Ten treasures

Noel Vera

Sometimes you don't want what's easily available by the dozens at
your local video chain, or in the nearest multiplex; sometimes you
want something rare, difficult, even impossible to find.

Here are ten excellent-to-great films in alphabetical order that are
either little-known or are not commercially available on video
(sometimes both).

"Akumulator 1" (Accumulator 1, 1994)

A nicely ominous title. The film, the most expensive Czech
production ever at the time, tells the story of Olda, who learns
that he's a human battery, an 'accumulator,' able to draw energy
from nature, wood, art, sex and other people, with only one
Achilles' heel--the television set. Filmmaker Jan Sverak combines
striking visuals with a wildly original, deftly applied sense of
humor; his film is full of images inspired, as he put it, by Tim
Burton and Federico Fellini (nice combination), not to mention
dizzyingly sudden shifts of perspective--at one point, he cuts to a
high-angle shot of Olda looking at a lightbulb, photographed from
inside the bulb looking down; at another Olda hurtles over Prague's
gorgeous cityscape like a concentrated bolt of the film's delirious
high spirits.

(Not released in the US; copies can be ordered from this website:
http://forum.hyperinzerce.cz/tema/9114/. Can't be sure of English
subtitles, though, or of international delivery)

"Bakit Bughaw ang Langit?" (Why is the Sky Blue? 1981)

Mario O'Hara's small-scale drama, about Nora Aunor as a put-upon
young woman forming a bond with Dennis Roldan as a mentally damaged
young man, is O'Hara at his most neo-realist--in my opinion as good
as if not actually better than anything the better-known Lino Brocka
has ever done. The film features finely wrought performances by both
Aunor and Roldan, set against the background of a large apartment
complex. Occasionally, a scandal will bring the apartment dwellers
out in a kind of impromptu "people's trial," where the people
involved air their dirty laundry in public; O'Hara's staging of
these "trials," his quiet condemnation of them, and his precisely
observed portrayal of a teeming community life is just about
peerless.

(No commercial DVD exists; however, VHS copies are floating about,
and if you know a "Noranian" (a diehard fan of Nora Aunor), you just
might be able to score one…)

"Batang West Side" (West Side Avenue, 2001)

Lav Diaz's five-hour film follows two narrative threads: a Filipino
youth's arrival in America and his subsequent shooting, and a
Filipino-American detective's investigation of the youth's death.
Along the way we are given a sweeping yet intimately detailed view
of an entire community, from the poorest working stiff to the
wealthiest housewife, from an elderly grandfather to a group of
young "shabu" (crystal meth) addicts. Diaz asks hard questions about
the Filipino Diaspora and the children that have been born out of
that outward movement of individuals and entire families; the
picture--comprehensive, comic, surreal and tragic--is in my opinion
Diaz's masterpiece (better even than his more ambitious, ten-
hour "Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (2004)), and one of the
best recent Filipino films ever made.

(No DVD or even commercial theatrical run has been done, though
there have been occasional screenings; no word yet of what the
producer plans to do with the film)

"Campanadas a medianoche" (Chimes of Midnight, 1965)

Orson Welles' adaptation of "Henry IV" parts 1 and 2, with scenes
from "Henry V" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" thrown in--sixteen
or more hours of Shakespeare, boiled down into a hundred and twenty
minutes by years of staging and rewriting (Welles had been working
on this material since the late 1930s). The film, marred by poor
sound synchronization, contains what may be Welles' finest
performance, playing Falstaff as a tragicomic figure; includes what
may be the single greatest battle sequence ever filmed (the Battle
of Shrewsbury); is perhaps one of the finest (if not THE finest)
film adaptation of Shakespeare ever; and is considered by a small
but growing number of people (including myself) as one of the
greatest films ever made.

(Not released in the US; a Spanish DVD, however, is available here:
http://www.lfvw.com/chimes_at_midnight.html. The website does not
say so, but the DVD most likely is in PAL format)

"Frost" (1997)

Fred Kelemen's "Frost" moves slowly, for an impossible two hundred
minutes. The story is simple enough to follow, even without
subtitles: a woman (Anna Schmidt) is beaten by her husband; she
leaves him, taking her son with her, and walks through vast wintry
landscapes, ending up in a city where she takes up prostitution to
support herself and her child. Kelemen shows a stubborn, freakish
discipline in drawing out his narrative; at one point the camera
following mother and son pans ahead, taking in the hugely empty
horizon little by little until it comes back to them--only then do
you realize just how much more frozen land they have to walk
through, just how much more emptiness they have to endure. Kelemen
seems determined to record the minutest details of a human soul that
has felt so much pain it's beyond feeling the pain, only an immense,
enveloping numbness.

