I took last week off from the blog because it’s autumn, which means I’m going into hibernation mode. This includes a lot of me-time in flannel jams on the couch drinking Rishi tea and watching Deadwood or revisiting Cassavetes films. It’s a pretty great existence. That said, seclusion is setting me behind on my real-world movie going, and my calendar is filling up!
This past weekend I attended another Sunday Cinema Club screening even though I still haven’t seen the new Jackass in 3D. I also am gearing up for this month’s big film event—the Nordic Film Festival at UWM Nov. 12-19. In the meantime, the Found Footage Festival happens Thursday and two interesting film events — MARN and WMSE’s They Came from Underground screening and the Piemonte Cinema mini-festival at Discovery World — occur during that time! What’s that French expression for the burden of plenty?
Let’s start with the low culture because my heart belongs to midnight movies. The Found Footage Festival Thursday the 11th at the Oriental looks pretty awesome. The program is meant to be a hilarious culmination of video tidbits found at garage sales and Goodwill. The website explains, “Two rules govern Found Footage Festival: 1) Footage must be found on physical format. No YouTube. 2) It has to be unintentionally funny. Whatever it’s trying to do, it has to fail miserably at that.” This year, their Live DVD Taping will take place at the Milwaukee screening! Actually, I have no idea what this means, but I’m excited to find out. This is a beloved annual event around Milwaukee, and this will be my first in attendance. Reactions and explanations forthcoming.
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| Nummioq. |
The very next night, the Nordic Film Festival opens at UWM’s Union Theater with crowd-pleaser The Wedding Photographer followed by a screening of Nuummioq! Why the exclamation point, you ask? Well… not only is Nuummioq Greenland’s outstandingly reviewed first international feature film and their official selection for this year’s Academy Awards, but this also is one of its first screenings in the U.S! Is Milwaukee going to be able to see Nuummioq before everyone at the Berlinale and SXSW? Yes. Why? Aside from solid research by festival organizers Veronica Lundbäck and Tami Williams, who knows… but it’s happening… and that’s pretty darned fabulous.
Nuummioq appears to be of the melancholic sort, as a man falls in love shortly before being diagnosed with an incurable illness. He faces the decision of leaving for treatments without a guarantee of return or staying with family and friends throughout his final months. Early reviews call it triumphant, accomplished, startling and stunning, and (predictably) compare it to the work of Swedish cinema icon Ingmar Bergman. While Bergman himself will be represented at the Festival through a screening of his lesser-known Smiles of a Summer Night, one of the festival’s aims is to expand awareness of contemporary Nordic film and culture. Therefore, most films are more contemporary and span a variety of genres from romantic comedies to all of the dramatic and bizarre films I mention below.
The Nordic Film Festival’s creation began about a year ago when Lundbäck, coordinator for UWM’s Scandinavian Studies Program, received a Cultural Projects grant through the Nordic Council of Ministers. As far as she knows, this is the first festival of its kind in Milwaukee, and it’s well timed because “Nordic Cinema has undergone a generational shift, so to speak. In addition to the established directors, new ambitious filmmakers are experimenting with new techniques and dealing with a changing society,” she says. This seems evident in the cult status of directors like Refn and Daniel Alfredson, whose The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is currently playing the Landmark theaters and whose earlier Wolf will show as part of the Festival. Furthermore, last year’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 2008’s fabulous Let the Right One In both hail from Sweden, while Dane Lars von Trier won’t go under the radar even when we want him to! (BTW: Did the video game based on Antichrist ever get made? Just curious.) Lundbäck also says the festival will continue into the spring with additional screenings, speakers, and events and that she hopes the full festival “is something we can do again in future years.”
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| Valhalla Rising. |
I’m sincerely excited about a number of the films, but Valhalla Rising may have the widest cult appeal (and will be shown on 35mm!). Writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn’s previous film, Bronson, made a big splash at the 2009 Milwaukee Film Festival, and Refn’s Pusher trilogy continues attracting a pretty solid cult following. I imagine these crowds will show for Valhalla Rising, which appears to be a mostly silent film about a one-eyed, mute warrior with superhuman strength. Williams explains, “It’s a Norsk viking tale, popular amongst black metal lovers in Scandinavia. We are hoping it will have particular appeal to younger filmgoers.” It’s sure to be bloody and brooding.
Williams, a silent film scholar, is excited about the two silent festival films, Eroticon and Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages, the second of which was banned in the U.S. for its graphic depictions of nudity, torture, and general perversion. These provocatively titled selections speak to the festival’s goal of promoting a range of Nordic films as well as a general awareness that, as Lundbäck notes, “Nordic countries are not only Vikings and old traditions, but cutting-edge modern as well.” Eroticon, described as a subversive sex-comedy-drama, will feature live accompaniment by local legend Renato Umali, while Haxan will screen as part of the Union Theater’s Experimental Tuesdays series.
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| Metropia. |
The animated Metropia is meant to be peculiar in look and disconcerting in content. Featuring the vocal talents of Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis, and Udo Kier, the film features a dystopian Europe circa 2024 and one man’s journey into paranoia, I think—potentially Brazil meets Blade Runner? Or Gattaca? I haven’t seen the film, so I’m not sure where the story goes, but I’ll attach a trailer instead of trying to describe its intriguing animation style.
One final note: On Nov. 18, music lovers can choose between Sigur Ros’s Heima or They Came from Underground, a selection of Joy Farm’s footage of mid-80s punk performances by Husker Du, Fishbone, Sonic Youth, Violent Femmes, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Einsturzende Neubauten. I’m particularly interested in the purported interview with the Minutemen’s D. Boone, as he died in a car crash shortly thereafter. I’ll be introducing Heima, so I’ll miss the other screening, but I wanted to mention it at length, because the footage has, apparently, been sitting in a basement in Kansas City since the 1980s. Plus, all proceeds benefit MARN, the Milwaukee Artists’ Resource Network.
Next week, I am going to flip-flop and start writing again about what I saw and experienced at the movies, but if you have film events you’re interested in getting word out about, let me know, and I will happily list them here. It’s a tricky balance, you know, trying to get word out about events AND talking about what a delight they were.
