originally posted at Globe and Mail:
Following the herd has its rewards
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Stephen Cole
A documentary of the last-ever sheep drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, Sweetgrass occasionally feels in need of a shepherd. Or maybe a drama coach. Grizzlies attack the flock at night, dining on lamb. A cowboy chases off after them with a rifle, but filmmakers stay with the herd. Elsewhere, there is a bottleneck in a pass – a noisy, 3,000 sheep pile-up. Once again, the camera remains at the back, uninterested in getting in front of “the story.”
After a while, however, we understand that husband-and-wife filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor – Harvard anthropologists – aren’t really interested in conventional drama. And that there are audience rewards for sticking with the herd and its lonesome cowboys.
For instance, a scene late in the drive, shot from atop a mountain, where we see tiny sheep wandering loose below – a white river curling around rocks – as their aggrieved shepherd, Pat Connolly, talks on a cellphone, bellyaching to his mother about how his knees hurt and he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in forever and the sheep … hell, even his dog, never listens to a thing, he says.
As Pat continues whining, the camera drifts away; we enjoy a God’s eye view of the world. Sky and stone go on forever. The complaining cowboy, the filmmakers seem to be saying, is but a single speck in a glorious universe that is almost completely indifferent to his suffering.
Sweetgrass is a study of man and animal struggling to make their way in the natural world. Cowboys sing to themselves, mumbling the words to Coming Down the Mountain when they do just that. They sing to their horses, dogs and sheep, too. And sheep call out to each other (in a subtle variety of inflections we eventually discover). After a while, we understand the voices, every one of them, repeat variations of the same phrase, “I’m alive, I’m alive.”
Sweetgrass isn’t exactly a cowboy movie, but it does have a star cowboy – John Ahern, a slow moving, chain-smoking (unfiltered rollies) drifter who is so accustomed to being alone that he answers every question with the same startled, “what?” as if he’s been pulled from a prolonged sleep.
Montana sheep ranchers have been driving herds 150-some miles through the Beartooth range for over 100 years. Barbash and Castaing-Taylor attended the last three-month round-ups, from 2001-03, amassing more than 200 hours of documentary footage. The resulting film is an anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre – Red River and Lonesome Dove.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Toronto Star: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Toronto Star:
Sweetgrass: A sheepish look at the modern world
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
Rarely seen on the silver screen outside of the animated adventures of Wallace & Gromit and the occasional horror flick about killer livestock, sheep have long been denied the movie exposure accorded other members of the animal kingdom.
Is it due to some collective case of denial over the source of our favourite wool sweaters? Or is this distaste due to painful memories of childhood traumas that occurred during singalongs of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”? Only our psychotherapists can know for sure.
Hopefully, this abominable practice of barnyard discrimination will come to an end with the arrival of Sweetgrass, an American documentary that puts these creatures front and centre for what may be the first time.
A surprise hit on the festival circuit last year that begins a Toronto run at the Royal this weekend, Sweetgrass depicts a year in the life of several flocks in the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges in Montana.
A team of artists with backgrounds in visual anthropology and environmental studies, Sweetgrass directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash favour lengthy shots of sheep mostly being sheep in a variety of often stunning landscapes.
Their movie has no music, narration or much of anything else that other filmmakers typically use to add drama to nature-oriented documentaries. Instead, the viewer comes to feel like part of the herd, an experience that may send some audience members to sleep but will prove to be curiously compelling for others.
Though the film’s mood is mostly serene, it’s still punctuated by surprising moments of humour and tension. Seldom seen in the opening stretches, the animals’ human guardians are the sheepherders and cowboys who tend the sheep, collect their wool and protect them from predators. The last task proves especially difficult during the film’s final section, which depicts a long and stressful drive across snow-covered ridges and valleys.
The fact that this was to be the last instance of traditional sheepherding practices in the region lends a certain poignance to Sweetgrass. What Castaing-Taylor and Barbash document is the end of a way of life. The harsh economic reality for the people involved becomes evident when we hear a sheepherder vent his frustrations in a cellphone call — his very liberal use of profanities seems even more extreme when juxtaposed with the pastoral beauty of his location.
The presence of a hilariously laconic old cowboy adds echoes of cinema’s most famous representations of the American west. In its own subtle way, Sweetgrass compels viewers to lament the loss of the real thing, and perhaps consider the fraying bonds between humans and the animals that have long provided so much for us.
