CO/MA (2004)

 

Director: Mike Figgis (with Steve Hudson, Johnny O'Reilly, Hanna Slak and Jovan Arsenic)

Screenplay: Jovan Arsenic, Mike Figgis, Steve Hudson, Fabian Joest Passamonte, Johnny O'Reilly and Hanna Slak

Cast: Aleksandra Balmazovic as Susi, Aljosa Kovacic as Mickey Dortville, Thekla Reuten as Isabella, Fabian Joest Passamonte as Prof.Kurt, Jesper Christensen as Weissman, Lana Baric as Edwina, Isabella Parkinson as Joanna, Feo Aladag as Ellen, Vladimir Bouchier as Shukov, Doris Schretzmayer as Dorothy

An Abstract Candidate

 

CO/MA is the kind of film which skitters between genres. For starters, it may be credulous, frankly questionable, to call this a "horror" film as I had intended to. For most, there is only the scene of one of the actress in this communal filming project being haunted by a ghost girl, and that is not enough to qualify for the genre. I would argue there are plenty of moments which do fit the tone even if this would be the most disappointing film to watch on Halloween. The rest of CO/MA is just as difficult to pin down, as for a work most would call a "documentary", even that is questionable. What we have instead is a curious tonally shifting chimera that is CO/MA, something truly peculiar and worthy of making excuses of, as tentative for a "horror" review or at any context, for me to get away with covering this during any season.

This belongs to an era I slowly crept into my cineaste hobby, which is growing up in the 2000s as a teenager and, by the time of 2008 when I became a young adult and had fully started to develop into this. This era, from when they were first released in the late nineties but especially the 2000s, is an entire "DVD era" of cinema which will hopefully get its own cult assessment. Despite the calls of its demise, in the streaming era and the existence of better formats for high definition images, DVDs are still being released, but I am creating a term for one specific era. One, even if they got very limited cinema runs, had many titles released on the format along straight-to-video titles which are forgotten and/or represent some of the era's greatest obsessions in terms of pop culture in general. In the case of CO/MA, I can completely understand this being viewed as pretentious if anyone has ever remembered this production exists. I did because, even before I was able to catch up with films like this, I was subscribing to a DVD review magazine. The review was pretty damning from memory, but this still lingered in my mind for decades before I could finally watch it and get rid of it from my mind palace To Get To List. Made in mind to reality television's popularity at the time, the vibes of horror are strong enough to also nod to as its genre, but there is also the comedy segments, the attempts to blur reality and fiction, the soap opera pastiche set in a hospital the commune in the centre which the central project of the production we follow, and other bits and pieces. In the end, CO/MA is neither and all of these.

It is also a Mike Figgis production, which adds a stranger air to all this, an English filmmaker who made films like Internal Affairs (1990) with Richard Gere, and Leaving Las Vegas (1995) where Nicolas Cage won the best acting Oscar. By 2000 however, he slowly started to move entirely away from larger budget films and increasingly experimental productions, both working with more digital filmmaking and also bold experiments like Timecode (2000) and Hotel (2001). Those two mark a turning point, effectively running with the four screen concept Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey developed in Chelsea Girls (1966), having four separate screens showing different films at the same time, with Timecode telling the same film from four different cameras, Hotel entirely different stories running at the same time. With the exception of Cold Creek Manor (2003), Figgis ditched "conventional" filmmaking, openly embracing his interest in digital camera filmmaking and experimentation, and the comment I made earlier about the "DVD era" of cinema has Figgis' name in the unwritten encyclopaedia on the subject. Films like Love Live Long (2008), where he took advantage of filming at a Gumball Rally racing competition to make an improvised erotic drama, are productions most people have no idea of the existence of, lost to time unless an old DVD is found second hand or on streaming. CO/MA is among these, needing this comically long prologue to set off the review because it is the only way to properly explain where CO/MA came to be. It is a project told to us to start in November 2004 at a film studio in Slovakia, where Mike Figgis and a group of actors have started a filmmaking master class with him leading, one where everyone is to collaborate on this project we the viewer are watching.

Already it is confusing things when, in the first conversations we see recorded, Figgis raises concerns that he will be marked as the director legally on the film credits, but that is subject in the collaborative production as a truth. He says it might "be crap", and one of the collaborators considers if they might say it is not legal to screen this master class if they ever decide to once they have spent finishing the production. Making explicit reference to The Blair Witch Project (1999), and with reality television in its mind, you can time stamp this to the early 2000s. These extensive conversations are continuous through the film, where people in this collaborative effort are already staying outside in disagreement to the project's trajectory before they have even considered what to make, and it is all playing to the idea of whether this is all real or not. Figgis states onscreen that he wants to blur the lines between what is real and when an actor might be lying, but as the tone and genres start to blur in general, what even the significant point of CO/MA is becomes of debate. You can make the justifiable argument this was not a successful project. For me, fascinated by these out-pourings of human creativity and their emotions, faked or real, it was a compelling piece even if "indulgent" is apt too.

Considering the likes of Timecode, this was inevitable. That and, with the black and white scenes, including those of actors talking the screen to the viewers, Big Brother's influence alongside the reality television shows that came at this time are seen imprinted on this film, what was on the tip of everyone's tongue whether they wanted to admit it or not. A year before this, New Line Cinema took a risk on The Real Cancun (2003), a theatrical reality film which was shot at spring break in Cancún, Mexico. It was a box office bomb, and not a film I remember with fondness beyond just curiosity of its existence, but again "DVD-core", if I am to plague the world with a term to describe this era of filmmaking, is a compelling set of films for a variety of reasons. Their use of digital film cameras, with their aged aesthetics, and their attempts to redefine what a "film" meant are worth prodding, with CO/MA clearly looking for a possible outcome that was not the titillation of The Real Cancun, but a more intellectually based experiment.

It definitely breaks reality from the get-go, not really a documentary, and the first nods to horror are found when we have one of the actresses in a toilet cubicle feeling at ill ease of an unknown presence, beginning the hints of the building being haunted or at least the disconnect to the location even if this plot thread is one of many which feel unfinished. They all decide, in the main drive, as a collective to make a soap opera, in mind to strip anything interesting away on purpose. Alongside the strangeness of this, when one of the actresses complains later about the hollowness of her "soap opera performance" and that they apparently agreed to this project in the first place, the tangled web we get suggests otherwise, like a no-horror version of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom franchise if more absurd and less about the horror of that franchise. There are a couple of scenes in a film-within-a-film, with an actual audience, bored by the likes of cooking shows such as Jamie Oliver's, switching over to "The Clinic", with absurd touches coming in with its plot whiplashes, and over-dramatic music. It is one of the better aspects to CO/MA that most of what we get of this pastiche is just the introductions to each new episode, skipping ahead of entire plot cycles with drastic character shifts. Abrupt amnesia, lovers cheating on doctor to take his job and let the cleaner, studying to be one too, become the head of the hospital, secret half-sisters, fake twins for ones supposed to be dead and unknown leukaemia, all of which is deliberately silly. Add to this that there are two bystanders, a male older alcoholic and a British actress who is playing a pathological liar, watching on as the Greek chorus, and The Clinic as a project could have been something from this era of cinema that might have been a proper film you might find released from this era. This is less strange to consider when Lars von Trier once shot an office set comedy, with the digital camera instructed with artificial intelligence to shot however it wanted, called The Boss of It All (2006).

