Joe Merrell’s Sister Cities (2006)

Sister Cities (2006) is quite simply a marvelous film. It is rare to find a piece these days that is so self-contained and yet limitless in its design, format, and execution. But Joe Merrell has achieved just that. Indeed, it should come as no surprise to this reviewer, who critiqued his Corner, Los Angeles (2005) for an earlier installment of “Film Scratches” (Film International, 4.3, 2006). Like Corner, Los Angeles – which is an equally strong film and one worth seeing, particularly in tandem with this newer work – Sister Cities demonstrates an interest in the concepts of layering and overlapping, but explores them in a decidedly refreshing and satisfying manner: anaglyphs. What result are fabulously layered images, when viewed through the appropriate 3D lenses.

The subject of the images is quotidian yet evocative – the heterogeneity of Los Angeles inscribed onscreen in soft grayscale, many parts forming a single whole. Merrell, in his film description, states:

The central symbol of the piece is the Sister Cities signpost, located near City Hall. Rather than marking a spot or providing immediately useful information, the Sister Cities signpost points outwards in many directions to places thousands of miles away. In this sense it represents an important characteristic of Los Angeles – a sort of center without a center, a place in many ways defined by its diversity.

Sister Cities’s approach, in fact, is reminiscent of Bruce Baillie’s Castro Street (1966) – the vitality of a neighborhood communicated sensorially. The film begins with beautiful images of clouds, inching across the frame. The motion is subtle and alluring – a motion later belied, however, by successive images, which teach the viewer that the “kineticity” of the film is rendered solely through camera movement over stills and the anaglyphic effect; the energy originates within – but eventually and stunningly spills over – the frame. Some of the images are punctuated by dazzling glimpses of sunlight, asymptotic flash frames that prefigure the dramatic, dynamic ending. There is at one point a radiant, lush shot of water bubbling up, limned by sunlight. Merrell’s elemental imagery is striking.

Approximately six minutes in, the images start to blur as if unable to check the frame’s energy. This transitions, around the seventh minute, to a sequence of nighttime images, engraved by light – approaching and ultimately ending on a frame of brilliant white. It would seem almost that Merrell, in his Sister Cities, is describing the trajectory of a day, from sublime cloud-filled morning to a joyous, Brakhagian symphony of painted light on dark that bleeds to total white – suggesting the beginning of the cycle, the birth of day again.

For more information about Sister Cities and Joe Merrell’s other work – including details on how to see his films – please visit www.uhhuhohyeah.com. 

Final Cut: Take Two

Final Cut is a group, based in Brighton & Hove, United Kingdom, that promotes short film culture – directly through regular screening events and indirectly through DVD compilations that are distributed online. To date, there are three DVD compilations available for purchase: Final Cut: Take One, Final Cut: Take Two, and Final Cut: Take Three. A closer look at Final Cut: Take Two reveals many accomplished shorts, a few notable gems, and – most impressively – a wide variety of techniques and styles. This two-disc set contains 24 films, ranging in length from one minute to twelve minutes:

Life in the Ring (David Ward, 2005)

The Devil & Manny Schmeckstein (Jim Goodman, 2004)

Just One More Night (Pat Garrett, 2005)

Midst of Paradise (Jo Barnes, 2004)

Cleanse (Anton Short, 2004)

Manifesto (Ben Rollason, 2005)

Sunnyroad (Ali Taylor, 2005)

Bob’s Boxes (Matt Watt, 2004)

Cost of Living (Max Hochrad, 2004)

Again & Again (Oscar Stringer, 2004)

Slow West Vultures (Adam Aiken and Shelley Revill, 2004)

Love Story (Oliver Gray, 2005)

SWAT (Masato Riesser, 2004)

Doubled Up (Samantha Moore, 2004)

Traced (Rajyashree Ramamurthi, 2004)

Extra Holes (Rob Hackett, 2005)

Opera Baby (Shane Sheils, 2005)

Disconnected (Jane McGee, 2005)

Dark Hair’d Rider (Toby Amies, 2005)

Ordan’s Forest (Scott Walker, 2004)

Memories in Spaces (Lou Trigg, 2005)

Magical Thinking (Chirstinn Whyte, 2004)