Of course, the real stars of the show remain oblivious to any of the weightier matters at hand, which is part of Sweetgrass’ charm. If there’s anything we can learn from the creatures here, it’s that any day in which you don’t get stripped of your coat or eaten by a bear is probably a good one.
Sweetgrass: A sheepish look at the modern world
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
Rarely seen on the silver screen outside of the animated adventures of Wallace & Gromit and the occasional horror flick about killer livestock, sheep have long been denied the movie exposure accorded other members of the animal kingdom.
Is it due to some collective case of denial over the source of our favourite wool sweaters? Or is this distaste due to painful memories of childhood traumas that occurred during singalongs of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”? Only our psychotherapists can know for sure.
Hopefully, this abominable practice of barnyard discrimination will come to an end with the arrival of Sweetgrass, an American documentary that puts these creatures front and centre for what may be the first time.
A surprise hit on the festival circuit last year that begins a Toronto run at the Royal this weekend, Sweetgrass depicts a year in the life of several flocks in the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges in Montana.
A team of artists with backgrounds in visual anthropology and environmental studies, Sweetgrass directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash favour lengthy shots of sheep mostly being sheep in a variety of often stunning landscapes.
Their movie has no music, narration or much of anything else that other filmmakers typically use to add drama to nature-oriented documentaries. Instead, the viewer comes to feel like part of the herd, an experience that may send some audience members to sleep but will prove to be curiously compelling for others.
Though the film’s mood is mostly serene, it’s still punctuated by surprising moments of humour and tension. Seldom seen in the opening stretches, the animals’ human guardians are the sheepherders and cowboys who tend the sheep, collect their wool and protect them from predators. The last task proves especially difficult during the film’s final section, which depicts a long and stressful drive across snow-covered ridges and valleys.
The fact that this was to be the last instance of traditional sheepherding practices in the region lends a certain poignance to Sweetgrass. What Castaing-Taylor and Barbash document is the end of a way of life. The harsh economic reality for the people involved becomes evident when we hear a sheepherder vent his frustrations in a cellphone call — his very liberal use of profanities seems even more extreme when juxtaposed with the pastoral beauty of his location.
The presence of a hilariously laconic old cowboy adds echoes of cinema’s most famous representations of the American west. In its own subtle way, Sweetgrass compels viewers to lament the loss of the real thing, and perhaps consider the fraying bonds between humans and the animals that have long provided so much for us.
Of course, the real stars of the show remain oblivious to any of the weightier matters at hand, which is part of Sweetgrass’ charm. If there’s anything we can learn from the creatures here, it’s that any day in which you don’t get stripped of your coat or eaten by a bear is probably a good one.
Toronto Sun: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Toronto Sun:
Sweetgrass a love letter to the West
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Liz Braun
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
So you'd gather from a documentary called Sweetgrass, a love letter to the old West that shows all the hardships and all the beauty involved in working a herd.
In this case, the herd is sheep, and the people who raise and tend them are a dying breed of workaholics. An anthropologist's dream and a desk-job guy's worst nightmare, Sweetgrass reveals the intense labour involved -- for man and beast -- in the seemingly simple annual task of moving a flock up to high pasture to graze.
Sweetgrass takes place in and around the town of Big Timber and the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains of Montana. Almost completely without dialogue or music (except for what seems to be Highway to Hell playing in the barn during a sheep-shearing scene), the movie shows the animals moving through an extraordinary physical landscape and initially shows them eating, being shorn and having babies in lambing season.
Once the annual summer migration begins up into the mountain range, things change. First comes the amazing sight of a massive flock of sheep moving through town, and then the slow journey to pasture begins. Although the camera tends to stay out of the faces of the humans in Sweetgrass, there are scenes of setting up camp the old-fashioned way, hints of the horsefly situation (or are they bluebottles?) and shots of the awe-inspiring physical surroundings.
Those surroundings include any number of places for sheep and people to get stuck: Streams to cross, piles of deadwood, thick brush, large rocks. The sheep get stuck, they wander, they spread out too far from one another, they bleat. As the film makes clear, sheep need constant attention. The word 'ornery' comes up more than once.
