A Girl's Story: "When Marnie Was There"

Anna is the main character in Hiromasa Yonebayashi's When Marnie Was There.
(Photo courtesy of distributor GKids)

I am not generally attracted to animated features, but when I read about the plot of Hiromasa Yonebayashi's When Marnie Was There, I decided to attend a press screening. It is a rare movie in which a girl is aided in her quest for identity by another girl. I was completely absorbed in the film, at first because of its lush colors and cinematography—and then because Anna, its protagonist, is such a complex character. When Marnie Was There is quite simply one of the best movies for young adults that I have seen in recent years, and it is opening next week.

Anna, who is 12 years old, is an adopted child. She is also a talented artist, yet she is so insecure and fearful that she develops a terrible case of anxiety. Her mother, fearing for her well-being, decides Anna needs a rest from their life in the city. She sends her to family friends, empty nesters who live in a seaside village. The movie, which is based upon the book by British author Joan G. Robinson (1910-1988), switches the setting to Hokkaido. Near an abandoned house on the village marsh, Anna meets a girl named Marnie who helps her to realize the sense of belonging that is the object of her quest.

Adapted by female screenwriter Keiko Niwa, the film was produced at one of Japan’s famous animation studios, Ghibli, which also produced Spirited Away (2001). Strong female characters, including Anna’s mother, and the compassionate but eccentric “grandmother” who protects Anna from the wrath of a villager, make When Marnie Was There a delightful movie for young women. A measure of its emotional power is that at the end of the screening, I turned to a male critic seated next to me and caught him dabbing at his eye with a tissue. Neither of us had ever felt so moved by an animated character.

And the Award Goes to . . . (OMG, Not Another White Male!) My Picks for the Best of Tribeca Film Festival

A still from Paz Fabrega's Viaje that screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo courtesy of TFF.)

In my Film Journal International feature on gender balance at the Tribeca Film Festival, I applauded the programmers for their inclusion of women filmmakers, but the major awards, with the exception of Camilla Nielsson in the documentary category (for Democrats), and the Nora Ephron prizes that recognize the work of women filmmakers, all went to white males. Laura Bispuri’s Sworn Virgin, a terrific quest film in the Narrative competition, won the Ephron prize. Another movie, about a 43 year-old white, male virgin, Dagur Kári’s Virgin Mountain, was awarded best narrative.

The audience award went to Felix Thompson’s King Jack, a male coming-of-age movie. While TFF cannot be held entirely accountable for the choice of its New York audience, institutional biases are apparent in Tribeca Talks (which included Thompson), and in TFF’s gala choices and special screenings, all devoted to white males, including the Monty Python troupe and Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. These events and their dearth of women filmmakers undoubtedly influenced audiences, jurors, and industry attendees that include distributors and theater owners. Press coverage is profoundly affected by who is invited to speak at these festival events, and by those invited as hosts, the majority of whom were white and male. The circumstances I describe here comprise a study in the ways in which women filmmakers are shortchanged in every aspect of the movie industry--even in audience awards.

Here are my Tribeca “awards” for films written or directed by women and/or those that are women-centered:

Narrative Films:

Best Cinematic Quest for Identity: Sworn Virgin (writer-director, Laura Bispuri)

Best Film: Sworn Virgin
Runner-Up: Meadowland (director, cinematographer, Reed Morano)

Best Cinematography: Viaje (writer-director, cinematographer, Paz Fabrega) and Meadowland (Reed Morano)

Best Sound Mix, Sound Design: Meadowland

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Alba Rohrwacher in Sworn Virgin

Best Actors in Supporting Roles: Paz de la Huerta in Bare (Natalia Leite, writer-director) and Zosia Mamet in Bleeding Heart (Diane Bell, writer-director)

Documentaries:

Best Cinematic Quest for Identity: Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (Lisa Immordino Vreeland)

Best by a Woman: Democrats (Camilla Nielsson)

Best about a Woman: Roseanne Barr for President (Eric Weinrib)

Best about a Girl: Toto and His Sisters (Alexander Nanau)

Best Produced by Women: The Birth of Sake, Masako Tsumura (Erik Shirai, director) and Havana Motor Club, Zelmira Gainza (Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, director)

 At this writing only Sworn Virgin will receive a theatrical release through distributor Strand Releasing. 

My Tribeca Film Festival Coverage

A still from Erik Shirai's "The Birth of  Saké" shows brewery workers preparing the rice that is the basis of Japan's national beverage. (Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival)

My interview with filmmaker Erik Shirai and two of his subjects in The Birth of Saké appears on Film Journal's website: http://www.filmjournal.com/harmonious-brew-tribeca-film-festival-educates-birth-sak%C3%A9.

