On the Bowery (circa 1955-1957)

Lionel Rogosin's On the Bowery is similar to The Exiles (see my previous post) in some respects.  Both are gritty, low budget  black-and-white films shot on location with nonprofessional actors and loose plots; they seem like scripted documentaries that feel simultaneously authentic and staged.  Also, both films provide insight and empathy toward a marginalized social group and a detailed portrait of a particular neighborhood at a particular point in time.  In this case, the film explores the lives of the alcoholics and other lost souls who lived in flophouses or on the streets of New York City's impoverished Bowery neighborhood.

However, the films are also dissimilar in some respects.   On the Bowery has very few female characters (I assume this reflects real-life demographics), the nonprofessional acting seems more natural and unselfconscious, and the movie has a distinct lead character: Ray Sayler (the name of both the actor and the character).  He arrives in the Bowery with his suitcase, interacts with the locals, drinks, interacts more with the locals, drinks more...you get the idea.  Actually, there is more to the plot, but not that much more, since this isn’t a plot-driven film.  But the movie is well crafted, considering its constraints, and it contains several striking images and scenes.  Also, Rogosin had the good sense (or lack of funds) to keep this 65-minute film short enough to avoid overstaying its welcome.  Overall, On the Bowery is worth seeing.

The Exiles (1961)

One of the drawbacks of creating a shoestring-budget film with nonprofessional actors, post-synchronized dialogue, and a relatively plotless narrative is that it could end up looking like a shoestring-budget film with nonprofessional actors, post-synchronized dialogue, and a relatively plotless narrative.

Such is the case of The Exiles, although "looking like" is probably the wrong way to criticize it, because the film's "look" isn't a problem.  The cinematography is quite fine and one of the reasons to watch the movie is to see what Bunker Hill, Los Angeles looked like in 1958 (when the filming was actually done).  Another reason is to gain some understanding of the lives of Native Americans (or at least a particular group of Native Americans in their twenties) living in that area at that time. Indeed, filmmaker Kent McKenzie based his film on interviews with his Native American actors/subjects, and the movie seems true to life (although I can't say that for certain since I wasn't there at the time).  The Exiles shows considerable sympathy for the plight of women living in this environment (who are generally portrayed in a more positive light than the male characters), and it features a pervasive sense of sadness about how both the male and female characters seem stuck in a life with limited options.  The film doesn't preach a particular social viewpoint, but I do think it has considerable value as a work of social history, and it seems as much a documentary as a narrative film.

However, most of the talking in the film consists of voice-over narration and post-synchronized dialogue, and I don't think the acting would seem professional even if McKenzie had the resources to make a film with more state-of-the-art sound.  The downside of using nonprofessional actors who sound like "real people" is that sometimes they don't speak with the clarity or emotional force of professional actors.  This isn't always a problem -- some of the Italian neorealists were able to get compelling performances out of nonprofessional actors, for example -- but this film seems at times like an amateur production.  This is unfortunate because this is a worthwhile film, despite its flaws, and it might have been hailed as a landmark independent film back in 1961 if somebody had been willing to distribute it for a theatrical release.  Nonetheless, the film did get a limited theatrical release many years later, it was named to the National Film Registry in 2009, and it's currently available on Netflix, so at least it hasn't been forgotten.  Despite my criticisms, I recommend seeing it because the film does accomplish its primary goal of providing insight into the lives of people who had been overlooked by Hollywood and mainstream society.

I've seen this guy's movies

In December 2010, Iranian film director Jafar Panahi was given a six-year prison sentence for making an anti-government film without permission (like they'd actually give him permission if he asked) and inciting opposition protests after the widely-criticized 2009 presidential election.  Furthermore, Panahi has also been forbidden to write scripts, speak with the media, express his political views, or travel outside the country for twenty years. 

Panahi's most recent film, Offisde, is about a group of girls who try to find a way to watch a World Cup soccer match despite being forbidden by law to watch it.  I've seen the movie and I like it.  I've also seen The Circle, another one of his films that criticizes the mistreatment of women in Iran.  In fact, I like both films better than the works of Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash), who is one of the two people who signed the Amnesty International email message I received today about Panahi's sentence (the other person is actress and Amnesty International spokesperson Nazanin Boniadi).  Nonetheless, I give Haggis props for supporting this cause. 

Incidentally, the email message mentions several Hollywood insiders who support Panahi, and the Amnesty International website drops even more names.  I'm ambivalent about the heavy use of Hollywood namedropping (I wouldn't look to Harvey Weinstein for moral guidance, for example), although I am pleased to see that Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X both support Panahi (Patrick Stewart is one of his supporters).  In any case, I personally support this cause and recommend that people go to the Amnesty International website to send a message on Panahi's behalf.

By the way, Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof was also sentenced to six years in prison and he is also mentioned in the sample letter provided by Amnesty International.

Sail Away

I have an idea for the opening of a movie.  It is set in pre-Civil War America.  A somewhat scruffy-looking white man is is giving an eloquent, grandiose and highly patriotic speech about the United States.  He speaks with great fervor and apparent sincerity about the virtues and great potential of the land of liberty.  As he speaks, the camera pans back and it becomes evident that he is delivering his oration to a crowd of people.  The camera continues to pan back during his speech, and as his words become increasingly eloquent and heartfelt, the audience sees that he is speaking to a group of dark-skinned people in shackles.  By the end of the scene, the audience realizes that he is a slave trader giving a sales pitch to a group of slaves who are about to be sent to the United States.

I wish I could say that this was a completely original idea that popped into my head out of nowhere.  But I must acknowledge the inspiration for this idea: Randy Newman's song "Sail Away," a ballad with orchestral accompaniment in which the narrator is a slave trader talking slaves into sailing away to Charleston, South Carolina.  The song is particularly affecting because of the contrast between the music, which is quite beautiful, and the subject matter, which is quite disturbing and draws attention to the ugly contradictions in our country's history, where people praised personal liberty while enslaving others.

