Ex-felon Leon Batts holds up his ballot for the camera after voting for the first time in his life in New York City, November 2, 2004

Demis Roussos with Kaftan

Gnarlys Barkley

- – -

What does democracy mean?

Linguists in the TFT community already know that it derives from a mashup of the Greek work ‘Demis‘ (meaning large bearded man in a kaftan) and ‘Crazy‘ (meaning a way for Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo to ensure their financial futures and colonise the hybrid brain of the human race for a few years until the next one comes along).

Demis-Crazy, the worst form of government except all the other ones that have been tried (apparently not said by Churchill); the system that resulted in a day off school for so many of us when I was growing up, whose successes can engender social change for the good of all, and whose failures can lead Al Gore to change his appearance.

(Actually, whoever made the comment about democracy being the least of many evils was right to add the rider ‘except all the other ones that have been tried – if you want to be inspired by an alternative voting method that aims to be fully inclusive of every voter, and produce results that far more people can live with, more of the time, than democracy as typically understood – winner takes all, satisfying a minority while everyone else grimaces til the next election – then check out Charles de Borda’s preferendum system.  Trust me – it’s fascinating and will change the way you think about how politics is done, and what kinds of social change may already be within our reach.  In a weird confluence, the new rules for Best Picture Oscar voting are more like de Borda’s system than majoritarianism – one lives in hope that life may imitate art.  Consensus – it’s the new riding roughshod over the dreams of others.)

But, and you already knew this, I digress.

In ‘Election Day‘, a warm-hearted observational documentary by Katy Chevigny, we see a day in the life of US democracy, on that fateful day when John Kerry was trying to un-swift boat himself; a day, lest we forget, which could have led to John Edwards becoming vice-president, potentially resulting in a rather troubling scandal in the middle of Kerry’s first term.  (Also makes me think that if the Supreme Court had voted differently in 2000, then last year’s most likely Presidential nominee for the Dems might have been his VP.  Sometimes things that look bad the first time round seem different on a second look.)  In ‘Election Day’ we see some of the process of how things came together and fell apart in November 2004, following a poll-watcher watching polls, trying to figure out the interaction between the individual and the collective, and taking in the disenfranchisement of marginalised people along the way.

The best thing about ‘Election Day’ is the way that it reduces our focus from the meta-level bystanding as the scandal of 2000 unfolded – when the world seemed glued to the same photo of that guy peering through a chad to see if it was hanging, swinging, or pregnant (and when I say ‘scandal’, I don’t mean that we should inevitably think that Bush stole the election, nor that Gore should have been crowned prince by the Supreme Court either; just that when it’s obvious that not all the votes have been properly counted, that they should all be counted.  That would seem a reasonable starting point for agreement on the fundamental principles of Demis-Crazy, wouldn’t it?)

Demis-Crazy in Action

And so we see a few polling stations, watching that apparently uniquely US American phenomenon of everyone getting involved, wearing badges, filling out forms, finding out who the volunteer judges are, and seeing it through to the moment when a supermodel news anchor subverts the process before the votes are counted and tells you who has won.  The lasting sense I have two days after watching this enlightening film is – on the one hand a reminder that the US American political experiment really might have something to offer the rest of the world, with genuine opportunities for people to get involved, no matter where they are; and on the other, of the apparent brokenness of the system they want to work.

In the UK and Ireland, you register to vote one day a year.  If you’re not registered on that day, you go to the local electoral office before the election and sign an affidavit.  If you don’t have a passport or a driving licence or another acceptable form of ID, you can get one made just for voting.  It takes a few minutes.  Then you get a card with your name on it, which lists the place you’re supposed to vote.  On election day, you have from 7 in the morning til 10 at night to vote.  You don’t even need to remember to bring the card with you.  Then you go into the voting booth where you get a card with the names of the candidates on it.  You put an ‘X’ beside the name of the person you want to elect (or rank candidates in order of preference if it’s a proportional representation election).  You fold the paper and put it in a box.  Then you go home and watch TV.  About four or five hours after the polls close, the votes have been counted.  And I mean actually counted, by people, more than once.  If the margins are small, they get counted again.  And again if necessary.  It’s amazing.  There are no holes to punch, no judges necessary to confirm your identity, it’s very difficult to be confused about where you should vote.  ‘Election Day’ is a valuable film because it presents the paradox of US democracy – a system that so badly wants to work,  but nobody seems quite sure of how a government by the people for the people of the people is supposed to be produced.

