Bergen International Film Festival

Last week I spent most of my free time (and I have a lot of it here) between volunteering for the Bergen International Film Festival and seeing films.  I saw 18 in six days.

The worst film I saw was easily Better Things.  Truly an awful film.  The whole film is full of cliched stories of morose people moping around.  The boyfriend of the girl who OD'd.  The ex-boyfriend of the girl who's seeing someone else.  The fat granddaughter who is too depressed to go outside.  The elderly couple separated by some unspoken of  incident.  Everyone in the film speaks softly and excruciatingly slowly, as if to underscore to the viewer that this Important, Serious.  There isn't a light moment in the film and, about halfway through the film, I found I'd lost all sympathy for all of the characters and their endless drone.  I think others in the audience agreed; at least five people left the theater somewhere around the midpoint.  By the end, I was wishing for the suicidal characters to just do themselves in already.

Although Entre les murs got rave reviews, I had a hard time seeing what the fuss over yet another movie about a white middle class teacher and his classroom of minority students was all about.  Granted, the film was in French with Norwegian subtitles, so I'm sure I missed some of its subtler points.  And there was some great, very natural dialogue and really honest performances by all the actors, none of whom were professional actors.  The filmmakers also do a great job of drawing the audience into the tension that every new middle school teacher must feel as he struggles to keep his class from falling into the chaos.  They also don't sugarcoat anything in the film.  The teacher is not a hero, he's simply getting by.  But still, I've seen this that premise at least once before (Half Nelson) and the broader idea of the relationship between minority students and white teachers more than a few time before (Finding Forrester, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds...).

The best film I saw was also the last one I saw: The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Just Around the Corner.

When twenty-something Sashko (played by a doe-eyed Carlo Ljubek) awakes in a hospital bed in Germany, he has no memory of the car crash that has killed his parents and left him with amnesia, or of the grandfather hovering over his bed.  The grandfather (the almost impossibly charismatic Miki Manojlovic) decides that the only thing that can help Sashko regain his memory is a trip on a tandem bicycle back to their native Bulgaria.  That, and some backgammon.  As the pair bikes through the stunning countryside of Sashko’s childhood and plays backgammon on breaks, this delightful little film quietly raises questions about what identity without memory means and asserts that how we play the game is as every bit as important as the dice we roll, even when it seems like all is lost.

At the closing gala of the 2008 Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF) on Tuesday, the jury gave Stefan Komandrev’s “The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Just Around the Corner” the festival’s top prize, the Cinema Extraordinaire award.

Ballast--An unsentimental look at a broken Southern family's efforts to rebuild itself.

Chronic Town--A cab driver gets dumped by his girlfriend in a bleak town in Alaska and stumbles through a suicide attempt and copious amounts of drugs and alcohol as he tries to move on.

Citizen Havel--An intimate portrait of Vaclav Havel, the thoughtful and funny man who ruled the Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic.  Maybe my favorite documentary of the festival.

Downloading Nancy--Not as bad as I expected a film about masochists to be, but still not one of the best films I saw.

Encounters at the End of the World--Herzog's documentary introduces us to a wide variety of characters, who have ended up living in Antarctica.  Herzog often seems to be poking fun at his subjects and doesn't seem to respect them enough to present them as much more than cariactures.  Still, there are a handful of moments that make the movie worth watching, like the scene in which everyone lies down on the sea ice to listen to the otherworldly chirps of the seals below.

Fuel--The part of the movie that was made before the controversy over biofuels in 2007 flows smoothly.  The part after has a tacked-on, aimless feel that has some good material, but could certainly benefit from much tighter editing.  Overall, though, the film gives some great info on biodiesel, its potential to help the world fight climate change and wean ourselves from fossil fuels.

Gonzo--The filmmaking wasn't anything extraordinary, with its fairly standard format of interviews of friends and family mixed with clips and photos of Thompson and a "best of the 1970s" soundtrack, but Thompson's compelling personality overshadows the problems with the filmmaking.

