Summertime
| Director | |
|---|---|
| Screenwriters | |
| Produced by | |
| Written by and Starring | |
| Principal Cast |
Summertime assembles an all-star group of young slam
poets over a single day (which appears to be July 4, 2019)
as they traverse
corners of Los Angeles.
Director's Carlos López Estrada sophomore effort was placed in Sundance’s
NEXT section for boundary-pushing and emerging filmmakers.
Its experimental
doc-fiction hybridity
comes from Estrada’s collaboration with the poets,
with
the script comprised of their poetry
and transition moments from character to
character.
Almost all of the writers play themselves in the film.
As an
expression of a current trend to co-create films with the communities they
depict,
Summertime is a rousing success,
one that embraces this
ethos
and reaches to the audience in joyful participation.
Indeed, at this public premiere screening at Sunadnace 2020,
the loud cheers, claps, and snaps started
from the moment the lights went down,
when the bumper sequence opened
with a land acknowledgement of the Utes.
It
appears that these videotaped acknowledgements were made with several different
Native
and Indigenous filmmakers
associated with the Sundance Institute,
from
Bird Runningwater, the director of the Sundance Institute’Indigenous Program
to
Adam Piron, Sundance programmer.
The personalization of Sundance’s land
acknowledgement,
new this year,
sharply contrasts with the scripted, dutiful
readings that I’ve encountered at other festivals,
where the mostly-white
programmers are the ones typically introducing the films.
As Summertime is
episodic by nature,
the atmosphere in the screening mimicked that of a slam
performance.
As a result, it was one of the more enjoyable screenings I’ve been
to in a while.
Many scenes ask a lot of the non-professional cast,
with various
skill levels.
The standout is Tyris Winter, who
plays a teenager who was kicked out of his home when he came out as gay.
His
comedic epic quest for acquiring a cheeseburger drew a huge, cleansing laugh from me as well as cheers
from the audience.
Similarly, the film is at its best
when its internal movie
logic
rubs against the reality of the world.
Paolina Acuña-González has a scintillating scene,
where her daydreams manifest on the street,
and a pair of
rappers
named Anewbyss and Rah
rise through the stages of an entire career over
the course of a day,
their fame coming from rapping about their mothers.
Most
of its characters pass through working-class
spaces,
which builds towards a genuine vision of solidarity
across races.
On the heels of this energy,
the narrative returns to its
scaffolding too many times,
and the performances are often cut.
The overly repetitious reminders of certain storylines,
like a recurring graffiti artist who tags walls with “City of
Jason” (his own name),
strained in achieving a narrative continuity.
The
transitions in the film are often comprised of documentary footage, shot by
Sean Wang,
and serve purely as backdrop.
This reduction of the richness of the street vendors,
subway cars,
and outdoor public spaces to signifiers
represents, to me, what is
frustrating
about nonfiction nowadays.
Still, walking out of the
screening,
it was difficult to deny feeling
that the kids will be alright,
and
that the future looks bright.
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
| Director: |
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
|
|---|---|
| Production: |
Cait Pansegrouw
|
| Running Time: |
120’
|
| Language: |
sesotho
|
| Country: |
Lesotho
|
| Year: |
2019
|
| Main Cast: |
Mary Twala Mhlongo, Jerry Mofokeng Wa, Makhetha, Makhaola Ndebele, Tseko Monaheng, Siphiwe Nzima
|
| Cinematographer: |
Pierre De Villiers
|
| Editor: |
Lemogang Jeremiah Mosese
|
| Production Designer: |
Leila Walter
|
| Costume Designer: |
Nao Serati
|
| Music: |
Yu Miyashita
|
I had greatly admired Mosese’s previous film,
Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You.
It was an experimental documentary
which positioned the filmmaker as part of a global
diaspora searching for the meaning of HOME.
This thought on PLACE in This is Not a Burial,
then,
stood out to me.
Especially since it shares with his previous film
an
aptitude in narrating the quotidian
in extreme poetic terms.
Cryptic and singular in shape,
dazzling in its play with light and landscape,
rigorously specific to its setting in the highlands of Lesotho,
This Is Not a Burial felt worlds apart
from the more traditional stories
that make up most of Sundance’ narrative features.
The film tells
the story of an 80-year-old woman,
Mantoa (Mary Twala Mlongo),
who discovers on
Christmas Day that her son has died in a mining accident in South Africa.
With no family
left alive,
she starts making arrangements for her own burial.
Until she is
told by the city council that her village,
Nasaretha, is about to be flooded
for the construction of a dam,
and that its residents will be resettled in
the city.
But Mantoa is ferm
in her desire to be buried alongside her
ancestors,
while her neighbors pack up their belongings and,
harrowingly,
dig
up their dead to take them along.
This Gothic
premise has its roots in reality.
As Lesotho
exports 780 million cubic metres of drinking water every year to South Africa.
This calls for the construction of
reservoirs that force villagers out of their homes.
They
leave behind their land, crops,
and must either exhume their dead,
or abandon
them to the flooding.
According to its
production notes,
this is the first film made in Lesotho
in the native language
of its local actors.
Its warnings against the cult of the modernity
are sharp
and humorous.
The village’s
chief line,
“Say the word progress, my
tongue rolls backwards”
will stick with me for a while...
But every
scene seems to tick off important themes: traditional rites versus the church,
a woman being
accused of sorcery,
the value of
caregivers,
the lure of
the city,
politicians
only claiming to speak for their constituents.
This is a
surrealist fable,
with fragmented editing
and dialogue infused with
pleinty of myths.
Its soundtrack is composed by the Japanese noise musician,
the haunting Yu
Miyashita.
You are first taken by his music in the film’s oneiric opening sequence,
that takes place late at night in a seedy bar.
The camera
wanders through smoked chiaroscuro,
and then settles on an elderly lesiba player
and raconteur
who starts
narrating ancient tales of war
and plague
and drowned
cities
that situate
the film in the realm of legend.
THIS IS NOT A
BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION
is devoted to how the
idea of HOME plays
into our own perceptions of mortality and life after
death.
The use of
both cinematic framing
and religious undercurrents
create a film that,
although
mournful,
is deeply
connected to how we live on.
Giulia Ghica Dobre
February 2020