And then there are the predators. Bears are sighted; wolverines are talked about. At night, all is dark and desolate, with only the remarkable dogs to sound a warning if any four-legged danger comes near. A gutted sheep is the distressing clue that something is stalking the herd. After a heart-rending scene that has one cowboy weeping over the phone to his mother about the endless frustration and physical mishaps -- he, his dog and his horse are all lame from scrabbling up and down the hills after sheep -- you begin to wonder how anyone could still live this way.
And in fact, they generally don't. The idea for Sweetgrass began with Lawrence Allested, a rancher who was the very last in the area to drive his sheep long distances into the mountains to take advantage of his family's grazing permit. The filmmakers began following the sheep drive in 2001; before Sweetgrass was even finished, the ranch and the sheep had been sold off. The movie celebrates a particular lifestyle and it's an homage to a dying tradition -- a slice of history that's fascinating to witness.
Sweetgrass a love letter to the West
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Liz Braun
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
So you'd gather from a documentary called Sweetgrass, a love letter to the old West that shows all the hardships and all the beauty involved in working a herd.
In this case, the herd is sheep, and the people who raise and tend them are a dying breed of workaholics. An anthropologist's dream and a desk-job guy's worst nightmare, Sweetgrass reveals the intense labour involved -- for man and beast -- in the seemingly simple annual task of moving a flock up to high pasture to graze.
Sweetgrass takes place in and around the town of Big Timber and the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains of Montana. Almost completely without dialogue or music (except for what seems to be Highway to Hell playing in the barn during a sheep-shearing scene), the movie shows the animals moving through an extraordinary physical landscape and initially shows them eating, being shorn and having babies in lambing season.
Once the annual summer migration begins up into the mountain range, things change. First comes the amazing sight of a massive flock of sheep moving through town, and then the slow journey to pasture begins. Although the camera tends to stay out of the faces of the humans in Sweetgrass, there are scenes of setting up camp the old-fashioned way, hints of the horsefly situation (or are they bluebottles?) and shots of the awe-inspiring physical surroundings.
Those surroundings include any number of places for sheep and people to get stuck: Streams to cross, piles of deadwood, thick brush, large rocks. The sheep get stuck, they wander, they spread out too far from one another, they bleat. As the film makes clear, sheep need constant attention. The word 'ornery' comes up more than once.
And then there are the predators. Bears are sighted; wolverines are talked about. At night, all is dark and desolate, with only the remarkable dogs to sound a warning if any four-legged danger comes near. A gutted sheep is the distressing clue that something is stalking the herd. After a heart-rending scene that has one cowboy weeping over the phone to his mother about the endless frustration and physical mishaps -- he, his dog and his horse are all lame from scrabbling up and down the hills after sheep -- you begin to wonder how anyone could still live this way.
And in fact, they generally don't. The idea for Sweetgrass began with Lawrence Allested, a rancher who was the very last in the area to drive his sheep long distances into the mountains to take advantage of his family's grazing permit. The filmmakers began following the sheep drive in 2001; before Sweetgrass was even finished, the ranch and the sheep had been sold off. The movie celebrates a particular lifestyle and it's an homage to a dying tradition -- a slice of history that's fascinating to witness.
NOW Toronto: Sweetgrass
originally posted at NOW Toronto:
Sweetgrass: As Ewe Like It
Editorial Rating: NNN (out of 5)
by Susan G. Cole
Is there such a thing as an ethnography of animals? If there is, Sweetgrass qualifies. It tracks a mammoth flock of sheep as they’re herded through the mountains of Montana in 2003 – the last such trek ever undertaken – and it’s directed by two anthropologists who let the beasts take the spotlight.
The film begins with a near-one-minute shot of a sheep snacking on grass and then bleating for the camera. Except for a fascinating early sequence in which the sheep get shorn, industrial-style, and a few lambs are birthed, that opening reflects what you can expect from this doc. The sheep are, well, sheep – eating, nursing and following the sometimes not so clear trail.
One thing about a visual art like film: it can’t convey how much that flock must have reeked. Not that filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor worry about such things. They’re only slightly interested in the experience of the herders, a fairly dim crew with apparently no personal relationships except with their dogs, which really do all the work.
Sweetgrass is a hypnotically gorgeous thing, though. The mountains are spectacular and the wide shots of the flock superb. Too bad there’s a little dip in the last half-hour even though it features the film’s only tense moment – the appearance of hungry bears.