Made in America--This documentary traces the birth of gangs in Los Angeles, from its roots in the squashing of organizations like the Black Panthers in the 1960s to the role the Crips and Bloods play in fulfilling gang members need for community and protection because they have been stripped of all defenses.

Planet B-Boy:  This film about breakdancing culture and the world's premier breakdancing competition features some incredible physical feats and a couple of interesting characters, but for the most part, it's hard to connect with most of the dancers.

The Price of Sugar:  A horrifying look at the Dominican sugar cane plantations that thrive on Haitian slave labor and the daily Herculean battles of a priest trying to improve the living conditions for the workers.

S&M:  An interesting and often funny argument for bringing attention to the rampant, but usually unintentional height discrimination faced by short males all over the world.  As easy as it is to think we don't discriminate, it's even easier to see ourselves in the people in the film who do.

Son of Rambow:  The film falls into the trap of a sugary ending but fortunately the movie's other charms, like the flamboyant French teenager and the funny moments filmed by the two protagonists, are enough to keep Son of Rambow from being totally ruined by its predictable resolution.

Standard Operating Procedure:  Errol Morris's documentary shows the torture at Guantanamo Bay through the eyes of the American soldiers, including Lynndie England, who worked there.  Morris's style of documentary is the direct opposite of Michael Moore's.  Where Moore uses loosely connected facts and contrived scenarios to make vehement arguments, Morris takes a seemingly detached perspective in which he simply observing the characters in SOP.  Where Moore is in nearly every frame of his movies, we simply never see Morris and often don't even hear the questions he asks in his interviews, only the responses.  As SOP progresses, though, we see that, by letting people speak for themselves, Morris has meticulously built up an unshakeable argument that the horrifying behavior at Gitmo was not just the work of a demented few, but was in fact pervasive and encouraged through the entire military operation at the prison and beyond.

The US vs. John Lennon--I was surprised by how impersonal this film about Lennon felt.  Mostly put together from footage of meetings Lennon staged with the press, like his famous "bed-in" with Yoko Ono in Amsterdam, and interviews with friends, supporters, and Ono, we get a clear picture of Lennon's political ideas and battles, but little idea about much going on in his personal life.  And for a film about his political battles with the US (or rather the bizarre political war the US quietly waged against Lennon), that's fine.

Yodok Stories-- a film about a musical about concentration camps in North Korea, and odd though it sounds, Yodok Stories was really good.  Hopefully, it will be able to shed light on atrocities that are occurring right now in North Korea, but that very few people either know about or acknowledge.  The film earned one of the prizes for best documentary.

Green hair

Last year for Christmas, my mom got me 2007 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. In it is a stunning piece by Susan Casey about our plastic ocean.  She writes, "A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse."  The online version of the piece has some photos of the heartbreaking effects plastics are having on animals--a turtle whose shell has been grossly deformed by the constraints of a plastic band, a dead seabird with a stomach full of plastic.  Casey writes that every year, each of us throws away about 185 pounds of plastic and that in 2005 the US alone produced about 120 billion pounds of plastic.  Unfortunately, both numbers are increasing and only a small percent of the plastic created gets recycled (partly because a lot of plastic doesn't recycle well or at all and partly because a lot of it just gets tossed and ends up elsewhere, like the ocean).

After I read that article, I vowed to get serious about using less plastic.  Besides the obvious ways like bringing my insulated mug with me everywhere (doubles as a water bottle and coffee cup, not to mention a replacement for plastic cups at events, on planes, etc.), switching to reusable shopping bags, skipping those clear plastic bags for produce, and cutting back on bottled soft drinks, I'm also trying out a shampoo bar as a way to reduce the number of shampoo bottles I go through.

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes..  From Intolerable Beauty:  Portraits of American Mass Consumption by photographic artist Chris Jordan.