‘Election Day‘, a fascinating contribution to the patchwork of understanding America is available on I-Tunes: Click Below to Preview and/or Buy:

And please don’t forget to visit ‘Operation Save The Film Talk’ or click below for information on how you can support our efforts to keep the show on the air.  Thanks!

You know, we like to be friendly round here, but if you’ve been in the The Film Talk neighbourhood for any length of time, you’ll also know that we often grieve the lack of imagination in most films.  Robots kill some people/people kill more robots; abs-ridden guy meets cute girl/conflict/unification; bloke changes, you know the deal.  So it’s a pleasant surprise to see ‘Turning Green’, your none-too-typical American boy grows up in a small West of Ireland village/competes with the local gangster by selling porn magazines (illegal in the eyes of the State and shameful in the eyes of the Church)/and makes witty comments about what’s wrong with the land of my birth while Timothy Hutton, an actor I like a great deal, snarls at him from under a pork pie hat.

‘Turning Green’ was made four years ago – a runner up in the first season of ‘Project Greenlight’ – and is only now being released, with the absurdly misleading poster above.  To tell you the truth, it’s one of the strangest films I’ve seen – on the one hand trying to make a decent job of assessing Ireland’s paradox, or at least its paradox thirty years ago, when the film is set: the fecund literary culture and freedom narratives of Beckett, Joyce, and Heaney co-mingling with the obsessive puritanism enshrined by the State; on the other, it offers a series of cliches about ‘Oirishness’ – the angry priest, the aul fella who seems glued to the end of the bar, the visions of Mary turned into a kind of foreplay.  It doesn’t help that the movie seems unsure of its tone – is it a dramatic entertainment in the tradition of ‘The Quiet Man’, a comedy in the style of ‘Waking Ned’, or a gangster thriller that should have been re-titled ‘Mystic O’River’?  You get parts of all three here; with a shade or two of Tarantino, and a little Woody Allen neurotic cynicism in the voiceover.

Writer-directors John G Hoffman and Michael Aimette do enough to make this northern Irish writer laugh – sometimes; but also enough to make me feel condescended to, sometimes.  Ireland has been poor, sure; Ireland has been oppressive for some, absolutely; Ireland has a long string of little villages where everybody knows everybody else, of this there is no doubt.  But the lack of any empathetic characters in ‘Turning Green’ has the effect of suggesting there’s no reason to care; and for me, Ireland needs a vision of what we can be, rather than yet more dwelling on what’s wrong with us.

And yet, I found myself almost beguiled by the depiction of my home; and grateful that I wasn’t watching another ‘Troubles’ film or a ‘Ryan’s Daughter‘-style over-romanticisation – there’s a smart little film trying to escape from ‘Turning Green’, one in which the double standard of moral hypocrisy is the heart of the story.  It’s not a stretch to say that cultures that freak out over nudity while people are being killed in their name need a mirror; ‘Turning Green’ offers a very blunt one in an exchange of dialogue that, for me, was worth the weaknesses of the rest of the movie.  When an old man is having trouble describing the package he’s gone to pick up from the post office, the domineering priest in line behind our anti-hero James (played with appropriate detachment by Donal Gallery) huffs and puffs about how ridiculous it is to be wasting his time.  James responds with a line that one imagines was the writers’ intended motto for the whole film:

‘If these people aren’t bombing women and children or starving the homeless, they’re making small talk at the post office’.

Despite the fact that the film doesn’t hang together, glimpses of this coruscating raised eyebrow can be seen throughout; ‘Turning Green’ seems not be a complete work, but it has signs of moving in the right direction.  And it’s a better film than I’d make right now.  (For what it’s worth, ‘Turning Green’ pales in comparison to another film that carries similar themes – the far superior ‘Garage’, Lenny Abrahamson’s Tarkovskian/Rohmeresque film about an Irish petrol station attendant and the encroachment of the Celtic Tiger.)

Meantime, in other Irish news, ‘Prods and Pom-Poms‘, the lovely short documentary about Sandy Row cheerleaders will get its local TV debut for Northern Ireland viewers tomorrow night – you can see it on UTV at 10.35pm, Friday 6th November; and if you’re outside the reach of northern Irish television transmitters, DVDs are still available from its makers.