Sweetgrass: As Ewe Like It
Editorial Rating: NNN (out of 5)
by Susan G. Cole
Is there such a thing as an ethnography of animals? If there is, Sweetgrass qualifies. It tracks a mammoth flock of sheep as they’re herded through the mountains of Montana in 2003 – the last such trek ever undertaken – and it’s directed by two anthropologists who let the beasts take the spotlight.
The film begins with a near-one-minute shot of a sheep snacking on grass and then bleating for the camera. Except for a fascinating early sequence in which the sheep get shorn, industrial-style, and a few lambs are birthed, that opening reflects what you can expect from this doc. The sheep are, well, sheep – eating, nursing and following the sometimes not so clear trail.
One thing about a visual art like film: it can’t convey how much that flock must have reeked. Not that filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor worry about such things. They’re only slightly interested in the experience of the herders, a fairly dim crew with apparently no personal relationships except with their dogs, which really do all the work.
Sweetgrass is a hypnotically gorgeous thing, though. The mountains are spectacular and the wide shots of the flock superb. Too bad there’s a little dip in the last half-hour even though it features the film’s only tense moment – the appearance of hungry bears.
Metro: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Metro:
Not interested in a sheep herding trek? Think again
Editorial Rating: ***** (out of 5)
by Adam Nayman
The brilliant Sweetgrass is a documentary that’s also a hymn to tradition: the annual sheep herding drive in Montana's Beartooth Mountain range.
The directors spent three years in the company of cowboys and their flock, and the film evinces that intimacy. It’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers’ ability to provide multiple perspectives on the action even as they’re in the middle of it with a single camera.
Not interested in a sheep herding trek? Think again
Editorial Rating: ***** (out of 5)
by Adam Nayman
The brilliant Sweetgrass is a documentary that’s also a hymn to tradition: the annual sheep herding drive in Montana's Beartooth Mountain range.
The directors spent three years in the company of cowboys and their flock, and the film evinces that intimacy. It’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers’ ability to provide multiple perspectives on the action even as they’re in the middle of it with a single camera.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
CBC.ca: Sounds Like a Revolution
originally posted at CBC.ca
by Greig Dymond
Songs of defiance
The documentary Sounds Like a Revolution explores modern-day protest music
It’s hard to believe in this era of Biebers and Ushers and Jonases that the pop charts used to pack a political punch.
Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction (penned by P.F. Sloan) was a certified No. 1 hit in 1965, and caused an uproar among several American conservative groups who felt the lyrics were unpatriotic (“The eastern world, it is exploding/ Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’/ You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’/ You don’t believe in war but what’s that gun you’re totin’/ And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’”). One suspects that Miley Cyrus will never get quite this incendiary.
Although protest music doesn’t register on today’s charts, the genre still thrives outside the pop mainstream. In their documentary Sounds Like a Revolution, co-directors Summer Love and Jane Michener deftly trace its evolution over the past 50 years. The idea for the doc came to Love after a chat with her mother in 2003.
“By the time the invasion of Iraq happened, you had a huge wellspring of activism, millions of people marching, the largest pre-war demonstrations ever,” says the Toronto filmmaker. “And I was inspired. My mom and I were having a conversation around that time and she said, ‘Where’s the music? Where’s the soundtrack of this generation?’ I thought that was a very good question.”
Love travelled around North America between 2003 and 2008, interviewing modern-day musical activists like Michael Franti, rapper Paris and punk bands NOFX and Anti-Flag. Although they create wildly disparate sounds, the doc shows just how much these musicians have in common: a loathing of George W. Bush and the Iraq war, a desire to distribute their own music on indie labels (in several cases created by the artists themselves) so they don’t have to compromise their lyrics, and impressive internet savvy they use to connect with their respective fan bases. During the 2004 U.S. election, NOFX lead singer Fat Mike created the website Punkvoter.com, an attempt to engage punk youth in the voting process.
These artists don’t need to appear on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to attract sizeable crowds — the film devotes a large chunk of time to Michael Franti’s annual Power to the Peaceful festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which regularly draws 50,000 people. Of all the artists profiled in the doc, he caters most directly to the neo-hippie demographic. Among his fans, Franti’s song Bomb the World has become an anti-war anthem to rival Give Peace a Chance. “We can bomb the world to pieces,” he sings, “But we can’t bomb it into peace.”
