Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

This week's JMOMA film is Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, a 2003 Korean film directed by Ki-Duk Kim. This film is simply gorgeous and well worth the trip downtown to see it on a large screen.

The film tells the story of a floating Buddhist temple where a monk lives with his young apprentice. As you might guess from the title, the film uses the metaphor of the cyclical nature of the seasons to demonstrate the cyclical nature of human life, death and rebirth.

Highly recommended.

Playing at the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art at 7:00pm Wednesday, June 29.

The Animation Show is coming to Jacksonville.

Sorry for the total lack of updates here. Just found out that "The Animation Show 2005" will be in Jacksonville next weekend. Presented by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt, the San Marco Theater will be hosting for three showings. "Guard Dog" will be there, and from everything I've heard about it, that should warrant the price of admission on its own.

The showings will be:

• Friday, July 1st, midnight
• Saturday, July 2nd, midnight
• Sunday, July 3rd, 2 p.m.

The short films shown will be:

1. "Guard Dog" (2003) by Bill Plympton
2. "The F.E.D.S." (2002) by Jennifer Drummond
3. "Pan With Us" (2003) by David Russo
4. "Ward 13" (2003) by Peter Cornwall
5. "Hello" (2003) by Jonathan Nix
6. "Rock Fish" (2002) by Tim Miller
7. "The Man With No Shadow" (2004) by Georges Schwizgebel
8. "Fallen Art" (2004) by Tomek Baginski
9. "When The Day Breaks" (1999) by Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis
10. "The Meaning Of Life" (2005) by Don Hertzfeld

I always recommend shorts programs. If you don't like what you're seeing, chances are something you like will be coming up in just a few minutes. If these are of the quality shown at the Jax Film Fest last month, it should be a good time. Hope to see you there!

JFF Schedule changes and additions

Just a quick note to let you guys know that Dark Water has been added to the schedule for tonight at 11:30pm at the San Marco Theatre. The Festival has also received permission for a second showing of Murderball on Sunday at 4pm at the San Marco Theatre. I'm glad I'll get a chance to see it, since I missed out on it yesterday evening.

I saw the first short film program this morning. I'll post some reviews a little later.

The Jacksonville Film Festival starts Thursday!

Hello everyone, I guess this will be my inaugural post here. I'm Josh Maki. Nice to meet you. Now on to business!

The Jacksonville Film Festival begins Thursday, May 19 with a reception and screening of Phil the Alien (a Canadian comedy by Rob Stefaniuk) at the Florida Theatre, starting at 7 p.m. The short film Zit will screen just before the feature. It looks like most of the feature-length films will feature a short beforehand, which is a nice little bonus. Murderball, a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players (which won the audience award for best documentary at Sundance and looks terrific) will screen later that night (9:30 p.m.) at the San Marco Theatre. Hopefully there will be enough independent film enthusiasts out there on Thursday viewing these films along with that other independent film featuring knights and starships which happens to open on the same day. Starting Friday morning at 9 a.m. it's 3 straight days of films, with a few panel discussions and receptions thrown in.

This is the point where I shamelessly promote my own work and tell you to grab a copy of Sunday's Florida Times-Union, which features an eight-page section dedicated to the Film Festival. I helped put it together, and trust me, I crammed as much information as possible into those eight pages. We've got capsules for every feature film, every documentary and even every short film that will be showing throughout the festival. You can also find all of this information at the Jacksonville Film Festival web site. Hopefully we can schedule some meetups next weekend. I know I've already got my 10-film pass and will be using it to it's fullest extent. Hope to see you there!

Almodóvar's "The Flower of My Secret"

Pedro Almodóvar is #5 on my list of favorite directors. Last night I watched his 1995 film, La flor de mi secreto (The Flower of My Secret), for the first time.

It's a fairly well-done film and not particularly tedious, but it lacks the pizzazz of his other films. Ordinarily, the characters, costumes and sets in his films are outrageous. This time, I actually found myself admiring some of the furniture in the main characters' apartments.

The awkward title is appropriate. The central character in the film is Leo (played by Marisa Parades), a woman who writes romance novels under a pseudonym but secretly hates the genre and longs to write more serious literature. "The flower of my secret" is the sort of florid language that might be used in her books to describe a hidden desire. Leo's marriage is on the rocks. Her husband has volunteered to be a peacekeeper in Bosnia, leaving her alone and annoyingly needy. We sense that he may have gone off to war as a way to avoid her. Her husband has a secret of his own, as do her maid, her best friend, and everyone else we meet in the film.

The film is not without its highlights. There is a scene where Leo throws a picture frame decorated with marbles onto the floor, and Pedro stops the film for 30 seconds or so to show us blue marbles bouncing across a wooden floor. It conveys Leo's emotional disarray, but mostly it's just nice to watch. Later, we are treated to a nice Spanish dance sequence, which is disconcertingly erotic given that the dancers are mother and son. In between, we visit a village in rural Spain where we get to watch a group of women making lace by hand, which is an impressive thing to see.