Picked (K. Akeseh Tsakpo, 2004)

Remote (John Burns, 2005)

Generally, most of the films exhibit solid production values – well shot, good audio, appropriate use of staging, etc. – and are narrative in style; it should be noted, however, that many of the more skilful pieces abandon the trappings of story and plot and are probably stronger because of it. Indeed, the constraints of the short film can be oddly liberating if a filmmaker is bold enough to explore image- and sound-making without the stranglehold structure of narrative scriptwriting (i.e. story arc, character motivation, active protagonists, etc.), instead exploiting narrative techniques that have been properly scaled down to the format. It is refreshing, too, to see so many female directors/filmmakers represented on these discs – if only these numbers could be achieved in the mainstream industry.

One film that successfully navigates the short film narrative is Midst of Paradise, by Jo Barnes. This piece functions as a day-in-the-life glimpse of a young woman, as told through a series of – very Cindy Shermanesque – 35mm color stills accompanied by a techno soundtrack provided by the band Specimen A. It begins with a shot of her asleep, wearing only her underwear, next to an unidentified man; we follow her as she gets up and goes to work at a local shop and then returns home to fix a meal, which she eats on her front stoop; she is then seen preparing for an evening out at the pub, where she meets a young man; finally, we end on the same image that we opened with of the woman in bed, asleep next to a man with his back towards the camera. In the course of four minutes, we quickly grow interested in this woman’s actions. We notice how she rolls out of bed for work but takes great pains to ready herself for an evening out, how she casually uses alcohol to prime herself for each next move, how she wears the same polka-dotted black dress all day – even after she showers before going out for the night. Typical of a lot of British cinema, which tends to feature rather unconventional characters living colorless lives in dreary circumstance (think Mike Leigh), the woman’s context is slightly seedy, the color palette of the images insipid. And yet there are flashes of color – the red bows on her high-heeled shoes, her red lipstick, her salmon-colored panties – that help her to rise above her surroundings and suggest that she defines her situation and not the other way around. While the box-effect transition between images overwhelms at times, all in all Midst of Paradise is a little wonder of a film.

Another film of note is Oscar Stringer’s Again & Again – a clever visualization of a car accident involving two women, who choreograph and interpret the motions of two bodies in crisis. Like crash test dummies, but with more agency and purpose, these two women enact a crash in a car parked on the side of a dirt road, near a tree in a rural landscape, using synchronized movements displayed at varying frame rates and through different camera set-ups. The five-minute film culminates in their “deaths,” their bodies draped dispassionately over the hood of the car. The muted colors of the images, as well as the experimental sounds on the audio track, work to heighten the disturbing nature of the repeated bodily contortions of the women. Again & Again is highly recommended viewing.

Cost of Living, by Max Hochard, is an interesting – and possibly distressing – commentary on the perils of living in a consumerist society. With the help of a rental agent, a young woman in the not-too-distant future finds an incredibly cheap apartment to lease in the city. The apartment is modern and streamlined: white walls, open-plan kitchen, efficient yet attractive use of space. Very 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). But, as we soon discover, every action – however minor or routine – is preceded by commercial sponsorship, requiring that the woman suffer through various ads on one of the many flatscreen panels located throughout the apartment before completing her task. She moves to put the kettle on but must wait for a commercial on tea bags before it is powered; she needs to use the restroom, only to find that the lid of the toilet is locked until a plug for sanitary towels finishes playing. The woman quickly discovers that these adverts cannot be turned off and soon she is forced to listen to and live with a cacophony of commercials, each vying to be heard over the others. A brief respite comes at night, as she sleeps. But sure enough, first thing the next morning, the ads begin again anew. Out of sheer desperation, the woman finally orders some of the items via a laptop computer in her kitchen and is rewarded with: silence. The film ends with the woman talking on the phone; she says that things in the apartment have been much better recently but that the cost of living has been unexpectedly high. A slow pan to the right reveals boxes and boxes of unopened, miscellaneous goods – the price she has to pay for some peace.

