Free Radicals
I’m of two minds about this film. There are some really great things about it. It is a documentary about an important subject: experimental cinema, which is a subject that is sadly viewed and championed very little, even by those who believe in pushing cinema to its limits like, say, most of us here at the site. In Free Radicals we get interviews by several filmmakers including Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Peter Kubelka, Robert Breer, and Hans Richter. Unlike Blank City (another film about film in the festival), Free Radicals has a personal warmth and affection that makes it even more exciting and engaging. The film even contains many short experimental films in their entirety.
So what’s the problem? Well, this film is massively self-indulgent. I understand that director Pip Chodorov was making something more personal and less academic, and the film while still a good introduction that inspires this critic to search out these films and auteurs, I’m still amazed at how little this film does as a documentary. To be perfectly honest, it’s not surprising; this seems like a first feature and one that is thrown together like a high quality home movie, which I do not mean as an insult, for that is a feat in and of itself. The problem is that there are very few if any films about this subject that I can find and therefore the filmmaker needs to truly make an expansive and detailed work, not just a slapdash personal film. Personal filmmaking can be compelling, interesting, and dense even in its brevity (see Nate Bell’s review of Film Socialism), but then there’s personal cinema that just works against its intended goal and just seems like a “look at me and what I like and film” show. Despite it all, this film is still immensely watchable. However, if you’re looking for depth or more of an overview of experimental cinema, you won’t find it here.
I Will Follow
There are some films that have a familiar feel, or give the impression that they’re going somewhere you’ve already seen, but then something changes and you realize (in a good way) that you were underestimating the film. That is a good way to describe the feature in the Breakthrough Section of AFI Fest 2010 presented by Audi, I Will Follow. The film tells the story of Maye (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), an artist who for the past couple years has been taking care of her sick Aunt Amanda (Beverly Todd), who used to be a background musician for many years for all sorts of rock-n-roll acts. The film begins after Amanda’s death due to breast cancer and takes place during the moving day where Maye is gathering the rest of Amanda’s things and leaving the home for good. As she goes throughout the day her thoughts via flashback are of Amanda and the profound effect on her.
At first I was taken by the average, predictable, but well-told film about grief, but as the film further unfolds it seems to portray a sense of maturity regarding life, death, art, relationships, and growing up that was refreshing and rare for a first feature. Richardson-Whitfield is excellent, playing Maye authentically without resorting to predictable sentiment that could go along with this kind of material. The film is still not without its issues. Visually, it’s pretty flat and plays like a middle of the road 1 hour drama on TV. Also, while some of the conflict between Maye and estranged cousin, Fran (Michole White) plays like solid tense drama, some of it also unfortunately can tend towards the melodramatic; thankfully the film stays away from those tendencies and those moments are brief. Even still, having come into this film knowing nothing except that it was accepted by submission (not by selection from other festivals), this is a tender, mature, and solid effort that more than deserves some proper distribution.
All pictures provided by AFI Fest 2010 presented by Audi for press purposes.
