I attended Roger Ebert's 5th Annual Overlooked
Film Festival this past weekend in Champaign, Illinois.
"Medium Cool" was one of the films showed,
which was shot in Chicago during the '68 Democratic Convention.
The movie was planned and written in advance,
but then the film makers just sort of fell into the whole event,
and the riots became an important part
of the film.
The writer/director Haskell Wexler spoke
after the film. He and Roger just went to town on the current sad
state of political and media affairs in
the U.S. Wexler demonstrated against the war in Iraq, and urged us
to
continue to do so. He said that the
forces which were at work during the 60's (calling war protesters anti-American,
marginalizing their views, etc), are completely
in control now and that we've got to fight back. Roger noted that
an
investigation of the Chicago riots concluded
that it was a police riot, and Wexler had shot Illinois National Guard
training sessions which showed that the
police and guard were going after both the protesters and the media shooting
the pictures. The audience gave Wexler
and Roger wild applause for their political remarks. This in Central
Illinois
(ok, it IS home of University of Illinois,
but still)!
Another film was "The Stone Reader", which
chronicles the quest of an obsessed reader to find the one-book author
of a coming-of-age book written in the
late 60's. It was a vivid screen portrayal of the love of reading.
We also saw a silent film called "The Gray
Automobile", a Mexican silent film that was accompanied by a benshi
performance. Benshi was common in
Japan during the height of the silent movie era, when American and European
silent films were interpreted by Japanese
actors who provided voices and explanation of the action to audiences.
Eventually, the benshi performers themselves
became the draw, and as a result, silent films remained popular in Japan
long after talkies had taken over the movie
business elsewhere. The benshi performance was in Japanese and Spanish,
and also included new sub-titles on the
film itself.
Also shown was "Charlotte Sometimes", which
is about Asian-American 20-somethings. The writer and 2 of the actors
attended, and there was an amazing discussion
of what it's like to be Asian-American girls and boys and the expectations
that our society (and their parents) have
of them. It was a moody, meditative movie. When asked if casting
was opening
up for Asian-American actors, Jacqueline
Kim said a little bit, but Michael Idemoto said that he'd auditioned for
20 roles
recently, all of which required him to
use an accent. He said he was about as preppy as one could get, and
that he refused
to play those roles. Which prompted
an audience member to stand up and say that prejudice comes not only with
skin color
and facial features, but also because of
accents. He attributed this to the fact that there are too many Republicans
and not
enough Democrats.
Last film -- "Singin' in the Rain" -- a
brand new 50th anniversary print which was pristine.
Donald O'Connor was one of the guests,
and he was extremely amusing and touching.
A full re-cap will be on their web site.
This is the 3rd festival that I've attended, and they've included films
from Japan,
China, Iran, West Africa, France, independent
films produced here, and studio pictures which were not well-received.
They're great events.
Toni C