FUTURE’S BRIGHT FOR HIEROGLYPHIC BEING >>>
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This handsomely mounted doc makes exceptional use of translated lyrics— something often overlooked in musical tales. International Village, October 1 (9:30 p.m.); Playhouse, October 5 (9 p.m.); SFU, October 9 (2:15 p.m.) > KE
CLAIRE’S CAMERA (South Korea/ France) A curious cinematic confection. Seoul film salesperson Manhee (Kim Minhee, The Handmaiden) is cast adrift at the Cannes Film Festival when she’s fired by her boss. After she meets snap-happy, quirky Claire (Isabelle Huppert, Elle), who holds magical beliefs about her camera, the two wind their way around town as Manhee’s boss and a South Korean director discuss Manhee’s dismissal. The film is deceptively simple and seemingly naive at first, until layers of relationships are unveiled and there’s amusement in the metahumour to enjoy. Not without flaws, but an otherwise light delight designed for festivalgoers. International Village, September 29 (7 p.m.) and October 1 (1:45 p.m.) > CRAIG TAKEUCHI
DISAPPEARANCE ( Netherlands/ Norway) With a pragmatic aesthetic informed by European minimalism, Boudewijn Koole develops a deeply nuanced examination of intricate familial bonds by employing artful elliptical jumps, and an emphasis on lyrical and aural details. A journalist, Louise, returns to her wintry Norwegian hometown for the birthday of Bengt, her teenage experimental-musician half-brother. There, she faces intensely rooted tensions with her aloof mother, Roos. But what Louise has to announce will have a life-shifting impact upon all of them. Admirable cinematic architecture. Rio, September 30 (8:45 p.m.); Playhouse, October 7 (noon) > CT
THE DIVINE ORDER (Switzerland) Voting rights for women seem like such a done deal that we don’t spend much thought on some of the latter-day entrants to the modern age. But seriously, Switzerland: 1971? Germany’s Marie Leuenberger is terrific as Nora, a smalltown hausfrau who knows just enough to know she wants more. Looking after her decent husband and two nice boys is okay, but the presence of her brutish father-in-law is key to recognizing a system—backed by old men of politics, law, and clergy—that doesn’t just lock women out of decision-making, it makes them subjugated people. Like much else in this sometimes overly ingratiating movie, Nora’s awakening arrives a bit too easily. But writerdirector Petra Volpe comes through with an empathetically entertaining tale that reminds us how far we haven’t come, baby. International Village, September 29 (4:30 p.m.); Centre, October 2 (6:30 p.m.) > KE
THE DRAGON DEFENSE (Colombia) Don’t miss this deceptively low-key character study of a nebbish middleaged man who has traded his life as a married almost-chess-champion for just getting by tutoring young math and chess savants. (The title refers to one variation in the famous Sicilian Defence.) Played by Gonzalo de Sagarminaga, better known as a composer, this near-monastic sad sack trades Diner- like barbs with his similarly stranded late-middle-aged buddies, while passively yearning for just a little more glory. First-time filmmaker Natalia Santa comes from a background in photography, and she starts with beautifully composed images that raise provocative questions within the simple spaces where most people pass their lives. Enough of these visual queries are answered by actions to keep the story moving forward with more precision than its lackadaisical hero might suggest. A quiet gem from an unusually talented young director—one with more great moves to come. SFU, October 7 (6:30 p.m.); International Village, October 9 (11 a.m.) > KE
THE FOOLISH BIRD (China) With an impassive eye and a spare touch, filmmakers Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka depict the desolate life of 16-year-old Lynn, a frowzy high-school student living in a rundown rural town in China with her grandparents while her migrant-worker mother is away. With a murderous rapist on the loose in the background, things go awry when Lynn and her classmate embark upon an ill-conceived plan to steal and sell her classmates’ confiscated cellphones. Featuring natural performances and authentic flow, this wellconstructed feel-bad film reads like a quietly devastating documentary that illustrates how a young life is stifled by inescapable sexism, neglect, and economic hardship. International Village, October 7 (6:15 p.m.); Cinematheque, October 10 (9 p.m.) > CT
