Stimulating sounds: "Afro Temple" by Sabu Martinez

Year released: 1973
Personnel: Sabu Martinez (bongos, congas, bukoba, talking drums, tympani, gong, all other sound and percussion effects), Johnny Martinez, Per Arne Almeflo, Bo Oster Svensson, Conny Lunstrom (congas), Stephen Moller, Ali Lundbohm (drums), Peter Perlowsky (extra percussion), Bernt Rosengren (tenor sax, piccolo flute), Christer Boustedt (alto sax, flute), Red Mitchell (bass), Margarita Martinez, Christina Martinez (vocals)

One of the all-time rare groove classics, this was Sabu's last proper album as a leader. And what a send-off, an intoxicating mix of pulsating rhythms and hippy-dippy psychedelic flourishes. Here's the review, from allmusic.com.

The final release of conga master Sabu Martinez is an out-in-the-psychedelic-ozone masterpiece. Featuring a politicized Martinez reciting poetry, his own manically exotic percussion ensemble, and a slew of reeds, woodwinds, and brass, this is a heady brew of poetry expressing Latino and indigenous pride, political indictments against the white man, and killer Afro-Cuban jazz. Think of Archie Shepp's "Attica Blues" or Abbey Lincoln's and Max Roach's "Freedom Now Suite" done by Chano Pozo and you get the idea.

The layers and layers of congas and djembe drums, the wailing saxophones à la Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders and swirling flutes played as if they were Eric Dolphy or Prince Lasha hypnotically elocuting Martinez's poetic recitations--after he's finished speaking. The title track is the best example of this, though it is a cut without poetry at the top.

There's a mesmerizing rhythm that creates a kind of speech between the drums. The saxophones-- and I have no ideas who is playing them because this company in Italy that issued this provides no credits--act as singers punching into the stratosphere with the cry of birds. Next, in "All Camels Hump," to a frenetic polyrhythmic orchestra of drums--some heavily reverbed-- a pair of flutes play blues licks back and forth until they are drowned out by electronically distorted percussion.

From the camels we move to the "Hotel Alyssa-Souisse, Tunisia." Here a drum kit and a choir of congas go to work as a saxophonist plays alternating lines from R&B records and Sonny Rollins solos! It's a mind-bending experience to think that someone heard music like this in his head and then went out and made it. This record is essential for any fan of Latin jazz, Vanguard jazz, Cuban music, or just plain sound. This guy went out riding the crest of a creative wave of pure genius.

Stimulating cinema: Tony Manero

Year released: 2008
Director: Pablo Larrain

This Chilean comedy is so black that you can't even see it--but the review posted below by Xan Brooks of the Guardian hits the nail right on the head. You do feel someone uneasy when watching it, but upon reflection--and provided you stick with it--there is a lot to be gained from this engrossing look at the lengths to which one will go in the name of an unhealthy obsession. And the cinematography--all grey grime, filthy apartments and rusting salvage yards--is depressingly beautiful to behold. And Alfredo Castro, in the (sort of) title role, does a tremendous job in a role that features practically no dialogue. Looking forward to checking out Larrain's "Post Mortem," which was the featured review in the October issue of "Sight and Sound."

How many actual laughs are there in "Tony Manero," a Chilean black comedy about one man's obsession with "Saturday Night Fever?" Probably not that many--unless one counts the scene in which our hero defecates on the pristine white suit of a rival, or the one in which he becomes so enraged by a screening of Grease that he opts to break into the booth and club the projectionist to death. And yet a comedy this is-- and one that perversely becomes more hilarious in hindsight, when the initial horror has had time to subside. Watching Tony Manero is like being accosted by a disturbed loner on a late-night bus. Assuming we survive, we may one day find it funny. Alfredo Castro plays Raul, a 52-year-old nobody who models himself on John Travolta's disco idol, ineptly mouthing movie dialogue and essaying dance moves with a frowning, joyless concentration. Chances are that you could put a jacket on a dog and teach it to walk on its hind legs and it would make a more convincing Manero. But no matter, because Raul's monomania is enough to draw a gaggle of adoring disciples. His harassed lover dotes on him, as does her nubile daughter and the elderly owner of the local ballroom. All of them want Raul, but Raul just wants to dance. Specifically, he wants to dance, as Tony Manero, in a TV talent contest. First prize is a blender, second prize is a poncho. And "no political talk" please, for this is 1978, the darkest days of the Pinochet regime, when loose talk can get you shot.

"Tony Manero," the second film from writer-director Pablo Larrain, makes for a brilliantly clammy and unnerving piece of work. The action unfolds in a shiver of handheld camerawork and grainy, overcast colours. There is sex and larceny and random acts of violence. Some scenes literally lose their focus as the fog of madness blows in from the wings. You might file this as an acid satire of 1970s Chile, a time when imported escapism served to distract the masses from the real business of political oppression.

Alternatively, it can be viewed as a broadside against globalisation as a whole, spotlighting a sub-continent hopelesly hard-wired to US culture and stumbling blindly in search of an identity. This point is driven home in a brief but telling exchange between Raul and his girlfriend. "Manero is an American," she tells him gently. "You're not. You belong here."

