2007 Summer Movies at the Academy of Music

40th Anniversary Monterey Pop Film Festival
June 15, 16 and 17, 2007

Some of the Films

Monterey Pop - On a beautiful June weekend in June 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love, the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward -capturing a decade's spirit and usinering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey would launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding but they were just a few.

Don't Look Back - Both a classic documentary and a vital pop-cultural artifact, D. A. Pennebaker's portrait of Bob Dylan captures the seminal singer-songwriter on the cusp of his transformation from folk prophet to rock trendsetter. Shot during Dylan's 1965 British concert tour, Pennebaker's access to the legendary private troubadour enables us to witness Dylan's moods and relaxes with his entourage.

Festival Express - The vintage concert footabe alone makes Festival Express a memorable endeavor, offering scintillating performances by Janis Joplin, the Band, the Grateful Dead and Buddy Guy. Nearly as rewarding are the candid scenes of the train ride itself, an endless jam session and party during which musicians let their hair down.

Sweet Toronto - John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band played their first and last performance at the Sweet Toronto Peace Festival in 1969. This classic film captures John Lennon, Eric Clapton Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

Rolling Stones: Hyde Park - The Hyde Park Free Concerts are legendary, and none more so than when the Rolling Stones performed there two days after the death of former bandmate Brian Jones back in 1969. What was always planned as a major show turned into a memorial with 500,000 people in attendance. Mick Jagger opens reading an excerpt from Shelley's poem Adonais as a dedication to Jones and releases thousands of butterflies.

Blue Wild Angel - Hendrix's legendary Isle of Wight show may have been notoriously riddled with technical difficulties, but in all honesty, it is one of his better live recordings, and Eddie Kramer's remix sounds superb. Next, Blue Wild Angel includes many songs missing from the original release such as "Lover Man," "Foxey Lady," "Message to Love," "Ezy Rider," and "Purple Haze." By far the highlights of the performance are the mesmerizing, newly unedited versions of "Red House" and "Machine Gun.

Rockin the Red Dog - With music by The Charlatans, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Lynne Hughes, Mark Unobsky, Dan Hicks, Alice Stuart, Ph Phactor Jug Band, Final Solution, Wildflower, Boston Wranglers, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service

Festival - Murray Lerner’s film "Festival" is a cinematic synthesis of four Newport Folk Festivals in which the art of folk music is pictured in transition during its most crucial years. The range is from Bob Dylan performing "Tambourine Man" and Joan Baez doing "Farewell Angelina," to country artists like Johnny Cash playing "I Walk the Line" to the Georgia Sea Island Singers. The range is also from the high-priced professionals like Peter, Paul, and Mary to the authentic folk dignity of living legends such as Son House and Mississippi John Hurt. Joan Baez, Donovan and Judy Collins are all on view, as are Pete Seeger, the Ed Young Fife and Drum Corps and numerous others that give a feeling of community with the whole American present, and continuity with the American past. Indeed, the long-haired Newport audiences pictured sleeping on beaches and on the grounds, in sports cars and battered station wagons, plunking banjoes and guitars, swapping tunes between formal concerts, and talking about folk music, seem not a rupture with the American past, but an expression of carrying forward an American idealism and social concern.

Summer Movie Series at the Academy
June through September 2007

Look Both Ways

Opening with the idea that everyone is but a moment away from disaster, and craftily wresting the proposition around to a life-affirming optimism, Look Both Ways is an imaginative, humorous and truthful contemplation of human reaction to the inexplicable. Richard Kuipers, Variety.

Watts weaves together their stories, like "Crash" or "Magnolia". It is poetic and unforgiving, romantic and stark. Roger Ebert.

"Look Both Ways" is a fearless movie about a fearful subject, an unusually empathetic and funny film that deals with death and dying in the most offbeat and life-affirming way. Exceptionally smart, playful and perceptive, "Look Both Ways" grapples with big issues in a style both heartfelt and idiosyncratic. It shows that cinema is a medium that can deal with the reality of existence in all its painful and wonderful randomness, and embraces the inevitable messy business of being alive. Winner of several Australian Film Institute awards, including best picture and director, as well as the Toronto International Film Festival's Discovery Award, given by a jury of more than 750 critics.

Iron Island

"Iron Island"--a powerful symbolic drama set in an impoverished Arab-Iranian community living aboard an abandoned oil tanker in the Persian Gulf--is another example of the riddle of Iranian cinema. The region may be in turmoil, the country at the center of world tensions. Yet Iran's filmmakers continue to make excellent, artistically ambitious movies with strong humanistic themes. Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

This is a potent social allegory from Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, told with humor and a feeling of mystery. Though it's thoroughly grounded in everyday realities, the film achieves a sense of fable. Walter Addiego San Francisco Chronicle

The titular "Iron Island" is a huge rusting tanker off the Iranian coast in which dozens of homeless families have found shelter and formed a community. The head of the ship, Captain Nemat, tries to balance finding jobs, oil, food and even husbands for the poor and struggling families. He controls the "residence" with absolute power, despite the increasing pressure from business interests seeking to seize the ship and evict the residents. However, the story comes to violent crisis when two young lovers attempt to defy his authority.