Paul Mangwana, the leader of Mugabe’s political party, Zimbabwe African National Union, and Douglas Mwonzora, a member of the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change. (photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival)

My interview with Camilla Nielsson for Democrats, about the two men who drafted Zimbabwe's first constitution, appears here: http://www.filmjournal.com/camilla-nielsson%E2%80%99s-tribeca-doc-%E2%80%98democrats%E2%80%99-follows-creation-zimbabwe%E2%80%99s-first-constitution.

Flonja Kodheli (L) and Alba Rohrwacher in Laura Bispuri's Sworn Virgin, one of the films discussed in my article on Italian films premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo courtesy of TFF.)

"Tribeca Film Festival Spotlights Italian Filmmaking" includes interviews with four filmmakers: http://www.filmjournal.com/tribeca-film-festival-spotlights-italian-filmmaking.

Sarah (Dianna Agron) and Pepper (Paz de la Huerta) in a still from Natalia Leite's Bare. (Photo courtesy of TFF.)

"Assessing Gender Balance at the Tribeca Film Festival," my coverage of women directors and women-centered films screening at the festival, appears on Film Journal International's website: http://www.filmjournal.com/assessing-gender-balance-2015-tribeca-film-festival.

Check back in a few days for an interview with cinematographer (Frozen River) turned director Reed Morano for Meadowland.

Alexander Nanau's "Toto and His Sisters"

Andreea and Toto in Toto and His Sisters (Image courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival)

The Tribeca Film Festival always screens a broad range of documentaries, and this year is no exception. I saw as many as time allowed, and interviewed two documentary filmmakers (see Film Journal International’s “Screener” blog) whose work may or may not get released in theaters. A third, Alexander Nanau, is a filmmaker I did not have time to speak with, but his documentary, Toto and His Sisters, about a Roma family, is a documentary I wanted to write about. It will screen at the festival on April 24th.

One art house distributor I spoke with at Tribeca complained that Toto and His Sisters had a  “downward trajectory.” Another declared that “everyone” knew about Romania’s discriminatory polices against the Roma. Neither statement is true. There have been other excellent documentaries and narrative films on the subject, but Nanau’s is both a skillfully rendered piece of journalism, and a documentary in which we see the world through the eyes of children. As in print journalism, documentary is shaped by the views of the journalist, although the subject matter surfaces through interviews—and, as it does in every cinematic genre, through the filmmaker’s close attention to what may be articulated through camera placement and editing.

Bring Back Our Girls

Tonight, the Empire State Building’s red and purple lights signal New York’s solidarity with the Nigerian people. These are the colors of “Bring Back our Girls,” the movement to rescue the 219 schoolgirls abducted on April 14, 2014 by Boko Haram. Our hearts are with the girls who are still missing, and the love and courageous activism of their families and friends.

My First Review

Yesterday, I received the author’s copies of my book, and Lucia, one of the feline beasts who shares our apartment (does anybody own a cat?), turned in my first review. Family! Always our harshest critics!

Fragments for Spring . . .

This is a photo I took in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, fondly known as the "UP" to the locals. It has little to do with what is posted below. It just reminds me of spring, which is getting a slow start in New York City this year!

Glitches on Film Journal International's website remain, so some of my links are still broken. A spring cleaning and rebooting is imminent.

My review of Abderrahmane Sissako's "Timbuktu" appears in the latest print edition of Cineaste (https://www.cineaste.com//).

Please check my FB page for updates on my book: https://www.facebook.com/MariaGarciaNYC. "Cinematic Quests for Identity: The Hero's Encounter with the Beast" also has an Amazon page now: http://www.amazon.com/Cinematic-Quests-Identity-Heros-Encounter/dp/1442246979/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427236438&sr=1-1&keywords=cinematic+quests+for+identity. Click on my name to see the "Author Page."

Finally, it must be Spring in New York City because the Tribeca Film Festival press screenings begin later this week. My coverage will be published online at FJI's "Screener Blog" in April. 

Love and Marriage Italian Style

I have just posted a link to "Italian Love and Marriage: How the Screen Classics Interpreted It" under Feature Articles (Print/Online). The feature, in which I discuss "Love with the Proper Stranger" and "Wild is the Wind," among other classics, appears in the latest issue of Ambassador, the magazine of the National Italian-American Foundation. 

