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Also this issue: Shot by Both Sides Preschool Confidential |
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July 5-11, 2002
screen picks
Philadelphia Stories (Tue., July 9, 9 p.m.; Sat., July 13, 10 p.m., WYBE-TV Ch. 35). A highlight of this week's Philadelphia Stories is the screening of Eugene Martin's Cynthia's Window, a 17-minute short that goes all the way back to 1988. A quiet piece full of haunting black-and-white imagery, the film juxtaposes nearly abstract shots of Philadelphia geography with the recollections of 90-year-old photographer Cynthia Lawrence. Martin's love affair with the city's less-depicted side, as evidenced by Edge City and Diary of a City Priest, is obviously already in full swing, with dreamy shots of cars zipping down the highway and kids playing on an asphalt playground. As good as it is to see new work from local filmmakers, it's rare to get a chance to see where they came from. Also part of the program: Lisa Chouteau's Jack Rosen: Portrait of a Photographer and Fly to Freedom: The Art of the Golden Venture Refugees by Barry Dornfeld, whose Look Forward and Carry On the Past: Stories From Chinatown aired a few weeks back.
Unquote TV (Wed., July 10, 7:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) DUTV's short-film showcase series celebrates its 10th season with a pre-kickoff screening at the Prince featuring selected films from the eight-episode run. Even in this 90-minute redaction, there are a few too many undistinguished segments driven by identity politics that don't have much to offer beyond their subject matter. But there are some stunners as well, especially Goran Radovanovic's My Country (For Internal Use Only), a dizzying, multifaceted work that channel surfs through the shifting landscape of present-day Serbia. Heavy with the bitter irony that pervades such regional feature films as Wounds and Cabaret Balkan (The Powder Keg), My Country alternates between excerpts of (presumably) real newscasts and Radovanovic's own version of reality, which includes everything from an interview with Serbia's oldest living film extra. The film's point of view is pretty well summed up in one brusque cut from the voice of Slobodan Milosevic to a shot of a toilet bowl. My Country also takes up most of Unquote TV's premiere episode, which airs Mon., July 15 at 8:30 and 11:30 p.m. on DUTV Ch. 54. Further episodes air each Monday through Sept. 2.
Little Dieter Needs to Fly ($29.98 DVD) If you read the newspapers closely, you might be under the impression that Werner Herzog has been cooling his heels for the last many years. But in fact, he's continued to release work at a fairly frenetic pace, but with theatrical release remaining elusive. (A seeming bid for the English-language market, the Tim Roth-starring Invincible, received poor reviews at Cannes and has yet to make it across the pond.) Anchor Bay's inclusive program of Herzog reissues has thus made many of Herzog's films available to an American audience for the first time. Little Dieter Needs to Fly was released in some American cities, though not Philadelphia, in 1997, but considering the limited scope of its release, this might almost count as its American debut. Like many of Herzog's films, Little Dieter is as much about its director as its ostensible subject matter, an approach that's more troublesome with documentary than it is with fiction. As a child in Germany, Dieter Dengler watched Allied planes destroy his village, and he became so fascinated with flying that after he moved to the U.S. at age 18, he became a Navy flyer and was quickly shipped off to Vietnam. Herzog frequently interjects his perspective into Dengler's story, as when he overlays aerial footage of the Vietnamese jungle with the words, "It all seemed so strange, like a barbaric dream." Those are, of course, Herzog's words and not Dengler's, and despite whether it's an accurate representation of the latter's sentiments, it's jarring to hear the plainspoken Dengler's thoughts channeled through what is so obviously Herzog's voice. (The descriptions are not a little like Herzog's comments on the Ecuadorian jungle in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams.) Likewise, when Dengler re-enacts his grueling imprisonment by the Viet Cong, tramping through the jungle with his hands tied behind his back, it's not at all clear why he's doing it -- he seems far too strong-willed a man to engage in such potentially devastating behavior just for Herzog's sake, but Herzog doesn't seem sensitive to the need to inform us that it's not all being done just for the sake of the movie. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is almost unwatchably effective at re-creating Dengler's torment, and its ethical gray zones just make the film uncomfortable. But comfortable viewing has never been Herzog's aim, and there's no doubt he would welcome any controversy you might care to drum up.