“I connected with Michael early on, because I saw him changing a business model that he didn’t agree with,” says Love. “He didn’t just acquiesce, he was trying to make it into his own, and in a way that he could feel proud of later on. Even in the film he says, ‘20 years from now, when my son asks, “What did you do during this time?” I can say proudly that I was there doing something.’ That’s why I connected with each one of these artists; I felt like I needed to do something. This is my small piece of the puzzle.”
Although Sounds Like a Revolution focuses on 21st-century protest music, the spectre of the 1960s and early 1970s hovers in the background. Early on, David Crosby tells a remarkable story about the genesis of Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic indictment of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 (“Four dead in Ohio”). Seeing the famous photos of the incident a few days afterward in Life magazine, Neil Young wrote the song on the spot, placing the blame squarely on Richard Nixon (“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming”). The band recorded the tune the same night and it was rush-released within a matter of days by their label, Atlantic Records. It went to No. 14 on the Billboard charts.
That chain of events could never happen today, and Sounds Likes a Revolution explains why. Indeed, the film is at its best when it delineates how the noose gradually tightened on politically charged music at major labels. The doc takes the viewer on a tour of relevant events, from Ice-T’s Cop Killer controversy at Warner Music in 1992 to the Dixie Chicks’ backlash during the lead-up to the Iraq War. (At a concert in England, Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines had said, “We’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” the band’s home state. It led to a boycott of their music by several country music radio stations.)
“Today’s highly corporatized environment leads to a general risk aversion,” Love argues. “That risk aversion is in every aspect of the industry, and it didn’t exist on the same level in the 1960s as it does today. I find it slightly condescending when people think that no generation since the ‘60s counterculture has cared [about politics]. Part of my personal mission was to prove that the business context had changed, and to make any value judgments about the music or the message was wrong, because the context is so different today.”
Sounds Like a Revolution suffers from some repetition in its musician interviews, but the film makes a convincing case that there’s more protest music today than at any other time in history — it’s just being distributed in a different way.
Love was thrilled when Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name — a powerful track condemning racism — went to No. 1 in the UK charts at Christmas last year, the result of a massive online protest against the manufactured-by-Simon-Cowell pop idols that traditionally inhabit that spot.
“It’s exactly the kind of backlash that you would expect from a hyper-commercialized environment,” she says. “The UK is even worse than the US in my opinion for this sort of bubble-gum pop karaoke. This was a retaliation against all of those values. It was about the need for some content, something more today. That’s what people are craving.”
Sounds Like a Revolution opens in Toronto on June 25. It opens in Ottawa on July 2.
by Greig Dymond
Songs of defiance
The documentary Sounds Like a Revolution explores modern-day protest music
It’s hard to believe in this era of Biebers and Ushers and Jonases that the pop charts used to pack a political punch.
Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction (penned by P.F. Sloan) was a certified No. 1 hit in 1965, and caused an uproar among several American conservative groups who felt the lyrics were unpatriotic (“The eastern world, it is exploding/ Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’/ You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’/ You don’t believe in war but what’s that gun you’re totin’/ And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’”). One suspects that Miley Cyrus will never get quite this incendiary.
Although protest music doesn’t register on today’s charts, the genre still thrives outside the pop mainstream. In their documentary Sounds Like a Revolution, co-directors Summer Love and Jane Michener deftly trace its evolution over the past 50 years. The idea for the doc came to Love after a chat with her mother in 2003.
“By the time the invasion of Iraq happened, you had a huge wellspring of activism, millions of people marching, the largest pre-war demonstrations ever,” says the Toronto filmmaker. “And I was inspired. My mom and I were having a conversation around that time and she said, ‘Where’s the music? Where’s the soundtrack of this generation?’ I thought that was a very good question.”
Love travelled around North America between 2003 and 2008, interviewing modern-day musical activists like Michael Franti, rapper Paris and punk bands NOFX and Anti-Flag. Although they create wildly disparate sounds, the doc shows just how much these musicians have in common: a loathing of George W. Bush and the Iraq war, a desire to distribute their own music on indie labels (in several cases created by the artists themselves) so they don’t have to compromise their lyrics, and impressive internet savvy they use to connect with their respective fan bases. During the 2004 U.S. election, NOFX lead singer Fat Mike created the website Punkvoter.com, an attempt to engage punk youth in the voting process.
These artists don’t need to appear on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to attract sizeable crowds — the film devotes a large chunk of time to Michael Franti’s annual Power to the Peaceful festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which regularly draws 50,000 people. Of all the artists profiled in the doc, he caters most directly to the neo-hippie demographic. Among his fans, Franti’s song Bomb the World has become an anti-war anthem to rival Give Peace a Chance. “We can bomb the world to pieces,” he sings, “But we can’t bomb it into peace.”