(The director had fought with the producer, so for years there had
been only one existing print of the director's cut; they have since
reconciled, and a subtitled print is available from the German TV
channel ZDF)

"Killer of Sheep" (1977)

Charles' Burnett's film arguably did for African-Americans in
early '70s Los Angeles what "Mean Streets" did for the Italian
Americans in New York: introduce an ethnic community in memorably
cinematic terms. Beautifully shot in black and white, I prefer
Burnett's debut film to Scorsese's better-known one for at least two
reasons: Burnett seems to have a better understanding of the women
in his films than Scorsese does, and Burnett is able to tell his
story without resorting to the kind of overtly dramatic elements
Scorsese does (gang violence, shootings). Burnett's visual style
isn't flashy, but he does include the odd surreal image: a shot of
clear sky with rooftops at either end, and kids leaping across the
empty stretch; shots of a slaughterhouse, where sheep carcasses hang
like corpses in a concentration camp.

(A DVD release of the film is scheduled for November 2005)

"Le Roi et l'oiseau" (The King and the Bird, 1980)

Paul Grimault and Jacques Prevert--better known for his legendary
collaborations with Marcel Carne (in particular "Les enfants du
paradis" (Children of Paradise, 1945))--collaborated on what was
supposed to be the first-ever full-length French animated film. The
production fell through; a mangled version was released without
permission. Grimault would spend the next thirty years of his life
trying to finish the film, with Prevert helping, until his death in
1977. The result, finished in 1979, is perhaps one of the loveliest
animated films ever made, about a malevolent king (Charles V + 3 = 8
+8 = 16) who chases a shepherdess he loves and a chimney sweep who
loves her up and down and in and out of the vast reaches of his
kingdom. The film is as influential as it is beautiful, having
inspired images in Hayao Miyazaki's "Kariosutoro no shiro" (Castle
of Cagliostro, 1979) and "Tenku no shiro Rapyuta" (Laputa, Castle in
the Sky, 1986) as well as Brad Bird's "Iron Giant" (1999).

(No US release; a French DVD is available here: http://www.objectif-
cinema.com/horschamps/098.php, but without English subtitles. The
mangled version, with the English title "Mr. Wonderbird," is
available online)

"Anju to zushio-maru" (The Orphan Brother, 1961)

Taiji Yabushita's animated adaptation of Ogai Mori's novel "Sansho
Dayu," about a young woman and her brother taken from their parents
and oppressed by a heartlessly powerful government official (the
novel is also the basis of Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film). Yabushita's
images have a distinct Japanese flavor to them--think of Disney
animation as drawn by Hiroshige--and he manages to tell the story in
fairy-tale terms, at one point implying a character's fate through a
magic transformation so sad and enchanting the tragic implications
are clear.

(No US release; a Japanese DVD can be found here:
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=DSTD-2123. No English
subtitles)

"Salo"

Pier Paolo Pasolini's final film, based on the Marquise de
Sade's "120 Days of Sodom," is "final" in many other ways. It's
possibly the final word in shock cinema--highlights of a hundred and
twenty days of sexual perversion, torture, and death, set against a
luscious background designed by Dante Ferretti, photographed in
voluptuous colors by Tonino Delli Colli, and scored to the music of
Fredric Chopin, Carl Orff, and Ennio Morricone. It's an unflinching
examination of final consequences, of what happens when you allow
sexual ennui caused by bourgeoisie oppression to reach unnatural
extremes. And it is perhaps a final, fatal work for Pasolini
himself, who, despite official word on the subject, was possibly
killed for making this film (authorities have only recently re-
opened the case on his murder). But even if he wasn't killed
for "Salo," it's difficult to imagine what else Pasolini can
possibly say; in many ways the picture is Pasolini's final word on
everything.

(The Criterion Collection DVD of this film is out of print, with
authentic Criterion DVDs selling for as high as $600 to $800; no
announcements as of yet of a new edition)

"Tadhana" (1978)

Nonoy Marcelo directed himself and sixty other Filipino artists for
three months to create this, arguably the first Filipino animated
feature ever, based on a multi-volume history of the Philippines
officially written by former president Ferdinand Marcos
(unofficially written by a team of historians). While the effort
hardly sounds impressive (Disney employs hundreds of animators
working for years to produce a feature), it's unheard of in
Philippine cinema, and the results are ingenious and passing
strange, to say the least. Marcelo takes the production's many
limitations--small manpower, limited time, miniscule budget--and
turns them into a distinct style, an idiosyncratic interpretation
and unabashed satire of official Philippine history. A real head
trip.

(As far as I know and as of this time of writing, there is only one
VHS copy of the film in all of existence, taped off the original TV
broadcast)

(First published in High Life Magazine, August 2005)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)