Tribeca Film Festival 2023
NEW YORK, NY
JUNE 7 – 18, 2023
Drake Stutesman
Some films to see:
A STRANGE PATH
2023
Guto Parente
Brazil
84 min.
The Brazilian film A Strange Path, directed and written by Guto Parente, won four "Best" Tribeca Film Festival awards: Best International Narrative Feature; Best Performance (Carlos Francisco) in an International Narrative Feature; Best Screenplay (Guto Parente) in an International Narrative Feature; Best Cinematography (Linga Acácio) in an International Narrative Feature. Compelling, visually beautiful, and engrossing, this film is about a young man who, reluctantly and by chance, comes to know his estranged father. Parente's story is a loving one and he makes in his film a space that is recognizable, to anyone, as a place of love—hard to define, full of feeling, connected and disconnected and ultimately deeply satisfying. Part of Parente's success in making this space is that A Strange Path is strange. There is a low-key surrealism throughout the film, and the story is, in fact, about a surreal world, but this is not apparent until the end. This sleight of hand is part of the film's brilliance, and it is also part of Brazilian culture, where the ghost world or the world of multi-dimensions are considered part of everyday life.
The story is about a young man (played by Carlos Francisco), a first-time filmmaker, interested in the horror genre, at loose ends and broke, who, stranded and away from home, goes to his father to borrow money, and then has to stay with him as his luck worsens. The men don’t get along, it seems, but the son is told about his father's life by a neighbor, then finds out more by reading a book that his father has written, and discovers, to his happiness, that the father has seen his film. Parente keeps A Strange Path simple, and the relationship simple, and keeps the ending both unexpected and unexpectedly simple. By doing this he affects what is a realistic version of the mystery that is often the core of a family, that remains unknown even when knowing each other well.
Must see. Compelling, visually beautiful, engrossing story about father and son.
PLAYLAND
2023
Georden West
US
72 Min.
Playland, Georden West's striking, inventive film about Boston's queer bar-theater, Playland, that opened in 1937 and was forced to close in 1998, is a mix of playfulness and political strategy, with a Cindy Shermanesque sense of tableau and performance. The film is a series of vignettes in which players speak or dance or pose, in costumes (by Edwin Mohney) that run from ornate show clothes to kitchen uniforms. Shot in a wash of cool, low lit, pastel pinks, greens, and whites (each one as the overall color for a single scene) by Jo Jo Lam, this is a highly staged film with acts that are sharply timed. It has, nevertheless, an unhurried quality. And Playland is inviting, almost cozy, drawing the viewer in to be part of the interior and the feelings of the people in it. There are references to the forties, sixties, and seventies but West's musical soundtrack is cut with real archival Boston news broadcasts from the 1990s spoken in harsh, shrill, entitled voices about police crackdowns on queers. The interior of the bar, in contrast, comes across as in control and in sync with a deeply valued, deeply loved life. These devices are cryptic, in that it isn’t clear what they signify or if there is an overall narrative, but Playland creates a new kind of political and artistic homage in a unique use of these intimate scenes.
Must see. Inventive take on the history of a queer Boston bar-theater.
BETWEEN THE RAINS
2023
Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira
Kenya / France / UK
82 min.
Winner of Tribeca Film Festival's Best Documentary Feature and Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature, Between the Rains is a powerful film. To raise awareness about climate change, the film is structured around a personal story in Kenya about the ancient Turkana-Ngaremara community. It follows a teenage boy and others as they travel for miles in drought-eroded land. The violence of climate change has reduced the rainfall and the film, shot over four years, is literally “between the rains” because it opens and closes on the only rainstorms for many months. The two directors, Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira, show this world—earth and sky, people and animals, desert and plants, fire and water—through Brown's stunning cinematography as alive and overwhelming. Though the people are the focus, Brown and Thurania almost objectify this immense nature and the people in it, as if their reality cannot be translated, as it cannot. The film is made into a life force of its own, using dark and light, in a Caravaggio-like structure of strong bright light centered in obscured, darkened, intense colors of browns and reds. This blend of the three parts—people, nature, cinematic rendition—make the film's impact very strong.
Must see. A remarkable film on climate change.
TAYLOR MAC’S 24-DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC
2023
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
US
106 min.
Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music is a condensed version of veteran performer Taylor Mac's filmed (by Ellen Kuras, Bobby Bukowski, and Buddy Squires) 24-hour continuous review, with Mac always in view, of American popular songs—sea shanties, ditties, musical hall zingers, war songs and more—from the early 1800s to today, one for each decade, over 240 years. The performance was staged in a New York theater and other venues. Wearing, with grace and aplomb, the supra imaginative costumes by Machine Dazzle, which Dazzle designed based on his own interpretations of the songs’ lyrics and meaning, and the phantasmagoric make-up of Anastasia Durasova, Mac belts out a potted history of the US as he explains the context of each song in order to reveal the on-the-ground prejudices and hypocrisy of the era; in this way, he presents a more sinister, realistic political and cultural world. An inventive way to approach history, Mac's love of performing and informing, his humor, anger, whimsy, and lust, carries the show from beginning to end, and he has the professionalism and panache to pull off such a parade and such a history lesson.
Taylor Mac's non-stop 24-hour show on US history through popular songs.
