This is our second film at the Stockholm Film Festival, a documentary about the film making in the Philippines during the 1970's. We both found this film rather interesting as none of us are able to claim that we know very much about the Philippine film industry and its historical development (with or without foreign influences).
One of the most famous films being shot on this island is probably 'Apocalypse Now' by Francis Ford Coppola.
This documentary displays both the most dirty aspects of film making but also how the Philippine film industry came about and the first pioneers. The film uses clips from different movies and include commentaries from directors and producers like Roger Corman, John Landis, Eddie Romero, Cirio H. Santiago and many more.
Movies being made during this period are indeed rightly called "exploitation movies" because everone and everything was exploited when shooting these films: People, nature, animals, taking advantage of the fact that everyone and everything were exchangeable. If one needed corpses one bought them from the military or other groups in society and if someone died on the set, he or she quickly was replaced in order not to delay the shooting. Using security measures for the stuntmen and -women was of course out of the question and paying people more for taking risks, was'nt at all on the agenda.
We also got to see how one used the dictatorship under the cruel leader Ferdinand Marcos in order to obtain different kinds of favours, all this repayed with positive commercial for the dictator and his excessive and cruel wife.
This documentary display the most disgusting parts of the film industry or maybe just the film industry as it actually always have functioned and functions? This is in part consumed in what John Landis says about Roger Corman - a statement valid for many contributers to the film indstry: "He is full of shit!" adding that Corman only wants to earn money, in whatever way he can, using every possible means to succeed in this his aim.
We appreciated 'Machete Maidens Unleashed' (director Mark Hartley) - if one can put it that way - because, in spite of the seriousness of the matter, it contains a lot of dark humour and interesting stories about people inside and outside the film industry, introducing to us Philippine actors and directors not so known outside the Philippines.
Jean-Luc Godard's latest film - and the third we watch at the Stockholm Film Festival - is, among other things, his latest way of displaying that cinema does no longer exist but only film. Furthermore his aim is to state that Europe does no longer exist in the way we conceive it and that France does no longer exist the way many French conceive it and want it to be. Full of references to literary works, masterpieces within film and music, Godard has created a mind wrestling piece of work.
I chose to insert the text my wife Aurore wrote for the Stockholm Film Festival's catalogue - though somewhat modified - explaining some traits in this film:
"As in Jean-Daniel Pollet's masterpiece Méditerranée, from which Jean-Luc Godard uses some shots in Film Socialism, a boat trip allows a mythological journey.
For Godard who once was the lynchpin of the French New Wave, the purpose of cinema has switched from presenting events to making time come back in a new form. Characters have become mediums facing opposite shores, between memory and oblivion, light and darkness. Communication is impaired and obstructs stories.
There are indeed three levels of history in Godard's work: one about mankind, one about movies and one about his childhood during the war. These strata of times are compressed in melancholy and funeral aesthetics, which are stressed by the use of the HD camera work.
Godard’s first feature film to be fully shot in video seals his idea that there is no longer cinema but only films.
We are reminded that if the concept of socialism exists, it is not a militant one but a state of equality experiencing the void as an assemblage of simulacra. "
'Douchebag' is a rather conventional road movie about two brothers - Sam and Tom - meeting for the first time in two years. Sam is getting married and his future wife - Steph (Marguerite Moreau) - insists on inviting Tom to the wedding, a decision having consequences not only for Sam and Tom but for Steph and many others around them. Sam takes his brother on a road trip around the USA in order to find an old love of Toms, just in order to invite her too, making Tom feeling less lonely. This is the 'official' explanation from his brother but are there other motives behind this journey? Of course.
The script is weak but it's compensated by the acting of Andrew Dickler (Sam) and Ben York Jones (Tom), both being disgustingly charming in all their repulsiveness.
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