I kicked off the fest, still fighting jetlag (and Greyhound-lag), with Boxing Gym, the latest from prolific cinema-verite pioneer Frederick Wiseman. It might be a minor film from him, in its subject and swift runtime, but it nevertheless features his strengths on full display, not least the ability to abstract the myriad workout routines on display into a symphony of rhythm. The inspiration allegedly came from his desire to make another film about a form of state-sanctioned violence, but the tone is nevertheless genial throughout, and the film is altogether curiously and mysteriously motivated, but in the best and most lingering sense of the term.
The main draw of the festival for me was the Wavelengths program, dedicated to avant-garde and experimental cinema; not because I'm an avant-nut (avant-n00b is more accurate) but mostly because these films are least likely to arrive on Aussie shores. The first was James Benning’s Ruhr, another of his landscape surveys, this time of the titular German industrial region rather than anywhere in the US. Ostensibly, the film is 6 shots: the first 5 (chronologically: an auto tunnel, a sky through forest, a pipe factory, a mosque, graffiti removal) comprising the first hour, and then an ENTIRE HOUR OMG devoted to a coke plant framed against a skyline, with a billowing cloud of smoke providing much the bulk of visual interest. A kneejerk criticism would be that such a shot is better suited to gallery installation rather than being asked to sit down and watch it in its entirety, but my remaining jetlag had got the better of me earlier on, so I konked out early and the thing became an inadvertent installation anyway. I doubt a fully-conscious viewing would've been more fruitful, though a spot of lively online debate has made me more appreciative of Benning’s project, and the auto tunnel shot I stayed entirely awake for (pic'd above) is a tour-de-force of various forms of off-screen space.
The next Wavelengths program was entirely my bag: I’ve long wanted to see Nathaniel Dorsky’s work, and the triptych of films screened (Compline, Audabe and Pastourelle) were revelatory in every sense. One knockout of image after another in complete silence, the cumulative effect enough to make one weep. Rustling, jostling plants and flora seem to dominate a bulk of Dorsky’s gleanings, but the level of instinctual, abstract, patterning is so powerful that a café shot with the protusions of a woman’s jacket bobbing in and out of frame registers with the same poetic force as the nature imagery. Words can only do this stuff injustice; as one tweep nailed it, “This guy's an avant-garde rock star”.
On a completely different note, I picked Griff the Invisible as my token Aussie flick & mood-leaving fluff among my viewing slate. Australian films that borrow from Hollywood genres tend to have an unwelcome air of kids-playing-dressup, so I approached this Sydney-bound superhero romcom from actor-turned-director Leon Ford with a little bit of trepidation. Fortunately, it’s not too long that the film starts showing a visual wit of its own, and the immensely appealing lead performances from Ryan Kwanten – so good at playing dumb in True Blood, and similarly effective at toning down his heartthrob persona here – and especially Maeve Dermody, in a potentially deadly role as the manic pixie dream girl, elevate what could have been a conveyor-belt quirky misfit romance. The earnest/angsty final act is a bit of a vibekill, and the package is a little too cloying and winsome for a miserable sod like me to wholeheartedly go for, but there’s a lot of fun to be had and the audience I was with clearly ate it up.
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