| Crossing Europe Film Festival : notes pt4 : Notes On Marie Menken [7/10] : etc |
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 Austria ¦ NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN ¦ 7/10 A distaff Excavating Taylor Mead? Partly - this is another documentary about a semi-forgotten, seminal figure in American underground cinema, who spent much time in Manhattan and worked closely on occasion with Andy Warhol. But Menken, unlike Mead, is no longer with us. That isn't a massive problem, as she comes across as such a larger-than-life figure (which is saying something, considering she was a hefty 6ft2in at her prime) and we do get to hear from her at certain moments, via a very drunken-sounding tape recording. These Notes on her career are just that: loose strands, reminiscences, clips, talking-head memories, along with much relatively superfulous material in which the director allows herself some Menken-ish moments of shimmery abstraction. Talking heads include perennial rent-a-gobs Kenneth Anger and Gerard Malanga, the latter taking up a considerable amount of screen time - including a journey to his father's crypt in an episode that isn't massively germane to the subject at hand but is sufficiently entertaining, informative and touching to more than justify its inclusion. And the scene where he finds decayed footage of Warhol and Menken larking about on a Manhattan rooftop - he views it via a Moviola machine - is a joy: especially when, after listening to his exhilarated commentary, we actually get to see the corroded images for ourselves. Notes on Marie Menken may not leave audiences especially keen to see more of Menken's own work, but we do end up hungry for more biographical details of what seems to have been a remarkable life-story: details of her death, for example, are only sketchily referred to and her Lithuanian background (real name: Menkevicius) are decidedly underplayed. The director's aims are, of course, to avoid the orthodox - not that you'd exactly call this an experimental biopic. It's a thought-provoking introduction to a fascinating and unjustly-overlooked cultural figure, one who was - but was also much more than - the model for Martha in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. And the real-life 'George', Menken's husband Willard Maas, sounds like he deserves a docu or two all of his own.  Serbia & Montenegro ¦ EUROPE NEXT DOOR ¦ 6/10 [watched standing up] Europe Next Door is a roughe-edged semi-documentary - 'staged' but involving real people 'playing' themselves - about life on the border between the EU (i.e. Hungary) and non-EU Europe (in this instance, Serbia). The results are amateurish at times but exert a certain charm, and document a valid historical 'moment' in relatively accessible style. It's the story of a late-twenties Serbian woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with a slobbish Hungarian from a town just over the border - but things don't quite work out. Apparently the re-enactment of actual events, Europe Next Door elicits very believable "performances" from its protagonists - though how one could describe the results as a "masterpiece" (as some critics have done) is rather baffling. Technically, the picture is somewhat rough-and-ready: the dreaded 'comic sans' font makes an appearance, and the very final image - a freeze-frame corrupted via a kind of white-noise/snow effect - is clunkily executed. It's all a bit heavy-handed, especially the decision to intercut proceedings with gloomy footage of the bride's glum return 'home', complete with mournful muzak. The picture's strong suit is its vivid sense of place, especially the semi-dilapidated farmhouse in which most of the 'drama' unfolds: horses, donkeys and pigs abound, especially the latter (a large hog is roasted for the wedding banquet, there's a fine sequence in which Hungarian shoppers haggle over the price of the pork they're buying from the Serbian farmer). These are clearly artisans of the 'old school' - who may indeed vanish soon if/when Serbia joins the EU and the farmers must deal with daunting new regulations as well as exciting new markets.  