Except that Raul, true to form, has no desire to ponder this statement. He's too busy killing people, too intent on rehearsing his routine or fashioning a makeshift glitterball from shards of broken glass. So off he goes, this shambling bulk of articulated body parts and crudely firing synapses, slouching towards the TV studio to be born.

What a terrific performance Castro gives us here: funny, scary and pathetic by turns. When Raul Peralta finally slithers on stage, it's a wonder the audience doesn't run for the exit. Perhaps they recognise one of their own. A round of applause for Dr Frankenstein's movie star; the sharp-suited mascot of a zombie nation. Wind him up and watch him dance.

Curling up with a good book: Electric Eden

Full title: Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music
Author: Rob Young
Year published: 2010

Essential reading for anyone with an interest in music, history, the British Isles or actually just life itself. Two reviews of this fascinating journey into the "old weird Britain" as it were. The first is from Michel Farber in the Guardian and the second is from Dwight Garner in the New York Times Book Review.

In 1968, a beautiful young minstrel called Vashti Bunyan (right) forsook the city and set off on an 18-month journey along the leafy lanes of Albion, in a rickety cart pulled by her horse Bess, heading for a remote Scottish island where the Pied Piper himself had promised to set up a happy haven of artists, musicians and poets. No, this isn't a fable, it's the true story of one of Britain's less famous folk singers, chosen by Rob Young for the opening chapter of Electric Eden, his survey of British "visionary" music and, more broadly, Britain's love affair with the notion of a pastoral paradise. When Vashti reached the Pied Piper's island, Donovan had fled for LA, but Bunyan's bittersweet tale--replete with the noble hopelessness of her determination to live as if the 20th century never happened--is emblematic of a whole generation of youth who seemed keen to drop out of industrialised society and "get back to the garden".

The core of Young's book is the late 1960s and early 70s, when pop's aristocracy dressed in archaic raiment and a cornucopia of folk-rock groups had names such as Tintern Abbey, Oberon, Dulcimer, Parchment, Mr. Fox, Fotheringay, Fuschia and the Druids. But "Electric Eden" does an admirable job of tracing folk's origins back to the 19th century, when upper-class academics first sought to capture the exotic ballads of rural Britain in annotated form. In a 664-page exploration with plentiful side trips, Young casts his net over just about everyone in this country who ever revived or preserved the past: William Morris, morris dancers, Vaughn Williams, David Munrow's Early Music project, the makers of the movie "The Wicker Man," Cecil Sharp's English Folk Dance and Song Society, and so on.

It's a hugely ambitious undertaking that could be tackled from any number of angles. Young tries out quite a few, including quasi-fiction ("The battered Austin, its 50 years clearly legible in rust and mud flecks ..."), meditations on the theme of the four elements, and straight scholarly record. What keeps it consistently readable is the happy marriage between Young's incisive observation and his talent for a vivid phrase. He praises the "arachnoid fingerwork" of Nick Drake's guitar technique, speaks of "a tidal spray of cymbals", drumming that "patters like butterflies trapped in a balsa wood box". Contemplating the bucolic cover image of an album by Heron, he sums it up perfectly: "John Constable has become court photographer to the counterculture."

"Electric Eden" is by no means the first book to trace the modern reinvention of folk music. A farrago of essays called "The Electric Muse," originally published in 1975 to accompany a triple-LP set, was the standard text in its day, but several comprehensive studies have been published since the millennium. Britta Sweers's 2005 overview, "Electric Folk: The Changing Face of Traditional Music," features valuable interviews and is pitched at a reader with no prior knowledge (dutifully explaining who Bob Dylan is), but it shows its origins as a young German's university dissertation. Michael Brocken's "The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002," which focuses more on the mainstream and politics than Young's tome, would suit readers who wish to study the "movement" rather than have their tastes expanded.

In his coverage of leftwing balladeers such as Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Young does acknowledge British folk as a voice of anti-authoritarian protest but, as the 1960s advance, he dismisses them as irrelevances "holding their breath until the revolution came". In Young's account, the true revolution occurred inside drug-expanded heads, when disaffected youngsters went in search of their inner elf (or hobbit). An oversimplification of 60s/70s counterculture, but a crucial aspect of it, and Young explores it in juicy detail. The story gets especially rich when the sylvan nostalgia of British folkies blends into the worldwide hippy dream. The founders of Glastonbury festival wished to "stimulate the earth's nervous system with joy, appreciation and happiness so that our Mother planet would respond by breeding a happier, more balanced race of men". Or, as one Stonehenge camper put it: "We want to plant a garden of Eden where there will be guitars instead of guns and the sun will be our nuclear bomb." Young doesn't sneer, but allows the quixotic dignity of these doomed idealists to resonate in all its sadness.

In any case, Arcadian idealism, like John Barleycorn, dies only to be reborn, as "Electric Eden," with its wide historical scope, attests. The late-60s blossoming of Glastonbury was a revival of a Utopian project by Rutland Boughton, "communist, vegetarian and suffragette sympathiser", whose 1916 Glastonbury festival, supported by George Bernard Shaw, staged an Arthurian opera on a shoestring budget. ("The battlements of Camelot castle were delineated by four stout yeomen.") Young has a special fondness for madcap eccentrics, and Albion has always been well stocked with those. We meet the composer Peter Warlock during the second world war, riding his motorcycle naked and drunk through a sleepy Kent village, "indulging in threesomes with local girls", and "singing raucous sea shanties ... in an attempt to drown out the hymns being sung in the neighbouring chapel". Had time machines existed, Warlock might have hung around with magick enthusiast Graham Bond, whose quirks included performing exorcisms on Long John Baldry's cat.

