Dir.: Paul Franklin; Cast Charlotte Riley, Ivanhoe Jeremiah, Hammed Aminashaun, Sophie Wu, Raghad Chaar, Elyssee Adil, Denise Gough; UK 2022, 15 min.

British filmmaker Paul Franklin, well known for his VHX work with Christopher Nolan, winner of two Oscars for Best Visual Effects (Inception/Interstellar), directs Paul Lally’s script about an operation at MI6, focusing on the frailty of human judgement in a situation of life and death.

Tension reigns in the MI 6 Ops room. In Tripoli, a well known terrorist will be executed. And to make matters worse, supervisor Gillian Lye (Riley) has fallen out with her father during a phone conversation. Co-workers B (Aminashaun) and Fiza (Chaar) try to keep out of it, when Pep (Jeremiah) enters the fray, telling Gillian that there are children in the vicinity of the drone attack. When Pep finally gets through to Gillian, who wants to abort the mission, boss Ellie Sherberg (Gough) arrives having just had a conversation with the government Minister and offering Gillian an opportunity she would be mad to refuse.

Originally planned a stage play by writer Paul Lally,  the project was developed by Franklin as an immersive experience for VR headset. Instead of visiting Lebanon, PD Jamie Lapsey used Russian language search engines, to find holiday shots to build the city in an “unreal” engine. Ed Thomas, VP Supervisor, explains the target was to build a real street section, with Franklin navigated the shoot with VR goggles to plan the shoot. Franklin was able to put a virtual movie camera (an IPad on a shoulder mount), walking around and looking at the virtual world, sharing it with Ollie Downey, the cinematographer who took individual frames from the VR recce to produce storyboards for the whole film.

“Dimensions Unreal’s” Craig Stiff did not only construct the virtual world, he also acted as gaffer. The treatment was the same, as if we had created the whole set on the street in Tripoli. Franklin:” I let the background over-impose, and treated it like a view from the window on a normal was set – only this way, I would have much more control”. The real and virtual sets were blended. The texture of the ground had seamlessly blend into the texture of the digital ground. Once you get this, it is very difficult to see, were reality ends and virtual reality begins. AS

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Dir.: Jessica Kingdon | Documentary; China 2021, 97′

Mesmerising in its imagery, Ascension is a frightening impressionistic portrait of China’s growing class divide through staggering observations of labour, consumerism and wealth.

In her documentary debut Chinese-American Jessica Kingdon explores this study of Chinese superiority by those whose crafted the system. But there is also the hankering after western values and traditions, coupled with a search for perfection in every aspect of working life. Through sheer determination this stealthy dragon will soon be the number economic power on the globe – a nightmarish vision.

The film is structured in three parts, ascending through the hierarchical levels: workers running factory production, the middle class selling to aspirational consumers, and the elites revelling in a new level of hedonistic enjoyment. In traveling up the rungs of China’s social ladder, we see how each level supports and makes possible the next while recognizing the contemporary “Chinese Dream” remains an elusive fantasy for most.

Job-seekers gather in front of buses which will ferry the chosen ones to their factories and dorms. The pay is a couple of dollars an hour, but there are restrictions: Only applicants between 18 and 38 are welcome, men are not allowed to have tattoos or ear-studs – and no illegals will be accepted let alone those with a criminal record. Then there is the roll call for the HUWAI bus, under a big sign of “Work hard, and all wishes come true” the workers put their luggage away before entering the bus. Other poster slogans tell the workers “Be civilised, set good examples” before we set off for the factories.

In a plant producing water bottles from plastic, the female workers discuss the role of the manager: “It does not matter how many days you work, the manager will decide how many days you get paid for. I buy the boss lunch, right after having been paid. We all plead to buy lunch for him so he can pull some strings for us.” In a factory producing jeans, the workers are told “to work harder”, because these jeans are for export: the stitching reads “Keep America great”. In front of a factory producing sex dolls, the chorus shouts slogans like “I love my company, I love my colleagues, I love my career even more. My fate is tied to the company’s, my glory bound to the company”.

Books are given out to workers and they are exhorted to study them with diligence, since the boss spend much time on writing the advice for his workers. During work hours, role play about how to be a perfect workmate is transmitted via loud speakers. We see workers marching like soldiers in front of factories. Meanwhile in the sex doll factory, the workers earnestly discuss the colour of the nipples and the trimming of the pubic hair.

