“The Home Game” (Seth Shire)

January 15, 2024. ”The Home Game” is an irresistible, funny and charming documentary about one Icelandic town’s ambition to have a soccer game on it’s “pitch” (“soccer field”) in a match that is part of the Icelandic FA Cup (Football Association).  The town of Hellissandur, in West Iceland, put in the pitch in 1994.  It was an effort accomplished by a tightly knit community, with a population of only 396. 

The coach at the time, Vidar Gylfuson, wanted to christen the field, and honor Hellissandur, by having his team participate in a FA home game in 1996.  Through the bad luck of the draw his team was assigned to a match in a town far away.  If that was not bad enough, the Hellissandur team, Reynir FC, lost 10 – 0 and was beaten by a golfing organization.  Considering how difficult it is to score in soccer to begin with, this defeat was particularly embarrassing. “The Home Game” picks up the story in 2020 with Gylfuson’s son, Kari Vidarsson, trying to revive his father’s dream of having an FA game on Hellissandur’s pitch.

“1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture” (Wendy Moscow)

(left to right) Director Sharon “Rocky” Roggio and film critic Wendy Moscow at the reception after the DOC NYC screening in November, 2022

Note: I originally wrote about this film after having seen it at DOC NYC 2022. When I saw that it was having its theatrical release here in New York City this week at the Village East Cinema, I decided to re-post the article. I’m hoping that it will pique your curiosity enough to go see it while you can.

December 3, 2023.  Living in New York City, where couples of varying gender identities walk down the street hand-in-hand, companies fall over each other to show their support for Pride Month activities and many churches hang out rainbow flags and have signs welcoming LGBTQ+ people, it’s easy to forget that there are parts of the country (and, I’m sure, even places in this city) where those who are not hetero-normative are struggling to reconcile their Christianity with their sexual orientation — people for whom what the bible says shapes their sense of self-worth. These folks usually come from fundamentalist, evangelical churches whose preachers inveigh regularly against the “gay lifestyle,” justifying their position with several biblical passages that appear to condemn homosexuality. But do they really?

Sharon “Rocky” Roggio’s film, “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture” sets out to show us that, prior to 1946, the word “homosexual,” does not appear in the bible at all. Roggio follows writers and scholars Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford as they do the laborious work of uncovering who made the change and why. It’s important to know that the change is made in the Revised Standard Version — one of the most widely used bibles in the English speaking world, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. What is actually a mistranslation and conflation of two Greek words, “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai,” (roughly, “effeminacy” and “sexual pervert”) has been weaponized against LBGTQ+ people in Christian settings from that point forward. Roggio (whose interest in this topic emerges from personal experience — she not only grew up in a fundamentalist environment, but her father is a fundamentalist preacher) wants us to understand the far-ranging implications of this misuse of language for our society. How many suicides of LGBTQ+ Christians might have been prevented if these words had not been translated as “homosexual”?

DOC NYC 2023 – “They Shot the Piano Player” (Wendy Moscow)

November 15, 2023.  As I write this, I am listening to the glorious music of Bossa Nova pianist Tenório Jr., the subject of a new animated film whose title references the French New Wave (Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player”) as well as having a literal meaning referencing our unfortunate titular musician. The Brazilian Bossa Nova composers and players had a great fondness for the films of the French New Wave. Both movements were edgy and intellectual. It was the late 1950s/early 1960s. We, the viewers, enter into the subject matter much later. It’s 2009 at the Strand Bookstore, and Jeff Harris is being interviewed about a book he is writing, ostensibly about the origins of Bossa Nova. But he becomes obsessed with one particular musician, Tenório Jr., considered to be the most influential pianist in that musical style. While Tenório is on tour in Argentina with his band in 1976, he vanishes without a trace, after leaving the hotel to get a sandwich for his girlfriend. Tenorio was also married with four children.