Right now I'm using a bar by Burt's Bees that I like, though I will likely switch to a brand that is not owned by Clorox for my next bar.  And to a product that fares better on Environmental Working Group's (EWG) Skin Deep:  Cosmetic Safety Database.  I just discovered Skin Deep and really like it because it also includes whether the product was tested on animals.  (Now, if only they'd include some information on the environmental impacts of the product, like the carbon created, and the sustainability of the manufacturing processes, I'd love the site... doesn't seem like too much to ask of an organization called Environmental Working Group.) Anyway, EWG rates the shampoo bar 4 out of 10, or moderately hazardous, because it contains ingredients linked to cancer, reproductive problems, allergies, and other health problems.  I did a quick search of other shampoo bars on the market and there are oodles and oodles that EWG rates as posing a low threat to human health, including all-purpose bars that can be used as soap and shampoo.  The bar came in a small cardboard box, but I've seen shampoo bar with just a little bit of plastic wrap or a band of cardboard, so I think it's possible to do better on that front, too.  I think it's also possible to eschew packaging altogether at places like Lush that just slice the bar off a larger bar (though it's probably not a bad idea to bring a reusable soap container or an old bag to keep the bar from rubbing off on other things on the trip home).

 

It was a little weird getting used to a shampoo bar at first, mainly because it leaves my hair feeling a little bit waxy when I rinse (for that reason, I still use regular shampoo every other washing).  I have thick, curly hair and find the bar leaves my hair a bit more manageable and maybe a little less dry (the jury's still out).  Other than that, shampoo in a bar is basically the same as shampoo in a bottle--it lathers the same and my hair feels the same when it's dry.  At a little less than $5, it's also cheaper by a couple of bucks than Burt's bottled shampoos and I would imagine other shampoo bars are also cheaper than the bottled equivalent.  I've had the bar for about a month and still have most of the bar left, so I think it will last as long, if not longer, than a bottle of shampoo.  Additional perks:  it's lighter to pack, can be carried on a plane (and won't explode all over everything as my shampoo always seems to do), takes less energy to ship without all that water, and takes up less room in the shower.

Because I'm a firm believer that buying more stuff isn't the answer to most environmental problems (though buying different stuff can help), I'm also going to cut back on how much I wash my hair in general.  Last year I tried the Curly Girl method, which calls for skipping shampoo and just washing with conditioner to keep from overdrying curly hair.  They also suggest skipping the blow dryer for the same reason (not a problem for me... I've never had the patience to dry my hair), but still a good idea for saving some time and electricity.  When I tried skipping shampoo, my curls looked better, but my scalp felt itchy, so I ended up shampooing after about four days.  They say it takes about two weeks for hair to really adjust, though, so I may try it again.  People lived for most of human history without shampoo and most people in the world today wash their hair far less than once a day with no problems (and probably healthier hair), so I think the main hurdle will be getting over the feeling that I need to wash my hair every day with shampoo.  And if I can't, I'll still have my shampoo bar to fall back on.

Next thing to try:  conditioner bars.

Compass cows and mole rat magnets

I happened to come across two articles yesterday saying that a number of animals seem to have some sort of built-in compass.  The Economist article "Magnetism and behavior:  animal attraction" talks about how scientists used Google Earth to look at photos of grazing animals around the world.  They found that to minimize wind chill and maximize the sun's heat, cows in cold weather stand pointing directly north-south.  Termites also build their mounds north-south to maximize heat from the sun, according to a piece in The Atlantic.  Mole rats (so cute!) apparently use magnetism to find their way around their elaborate burrows, even though they're blind.  Scientists think that the little bits of magnetite in the corneas of mole rats may be responsible for their remarkable sense of direction.

Animals are pretty amazing.

The last person I'd want to run the country

Disgusting.

All you ever wanted to know about tomato farming, and then some

Last Friday I visited a tomato farm an hour or so outside LA. The farm, which is run by an alum from my
business school, is actually more of a seed business with produce as a byproduct.