Ongoing Exhibit at MoMA: My Interview with a Curator

Last fall, I interviewed Ron Magliozzi, an associate curator in the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art about "100 Years in Post-Production." The ongoing exhibition is about a 1913 film in MoMA's collection from the New York City-based production company Biograph. The studio's unnamed project, which Magliozzi and his co-curator assembled into a rough cut for the exhibition, starred the Caribbean-American theater and film actor Bert Williams. My interview appeared in the Winter issue of Ambassador Magazine. I have placed a link to the left of this column under "Feature Articles." A note to filmmakers: MoMA is considering proposals for the footage.

An Insider's Film Festival: New Directors/New Films

One of the standout documentaries at New Directors/New Films is Stevan Riley's Listen to Me Marlon.

Native New Yorkers pride themselves in never paying full price for anything—not clothing or theater or opera tickets—and in knowing where to discover a great performer, or to see the work of a future star of the art world. With the advent of the Internet, finding these venues has become easier for everyone, although bargains are harder to come by. The halcyon days of the New York City Opera, and dozens of Off Off Broadway productions, are past, but the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center have preserved one New York City insider event for film buffs, the annual New Directors/New Films festival. (For information and tickets: http://newdirectors.org/)

ND/NF features art house cinema at its very best—a quirky, eclectic mix of films by young or newly minted filmmakers from around the world. While the $16 per screening “rack rate” may not appear to be a bargain, there are member rates, discounted student tickets and 4-movie package rates, as well as VIP tickets that include events and opening and closing night screenings. Both venues, Titus 1 at MoMA, and FSLC’s Walter Reade, are terrific theaters with stadium seating and good sound systems. From March 18th to the 26th, twenty-six features and sixteen shorts will screen at ND/NF by filmmakers who represent over a dozen countries including India, Israel, Japan, Georgia, Tunisia, Canada and the United States.

Nellina, one of the stars of an excellent documentary-narrative hybrid, Simone Rapisarda Casanova's The Creation of Meaning.

This is a still of Pacifico, the Tuscan shepherd at the center of The Creation of Meaning. In a quick shot of Pacifico's kitchen there is a snapshot of Nellina as a foal.

My Facebook Page for "Cinematic Quests for Identity"

Please visit my new Facebook page for updates on the book, and to read about new cinematic quests for identity and meaning. I hope you will participate in discussions, too. I have posted road pictures from my travels, remembered Alice Rohrwacher's "The Wonders" (2014), and listed the Oscar-nominated quest films. My Facebook page is "Maria Garcia, Author" and the URL is: https://www.facebook.com/MariaGarciaNYC.

My Book, "Cinematic Quests for Identity: The Hero's Encounter with the Beast"

Last week, as I walked onto the deck of the pool where I swim laps, Julie, one of my "pool friends," paused in mid-lap and shouted: "Where have you been? I have been asking about you all month. Is your book finally finished?"

It had been longer than a month since I had gotten to swim my usual mile--but I could answer Julie definitively, and in the affirmative. In fact, "Cinematic Quests for Identity" is in production. It will be published in late March or early April by Rowman & Littlefield. Their description appears here: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442246973

Oscar's Foreign Film Nominees Among the Best Movies of 2014 (Links to my Interviews with Two of the Filmmakers)

A still from Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida shows the title character, a nun who, on the verge of taking her vows, discovers her Jewish heritage.(Courtesy of Music Box Films)

The finest Oscar-nominated films of 2014 are in the Best Foreign Film category: Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Abderhamme Sissako’s Timbuktu, the last of which premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2014. Most movies in this category are “art house,” and these three are no exception. While they may not have received wide distribution originally, their Oscar nominations have led to re-releases in some cities. In New York City, for instance, Timbuktu and Leviathan are now screening at Film Forum, (http://filmforum.org/now_playing) and Ida recently reopened at Cinema Village (http://cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/).

In this still from Andrei Zvyaginstev's Leviathan, the isolation of the protagonist in a vast, empty landscape perfectly illustrates his predicament, as well as his sensibilities. (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics).

All movies should be seen on the big screen, and this is especially true of Ida and Leviathan where the settings and the mise-en scène (the visual style of the film) do so much of the storytelling. The starkness of Pawlikowski’s 1960s-era Poland, and that of Zvyaginstev’s modern Barent seacoast of Russia, place in high relief the interior struggles of their respective protagonists, a novice nun who discovers she is Jewish, and a mechanic who is battling a corrupt politician attempting to seize his land. In the case of Sissako’s Timbuktu, based on the real-life Islamist occupation of that Malian city, the director’s sense of color and his excellent use of music and ambient sound, is best experienced in a theater. My review of this film appears in the upcoming issue of Cineaste.

