Neil Young's Film Lounge

Rotterdam 2006 : final part (shorts and awards) including Coleman Miller’s ‘Uso Justo’

SHORTS
Haze; Optical Sound; Uso Justo

HAZE [6/10 - short]
Though it loses its way somewhat drastically at the end (when it unwisely starts trying to make sense) the sweatily claustrophobic Haze is – at least for the first half – one of the most intense and gruelling things ever committed to digital video. A man wakes up in a narrow, coffin-like crawl-space, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He finds he can move, painfully, in several directions – but this just leads him into a further series of cruel, confining, punishing 'traps.'His hellish torment – observed in unbearably close close-up by Tsukamoto's camera – is accompanied by a suitably clangorous soundtrack of pipes and doomy gongs, this interspersed with the protagonist's fevered interior monologue: "Was I taken prisoner? Or some kind of cult brainwashes me? … Perhaps some rich pervent plays a trick on me." The script isn't Tsukamoto's strong suit here – indeed, when he branches out into dialogue in the short's less-than-successful final act, he rapidly bogs down into pretentiousness. The extended sequence in which the man wakes up to find his teeth tightly clamped around a large, horizontal, wall-mounted pipe that allows only molar-scraping sideways movement, will test the nerves of even the most hardened horror-hound: the makers of the Cube and Saw franchises will surely be preparing their "hommages" to this near-unwatchable nightmare set-piece.

OPTICAL SOUND [6/10]
A beguiling piece of sound-and-vision experimenta, technically superb but expresing a fundamentally trite message about the mechanisation of depersonalised modern life: the whirring/buzzing mechanisms of office equipment are manipulated to create a music-like piece ('The Symphony #2 for Dot-Matrix Printer') while on screen we see the repetitive results of the gadget's labours. This is just the kind of thing that used to crop up on BBC television late at night in the late seventies: diverting, ingenious, but ultimately a little too clever-clever for its own good.

USO JUSTO [7/10]
Prankish cod-auteur Coleman Miller has an awful lot of fun reconfiguring footage from what looks like a 1950s Mexican hospital melodrama – and the audience reaps the benefit. In a strangely Borgesian disjunction, Miller's principal contribution (apart from editing the material) is to write subtitles which clearly bear no relation to the Spanish language being spoken. Instead the characters realise they're 'starring' in an experimental film, and comment freely on their situation: such enterprises "can be very odd and unpleasant," somebody notes, though it's conceded that this is "a legitimate art form." Not all the participants are so sanguine: "We're found footage!" another character exclaims, "He can't afford to shoot his own footage!" While the unseen 'director' is treated with scorn by his ungrateful 'puppets' – especially when "things [get] very abstract round here," Miller himself emerges with rather more credit: Uso Justo (Spanish for 'fair use') may be a larkish, one-joke project extended to sitcom-episode length, but it maintains a surprisingly high hit-rate for its gags and rather niftily blends highbrow and lowbrow comedy: 'Carry On Brakhage,' if you like…

Neil Young
1st/2nd March, 2005

HAZE [6/10 - short] : South Korea 2005 : TSUKAMOTO Shinya : c28m short (video)
seen on VHS in videotheque, 2.2.06 (section Short : As Long As It Takes in programme Digital Shorts By Three Filmmakers)

OPTICAL SOUND [6/10 - short] : Optinen aani : Finland 2005 : Mika TAANILA : c5m short (35mm)
seen on DVD in videotheque, 2.2.06 (section Short : As Long As It Takes in programme Current)

USO JUSTO [7/10 - short] : USA 2005 : Coleman MILLER : c28m short (video)
seen on VHS in videotheque, 2.2.06 (section Short : As Long As It Takes in programme Twisted Narratives)

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
AWARDS 2006

VPRO Tiger Awards
  The Dog Pound
  Old Joy
  Walking on the Wild Side
(three equal prizes)
my choices : Madeinusa; A Summer Day; Taking Father Home

FIPRESCI Award (International critics; I served on this jury)
   Madeinusa

KNF Award (Dutch critics)
   # Look Both Ways

Movie Squad Award ('youth' jury)
   Glue

NETPAC Award (for Asian films)
   The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros
   The Lost Hum
(jointly)

Amnesty International Award
   # Avenge But One of My Two Eyes
Tiscali Audience Award
   # Eden
   (runners-up : Nuit Noir – 17 Octobre 1961; # Metal – A Headbanger's Journey)

more details on these and other awards presented at Rotterdam 2006 can be found here

# = film not reviewed on Jigsaw Lounge

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More details on these titles – and all others shown at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival – can be found at the IFFR official site

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A full alphabetical index of all films seen at IFFR 2006 can be found HERE

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