It was interesting to learn about the seed business--it's much more complex than I'd imagined. The company hires a lab to cross-pollinate different varieties of tomatoes. The lab then sends thousands of varieties of seeds to the farm. The farm grows some of the seeds in order to evaluate the quality of the tomatoes and also gets other local growers to test the seeds. After they've tested the tomatoes and gotten feedback from growers, they select a few varieties of tomatoes, usually by how perfectly round and unblemished they are (so they'll either sell at the grocery store or fit neatly in the machines of tomato sauce makers) and by how firm they are (so they can withstand being stacked in boxes). No consideration is given to the taste, texture, or nutritional content of the tomatoes.

After they select a few varieties, they send the "recipe" for creating the tomato seeds to China for workers there to mass produce. Basically, they tell them which tomato plants to cross-pollinate and then have them extract the seeds of the offspring. I asked what happens to the tomatoes that the seeds come from; the farmer had no idea but suspected they just get tossed. After the workers extract the seeds, they send them back to the farm in California. The farm then distributes them for over $700 a bag. They don't patent the seeds because the seeds are hybrids and are sterile and of lower quality after several generations. So, while that's a great natural protection to the business's "intellectual property" (which I don't think organisms should ever be), it makes tomato growers totally dependent on the seed producers.

On another note, the farm also grows heirloom tomatoes, which varieties of tomatoes that have been grown for at least 40 or 50 generations. They are big, beautiful, and completely irregular in shape and color. Some looked like gnarled yellow pumpkins, others were deep red with dark green streaks and still others were almost purple. We got to taste five or six varieties of the heirloom tomatoes (and take home, lucky us!), along with conventional grocery store tomatoes. The heirlooms had incredible flavor, colors, and texture, while the grocery stores tomatoes tasted a little bit like mushy styrofoam. Anyway, the farm sell its heirloom tomatoes at farmers markets within a 60-mile radius. The farmer talked a little bit about how many of the other stands at farmers markets just buy produce wholesale and then resell it. For tomatoes, he said one way to tell is to pick it up and feel the tomato. If it feels smooth like grocery store tomatoes do, it may have been waxed, which is a sign that's it was purchased from a wholesaler. If it feels a tiny bit rough, almost like it has a little bit of dust on it, then it's less likely to be from a wholesaler. You can also talk to the grower about his practices and get to know growers at farmers markets. If you're interested, they should be willing to let you visit the farm to see how the food is grown.

We also got to walk through the hothouses they grow hydroponic tomatoes, which I imagined growing out of some sort of aquarium. In reality, they way they are grown isn't all that different from tomatoes grown in soil. Instead of soil, the farmers use shredded coconut husks to grow the tomatoes in. They use the shredded coconut material because it is sterile and has no inherent nutrients. In each greenhouse there are bags of the shredded coconut husks, arranged in long, neat rows along with lengths of hose. The bags have small slits for the tomato plants to grow out of and a tiny hose inserted into each slit feeds the tomato plant a mixture of water and nutrients every half hour. Seems like a lot of work to replicate the qualities of soil when it's available for free just under the bags of coconut, but I guess if the goal is to maximize the yield, then maybe it makes sense. Growing tomatoes hydroponically also allows for more efficient water use, as the water that seeps out of the bags of coconut material is captured and recycled.

WaPo reports US is behind the times with animal testing

From an article on how outdated the US's use of animal testing has become, "The reason we use animal tests is because we have a comfort level with the process . . . not because it is the correct process, not because it gives us any real new information we need to make decisions," said Melvin E. Andersen, director of the division of computational systems biology at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences near Raleigh, N.C. "Animal tests are no longer the gold standard," he said. "It is a marvelously new world."

Reason number 8,746 to go veggie

Disgusting.

Robots for rats

The NIH and EPA are teaming up to use more robots in toxicity tests and fewer lab animals.

