James Joyce famously wrote that "the artist, like the God of the creation,
remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined
out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails." This year's slate of
shorts in the Rhode Island School of Design's Film, Animation, and
VideoFestival betrays a somewhat more pronounced level of involvement from the
artists, but a few of them do almost seem to transcend the act of creation,
standing apart with a life of their own.
I thought of the Joyce quote while watching Will Lee's Shadow of the
Mask, which breaks down the fourth wall in a very amusing way. Lee looks to
have invented a new genre here: computer-animated film noir. Sure, the action
scenes are at times a little clunky, and it does occasionally resemble a video
game. But sodden atmospherics of shadow and rain do much to enliven this
black-and-white tale of a Philip Marlowe-like gumshoe who, as he seeks answers
from a mysterious masked dame, ends up in an empty room. There, a stentorian
voice bluntly and hilariously explains the utilitarian logic behind the masks.
Joel de Guzman's Creeps & Coppers is a fabulously choreographed
dancing and gambling jag that happens to take place in a cemetery. Here the
skeletons gussy up in zoot suits and throw craps (the tombstones are slot
machines). A riot of color and ceaseless motion, its off-kilter lines and jazzy
sensibility bring to mind the old UPA cartoons of the early 1950s.
Speaking of emerging from holes in the ground, Christina Spangler's
stop-motion Unearthed uses suitably muddied tones to limn the picaresque
adventures of a potato, freed from the soil and loosed on a murky
vegetation-choked world. An altercation with a monstrous rat affords the spud
an eye. But this new body part, for all its benefits, also allows the poor
tuber to see, Buddha-like, the old age, sickness, and death that all life must
bring. (The epiphany comes, of course, in the form of a potato chip conga
line.) When this potato weeps, you know his tears are real -- or at least
Spangler makes 'em look that way.
Although Peach Blossom in Moonlight is about "a magical peach [finding]
its way into a quaint Chinese home," Ben Ho also seems to draw on the story of
Adam and Eve, Marc Chagall's magical-realist flying romances, and a visual
style that, if a bit sloppy, recalls the look of some of Disney's Asian-themed
films (Mulan, Aladdin). Supersaturated colors and a pretty
soundtrack vitalize this dreamlike, wordless short.
In Friend on the Rocks, Adam Todd tells a ridiculously simplistic story
with considerable visual panache and an obvious knack for the digital medium.
As a "drog" (dragon, dog) struggles like Sisyphus to move monoliths up a
mountain face, a fly swarms him in a galling try for friendship. That's about
it. But Todd nails the sense of weight as the rocks are heaved skyward, and he
expertly renders the faces of both the mountain and the drog. Best, he doesn't
ignore small details, like when the drog stops for a moment to scratch his
ass.
Tanis Gray's Thermopolis, Wyoming
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In the astounding multi-media Thermopolis, Wyoming, Tanis Gray has
created a breathtaking thrill ride of a travelogue, taking what could be a
prosaic documentary subject and dressing it up in motion and soaking it in
kaleidoscopic color. Gray manhandles flickering, sped-up old stock footage and
interviews with denizens of the titular burg, a former boom town (hot springs,
coal mining, oil) that's now in decline. As the talking heads talk, layers upon
layers of imagery fan over each other, leaping fore and aft across the screen
until it's unclear what's background and what's foreground. As we meet a woman
whose lameness was cured by Thermopolis's hot springs and a rancher who is
struggling to make a living with his chosen profession, it's clear that this
film is moving in both senses of the word -- it's as touching as it is visually
striking.
Strictly live-action works are less of a presence here than in years past.
Charlie Zinn's Last Day benefits from its director's innovative camera
placements and a keen eye for mise en scène. A glowing time-lapse
opening shot and a lightning-fast photo montage set a promising tone for the
rest of the film. But its gossamer-thin storyline, about two adolescents
enjoying a day as if it's their last, isn't too engrossing -- and a
speed-talked narration, muffled and mumbled, doesn't help things.
As might be expected, the events of last September inform more than one film.
Greg Kanaan's Sand Nigger TV and Ryan Cunningham's Too Much for Her
to Handle both use that hateful day as a jumping-off point for some novel,
unexpected treatments. Kanaan gets a ready-made narrative by tailing his
friend, cable-access host Georges Aad, whose cousin Moni flies into Providence
from Lebanon on August 29, 2001. Georges is at first glad to have a new
character for his lo-fi, low-brow TV show, but two weeks later the cousins'
relationship is strained badly, suddenly mirroring the larger antagonism
between the US and the Muslim world. Kanaan exploits some neat tricks
(especially the way he films much of the action as it plays on a television in
a dark room, making for a palpable sense of disconnect) and his camera stares
unflinchingly at Georges's boorish antagonism toward his "sand-nigger"
relative, culminating in a disquieting altercation between Moni and Georges's
townie friend. The film's fly-on-the wall realism is unsettling, but its end
credits reveal a twist that throws everything seen before into a new light.
On first glance, Cunningham's Too Much looks to be a documentary about
the ramifications, echoing down the generations, of her great aunt's horrific
murder (she was set ablaze in a locked room). Cunningham is interviewed about
this by her childhood friend Vanita. Then, suddenly, the camera turns on
Vanita, who states matter-of-factly that she worked on the 68th floor of Tower
One. Through an ever-shifting montage of interviews, faded photographs, and
clips of Kindergarten Cop (just see it to get it), Cunningham draws deft
parallels between these two conflagratory horrors, gently probing the inability
of her mother, her grandmother, and Vanita to come to terms with their
aftereffects. As Cunningham dons her great aunt's necklace and the "lucky suit"
Vanita wore on the 11th, standing against a backdrop of tongues of flame, she
seeks to "take all their pain away . . . put it on myself." Her directorial
skills, coupled with a gripping and elegant narrative, make her a filmmaker
worth watching now and in the future.
The RISDFilm, Animation, and Video Festival runs through Saturday, May 25
at 7 p.m. at the RISD Auditorium. Call 454-6233.
Issue Date: May 24 - 30, 2002