Young's background is editing "The Wire," a magazine devoted to marginal music, so it's not surprising that he has scant regard for the more commercially successful folk-rock acts, such as Jethro Tull and the later incarnations of Steeleye Span. Cult figure Bill Fay (right), whose achingly compassionate social commentaries achieved sales so meagre that he was reduced to packing fish in Selfridges, is allotted several pages, while Ralph McTell's "Streets of London"--one of the most popular English folk records ever--is not even mentioned. This favouring of the obscure over the bestselling lends somewhat dubious support to the argument that folk had a brief heyday which was brought to an end by glam, punk and/or Thatcherism. If many of the acts that "flourished" during folk's glory years sold zilch, while other acts enjoyed brisk business after the genre was supposedly in terminal decline, does this mean that Young's generalisations are based purely on aesthetics? Are the stars of later decades--Billy Bragg, Clannad, the Pogues, Enya, et al--evidence of folk's perennial ability to adapt to new musical fashions, or did Young disqualify them as redundant postscripts to a closed canon? The absence of chart placings and cash registers from this narrative is artistically commendable but muddies the historical picture.

In the concluding chapters, Young offers lengthy profiles of Kate Bush, Talk Talk and David Sylvain–-fine musicians all, but a far cry from Fairport Convention. The book ends with avant-garde luminaries Coil, whose work is undeniably suffused with the paganism that attracted the folkies, but whose actual sound --lysergic, eerie electronica--is galaxies removed from folk. Young wants us to accept that his theme is not a specific genre but visionary musical landscapes in general. If so, various realms to which this book gives little or no attention (the misty peaks of prog rock, the fantasised Zion of Rastafarianism, the ecstasy-enhanced Eden of 90s rave) are glaring omissions.

Better to regard "Electric Eden" as what it is, at heart: the best of the currently available books on the modern British folk phenomenon. Despite its biases and digressions, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read and likely to remain the best-written overview for a long time. While unadventurous souls may feel Young takes them on a ramble too distant from the safety of their local CD store, I've already made several precious musical discoveries thanks to this book and I expect to make more. Just as there are unspoilt bits of British countryside hidden in the spaces between the motorways, there are musical pleasures hidden in the overgrown woods of an enchanted past.
The brilliant and largely forgotten critic Seymour Krim (1922-1989) grew up, as have so many American readers, worshiping those writers who captured what he called “the unofficial seamy side of American life.” The excitable Krim put it this way: “I dreamed Southern accents, Okies, bourbon-and-branchwater, Gloria Wandrous, jukejoints, Studs Lonigan, big trucks and speeding highways, Bigger Thomas, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!”

Krim’s ecstatic catalog suggested a sense of the “old, weird America” that fed Greil Marcus’s essential 1997 book about American folk culture and music, "Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes." (That book has since been issued under the title “The Old, Weird America.”) Mr. Marcus examined, through Dylan and the Band, as if in Imax wide-angle, “how old stories turn into new stories.”

The British rock critic Rob Young’s excellent new book, “Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music,” is a response of sorts to Mr. Marcus’s volume, and to Krim’s longing for a raw-boned alternative America. Mr. Young’s book, which is largely about England’s amped-up folk music during the late 1960s and early ’70s, is ardent and learned in its search for what the author calls “a speculative Other Britain.”

Mr. Young is a former editor of "The Wire," the eclectic British music magazine. He originally conceived “Electric Eden,” he says, as a group biography of artists including Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Pentangle, Vashti Bunyan and the Incredible String Band. Collectively, this music means a lot to him; it represents, he argues, “British folk-rock’s high-water mark.”

Gathering string for this project, he tripped into a sonic wormhole. His book becomes an insinuating meditation on how British music — and all British literature and art — “accumulates a powerful charge when it deals with a sense of something unrecoupable, a lost estate.”

England didn’t have a W.P.A. or a Leadbelly or a Jack Kerouac. It has no tradition of the open road, so urgent an injection into American culture. But Mr. Young, working his way through poets like Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley; through William Morris’s novel “News From Nowhere” (1890) and “Paradise Lost”; through films up to and including "Withnail and I" among many other cultural artifacts, provides a sense of British music as “a primordial soup waiting for an electrical spark.”

That spark arrived from musicians who glanced back in order to rush forward. They intelligently plundered, Mr. Young writes, “pagan chant and Christian hymns; medieval, Tudor and Restoration secular sounds; the nature-worshiping verse of the revolutionary Romantics.” They developed, he says, “an occult communion with the British landscape.”

The resulting agrarian noise thrills Mr. Young. About an early record by the band Steeleye Span, he observes the way acoustic and amplified instruments “rub up against each other like a shedload of rusted, notched and pitted farm implements.”

Mr. Young charts the history of Britain’s folk movement, through the work of early song collectors like Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams, and the songs (both original and traditional) of ruddy midcentury performers like Ewan MacColl. He is quite hilarious while dispatching effete, drawing-room folk singing. He quotes one critic lambasting the championing of “clodhopping bumpkin folderol” by, all too often, “prancing curate(s) in cricket flannels.”

