SFF Review: A River Changes Course (Kalyanee Mam, 2013)

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Kalyanee Mam’s A River Changes Course is a beautifully shot slice of Cambodian life that examines the reliance of several families on traditional modes of living and the continuing impacts of depleting agricultural resources and industrial modernization.

A family of fishermen, reliant on their river catches, find themselves struggling to make ends meet with their increasingly meager returns. The oldest son in the family skips school to help his father on the river, but ends up leaving his village to work with a Chinese excavation company to help support the family. In a village near Phnom Penh, a mother in debt sends her eldest daughter to learn how to sew and work in the city sweatshops. We follow her there, and it is revealed that many of her co-workers have also taken on these jobs to support their country-dwelling farming families.

This raises some alarms about future generations of Cambodians, with many that are barely literate forced to drop out of school and attain specific skills to work from a young age. Their education levels are low, and in the case of the subjects in this documentary they have sacrificed their own futures for the sake of their younger siblings.

A River Changes Course is a powerful, attentive and intimate look at Cambodian country living with subjects whose livelihood and future is cause for concern. The admirable decisions made by these families in the face of great agricultural change ensures the state of living in this part of the world draws attention and will resonate with viewers.

My Rating: ★★★

SFF Review: Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013)

During our lifetimes many of us will visit a marine park and marvel in awe at the common main attraction – the seemingly harmonious interaction between 8,000-pound plus orcas or “killer whales” and their human trainers. Blackfish, directed brilliantly by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, is a captivating and harrowing documentary investigation into the fascinating nature of the orca – their supreme intelligence and development of different languages, their open water gracefulness and clinical hunting abilities – and the cruel mistreatment of those kept in captivity and trained for human amusement. Also examined are the indecencies of the marine park industry and the decades of incidents, manipulated to hide the truth and keep the business afloat. We see the devastating consequences of human exploitation and greed, with nature the executor of revenge.

Concisely structured, thoroughly researched and powerfully argued, Blackfish plays out like a thriller, with an especially troubled soul at the core. We broadly track different branches of the industry – orca hunting and transportation, corporate emphasis on profits over the wellbeing of the animals and safety of the trainers, and the enthusiasm-come-disillusionment of park employees – through the decade-spanning life Sea World Orlando’s largest male, Tilikum. Eventually deemed responsible for the tragic death of experienced trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010, Tilikum’s life has been a rough one.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation. 

SFF Review: Computer Chess (Andrew Bukalski, 2013)

Comprised of raw black and white images captured by an ancient Sony video camera, Computer Chess is pretty much what you would expect to see if you were an observer at a convention-come-tournament such as the one depicted in the film. During a boring panel discussion that opens the film, which has veteran computer chess programmers chat about the recent advances in technology and what went wrong at last year’s event, we can see some of their audience (also programmers, awkwardly assembled at a hotel for the weekend) drifting off. For a short while, I did too. The heavy use of jargon meant that I had little idea what they were talking about and I hoped it got more interesting…and fast. It does, trust me, but this is one of the fascinating things about this film and the reason it is unique. It fooled me.

I believed I was watching actual footage – buried deep in some archive and forgotten about, only to be resurrected and collaborated together – of a group of bespectacled tech nerds with poor social skills and bad haircuts interact and philosophize about the future of Artificial Intelligence and try to justify their personal obsessions not with chess, necessarily, but their desire to perfect their programs. But then I realized that it was all a recreation – a very authentic rendering of an early 80s era where a brash chess wiz remains adamant that a computer program was incapable of beating him, arranging the country’s best to get together and try. Perhaps past embarrassments will be eradicated. Who knows what will happen?

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation. 

SFF Review: Greetings From Tim Buckley (Daniel Algrant, 2013)

As Tim Buckley’s son Jeff (Penn Badgely, Margin Call), a few years before he made his acclaimed ‘95 debut album Grace, prepares to participate in a tribute concert to his late father, we get glimpses into the 70s of Tim’s (Ben Rosenfield) short career in this dual rock biopic from director Daniel Algrant.

Algrant’s decision to insert the audience into this specific period of Jeff’s life, the first time his own intimately collided with his father’s, is a good decision. The soundtrack is suitably made up of Tim’s music, and his legacy is clearly admired and respected. Jeff, who never knew his father, save for a few brief meetings when he was very young, is more indifferent. He is struggling to escape the expectations placed on him, while trying to understand the extent of his own musical talents. It is courtesy of his friendship with Allie (Imogen Poots, 28 Days Later), one of the production assistants, and his involvement in the tribute concert that he is then able to go on to capture the heart of his own generation.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation. 