Watching Ben Jones and Paul Hutchinson’s entertaining documentary ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ (available on DVD at a bargain price from Hooptedoodle Films) was a nostalgic experience. (Full disclosure: It’s set in my home town, and Paul and Ben are friends of mine. Second full disclosure: I think I’d like the film even if I didn’t like them.)

It gets both the urban desolation of an easily forgotten part of South Belfast and the craic of the culture just right – the struggle for recognition and desire to do something other than be passively entertained finding expression in that most unclichéd of dramatic conventions: a working class Protestant cheerleading squad preparing for their big day out in Scotland.

If you know northern Ireland, or have ever been around small-town amateur theatrics, then you’ll have a wry smile on your face as you watch – ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ humanizes people who are often either laughed at, ignored, or even feared by the liberal intelligentsia. The sense of identity that derives from a place and its people is palpable – the cold light of my city keeping people alert to the fact that Sandy Row is – whatever its challenges – home.

There is a sense of genuine drama as the squad makes the trip across the Irish Sea to the championships – theories about the social construction of reality and competition seem churlish when you see the excitement these kids have invested in the journey. When they get to Scotland – a promised land for Ulster Protestants, who, myself among them, often grow up feeling small, that we didn’t belong, and that things of ‘scale’ are none of our business; but sometimes in the sense of ‘anywhere but here’ – they perform to an apathetic audience, only there to see their own team play. But they give it all they’ve got; and, as their leader – a brilliant sketch of an indominatable northern Irish ‘weemin’ – says ‘They all smiled and they all enjoyed themselves, and that was the main thing’.

The parallels with the faux-militarism on display in northern Ireland’s marching organizations is not lost in ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’; nor is it overplayed. We’re just invited to observe an American phenomenon in an Ulster setting; to remember what it’s like to participate with others in seeking common goals, and how taking part matters more than winning. (‘You know what we’re like, we’ll just suck it up and get on wi’ it.’) The climax squeezes a lovely little human comedy with its share of tension into a series of speakerphone calls on a ferry; and the fact that the squad arrives back to the depressed Belfast night is more than countered by the human contentment that a day well-lived offers.

Where ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ universalizes its themes is in its subtle observation of the ordinariness at the heart of a much-maligned culture. These kids attend their cheerleading classes in a small heartland, surrounded by the commercial real estate encroachment of Belfast’s retail centre; beneath belligerent and depressing murals that seem threatening to anyone from outside, and presumably don’t exactly lift the spirits of residents. But they take part in the Belfast St Patrick’s Day parade – an unconventional and imaginative move for a Protestant group to make in recent years; they want people to know that, when it comes to bigotry and political entrenchment, ‘not everyone here is like that’; they love their wee patch of ground, and they’re proud of what they’re doing. People from this place have rarely been portrayed as human beings, if they’ve been portrayed at all. The way that the film promotes respectful dialogue about difference among human beings might feel grateful that ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ exists.

In April we presented Episode 62 of TFT, focusing on ‘Hunger’, the astonishing feature film debut of the visual artist Steve McQueen, which compelled audiences on its release last Autumn, and is now available on DVD.  I’m still reeling from my experience of watching this movie and wanted to revisit it; thoughts below.

The political responses to the film were predictable – but the film itself was not.  In the first instance, it is not, as was assumed, a film primarily about Bobby Sands, or even about the 1981 hunger strikes in general.  No historical knowledge of the socio-political context is necessary to understand or appreciate ‘Hunger’; in fact it’s likely that people outside northern Ireland will experience the film as a work of moral philosophy, while we locals may be unable to divorce ourselves from the traumatic memories of violence and sorrow that so many of us harbour, whether we know it or not.

‘Hunger’ is about the descent into dehumanization that every violent political conflict includes: the reduction of other human beings to ‘types’ and not personalities, sociological cohorts and not individuals with hopes and dreams and fears and pain.  In the film this descent has already taken hold; but we know that in our own society it began as such a reduction, and continued to form part of a deceptive and recursive narrative that, our history has shown can, unless it is arrested by a non-violent negotiation, end with genocide.

