SIFF reviews
May. 27th, 2005 08:39 amThe Art & Crimes of Ron English, a documentary about a guerrilla artist who hijacks billboards. Wonderful subject, poor execution. Overlong, repetitive, aimless, and a little too smug even for me. On the other hand, the short for this one, Wet Dreams and False Images, should be shown in every junior high school in the industrialized world. The filmmaker goes into a Brooklyn barbershop full of young men and lined with girlie pictures. She then interviews a couple of the guys who digitally retouched those photos, and shows the interviews on the barbershop's TV. Arriiiight.
North Korea: A Day in the Life -- North Korea's government allows a documentarian to follow a typical (?) North Korean family around for a day. I found myself questioning everything I saw and heard in this film except for what was in the background. Many of the people who spoke on camera were suspiciously photogenic, occasionally seemed rehearsed, and looked nervous as whores in church to have a foreigner pointing a camera at them. Militarist propaganda is as pervasive there as ads are here. Electrical plugs, however, are apparently absent. The North Korean state is an almost unbelievable mixture of creepy manipulation and incompetence.
With A Day in the Life was Seoul Train, a documentary about the people who try to smuggle some of the 300,000 North Korean refugees living just inside China to South Korea. Chinese policy is to repatriate the refugees whenever they catch them (China says they're merely economic migrants) where they are of course imprisoned, tortured, killed, or subjected to forced abortions. The filmmakers have a little blame to spare for the UN High Commission on Refugees, too. Potent stuff, not the least bit subtle like A Day in the Life, and well made.
North Korea: A Day in the Life -- North Korea's government allows a documentarian to follow a typical (?) North Korean family around for a day. I found myself questioning everything I saw and heard in this film except for what was in the background. Many of the people who spoke on camera were suspiciously photogenic, occasionally seemed rehearsed, and looked nervous as whores in church to have a foreigner pointing a camera at them. Militarist propaganda is as pervasive there as ads are here. Electrical plugs, however, are apparently absent. The North Korean state is an almost unbelievable mixture of creepy manipulation and incompetence.
With A Day in the Life was Seoul Train, a documentary about the people who try to smuggle some of the 300,000 North Korean refugees living just inside China to South Korea. Chinese policy is to repatriate the refugees whenever they catch them (China says they're merely economic migrants) where they are of course imprisoned, tortured, killed, or subjected to forced abortions. The filmmakers have a little blame to spare for the UN High Commission on Refugees, too. Potent stuff, not the least bit subtle like A Day in the Life, and well made.
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- The Cars, "Shake It Up" -- damn you,
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