Andrew Currie Online

Just as I’d hoped, the matinee screening of ‘Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey’ brought out a full contingent of Bermuda’s “disaffected youth”, both young and old. Can troubled teens in shaggy hair and black T-shirts also be enrolled in summer sailing camp? Apparently so!

The film itself had plenty of facts but would have benefitted from a little more music, I thought. However, finding out that Nordic death-metal musicians regularly set Christian Churches on fire was certainly information worth knowing.

After a brief leg-stretch I was all set to head back inside the same theatre to see ‘Kilometer Zero’, but apparently DHL, the official fuck-up of the Bermuda Festival, screwed up yet again and mistakenly sent the film to Bahrain. Offered in its place was the award-winning Mexican comedy ‘Duck Season’, which I found so tedious that I got up midway through the film to leave.

Unfortunately for me, I chose the wrong side of the theatre to exit, and soon found myself in a locked stairwell. I heard voices through the keyhole on the second floor and knocked politely once, then louder a second time. When the door finally opened, I found myself in the middle of a packed meeting hall where I was clearly not welcome. I bowed my head in apology and quickly skulked to the door on the opposite wall.

Outside the building I queried two young gentlemen as to what was transpiring upstairs. With their answer I finally understood the cold stares: “Narcotics Anonymous.”

Film quote of the day:

“What would you say has been the main motivation in your music?”

(ten second pause)

“Satan.”

… Lead singer of the Norwegian death-metal band “Gorgoroth” in ‘Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey’.

A non-event, I’m afraid. DHL courier failed to deliver the print of ‘The Proposition’ in time for its 6:30pm screening, so the audience got their money back. And by the time I was ready to roll back into town for ‘Three Extremes’, the midnight trio of Asian horror shorts, there was a raging storm outside.

Too bad—I was really looking forward to it!

It’s lonely at the top.

I guess that’s the point of ‘The Sun’, a dramatization of the Japanese Emperor’s surrender to American forces at the end of World War II. Nary a word is spoken for the first few minutes of the film, as the Emperor’s breakfast is silently presented to him. When the Emperor finally does speak he doesn’t make any sense.

After wandering aimlessly around his bunker for what seems like hours, the Americans finally show up—thank god! But hearing the first words of this movie in English made me realize that the acting was horrendous, and made me suspicious of the subtitled Japanese actors too. The guy who plays the Emperor did a convincing impression, but there was nothing much in the script for him to really do.

Apologies to the makers of ‘The Sun’, but in the cinematic battle of the last days of defeated Axis overlords, ‘Der Untergang’ wins hands-down.

A quick scooter-ride brought me to the other end of town for ‘We Feed the World’. The perfect companion to last night’s ‘China Blue’, ‘We Feed the World’ documents the industrialization of the European Union’s food industry, at the expense of starving nations. Anyone who pooh-poohs day-old bread will surely reconsider when they see the image of a dump-truck full of it being unloaded in a warehouse for destruction. This comes right after an interview with a wheat farmer, who tells us that his crops are so undervalued that he’s had to increase his acreage by six times to maintain the same standard of living for his family that his father did. So if you need one less reason to eat Wonder Bread now you’ve got it!

Film quote of the day:

“Anyone on this planet who dies of starvation is murdered. It’s as simple as that”

… An expert opinion in ‘We Feed the World’.

Most convincing reason to eat Halaal meat:

Seeing baby chicks dumped onto an assembly line in the same film.

Back home people take weeks at a time off work to attend the Toronto International Film Festival. But here in Bermuda it’s mostly blue-hairs at the weekday matinees. To paint the picture a little better for you, a young lady sat behind me with her elderly mother, who spent about five minutes talking about why they should sit in the aisle seats, then another five minutes telling the daughter to get a drink at the concession stand so she could have some change for later, then another five minutes about how they should move a couple of seats over so they wouldn’t have to get up to let people through, and so on…

Thus, it seemed like a cruel joke that they were there with me for the screening of the deliberately-ambiguous Cannes-winning ‘Cache’. If nothing else, the film resurrects the almost lost art of post-movie dissection, as the forums on IMDb.com will attest. It certainly gave the audience something to talk about once the lights came up:

“That’s it? That’s the end?”

“Well, that was different…”

“What was that all about, anyway?”

“I guess you have to be French to understand it…”

Later that evening, regular hard-working folk sold out the 9pm screening of the documentary ‘China Blue’, yet another look at the plight of factory workers in China. A couple of things struck me about the facts presented in the film:

1. Sure these workers, mostly young women, are overworked and underpaid. Yet they still manage to save enough money to send to their families back in the villages, who might otherwise be starving. One has to acknowledge that on a very rudimentary level these otherwise dirt-poor farm-girls are at least participating in the global economy. And surely documentaries like ‘China Blue’ will some day put enough pressure on the system to finally improve working conditions at these places.

2. We privileged folks in the Western World have to accept that we’re ultimately responsible for the exploitation of these people… Or in other words, stop buying clothes at Wal-Mart!!!

In the end credits of ‘China Blue’, the filmmakers complain about the constant harassment they got from factory owners while filming. That struck me as odd, as the film provides the most in-depth view of a Chinese factory’s inner workings that I’ve yet seen. It’s definitely worth watching.

Film quote of the day:

“Who must we be making these jeans for? They’re so tall and fat!”

… An incredulous factory worker in ‘China Blue’.

Audience quote:

“I deliberately sat here so I wouldn’t have to get up… I’m disabled!”

… Said to a fellow patron by the old woman behind me, sitting three seats from the aisle in an otherwise empty row.

AKA Black History Month in one night…

The first of my two evening screenings took place at the swanky Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. ‘Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela’ chronicled a life in exile from South Africa, documented in a deeply personal manner by the subject’s adopted son. In a rare nod to the 21st century, the director is keeping a blog of the film’s journey through the festival circuit. It’s accessible through the production company’s website:

http://www.chimpanzeeproductions.com/

The film was great, but what really stuck in my mind was the persistent murmurs from the audience during the Q&A afterwards. It wasn’t heckling by any means, more like a congregation participating in a sermon. The strong communal bond between native Bermudians is something this pasty-white agnostic isn’t used to… If I wasn’t leaving on a Sunday I might have mustered up the courage attend my brother’s local Church.

It was no surprise that ‘Walking on a Sea of Glass’ sold out— locally-produced films usually do. But why festival organizers chose to screen it at the smallest venue in town is beyond me. It ended up working in my favour, though; candy and popcorn flowed freely from seat-mates on either side of me.

I had thought that ‘Walking on a Sea of Glass’ was going to be about the struggle to end segregation in Bermuda in the 1950s, but Kingsley Tweed, the subject of the film, pretty much solved that in the first half-hour of the film. The remaining screen time showed another life lived in exile, as Tweed was urged to flee his island home for his own safety. The outspoken activist was finally convinced to return only a few years ago, to be reunited with surviving friends and the daughters he never knew.

Though shot on video, the quality of the production was quite impressive, except for an odd sound mix which made Mr. Tweed seem larger than larger than life.

Film quote of the day:

“Young people have to realize that there is no today without yesterday, and there’s no tomorrow without today.”

…. One of the disciples in ‘Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela’.

Most magnanimous gesture of the festival thus far:

Director Errol Williams waving off the Q&A after ‘Walking on a Sea of Glass’, saying it was too late and thanking the audience for coming.