One film that this reviewer did not care for is Masato Riesser’s SWAT. It concerns a drug dealer who is locked away in his dark, hot apartment, processing his latest bulk shipment of cocaine. His young son plays at his feet, watching kung fu on the television. The dealer, distracted by a fly that harasses him, quickly loses his patience with his son, lashing out at him with a fly swatter and yelling at him not to bother him while he works. Meanwhile, a SWAT team is mobilizing outside his apartment block, ready to surprise him in the midst of his illegal activities. As the SWAT teams moves in, the dealer then turns the fly swatter on the fly, which has rested unceremoniously atop the pile of cocaine. The motion of the swatting sends the cocaine flying, just as the SWAT teams enters the apartment. The dealer grabs a gun, but too late, and is shot several times in the chest by a member of the armed force. He falls to the ground, dropping his gun at his son’s feet. The son notices that the fly is now menacing his dead father’s forehead and is torn as to whether to grab for the swatter or the gun; there is a tense moment while the SWAT team waits to see what the child will do. The film ends with an extreme close-up of the father’s head, the fly swatter slapping down on it. The film itself is competently constructed, borrowing many tropes from action cinema; but its trite treatment of serious topics (e.g. drug trafficking, child endangerment, guns, etc.), coupled with its casual use of violence, achieves a dark comedy that only serves to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.

On a more positive note, other highlights of the Final Cut: Take Two compilation include: Doubled Up, an animated documentary utilizing a variety of techniques like rotoscoping and found footage to convey factual details, with a touch of humor, about the process of creating and caring for twins; Disconnected, a funny little film about the dangers of not paying your “physics” bill; and Memories in Spaces, a four-minute stop-frame animation, featuring dolls and dollhouse furniture (a la Todd Haynes’s Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story [1987] – as with Superstar, the device of the dolls is oddly moving, resonating with the viewer), consisting of seven defining moments in the life of a child.

It is clear that, if nothing else, these Final Cut products highlight the vibrant site of experimentation – and, at times, beguiling whimsy – from which these short films result. Based on the obvious strengths of this DVD set, Final Cut is a needed and welcome advocate of short film artists, challenging the paradigm of the short film as merely the younger cousin of the feature and reconfirming it as a valued art form in its own right. For more information about Final Cut, or to purchase any of their DVD compilations, please visit their website.

 

Dennis King’s Daddy’s Girl (2006)

From the opening credits, it is clear that Dennis King’s Daddy’s Girl (2006) is a product of love and dedication. A film with a message about the redemptive power of parental love, Daddy’s Girl provides a dose of positive energy, serving as a testament to independent filmmakers everywhere that a feature can happen with enough determination and hard work. It also helps to have something of a Renaissance man at the controls; King, in addition to directing the film, was a lead actor, producer, editor, and casting director, among other thankless roles, to be sure. The film is well shot; in fact, it is strongest when King uses the camera to depict the natural and fecund beauty of the New England landscape. He seems to juxtapose the blossoming of the scenery with that of the two female leads; indeed, this is a sophisticated device that could have been explored further to the film’s benefit. Daddy’s Girl is ambitious, to say the least; it covers a time span of approximately fifteen years in the lives of two young girls, necessitating using two actresses each for the roles of Sarah and Becky – no small feat for an introductory film project. And it is this ambition that, at times, weakens the whole: the scope of the story is simply too large to do justice to all the issues that King tries to tackle. But he shows great promise as a storyteller; to date, Daddy’s Girl has collected Best Drama at the New York International Film Festival and Best Director at the Los Angeles International Film Festival. His next feature Deception (currently in production) is certainly something to look forward to. One hopes, however, that he harnesses the talent of other experienced film technicians for his future projects so as to soften some of the more rough edges of his methods and refine, overall, his film style. Kudos to King and his troupe, though, for making feature-filmmaking more family friendly and fun. For information about Daddy’s Girl and Dennis King’s other projects, please visit Sirona Studios.

Contributor Details

Liza Palmer is Review Section Editor of Film International and Creative & Fine Arts Librarian at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her research area is the cinema of the American Avant Garde.

Film International invites filmmakers and other related media artists to submit works – particularly those that do not achieve mainstream distribution – for consideration and possible review in this column. Please direct all (either NTSC VHS or any DVD format) submissions to: Liza Palmer, Review Section Editor, Film International, c/o University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-5616, USA. For more information or to suggest topics for future “Film Scratches,” contact Liza at liza.palmer@filmint.nu.