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El último verano de la Boyita (2009)
The Last Summer of La Boyita
Whether you are a writer, painter, visual artist, graphic artist, photographer, graffiti connoisseur and the like, telling stories, communicating through a chosen medium is what you do. Argentine filmmaker Julia Solomonoff is the director of The Last Summer of La Boyita, a film that has broken my heart
in the best possible way. I have seen few directors maintain such delicacy while effectively telling stories about subjects so contextually controversial.
Solomonoff is no stranger to the director's chair. She teaches film directing at Columbia University, New York, where she earned an MFA in film. Her directorial debut, Sisters (2005) opened at the Toronto International Film Festival. She has produced a number of films for other directors, and was first assistant director on Walter Salles' Motorcycle Diaries (2004). The Last Summer of La Boyita is her most recent film.
The film focuses on a little girl named Jorgelina who is played by Guadalupe Alonso. Her sister Luciana (María Clara Merendino) has just entered puberty and predictably seeks independence, solitude and privacy from her indulgent younger sibling, Jorgelina. Addressing the disturbance to the equilibrium of their relationship, Jorgelina in turn leaves behind Luciana as well as la boyita, the little van that bore witness to the girls' secrets and confessions. Instead, Jorgelina chooses to spend the summer in the countryside on her father's farm. There she meets a farm boy and jockey named Mario, played by Nicolás Treise, who she attaches herself to as a playmate.
Mario has already started his transition into adolescence and it is eventually revealed that all is not "normal". Mario has female sex organs. At birth, medical professionals misidentified an enlarged clitoris for a penis and recorded the birth of a male baby. As his body changes and he continues to grow breasts and experience menstruation, he also suffers abuse and neglect from his father who does not fully comprehend the possibilities and ramifications of such a medical situation.
The film climaxes at the races where Mario has to face tradition and test his manhood. If he wins, he has the chance to quell the growing prejudice of the other boys as well as prove to his father that he does possess worth, no matter what is happening underneath his clothes.
Through the friendship between Mario and Jorgelina, the beauty, kindness and innocence of children and childhood are portrayed. The Last Summer of La Boyita is both a coming of age tale as well as a tribute to those qualities of pre pubescence. Set in the magnificent Pampas prairies, the film is visually stunning. More than that, it is emotionally exquisite. Somonoff's telling of this story though Jorgelina's eyes, as she attempts to understand what Mario is going through, is quite masterful and the bittersweet nuances of the protagonists' experiences finds a way into your heart and mind and will stay with you for days.
Lamb (2015)
Lamb
Lamb is Yared Zeleke's love song to his homeland Ethiopia and, like any true love song, it is simultaneously grand, spontaneous, gentle, quite, ineffable, solidly grounding and simply exquisite.
The protagonist Ephriam, is forced to leave his home as a child. Ephriam's mother died from the drought and he travels with his father to meet relatives. His father leaves to find work in the city and promises to return when the rains come. This sudden loss of home and parents takes hold of him profoundly but he has one comfort, his lamb Chuni, the last link to his treasured past family life.
Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that the Europeans never colonized. Zeleke also had to leave this home as a child.
Ephriam and Chuni are like two peas in a pod and their friendship eases the trauma of displacement and brings comfort when Tsion, a headstrong, education-thirsty young woman in the family refuses to speak to him and also when his uncle mocks him for cooking, which is traditionally a woman's task.
However, when his uncle announces that he will be sacrificing Chuni on the upcoming holiday, Ephriam is agonized and agitated. He embarks on a plan to save Chuni and return home. He decides that he will sell samosas in the market and earn enough money to buy the bus fare back home. He suffers several setbacks, including a gang of bullies in the market and soon the day of the sacrifice approaches.
He manages to get someone to look after Chuni and he tells his uncle that the lamb was stolen. His uncle beats him but at least Chuni is safe. He eventually finds her a safer place with a young shepherdess and figures out how to deal with the bullies. He even becomes friend with Tsion. Eventually, Ephriam saves enough money and returns to the shepherdess to get Chuni. The lamb doesn't want to leave with him. She has found a new home. The shepherdess tells him to let go.
Lamb is a coming of age story. It respectfully tells of the challenges of growing up as an outsider without parents and also in a multi-religious society; Jews, Christians and Muslims populate Ethiopia and Ephriam is part of the minority group of Felashas.
Rediat Amare and Kidist Siyum who played the roles of Ephriam and Tsion were part of a casting process where Zeleke auditioned more than 6,500 people; more than half of them were children.
Many other people in the film were from that village and had no experience with filming. Some of them had never seen a film before.
The boundless landscape stood as its own character in the film. Leaning almost towards pathetic fallacy, the emotions of Ephriam echoed off the beautifully stoic mountains. Zeleke inspires one to wonder what sort of imprint those mountains would leave on a soul. Surely, through Lamb, we can attempt to understand the imprint it left on his.
Lamb premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard 2015. It was the first time an Ethiopian film has ever screened as an Official Selection at Cannes.
Zeleke has also written, produced, directed and edited several short documentary and fiction films. He also worked with Joshua Atesh Little on the award-winning documentary The Furious Force of Rhymes. Lamb is his first feature-length film.