The film is in two parts, the first of which focuses on the daily existence – to call it a life would be an overstatement, it being so full of emptiness that it can’t be described as a humane experience – of a prison officer played by Stuart Graham (a magnificent portrayal of broken and brutal northern Irish masculinity).  He lives in a tidy middle class Protestant shell; with a quietly terrified wife, eating the same fry for breakfast every day, life regimented by the morning hand and face wash, the surreptitious pulling back of the curtains, the look under the car, the Puritanical schoolboy folding of tin foil sandwich wrapping, the punching he meets out to dirty protest prisoners, the tidiness of the flowers brought to his mentally frail elderly mother, ultimately leading to one of the most horrifying images I’ve ever seen in a film.

The second half begins with a long dialogue between Bobby Sands and a priest, tossing back and forth the question of the morality and purposefulness of the hunger strike.  This scene has been acclaimed by critics for taking such a long hard look at one thing: why someone would choose to die for a political cause.  Sands, as played by Michael Fassbender (it’s difficult to find adequate superlatives for his performance, so enveloped by the idea of what a human being would go through in starving to death), would call it a human cause before a political one; and perhaps substitute the word ‘inevitability’ for cause – so driven by what he sees as the forces of history to take this stand.

And after the talk, the agonizing death.  In this, as in the rest of the film, McQueen is both unsparing and subtle – elliptical scene giving way to elliptical scene, a lot of conversation followed by periods of almost silence, a memory sequence of Sands running as a child.  And then, it’s over; fade to black, a caption telling us how many died in the hunger strike, and how many prison officers were killed during the period, and how the prisoners’ demands were met.

For me, ‘Hunger’ might be the most important film yet made about northern Ireland and our shared trauma.  It is also the least one-sided (that doesn’t mean it is without prejudice; and it’s certainly neither a perfect film, nor an attempt at telling the whole story – none could, of course.  But for those of us who want our stories to honour the truth of the victims of violence without denying the brokenness of our society, ‘Hunger’ is a start.  A harrowing start that I wouldn’t recommend to everyone, but a start nonetheless.)  No film has taken more seriously the horror of the taking of life by paramilitaries in the Troubles, nor the brutalization that the state was capable of endorsing.  No film has more clearly stated that all violence against the person requires dehumanization; and that such dehumanization will always diminish the credibility of the cause (ostensible or real) of those carrying it out.  No film has upset me more.  And no film about my home has given me more hope.  I understand those who say they would prefer such films not to be made – that they stir up painful memories, or focus too much on those considered combatants rather than non-engaged citizens; but this film does not set out to lionize or demonise anyone.  It simply states what should be obvious, and a central part of what people who take being human seriously might be called to embrace: when one suffers, all suffer.  You can’t kill a person without tearing a part of yourself.

You know, Dear Listener, that The Film Talk is striving for something rare: to be a truly international cinema podcast. Your genial co-hosts Jett & Gareth are men of the world, widely travelled, for whom it would not be an overstatement to assert the core truth of country music: wherever they lay their hats, that’s their home.

While we both now make our caves in the land of Buster Keaton, William F Buckley, Andrew Dice Clay, and the late Bea Arthur, our first encounter with each other was in the hallowed space of Belfast’s only arthouse theatre (or, as the somewhat ridiculous government-endorsed lingo has it: ‘specialist cinema’), the Queen’s Film Theatre.   QFT, more than any other venue, formed my cinematic consiousness over the past two decades – beginning rather inauspiciously with a late night screening of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, later becoming the place where I first saw Kieslowski films, bumped into Albert Maysles, discovered Hirokadu Koreeda’s ‘After Life’, listened to Howard Shore play the temp tracks he shows David Cronenberg when he’s scoring a movie for him, fell for Emmanuelle Beart in ‘Nelly et M Arnaud’, saw a triple bill of ‘Miller’s Crossing’, ‘Lost Highway’ and ‘The End of Violence’, (never saw a David Lynch film anywhere else) and even had a door held open for me by Mike Leigh.  Couldn’t happen in too many other places.

QFT has been a magical place for me; operated as something close to a labour of love for many years, especially when it was one of the few entertainment venues that stayed open in the toughest days of the conflict in and about northern Ireland. It’s changed of course; updated furnishing, rebuilt screens, different seats; some of the romance of the old theatre that you could only get to by knowing where the almost-secret back alley was has gone, but it’s still the place where people in Belfast who want to be surprised by cinema end up every week. I saw ‘In the Loop’ – which could well turn out to be my favourite film this year – there just a few days ago.

