THE MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
2005 DIARY

By Laurie Meunier Graves

DAY 2

Today is an Opera House day. We are staying here the whole time, from 2:00 p.m. right straight through to 9:00 p.m., and this presents quite a challenge. Although Clif and I both love this old theater with its curved balcony, its plush red seats, and glittering stage lights, it is, as we have come to call it, “a popcorn-free zone.” In fact, it is a food-free zone, and the only thing the staff will allow is water. I understand why this is the case. They want those plush red seats to stay nice and clean. But what do you do when you’ve booked yourself more or less back-to-back with movies right through dinner and you aren’t even allowed to have popcorn to tide you through this stretch of movie watching? And, to make matters worse, the theme of this year’s festival is…popcorn! The festival T-shirts burst with this delectable food, and at Railroad Square, the popcorn motif is carried throughout the lobby. Huge meringue-like creations, in the shape of giant popcorn, are sprinkled wherever there is extra space.

Ah, popcorn! Off and on during the day, our minds turn longingly to the lobby of Railroad Square, where the popcorn machine holds court, and the lovely pop, pop sound, accompanied by the even lovelier smell, welcomes the weary filmgoer.

Dear readers, we bear the deprivation bravely. We even rise to the challenge of how to fit food in between movie watching. We park close to the Opera House and keep a big cooler of food in the car. The movies do have some time between showings, and we figure we can run to the car, grab our sandwiches, and eat them before the next show begins. With us, we bring a small cooler packed with snacks. That way, we can nip out for a quick snack as time allows.

Our strategy works beautifully, and we manage to eat more than enough to maintain strength for watching movies. Nevertheless, we are relieved that the next day’s agenda only includes one movie at the Opera House, and, for most of the day, we’ll be able to turn to popcorn whenever we want. Both Clif and I agree that two consecutive days in a popcorn-free zone are more than any filmgoer should have to bear.

RUNNING IN HIGH HEELS
USA, 2005; 115 minutes; video; in English



As it happens, all the movies we plan to see today are documentaries, and as Joel Johnson, the journal’s film reviewer, noted in his “Scouting Report,” this year’s film festival is heavy with documentaries. This comes as no surprise. These past few years have seen the rise of the documentary, and their abundance at this year’s film festival is a reflection of the upswing in their popularity.

Running in High Heels starts with a basic question. Why aren’t more women running for office? Here are some statistics, taken from the festival guide’s description of this movie. “52 percent of the population is female; 14 percent of Congressional seats are held by women; 95 percent of all foot surgery is done on women to correct damage done by wearing high heel shoes. Director Maryann Manelski asks: How far can women go running in high heels?” How far indeed?

In examining this question, the movie tracks the political campaign of Emily Csendes, a twenty-nine-year-old math teacher who is running for a state Senate seat in New York City’s 29th district. Csendes, attractive, engaging, and energetic, immediately wins the audience’s sympathy. We can’t help but root for her as she tries to pass out leaflets to uninterested passersby, eats too much pizza, and struggles to find time to grade papers as well as campaign for office. However, early in the film, we learn that Csendes is a Republican, and this fact certainly puts this liberal Democrat in a quandary. On the one hand, I admire this hard working young woman, even when she nags her parents and whines at her campaign manager. On the other hand, as a staunch Democrat, how can I want a Republican to beat a Democrat, even if that Republican is woman?

Was this a clever tactic that the director deliberately employed? She must have known that most of this film’s audience, men and women alike, would be liberal feminists. Everyone I talk to after the film feels the same way as I do, torn between wanting Csendes to win and not wanting her to win.

Mixed in with Csendes’s campaign are the director’s interviews with women who are both liberal and conservative. Phyllis Schlafly, stiff, coifed, and unabashedly conservative, says every regressive thing that you would expect her to say, and the look on the director’s face as she struggles to hold her tongue makes the audience laugh. Especially fine is how the film cuts from Schlafly’s diatribe against cold, angry, and unhappy feminists, to the feminists themselves, who are upbeat, energetic, and even radiant. Clearly, the movie stacks the deck against Schlafly, and it couldn’t have happened to a better person.

This terrific little film explores the various aspects of women, politics, feminism, fashion, and tradition. By following Emily Csendes, it posits a challenging question. Should feminists vote for women, regardless of the candidates’ politics? One of the views put forth is that women, regardless of their political affiliation, are the ones who initiate policies that will benefit women and children. Therefore, it is always good to vote for a woman, whether she is a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. I’m afraid I can’t quite agree with this philosophy, and I would not have voted for Emily Csendes. However, Running in High Heels shows how a good documentary can raise issues that are provocative, even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with all the views expressed in the film.

