Reelin'

The Newport International Film Festival: Documentaries

by Johnette

Of the almost three dozen full-length films to be shown at next week's 2001 Newport International Film Festival (June 5-10), 11 are entered into the documentary competition and two other documentaries are being given special screenings: Spike Lee's A Huey B. Newton Story, in its US premiere; and The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition, directed by George Butler and based on the book by Caroline Alexander.

I had a chance to preview the latter, plus two US films from the competition: Amato, directed by Stephen Ives; and Running On the Sun, directed by Mel Stuart. All three of these films deal with physical and emotional endurance. The Antarctic expedition has all the true-life adventure you could possibly want: men fighting to survive the harshest elements on the planet. Running chronicles the Badwater 135, an ultra-marathon undertaken each year by 40 runners from around the world in the grueling circumstances of desert heat and mountain storms. And Amato tells the story of two people whose love for one another and for opera has given tremendous staying power to their Bowery Street theater.

Amato

Tony and Sally Amato established the Amato Opera in 1948, and after nine years in a Bleecker Street location, they moved to a narrow four-story building in the Bowery that has been called "the smallest opera house in the world." Though they had wanted to have a professional company, they realized, after several tough financial years, that they could instead provide a platform for young performers by acting as a workshop theater. In 1998, when Amato was filmed, they were still mounting 10 productions a year, with up to 10 different casts for the major roles.

In addition to its backstage look at this opera company, what Stephen Ives's film does so brilliantly is to give us a well-drawn and evocative portrait of the Amatos themselves. We see 78-year-old Tony conducting the mini-orchestra, encouraging antics and ribaldry in a scene from Rigoletto, climbing an 18-foot ladder to hang lights. Eighty-year-old Sally works the light board, runs the ticket office, sews and fits costumes -- "without safety pins, there could be no opera," she quips-- and makes spaghetti and meatballs for the whole crew. The camera people who follow the Amatos through their daily routines can barely keep up with the energy of these two.

Ives takes a page from his colleague Ken Burns, whose The Civil War and Baseball series he co-produced, in using historic stills to tell the story of Tony's immigrant family and his early training in the butcher and restaurant trades, Sally's hard times with her mother, working in a factory and taking voice lessons, and their quick courtship and marriage, in 1945. Ives has an excellent sense of narrative, of building suspense and fleshing out scenes. Early in the film, Sally observes,"Opera has everything, life and death, love and drama -- it arouses you." The same can be said for this film, whether you've ever attended an opera of not.

Amato will be shown on Wednesday, June 6 at 4 p.m. and on Friday, June 8 at 7:15 p.m. at the Opera House 3.

Running On the Sun

Why would anyone put themselves through the physical and mental torture of running 135 miles in the July heat of Death Valley and 8300 feet up Mount Whitney? Emmy Award-winning director Mel Stuart, best-known for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, set himself and his crew almost the same task in order to film the runners in this marathon with no cash prizes, only a belt buckle if they finish the race in 48 hours. To qualify as finishing the race at all, they have to do it in 60 hours; at least one-third usually don't make it, beset with exhaustion, dehydration, nausea and vomiting or blistered feet.

Stuart closely follows a dozen runners, and at first it feels as if he's throwing us too much information. But Stuart skillfully weaves in mini-bios of each runner when we first meet them, and, eventually, just as the pack of runners thins, our knowledge and understanding of each runner winnows to the essentials.

There's the New York Times reporter who got hooked when he did a story on the Badwater; the Marine who wants to see if he has "the right stuff"; two guys in their mid-sixties, one with a herniated disc who says, at 65 miles, "If my doctor knew I was doing this, he'd kill me!" and the other, a Brit lured on by a can of Irish stout dangling from the back of the van his wife is driving. Two amputees, one a Vietnam vet on an artificial leg and the other a victim of his job in disarming landmines, with an artificial leg and arm, are profiles in determination. So are the three women, including a Brit who trained by running up Scottish mountains, and the two men battling for the lead: the previous year's winner, Gabriel Flores, a tire-store owner, and Eric Clinton, a seasoned marathoner who takes an early lead.

The footage in this film, shot in wind, rain, blowing dust and temperatures up to 115 degrees, is remarkable, conveying startling images of the landscape, unforgettable scenes of the runners' pain and memorable moments as the finish line draws near. Stuart, too, kept his goal in mind and came out a winner.

Running On the Sun will be shown on Wednesday, June 6 at 3 p.m. and on Friday, June 8 at 1:30 p.m. at the Opera House 1.

The Endurance

In early 1914, Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton placed an ad that read: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success." Five-thousand men responded, lured by the daredevil risk of adventure. Shackleton ended up with 27 men and 69 Canadian sled dogs when they set off for Antarctica and the South Pole. In December 1914, they reached the Antarctic Circle and began plowing through the small bits of open water, only to become trapped inside the pack ice when it froze shut around them.

For the next 10 months, Shackleton's biggest job was to keep up the morale of his men, and he seems to have been born to do just that. When the shifting, heaving ice began to break up the ship, they set up camp on the ice floes; when those thawed enough to sweep one man into the water (he was quickly retrieved), they moved into three life-boats and made land-fall on Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton set off with a skeleton crew across 850 miles of open sea to a whaling village on South Georgia Island, hiking across its glaciers for 36 hours to reach help for his men.

Though library and bookstore shelves clearly show the renewed interest in Arctic and Antarctic exploration in the last decade, this is the first film to pull together the amazing footage and 100 stills taken by the Endurance expedition's official photographer Frank Hurley. Those historic frames seem as contemporary as a TV broadcast. Combining them with new footage of the region and with staged images, such as close-ups on woolen leggings and boots tromping up a glacier or mittened hands rowing the lifeboats, director George Butler creates a seamless tale that could compete with any action movie. Together with his writers, Caroline Alexander and Joseph Dorman, he keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the film.

The Endurance will be shown on Saturday, June 9 at 12:30 p.m. at the Jane Pickens Theater.

Go to www.newportfilmfestival.com for complete details on the Fest.