Cinema Arts Festival Houston 2009

Frederick Wiseman, the cinema verite director renowned for his penetrating explorations of social and cultural institutions, turns his gaze towards the workings of one of the world’s great ballet companies, the Paris Opera Ballet. The film follows the rehearsals and performances of seven ballets: Genus by Wayne McGregor, Le Songe de Medée by Angelin Preljocaj, La Maison de Bernarda by Mats Ek, Paquita by Pierre Lacotte, Casse Noisette by Rudolph Noureev, Orphée and Eurydice by Pina Bausch, and Romeo and Juliette by Sasha Waltz. Wiseman, as he did for classic works such as High School, Hospital , and Public Housing , spent weeks embedded with the ballet company. He observed all aspects of the organization, from the administrative offices and their fundraising strategies to the rehearsal studios and costume rooms. His investigations reveal the coordinated and collaborative work of choreographers, ballet masters, dancers, musicians, and costume, set, and lighting designers. As usual, his complex, masterful editing avoids narration or titles, and flows without a simple narrative arc. Viewers are given a great deal of room to explore and inerpret and make their own connections and meanings. The film was warmly received at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and Variety took special note of the fine work by Wiseman’s longtime cinematographer: “Unfussily shot in long takes and mostly from a distance by d.p. John Davey so as to allow auds to see the perfs to their best advantage (alas, if only more helmers of modern film musicals would take note), the dance footage is an absolute treat for balletomanes.” After this festival screening, the film will return for a theatrical run in Houston in mid-December.

Based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel of the same name, The Lost World revels in adventure-flick thrills but is equally effective as a cinematic document of our fascination with our own prehistory. Featuring amazing stop-motion sequences by animation pioneer Willis O’Brien, who later animated King Kong , and enlivened by outlandish costumes and sets, this dyno-dino epic was a smash hit upon its release in the mid-Roaring Twenties. An explorer’s journal points to the existence of dinosaurs in a far-flung locale, so reporter Edward Malone makes a deal with the robust Professor Challenger and joins a pseudoscientific expedition to find the mythical monsters. Vicious battles with a menagerie of real and imagined creatures ensue. If only Malone and his fellow explorers had stopped to consider the grave consequences before hauling a mad-as-hell Apatosaurus back to their ultramodern metropolis. While the film exemplifies groundbreaking cinematic techniques and razzle-dazzle storytelling, it also serves as a reminder of (hopefully) obsolete American attitudes toward the big, bad world at large. Amid its now dissonant charms are anachronistic cultural stereotypes regarding science, marriage, and race (complete with a white actor in blackface). Dengue Fever’s score will playfully and lovingly evoke worlds both known and unknown and elevate the The Lost World’s offbeat humor and singular beauty. (Notes by Sean Uyehara, San Francisco Film Festival). Dengue Fever Dengue Fever’s repertoire isn’t simply Cambodian music or a Cambodian/American hybrid. Bollywood glitz, psychedelic rock, spaghetti Western twang, Klezmer, ska, funk, and Ethiopian jazz all contribute to the band’s unique sound. Singer Ch’hom Nimol’s powerful singing voice, in Khmer and more recently also English, is a luminous vibrato that adds exotic ornamentations to her vocal lines and complements the band’s driving sound.