The author is blissfully quotable. He calls Nick Drake (left) “a lost, inchoate genius that you sometimes wish you could grab by the shoulders and shake.” Talking about Fairport Convention’s talented drummer, Dave Mattacks, he doesn’t note just the “funky plod” of his attack. He writes: “In his hands, the beats fall with a heaviness that seems to gouge at the earth itself.”

These lines about the early years of the British psychedelic movement are so terrific that they contain the seeds of a sour, funny, lovely Philip Larkin-ish poem: “When Joni Mitchell sang of getting back to the garden, you felt she pictured a host of naked longhairs disporting themselves in love games on the cliffs of Big Sur. For Brits, the image that springs to mind is a cheeky reefer in the potting shed before getting back to work on the allotment.”

Artists like Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and Pink Floyd are considered in this volume. But Mr. Young is more interested in the era’s crisscrossing undercurrents. He resurrects and contemplates the work of many lesser-known musicians, among them John Martyn, Mick Softley, Shirley Collins and Bill Fay.

The second half of “Electric Eden” grows, occasionally, mossy. There’s an awful lot of earnest talk about Druids and Stonehenge and Tarot cards. You may begin to hear the clotted chords of the Spinal Tap song “Break Like the Wind” welling up in the background.

“The sonic wizardry made heads smoke,” he writes, feebly, about an Incredible String Band album. “The pantheistic fusion flared like a bonfire of religions.” At this and other moments you suspect someone’s been having a cheeky reefer in the potting shed.

Mr. Young traces the way the current freak-folk movement has picked up on much of this music. (Ms. Bunyan sang on a 2004 Devendra Banhart album). He is less convincing when arguing for more recent performers, minor enthusiasms like Kate Bush, David Sylvian and the band Talk Talk. Are these really the finest he can come up with?

At its frequent best, though, “Electric Eden” is a lucid and patriotic guided tour, as vigorous as one of Heathcliff’s strolls across the moors. “Britain’s literature, poetry, art and music abounds in secret gardens, wonderlands, paradises lost, postponed or regained,” he writes, before announcing some of them: Avalon, Xanadu, Arden, Narnia, Elidor, Utopia.

“Electrification comes in many forms,” Mr. Young says. His book throws plenty of lightning, and it will have you scrambling to download some of the music that’s filling his head.

Mr. Young’s book is a declaration: England is not just older than America. It’s weirder, too.

Otar Iosseliani: The man who loved birds

Here is a thoughtful piece on the Georgian director Otar Iosseliani, originally written for the Cinemascope web site.

A couple of years ago Edgardo Cozarinsky, an Argentine filmmaker who has lived in Paris for the last 40 years, said that nothing important was happening in France culturally but, at the same time, artists were still welcome to live and work there. Otar Iosseliani was born in 1934 in Tbilisi, and moved from Georgia to Paris in the early ‘80s, after censorship halted his career as a Soviet filmmaker in Georgia, where he made three features plus shorts and documentaries. In France he started anew, and so far he has made seven features, as well as a number of docs and shorts. Iosseliani is one of the adopted French filmmakers, a category that includes the likes of Raúl Ruiz and Eugène Green, and can be understood to encompass Manoel de Oliveira, Michael Haneke, and Ousmane Sembène. (It’s likewise tempting to describe the Swiss Jean-Luc Godard as a foreign filmmaker who sometimes works in France.)

Iosseliani once said, “Culture, in the sense of a well-constructed system of human relations, has collapsed [in Georgia]. Maybe it was one of the last countries. But everything collapsed, practically, with the departure of the previous generation.” He was talking about the devastation of war and communism, but the statement could well apply to the subjects of many of his films—such as And Then There Was Light (1989), a film about the destruction of an African village by the arrival of so-called progress. Iosseliani’s films are parables, and parables have many possible meanings. Also, in the director’s words, “the secret of your vision dies with you.” But his new feature, Jardins en automne, seems mainly to comment on the dissolution of the French film community, at least in the form he knew it when he became one of its members in 1984, the year of his first French-made film, Les Favoris de la Lune.

Sharing the designation which Ruiz frequently ascribes to himself, Iosseliani can be called “the best known of the unknown directors.” Ruiz is seven years younger than Iosseliani, but emigrated to Paris seven years earlier, fleeing from the Chilean dictatorship. Both are considered minor masters in the French nomenklatur, and they share a sense of subtlety, irony, a love of long shots and a hatred for explanation, psychology, and conventional storytelling. In a way, they are complementary: while Ruiz is definitively urban, nature is very important in Iosseliani’s work. And while both share an interest for the fine arts and the pleasures of alcohol, Ruiz opts for literature and philosophy while Iosseliani is deeply immersed in music. A pianist and composer in his own right, music plays an essential part not only in Iosseliani’s soundtracks, but also in his plots. Iosseliani’s films are musical in their form and structure, and music is the link between his usually disjointed scenes. But mostly, Iosseliani is a tonal filmmaker. His films can be thought of as the movements of a unique, consistent musical oeuvre.