Manakamana (2013)
Manakamana
Manakamana is a spiritual experience.
True, it is filmed inside a cable car that is transporting its passengers to a temple in the foothills of the Nepalese Himalayas dedicated to Manakamana, the Hindu goddess of good fortune. However, the ethereal experience of the film does not only belong to the passengers but also to us, the audience, the voyeurs.
The work is filmed in 16mm and records 11 trips. This gives the audience the depth of time to watch, listen, observe and internalize these pilgrims. In this hypnotizing act of looking, we become pilgrims ourselves, enthralled in a simultaneous internal and external exploration of landscapes.
Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez are the filmmakers behind this work. Stephanie Spray is a filmmaker, phonographer and anthropologist who has been working at the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory at Harvard University since 2006. Her work exploits different media to explore the confluence of social aesthetics and art in everyday life. Since 1999 she has spent much of her time in Nepal, roaming its mountains; studying its music, religion and language; and making films. Pacho Velez's work sits at the intersection of ethnography, structuralism and political documentary. Though shot in different countries, using distinct formal strategies, his films share a preoccupation with local responses to broad changes wrought by globalisation. He teaches at Bard College.
These two influences are reflected in the situation of the work geographically, both on a temporal and otherworldly level. The nuances of culture, gender, nationality, age, and marital status are all revealed to us on this journey.
As a trio of elderly women, a pair of young American tourists, a husband and wife, three young men, two musicians and a small herd of goats each take their trip above the rich and verdant landscape, a character study ensues. Each entity is occupying space that someone else previously did. However, even though they may be travelling along the same route and may have the same destination, they are all worlds apart.
One of the things that I will carry forever with me of this film, is the feeling that not only was I watching these people but they were watching me too. The camera lens felt like a two way portal. That feeling of being connected to another time, space and entity engendered feeling of meditative peace and tranquility. It sparked a complex internal dialogue that could not be translated with words.
This film is probably the furthest thing away from Hollywood that I have seen, at least in a long time. It is breathtaking in the boundaries that it challenges and transcendental in its quiet ambition.
Vanishing Sail (2015)
Vanishing Sail
"Life is too short for instant coffee and Rice Krispies." – John Smith, Vanishing Sail.
This is my favourite line from the film.
Indeed Vanishing Sail is a film about the traditions of boat-building in the Grenadines but by emphasizing this part of John Smith's interview, director Alexis Andrews is pushing the audience to dig deeper, to size up the routines of instant gratification in their own lives and to do the work needed to experience a deeper sagacity of life.
The film focuses on Alwyn Enoe, one of the last boat-builders of Carriacou who practises the trade passed down the generations from the Scottish settlers who arrived in the 19th century. At one point, these traditions of boat-building were crucial to the survival of the islanders. However, with the younger generation now interested in other pursuits, these skills have all but vanished. Approaching his 70s, Alwyn decides to create a final sailing vessel before the skills introduced by his ancestors are lost forever.
Through mapping the creation of this vessel, Andrews gifts the audience the ability to witness the miracle of creation.
From the cutting of the trees that form the skeletal bones of the boat to the addition of reinforcing sinews of planking to fortifying joints of screws, nails and caulking to the fleshy materialization of sandpapered and painted decks, a masterful mast and swift sails, Andrews connects the audience to the three year journey to birth the Exodus.
"The film itself took three years, to build Alwyn's vessel," he said. "During that time I sailed up and down the Caribbean and looking for stories, for people who had a connection with boat building and I thought it would be maybe 10 people that I find with interesting stories and during the course of my travelling up and down, I did 49 interviews. We have 180 hours of footage. So then it took another two years to refine the story and a lot of people, when they heard the project was in development, began to get in touch with us and they wanted to submit photographs or pieces of music or old footage which was wonderful because it all helped to tell a wider story."
The film features several voices that have all been a part of the salt life, working on boats in varying capacities as well as a cultural scholar and storyteller from the community who give life to the history of boat-building and sailing, recounting their memories with charisma and the emotion of genuine nostalgia.
Andrews was born in Greece and studied photography in London before moving to Antigua in 1985 to work as a commercial photographer in the yachting industry.
Combined with his natural eye for framing, creativity and composition, Andrews' natural love for boat-building, sailing, as well as his respect for Alwyn, gives the film a beautiful buoyancy. Andrews lived in Antigua since 1895 and has been visiting Carriacou for over a decade, during which time he was able to build a boat with Alwyn, the Genesis.
I suspect that it is because of this true experience of the island, the people and the boats that Andrews' portrayal of the life there feels authentic and intimate. Moreover, because he is invested in the story, he gets the audience the audience to invest in the story. I felt like I was right there with Alwyn and his sons all the way through. I mean, they made a sail boat, from scratch with their bare hands. That is completely beautiful and remarkable. I marvelled at the latitude of work and felt utterly impatient to see the vessel in the water. On the launch day, as they were rolling the boat down to the shoreline, I realized I was holding my breath and only when it hit the water did I breathe a sigh of relief, happiness, pride and exultation.
The film ends with a few frames of text explaining that the family was commissioned to build another boat. Even though Alwyn has retired, the last frame captures one of Alwyn's sons walking with his own son and the audience can hope that the tradition will live on.