It feels hypocritical as a result, admittedly, to have a critique of soap operas yet playing one out whose strange presentation is actually interesting, but when the actors are flummoxed why they are doing a "bad soap opera", it is clearly another plot strand that is at play, with Mike Figgis playing his role at times as an odd puppet master. He is never cruel or manipulative, choosing soap operas as it is a genre and the most popular one globally in his words, but it is clearer he is trolling the cast. One of the biggest critiques I can make is that, for how long they had to produce the film, which feels like a short production of pure improvisation, it feels like a more fleshed out series of arches were lost in this and we could have gotten a much more complex yet precise work if it had been longer. It is aiming for something more complex but can merely add hints to these plot strands, such as when we get to one of the actresses being honest that she was comfortable filming Figgis' "porno". Truthfully, when the film uses the term "porn" the use is in mind to the fully improvised production with little script and minimal production crew instead, but there is a nod to the potential issues of lack of professional morals to get the right stories, such as a tale from a crew member who says, to cut costs on a failing soap opera, the script created a plague to bump off actors only for that to get high ratings. Nothing is explicit in CO/MA in terms of sexual content, but it is nodded to, with this actress' character in a relationship with a former patient of hers in The Clinic among other implications of the relationships between characters in the hospital setting. The sole explicit scene is a retake of a phone call between this actress and her former patient where, with only hints, she starts heavily breathing her invitation to the woman to go to a cafe whilst rubbing the mobile phone against herself, which with the ominous music used in the scene feels like they were suddenly trying to be like David Lynch.

Those music cues, and the more overt moments where the cast feel at ill-ease in the studio, are enough to justify the fleck of horror as a genre on this film before we get an actual ghost girl with her multicolour basketball in the costume department scaring one of the actresses. This is a movie with really not clear genre but shades of them in a spectrum. In truth, it is a film which does not really clear trajectory to itself, somewhat befitting the narrative it has where there is growing unrest from the group with Figgis as this goes. Some aspects of its trajectory are missing to fully emphasis the point - that there is a sense of discontent and a sense Figgis is antagonising some of them which should have had more scenes of, especially if CO/MA is playing with the idea of what is "real" and "reel". Even if that could be something difficult to capture in b-roll practically or morally, this especially becomes the case when the film starts talking about a conspiracy about who is who eventually, with paranoia growing, which could have added a greater weight to the production if more time was spend on this.

The sense the film drifts off is when it cuts into other tangents in the last half. The horror tangents feel like they are baked into the tone, set up from the start, but eventually we are looking into the production shooting a take on The Exorcist (1973) having managed to get Max von Sydow for one day, or the Jackass crew of the cult MTV series and Johnny Knoxville are brought up as about to appear in The Clinic. Obviously, these are joke moments, with none of these people about to appear, and instead it is all with a sense that as the production for real went on, the commune started to horse about and became less concerned about a serious meaning to the work. This is felt when we get another of the memorable pieces, a three plus minute comedy sketch where a man conjures up a woman in an abandoned film set, wanting to seduce her but with their collected ability to imagine anything they wish leading to legitimately fun comedic beats in a few perfect minutes. Is it enough to justify the whole film though? I think it is telling, when the ending epilogue text comes up, there is a reference (clearly for some humour) that some Slovakia filmmakers walked out the first ever screening, with the pervading sense that CO/MA was never meant to win over a large crowd, but Mike Figgis with these collaborators experimenting for the sake of it. He would become obscurer as a result of these projects, barring one music documentary or occasional TV episode in a whole, entirely focused in these lower budget productions where he would eventually become the editor and the cinematographer.  In this case, it feels less like a tragedy but more that he willing choose this direction, and to be brutally honest, barring my love for Nicolas Cage and some of the older films with enticing premises, these more obscure titles like CO/MA feel far more compelling to consider from him for their complete lack of compromise regardless if they are successful or not.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Metatextual/Stream-of-Consciousness

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Those That, At a Distance, Resemble Another (2019)

 

Director: Jessica Sarah Rinland

An Abstract Candidate

 

Here's where it took its first breath.

The best way to describe Jessica Sarah Rinland's feature length documentary, which will be called Those That... for abbreviation, is to compare to an older work of Rinland's, an Argentinean-British multi-media artist. Black Pond (2018), a micro-feature, is set around Elmbridge Natural History Society on a pilgrimage the south of England. Toads in the darkness establish the first shot of the film, as older individuals study the old trees of the forest, collecting moths, all whilst Black Pond is clearly shot on film by Rinland, and refers to more than its gentle tone suggests, eventually quoting Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers¹, Winstanley a Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist whose Diggers group he co-founded occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures. Black Pond is also very English in a whimsical way - examining fungi whilst carrying samples in a Tesco supermarket plastic zip tie bag - whilst adding surreality even by accident, in documenting people in work that is not commonly depicting in cinema, sniffing conifers to identity them, one even smelling like pineapple.

Alongside the sound design being of importance between the films - the clatter, chatter and noises of bats in the dark when being studied and examines in the palm of one's hands - a line of dialogue from the Elmbridge society really exemplifies what Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another's own modus operandi is, that "If you want to see something, hold it close". With her own hands among those creating onscreen in her film, marked out deliberately with pink nail polish, Rinland's own course in the film, her face obscured and her hands as the others the focus, is to begin copying a replica of a tusk. This tusk was poached from a female elephant in Malawi, and donated to the Natural History in London, back in 1900. The film, working with Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, hides a lot of the information for context on all you see, all the vignettes, until the end of the film in a large text narration. Shot between multiple museums in Brazil and England, the film deliberately strips the context until the ending, focusing on the craft itself, the hands and voices of the other ceramicists and preservationists the cast alongside the work they are preserving, studying, or recreating copies of.

Creating casts for museum objects - painstakingly - has an inherently surreality to it, including going as far with her tusk for RInland's project onscreen to have its damages recreated. Even if it was a source of concern for the preservationists who did so, explained that it is obviously not their job to destroy, the replica we see onscreen, up close with its working area the backdrop, even had a significant fragment where it would connect to an elephant's mouth broken with a hammer, and then glued back on with animal based glue, for accuracy. The replication of damages, of glue jobs, has a perverse air, yet early in the film the lineage of the copy to its original, like strands of inherited DNA, are emphasised in the narration and dialogue, the copy co-existing as important as the real one. In real life, Rinland's copy sits side-by-side with the original, donated to the Natural History Museum in London².

