Documentary Fortnight at MoMA is underway. The first event I’ll be attending is tomorrow (sun.) night, a screening of Family by Sami Martin Saif and Phie Ambo. After the deaths of his mother and brother, Saif travels from Denmark to Yemen to find his father. There’s a filmmaker reception after that. I’ll give you a report. Let me know if you’re going, or look for me there. That’s me in the orange Kozmo.com jacket.
Blocking out the production schedule for Souvenir January 2003, the next short, which will be shot in Springville, Utah (aka “Art City”). Here’s the script. For reference, check out the documentary in the Projects column at left.
In the Guardian, Duncan Campbell reviews 11″09″01, the collection of 11 Sept. 11-related short films produced by Alain Brigand, and loudly laments its lack of US distribution prospects. [The film’s site has interviews will all eleven filmmakers. In French.] Frankly, I’m still pissed that I missed a screening last month at Columbia.
image: bacfilms.com
Campbell mentions the Sean Penn installment I wrote about earlier (starring Ernest Borgnine, the new greg.org poster boy). Penn remembers that loss “occurs every day, and the suffering that follows.” Here’s the Read Google translation of Penn’s director statement.
image: bacfilms.com
In her short, Mira Nair tells the true story of a Muslim New Yorker’s unexplained disappearance on September 11. [Read about her latest feature, Monsoon Wedding, in Filmmaker Magazine.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s segment has repeatedly been singled out as the most powerful in the film; sounds and voices over a black screen punctuated by fleeting clips of people jumping from the towers. A question appears on the screen at the end, “Does God’s light blind us or guide us?” It’s a question Inarritu intends for both sides, since both invoke God in a battle of good and evil.
Kissinger sharing the spotlight with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
Ken Loach must have found Henry Kissinger’s brief appointment to a September 11th commission to be a cruel joke. His segment deals with the one of Kissinger’s pet projects for Nixon, the bloody 1973 overthrow of the civilian government in Chile, which cost over 30,000 lives. [Read Seymour Hersh’s <1982 Atlantic article about Kissinger driving the coup.] It took place on Sept. 11.