VACATIONLAND
USA, 2005; 28 minutes; 35mm; in English

  for good beginning effort

In the film festival, there are a number of short films, “calling cards” by beginning directors, that preface a longer film. As to be expected, these short films are of very uneven quality. Some are quite good, and others are, well, quite amateurish. Because the films are made by beginning directors working with limited resources, I usually do not comment on them unless they show some spark. Vacationland is such a film, a little gem that shows promise for director Lance Edmands, who has a fine cinematic eye and great sympathy for his characters. In this movie, two brothers, a teenager and one who is about eight years old, go on a quest, of sorts, to connect with an older brother who has just been released from jail. In just twenty-eight minutes, this film achieves a lovely, lyrical tone, and Edmands makes the most out of his young actors. Especially good is the youngest brother, uncredited in the program guide. This photogenic young actor seems to be a natural, and it will be interesting to see if he continues with acting.

TROLLYWOOD
USA/United Kingdom; 82 Minutes; video; in English



This clunker of a documentary takes a worthy subject—the homeless in Los Angeles and their reliance on shopping carts, or trolleys, as the English director calls them—and make it alternately tedious and exploitative. This hectic, disjointed film employs a jumpy, pseudo-art style that soon becomes grating, and the sound track is equally annoying. Fifty percent of homeless people in Los Angeles are mentally ill, which means, of course, that 50 percent are not. However, the director Madeleine Farley makes no attempt at balance, and most of her subjects are the worst cases you could ever expect to see, physically as well as emotionally. In one terrible scene, she even encourages one of her subjects to expound on his supposed sex life, and she laughs tolerantly as he describes various sexual acts. Clearly, she has crossed a line that documentary makers should not cross. This is partially redeemed by a scene where she tries to help a horribly disfigured woman find space in shelter, but it is not enough to rescue this mess of a film during which I fidget the whole time.

BEARING WITNESS
USA, 2005; 90 minutes; video; in English



On the other hand, I don’t fidget at all through this excellent film that follows five women, photographers and journalists, who quite rightly call themselves “war junkies.” These women are attracted to all the “hot spots” in the world, places that most sensible people avoid if they have a choice, which unfortunately, they don’t always have. The movie focuses on the women’s time in Iraq, the current popular hot spot, but these women have also gone to places such as Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, and the Ivory Coast. In short, wherever there is conflict. The women featured are May Ying Welsh, a producer at Al Jazeera TV, a job that puts her at odds with both the United States and the Arab world; Mary Rogers, the stringy, determined camerawoman for CNN, who was caught in a gun battle in Sierra Leone and lived to take more pictures; Molly Bingham, another photographer, who spent time as a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, where she became “a story, which is never good.”; Marie Colvin, senior correspondent for the Sunday Times of London and, with a patch over an injured eye, the most swashbuckling of all; and Janine DiGiovanni, a foreign correspondent for the Times, who must figure out how to balance covering wars with having a baby.

Time, unfortunately, does not allow me to describe all the adventures and adversity these plucky, gonzo women face. They confess to being afraid, but somehow they manage to conquer that fear to get the photographs or tell the story. Even though they readily admit to getting an adrenaline rush by all the dangerous situations, they also express an overwhelming desire to “bear witness,” to give voice to the voiceless, to move the comfortable people around the world into doing something for those who suffer so horribly in war. In an odd way, this makes them optimists, of sorts, because evidence does not suggest that bearing witness prevents war or killing or produces a great outpouring of aid. Yet still they go on, and we can only be thankful that they do, even if the results are not all they should be.

I hope this riveting film manages to get the distribution and the recognition that it deserves. By focusing on war photographers and journalists, this movie shows us a rare breed who has the guts and the commitment to do what most of us would never consider doing. Then, by featuring women who are tough yet caring and observant, Bearing Witness makes a feminist statement as well, taking us into realm that is often dominated by men. With the exception of Janine DiGiovanni, these women have eschewed traditional roles but not without a certain regret. They are well aware of what they have given up, but they seem to think the price is worth it. Marie Colvin is even philosophical about the loss of her eye. As she puts it, “When someone shoves a grenade at you, you’re lucky if you just lose an eye.”

Bearing Witness will be a hard act for any other movie to follow. Each year, filmgoers must vote for best of festival. It’s difficult for me to imagine any of the other movies topping Bearing Witness. However, this is only day two of the festival, and there are a lot more movies to see.  

Day 3 -->

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