The one moment, at the beginning of the film, where howler monkeys are introduced to the wild again, does feel contextually different, the one non-artificial environment in the Tijuca Floresta in Rio de Janeiro, a forest in Brazil conservation. However it elaborates on this idea of lineage, in the form as much as the DNA, of that which comes from the older, be it the offspring of the monkeys or the tusk's replication to the original. Likewise, the techniques within the film are both older than one would believe as newer technology as 3D printing also exists. The irony is not lost with the mould and case process done in the film, which would be appropriated and used by Europeans in the 1800s onwards, comes from Peru 2000 years earlier for making panpipes, influencing the craft in an entirely different region of the globe. It is neither lost how colonialism marks the world, as it is own historical DNA, the tusk Rinland working on having its own history. Another segment shows the still problematic issue of ivory smuggling even in the centuries after today, where a chipped game box which is painstakingly fixed, beautiful on the surface with its white and black design, used ivory confiscated by poachers for the repair before the material used was packed away¹.

The hard work is shown in close up, from the tracing of images on an Amazon funerary urn to new clay pots being crafted, but you still have the lives of these artisans and preservers depicted on screen nonetheless. Conversations are casually overheard and recorded, such as discussing a young daughter now less interested in cartoons and more into nature documentaries, including one of how elephants are like ballerinas in their ability to "hear" through their feet and walk differently as a result. With Latin music on the radio constantly, the lives of these people are experienced if rarely seeing their faces. Sound design, as in Black Pond, is a prominent piece of Those That's creation, from the intimacy of these sequences to bird calls being spliced into the scenes of work on the soundtrack.

The film does, in truth, evoke those of museum instillations. The one significant difference is that, with the craft in what is depicted onscreen and in the soundtrack as carefully considered, the form of the film is as important as the content. This comparison is also not out-of-place as, alongside the tusk itself, there was also a book connected to the film². A museum installation in itself is as much an art form, one I respect as much for their sense of being in presence of them in an environment outside of a cinema. I can see Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another have its segments separated into installation pieces, but it is truly the virtue of Jessica Sarah Rinland's that the actual film as is also works as cinema. With its seemingly distancing effects actually focusing one on the importance of the work onscreen, it becomes cinema of the senses in feeling the intimacy and hard work on display in painstaking detail.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Contemplative

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

=====

1) The Earth shall be made a common treasury of livelihood to whole mankind, without respect of persons. I hate none. I love all. - Gerrard Winstanley and The Diggers, 1649. As quoted in Black Pond in its ending onscreen.

2) Taken on the MUBI article on the film Not All Objects Are Silent: "Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another", by Madeleine Wall and published on April 6th 2021.

Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)

 

Director: Jonas Mekas

Canon Fodder

 

August 10:

"Worse than the Twilight Zone"

Jonas Mekas early in this document of his life compares himself to Ulysses, one form of the Roman name of Odysseus, a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey who, returning from that odyssey after ten years, despite originally just trying to returning home from the Trojan War, felt weary in his homecoming. Weary in his homecoming in a new world to him, we begin in  1949, a week into Jonas Mekas and his brother emigrating to the United States, having bought a Bolex camera between them which we see the footage from, in this film composed together in 1976 decades later. A displaced person in New York City, this Lithuanian migrant's experience is steeped in melancholia, but as he would find happiness in his new life, and return to Lithuania briefly one day in the future, so too does the world he entered feel brimming with fascinating. This preserves that world he entered like amber on film, even the nudie joints and downtown cinemas selling sex, from which after his sense of being lost he would eventually find himself.

Mekas admits early on he is sentimental, rather than record abstract images, and as a film that view is taken as it goes from his new life in 1949 to the sixties, Lost, Lost, Lost now I come to it appreciating his work rewarding as a journey over three hours felt fully. It does not hide the fact he was displaced. Fellow Lithuanians meet up at the House of Lape, as seen, and we see football (soccer) games, picnics, traditional folk dances, and even a Lithuanian wedding in Brooklyn. Openly viewing himself and others like him lost in stasis, to eventually diminish in number, Mekas  even shows that their nationality was to question even as exiles, as he briefly covers the conflict of Lithuanian communists versus Lithuanian nationalists, as their country became a Soviet nation in the future Iron Curtain, footage recorded by him even showing protesters with signs.

This is the kind of source which can now compel me, as it is an epic documentation of one man's past as a diary, one of many Mekas would make as he kept recording his life for decades even after this production. Eventually this film reaches the end of its first and second parts (reels 1 and 2), with this chapter of him and his fellow migrants in the United States, with him reconsidering himself beyond an exile, by 1953, to become a Lithuanian needing to rebuild himself. He did, and where Lost, Lost, Lost grows is that in the little details of the life seen, from leaving Brooklyn to Manhattan, even going briefly to New Jersey for shooting grounds, he amplified the life that he experienced and reconsiders it with greater meaning we all learn from.

And the film, based around six reels, does become profound. Fiction and reality both have their places to tell meaningful narratives, full of introspection, but entirely based on reality, this accomplishes this greatly, where even when ending up in Los Angeles, living on "miserable sandwiches and coffee", you see many profound moments Mekas was rewarded with in his perseverance. Only one segment, an extensive one on "Rabbit Shit Haikus", feels broad and trying a little to the point of pretention ("the road, the road, the road...."), even if the name comes from the dark humoured idea that, if life is a journey, he imagines someone reaching the end of the road only to find rabbit droppings and having to turn back round, having to explain what they find to the people back at the start. That segment feels contrived when everything else is intimate and felt fully, meaningful with just the littlest of moments such as a montage of a woman chewing bubblegum, and blowing bubbles, in a variety of different places strung together. His eventual future as a huge figure for avant-garde cinema in his new homeland was documented by himself without ego, filming the world for these filmmakers as it was, such as footage of Robert Frank shooting The Sins of Jesus (1962) at a chicken farm. Mekas also found himself in places of history of the time beyond cinema too, at the right time and right places recording in the middle of an anti-nuke protest, a large scale one that lasts into the night with Mekas front row (literally in the midst of) with his camera.  