This new, trans-agency collaboration is expected to generate data more relevant to humans; expand the number of chemicals that are tested; and reduce the time, money and number of animals involved in testing, officials of both agencies said.

Better, faster research, less cruelty, and for less money. Everyone wins.

The way nature never intended

Leave it to humans to take magnificent animal like a wolf and turn it into a marshmallow topiary of a dog, like the poodles on the left, shown last night at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And those are the best of the breed!

Hideousness isn't the only calamity that comes with inbreeding dogs generation after generation. It's no secret that "purebred" dogs generally suffer from a host of health problems.

Purebred dogs at even the best of breeders live pretty depressing lives. I dogsat a number of times for a coworker, who was also a breeder of terriers. My coworker really loved her dogs and had a reputation for being one of the best breeders. She and her husband had between 12 and 16 dogs at any given time, depending on whether there were puppies in the house. Only one dog was allowed out of her cage all the time. The rest got fed twice a day and walked a few times a day. They spent the remaining 23.5 hours of every day in small wire cages stacked on top of each other in the sun room.

When I dogsat, I tried to take the dogs on long walks and have a couple of dogs out in the fenced yard at a time. Because the dogs were not neutered and didn't all get along, I could only have a couple of them out of their cages at a time, which meant that even if I had several dogs out of their cages for most of the day and switched them every hour or so, the dogs still spent all but a couple of hours a day trapped in their cages. The dogs would thrash and cry every single time I had to put them back into their cages. Heartbreaking. And those are likely the best of circumstances for breeders' dogs. (I won't even get started on their far worse cousins, puppy mills).

On top of that, the more purebred dogs there are, the less likely it is that animals in shelters will be adopted and the more likely it is that shelter animals will either be put down or live out their lives in shelters. According to PETA, about shelters house about six to eight million unwanted cats and dogs and about half of those animals are put to sleep each year.

What can we do to reduce dog and cat populations so that no animals need to live in shelters or be euthanized?

First, pledge to stop buying pets from pet stores and breeders. Should be the easiest decision you've ever made, but if you're having doubts, just take another look at those fugpoodles above and then check out the adorable dogs on petfinder.com).

Second, spay or neuter your pets. Lots of low-cost options are available for those on a tight budget. Just think of all the money you'll save on diapers for your female dog when she no longer goes into heat.

Third, lobby for or support legislation calling for mandatory sterilization of pet populations, like the bill the City of Los Angeles just passed.

Fourth, spread the word.

Yeah, NYT!

One of the best articles I've seen recently on the argument for going veggie ran in yesterday's New York Times.

Sundance Film Festival

On Sunday I flew back to LA from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. Didn't see much for celebrities (no, the bald guy Charlotte marries in Sex and the City, Danny Baldwin, and the random guy from Neil Young's band do not count), but I saw some fantastic films, sat in on some really great panels, took in a set by Brett Dennen at the Music Cafe, and basked in the beauty of Park City's snowy, snowy mountains. Most of the celebrities come earlier in the week, so things were quiet, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that people seemed to be more focused on making great film and on making social change through film than on the glitz and glamour Hollywood has lent the event in recent years.

First, the films.

Flow: For Love of Water
The pathos was a bit over the top (they compared the future consequences of the water shortage in some parts of the world to the meteors that caused mass extinctions), which is too bad because I think it undermined the credibility of what was otherwise really good content on the consequences of privatizing water.

Red
Malicious teens shoot dog. Owner goes on insane rampage seeking vengeance, which (spoiler alert) ends with a bloodbath (at least for a Sundance Film). Don't get me wrong, I love dogs and empathize with the owner's anger, but no one in their right mind would go as far as he did. Overall the film was trite, predictable, and low on insight and character development. Too bad the best thing about the film, the cute dog, is only on screen for the first few minutes.