My New York Film Festival interview with Sissako, a Mauritanian-born writer-director, "Defying Jihad: Abderhamme Sissako's 'Timbuktu' Dramatizes a City Under Siege," appears in the print version and on Film Journal International's website: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/esearch/e3ie83416ef2c00c3e3b59097c4170142f7. (Film Journal International is launching a new website design and there may be problems viewing the images attached to this article and the one below.)

I also interviewed Zvyaginstev, a Siberian-born filmmaker, when he was in New York City this Fall. That interview, "In the Belly of the Beast: Andrey Zvyaginstev's Acclaimed 'Leviathan' Depicts One Man's Fight Against Corruption in Modern Russia," may be seen here: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/esearch/e3i8d383049914604678e9d38d153e1272a. These two movies, along with Ida, would have been at the top of my "Best Films of 2014" list, which I did not have time to write this year. More about the project that prevented me from posting in my next entry . . .

Women Getting Angry: This Year's Best Documentary

This is just one of the many emotionally-charged archival photos that appear in the new documentary, She's Beautiful When She's Angry, opening on Friday, December 5th. To find screenings in your area, go to the official website: http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com/.

Mary Dore’s She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a homage to the women whose intelligence and persistence led to most radical social reforms of the 20th century. And it all started here, in the United States. Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” (1949) notwithstanding, it was American women who first took to the streets for women’s rights, who shut down Congress, forced the Supreme Court to decide on a woman’s right to choose, compelled law enforcement to view rape as a violent crime, and burned their college degrees to protest the dearth of women’s history and literature in college curricula. The burning of bras and girdles followed, a symbolic relinquishment of standard concepts of beauty: The cry went out in 1970 that all women were beautiful and, as Dore suggests in this excellent documentary, even more so when they channel their anger.

Dore’s title is a twist on the condescending line used by men to minimize the effect of women’s anger. The filmmaker opens on a contemporary protest in front of the Texas state house in Austin. A speaker shouts, “Don’t mess with Texas women,” a play on that state’s unofficial slogan. Texas is “messing” with a woman’s right to choose, in defiance of federal law. Next, Virginia Whitehall, the founder of the first woman’s shelter in Dallas, and the daughter of a charter member of the League of Women Voters, delivers the documentary’s call to action: “You are not allowed to retire from women’s issues.”

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry then moves to its lively, deftly edited mélange (accomplished by co-producer Nancy Kennedy) of archival film and photos, and interviews of its female subjects, all to the accompaniment of an expertly mixed score of women’s voices (by supervising sound editor Deborah Wallach and re-recording mixer Sean Garnhart) that highlights a variety of protest songs from the 1970s.

Among the women who appear in the documentary are iconic feminist leaders, such as author and educator Kate Millet (“Sexual Politics,” 1969), journalist and author Susan Brownmiller (“Against Our Will,” 1975), the founder of NOW, Jacqui Ceballos, and celebrated District of Columbia Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who in 1970 became the most prominent feminist in New York City after being appointed by Mayor John Lindsay to head the Human Rights Commission. Lesser-known but equally influential women also appear in the film, including Fran Beal, co-founder of the Black Women’s Liberation Committee who in 1969 wrote what came to be known as the Black women’s feminist manifesto, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.”

'Tis the Season for Revivals: "The King and the Mockingbird" at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

 

In this still from the "The King and the Mockingbird," (a Rialto Pictures release) the eponymous character helps a pair of lovers escape an evil king. (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures.)

The King and the Mockingbird, an official selection at this year's New York Film Festival, was a labor of love for director and animator Paul Grimault, and his co-writer Jacques Prévert (Children of Paradise, 1946). The filmmakers lost rights to the movie shortly after it screened in France in 1953, and it was not until 1979, shortly before Prévert’s demise, that it was completed. The animated feature (in French with English subtitles), loosely based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, will open at Film Society of Lincoln Center on November 21st. A beautiful example of the traditional cell animation technique, which in today’s digital age is generally seen only in shorts, The King and the Mockingbird is intended for adult audiences.

The setting for the movie is the “rapid heart” kingdom of Tachycardia in which a cross-eyed ruler falls in love with the painted image of a shepherdess. As it turns out, the shepherdess loves another man. Charles V (voiced by Pascal Mazzotti) is not the first cinematic anti-hero to be drawn into or undone by a love triangle, but this king is a Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles in Citizen Kane), his castle a monument to his megalomania. The plight of the lovers (Agnès Viala and Renaud Marx), and the king’s peasants, are delightfully chronicled by a blind musician (Roger Blin) and the bird of the title (Jean Martin, best-known for his role in The Battle of Algiers). That bird, which continually "mocks" the king, was undoubtedly reborn as the song and dance man Honoré Lachaille (Maurice Chevalier) in Vincent Minnelli’s Gigi (1958).