I should mention, at this point, that Bossa Nova is a unique blend of Brazilian samba, U.S. West Coast jazz, and other elements from world music. The soundtrack of this film flows richly with piece after piece of the best the genre has to offer. The animation itself is drenched in saturated primary colors (not to mention purples and pinks), as befits Brazil, and the scenes of Rio at night are wonderfully atmospheric. There is a fantastical quality to animation that works especially well during the concert footage — for example, a rippling keyboard under Tenorio’s expressive fingers.

DOC NYC – “Uncropped” (Seth Shire)

“Uncropped” which had its DOC NYC 2023 is a visually stunning, roller coaster ride of a documentary taking the viewer through the world of photographer James Hamilton. Street photographer, war photographer, photographer of pop culture icons, portraitist – Hamilton’s pictures form a cultural diary of New York City from the 1960s to the 2000s.

“Something in my brain tells me when to shoot,” Hamilton explains about his photography. Having no preference for shooting in black and white or color he explains that if he is shooting using color film, he sees everything in color. If he is shooting with black and white film, he sees everything in black and white. The iconic black and white photographs he took of BB King, Janis Joplin and others, after talking his way into a music festival in Texas in 1969, are almost luminescent.

DOC NYC 2023 – “The Mother of all Lies” (Wendy Moscow)

November 11, 2023.  “At twelve, I was a body with no memories,” says Asmae El Moudir – a poignant moment in a poetic and disturbing film “The Mother of All Lies” which El Moudir directed. An exploration of remembering, misremembering, and the hidden trauma of the repression and violence visited upon the people of her Casablanca community in 1981, the film takes us on a journey that peels back the layers of a wrenching family history.

She does this, ingeniously, by enlisting her father to construct a scale model of their neighborhood as it was then, peopling it with beautifully crafted figurines representing her family members (dressed by her mother), and imploring her flesh and blood kin to travel back in time with her. In the Q and A following the screening I attended, El Moudir shied away from the word “therapy,” but her technique is certainly reminiscent of the reenactment therapy used by psychologists, which employs miniatures to help people work through trauma, recover memories, and access unconscious feelings.

The miniature village is jewel-like and gorgeously shot (El Moudir had to create special lenses to do so) and we are immersed in this world of the past. Intercut with that world is the world of the present, where the director’s parents are creating additions to the set upon which an emotional reckoning would play out, and her grandmother, a dictatorial matriarch, pretends not to hear when asked why there are no photos from that period.

DOC NYC 2023 – “Scooter LaForge: a life of art” (Seth Shire)

November 11, 2023.  “Scooter LaForge: a life of art” is a colorful portrait of the titular artist. Producer, director and primary animator Ethan Minsker has given this documentary its own very colorful, animated style as lines and art work are drawn around its scenes and interviewees. At one point, LaForge, while talking about influence that cartoons have had on him, Minsker tranforms him into a talking cartoon character on a television screen. The result of these touches is a very appropriate enhancement that gives this documentary the same playfulness and color that LaForge brings to his artwork.

Scooter LaForge is a painter who fills canvases, walls, clothes and seemingly any type of object that can hold his art. If one medium doesn’t work, he goes to another. As culture critic Michael Musto, interviewed in the film, points out, if he puts one of LaForge’s pictures over his head then it’s fashion. Curator Ted Riederer compares LaForge to downtown, neo-expressionist artists such as Basquiat and Keith Haring who also painted on clothes.

DOC NYC 2023 – SHORTS, “ANIMAL FARM” (Wendy Moscow)

“Visible Mending” – Stop Motion Animation

November 9, 2023.  One of the things I look forward to at the DOC NYC festival is discovering short form documentaries that are often impossible to see anywhere else.

Here are my brief reviews of three in the “animal” category that caught my attention, all of which you can see in person or online. (Info on how to do that is at the bottom of this article.)

