Mayor

— “Mayor” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      This was a welcome surprise and ended up being one of my favorite films of the festival. I worried that following the mayor of Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital, might be a dose of too much global conflict. What I got was a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall look at the daily life of a second term, Christian mayor who’s calm and purposeful, worried about park benches and fountains and making Ramallah a nice place to live even in the midst of endless occupation. He’s constantly moving, meeting constituents, brokering deals, worrying about branding and presenting the best image to the outside world, and all the other details of running a city, even if its a city without a country. The film was shot in 2017, just as the U.S. announced it would be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, complicating things even more by adding a global dimension to the job. Although the mayor’s focus is always on making things better for the citizens of Ramallah, he knows ending the occupation of Palestine is the ultimate goal. For me, it was helpful to see a small piece of the issue, to visualize the place, and to know the similarities we share. It opened my eyes. Although the mayor was flexible about many things, he was clear about where a line must be drawn: “It’s about dignity. And when it comes to dignity, I think it’s something non-negotiable.”
      Description from the T/F website: “Musa Hadid is the wry, level-headed mayor of Ramallah, a historically Christian city that has become the de facto capital of Palestine. Set during the Christmas season, ‘Mayor’ observes Hadid, e-cig in hand, as he traverses Ramallah to meet with constituents and manage the quotidian predicaments facing the city, all the while working toward a day when his nation will be truly free. Director David Osit’s patient camera reveals moments of absurd humor, lyricism, and even white-knuckle tension, all while allowing the less newsworthy aspects of oppression to be felt in indelible, organic ways.”

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[2020. 87 min. Directed by David Osit.]
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/mayor-review-ramallah-musa-hadid-1202215500/

Boys State

— “Boys State” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      This is just a nicely done documentary, focusing on a few key participants at Texas’ 2018 Boys State. It’s easy to get caught up in the political pressures and root for one candidate over another. Some candidates value honesty and sincerity while other target their messages and shift priorities, but that's to be expected since Boys State is a microcosm and national politics operate similarly, encompassing all kinds of values and strategies. It’s a glimpse at the generation about to enter the political arena and a reminder they may not be all that different. It’s also very well done and worth seeing. (Apple and A24 have acquired all global rights)
      Description from the T/F website: “What will the United States look like in 30 years? Over a single summer week, an ambitious and accomplished crop of teenage boys from across the state of Texas assembles at the state capital. Some plaster their bedrooms with portraits of Reagan; others look to Bernie as they imagine revolution. Strangers to one another, each is randomly assigned to one of two fictional political parties. Together, they must reach consensus on a platform and nominee to run head-to-head with the other party’s choice for the title of 2018 Texas Boys State governor. ‘Boys State’ is a miracle of documentary production, with a perceptive camera crew that happens to be everywhere at just the right time. We’re there as stars are born and campaigns come crashing down (monitor your Instagram accounts!). This delightful, insightful, and rousing film watches as its charismatic subjects figure out if it’s possible to unite a divided house.”

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[2020. 109 min. Directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss.]
https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/boys-state-review-1203489812/

So Late So Soon

— “So Late So Soon” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      I was enchanted by this tender look at two artists living in a home they’ve shared and embellished for decades on Chicago’s north side. Over the years they've also settled into all sorts of routines and married ways, but a tenderness shines through even when they bicker, and there's beauty to behold in every corner of their house and their hearts. As they near the end of the life they've made with each other, it’s hard not to hold your breath just a little, wanting to witness their energies a bit longer before the film ends. I like this sort of tender, little film.
      Description from the T/F website: “Chicago artists Jackie and Don Seiden are a half-century into their marriage, time spent creating distinct yet congruous bodies of work. Jackie makes art of everything around her. Central to her practice is a recognition of the fragility of materials. That conceptual interest has turned into daily reality, as both her body and one of her most ambitious art projects, her canary-yellow Victorian house, start to fall apart. Don’s work reveals a mind resigned to death. He has always been interested in the rules of nature, and now he finds himself facing inevitable health scares. ‘So Late So Soon’ is a sensitively constructed, playful character study that honors Jackie and Don’s art, and even becomes a part of it, while also locating in it glimmers of their essence.”

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[2020. 70 min. Directed by Daniel Hymanson.]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/late-soon-review-1282758

The Viewing Booth

— “The Viewing Booth” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      I am always interested in films that consider the effects of perspective on truth and reality, and in the gray edges that exist in so many things thought of as black and white. A viewing booth becomes an interesting contrivance to drive the point home at a time when so many people are pulled to the left or the right, polarized and set in their own perspectives and truths, where opinions shouted at cameras and across the social network are viewed as “news” instead of opinion or propaganda. It’s good to have films like this to remind us that we all see through different lenses and we all wear our own blinders.
      Description from the T/F website: “A student’s face is bathed in blue light as she sits alone, scanning YouTube. She is instructed by a researcher to watch a series of carefully curated videos designed to evoke a political or emotional response about international human rights issues, but the images take on new meaning under the scrutiny of a different perspective. As the researcher attempts to test belief, fact, and fiction, this film reminds us that anything is true from the right angle. A psychological thriller directed by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, whose previous films ‘The Law in These Parts’ (2011) and ‘The Inner Tour’ (2001) each concern the Israeli occupation of Palestine, ‘The Viewing Booth’ explores the production, consumption, and proliferation of media in polarized times.”