Sugar
The movie is by the creators of Half Nelson and is about how we crank ballplayers from Latin America through the baseball machine like so many cogs on a conveyer belt and toss them out when we're done with them. Unfortunately, I think that's exactly what will happen to the Dominican actors in the film. Still, the lush visuals and subtle acting make for a good movie.

Half-Life
What unwinds as a weird and unsettling look at the life of a dysfunctional California family is made beautiful and lovely by the animated (literally) imaginations of the main characters and touching depictions of each character's vulnerability.

I Always Wanted to be a Gangster
A French comedy, oddly enough, and the only lighthearted movie I saw. Absolutely gorgeous imagery. Funny, original, and sweet-but-not-too-sweet. Probably my favorite movie of the festival.


Now, for the panels.

That Must Be Told: Todays Human Rights Documentary Movement
The panelists started by showing clips of their films (more info below) and then moved to a discussion of whether it is enough to simply make a documentary film and raise awareness or whether one must also offer concrete ways for viewers to take action. That segued to a discussion on the trend of working with nonprofits that use documentary film in their campaigns, and the benefits that can come with collaboration, like exposure, funding, and offering audiences a way to take action. Amnesty International has a campaign related to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black former Panther and journalist, and his 25 years on death row, and so they were willing to collaborate with panelist Livia Giuggioli on her film about his life, In Prison My Whole Life. The film screened at Sundance, but unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see it.

Also on the panel:

*Gillian Caldwell, 1Sky Alliance

*Oren Yakobovich, B'Tselem, collaboration on Shooting Back, a very cool project in which B'Tselem gives cameras to Palestinians living in Israel to film their daily lives. Democracy Now! uses the film on their website.

Paul van Zyl, International Center for Transitional Justice

James Orbinski, the Nobel prize winning doctor for Doctors Without Borders and the Narrator of Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma


The Double Bottom Line: Too Good to be True?

A panel of directors and producers debated whether one of the goals of documentary filmmaking should be to make a profit. Panelist John Schreiber of Participant Productions argued that though every once in awhile a documentary will make a profit, films with critical messages need to be made whether or not they'll generate a profit. He does evaluate whether a film will be able to generate enough revenue to cover its costs, though.

Panelist and moderator Jess Search of the Channel Four Foundation (and formerly of Witness, a You-Tube like site for user-created content related to human rights), echoed Schreiber's sentiments and argued that there's a sweet spot between being socially important/relevant and entertaining that leads to a wildly successful film bu is really difficult for most documentaries to hit and creates unrealistic bars by which to measure the majority of documentaries. Occasionally a film like An Inconvenient Truth will hit that sweet spot, but if documentary filmmakers make only movies that are on hot topics and are always entertaining, lots of important stories will go untold.

Panelist Bristol Baughn, an executive with Reason Pictures and GOOD, disagreed. She talked about how she thinks it is possible for filmmakers to make a profit by telling relevant stories, using compelling narrative and marketing effectively.

The panelists then discussed ways to measure the social value documentary film creates, like number of viewers, number of click-throughs to take action, and measures of actual action taken, and agreed that social value is difficult to measure, but is becoming more measurable with online metrics.

The panelists also talked about how they are changing their distribution strategies in response to new media outlets like YouTube. Schreiber talked about takepart.com, a site that lets people watch documentary films on all different kinds of issues and gives them tools for taking action right on the site. A video on Canada's seal hunting, for example, is posted next to links for contacting Canada's prime minister, information on boycotting seafood, and supporting HSI's ProtectSeals campaign.

Panelist Annie Sundberg, the director of The Devil Came on Horseback, (which looks like a very compelling film on the Darfur crisis, by the way) spoke about how distributing films through non-traditional venues, like screenings at schools and collaboration with nonprofit would could use the film in their campaign, can be as effective as more traditional distribution. She also spoke about using viral marketing tactics like contacting relevant interest groups on sites like MeetUp.com to host screenings for a fee.

All in all, a fantastic few days.