Pioneering

We're delighted to be opening The Sugar Curtain. This subtle and stirringly ambivalent film ponders the promises and boycotts of the Cuban Revolution, from a decidedly singular perspective. Cuban Socialism may have quite literally saved the life of filmmaker Camila Guzman Urzua. Ms. Guzman Urzua's father, Patricio Guzman, had been a filmmaker closely aligned with deposed Chilean President Salvator Allende; not long after the coup, as Augusto Pinochet's junta ideologically cleansed Chile, Guzman and family made their way to Cuba.

With this background, one might expect Ms. Guzman Urzua to present an extremely positive image of Castro's Cuba. She doesn't. Instead, the film is ambivalent, contrasting Castro's Socialist Dream with that dream's incarnation - particularly with the day-to-day reality of contemporaries who grew up in the 70s and 80s. Though some remain, many - including the director herself - now live elsewhere.

From Ms. Guzman Urzua's frank and personal meetings with these old friends, a subtle and relatively unique image of Cuba appears. The Sugar Curtain is less an ideological talking point for a CNN roundtable than a serious chat among old friends. Thirty years into their lives, they ask: what happened between us? Were we told truths or lies, and, now, are those lies excusable, even if they hurt us? And what about the truths?

Ed Gonzalez puts it well in the Village Voice:

"Both love story and memory of underdevelopment, The Sugar Curtain illuminates, with great sobriety and reverence, the paradox of a nation as steeped in tradition as it is in hypocrisy . . . Guzmán Urzúa understands that to be Cuban is to be conflicted."

The reviews have generally been positive, and for that of course I am grateful. But one critical oversight is remarkable. No one whom I have read discusses The Sugar Curtain within the context of Patricio Guzman's work. The senior Guzman has, for over thirty years, documented Pinochet's coup and dictatorship, while simultaneously evoking the memory of Salvador Allende with an endless tone of "what if?" What if there had been no U.S.-backed coup? What if Allende had remained President of Chile? What if the Guzman family had stayed in Chile? At a remove, and certainly through metaphor, The Sugar Curtain feels like Ms. Guzman Urzua's response to such conjecture. If there had been no coup, if Allende had remained, and if the Guzman family had stayed in Chile, then maybe their Chile would have resembled the Cuba depicted here.

Would that have been a good thing?

Go to the Pioneer Theater website.

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As a footnote, we're excited about some of the people with whom we're presenting the film. Jonathan Miller of First Run / Icarus Films has brought Patricio Guzman's work to the United States for a long time. Gary Crowdus, of Cineaste magazine and now also working with First Run Icarus Films, has chronicled Cuban and Chilean cinema since about the time Ms. Guzman was born. Crowdus is one of the great, unknown American film critics. Beyond being a fantastic writer and editor, Crowdus consistently sticks to his principles and obsessively delivers fantastic work. We're delighted to present this film with his collaboration, and also with that of Mr. Miller, everyone else at First Run / Icarus Films, and finally our old friends at Cinema Tropical.

Shockproof, which opens on Wednesday, was suggested to me by the contributors to a_film_by, an online forum for the discussion of “film as art, from an auteurist perspective.” In a previous life, I contributed to forums preceding a_film_by (notably cinemasters).

Discussions there informed my approach to cinema. Through these discussions, I also met a number of writers (most of them better writers than me) who have since become friends and colleagues. We didn't, and don't, necessarily agree on anything. However, I respect their tastes and welcome their criticism and other contributions to film culture. Out of that respect, I was very glad to invite the members of a_film_by to suggest some films to screen at the Pioneer. I want to add that this invitation also extends to the people still writing on cinemasters, though I have fallen out of touch with them.

After an extensive poll, Bilge Ebiri and Dan Sallitt collated the results and passed the resulting list on to me. This list presented many extraordinary dares and challenges. Admittedly, the first that I took up was not the biggest dare and challenge. Shockproof was a relatively easy (and inexpensive) film to locate and bring to the Pioneer. It was not the film at the top of the a_film_by list; however, it was on the list. Shockproof is the first one I have been able to program. Hopefully, it will not be the last.

I have many disputes with all “auteurist” approaches to film history. Like many, I think auteurist approaches overlook the collaborative nature of much filmmaking. But as an exhibitor, I also think that auteurist approaches – like many competing approaches – mute too many parameters of how moving images can be and actually are made, distributed, programmed, exhibited, and experienced.

Nonetheless, I do appreciate many insights of auteurists of many stripes. And I am glad to share a few programming decisions at the Pioneer with such intelligent and insightful critics as Dan Sallitt, Bilge Ebiri, my old friend Fred Camper, and all the many members of a_film_by. I want to express my sincere thanks to them for suggesting Shockproof, and I look forward to other, future presentations.

I wonder why critics have not included Long Knives Night on various "best of the year" lists.

Exceptional in its modesty, DANCE PARTY USA is, for us, an inside job. Writer / director Aaron Katz used to work at the Pioneer, and he has remained a friend to the theater.

But don't get upset that talented people have worked with us.

DANCE PARTY USA is an odd, beautiful little film - attentive to the uncomfortable rhythms at the dawn of relationships, the strange tension that exists before a couple's first kiss, the qualities of independence, and, most powerfully, the ramifications of personal revelation. Also, no literal dance parties take place in the film. Perhaps "dance party" refers to the young peoples' mating rituals. . .?

Beyond (and partially through) the Pioneer, Aaron has become part of a community of 20-something middle-class filmmakers who are creating very naturalistic, downbeat, semi-autobiographical cinema. The community includes directors Joe Swanberg (LOL), Frank Ross (QUIETLY ON BY), the Duplass Brothers (THE PUFFY CHAIR), and Andrew Bujalski (FUNNY HA HA, MUTUAL APPRECIATION). These guys are all directors, but they also often work as actors or technicians on films the others direct. Geographically they are spread out, though common points of meeting include Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, Austin (Texas, whose South by Southwest festival screens much of their work), and also Portland (Oregon), where Aaron passed much of his adolescence and where DANCE PARTY was shot and is set. Often they shoot on three-chip digital video, and the inexpensiveness of that format allows a high shooting ratio which encourages improvisation and taking chances. (Bujalski is an exception, here, as he has tended to shoot on 16mm.)

Institutionally, these guys have a lot going for them, and in time I wonder if their modesty as a "movement" will be lost, and their significance will be overstated - much as the significance of the "French New Wave" of the 60s and the "New Hollywood" of the 70s has by now been infinitely overstated. Still, like the filmmakers affiliated with those movements at their emergence, these guys are making some very interesting, modest little movies, including DANCE PARTY USA.

Check it out this week.

(As a final footnote, DANCE PARTY USA may itself some day be a footnote in biographies of Anna Kavan, the film's teenage star. Kavan has an ephemeral indelibleness that should attract Hollywood agents and casting directors.)

Postscript:
See also this, this, and this.