Not Wasting My Time

Director Derek Howard follows cat rescuer Steven Hock around an unidentified New York City neighborhood at night, as he waits patiently, strategizes with a colleague, and even awkwardly executes a mid-air fence straddle, in his mission to trap stray cats. An irate homeowner calls the cops when Hock positions a trap in his driveway, but nothing deters this dedicated cat lover from his self-appointed rounds. The fly-on-the-wall style allows the viewer to be immersed in Hock’s life and marvel at this cat whisperer’s empathy as he strokes a cat (in his cat-filled apartment) that he claims has “never been touched before.” What he asserts may be a cliché, but I don’t doubt it’s true, that he experiences stress relief when he interacts with his purring charges.

Hock actively finds homes for the cats he traps, and here the film takes an interesting turn, as the director wisely chooses to include Hock’s outraged but stammering reaction to online accusations of his farming out cats who are not socialized or are sick. I had some questions as well, though perhaps they are beyond the scope of this film. Cat trappers I know personally do TNR — trap, neuter, return — in which ferals (who aren’t human-friendly enough to be adoptable) are returned to their colony without the ability to reproduce. There’s no evidence in the film that Hock takes his rescues to be neutered (or provides any vet care), and it seems that, perhaps, the criticisms are justified. So we’re meeting someone who is unconventional, even among his cat-rescuing colleagues. Even so, there is no doubt that Hock’s love and concern for the strays in his neighborhood is the guiding force in his life. With great sincerity, he says, “No time spent with cats is ever wasted.”

DOC NYC 2023 – “The Walk” (Wendy Moscow)

November 9, 2023.  As gorgeous as the cinematography by Jean Dakar is and how compelling the images are, “The Walk” is not exactly the film about Amal – the 12 foot tall refugee puppet traveling the world in search of a place to live – that I wanted it to be. The giant puppet very effectively embodies a 10-year-old Syrian girl fleeing a war that left her homeless and adrift in a sometimes unwelcoming world. The brilliance of her original crafters, and the three puppeteers required to operate her, bring her amazingly to life in a way that evokes a liminal space between deep sorrow and the joy that comes from meeting new people and the irrepressible curiosity of being 10.

One of my favorite aspects of the film was getting to know the two main puppeteers, both refugees – one Syrian and one Palestinian – whose personal experiences with war and displacement imbue Amal with pathos and authenticity. The “fairy tale” aspects were, I felt, less successful.

“The Beasts” Opens at Film Forum on July 28 (Seth Shire)

July 27, 2023. Opening at Film Forum on Friday, July 28 “The Beasts” is the winner of nine Goyas (Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars) including the award for Best Picture. The story, a work of fiction inspired by an actual incident, is patiently paced, with a sustained sense of tension running just beneath the surface as the film carefully and methodically introduces and sets up its atmosphere, location, characters, motivations and desires. At 138 minutes the pace is leisurely but never dull. The story kept me continuously off balance, moving in directions that were unexpected. I was intrigued, wondering how the situations presented would be resolved.

Tribeca 2023 – “Maya” and “The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend” (Wendy Moscow)

June 16, 2023.  One of the most enjoyable parts of the Tribeca Festival 2023 (or any year’s Tribeca Festival for that matter) is the Immersives.These installations use virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to “immerse” viewers into the lives and environments of their subjects.

A short explanation. Virtual reality requires the use of a headset which gives the viewer a 360 degree view of an environment and covers the viewer’s peripheral vision. Augmented reality uses either a headset or an iPad to add visual images to an actual environment. An example might be using augmented reality with one’s phone or iPad and seeing a tree grow out of one’s living room floor. Obviously the tree is not there, but seen through a device using augmented reality, it appears to be.

Two VR installations that I enjoyed immensely this year, but in very different ways, were Maya: The Birth (Chapter 1) and The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend. Both address the issue of female oppression, patriarchy and women’s empowerment, but there the similarities end.

Maya, whose name means both magic and illusion in Sanskrit, is a contemporary girl from a traditional Indian family living in London. When she gets her first menstrual period, her life spirals out of control, as she’s forced to deal with the patriarchal notion that menstruating women are shameful and that the subject is taboo, even in modern-day England.