And now, QFT has launched a new website – much easier to use than the previous one, which had some of the quaint characteristics associated with Web 1.0

The new www.queensfilmtheatre.com is gorgeous to look at, intuitive to use, and the only criticism I can offer is that no one has yet invented the Star Trek transporter machine, so I can’t get to see the films screening there unless I fly to Belfast. QFT is that rare thing – a cinema with heart, with a touch of the personal, a movie theatre where you can feel at home. We hope that The Film Talk offers something similar; for now, I’m happy to begin this week by paying tribute to one of the best places in the world to watch movies.  And we’d love to hear from you, Dear Listener, about your own cinema shrines – please comment below.

To TFT listeners in Belfast: you know it already, but those of us on the other side of an ocean are mildly envious that we can’t be with you at the Belfast Film Festival over the next week or so.  (Don’t cry for us, though, for in one of those thrice-yearly mystical encounters, your genial co-hosts will be together in Durham, North Carolina for the largest documentary festival in the US, Full Frame from next Thursday on, and then in Nashville for the Big Sleepy’s film fest later in April.)  For what it’s worth, I’m listing below some highlights from BFF.  Let us know what you see, what you like, and anything you’d like us to review.  We’ll see what we can do.

Friday 27th

‘Synecdoche, New York’ is, among the movies I saw last year, the one I most want to see again.  It’s a film about everything, in the same way that one human life is about everything; the actors blend into a crowd that looks like it could absorb the world, or be overwhelmed by it.  It’s a painful watch at times, but also thrilling in the way that films about the interior life can be when they’re made for grown ups.

Saturday 28th

‘Let the Right One In’ is the teenage vampire film we’ve all been waiting for – Jett holds it in high esteem, and a friend who only likes about two films every five years thinks it’s a masterpiece.

Sunday 29th

If you’re not going to the Film Quiz and trying to equal or beat our record of second place (we were robbed by zombie film questions) you really could do a lot worse than seeing ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ again – I watched it over a few months ago and think it might be the Coen Brothers’ best film – the light, the pacing, the intelligent humour, the ripping apart of racism through coruscating humour, the floating cow.  It’s perfect.

Tuesday 31st

Go see Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ if you haven’t already.  If you have, then I imagine you’ve already booked your ticket.  But that would mean you would miss ‘Rough Aunties’, Kim Longinotto’s film about heroic women responding to horrific abuse in South Africa. Longinotto won an award at this festival a couple of years ago – and we’ll be seeing this film at Full Frame next week – she’s a documentarian of huge sensitivity.

Thursday 2nd April

Crispin Glover will present the live roadshow version of his film ‘It is fine.  EVERYTHING IS FINE.’  Crispin Glover is known for three things in particular – playing George McFly in ‘Back to the Future’, nearly kicking David Letterman in the face, and refusing to play George McFly in the ‘BTTF’ sequels.  People who have seen this live performance are usually stunned by a film and a show that has enough engagement and horror to feel like a night at a circus that has both clowns and monsters.  I’d probably go see ‘Chevolution’ – about the industry and cultural movements that claim Guevera as their own.

Saturday 3rd April

I’m not recommending ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’, a documentary about a South Belfast cheerleading troupe, simply because its co-directors are friends of mine – but because it does something that political cinema about northern Ireland rarely does: goes beyond the stereotype or the linear chronological narrative.  There are a lot of documentaries that claim to tell ‘the truth’ about my city and my home, through biographical statements about key public figures, or important historic moments.  These films, of course, have their place, and some are pretty good.  But there has always been a better story under the surface than the one told by people with access to elections and microphones.  ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ feels to me like an example of Howard Zinn-style ‘people’s history’ – a story of two cultures being blended, and the world changing under their feet.

Feel free to let us know if you’re at the festival, and tell us what you see.  Enjoy.

Belfast film-makers, and friends of the Film Talk, Paul Hutchinson and Ben Jones have made what looks like a very special little documentary about Northern Irish cultural life in the early 21st century…It’s called ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’:

Prods and Pom-Poms from Höoptedoodle Films on Vimeo.

]]> http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/new-belfast-documentary/feed/ 9