It is difficult for me to review a film which is entirely of these images and visuals, which you can argue for all cinema, which should be seen and then discussed. But here especially, Lost, Lost, Lost is a profound work that should be seen, a piece which is compelling as an extensive home recorded narrative. We see over time Mekas find himself, this documentary in itself with him looking back at the time with this in mind, questioning what it meant to be a migrant living in another country and eventually lead to become the man he became, famous for this when Lost, Lost, Lost was compiled and released. It is stepped in melancholy throughout, but as time has passed from watching the film, this mood has seeped away and I look back at this film as a celebration. He crossed paths with fascinating figures, between a Tiny Tim cameo in reel 6, or the sight of an older Salvador Dali conversing with a group over optical illusions in another scene. Mekas even if his journey could end just finding rabbit droppings must have realised the distance was still worth it just for the walking he did.

Eventually a viewer will see this in the early stages of who Mekas became, travelling with film prints of Flaming Creatures (1963) and Blonde Cobra (1963) for screenings only to be forced to sleep outside in the cold, with friends, in Vermont. He is able however in the footage to appreciate the moment between them, becoming a victory for a man who, as documented in his own film Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), originally fled his home land due to Nazi invasion and even ending up a prisoner to them briefly. He jokes over this footage of he and the figures in this footage having been "the monks of cinema", aptly with Mekas onscreen waving his camera around with monk chanting on the soundtrack, all justified knowing his reputation in promoting others' work avant-garde cinema let alone his own work being profound for decades to come. After nearly three hours of Mekas trying to find himself as an exile, to joke like this in the final stages of the archive material feels like he found himself, Lost, Lost, Lost for us the viewers a celebration of finding oneself, certainly a film is dire need of greater recognition as a gem of the art form.

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972)

 

Director: Jonas Mekas

Canon Fodder

 

Berries, always berries.

Reminiscences... was the first Jonas Mekas film I ever saw, and I did not appreciate it. His films today, having come to appreciate them, belay what cinema can be. I do not consider this an insult, but this huge figure in American avant-garde cinema in his own work compiled what would effectively be lifelong home movies to most viewers, becoming diaries that spanned decades which he would eventually compile into short and long form features based on the subjects per work. You see this in the first pieces of Reminiscences..., scored to solemn piano music, of the streets of Brooklyn from his perspective as a Lithuanian migrant. This is real homemade footage focused on fragments of the most innocuous of images, like kids playing on the street, turned into something profound by time and his focus on them. The time capsule nature is profound - Mekas' own narration is personal and introspective, contrasting that the footage is archival and meaningful even without his compelling words over them.

Mekas' own accounts build together a life for those around him, a world where even an anecdote never seen onscreen is meaningful, such as his brother when drafted into the army being shipped back because he started eating leaves and was presumed to be mentally unstable. Mekas' own life is complex as, documented in this film specifically, he was a migrant who had to flee his homeland from invading Nazi Germany, including being imprisoned by them before he got to the United States with his brother finally. Reminiscences... follows him finally returning to his homeland in 1971.

Intermingling colour and monochrome footage, Mekas' work immediately evokes a time in my life of volunteering in a film archive, devoted to sorting through home movies on a variety of formats to discern historical importance, working on the types of film materials Mekas may have considered or even use like 8mm film reels, discerning the images on hand cranked projectors you had to squint to scan the images of. Here there is a greater existential nature, of a man from World War II in exile finally returning home. An additional factor at the time is that his home of Lithuania then was also a Soviet nation which is touched upon.

It is difficult to describe this, as it has to be experienced viewing the footage, seeing through his camera eye and thoughts of the world within them, of music, of drinking and sleeping on hay in a profound moment in his life he calmly, gracefully, recounts as a storyteller. Baring some rapid editing, this is only "avant-garde" in how sadly people do not want to watch something this sincere on mass to fictional reality. This is sad as, finally understanding this after the first viewing, returning to these reminiscences is incredibly gentle. Entirely in the countryside in the Lithuania section, there is not even a spectre of communism really here, where it feels less different from the land of Mekas' relatives when they were younger, baring that now collective farming groups exist. A running gag is how the native Lithuanians joke they will probably look backwards to the United States, all in an amused attitude, such as having to use hand ploughs.

It is a beautiful piece, structured in chapters, part 1 almost a prologue, the Lithuanian section part 2 with 91 shots makings it up, whilst part 2 examines how, fleeing the country, he did end up in a Nazi prison camp, going to Germany, before finally escaping to the United States. Far from a bleak affair, it comes with curiosity as, able to go to the factory he as a prisoner had to work in, now a heritage site, he can reflect on this history and even meet one of the staff, now an older man, with no grievances and now empathy for each other. It is a soothing reminder of how, even with the horrors of World War II and Nazi Germany, human beings are still human beings capable of empathy.

More so as Mekas, the man he became, ends the film, where with the colour of the film stock used adding such a striking look, the colour red so unique to this footage, Mekas goes to Vienna. The man who returned home, to be able to see family he left in his country, was also able to become a hugely profound figure for growing avant-garde cinema. His films soften and remind us viewers in the modern day even these seminal avant-garde filmmakers are us, where Peter Kubelka, the legendary filmmaker who turned a commissioned beer commercial into an elliptical short Schwechater (1958), is seen as a jovial man feeing pigeons, or how Ken Jacobs, of Star Spangled to Death (2004), was dubbed "the Child" by Mekas. Even tragedy, when Vienna burning at night due to the final is the final images of the film, as Kubelka is recounted lamenting a market he was fond of burning down, is felt with a greater worth than just mere sadness. That at least the market existed and is remembered, and that, yes, even destruction can be beautiful as it is here, the sight of crimson reds, oranges and flickers of yellow on black stunning to behold. If this review feels whimsical, more than usual, it is because trying to speak of Mekas beyond this would be absurd. Sadly, his films are difficult to see, a tragedy as never was there a man in avant-garde filmmaking who championed humility.

Travel Songs (1981)

 

Director: Jonas Mekas

Canon Fodder

 

May there be happiness -

The name Jonas Mekas is legendary, a figure of great importance of American avant-garde cinemas a Lithuanian migrant who came to American and contributed to avant-garde filmmaking in his own work and he help in others work, co-founding the Film-Makers' Cooperative in 1962 and the Filmmakers' Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives. The interesting thing seeing his work, and it is cinema not as readily available as one would hope unfortunately, is that nothing in his work is "experimental" in the sense of requiring a different attitude to approach the material. This twenty plus minute short is exemplary to this.

Travel Songs, in all honesty, is a compilation of home movie fragments. It is not difficult; it could be sold to any viewer with ease if they found a fascination in exploring any person's old films, vacations or chronicles of a place in an old time period, and appreciate the experience. Mekas' career, with his own filmmaking, is a man who picked up a film camera and recorded his life over the decades until his 2019 passing. In the span of twenty minutes here, from the late sixties to the eighties, we hop through the various countries he has travelled within, snapshots of times of the past. In fact, Travel Songs as I viewed it is actually a compilation of shorter work - The Song of Assisi (1967), The Song of Avila (1967), The Song of Italy (1967), The Song of Moscow (1971) and The Song of Stockholm (1981) at least.