A little more up the food chain, the middle-managers are equally enthusiastic about paying good money to listen to champion managers, who have a large fan base. “Monetise your personal brand. Knowledge must be monetised”. Others have participated in a two-day course and promise “to make millions and millions” in the coming months and years. There are other expensive courses that tell you how to smile (show eight teeth), nod and hug, the latter not being very popular in China.

At a lecture by the Senior International trainer we learn “either you influence me, or I influence you”. There is a training school for butlers too: The new Chinese ruling classes want to copy their European counterparts. “You may not have much time for your personal life, or your family. The rich people do what they want to do, and you have to accept it. They are the people who pay you, no matter how much they humiliate you”.

We watch a group of young men being trained as body guards for the big bosses – unfortunately the applicants fail: the boss has been killed. A group of rich Chinese business people complain about the West calling them out for their Human Rights violations. “They don’t understand the poor have to learn to survive, there is no place for human rights, just survival.” One of the directors tells the audience of employees that “If your intelligence does not match your wealth, Chinese society has hundreds of ways to take your wealth away”.

Before a rather melancholic ending, we are reminded again “that dreams are “. Kingdon keeps the tone understated, letting images and the slogans talk. The result is a mixture of false naivety – on behalf of the upper classes – and a kind of religious fervour of obedience from the workers. But whatever the future holds, the mixture of state capitalism (after all the Party rules supreme) and expanding consumerism, which will see China overtake the USA’s GDP by five times, is a reason for trepidation – to say the least. A brilliant study of a communist nation on the march. AS

Documentary Films will release ASCENSION, one of the most acclaimed documentaries of 2021, on 14 January 2022 in UK cinemas.

THE 2021 ALBERT MAYSLES AWARD BEST NEW DOCUMENTARY DIRECTOR to JESSICA KINGDON AT Tribeca Film Festival | JUNE 2021

Dir.: Macha Colon aka Gisela Rosario Ramos; Cast: Luz Maria Rondon, Katia Maria, Blanca Rosa Rovira Burset, Carmen Milagros Ortiz Cruz, Abner Riviera; Puerto Rico/Columbia 2021, 97 min.

This dark but colourful comedy reflects the identity of a nation inured to adversity and where humour and drama always go side by side. Perfume of Gardenias is the feature debut of Puerto Rican director/writer Macha Colon, a queer multi-disciplinarian artist who studied in New York.

Vibrantly reflecting the director’s idiosyncratic personality, Perfume often indulges in shock-treatment and plays havoc with an audience used to mainstream aesthetics.

When theatre and television star Isabel (Luz Maria Rondon in her first starring role) loses her high-ranking officer husband Mario after a long illness, she has to rethink her life in the religious middle-class community. Daughter Melanie (Maria) comes to stay, but is not much of a help, treating her mother like a child. For example, she asks Isabel to look for a “plug-into-the wall piece” – to which her mother answers “it would have been easier if you asked me to look for your mobile charger.”

Melanie is soon off, promising – not very sincerely – to be back at Christmas leaving Isabel to restructure her life. She has made a great impression of organising her husband’s funeral paying respect to him in a very individual way. Her friend Toña (Riley), self-appointed leader of the small community, decides that Isabel should be the one to interview the moribund members of their circle, so they have an individual input in their own funeral arrangements.

Unfortunately, Toña has the tendency to speed up the process, before many potential clients are ready to leave this world. While Toña is already directing their funeral. Isabel has to learn to find a new approach to death and religion.

Perfume is highly entertaining – DoP Pedro Juan Lopez capturing the customs and characters, always making fun of the sacred religious undertones which dominate the middle classes: despite their reduced status they must still be seen to be the ruling spiritual light. Rondon carries the often rowdy proceedings with much dignity and elegance,  farce never overtaking the narrative. Colon, playing the enfant-terrible of her cultural scene, is often too self-indulgent, going for full blown radical shock-effects rather than a more sensible approach. Her attitude of wanting the cake and eating it somehow diminishes the underlying problems of the society she caricatures. But Colon and the brilliant ensemble certainly have their fun. AS

https://youtu.be/JzX-bJ_AwCg

SCREENING DURING Tribeca Film Festival | JUNE 13th 2021

Dir.: Joseph Kubota Wladyka; Cast: Kali Reis, Daniel Henshall, Tiffany Chu, Kimberly Guerrero, Kevin Dunne; USA 2021, 86 min.