FOREST MOVIE (Canada) Matthew Taylor Blais’s 66-minute feature is simultaneously the most extreme and the most placid entry in this year’s FUTURE//PRESENT program. A young woman (the almost-not-there Ana Escorse) dreams of a forest, visits a forest, then falls asleep inside the forest (namely, Pacific Spirit Regional Park). There you have it: a wordless and subtly lysergic document that can be used either to quiet the mind or to project your own adventure. Cinematheque, September 30 (6:45 p.m.); International Village, October 9 (1 p.m.) > AM
FRANK SERPICO (USA) The man who testified about the extensive corruption in his own police department and took a bullet in the face for his troubles opens up in this fascinating, frequently frustrating doc. A straight arrow with a bohemian soul (and hair) who retired to his Greenwich Village apartment after every shift, Serpico was predictably never trusted by his colleagues, while his pedantry over liberties taken in the classic 1973 “biopic” starring Al Pacino (the film is quoted often here) made director Sidney Lumet want to shoot him too. This portrait is as garrulous as the man himself—appropriately, given his uncategorizable mix of hippie insouciance and obstinate New York cop-itude, but it also means that a reunion with an old partner who left him to bleed to death takes a lot of time to go nowhere. SFU, October 6 (9 p.m.); International Village, October 8 (11 a.m.); Cinematheque, October 13 (6:30 p.m.) > AM
HOLLOW IN THE LAND (Canada) Rising star Jared Abrahamson (three films at VIFF this year) and Glee’s Dianna Agron are your best reasons to catch this thriller, even if his troubled misfit disappears from the movie inside 15 minutes. As his sister, Agron sets out to prove that her fugitive little bro didn’t murder his girlfriend’s monster of a father, while markedly unsympathetic local cops do everything to obstruct her—or some of them do, anyway. The film’s depiction of small-town B.C. feels more considerate and lived-in than usual (Castlegar plays itself), while director Scooter Corkle proves with his debut feature that he can bring some movement and a few other ancillary charms to a thing as basically dispiriting as a Telefilm-funded action whodunit. Rio, October 1 (6:15 p.m.); International Village, October 9 (11:30 a.m.) > AM
HOLY AIR (Israel) A minority within a minority inside Israel, Arab Christians don’t get much screen time. But then again, neither do couples as funny and sexy as the Nazareth twosome seen in this surprisingly sweet-tempered and colourfully shot (and quite short) comedy of sometimes serious errors, which comments on the commercial uses of religion. Writer-director Shady Srour plays the husband, not quite ready for his media-savvy wife (Laëtitia Eïdo) to have their first baby. First, he wants to make some dough through one of his many get-rich-quick schemes, and the latest is to literally bottle air from atop a mountain where Jesus supposedly walked. You can imagine how well that works out. Playhouse, October 8 (9:30 p.m.); SFU, October 12 (4 p.m.) > KE
A MARRIAGE STORY (Czech Republic) Helena Třeštíková spent more than three decades following one Prague couple through some pretty serious ups and downs. What’s striking is how opaque the otherwise likable Václav and Ivana remain to each other, as well as to us, from their faintly cynical pre-wedding views to the somewhat happy ending. Changes in government are never discussed, but both seem to chafe at lack of advancement; they met in architecture school, but now he sells furniture and she makes small craft items to sell. Through it all, they continue to churn out children, and these make for interesting side stories and possible doc spinoffs. The couple’s golden first-born starts drifting, for example, while the in-house delinquent starts coming through for Mom and Dad when they’re stuck. Recommended. International Village, October 1 (1:15 p.m.) and 7 (9:15 p.m.) > KE
SAMI BLOOD (Sweden/denmark/ Norway) Systemic prejudice against Indigenous people isn’t just a Western Hemisphere thing. Scandinavian countries have engaged in a low-key war against Arctic Aboriginals over the years, with Sweden building its own version of Canada’s residential schools. Mostly set in the 1930s, the darkly shot film follows two Sami sisters as they’re separated from their reindeer-herding mother and sent to a school dedicated to wiping out all traces of their culture. The nearly twohour film is very well acted, especially by Lene Cecilia Sparrok, who plays the older sibling, who assimilates more easily—at her own peril. But it’s repetitive in tone, and filmmaker Amanda Kernell, part Sami herself, started with an unavoidable obstacle: the people who used to be called Laplanders are now so intermarried with the general population that it’s hard, for outside audiences anyway, to spot any defining ethnic differences between characters in a movie drawing on the actors available today. Playhouse, October 10 (6:15 p.m.); International Village, October 12 (11:15 a.m.) > KE
