DOLLAR (DOUBLE) BILL : 'Fish Kill Flea' [8/10], 'Profit motive and the whispering wind' [9/10]

Friday, 31 August 2007

FISH KILL FLEA : [8/10*] : US 07 : Brian M CASSIDY, Aaron HILLIS, Jennifer LOEBER : 50 mins (approx)
PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND : [9/10*] : US 07 : John GIANVITO : 58 mins (approx)
both seen on DVD, Sunderland, 21st July : with thanks to John Gianvito and Aaron Hillis

I happened to watch these two short-ish documentaries back-to-back, and while they're very different in many ways - in terms of intention, subject-matter and execution - they do make a rather neat double-bill about American politics and socio-economics. On the principle of leaving the best till last, you'd schedule Fish Kill Flea as the "hors d'oeuvre" and Profit motive as the "main course", though considering that the latter is emphatically one of 2007's most distinctive and remarkable cinematic achievements of any length, this isn't in any way to denigrate what Cassidy, Hillis and Loeber have accomplished with their deceptively small-scale Fish Kill Flea.

It's the story of an ad-hoc community of shoppers and shop-owners who come together in what opened in 1974 as the 'Dutchess Mall' in a snowy corner of New York State's Hudson Valley. Close to the small town of Fishkill ("fish creek" in Dutch), the Dutchess was - back in the day - one of America's biggest and most ambitious shopping-malls, a "palace of commerce" which lasted a couple of decades before hitting hard times. By the early years of the 21st century, most of the Dutchess had become, in effect, an outsize flea-market (hence the film's rather cutesy title), and we're introduced to a wide range of buyers and sellers trading in all manner of offbeat merchandise - including pop-culture ephemera, knives (which we see being purchased by teenagers), and certain historical artefacts which this review won't specify (so as to avoid spoiling what is a genuinely jaw-dropping moment.)

Interspersed with monochrome photographs of the Dutchess on its boisterously optimistic opening day - stills which now seem like archaeological relics from a distant epoch - Fish Kill Flea takes a measured, elegaic look at a specific location which says much about the functioning (and dysfunctions) of dog-eat-dog American capitalism. The Dutchess, we're told, has been sold to become (yet another) Home Depot DIY store, forcing the traders - under the stern rule of the market's gruff, cigar-chomping manager - to seek an alternative home ("and then they make a new mall... and the old mall dies a sad, decrepit death.")

Cassidy, Hillis and Loeber provide a textbook example of making much from limited resources - though there are one or two technical rough-edges here belying the project's shoestring nature, this is part of the picture's low-tech, lo-fi aesthetic, one which feels all of a piece with the stall-holders preference for an atmosphere that's "a little grungy." The film-makers have a knack for composition and editing - often deployed for slyly comic effect - and they are admirably careful to avoid Fish Kill Flea degenerating into yet another aren't-people-funny, gallery-of-weirdos exercise in gratuitous quirkiness: though the 'cast' of characters does include no shortage of genuine American eccentrics. The film works quietly on multiple levels, providing, much like the Fishkill flea market itself, something for all kinds of 'customers'.

Quietness is - for most of the running-time at least - a defining element in Profit motive and the whispering wind, a "high-concept" sort of non-fiction film-making that, in lesser hands, might have ended up as a rather off-puttingly pious conceit. Taking a leaf from James Benning's playbook, and mining a similar kind of seam to Travis Wilkerson (An Injury to One; Who Killed Cock Robin?) Gianvito - who's been a Visiting Artist at Benning's "manor", CalArts - goes on a journey around America, training his (almost entirely static) camera on historical monuments and gravestones which relate - sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly, and in strict chronological order - pretty much the entire history of the country's injustices and political strife, and the valiant resistance of the oppressed."

"Don't iron while the strike is hot," wittily conjoins one memorial, rousing housewives into action. Another informs us that "It takes too much energy not to care." From the 1880s, we're invited to recall the "struggle for the eight-hour day" which remains sadly topical 120+ years on. The 1891 Morewood Massacre reminds us of the bloodshed involved in strikebreaking. The tombs of Frederick Douglass and Susan B Anthony are shown, without explanation or comment (Gianvito should publish a book to accompany the film, including footnotes to illuminate those not entirely au fait with recent American history.) Harriet Tubman Davis is commemorated as the "Moses of her people." An inscription prophetically warns that "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today," while another posits that "The long memory is the most radical idea in America."

On one level an elegy for America's left - many of whose members evidently died violent and/or premature deaths - Profit motive and the whispering wind (as with Fish Kill Flea, perhaps not the very best choice of possible title) is also an inspirational record of achievement, piecing together the efforts of individuals and groups into a single, radical continuum - which the documentary itself, by implication, seeks to uphold and, indeed, expand. Although one of the most hushed and calm films you'll ever see, it's also one which speaks in the loudest and and clearest of voices - a lest-we-forget meditation which also acts as a rousing call to arms.

This latter aim becomes explicit - perhaps too explicit - in the film's final section, showing various marches and protests illustrating the causes which are making the headlines today. In stark contrast to the "whispering wind" and dappled sunlight of the graveyard sequences, this is a boisterous explosion of noisy energy - somewhat incongruous and a touch heavy-handed after the graceful uninflectedness of what's come before. In addition, Gianvito occasionally punctuates his film with silent, rather gnomic black and white animations whose purpose and meaning remains frustratingly opaque. And there's one notably ill-advised moment - where a sign recording a "defeat" of Native Americans is altered (by unseen hands, via a piece of paper) to instead refer to a "massacre" - which feels like inappropriately direct editorialising on the film-makers' part, in a work notable for its subtle eloquence. But these are very minor cavils: Profit motive and the whispering wind succeeds brilliantly on multiple levels, and as a vital, productive and worthwhile use of the cinematic medium, it's exceedingly hard to beat. 2.9.07

the three living quotations cited by Straub at the Collective for Living Cinema on April 30, 1983:
D. W. Griffith at the end of his life: "What modern movies lack is the wind in the trees."
Rosa Luxembourg: "The fate of insects is not less important than the revolution."
Cézanne, who painted Mont Saint-Victoire again and again: "Look at this mountain, once it was fire."

Neil Young
2nd September, 2007

NB
1. all films seen in the UK, and all timings approximate, unless stated otherwise
2. timings taken from the BBFC website are rounded to the nearest minute (i.e. 100min 29sec = 100min, but 100min 30sec = 101min)
3. an asterisk [*] in the rating indicates that film is not a feature (i.e. 0-39m = short; 40m-63m = medium-length; 64m+ = feature)

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