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[2019. 70 min. Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz.]
http://ubiquarian.net/2020/02/film-review-viewing-booth-2019-raanan-alexandrowicz/

The Metamorphosis of Birds

— “The Metamorphosis of Birds” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      A day after I saw this film I overhead a conversation in which someone said it was their favorite film of the festival. I can only shake my head and say that's proof “there’s something for everyone” at True/False. I didn’t even make it through this mess of story that must have existed in layers hidden to me. Whatever value it has is packed in a film that often looks more like a slide show than a film, and an amateur slide show at that. When there was motion, it often should have been severely edited. I think it may just have been too intimate a tale or too Promethean a telling of the tale. Maybe it was just outside my cultural grasp. Whatever it was, it was wordy and subtitles flew across the screen continuously, to the point that you could miss the visuals entirely, particularly when trying to read white subtitles on white. All I can say is that some people loved it, and I didn't.
      Description from the T/F website: “A family preserves its memories in this epistolary love story. While Henrique is away at sea, his lifelong love Beatriz is left at home learning about plants and taking care of their six children. The couple keeps in touch through letters and journal entries recited throughout the film. “Let me die, standing up like the trees,” is whispered from a past note in a red-lit corridor. Beatriz and Henrique’s oldest son, Jacinto, wants to be a bird. We observe the growth, love, and despair of Beatriz, Henrique, and their family via director Catarina Vasconcelos’s beautifully reimagination of this personal and intimate tale, sonically activated by the blossoming of flowers.”

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[2020. 101 min. Directed by Catarina Vasconcelos.]
https://www.cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/386207

Faith

— “Faith” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      I chose to see this film more out of curiosity than anything, wondering what a blend of Shaolin and Catholic doctrines might be. My reaction wasn’t great, but I stayed with it, my interest still piqued thanks to its cult undercurrents and uncomfortable aura. I guess it was, as advertised, “serene and unsettling,” but that’s about all it was—I wasn’t able get beyond those feelings to something I wanted to keep with me.
      Description from the T/F website: “At a rural Italian monastery, the Warriors of Light adhere to a curious blend of kung fu, Shaolin doctrine, and Catholicism. At the behest of their Master, the warriors engage in highly strenuous daily athletics. These routines put the disciples under intense psychological pressures – all with the impending threat of being banished from the community. After 11 years of dedicated documentation, shooting entirely in black and white, director Pendicini molds her film as an entrancing religious thriller. The aesthetic choices provide a stark visual reckoning for the followers who question their values of faith, freedom, and society, while fully immersing the viewer in a world that’s both serene and unsettling.”

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[2019. 93 min. Directed by Valentina Pedicini.]
https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/faith-review-1203414235/

Time

— “Time” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      The film does what you might expect—touches on the inequity of prison sentences, but also defines time lost from a prison sentence not just in terms of what the prisoner loses, but also as the times lost by family and friends continuing their lives without the inmate as part of them. What set the film apart for me was seeing “Fox” Rich’s spirit as she raises her family, continually advocating for her imprisoned husband, keeping her love for him front and center and somehow conveying the importance of her husband’s love to her children. I haven’t seen many films where black families are portrayed as having tender, loving, and intimate family moments and I didn’t even realize it until I saw this film and the soft edges of relationships and moments in Rob and “Fox” Rich’s family life. That sense of love and strength maintained across the years is beautiful.
      Description from the T/F website: “A single moment in time can propel your life into new, unexpected directions. A single decision, a single chance, or a single mistake. We talk about time like we talk about movement, tumbling forwards, pregnant with possibility. In prison, the world races on without you, with your family and loved ones straddling parallel dimensions of space and time. Sibil “Fox” Rich’s family is split in two as her husband Rob serves the mandatory minimum sentence for a first-time offense committed in his 20s, and their sons grow into men. Garrett Bradley’s Time is a gorgeous decades-long portrait of Fox Rich—a tireless advocate, entrepreneur, and prison abolitionist—and a testament to the monumental strength of all women who love and support someone behind bars. Eighteen years of home miniDV tapes capture each year’s birthdays and milestones as Fox records video love letters to melt the iron bars of Louisiana's Angola prison and keep her family together.”

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[2020. 85 min. Directed by Garrett Bradley.]
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/time-review-documentary-garrett-bradley-1202208104/

Some Kind of Heaven

— “Some Kind of Heaven” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      As someone of an age where retirement communities are a choice some people I know are making, The Villages represents that largest and, for some, scariest of the lot. You get a sense of just how large the community is and how many options are available, and the bubble in which its residents live, but the focus isn’t really on The Villages, it’s on the way we define ourselves in older age, the circumstances in which we find ourselves and how we deal with them, the need for emotional connections, perhaps even over physical comfort. One of the highlighted characters ended up realizing he had to choose between comfort and freedom. I smiled, thinking that there’s some irony it should come down to that choice for a generation originally defined by social and political unrest. (It is worth mentioning that Darren Aronofsky is credited as a producer.)
      Description from the T/F website: “A Floridian garden of earthly delights and its discontents, Some Kind of Heaven follows retirees newly arrived at the fountain of youth. At The Villages, a married couple, a widow, and a bachelor find Eden and a second bite at the apple. An area handyman looks for work while a woman toys with love after loss and joining the parrotheads, and each of the deadly sins is out on full display. From synchronized swimming to pickleball, the good life is waiting, as well as a discounted funeral package now at a new, lower price. In a transcendent debut film that puts a twist on the “long-term” relationship, Oppenheim digs below the perfect facade to explore each person’s oscillation between integrity and despair, reinvention and recklessness, freedom and familiar safety. A film that reminds us that we all leave this Earth the way we came.”

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[2020. 81 min. Directed by Lance Oppenheim.]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/some-kind-heaven-review-1274913