoming of Chomsky into the community. The award-winning documentary showcases Chomsky’s message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate public opinion. He also received The Lofty Achievement Award, presented each year at the Loft Film Fest to an individual whose career and body of work have significantly contributed to the world of cinema, and who continues to inspire, entertain and enlighten audiences.
The second 25th anniversary screening and the bestowing of the Lee Marvin Maverick Award named after the Oscar-winning actor and former Tucsonan and presented to those film artists whose work embodies a bold spirit of daring, originality and independence went to Allison Anders and her Gas, Food Lodging. The first indie contemporary movie about a single mother and the first of many more about trailer park people, starring a young Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk, Brooke Adams and Pierce Brosnan, it is just as good today as it was when it premiered at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and went on to earn five Independent Spirit Award nominations, with Fairuza Balk winning Best Female Lead. That same year, Anders won the Best New Director Award from the New York Film Critics Circle.
Other great films that screened here are the Sundance premiering and Oscar bound (we hope at least) Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (reviewed here).
Awake: A Dream From Standing Rock directed by Myron Dewey/Josh Fox/James Spione, 2017, USA, 84 mins. Standing Rock North Dakota has become one of the most watched places on earth. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe captured world attention through their peaceful resistance. While many followed news reports of what transpired at Standing Rock, the compelling new documentary, Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, captures the story of Native-led defiance that forever changed how we fight for clean water, our environment and the future of our planet. “A lesson in resistance … an evocative wake-up call told as a visual poem.” — Jude Dry, Indiewire .
The Tent Village with director Nilima Abrams here in person, 2016, India, 27 mins. is a story about the lives of road-side dwellers in S. India, filmed by their teenaged children and friends. The film is not, however just another movie about poverty in India, pointing fingers, or patronizing. The young filmmakers provide rare, nuanced, and gentle yet honest perspectives on child marriage, alcoholism and caste stigma, exploring the interplay between external oppression, internalized self-defeat, and hope. Though set in India, the story’s themes relate to issues faced everywhere, such as stereotypes, gender relations and social mobility The Tent Village is part of a week-long series on Women’s Empowerment and Human Rights from November 13th- November 17th. See the trailer here. The other featured event in this series, Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan, A One-Woman Play by Dipti Mehta will also be shown.
Brimstone & Glory directed by Viktor Jakovleski, 2017 (Mexico/USA, in Spanish with English subtitles, 67 mins., Not Rated), from the creative team behind Beasts of the Southern Wild comes the astonishing, explosive, ecstatic documentary, Brimstone & Glory. The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of an extravagant festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days. More than three quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of crafting fireworks by hand. A true cinematic experience that must be seen on the big screen, Brimstone & Glory honors the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.
Faces Places directed byAgnès Varda & JR (2017, France, in French with English subtitles, 89 mins., Rated PG) 89-year old Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7; The Gleaners & I), one of the leading filmmakers of the French New Wave, and acclaimed 33 year-old French photographer and muralist JR teamed up to co-direct this enchanting documentary/road movie. Kindred spirits, Varda and JR share a lifelong passion for images and how they are created, displayed and shared. Together they travel around the villages of France in JR’s photo truck meeting locals, learning their stories and producing epic-size portraits of them. The photos are prominently displayed on houses, barns, storefronts and trains revealing the humanity in their subjects, and themselves. Faces Places documents these heart-warming encounters as well as the unlikely, tender friendship they formed along the way
Jane directed by Brett Morgen (2017, USA, 90 mins., Not Rated) Drawing from over 100 hours of jaw-dropping, never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the National Geographic archives for over 50 years, Oscar nominated director Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) tells the story of Jane, a woman whose chimpanzee research challenged the male-dominated scientific consensus of her time and revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Set to a rich orchestral score from legendary composer Philip Glass, the film offers an unprecedented, intimate and poetic portrait of Jane Goodall — a trailblazer who defied the odds to become one of the world’s most respected and admired conservationists.
