FORM-Idea

@BeverlyAAndrews

Toward the end of 2021, many film festivals around the world welcomed the new year, hoping it would herald a return to in person festivals.  Sadly for Sundance with the arrival of Omicron and the dramatic rise of infections, festival organisers reluctantly took the decision to again host the festival online.   Although this was a disappointment for many of Sundance’s fans, it did mean that for those who have never travelled to wintery Utah before, they would have the opportunity to sample the festival’s cinematic gems online from the comfort of their homes.  Below in no specific order are some of my personal festival favourites.

With the Beijing Winter Olympics now in full flow there is perhaps no more timely a documentary then this one, made by Violet Columbus and Ben Klein.  The film looks at the lives of three prominent Chinese exiles, all dissidents who fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protest.  Christine Choy, a famous Chinese documentary filmmaker in her own right interviews these men and these interviews are edited together alongside those Choy herself conducted years ago, shortly after the tragic events of that time.

Directors Violet Columbus and Ben Klein reunites Choy with her interviewees and places these interviews alongside, the previous ones, as well as new interviews she conducts with a younger generation of Chinese students, almost all know nothing of this historic event.   Choy leaves her present home of New York and travels to Taiwan, Maryland, and Paris to meet these men and discuss how their lives have changed has a result of their decision to take a stand and support this pro-democracy movement. While China seeks to erase any trace of the events of that tragic day, Wu’er Kaixi, Yan Jaiqi and Wan Runnan are in many ways living reminders of what really took place.

Wu’er is the youngest and now lives in Taiwan, a country he loves, but in interviews with him he nevertheless highlights the personal cost he has had to pay.  Desperate now to return home to see his family at least one last time.  In the film we see his sometimes-hilarious attempts to get arrested by the Chinese authorities. An arrest he hopes would lead him to being deported back to his native home and offer a chance of seeing his parents.  

Wu’er states that although he is proud of what he did, he at the time, had no idea of the price he would ultimately have to pay. 

Political science specialist Yan Jiaqi is perhaps the most reflective of the three, as he discusses the death of close friends from that generation.  He highlights the isolation exiles feel around the world when they find themselves living in a country which is not their own. 

Wan Runnan of the trio seems perhaps to be the happiest.  Living in Paris and now retired, Wan Runnan, seems to have made peace with his new life and fallen in love with the city he has been exiled to.   He says with a beaming smile that when one is young, one should live in New York but once older it must be Paris.   There are only moments when you catch a glimpse again of the price he has had to pay for the choices he made during that time.

This beautiful documentary highlights that while the Beijing Olympic Games presents one image of China, an image the Chinese government very much wants us to see, there are darker shadows lurking just out of view, shadows which are very much at odds with that image, shadows from the country’s past as well as its present.  

A very different film would be the utterly delightful Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack.  The film is both a triumph and a delight.  The perfect film to shoot during a pandemic since it mainly consists of a series of encounters between a late middle-aged retired schoolteacher, Nancy and the male sex worker, Leo, she has hired.  In less assured hands this film, beautifully directed by Sophie Hyde, could so easily have become a Pretty Woman gender reverse. Fortunately, it is not. What it is though is a rather profound meditation on our attitudes about sex, intimacy and loneliness.    Beautiful and at times blisteringly funny it is a timely work during these Covid times.   

The film highlights our desperate desire to connect even if it’s something we are not quite sure how to do.  Being a retired teacher, Nancy is far more comfortable correcting people rather than speaking directly to them.  She is also the widow of a satisfactory rather than happy marriage and now she desperately wants to experience sexual fulfilment at least once in her life.  In walks Leo Grande, an intelligent, handsome, and above all extremely patient young man who attempts to move pass the walls which Nancy can’t help erecting.    The film is delightfully non-judgemental about Nancy’s choices and in many ways celebrates her decision to take her life into her own hands, it also perhaps quietly suggests that sexual fulfilment and true intimacy are not mutually exclusive.

The beautiful Marte Um (Mars One) from Brazil looks at the Martins family, a family who have miraculously managed to climb out of Brazil’s poorer classes and have carved out a lower middle-class life.  The couple’s children’s desires, for their future though are at odds with what their parents want for them. Their daughter has fallen in love with a slightly older girl, and they now want to live together.   The young son, to the father’s horror has no desire to become a champion footballer but rather has a passion for the stars, a passion he wants to put into practice by becoming an astronomer, a desire he confides only to his older sister. 

Marte Um (Mars One) is a gentle and beautiful film which does not in any way shy away from looking at the scale of Brazil’s poverty nor the economically tenuous lives many who live there have to face.  And yet the film leaves you with a wonderful sense of hope for this sweet family, you feel that once they can accept each other they are then better equipped to face all the world can throw at them.

The documentary Descendant tells the astonishing story of the residents of Africatown in Mobil, Alabama.  Descendants of the very last slave ship to reach America.  Shortly after the ship’s arrival that country’s Civil war commenced, and the slaves suddenly found they were free.  There are few African American communities where individuals know not only the exact date of their ancestors’ arrival but for some in this community the very names of those ancestors.

The film though charts the discovery of the ruins of that very same ship which for over a century had remained hidden just off the banks of the very same community where the residents now live.  This discovery interestingly brings the community even closer together, a community, which, even includes the descendent of the captain of the very slave ship. They decide to find a way to tell the story of that time so future generations can learn the lessons of the past.

My personal favourite though would have to be the documentary short entitled The Panola project, a film which looks at the heroic efforts of Dorothy Oliver to keep her small town of Panola, Alabama, safe from COVID-19.  Dorothy runs a makeshift vaccine coordination centre from the convenience store she runs out of a mobile home.

Today, nearly 99% of adults in her town have received their vaccine injections, in a state which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.

One of the most touching moments in the film comes when a young man Dorothy thought had skipped his appointment drives up.  She can’t stop smiling when she sees him. You feel for her that every individual in that small-town matters and when you realised that out of the close to a million fatalities America has experienced so far due to Covid, communities like Panola could have been very badly hit, you see the importance of the work she has carried out.  The Panola Project clearly illustrates that it only takes one person to make a difference.