SFF Review: Mistaken For Strangers (Tom Berninger, 2013)

I like The National’s music, and over the last decade they have become one of the world’s great indie rock bands. When given the opportunity to watch an insider documentary of the band’s tour of Europe following the release of High Violet, this reviewer couldn’t help but be excited. Directed by well-meaning but incompetent roadie, Tom Berninger, the younger brother of the band’s lead singer, Matt Berninger, Mistaken For Strangers becomes something else entirely. For better and worse.

In moments of despair at his own inability to finish the documentary, Tom turns the camera on himself in a self-reflexive study as he struggles to find his place in the world, fulfill his own artistic aspirations and break out of the shadow of his big brother. It becomes a film about the creative process, of how an amateur filmmaker took on the challenge to make a rock documentary, and the bizarre experiences that aided and abetted the realization of that dream.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation. 

SFF Review: It's About To Rain (Haider Rashim, 2013)

Said Mahran (Lorenzo Baglioni) is a man of Algerian heritage. His father, Hamid (Mohammed Hanifi) is Algerian, but having emigrated to Italy thirty years prior, Said and his brother, Amir (Amir Ati), were born in Florence and have been living in Italy their entire life. Said has never once visited Algeria and considers Italy his home, but having never been granted certified citizenship his family continually has to apply for working visas. Their legal ‘acceptance’ is temporary.

When industrial businesses begin to go under, layoffs and closures ensue. Hamid’s boss commits suicide and Hamid loses his job, which in-turn results in the entire family faced with expulsion from Italy within fifteen days. Angered by this injustice Said relentlessly fights their case, hiring lawyers and bringing this widespread issue of dislocation to the attention of the media.

It’s About To Rain is a potent cultural study, covering the internal drama of a family who have been forced to let go of any future ambitions and completely change the course of their life, and the bureaucratic mess that not only affects the second-grade Italian citizens who are denied connection with the culture, but ALL Italians.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation.

My Final 2013 Sydney Film Festival Lineup

With a few late substitutions I have my final line-up confirmed for the Sydney Film Festival. Here is a list of what I have seen prior to the festival, and below is my day-to-day schedule.

Wed 5 June

Dirty Wars 6:00pm
Outrage Beyond 8:00pm

Thursday 6 June

The Act of Killing 6:00pm

Friday 7 June

Wadjda 6:00pm
Stoker 8:30pm

Saturday 8 June

The Iceman 7:00pm
Before Midnight 9:30pm

Sunday 9 June 

Ginger and Rosa 10am
Grisgris 2.15pm
Muscle Shoals 4.30pm

Monday 10 June

Broken Circle Breakdown 11.45am
For Those In Peril 2.00pm
Child's Pose 6.15pm

Tuesday 11 June

Monsoon Shootout 6:00pm
Blancancieves 8:30pm

Wednesday 12 June

Oh Boy 6:00pm
Mood Indigo 8:30pm

Thursday 13 June

Prince Avalanche 7:00pm
You're Next 9:00pm

Friday 14 June

Borgman 2.15pm
Shopping 5:00pm
Downloaded 7:00pm
Frances Ha 9:30pm

Saturday 15 June

Stories We Tell 12:05pm
Upstream Colour 2:45pm
Only God Forgives 7:00pm

Sunday 16 June

The Past 12:00pm
Thanks for Sharing 5:30pm
Closing Night - Twenty Feet From Stardom 8:00pm

SFF Review: The Rocket (Kim Mordaunt, 2013)

Kim Mordaunt’s magnificent drama, The Rocket, screening at the 2013 Sydney Film Festival in the Official Competition, is fresh from winning the Best Narrative Feature, Audience Award and Best Actor (Sitthiphon Disamoe) at the TriBeCa Film Festival. It is an optimistic and spirited tale of a young man’s personal journey to alter his destiny.

The story of The Rocket follows Ahlo (Disamoe), a ten-year old boy whose family are forced to relocate after an Australian energy company announces the construction of a dam set to flood their area. Considered bad luck in the traditions of the family as he is delivered into the world preceding a stillborn twin, Ahlo finds himself the blame for the string of misfortunes that fall upon the family.

After a tragic accident and the forging of a friendship with a young girl, Kia (Loungnam Kaosainam), and her outcast uncle, Purple (Thep Phongam), Ahlo’s father (Sumrit Warin) begins to believe that the prophecy is true. Ahlo must prove his worth to his family as they come to terms with the economic change that threaten their livelihood, with their future reliant on the most unlikely of events.

Continue Reading at Graffiti With Punctuation.