On the lighter side, but still relevent, The Divine Order Friday, directed by Petra Biondina Volpe (2017, Switzerland, in German/English/Italian/ Swiss German with English subtitles, 96 mins., Not Rated) is set in Switzerland in 1971 — a time and place where, despite the worldwide social upheavals of the previous decade, women were still denied the right to vote. When unassuming and dutiful housewife Nora (Marie Leuenberger, winner of a Best Actress award at Tribeca) is forbidden by her husband to take a part-time job, her frustration leads to her becoming the poster child of her town’s suffragette movement. Her newfound celebrity brings humiliation, threats, and the potential end to her marriage, but, refusing to back down, she convinces the women in her village to go on strike … and makes a few startling discoveries about her own liberation. Uplifting and crowd-pleasing, this charming, captivating film about regular women demanding their right to an equal voice is a time-capsule that could not be more timely.
I Am Another You directed by Nanfu Wang (2017, USA, 80 mins., Not Rated) Documentary filmmaker Nanfu Wang buys a one-way ticket to Florida with the goal of documenting every conversation she has along the way. A few days into her trip, she meets a handsome, free-spirited traveler named Dylan, a young man who has rejected his comfortable, middle-class upbringing to lead a vagabond lifestyle of absolute freedom and mobility. Nanfu decides to follow him across the state, eating out of garbage cans, dodging the police, and hitching rides with strangers as he embraces a life of intentional homelessness. Unfolding like a low-key mystery, I Am Another You is an incisive and powerful examination of the myth and bitter realities of America’s rugged individualism.
My Friend Dahmer directed by Marc Meyers (2017, USA, 107 mins., Rated R) Based on the cult graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer chronicles the origins of the man. The monster. The high school senior. Writer/director Marc Meyers adapts graphic novelist (and actual Dahmer classmate) Derf Backderf’s source material with a careful eye, presenting this origin story with a thoughtful approach and drawing a revelatory performance from former Disney star Ross Lynch (Teen Beach Movie) as the teenage Jeff. Shot on location not just in Dahmer’s hometown, but also in his actual childhood home, the film nails the necessary period details with stunning accuracy. A highly unique biopic, My Friend Dahmer entertains with its frighteningly compelling narrative while simultaneously presenting a nuanced snapshot of mental illness, the inherent desire for human interaction, and the perils of duplicitous friendship.
The Desert Bride directed by Cecilia Atan & Valeria Pivato (2017, Argentina/Chile, in Spanish with English subtitles, 78 mins., Not Rated) Human emotions are as subtle as the beauty of the Argentinian plains in the delicate and keenly-observed drama, The Desert Bride. Acclaimed actress Paulina García (Gloria, Little Men) stars as Teresa, a lonely Chilean woman who has spent all of her life attending to the needs of others as a live-in maid for an upper class family in Buenos Aires. But when they can no longer afford to employ her, they find Teresa work with their in-laws, who live miles away in San Juan. Although daunted by the prospect of starting a completely new life, Teresa embarks on a cross-country road trip to her new job. When her bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, in the land of the miraculous “Saint Correa”, she ends up losing her bag with all her belongings. Forced to spend several hours in a small desert town, Teresa crosses paths with Gringo (Claudio Rissi), a free-spirited door-to-door salesman, who offers to help.
Ismael’s Ghosts directed by Arnaud Desplechin (2017, France, in French with English subtitles, 116 mins., Not Rated) The new film from acclaimed French director Arnaud Desplechin (A Christmas Tale) is a delirious love letter to the art of cinema, featuring an all-star cast including Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mathieu Amalric and Louis Garrel. Phantoms swirl around Ismael (Amalric), a filmmaker in the throes of writing a spy thriller based on the unlikely escapades of his brother, Ivan Dedalus (Garrel). His only true stability, his relationship with Sylvia (Gainsbourg), is upended, as is the life of his Jewish documentarian mentor and father-in-law (László Szabó), when Ismael’s wife Carlotta (Cotillard), who disappeared twenty years earlier returns. Like one of Hitchcock’s fragile, delusional femmes fatales, she expects that her husband and father are still in thrall to her. A brilliant shape-shifter — part farce, part melodrama — Ismael’s Ghosts is finally about the process of creating a work of art and all the madness that requires.