Slovenia ¦ WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN YOU GET OUT OF HERE? ¦ 4/10 "Here's a dance step that's pure hell : enter at your peril!" : so quoth Mark E Smith on The Fall's classic 1989 single 'Dead Beat Descendant' (1989), a line which comes to mind at several points during this painfully stilted 'dance film'. The story is set after some unspecified global disaster, the survivors of which dwell underground in what looks like a cavernous old factory (it's actually the old steelworks in the central Slovenian town of Trbovjle, previously best known as Laibach's home town). The story is primarily told via movement within space, but there is - unfortunately - a surprising amount of dialogue which is subterranean and sub- sub- sub- Beckettian. The result is something of an ordeal of pretentiousness, complete with the artsy atmosphere of early-80s Channel 4 comissions (such as Ghost Dance). The post-apocalyptic set-up recalls Romero's Dawn of the Dead and its recent overrated remake: and that isn't the only similarity between the latter and Podgorsek's effort. In both instances, the opening titles sequence is by a very long way the best thing about the picture: known on set as the 'Fight Club' montage, What Are You Going To Do's curtain-raiser deploys 27 digital cameras a la Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark and the results are just as imaginative and thrilling: percussive, pounding, elliptical, with a soundtrack of metallic industry and frequent cuts to black as the dance personnel are introduced and named. Dafne Jemersic is credited as the film's editor and an educated guess would be that she was in charge of these terrific opening titles: they don't make the film worth paying money to see in a cinema, but anybody wanting to know how to open a movie with a bang is advised to seek out the DVD at the earliest possible opportunity. But the vivid brilliance of the opening titles comes at a price: everything afterwards seems leaden and static, very hard going and borderline offensive in the way it uses Trbovlje's economic woes as the backdrop for such fanciful preciousness. Iztok Kovac's very physical choreography deserves a more suitable showcase: taken in conjunction with his Laibach docu Divided States of America, it would seem Podgorsek has something of a knack for making sow's ears out of silk purses.  Slovenia ¦ UNDER THEIR S.K.I.N. ¦ 5/10 With only a couple of days' notice, documentarian (and sometime film-festival organiser) Vlado Skafar was invited to take his cameras behind the scenes of Saso Podgorsek's "dance movie" What Are You Going To Do When You Get Out Of Here (see above). The impressionistic results are longer than Podgorsek's film, and better, but fall some way short of Skafar's more personal project Peterka (which also enjoyed a much more leisurely and protracted shooting schedule). Main problem is that Skafar doesn't show how or why Podgorsek's project went awry: ace editor Dafne Jemersic, for example, is conspicuous by her absence (despite being the most talented individual involved - how much influence did she have over the finished product?) Skafar - who divides up the 'action' into a somewhat arbitrary series of chapters - is also over-fond of using the "shuttery/shuddery" lens trick with his camera, seemingly an attempt to inject some kind of kinetic life into what looks like something of an inert, moribune enterprise. The camaraderie of the dance-personnel comes across pretty well (their interaction is, according to Skafar, the real subject-matter of his film, which he does not regard as a conventional 'making of'), though it's disappointing we don't hear the reactions of the Trbovjle miners and steelworkers who are seen looking on, somewhat bemused, as the dancers strut their fancy moves before them. The focus is instead fixed on choreographer Kovac and his troupe, with British dancer Julyen Hamilton (the camera loves his aquiline visage) emerging as the most lively and entertaining of the gang. Film would make most sense as part of a DVD package alongside What are you going to do, though most intriguing possibility would be to take the two films, plus unused footage, and edit them together into one long(ish) work. A tough ask - but Jemersic might have been up to it, if only she hadn't started on her own directorial debut... Neil Young 22nd May / 30th June 2006 NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN : [7/10] : Austria 2006 : Martina KUDLACEK : 103 mins (timed) EUROPE NEXT DOOR : [6/10] : Evropa preko plota : Serbia & Montenegro 2005 : Zelimir ZILNIK : 61 mins (timed) WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN YOU GET OUT OF HERE? : [4/10] : Kaj bos pocel, ko prides ven od tu? : Slovenia (Slo/Hun) 2005 : Saso PODGORSEK : 53 mins (timed) UNDER THEIR S.K.I.N. : [5/10] : Pod njihovo kozo : Slovenia 2006 : Vlado SKAFAR : 58 mins (timed) Notes on Marie Menken* seen at CityKino cinema; Europe Next Door, What Are You Going To Do... and Under Their S.K.I.N. seen at Moviemento cinema. All seen on 29th April in Linz (Austria). click here for A-Z of all features reviewed at Crossing Europe 2006, or here for a roundup article on the event (written for Tribune magazine) *Notes on Marie Menken was not officially part of the Crossing Europe film festival line-up, but was shown as part of the event's 'Austrian Screenings' parallel programme  |
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