Leo's sister is played by Rossy de Palma, a regular in Almodóvar's films, including Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! She's the one who looks like she stepped out of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon." Sadly, her presence here serves only to remind us of how much more enjoyable those films were than this one.

I'd give the film a B minus.

Downfall (Der Untergang)

I promised Bassel I would write a review of Downfall and then my job totally took over my life so I've had no time to post. I have no time now either, but it looks like the film will be playing only one more day before leaving town forever, so I thought I'd crank out a quick note encouraging people to see it.

*** Spoiler alert ***

Downfall is the story of the last few days of the Third Reich. We generally see WWII from an American, British or French perspective; this time we get to see it from a German perspective. Specifically, we see it through the eyes of Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary. (The real Traudl Junge appears at the end of film.) The film opens with the young Traudl interviewing for the job with Hitler himself. In this opening scene, Hitler seems like a kindly old man who seems to choose Traudl based on her being from his childhood home of Munich, and/or her being an attractive young woman, than based on her typing skills.

We then jump to the end of the war, where we meet a different Hitler, one who is out of touch with reality and abusive to his underlings, but still tender toward Traudl. His officers and staff attempt to make him understand that the war is lost and repeatedly try to convince him to leave Berlin or surrender to spare the German people more suffering, but he insists the war is winnable and none dare to disagree with the Fürher. While he is willing to sacrifice himself, his staff, his officers, and the German people, he encourages Traudl to escape to safety.

Those of you who, like myself, aren't history buffs may find it difficult to keep track of the characters. Figures like Speer, Goebels and Himmler are given little introduction; the filmmakers seem to assume you will know who they are. They forget what idiots we Americans are when it comes to the history of anybody who's not us.

One of the most chilling sequences in the movie is when Magda Goebbels poisons her children one by one, ever so tenderly. She can't bear to have her children grow up in a world without National Socialism.

Some of the German officers are portrayed as downright evil. Many others are portrayed as very professional officers, unhappy with their leadership but determined to do their duty and sacrificing themselves for their country.

At the end of the war, a German boy who had been playing soldier thoughout the war finds a bicycle in the river and rides away on it, just as the German people were turning from the war back to normal lives. This is followed by the epilogue where Traudl, now an old woman, comments on her own feelings of guilt for having worked for Hitler.

All in all, the film is quite interesting, quick realistic and well-made, and very thought-provoking. This review doesn't do it justice; I apologize for not getting around to writing something when the movie was fresher in my memory and there was still time to see it in theaters. It hasn't yet been announced for release on DVD, but since it was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film, I think it's quite likely that it will show up on DVD before the year is out.

(So, is it really a spoiler to reveal that Germany lost the war?)

JMOMA's Underground Summer film series

The Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art is running a series of foreign and independent films at 7pm Wednesday evenings in June and July. The films are:

• June 1: Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (Great Britan/Denmark 2002)


• June 8: Facing Windows (Italy 2003)


• June 15: Kitchen Stories (Norway/Sweden 2003)


• June 22: The Agronomist (USA 2003)


• June 29: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (South Korea 2003)


• July 6: Demonlover (France 2002)


• July 13: The Flower of Evil (France 2003)


• July 20: Good Bye Lenin! (Germany 2003)


• July 27: Monsieur Ibrahim (France 2003)

Top 5 Foreign and Independent Film Directors

To get things started, here is a list of my favorite directors of foreign and independent films. I know most people do top 10 lists, but that's hard work.

My Favorite 5 Directors of Foreign and Independent Films:

1. Akira Kurosawa: The master. While best known for his samurai epics depicting an idealized feudal Japan ("Ran", "Seven Samurai", "Rashomon"), his films set in contemporary times are also wonderful, particularly "High and Low" and "Dreams".
2. John Sayles: Perhaps the most commercially successful director of American independent films, Sayles is a gifted screenwriter who has served as a "script doctor" for several major studio films. His own movies are heavily dialog- and character-driven, although sometimes weak from a visual standpoint. My favorites include "The Secret of Roan Inish", "Passion Fish" and "The Brother from Another Planet".
3. Krzysztof Kieslowski: This Polish director's later films ("The Double Life of Veronica" and the "Three Colors" trilogy) were visually stunning studies of human relationships. His earlier works, mostly made for Polish TV, were less stylistic but generally less baffling to the casual viewer than his later, more philosophical work.
4. Werner Herzog: This German director has a reputation for recklessly endangering cast and crew by shunning sets and props for live action in exotic locations. He frequently cast the notoriously difficult Klaus Kinski as his star. The "making of" documentaries for Herzog's films are generally just as interesting as the films themselves. My favorites include "Aguirre: The Wrath of God", "Fitzcarraldo", "Nosferatu" and "Stroszek".
5. Pedro Almodovar: The Spanish John Waters? Almodovar's films generally revel in primary colors and bad taste. While his earlier movies were generally outrageous comedies ("Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down"), later films such as "All About My Mother" are thought-provoking as well as entertaining.