A SKIN SO SOFT (Canada) With his acute attention to everyday detail, Quebec auteur Denis Côté paints an intimate docufictional portrait of Canadian bodybuilders preparing for a competition. Lives sacrificed to achieving grossly exaggerated physical shapes are laid bare, as Côté eschews overt commentary in favour of observation. Peculiarities range from the amusing (one guy weighs his food) to the contradictory (a father eats apart from his family, then bemoans his lack of quality time with his baby). This is not about the whys of their pursuits but, rather, the whats. With their lifestyles held up as evidence, audiences can gather what they can, as the expansive surfaces of these men’s physiques are more revealing than anyone intends them to. International Village, September 29 (8:30 p.m.); Vancity, September 30 (2:30 p.m.) > CT
STILL NIGHT, STILL LIGHT (Canada) Sophie Goyette’s feature debut travels from Montreal to Mexico to an unnamed city in China (and farther on to a delicately metaphysical conclusion) in its effort to map the interior lives of three seemingly disparate characters, principally an inscrutably intense “failed” musician played by Eliane Préfontaine. She’s the magnetic centre of a film whose formal audacity—long takes, innovative sound, zero commercial pandering—puts it on the thrilling edge of new Canadian cinema. Don’t miss. Cinematheque, October 1 (9 p.m.); International Village, October 3 (3:15 p.m.) > AM
SUCK IT UP (Canada) We Were Wolves director Jordan Canning’s second feature survives a couple of overdetermined comic sequences to emerge as an amiable portrait of two friends on a grief bender. Straight-arrow Faye, a teacher in training, seems to be handling the death of her ex-boyfriend, Garrett, a little better than his permanently wasted sister, Ronnie. They go to Invermere, B.C., together, ostensibly to dry Ronnie out with crafting exercises and other twee teacher-in-training bullshit, but she’s already traded boob-flashes for road beers before they hit the worst bar in town. Erin Margurite Carter and Grace Glowicki have a lot of fun with the rhythms of this asymmetrical friendship, which could have left them stranded with cutout characters but instead melts into something a little deeper and more honest—random conversations about pube colour, and so forth—as it goes on. Rio, October 8
What do you think of when you think of the future? Do you think of a thousand years from now? A hundred? Next week?
For Jamal Moss, even next week is too late. For the Chicago house producer, who performs under the name Hieroglyphic Being, the future is now—and it’s ours to make.
Granted, when the Georgia Straight reaches him at his home, he’s more concerned with surviving the present. He’s been in the air as much as on the ground for the past few weeks, and all that time in sealed tubes resulted in a bout with norovirus, which led to pneumonia, and now to whooping cough—as is painfully audible during our chat. This, though, hasn’t diminished his positive outlook.
“I try to not give in too much to the negative, because that’s just like a barrier that you set up for yourself to not excel,” Moss explains. “It’s like a dead weight, and I just never want to look at life from that approach. It’s like no matter what I go through in life that makes me see it as negativity or weird happenstance that may cause me anguish or stress or hurt, I try to block all that out. When I create, that’s when it becomes the opportunity to purge all that other stuff out of me. I’m like, ‘Okay, even if my world is bad, I know I have the power to make the world better for other people through the sounds I create.’ And that process is kind of healing for me.”
Moss’s own life is a case in point. He grew up in a ghetto milieu of drugs and poverty and was homeless for an extended period; much has been made of his time as a gigolo, servicing bored, wealthy women. But once he discovered his aptitude for making music, his upward trajectory was unstoppable.
“When I first started Djing I used to work with a friend, and we would set parties up for people that were disabled—paraplegic, or born with mental disabilities or body disfigurations, stuff like that,” he explains. “We would do parties for them— and it was a kind of beautiful thing because, you know, they got into the music. They didn’t consider it underground or deep or esoteric from the regular world; they were just into it.