Stan Brakhage, speaking of avant-garde filmmakers he would have crossed paths with, becomes a point of note here as, whilst this does follow common traits to other Mekas films I have seen, noticeable for me is how he intercuts the silent footage filmed in these environments, literal fragments in places, and rapidly cuts between them, a barrage of memories especially with Italy, which has the longest segment over fifteen minutes, very much like Brakhage. Yes, these are home movies of travels, but that is inherently rewarding as time capsules to the past, which Mekas recorded amongst large portions of his own life, especially between those we see rushed through in snapshots, as if recounting memories which suddenly flash up when least expected in barely glimpsed form, or when we are allowed to breathe and take them in.

His trademark is not to hide behind the camera as a silent figure, not necessarily in front of it presiding, but his voice is that of a commentator on his own work. Here, it is sparser than other work where his voice and ideas dominate as much as the visuals are allowed to breathe. He relies here on a few text intertitles, which in the rawer look of the footage, where shots were recorded on shaking moving transport or dependent on the environment, is themselves as handcrafted to be filmed as everything else.

As someone who documented the United States from the perspective of a Lithuanian migrant extensively in the likes of Lost, Lost, Lost (1976), here this feels like a relaxed view of the world beyond. Snippets of Moscow, its famous onion domes on Saint Basil's Cathedral barely appearing onscreen but enough to register, whilst Stockholm in Sweden is a place of humility, with Mekas placing great emphasis throughout these films-within-a-film on ordinary life and the joys of it, from simple acts to dining to looking on the people that pass in front of the camera (adults and especially children) with an admiration for them. Italy as having the longest segment becomes an ode to ordinary, non-glamorised reality between cafes to barbers rather than an elaborate piece with a commentary on the culture.

In his segment in Ávila, Spain the longest of his monologues here, near the beginning, emphasises the point of the whole Travel Songs. He reflects, with his accented voice with calm happiness, a "little dog" suddenly coming up to him and licking the dust off his shoe that came from the paths he was walking. Said dust connected him to the place, the dog and everyone there, as these films connect us viewers even decades later this time. Only the fact recorded footage, especially on physical materials he had to use rather than digital, creates its own beautiful distortions in time changes anything from us being there with these people and places of time before.  

It is a compelling piece altogether, but for me, their real worth comes with the larger scope of Mekas' filmography. Again, these films are not as easily accessible, but when they include Lost, Lost, Lost (three hours long, spanning his migration to the United States in the late forties to the sixties), to As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) (nearly five hours long), this is a small piece of a filmmaker's work, a real case of one where the author's entire career is in goal to one large composition, his life depicted on camera. This little piece by itself though still reaps a reward, but its place in the larger framework is where the power grows further for its virtues.

Secret Rites (1971)

 

Director: Derek Ford

Screenplay: Derek Ford

Cast: Penny Beeching as Penny; Shirley Harmer as a Coven Member; Lee Peters as the Narrator; Alex Sanders as Himself; Jane Spearing as a Coven Member; Wendy Tomlinson as a Coven Member; Maxine Sanders as Herself

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #248

 

The initial thing to address, in this documentary about a Wiccan initiation ritual and other rites performed at the coven of Alex Sanders, an English occultist, is that this definitely a fictionalised interpretation. We will get to the film's value as an artefact as we go, but just going off the main selling point of this micro-feature, Secret Rites' director Derek Ford is famous for work selling salacious content like The Swappers (1970), an anthology of wife swapping and swinging narratives. Penny Beeching, the young hairdresser wishing to join Sanders' coven, has a role in the television series Up Pompeii! (1970) with Frankie Howerd, and there were people not part of the coven hired as additional extras during that ritual scenes¹.

However, the interesting thing, as with any film, is that it still has legitimacy as a cultural document. More so as this does have a really funny and ultimately profound prologue, where you are introduced to a typical Hammer horror film conclusion as a parody. A nude Satanist orgy is taking place, with the oncoming virginal sacrifice of a young woman being talked of by the narrator, only for her fiancé John Goodfellow (wink) to rescue her with just a crucifix and the power of Christ. The film immediately cuts to Alex Sanders, a real practitioner of the occult, proclaiming this image to be rubbish, and later on even Dennis Wheatley, the author of the likes of The Devil Rides Out (1934) and other Satanic horror novels, is buried by his coven in the discussions. This immediately proclaims Secret Rites' virtue even if it is a fictionalised mondo documentary, that this is replacing the image of evil witchcraft stereotypes with Wiccans who, whilst still doing sky clad nude rituals, are ordinary people who pass the viewers on the street.

Even if Penny is a glamorised figure to enter this coven, the banality of her going from work at a hairdresser to the coven for her ritual is an image with profoundness, the occult and esoteric alternative religions seeping into ordinary British life. Even when her voice over talks of her family being slightly wary for her, no one is trying to stop her casually going to her induction ceremony as if a club. It is still of the time, with a lot of psychedelic music and m-o-o-g synthesiser sounds on the soundtrack, but for a document presenting the secret rituals of a community few have seen. This still has relevance in seeing how Secret Rites is trying to present the unordinary being of regular people. It is still sold for titillation - that whilst there is body positivity in varying shapes and equal opportunity full frontal nudity, this is sold on many nubile nude women. For whatever reason, alongside the more sombre documentary Legend of the Witches (1970)², this is rated for still being only suitable for eighteen year olds to see in modern British between them for BDSM nods, which is the only truly absurd content of the micro-feature too.

Even then, though it follows the trope of this type of feature of having to dampen the titillation for its audience with moralising, it is more progressive in this case as Sanders talks of people wishing to join his coven for nude orgies only to leave when learning you have to study a lot whilst you are there. There is more emphasis on very kitsch rituals here, with man in an elaborate goat's head doing nothing but lounge around the proceedings, but there is also talk of having to do lectures, reading and studying to be a coven member, which is a progressing thing to include. Rather than just nude frolics in occult circles, this is enforcing that these covens are more than scintillating acts of fornication but an alternative belief system with its beliefs, study and discussion. One of the most rewarding moments is seeing these people, with clothes on again post initiation ritual, talking about Penny's initiation afterwards in a discussion group.