This tone has to do with Iosseliani’s unique pace, which is rhapsodic and joyful, but with a paradoxical grace that follows from detachment and a lack of sentimentality. Iosseliani’s primary Western influence is Tati, with whom he shares a peculiar serendipity in the contact between people, objects, and animals. He prefers non-professional actors, and because of this, coupled with his lack of attention to dialogue, his fiction films aren’t far away stylistically from his documentaries. Some motifs are common to all of Iosseliani’s films: love for drinking, talking and singing amongst friends; hatred of work in any routine sense; the despising of bureaucrats; love for women as long as they are friends and lovers and never wives or mistresses; the presence of plants and animals among the human.

On this last count, Iosseliani can be acclaimed for bringing some of the best birds to the silver screen, with a high point being the gigantic, unbelievable, and hilarious stork from Adieu, plancher des vaches! (1999). But in Iosseliani’s films, birds are more than just birds—they illustrate an aesthetic principle. In Brigands, chapitre VII (1996), a medieval tyrant is poisoned by his mistress. The man falls down in agony, and she says, “Die you lousy swine!” But the man doesn’t die, and a parrot that hears the words and repeats them is used as a key witness in the mistress’ trial. So, without realizing it, the animal plays an important part in history. In Iosseliani’s films, you can see birds and quadrupeds like the boars that, alive or in photographs, punctuate Jardins en automne (together with a caged bird that’s called “the bird of truth”). These untamed animals are a presence that we humans cannot understand, and we look at their mysterious nature with the same perplexity as they might look at us. Maybe that’s the secret of Iosseliani’s view of human affairs: his camera shows people from the point of view of an animal, and, like men see animals, it finds humans weird, colourful, and potentially dangerous.

Over that basic layer of strangeness and involuntary cruelty, civilization tries to build a network between isolated individuals. But “civilization” doesn’t mean technology nor political order, but a series of rites and traditions that appeal to a much more primitive and, at the same time, sophisticated bond among equals—one that can be named kindness. Kindness is what leads to affection, to communication, to the pleasure of sharing. It has elementary manifestations in the ways to greet people, to ask for a match, to continuously offer cigarettes and drinks to others (Jarmusch!). Kindness is what contradicts brutality, the arrogance of dictators, the sadism of bureaucrats, the greed of capitalists, the pettiness of spouses, and all the other evils in Iosseliani’s films.

The balance of forces is uneven, however. As shown in Brigands, Iosseliani’s most political film, brute force prevails, and the autocrats, the party members, and the arms dealers impose their ignoble rule over tenderness and joy, dispossess the innocent, the rebels, and even the bad guys from their jobs, their homes, and their lives. Not much can be done against the determination of wrongdoers. In There Once Was a Singing Blackbird (1970), a masterpiece from the Georgian period, the main character is a musician who needs to be in perpetual motion and whose optimism and joy of life contradicts his boss’ desire to make him ordinary and disciplined. In the end, a car hits the young man, revealing that the director, in spite of the film’s light, bubbling atmosphere, doesn’t share his character’s naiveté.

As a result, Iosseliani’s films are far from being optimistic. On the contrary, they convey a deep sadness that has been especially apparent in his last few films. Although the filmmaker is very reluctant to show the actual death of his characters, there is a bleak cloud hanging over them, a sense of vague melancholy, of a loss with no precise object. In Jardins en automne, events go smoothly and nothing terrible happens; we seem to be watching a gentle comedy about an ex-politician who finds himself fully free to play the guitar, party with friends, and make love to women. The film’s protagonist, Vincent (a spectacular performance by Séverin Blanchet), is a minister in the French government, whose official duties seem to consist of keeping up with protocol. He’s bored with his job and his mistress. One day he’s fired and finds himself alone, with no job, no home, no girl, and no money. It’s the ideal Iosseliani situation, like in Adieu, plancher des vaches! or Lundi matin (2002). So, he behaves like he’s supposed to: he meets his old pals and girlfriends, and goes around drinking.

But there is a new element this time. Vincent has a rich mother, played by none other than Michel Piccoli, from whom he demands protection, shelter, and money. This is, to say the least, very unusual casting, and it’s almost impossible to avoid giving a meaning attached to this choice. This peculiar lady lives in a huge mansion with a big park, almost a palace, where she gives parties and conducts official ceremonies. In one of these ceremonies, she calls out the names of some soldiers, like Lt. Pierre Grandrieux and Sgt. Philippe Léon, who happen to be dead in the battlefields—Philippe Grandrieux and Pierre Léon are two French filmmakers, younger than Iosseliani, and in the hardcore cinephile camp. On the other hand, one of Vincent’s pals is legendary Cahiers du Cinéma critic Jean Douchet, and another is Iosseliani himself, who plays Arnaud, a character interested in painting, music, and gardening (and a transparent liquid that probably is vodka).

During the party the house is attacked, and Vincent and his friends are beaten. It’s very tempting to see Piccoli as a symbol for the French cinema (the actor, also a director himself, has worked with every major French director, and was even cast by Godard as the grey eminence of 1995’s Deux fois cinquante ans de cinéma français) and to see the attack on the house as a metaphor for the state of film in France, where people like Iosseliani seem not to matter any more. Vincent’s loss of privileges, yet with some remnants of his former official protection, speaks to the fragile situation and threatened careers of Iosseliani and his cineaste colleagues. A crowd sings Marxists hymns and throws tomatoes at Vincent, like they used to do in Stalinist Georgia. He is dispossessed of his official ministerial residence, as well as from his private apartment by squatters. The bistro where the group hangs around is shut down. The walls of the café, full of drawings made by Arnaud, are painted over. The new owner of the house tells the painter to “eliminate all that crap.” It’s an obvious reference to the oblivion to which Iosseliani’s images will be thrown in the future. This is not just a goodbye—it’s a dark one.

