September 11-17, 2003
screen picks
NY, NY (Thu., Sept. 11, 9 p.m., Sundance Channel) New York is without question one of the most filmed cities in the world, so Sundance Channel's second annual collection of NYC-themed short films serves not only as a memorial, but as an opportunity to view the city -- and, really, all cities -- in a new light. Peter Hutton's three-part New York Portrait, shot from 1978 to 1991, views the city in large-grain black and white from a range of angles that suggest a painter's eye more than a reporter's. Hutton's midnight visions are amazingly suggestive; a cleverly arranged sequence of shots seems to turn the Goodyear Blimp into some futuristic airship, surveilling the populace from Midtown to Coney Island. Perhaps most transformative of all is that the images play totally without sound; when has anyone ever heard Manhattan quiet?
Manfred Kircheimer's Stations of the Elevated, from 1979, features images of graffiti-bedecked subway trains, linked together by the music of Charles Mingus, while Francis Thompson's N.Y., N.Y.: A Day in New York (1957) is the briefest of the films, but the most evocative. Shot with a range of modified, damaged or otherwise tinkered-with lenses (Thompson stoutly refused to reveal his secrets), the film bends the city like a Mylar sheet: Buildings contain their own reflections, coffee pots and orange slices multiply and recombine, all accompanied by a score that suggests that the city is itself an instrument, and Thompson its virtuosic player.
Kinetica 4 (Fri.-Sat., Sept. 12-13, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Subtitled "Abstraction/Animation/Music," this two-part series delves into the past and present of experimental film. Friday, "The Sixties: Spirituality and Psychedelia" features work by Pat O'Neill, Oskar and Elfriede Fischinger; Saturday, "Contemporary Works of Abstraction" brings us up to date with an evening of (mostly) recent work.
Soul Comes Home (Sun., Sept. 14, 11 p.m., WHYY-TV) Produced as a fund-drive carrot and subtitled "A Celebration of Stax Records and the Memphis Sound," Soul Comes Home has its share of oldies-night embarrassments: It gives no joy to report that Percy Sledge's rendition of "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a cruise ship-worthy travesty, complete with cracked high notes and mechanical knee-drop. (And, oy, the less said of Michael McDonald's "Dock of the Bay," the better; the only happy note is that Otis Redding isn't alive to be struck dead by it.) Good as it does my heart to see Booker T. and the MG's, their "Green Onions" run-through is accomplished but uninspired, the exact opposite of the spirit that made Stax great. And what is Al Green, who never recorded for Stax, doing closing out a show principally devoted to Stax artists? Something in here's funky, and it ain't just the chicken.
But if ever there was cause to doubt the life-extending benefits of singing God's praises, Soul Comes Home ought to lay it to rest. Without exception, the show's best-aged voices came from those who devoted themselves to, or at least drew heavily on, the gospel tradition. Mavis Staples (watch for her Oct. 18 gig at the Philadelphia Blues Festival) invigorates "Respect Yourself," Philly's own Solomon Burke does Otis right with "Try a Little Tenderness" and Rance Allen, a lesser-known figure from Stax's latter days, thrills with "Heaven is Where I Want to Be." Green, who's apparently convinced himself that the "love" in "Love & Happiness" might as well be divine as earthly, still knows how to hold the crowd in the palm of his hand. OK, William Bell strikes a blow for the secular team with a rousing "You Don't Miss Your Water," but still, the facts are in. Perhaps you can use pledge breaks to thank the creator instead of writing Patrick Stoner a check.
My Brother Silk Road (Wed., Sept. 17, 8 p.m., $6, International House) The title of International House's five-day series, "Films from Along the Silk Road," evokes the days of Genghis Khan (or, more to the point, The Fall of Otrar), but it begins with the most recent film in the series, Marat Sarulu's My Brother Silk Road (2001). Full of heady imagery and philosophical conundrums, Sarulu's film might be described as a road movie where the road leads nowhere; mostly, it's set on a train, which a shot near the end implies is literally going around in circles. Aboard the train, the passengers travel without moving, which is to say without progressing. The film opens with children, two boys and a girl, playing in the woods, sucking drops of moisture from low-hanging tree branches, a moment emblazoned with black-and-white clarity that might send you back to the shot of raindrops churning up a placid pond in Pather Panchali. Never idealized, the children bully each other, then quickly forget their differences: Sarulu's paradise is sweet, but not without its problems. On the train, which the older boy reveals travels the route of the old silk road, life is less happy: A middle-aged woman is insulted by her ex-husband and ignored by her bohemian daughter; an artist tries to sell people pencil sketches of themselves, but they object to his poetic representations. My Brother Silk Road has its share of clumsy rhetoric: When the wayward daughter asks why the artist always draws people floating in the air, he responds, "Love makes people fly." (Ick.) But at its best it has an earned simplicity that borders on fable. After the artist is thrown off the train (the movie is definitely marred by too much sentimentality when it comes to the role of the artist), he hooks up with the children, and when one asks to be his apprentice, he demands, "Can you stand on your head?" When the child asks why, the artist responds, "Sometimes it's good to look at things from a different angle." "Films from Along the Silk Road" provides ample opportunity to do just that. More on the rest of the series next week.
Mother and Son (starts Wed., Sept. 17, 4:30 p.m., $5.75-$7.75, County Theater, 20 E. State St., Doylestown, 215-345-6789) Cinephiles (over)impressed with Russian Ark are in for an abrupt, but pleasant, awakening; Ark director Aleksandr Sokurov's 1997 Mother and Son is superior in every way, substituting visual artistry for one-take gimmickry. Inspired by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, the film uses a variety of special lenses and filters to create tableaux of smeared light unlike anything you've seen. Rather than depicting the circumstances leading up to grief, the film is something approaching a portrait of grief itself: Seeing Alexei Ananishnov's gargantuan body stooped with sadness, the body of his mother in his arms, you need no explanations. Sokurov's new Father and Son, perhaps something of a thematic sequel, has been acquired for U.S. distribution.
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