Romantico

Pain, poetry and perseverance form the backbone of Mark Becker's compassionate, well-observed documentary "Romántico," which follows Sánchez from the upscale restaurants of San Francisco to his hometown of Salvatierra, Mexico. Sam Adams, LA Times

A lovely touching moving…portrait…This man talks about his own life - his own struggle - and you get a real sense of his dignity and…that he is a genuine artist. A. O. Scott, The New York Times

"Romántico" is a feature-length documentary portrait of Mexican musician Carmelo Muñiz. The film follows Carmelo as the troubadour returns home to scratch out a living after years of trying to get ahead in the United States. Together, Carmelo and his musical partner, Arturo Arias, roam the streets of San Francisco from restaurant to restaurant, trying to earn a living playing love songs for tips. However, Carmelo's stay in the city ends abruptly when he learns that his ailing mother has taken a turn for the worse. Upon his return to Mexico, Carmelo sees his family for the first time in years. Through his eyes, the viewer watches a migrant tale in reverse, as the film vividly captures why the 60-year-old first chose to leave his beloved family and cross the desert borderlands. But almost as soon as he arrives, he realizes that he can't adequately support his family. And so Carmelo picks up his guitar again in an attempt to earn enough to pay for a return trip to the States. In "Romantico," the music reflects a lifetime of desires and disappointments for this itinerant musician. And the songs bear witness to one man's existential quest for happiness in the face of a frustrated dream.

Casting About

From its opening montage of headshots through its fragments of auditions and between-performance chatter, ''Casting About'' is a solid documentary about how art is made. Matt Zoller Seitz

The acting process is joyously celebrated in "Casting About," a captivating documentary shot entirely in audition rooms during the search for three thesps for a feature film. Richard Kuipers, Variety

"Casting About" is a lyrical feature documentary that explores the captivating experience of casting actors. In late 2000, filmmaker Barry J. Hershey set out to cast actresses for a dramatic film that he had co-written and intended to direct. The plan was to incorporate some of the casting footage into the fiction film, an idea arising from Hershey's first experience with casting at film school more than 20 years earlier. After reviewing the more than 70 hours of casting tapes, a decision was made to shape this rich material into a film of its own. The viewer sits in the filmmaker's seat, as we see and hear 184 actresses, many of whom perform monologues from the work of renowned contemporary playwrights such as Eric Bogosian, David Hare, Richard LaGravenese, Susan Miller, Keith Reddin, Nina Shengold, and Alfred Uhry. "Casting About" includes footage from audition sessions held in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, and Los Angeles - weaving together actor interviews, monologues, and scene work to create an impressionistic collage of the casting experience. The film explores the boundaries between fiction and reality - and the dialectic between intimacy and voyeurism.

IN THE PIT

Like being inside the BIG DIG --experience the industrial mega-project and the human souls trapped in its construction…

Literally and existentially down and dirty, “In the Pit” is an absorbing documentary about work and the transformation of men into laborers. Directed and shot with sensitive attention to detail by Juan Carlos Rulfo, the film takes us into a world apart, populated by members of the construction crew building the second deck of the Periférico beltway in Mexico City. --Manohla Dargis, New York Times.

Although "In the Pit" won the Sundance Film Festival's documentary competition last year, it supplies a kind of a punctuation mark to the current wave of new Mexican films ("Babel," "Pan's Labyrinth," et al). At the same time, it exemplifies the state of the art of documentary cinema: Rulfo could never have made this "In the Pit" without a mini-HD camera. Nor would it have looked so spectacular. – John Anderson, Newsday

According to Mexican legend, the devil demands one soul offered up for every bridge built, as a guarantee for the structure's durability. In Juan Carlos Rulfo's internationally praised documentary, this age-old adage takes on mammoth proportions. Laying the foundations for a massive Mexico City roadway, the workers Rulfo profiles discuss religion, violence, love and jail with a candor that belies the presence of the camera. At the same time, Rulfo’s camera work – from the images and conversations captured high above the ground, to the epic closing shots of the project in all its concrete glory – exemplifies the tension between today’s industrial mega-projects and the human souls trapped in their construction.

RANG DE BASANTI

India’s 2007 Best Pic and BAFTA’s 2007 Nominee

It's the strong performances from the ensemble cast that impress foremost, all of whom are totally convincing as disillusioned youngsters learning the importance of personal sacrifice. Accomplished and universally appealing, this is the way Bollywood films should be made. – Jaspreet Pandoha BBC

An ambitious melding of history, politics, romance and patriotism within the parameters of a commercial Hindi movie, "Rang de Basanti" reps a major step up by writer-director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra ("Aks") in his sophomore feature, and a largely successful attempt to push the Bollywood envelope. – Derek Elley, Variety

Every so often Bollywood produces a rare gem like Rang De Basanti, a film that breaks the mould by offering something more sophisticated than the standard musical melodrama. Directed by Rakeysh Mehra and featuring Brit Alice Patten opposite Indian superstar Aamir Khan, it tells the story of an English filmmaker who travels to the sub-continent to make a documentary about the freedom fighters mentioned in her grandfather's memoirs. An entertaining mix of romance, history and social commentary, this quality production takes Hindi cinema in a fresh direction.