To contradict that view, at the end of the film we see another party in a garden, where all Vincent’s lovers, friends, and relatives are talking, drinking, and having fun. They all seem very relaxed, very happy. Then the camera turns up, showing the blue of the sky and the green of the trees. It’s a beautiful shot, full of lyricism and tenderness, one that perfectly integrates with the bright spirit of the last meeting. Then the screen turns black for a moment, and the credits begin to roll. At that point, the viewer might very well remember that the first shot of the film, a prologue that precedes the title, is a long shot in the shop of a coffin-maker, where Douchet, among other people, is trying to buy a casket that will fit him. With this in mind, the last shot becomes one of overwhelming sadness, and the party a definitive farewell.

About 12 years ago, another adopted French filmmaker, Krzysztof Kieslowski, completed his famous Three Colours trilogy, which was supposed to comment on the keywords of the French revolution. Iosseliani once said “the problems of a foreign country can never become truly, intimately yours… For you they will never have the same concreteness as they do for a real human community of people that are born and raised within that community.” However, this foreigner who saw his country destroyed to the verge of the unrecognizable and has, since then, been a well-treated guest—but with very limited recognition—in his new home, has not only showed today’s crisis in French cinema in a way that his native colleagues don’t dare, but deals in a clever way (and in a much less pompous one than Kieslowski) with the principles of liberté, egalité, and fraternité. Something is happening in Paris, after all. The problem is that the French don’t see it.

Stimulating cinema: Otar Iosseliani FilmFest Day 3

Film: Pastoral
Year: 1976

Last, but certainly not least, in Iosseliani fest is "Pastoral." In the commentary that accompanies the two-disc set of the director's work that was the source of this fest, one of his mentors (I believe) says that this movie was Iosseliani's farewell to his Georgian homeland. A few years, the director emigrated to France, where I would guess he still lives. What a treat it would be to talk to this man now--to get his insights into these remarkable works and to hear his thoughts on what has transpired both in the world of cinema and in the world in general since this movie was made. Does anyone know of any recent English-translated interviews he has done in recent years that might be found online somewhere?

If this movie was Iosseliani's farewell, he went out with a blaze of glory. The ending of this movie, in particular, is one of the most poignant, human moments you'll ever see on the screen. When watching it I thought to myself "this is about as good as it gets." The quality of this movie (and the other three I've discussed) is uniformly high and filled with liberal doses of humanity, spirit and warmth.

The movie begins with a group of classical musicians being sent to a rural village for the summer. The reason for this, at least as far as I could tell, wasn't really clear. But, just accept it--they're there. The sophisticated artsy folks from the city (one of whom is played by Iosseliani favorite Marina Kartsivadze) are plopped into the middle of an alien world. And of course, the feeling is mutual--the unpretentious, hard-working country folk don't quite know what to make of their unexpected visitors, but extend them plenty of warmth and courtesy and try to help them feel right at home. The contrasts are striking--the only thing these people have in common is that they are all Georgian. They're way of lives, though, are complete polar opposites. I think it's fascinating to think that even today (I'm thinking of a place like Brazil but I am sure there are many, many others), there could be such disparity between the lives of all the citizens. Here in the United States, there are differences between north and south, city and country, etc. but the gaps aren't that huge and there is frequently a common ground. For the characters in this movie, though, it's really like two different worlds coming together.

The musicians go through their day, warily keeping an eye on their surroundings while rehearsing. The villagers go on about their business too, farming and raising their animals with the wafting music as a constant accompaniment to their chores. In one of the best scenes, the musicians start playing for the first time and everyone in the village, young and old, is captivated by the sounds. Slowly, the two groups begin to find common ground--and Iosseliani shows this brilliantly. It's the little things--helping take in laundry before a storm arrives for example or recording a brother and sister singing traditional songs--that help bring the groups closer together. Helping to bridge the two worlds is Edouki, a teenage girl played by Nana Iosseliani (who I would have to assume is the director's daughter). Edouki is a hard-working girl, devoted to her younger brother and sister. But the arrival of the musicians (and a crush on one of them) fires in her imagination the possibility of a better life. Eventually, the musicians have to leave--goodbyes are said and promises are made. And then the scene I described earlier which I won't reveal, but which is truly magical.

Iosseliani's works are often described as "lyrical" and this might be his most lyrical work. In the literal sense, there is always music in the background and it underscores the emotions and actions of the characters. But also lyrical in the poetic sense of expressing personal feelings--it's never hard to know where these characters stand or what they are feeling. Everything, warts and all, is right there on the surface.

There are so many things that made me smile when watching this movie. Small gestures really say a lot--like when the musicians first arrive, one of them carelessly tosses and empty pop bottle on the ground. Shortly thereafter, we see an old man--his back bent almost perpendicular to the ground under the weight of a heavy load--stop and pick up the bottle before continuing on his way. Another moment comes when a pick-up truck carrying a group of peasants on their way to pick a crop is forced to stop at a railroad crossing. The passengers on the train gaze at them as if they were aliens, and the peasants return their gaze in similar fashion. Two worlds in conflict--and I think this scenes best illustrates where Iosseliani stood. There is also a sly tribute to his earlier film "Lived Once a Song Thrush" and lots of moments of high comedy. I'll come back to Iosseliani's movies again and again and I'm sure I'll always feel slightly uplifted after watching them. They do make you feel better about yourself and the world in general somehow.

