nwFilmCenter

Eco-Sicko II

When John Ford's THE GRAPES OF WRATH was included in Eco-Sicko last year, we suggested it could be seen as a premonition of the 21st century. That augury doesn't seem too off these days. Eco Sicko is indeed upon us, in the sense that the dark, poetic, and prophetic movies this year are in sync with the escalating breakdown of our world. Separations between "short-term" and "long-term" planning are now strikes against survival. By practicing neo-contemplation of certain incisive films from the past, we become eligible for salutary understandings of the spiritual, eco, and economic, which, by and large, elude our greater society. As indicated by the surname: "SICKO," the focus of the series is on potential harms affecting our well-being—disrespect to nature, the emotions of war and reform, traumatizing technologies and fantastic, unpredictable human behavior. These complicated expressions cover diversity from the individual to the corporation to the subconscious. The goal is to create an 'environment' for thinking about our environment—a forum producing inspiration.—Jacques Boyreau, Guest Programmer.

Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 7 PM	PARIS, TEXAS DIRECTOR: WIM WENDERS FRANCE/GERMANY It seems logical to seek a hero to fit the mess. Revered for its art house pedigree, Nastassja Kinski's blonde style, and its perfect photography, PARIS, TEXAS offers us even more today in its hidden capacity as an unlikely hero's journey. The mix of the crazy and the simple—personified by the introverted cowboy of Sam Shepard's script—mythically ignites under the sere yet serene guidance of Wenders into a Germanic quest to repair the family Grail. The unshaven, walk-about hero, Travis Henderson (played by Harry Dean Stanton) is a miracle of human recession and hangdog humility. His return to form, as he intuitively dowses for his child, his fatherhood, his woman, his marriage, and a strange, sad destiny—to not be on the road, but to be the road itself—storms with a feeling blindly admitting a truth: solutions that hurt in ways unimagined must be real. Somehow, this defines a tax placed upon us by the environment. Without PARIS, TEXAS, there would be no DEAD MAN and no INTO THE WILD. ( 150 min ) ^ Top
Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 7 PM	VIDEODROME DIRECTOR: DAVID CRONENBERG CANADA VIDEODROME presents a technological animal version of the hero as nightmare. Cronenberg had a goal: To see what happens when people go to extremes to try to alter their total environment to the point where it comes back and starts to alter their physical selves. VIDEODROME's tale of Max Renn, a merchant of edgy erotica, is a tour de sleaze for James Woods. Renn enters the cradle of Videodrome, a pirated love and torture cable channel with an embedded signal that changes Renn's body into the new flesh. This is Cronenberg's BLOW UP, the movie where his many assets max into a nauseatingly cool masterpiece full of ideas about the biology of media bringing forth environments that brew bad thoughts in order to prep us to mutate. As Brian O'Blivion, one of the characters in VIDEODROME, says, The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality and reality is less than television. Andy Warhol called VIDEODROME A CLOCKWORK ORANGE of the 80s. ( 90 min ) ^ Top
Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 4:30 PM	ZABRISKIE POINT DIRECTOR: MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI US Less about a hero, though heroic as a vision of post-apocalyptic needfulness, ZABRISKIE POINT is a heretical switch from the chic of elegy (e.g. 1960s closure-works like EASY RIDER and THE WILD BUNCH) to an inflammation of environmentalism; or, put another way, director Antonioni takes the anxieties of military-industrial society and atom-smashes them in Death Valley, as young lovers spend flesh on the desert. A threshold film that re-finds America as a savage scene—emotional primitives, consumerist gods, unnoticed answers—ZABRISKIE POINT begins by criticizing radical student politics ( revolution requires a revolutionary party, not your bourgeoisie individualism ), but quickly stops seeking fault and starts indulging Antonioni's unequaled groovy existentialism (soundtrack by Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia). It climaxes in a poem of inner space expressed as total explosion, scattering rock 'n' roll self-disgust and a heavy mellow of bummer-power. As art, ZABRISKIE POINT feels amazing. For those who skip Burning Man, here is an environment. ( 112 min ) CO-sponsored by Orlo and Bear Deluxe Magazine. ^ Top
Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 7 PM	ACE IN THE HOLE DIRECTOR: BILLY WILDER US It's important to understand cinema to be intrinsically environmental: from location shooting to production design, the materials of mise-en-scene build worlds. Style-as-environment acts as medium-and-message—as in Wilder's noir ACE IN THE HOLE. Not really a story—though the movie's lead, Kirk Douglas, cast as yellow journalist Chuck Tatum, is nuts about getting a juicy story—ACE IN THE HOLE can best be described as a cultural event. Tatum's good fortune to come upon Herbie Cook trapped in a mine, and to turn his predicament into a media circus (to make Tatum top dog again), makes a too-perfect portrait of ambition and greed nursing human interest. Wilder's gourmet cynicism, a bite inside the heart of several of his great movies (DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE APARTMENT), approaches the intensity of a scientific field theory in ACE IN THE HOLE. The hell-balling of all the characters into a fusion of dark will and unholy camaraderie is not just fine film noir, but also a crackling good exposé of the worst news-manipulation still going on today. ( 112 min ) ^ Top