The rituals themselves, for entertainment's sake, are kitsch in an amusing way. The rituals are likely as accurate as Alex Sanders wished them to be, bearing in mind Derek Ford clearly wanted to add some additional spice to sell the content. The final, forbidden ritual we the viewers finally see is clearly this fully. An Egyptian ritual of people who love each other to the point they believe they knew each other in past lives, and wish to union even their souls, it means a lot of homemade Egyptian iconography. Most of the rest of this content, including restaging the meeting between the goddess of rebirth and Death, obviously has to be taken into consideration of how Wiccan beliefs are relatively young, properly founded in the early 20th century, and where their sources on witchcraft belief came from, but they feel more accurate depictions in spite of the content around itself. Plus, and this would not be a surprise, Alex Sanders of the head of the coven with his wife (not  as prominent despite her importance in the conven) was probably taking any advantage to promote his beliefs even if spicing up his practices up for this little movie. Anything which feels more provocative, or has non-coven members involved, was likely a compromise for him to get more eyes onto his belief practices, whether right to do or not.

It is a fascinating piece, as much for these scenes in the darkened cavernous ritual area, of their era, but also as still a good document of how these movements were bubbling under the surface at this time, feeling as appropriately normal as anything else not taking place in a darkened cavernous ritual area. Certainly, for a purely pleasing sit, this is only forty seven minutes and you get to enjoy a psych-music scored piece of homemade occultism, which no one should find disappointing unless you are one of those awkward people wishing to call these nice ordinary people blasphemers. As they themselves point out, a lot of the lore on witchcraft, even kissing Satan's arse in nocturnal rituals, are misquoted or were weaponized, whether old pagan gods turned into Christian demons or that the ritual arse kissing is speculated to only be the case because the deity is taller than a person and that was the only place to show devotion to them. Maybe from the director Derek Ford this is a smuttier take on that important idea, but as a cultural artifact, we could have just had the evil witchcraft clichés but thankfully ended up with something attempting to be progressive. One where I can end a paragraph with that thought now buried in a reader's mind.

 

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1) A great source book which covers this film is The Bodies Beneath (2019) by William Fowler and Vic Pratt, covering the many strange and unique titles from British cinema and television, which throws a lot more speculation on what is real and possible reel filmmaking for selling something saucy.

2) The pair of films has been sold together on Blu-Ray and DVD from the British Film Institution as a compelling double bill in 2019, both including Alex Sanders and including perspectives on occultism at that time including its growing acceptance to some.

Shakedown (2018)

 

Director: Leilah Weinraub

Cast: Egypt, Jazmyne, Mahogany, Ronnie-Ron, Slow-Wine and Keyonna Taylor

Ephemeral Waves

 

Some places are just hard to find.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when it began in 2020, where many were likely watching films on the internet unless they had also acquired large DVD collections to finally go through and rewatch, there was a perfect time to appreciate cinema's more maligned areas when blockbusters were being held back for a year or unable to be completed. At a time where there were films lucky to have been finished, but many were instead delayed or not yet released, the time useful for the sake of bringing attention to both retrospective titles, like the virtual We Are One film festival which screened on YouTube between May 29th and June 7th 2020, but also smaller independent releases. This context is worth bringing up as, alongside being a fascinating documentary built from footage director Leilah Weinraub filmed through the early 2000s of a lesbian African-American strip dancing group known as Shakedown, Shakedown's history should also include the fact it premiered on PornHub¹ even before going onto the Criterion Collection's streaming service or the film's own website. That is a distinct thing consider, especially as this is proudly an LGBT work about lesbian African-American culture, juxtaposed by this distribution context.

This detail has thankfully not overshadowed the film, in mind to Pornhub and mainstream pornography being still seen as a local leper, due to problematic attitudes to sexuality worth questioning as much as problematic puritanical attitudes that single out porn for no justifiable reason. Historically, it will show alongside entrepreneurism that Shakedown's director Leilah Weinraub took this brave risk, and she deserves blessings for a great work but also for having a promotional decision that, as this would afterwards be on The Criterion Channel, blurs media sides. It also fits a film whose (evocative) poster and its footage within itself is not shying away from being sexually frank too. Within a world of "studs" and "fems", the world of Shakedown is of female dancers in erotic and explicitly sexual dances for a female clientele, surrounding them on the dance floor and even slipping dollar bills in their g-strings. Shakedown both is a film proud of being sexually explicit, and also one without needing to spell it out that really forces one to question notions of gaze and idealised physical attractiveness.

Coming to this as a male heterosexual viewer, obviously this world is for me from being an outsider, and as a white viewer as much so. It would be frankly stupid to consider my opinions the ones to follow in thought on this document. As an outsider however, probably the most fascinating immediate detail is that, whilst the dancers and patrons are of all shapes and sizes, many of the women we follow and interview dress and perform in deliberately hyper-feminised ways in their performances, usually seen from a male heterosexual form of eroticism when depicted. The film has discussions on this whilst stereotypical images such as money placed into g-strings and twerking are witnessed in a world of proud gay black women who dress and act how they want.

It is technically a documentary, but it is more meaningful to call the work an archival project experienced in first person by the director, Weinraub putting together filmed pieces shot by her during the nineties into the early 2000s following female go-go and strip performers at black lesbian bars. As someone who is remotely alien to this world, it is an uncensored lens to the world which is greatly appreciated as much for its pride in showing itself. We see the people in this world and talk about a world of theirs. Egypt, among the many dancers with such distinct stage names like "Slow Wine" and "Jazzybelle", is one of the most prominent voices, who openly admits to having once as a teenager in high school, not coming out as gay, having beat up other girls in high school who tried to make a pass at her in cheerleading groups, a long progression to finding her sexuality when having been brought to a gay club called Catch 1 without realising its target patrons. We see these dancers as ordinary people, Egypt's girlfriend both a former teen fan who found a poster of her and that is the real woman against her persona Egypt. We see the backstage, dancers getting changed and ready to go out, and there is a lot on how many of them came out of the closest later in their lives. One of the most distinct figures, the MC Ronnie-Ron, talks of having been from a Jehovah's Witness upbringing, not coming out as gay and originally when she had being a "fem" only to find herself as a "stud" dressed down much later, become one of the most charismatic figures in the documents as much for the brash personality that would have came to her in that time.

We see gay parents, one a female dancer with their daughter the first "Shakedown baby", one of the absolutely sweetest segments to see, including footage of an interview show called Issues in the Hood, where for the one person surprised of one of the female parents' occupation, another person calling in says they should be proud of themselves regardless of said occupation. In contrast, returning to the poster of Egypt, that is one of a couple of tales of how posters of her advertising the club, homemade posters for Shakedown and other "parties" shown throughout, became fixations for teen girls. Against discovering their sexualities there is also however a tangled web in the cases brought up. Even in mind to an anecdote of one girl stealing a poster from her mother to keep under her bed, and being beaten for it, a lot of blatant outward text of one's inner life when one's parents having posters for these clubs, even if married, is talked of a few times, alongside the fact that Egypt's friend who brought her to the club, which led to her finding her sexuality, was gay to her surprise too and unaware of.