Stimulating cinema: Otar Iosseliani FilmFest Day 2

Film: Lived Once a Song Thrush (original title: "Iko shashvi mgalobeli," also known as "There Was Once a Singing Blackbird")
Year: 1972

I really hate guys--and more often than not it is guys--like Gia, the main character in the third film in the Iosseliani festival. In my personal and in my professional life, this kind of personality has always rubbed me wrong for some reason. The glad-hander. The guy with a smile or a flirtatious word for every lady. The guy who breezes through life oblivious to the constraints of time and oblivious to how his irresponsible ways impact others. Probably I'm jealous of guys like Gia to a point--I don't have the gift of gab among strangers and I have always been awkward around women (how I even got married is quite a miracle in itself!) So sure, I do wish I could be a little more like Gia. But ultimately though, people like this have no substance; they might no everybody in town but do they really have any deep friendships? Do they ever really fall in love? Or do they love themselves to much to ever give themselves up to another?

Gia (Gia Agladze) is the center of attention in this movie, both literally and figuratively. He moves to the march of his own clock--deadlines are flexible, meetings and appointments are often forgotten or ignored outright and the feelings of others don't matter. It's not that Gia is a bad person--early on, his mother urges him to attend an aunt's birthday party and he does manage to make the scene, clearly delighting the older woman--it's just that he's clueless to how his frivolity gets in the way of the serious side of life. It's not all play and Gia hasn't figured that out yet and it's doubtful he ever will as there are too many admirers (male and female both) who will let him keep on with his flighty ways.

As the film opens, Gia is running late once again. A harried stage manager is looking all over the place for him. There is a concert going on and Gia is nowhere to be found. Just in the nick of time though he arrives to play his part (he plays the kettle drums in a symphony orchestra). And so, smiles all around. That Gia--he almost blew it that time! This flying-by-the-of-you-pants style annoys the conductor and the orchestra head and even though both express indignation, they never punish him. As one character says "all we ask is that you be on time" and Gia can't even do that.

The following morning--the film unfolds in a 36-hour time period, give or take--a kind, vacationing couple arrives at Gia's home. They are friends of a friend and Gia has been asked to put them up for a bit, maybe show them around and be nice. Gia promises to show them the sights of Tblisi, then promptly ducks out for the rest of the day--leaving the couple in the hands of his befuddled mother. And he's off, chatting up almost every female he sees (I lost count of all the girls he flirted with), charming most and annoying a few. One of the annoyed ones is played by Marina Kartsivadze, who had a larger role in "Falling Leaves." And that's pretty much it--no lessons are learned and you get the feeling that nothing is ever going to change. At the end of the day, Gia lies in his bed, staring at the monotonous wallpaper. You get the sense that he wants to be different, but just can't. The movie ends on the following morning with a bit of a jolt and a lot of disarray.

This me sound like a negative review, and I surely don't want to give that impression. I liked this movie a lot, just not the main character's ways. There is a good message here and there are a lot of thought-provoking elements. And the director's work is excellent once again (I'm really delighted to have made your acquaintance Mr. Iosseliani.) He keeps his touch light and makes the city of Tblisi positively thrum with energy. Gia flits about from situation to situation like a busy bee and the camerawork and editing help enhance the chaos.

Stimulating cinema: Otar Iosseliani FilmFest Day 1

Film: April
Year released: 1962

and

Film: Falling Leaves
Year released: 1968

For my first FilmFest, I'm digging into some works by the great Georgian director Otar Iosseliani. And I'm really glad too, because Iosseliani's movies are opening up a whole new world for me. I have to say that before starting this blog and getting heavily involved in movie-watching, I'd never heard of him and I'd wager to say that even if you are student of film history, he might be way down on your radar. That's one of the neat things about this project--I'm always learning and there are wonderful new discoveries around every corner. The joy of finding someone new (to me) and immersing myself in their art and their vision is incredibly gratifying and rewarding.

Iosseliani was born in Tblisi, Georgia in the former Soviet Union on Feb. 2, 1934. The rest of his biography follows, courtesy of allmovies.com

He studied at the State Conservatory and graduated in 1952 with a diploma in composition, conducting and piano. In 1953 he went to Moscow to study at the faculty of mathematics, but in two years he quit and entered the State Film Institute (VGIK) where his teachers were Alexander Dovzhenk and Mikhail Chiaureli. While still a student, he began working at the Gruziafilm studios in Tbilisi, first as an assistant director and then as an editor of documentaries. In 1958 he directed his first short film "Akvarel." In 1961 he graduated from VGIK with a diploma in film direction. When his medium-length film "Aprili" (1962) was denied theatrical distribution, Iosseliani abandoned filmmaking and in 1963-1965 worked first as a sailor on a fishing boat and then at the Rustavi metallurgical factory. "Aprili" was finally released only in 1972. In 1966 he directed his first feature film "Giorgobistve" that was presented at the Critics' Week at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival and won a FIPRESCI award there. When his 1976 film "Pastorli" was shelved for a few years and then granted only a limited distribution, Iosseliani grew sceptical about getting any artistic freedom in his homeland. Following "Pastorali's" success at the 1982 Berlin Film Festival, the director moved to France where in 1984 he made "Les Favoris de la Lune." The film was distinguished with a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Since then Venice became a showcase for all his subsequent films. In 1989 he again received a Special Jury Prize for "Et la Lumiere Fut" and in 1992 the Pasinetti Award for Best Direction for "La Chasse aux Papillons." After the disruption of the Soviet Union he continued to work in France where he made the documentary "Seule Georgie" (1994) which was followed by the sardonic and allegorical "Brigands: Chapitre VII" (1996).