I also like this song because it demonstrates how Randy Newman is almost a non sequitur in music history.  Starting out in the 1960s, he drew his musical inspiration from atypical sources (at least for the time): New Orleans rhythm and blues, bottleneck blues, and movie soundtracks (three of his uncles composed music for Hollywood, and Newman himself would have a successful career composing films scores).   He emerged as a cult figure during the era of the  confessional (and sometimes narcissistic and self-pitying) singer-songwriter who wrote about their own personal experiences, but Newman specialized in the unreliable narrator.  His songs were often short stories that didn’t pitch a particular political viewpoint, unlike the topical singer-songwriters who were in vogue before the confessional ones.  Instead, he made the listener think about characters they would normally dismiss as unsympathetic (if they thought about them at all), and sometimes he even imbued these characters with a measure of dignity.   For example, the narrator of “Rednecks” is a blatant racist, yet he also makes a valid point about the superior attitude of Northerners who feel that they are better than him despite the pervasive racism in their own cities.    

Newman did write “confessional” songs that were apparently about himself, particularly later in his career, but he still wrote as an unreliable narrator.  This made it even harder to tell whether he was critiquing the narrator’s attitude or actually believed what he was saying. Indeed, one of the reasons why I like Newman is because his songs force listeners to question their own point of view (which, of course, is one of the reasons why fiction writers use unreliable narrators).  Perhaps that is why Newman’s most popular songs, such as his foreign policy commentary in “Political Science” (“We give them money-but are they grateful? / No, they're spiteful and they're hateful / They don't respect us-so let's surprise them / We'll drop the big one and pulverize them“), are generally the straightforwardly humorous songs in which Newman’s real-life attitude is easiest to identify (although sometimes I wonder if Newman might be the type of person who thinks that Dr. Strangelove has a happy ending).

Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

Pianist and composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was born under the name Yéwédbar Guébrou on December 12, 1923 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Her father was the prominent Ethiopian intellectual Kentiba Gébrou Désta (I should probably mention at this point that the English spelling of Ethiopian names and locations varies between sources).  She received some of her musical education in Switzerland, where she studied violin and piano, and then continued to study music in Ethiopia in 1933.  Her family was deported to the island of Asinara in 1937 and then to Mercogliano during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Her family later returned to heir homeland and became part of the country's high society, and she was able to study music in Cairo.  However, her ambition of studying piano in England was crushed when Emperor Haile Selassie nixed a plan by one of his sons to sponsor her studies. 

She entered the Guishen Maryam monastery in 1948 and became a Christian nun, taking the name Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.  She left the monastery after two years because of health problems and taught in an Addis orphanage.  She composed and recorded haunting, contemplative solo piano music, often characterized by rolling left-hand arpeggios, simple melodies and modulations on the right hand, and the use of 3/3 meter that reportedly reflects the influence of Ethiopian music.  Indeed, Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was influenced by early Ethiopian church music and Ethiopian pop, although her primary influences were European classical composers; her music also sounds a bit like early American jazz piano at times.

She released several LPs, including at least three recorded in Germany, and donated the proceeds to charity.  She returned permanently to the monastery in 1984 and moved to Jerusalem, where she currently resides (to the best of my knowledge).  Her sixth recording, a collection of her solo piano music titled Ethiopiques Volume 21: Ethiopia Song, Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, was released as part of of the Ethiopiques music series on the France-based record label Buda Musqiue in 2006.   I must credit Francis Falceto's liner notes to that CD as the source of most of the information provided here (much of which is also printed on the website for the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation, "a non-profit organization registered in the state of Virginia to teach classical and jazz music to children in Africa and assist American children to study music in Africa.)  Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was also interviewed by the Voice America, but that was not a particularly useful source of information for me since the interview was conducted in Amharic.

If you'd like to listen to her music, here's "Mother's Love"

and "The Homeless Wanderer":

Waste Land (2010)

Can art be a vehicle for social change?  Can it change individual lives?  Is offering poor people who are ignored or regarded as bottom-feeders an opportunity to achieve recognition and fame an honorable way to provide them with the respect that they have been denied for their entire lives?  Is it a chance to empower them by offering them a different way of thinking about the world?  Or is it a way to dangle false hope in front of them and make them more acutely aware of their limited options?  Also, how much real difference is there between a respected arthouse documentary about offering poor people a chance to experience fame and possibly better their lives, and a disrespected reality television show that does essentially the same thing?

The documentary Waste Land (2010) observes Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz as he visits the massive Jardim Gramacho landfill, which serves the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, and collaborates with some of the catadores (people who pick recyclable materials from the landfill) to create works of art to be displayed internationally and auctioned for charity. The film doesn't explore all of the previously mentioned questions in depth, but Muniz and filmmaker Lucy Walker are sufficiently self-aware to acknowledge some of the ethical issues raised by this philanthropic project.  Perhaps that is the difference between this documentary and the hypothetical reality show that I mentioned.

Waste Land provides some of the catadores with the opportunity to tell their individual stories, and this is the emotional center of the film, in my opinion.  I don't know if the opportunity to talk about their lives on camera had any effect on how the catadores viewed themselves, but it did affect how I saw them. For example, I learned that many of them chose to pick recyclable materials so they wouldn't have to resort to dealing drugs or prostitution to support themselves.  The catadores emerged as real, three-dimensional people instead of being part of an undifferentiated mass of laborers who nearly blended into the garbage itself.  Indeed, this seems to be the message of this film: that some of the things we regard as disposable, including human beings themselves, have real value.