Throughout there is a nice and subtle reminder, without hammering it home, to never make snap judgements of what sexuality should be as, between a performer who deliberately exaggerates her costumes to the point of drag to Egypt herself, who was came out gay only when she was brought to such clubs. These are all individuals and their sexual attractions vary wildly. Their matriarch Mrs/Mother Mahogany, who runs the clubs, even talks of there being a vast difference between stripping for male patrons and for women, for the later far greater need for dress, pose and how to portray femininity to tantalise the female audience, whilst the flexibility and openness of the community means that, costume and body diversity alone, all the dancers here are vibrant and powerfully eroticised figures in full control of their own image. Whether first wearing a full fireman's costume, street clothes to suits or costumes deliberately chosen to barely conceal a thing, this is as vast and creative as you can get from these performers in how to express them. Particularly, again with mind as an outsider, of the stereotypes of how black women are sexualised in mainstream media, it is really ironic and fascinating that those stereotypes are embraced by quite a few of these dancers, including in dressing and acting in a way to emphasise their figures, alongside women in the crowd or running the establishment who do not wear makeup, dress down and act the complete opposite. 

It is only seventy plus minutes long, which is a shame as this subject matter (if the materials recorded at the time were plentiful) could have been longer. A timeline of this culture in Los Angeles with footage shot by the director on early digital cameras, it is low resolution and of its time, among the homemade posters and DIY attitude of the performers and their MCs. The film is proudly sensual and erotic for any viewer of any gender and sexuality, but entirely from a perspective of a minority in LGBT culture with its own characteristics, which is a huge virtue of the film coupled by the complete lack of patronisation and lecturing within this world, throwing them instead into the middle of it with some onscreen text and talking head interviews for context. Entirely working class, with a lot of background in Baptist and Christian churches, this world is shown and allowed to breath. There is even male figures, such as an older guy who talks of being in this area the Shakedown headquarters are at since the fifties, who looks to the club we follow with friendliness and mutual respect as someone who is hired as an employee.

The only time Shakedown depicts anything oppressive is when two male white police officers abruptly appear in the middle of a performance and arrest a dancer halfway through her act for soliciting, not even bothering to cover her up as they handcuff her hands behind her back in a way that comes off as humiliation. The sense of this club, and these gay women, being outsiders is finally felt as it is male police officers who continually appear to interrupt the club, disguised in plainclothes and abruptly appearing as outsider threats. Their sense of banality, when the director manages to get conversation with them (even if lying about having turned her camera off), makes it far more troubling especially in how, in the middle of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States went through the entire Black Lives Matter movement and a lot of greater existential questions of how police should be. Ultimately the male owner of the building not wanting sex taking place in his establishment is what tragically ends the Shakedown parties, he feeling like an outsider without understanding the wholesome environment he is intruding on, forcing eventually the tale of a safe place being torn down and having to be rebuilt as the ending.

Shakedown is a film I admire just from the perspective as an outsider to this culture being permitted access to this environment. Hence documentary as a genre tag would be a disservice when this deserves to be called a home movie, to embrace the intimacy of Leilah Weinraub being a participant of this world, and an archival piece, worthy of those tags as positives as it is a snapshot to a place and community bristling in energy and excitement. More so as this is a community of progressive ideals, not stereotypes stand-ins as framed ideals, but women who are a variety in who they are and themselves a far admirable image to raise up as an LGBTQ ideal. The decision to premiere for free on PornHub was only until the end of March 2020 and, sadly, this is easily a film that can slip through the cracks after the initial surprise of that promotional strategy, when in truth it is one worthy to see. Choosing PornHub ultimately has a rewarding existential question in itself too. In late 2020 as well, PornHub flushed half if more of its user generated content when accusations of unwholesome content were made at them². They themselves too as the mainstream face of porn is an albatross around their necks too when, in image, the stereotypes of mainstream pornography can easily stick to them even for all their amateur and professional figures of all types who create material for the site. Not even in terms of questioning the tropes in mainstream porn either honestly, but whether the tropes are in themselves gauche.

Something like Shakedown is a rewarding and even subversive work to briefly have connected to such a site, with real LGBTQ women proud of themselves, and painting an image of their own desires and sexuality which, as mentioned, defied many presumptions. That of a) what is eroticism for a gay female gaze and b) that presumed stereotypes of the male heterosexual gaze, in shapes and sizes, do not necessarily exist as things merely only men like, but that the problem was always the male objective gaze, not a woman's dress sense and figure. The film also does not in the damndest hide the explicitness of the sexuality, both in how explicit the nudity seen is, and even with eroticised smothering of whipped cream at one point mid-dance, and a mock strap on performance, among scenes. A hell of a lot more powerful erotic imagery can be found here regardless of the average viewer and their sexuality and gender, greater knowing it is for gay women by gay women.

 

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1) More detail on the film can be read HERE.

2) HERE.

The Cat, The Reverend and The Slave (2009)

 

Directors: Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita

Ephemeral Waves

How can you mistake me for a panda?!

Merely a fragment of a much larger image, the document by Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita is slight in many ways but still compelling, the collaborators from separate birth places (Negra in France, Kinoshita in Japan) yet joined to create extensive art installation, short based and even theatrical length documents of the fringes of modern human culture. From the various sub currents of Japan, of people who dress up in female masks and clothes of kigurumi cosplay, or have virtual girlfriends (Wife, Girl, Mother (2019)), to The Cat's subject which is primarily about Second Life. The couple, just from this triptych, blur the line between constructed fictionalised scenes but about real people, following three different worlds within the online virtual world created in 2003 and which became a phenomenon at the time of the documentary.

The three narratives including their tangents, "triptych" truly the best way to describe this film, involves The Cat, which is about the world of the furry community, The Reverend, in which a Christian minister has ventured out into the Second Life virtual realm to preach the word of God, and the Slave, part of a variety of individuals involved in virtual escorts and consenting BSDM-like slave to master roles. The world of Second Life is a vague one for me, frankly, but experience of family playing The Sims, a virtual game Negra and Kinoshita explored with short Neighborhood (2006), has provided me with the idea of the virtual world as an idealised one or to explore. It is for me, however, a double sided coin I admit wariness to. There is something strangely compelling yet disconcerting, with the initial shots, of an ordinary world rebuilt within Second Life, of a room where you can watch TV as in real life, recreating the ordinary world exactly and finding it not as harsh as a fantasy baring a few idealised tweaks. In contrast, when a group of women called the Earth Mothers Charity Association are seen debating to plant virtual trees to encourage real trees in the real world, you see the virtues of grappling with the virtual landscape. I find in reality, if I have to past a bias, it is that the banalities of the real world seep into the new one which has always made me wary of these virtual realms, the idea of them as places that should offer complete unnatural freedom only to be dragged down by the flaws of real life something I find a great deal of. At least repeating those aspects when virtual reality can offer if never true escape but a place for creative imagination would suffice, but a lot of repetition and grinding as one would do in real life, and not see them as the same, really startles me with the likes of this.