A key thing to remember when watching Iosseliani's films: They ran afoul of the Russian censors and were either banned outright or similarly restricted upon release. That, to me, is really mind-boggling in that there is nothing in these two films that would merit that. Granted, there is some symbolism that could be interpreted one way but of course it could be interpreted in others too. It just confirms (as if we needed any more at this point) the paranoia that was permeating the Soviet leadership at the time. If you are looking hard enough for subversion, you're sure to find it. And I am pretty certain that Iosseliani meant for his works to be taken at face value (although I'd be interested to know if this is not the case. Can anyone help out with a link or an article?)

Take the first movie in our Fest--"April." According to allmovies, the film was banned upon release due to it's "excessive formalism." I think this is party doublespeak for "we don't understand this so there must be something subversive here. Best to ban it." "April" though, is really a charming little film. It has a message that resonates across cultures and eras--don't get too caught up with material things. Remember what's important. Take joy from a lover's kiss, a tree or a sunny day. It's really a universal message but it's made more poignant perhaps by the setting (a depressed, run-down Tblisi).

As many other critics have noted, "April" is similar in style to the works of Jacques Tati (I've seen his "Playground" and will certainly do a future FilmFest on him one day.). There's little dialogue in the movie and what is spoken isn't subtitled (it's hardly necessary though; the characters are fighting with one another and what's being said isn't as important as what's going on between them. Instead, the movie focuses on astounding camerawork--figures moving about at all angles--and constant motion. It's like peering into a beehive; there's always something moving and objects or people that at first appear insignificant frequently become so in the course of a scene or two. It's really amazing, creative work and a style that's fresh and always full of enjoyment.

"April's" plot is simple--a young man (Tanya Chanturia) and a young woman (Gia Chiaqadze) meet and fall in love. Early on, their attempts at a simple kiss are constantly thwarted by passersby. When a brand new apartment complex goes up, the two move in. Alone in their bare space, they finally kiss and when they do it's magic! The lights come on, the water runs and the stove burners light--all from this one kiss. Life is good. But slowly the couple's idyllic existence changes as they are seduced by the creeping disease of materialism. It starts slowly--first a chair then a vase. Soon, their apartment is jammed with all types of furniture and gadgets (two vacuum cleaners!) Their quiet tender moments are replaced with quarrels and eventually they make the only choice they can.

By contrast, the feature-length ("April" runs for about 45 minutes) "Falling Leaves" is more conventional in terms of plotting and structure, but still maintains the characteristic Iosseliani touches. The movie begins with sort of a prologue as we see Georgian villagers harvesting grapes, making them into wine and enjoying the wine along with good food and fellowship. We switch then to the city, where two young men are on the verge of new jobs. Otar (Georgiy Kharabadze) is a by-the-book opportunist who is still living at home and is hilariously brow-beaten by his parents before going off on his job interview. Niko (Ramaz Giorgobiani) is a younger man with a lot of weight on his shoulders. He needs this job because he's now the man of the house and has a mother, grandmother and and four younger sisters to support. It's clear right away that Niko is a good boy, serious, kind-hearted yet very strong, earnest and principled.

The two land jobs at a wine collective. Otar quickly sets about on a course of trying to become a success by becoming Mr. Company Man. Niko, meanwhile, quickly endears himself to his co-workers by being their equal and by working side-by-side with them. Niko's status grows when he reveals his father's name (Alexander Nijoradze). His co-workers are sympathetic--Alexander who has apparently just recently passed was "a good man" and Niko is highly respected as his son. Otar and Niko vie for the affections of Marina (Marina Kartsivadze), who feels she is better than Otar but is too flighty for the serious-minded Niko. One of the more poignant parts of the movie comes when Niko realizes Marina isn't the person he thought she was (and takes a punch in the face to add insult to injury).

Niko takes a stand early on--it's time to bottle the wine from vat 49 (a strange number, would there be any connection with Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49?"). The wine is clearly subpar, yet for the sake of cost and efficiency, the powers that be want it bottled anyway. Niko refuses to sign off on bottling a bad product and is forced to stand firm. Eventually, with the help of the workers he has developed deep friendships with, Niko resolves his conflict.

Clearly there is symbolism here--the character Otar represents the staid, non-conforming bureaucrats, yes-men and lackeys without an ounce of creativity or passion in their souls. Niko represents the people and the inherent power we all have inside of us to do good for mankind. Along the way, there's comedy, sorrow and more of the Tati-esque moments and shots that Ioselliani excels at. Excellent film.