The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is the highlight of my year. I go to four to six films a day for the ten days of the festival. Every year I want to diary the best films, but I am so busy, and so exhausted at the end of the day, that I never have. This year I have decided to be willing to throw a diary together, just to get one out there, when I see important films. This is tonight's report.
Seeing these independent films and documentaries makes mainstream Hollywood films look even more shallow, if you can believe that. It is a shame more of these films don't reach a wider audience. It took me a while to discover that documentaries with daunting topics--such as, torture or environmental catastrophe--are more often inspiring than depressing. Now I try to see as many docs as I can.
[Other documentaries proving a person or small group of people can make a difference: The Whistleblower, Yes Madam, Sir, The Road to Fallujah, Someplace With a Mountain, and Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz).]
Good news--no concentration camps today. The one film involving East Timor was a feel-good story of the soccer team that won a tournament in Japan, against all odds. Not worth reporting.
But, I did see one of the funniest films I've seen in the last ten years. As usual with documentaries, you will not accurately imagine what it is from hearing it described. Exporting Raymond follows the painful journey of Phil Rosenthal as he tries to help Russian television put together their version of Rosenthal's hit "Everybody Loves Raymond". The audience laughed non-stop, and I was right with them. But don't think sit-com, there is more meat here.
The primary challenge is to convince Russians, from execs down to writers, that ordinary people being ordinary in their lives is funny. Rosenthal is up against a costume designer who wants to inform Russian women about fashion by having her star clean the house in evening gowns, actors who think the funny way to play a man hit in "the garden of good and evil" is not the realistic slow bend and groan but manic jumping up and down in what Rosenthal terms a "folk dance", and writers who think Raymond should be more macho.
In a typical sequence, the patient and diplomatic Rosenthal listens to a writer speak about how Raymond is not appealing because he is too wimpy, not dominant enough with his wife. A light goes off in Rosenthal's head and he asks, "Are you married?"
"No", comes the predictable reply.
Later, when an actor testing for the lead role nails a scene, engaging in a petty argument with his wife, we see everyone laughing but the still optimistic single writer, who sits with his arms crossed looking grumpy. Only it's much, much funnier than that.
Rosenthal enters the project with the belief that marriages and men/women are the same everywhere, and maintains this view in the face of endless Russian insistence that no one wants to see normal people revealing normal foibles. The film manages to be touching at the same time it is hilarious, and Rosenthal deserves a reward for his sensitive brilliance in dealing with resistance. The film is populated by several Russian characters.
Really, see this film. It is truly hilarious, and in my large audience at least, Everyone Loved It.
Here's Phil Rosenthal in a Q&A following one of the screenings. There area a couple of interesting factoids near the end of this:
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This festival features Quebec film-makers, whose films seem to share a style and message. Normal people in real-life situations, character-driven, without lessons or tidy endings. The excellent film, Remain With Me (Reste Avec Moi), I saw today followed a couple deciding whether to abort a Downs Syndrome fetus, an elderly man whose wife has Alzheimer's, an alcoholic woman who perpetually backslides, an immigrant family being exploited by insulting employers as they try to get by in a squalid and dangerous living conditions, and a woman coping with a four-year-old daughter acting out over the separation of her parents. These themes aren't milked, nothing too dramatic happens, and it is all fascinating, touching, and human. Also in the series this year are Blind Spot, the beautiful Heart of Auschwitz, Mourning for Anna, Piche: Between Heaven and Earth, and A Life Begins. Something special is happening in Quebec.
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StepLeftStepForward offers this tip for finding documentaries:
DOCALLIANCEFILMS.COM is an online portal of Doc Alliance for Video on Demand offering permanent access to 400 outstanding documentaries selected by the five partner festivals. Twenty new films are added monthly and these can be acquired through streaming or download.
It is an excellent place to spend a weekend. Many of the films are offered for free, including a new one each week, and the rest can be streamed or downloaded for a very low price. It is East-European heavy but there are works from around the world.