THE BOSS OF IT ALL

Lars von Trier’s story of messy lies, loyalty and getting fired. It hits VERY close to home…and VERY funny.

The movie is as attuned to Dilbert-level cubicle politics as it is to the pomp and absurdity of the actor's life, and if the Coolidge Corner didn't have dibs on it, I'd say the film should be required viewing at every offsite on or near the Route 128 high-tech corridor. It'll trash company morale but you'll go out laughing. Hollowly. –Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Cinema needs meddlesome provocateurs. An occasional stone in the shoe keeps us alert. The film has a lot to stay about professional loyalty, theatre, business and the mad impulse that would have a business leader (or film director) attempt to seduce a company of workers. Enjoy von Trier’s ably performed comedy while we can. –Stephen Cole, Globe & Mail, Toronto

The story begins with Danish executive Ravn who has ordered the business be sold and hired an idle actor to play his American “boss of it all”. Ravn wants to avoid the messy job of dealing with workers’ emotional needs when several loyal employees get fired without warning. The movie uses a new camera technique called Automavision that limits human control over cinematography. A computer program randomly decides when the camera pans, tilts and zooms. It acts as an ironic metaphor, framing a corporate culture that’s trapped in a web of its own making but unable to escape its own rules.

INTO GREAT SILENCE

Sundance - Special Jury Prize, Grand Jury Prize Nominee
European Film Award – Best Picture
German Film Awards – Gold Prize

The silence captured in this documentary -- a meditative look at life in the Carthusian monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps -- may be the most eloquent you'll ever hear. The German director Philip Gröning waited more than a decade for permission to film inside the cloister walls of the 900-year-old order, and he has done a remarkable job of depicting an ascetic way of life that's normally closed to outsiders. The resulting film is nearly wordless and relies solely on natural light and ambient sound to convey the daily routine of the monks, their work, their twice-daily attendance at Mass and their individual prayer sessions. –Walter Adiego, San Francisco Chronicle

Gröning dares us to be alone with ourselves, and with whatever concept of the Infinite we embrace. It's less a movie…than a life experience. I fought it, and surrendered to it, and fought it again and loved it. –Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

‘‘Into Great Silence’’ is where religious faiths converge. Where the unspoken says as much to a Zen Buddhist as to a Sufi Muslim as to a Kabbalist Jew as to a Carthusian. Gröning uses various filmmaking tactics to take us into the mystic: He switches between pristine HD video and grainy, hallucinatory Super-8; repeats key points of text until they become koans; undercranks his camera until the stars spin through the sky; films the monks in silent Warholian confrontation with his lens.

STRANGE CULTURE

Urgently Topical : “Art is Not Terrorism”

“Strange Culture" is an important heads-up to what is going on in our country right now in the name of national security, and a brilliant statement on artistic freedom and the dangers it faces. This film should be seen, should be discussed and is an important document on our times. – Mark Bell, Film Threat

Lynn Hershman Leeson [Director] is as interested in reinventing the doc form as she is in publicizing Kurtz's case (and that of co-defendant Dr. Robert Ferrell, a former chair of the graduate genetics department at the U. of Pittsburgh). The director not only breaks the fourth wall, she reduces it to plaster dust. It's always clear that actors are playing real people -- the actors even discuss their characterizations with the real people they're portraying, and Swinton talks on the phone with the real-life Kurtz. – John Anderson, Variety

In 2004 as Kurtz was preparing an interactive exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that would have allowed participants to test food labeled "organic" for the presence of genetically modified organisms, his wife tragically died from heart failure. Distraught, Kurtz called 911, but when the police arrived and saw the scientific materials for the exhibition-all legally purchased-they called the FBI. Dozens of agents in haz-mat suits searched his home, impounded his computers, books, cat, and even his wife's body, and held Kurtz as a suspected bio-terrorist. Three years later, he faces up to 20 years in prison on mail and wire fraud charges relating to his acquisition of materials for the art exhibit.

EXTERMINATING ANGELS

It’s a seriously dirty film — but also perfectly serious…you decide.

MMMM Out in America (Online)

Jean-Claude Brisseau offers a frequently funny, authentically arousing and seemingly autobiographical tale in "Exterminating Angels”. He heightens the intensity of already blissful sensations via transgressive flourishes. If exiting viewers could all be asked "Was it good for you?" the likely answer is "Yes."

Viewers will have to form their own judgments about Brisseau, and you can read "Exterminating Angels" as both a confession and a defense. Simultaneously brilliant and naive, the film strives to manipulate and implicate the viewer, seducing us into…sexual and mystical intrigues and then punishing us for our complicity. -Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

Inspired partly by some legal and personal troubles that followed the completion of an earlier film, “Secret Things” (2002), Mr. Brisseau tells the story of a director named François who decides to make a film about female eroticism. His methods are decidedly empirical. He recruits “the girls” to participate in screen tests that involve masturbating on camera and then onwards to hotel rooms. His folly is to believe that what the women do for his camera has nothing to do with him, and to deny the sexual and therefore emotional connection that binds him to them.