US director/writer Joseph Kubota Wladyka has a bold confession – as a kid he tried to sneak out of the local Arthouse where his parents had taken the family to watch Terminator.

It is no surprise then that Catch The Fair One – exec-produced by Darren Aronofsky (and co-producer by Molley Asher of Nomadland fame) is a straightforward action thriller. But nothing to be sneezed at – this is genre cinema at its best.

Feisty Native American Ex-champion boxer Kaylee (Reis) is having a tough time making a comeback as a boxer, well aware that competition is fierce from younger players. And with her unsupportive mother Jaya (Guerrero), a group therapist bereavement sufferers, and concerns that her sister has been abducted by sex traffickers, the outlook is grim.

Sleeping with a razor blade for protection means Kaylee often wakes up  with blood on the pillow. And this make-ship weapon comes in handy when she is drugged and ‘sold’ to sex trafficker by boss Bobby (Henshall). But Kaylee surprises her guard, kills him, and then sets off for Bobby’s place where she overpowers him and immobilises his son. But Bobby won’t reveal her sister’s whereabouts, so Kaylee must set off on a ‘no holds barred’ mission to track down her sibling.

DoP Ross Giardina’s images of the sleazy underbelly of the boxing gangland are spectacular, so are his flashbacks of Kaylee’s violent times in the ring. A real-life middle-weight champion, Reis is impressive in her hunt for vengeance, her hostile expression striking fear into opponents – both in and out of the ring. Wladyka has certainly watched enough classic movies of the genre: this is a masterclass in tempo and timing. But most awe-inspiring of all is his tight script in a narrative full of twists and turns that never relies on atmosphere alone to keep the audience in thrall for 86 minutes – even the running time is a salient reminder of former B-pictures, who are today ageless wonders. AS

ON RELEAE FROM 4 APRIL NATIONWISE | TRIBECA PREMIERE 2021

Dir.: Sol Guy; Documentary with William Richard Guy, Sol Guy, Donna Guy, Freye Parkhouse, Soshana Guy; USA 2021, 96 min.

Finding the courage to look at photos and videos of a lost loved one is tough, even years after their death. It took Sol Guy decades to watch a batch of 20 VHS tapes his father William Richard Guy (1944-1998) had made, just after being diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer, when Sol was twenty. This labour of love and remembrance forms the subject of this mature feature debut that enabled the writer director to reach out and meet the extended family his father had founded.

William Richard was quiet a philanderer: he had five children with three women, compensating with his good looks for the bad cards fate dealt him by having to grow up in a segregated America. The KKK was still rampant in his youth, its members capturing Blacks and selling them to plantation owners in the South. Signs like “Waiting room for Coloured only, by order of the police.” were common; and demonstrators waved signs in favour of segregation: “We want a white School.” Housing was so poor, that rats simply came as standard with the accommodation.

Via Kansas City and Iowa, and a two-year stint in the army in Thailand, William ended up in Canada, working as DJ ‘Gigging Guy’. William’s partner Bobbie tells their son, “your father had girl-friends”. Eventually she had enough and moved in with Freye Parkhouse, an Englishman, would become Sol’s second father.

After Bobbie left, William went to Mexico where he met Lee Lee, another adoring white woman, before fathering his 5th child with “auntie” Jayda. William turned to social work which became his redemption, drink and drugs were out, caring for others made him a better person. For Sol, his father’s suffering was too much, he ran away not wanting to watch his deterioration. At William’s funeral, all his children met for the first time. Sol, like his father had a penchant for running away when the going got tough he left his own family in Germany, and travelled the world, before it occurred him that he was just repeated the same pattern as his dad. At the end of the feature, we see him and Bobbie caring for the dying man who by now had lost his ability to speak. On the 20th anniversary of William’s death, the family met again in Kansas City: for Sol a time to reconcile himself with his past, and re-connect with the family he once spurned

The feature was completed in the editing suite shown in the lively, handheld camera of DoP Rafe Scobey-Thal. Sometimes confusing it its timelines and points of view – both Sol and his father address their children, the difference being that the protagonists are one generation removed from each other. But Sol’s utter honesty is the redeeming feature here. Never resorting to the ‘race card’, Sol freely admits that  Black men often repeat the lives of their fathers’, leaving their women to bring up the kids. This way, Sol Guy creates a history of race and fatherhood in the USA, and a personal account of gender roles in the Black community. AS

SCREENING AT Tribeca Film Festival 2021 | 10 June 2020.