The Ballad of Lefty Brown directed by Jared Moshé (2017, USA, 111 mins., Rated R). Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman) is a 63-year-old sidekick. Loyal, crotchety and rarely taken seriously, he’s ridden with Western legend Eddie Johnson (Peter Fonda) for his entire adult life. Now Johnson has been appointed Senator of Montana, and despite the objections of his spirited wife Laura (Kathy Baker), he plans to leave Lefty in charge of his ranch. But when a rustler kills Johnson, Lefty is forced from his partner’s shadow. Devastated by guilt, he sets out on a journey that will reunite him with old friends US Marshall Tom Harrah and Governor James Bierce as he confronts the ugly realities of frontier justice. This revisionist take on the classic Western, in which the sidekick takes center stage and becomes the hero, is a gorgeously- photographed (shot on 35mm film), beautifully-acted homage to the venerable American genre featuring an appealing return-to-leading-manperformance by Bill Pulllman.
Marjorie Prime directed byMichael Almereyda (2017, USA, 99 mins.,Not Rated). Jon Hamm, Geena Davis and Tim Robbins star in this haunting vision of a foreseeable future where death has become slightly less final. When her husband Walter dies, 85-year-old Marjorie (Lois Smith), who is struggling with dementia, decides to replace him with a Prime — an artificially intelligent avatar that looks and sounds exactly like Walter did when he was 40 (played by Jon Hamm). As Marjorie oscillates between presence and absence, her new Prime provides her with much needed support and warmth. But for her daughter Tess (Davis), and son-in-law Jon (Robbins), Walter feels like a false image, an interloper who is stealing Marjorie’s memories and corrupting the fabric of what they once had as a family. Acclaimed writer/director Michael Almereyda’s beautiful and unnerving adaptation of the critically acclaimed play by Jordan Harrison explores issues of memory and mortality while raising provocative questions about our uneasy relationship with technology.
And for fun openers, Revenge of the Nerds with acclaimed actor Curtis Armstrong (aka “Booger”) in person! Directed by Jeff Kanew (1984, USA, 90 mins, Rated R) this 1984 comedy classic, Revenge of the Nerds, was filmed in Tucson on the University of Arizona campus! Curtis participated in a post-film Q&A, and copies of his new memoir, Revenge of the Nerd: Or … The Singular Adventures of the Man Who Would Be Booger, was available for sale and signing at this event following the Q&A, courtesy of University of Arizona BookStores. In the beloved Tucson-shot college comedy Revenge of the Nerds, geeky freshmen Gilbert (Anthony Daniels) and Lewis (Robert Carradine) are having a hard time fitting in among the jocks and cool kids at Adams College (played by the University of Arizona).
Another wonderful diversion was the Isabel Huppert musical Souvenir (2016, Belgium/Luxembourg/France, in French with English subtitles, 90 mins., Not Rated) directed by Bavo Defurne and produced by Yves Verbraeken, a beautifully designed film shot on locations of art deco Belgium, giving the beautiful, enigmatic, lythe Huppert a gorgeous 22 year old love interest in a gentle sexy film of love conquering all. Originating out of the 2014 Berlinale Talents, Souvenir features music with lyrics by director and producer Defurne and Verbraeken. The inimitable Isabelle Huppert stars in in this touching and endearing musical romance about a middle-aged factory worker whose long-ago brush with fame is reignited by an unexpected relationship with a younger man. An unassuming model employee in a pâté factory, Liliane’s (Huppert) monotonous routine is thrown into disarray when one day at work she meets the handsome 22-year-old aspiring boxer Jean (Kévin Azaïs), who excitedly recognizes her from a European singing competition she almost won many years before. Jean’s enthusiasm encourages Liliane to rediscover her talents and glory, bringing her out of the shadows and back into the spotlight. However, as Liliane’s celebrity rises, Jean begins to learn the reasons that her past fame was so short-lived as old ghosts and bad habits from her bitter past resurface. Sweet, simple and full of life, Souvenir is an uplifting story that proves it’s never too late to find happiness.