Commodity is there, as money transaction exists in Second Life long before bitcoin became a thing, as is the fact to even get to each sim (location in the world) you past a variety of obtrusive advertising. I wondered, if I had ever decided to go to Second Life, and be brave in my anonymous form, whether it would be possible to spend the time building places only possible in dreams, strange locations I dream of in sleep and as much are the obsessions in even cinema, itself a form to escape the real world in truth. Yet the wonder how expensive that would be is there, as estate and property are there in the Second Life, as is the man briefly seen chastised by his wife in the real world, in their ordinary kitchen as a fellow player, for starting an escort service.

The real world seeps in, not in least, that one man we meet entered the Second Life to find the wife who left him abruptly in the night, never to be seen again until he searched. This also introduces us the master and slave relations, figures who in the virtual world, be their avatars animal people or human, who have slaves willing to do what the masters want, and with slaves who have their own slaves, and many each. This is far less disconcerting to me than the banal costs and lives of the real world invading the virtual one, as it leads to one of the most interesting and mentally fulfilled figures named Lisa. Lisa, a trans woman who still has to go back to being Chris when she has to go to work, and switches between as well, lives in a small apartment and has a group of female slaves. However, with a semblance of knowledge of BDSM's ideals of consent, only the term "slave" due to its historically loaded meaning is problematic, as what we see is consenting adults involved in role-play, posting erotic photos to each other and playing games of commanded chastity to enhance their sexual lives. Lisa is also using to in finding a real life relationship away from the virtual world, with one of her female slaves which she talks of in an interview to the camera soon to be met, dealing with the reality as much as the sexual fantasy including the issue of a potential step daughter with all the baggage that will involve.

Contrasting this, in the world where Second Life is full of gambling and sex and vice, a reverend named Benjamin, an ordained Christian minister, has brought a church to Second Life alongside his wife. They would be one of many in the online game - as it progressed religion in general came to the world such as the Islamic faith - and they even acquired an island (a sim) called Truth to help the faithful escape sin. Some with raise their eyebrows at this, be it this review or actually watching the documentary, but this is not strange to me. In hindsight, the notion of Christians going out to spread the word of Christ, depending on which denomination, would have naturally gotten to Second Life, among the porn and gambling trying to bring an alternative side in a perceived view of entering a new horizon to offer salvation. It is virtual, a simulacra, but this is new land to spread the gospel, but where the segment does raise questions, and where the film's brisk length teases in a tantalising philosophical conundrum, is how the religious notions of redemption exist through this mirror.

Second Life, and the internet in general, for myself, is a mirror to human perception. Again, this is my personal opinion, so this is merely an idea to contrast and scrutinise. We created these constructs, forms in digital for our ideas and our dreams, alongside our worst sides and also our subconscious desires intentionally or accidentally, even if separate from us. It raises all sorts of strange reflections, such as in other aspects of avatars and the masks players have, when the real notions of faith are involved with what is effectively these subconscious aspects of human minds made accessible as a apparently form. A senior priest, brought in to console Benjamin, refers to Star Trek and the new frontier, but there is a lot that could have been unpacked. The film briefly cocks an eyebrow, where we see the senior preacher leave his church in a lavish red car, which he calls "his mid life crisis", but never was there a subject matter, as with the rest of the triptych, which leaves one unsated and wishing for more. Openly, I do not criticise Negra and Kinoshita's film at all for slightness, and they are clearly a case of their work altogether, though sadly not easily accessible, which build to a single work based on comparing these different worlds. The depth would be found in contrasting the worlds they explore and similar themes shared between them, in their static scenes of interviews and set pieces, occasionally some ambitious (if heavily structured) moments of the camera pulling away in aerial shots over buildings or passing by among the cars outside.

The third of the triptych is one though which many of us may have some greater idea of, but as one commentator points out, in his cat ears and tail, is likely due to their exoticising in the mainstream media. I openly admit I learn of the furry culture, of people who role-play as (and even embrace the identity of) animal people through episode five, season 4, of CSI: Crime Scene Investigations called Fur and Loathing, about a dead body leading to a furry convention in Las Vegas. Furries, in their prolific communities, are likely to be come across if you look in the right places online, or at least for myself in my interest in fan art. I openly admit to not being a furry, in the sense that my connection to animals has always been of them being separate to myself even in my admiration of the natural world, but there is something profound and beautiful in the scene where a group, in full costume, proudly march through a convention hall corridor, more striking as one of them is even carrying a flag like a flag bearer. The people within he costumes are also regular people, getting into debates as one does with a female cashier, who is not one, of the difference between having sex with an animorph and a person dressed as an animorph, in mind that (as referred to in that CSI episode) there is a sexual subsection of furrydom, with terms like "yiffing" coming to the mainstream, but that it is not the entire picture in the slightest¹.  

I wish, again, that a longer version of this film existed. What we get offers a lot of a potential fragments, sub currents within sub currents as there is mention of furry escorts existing in Second Life, and the notion of these new worlds, as they would have been then as the internet was fully available, and how they interact with the normal real world is a subject that would be fascinating to see. Just in terms of scenes like one at night where an older woman wishes for members of the furry community not to talk too loudly outside her house, not wanting her lawn to become an anime expo, which paints a picture of how she has adapted to the communities around there. Or that the film ends with Second Life being struck by a virus-like prank of thousands of images of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle raining down on the screen like fake money, the flaws of the idealised world seen. But that is not a dismissal of the documentary itself, merely a wish for more. What we get is a finale briefly entering the Burning Man festival, its own potential documentary of a place of self reliance and strange sights (women nude, willingly being rotated around on an improvised art installation spit, trucks turned into coiling giant dragons). They also look to the idea of melding with Second Life, and whilst the online game has faded in the popular consciousness as others have come about, even something like the wholesome videogame franchise Animal Crossing becoming a communal experience for many as online games and virtual realms have multiplied, those which followed it were the same in creating new places for communities to exist. This subject, and the many seen, if anything could be returned to even by Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita, adding more to the interesting content here.

 

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1) That said, the sexual subculture of furry fandom, even if not the whole, can be found and is not a marginalised aspect in the slighted. It is eroticised fantasy, and far more complex than merely zoophilla, entirely different in what it entails. Again, it is not my interest either. Hopefully this lands as an amusing joke, rather than accidentally offending any potential readers who are furries, but I myself did not grow up being pulled towards the Cadbury Caramel Bunny, a figure in adverts I saw growing up who, upon looking back, was an example in mainstream pop culture of a figure ridiculously sensualised, for what is an anthropomorphic rabbit, among many that I would not be surprised would have had influenced someone towards the erotic side of furry culture.