“I connected with Michael early on, because I saw him changing a business model that he didn’t agree with,” says Love. “He didn’t just acquiesce, he was trying to make it into his own, and in a way that he could feel proud of later on. Even in the film he says, ‘20 years from now, when my son asks, “What did you do during this time?” I can say proudly that I was there doing something.’ That’s why I connected with each one of these artists; I felt like I needed to do something. This is my small piece of the puzzle.”
Although Sounds Like a Revolution focuses on 21st-century protest music, the spectre of the 1960s and early 1970s hovers in the background. Early on, David Crosby tells a remarkable story about the genesis of Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic indictment of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 (“Four dead in Ohio”). Seeing the famous photos of the incident a few days afterward in Life magazine, Neil Young wrote the song on the spot, placing the blame squarely on Richard Nixon (“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming”). The band recorded the tune the same night and it was rush-released within a matter of days by their label, Atlantic Records. It went to No. 14 on the Billboard charts.
That chain of events could never happen today, and Sounds Likes a Revolution explains why. Indeed, the film is at its best when it delineates how the noose gradually tightened on politically charged music at major labels. The doc takes the viewer on a tour of relevant events, from Ice-T’s Cop Killer controversy at Warner Music in 1992 to the Dixie Chicks’ backlash during the lead-up to the Iraq War. (At a concert in England, Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines had said, “We’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” the band’s home state. It led to a boycott of their music by several country music radio stations.)
“Today’s highly corporatized environment leads to a general risk aversion,” Love argues. “That risk aversion is in every aspect of the industry, and it didn’t exist on the same level in the 1960s as it does today. I find it slightly condescending when people think that no generation since the ‘60s counterculture has cared [about politics]. Part of my personal mission was to prove that the business context had changed, and to make any value judgments about the music or the message was wrong, because the context is so different today.”
Sounds Like a Revolution suffers from some repetition in its musician interviews, but the film makes a convincing case that there’s more protest music today than at any other time in history — it’s just being distributed in a different way.
Love was thrilled when Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name — a powerful track condemning racism — went to No. 1 in the UK charts at Christmas last year, the result of a massive online protest against the manufactured-by-Simon-Cowell pop idols that traditionally inhabit that spot.
“It’s exactly the kind of backlash that you would expect from a hyper-commercialized environment,” she says. “The UK is even worse than the US in my opinion for this sort of bubble-gum pop karaoke. This was a retaliation against all of those values. It was about the need for some content, something more today. That’s what people are craving.”
Sounds Like a Revolution opens in Toronto on June 25. It opens in Ottawa on July 2.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Globe and Mail: Land
originally posted at the Globe and Mail
Land: Where land is all they’ve got
Documentary examines the impact of developers on a pristine stretch of the Nicaraguan coast
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Jennie Punter
In January, 2006, three starry-eyed American resort developers, two expat eccentrics and some increasingly restless locals were living in imperfect harmony in a sleepy fishing village on a gorgeous stretch of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast dubbed the Central American Riviera. Toronto filmmaker Julian T. Pinder’s captivating, intimate and often funny documentary Land lets us join the citizens of this “underdeveloped” community during the months leading up to a general election that threatens radical change to the status quo.
Of course the November, 2006, election results in Nicaragua are known: Former revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega became president for the second time. But this knowledge in no way detracts from this rich film, which uses the looming election (with artful use of archived footage and photographs providing historical and political context) to build tension.
The main attractions of Land, however, are the engaging folk Pinder finds to illustrate the complexity of land issues in Nicaragua. The issues aren’t as simple as “developers bad, locals good,” although some gringos do exploit cheap local labour. Pinder makes sure his key characters are not merely “representative” but real people whose fates we care about – even if we don’t like some of them that much.
My favourite is Dean, an irascible, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling American expat who’s a hilarious commentator on the intrigue between developers (“land whores and dirt pimps”) and locals. His gruff poetry finds its counterpoint in lovely scenes with Nicaraguan poet and ex-guerrilla Sebastien Narvaez, who feels for the nation’s broken, forgotten soul.
We also get choice words from politician Eden Pastora, who once cut a dashing figure as a revolutionary leader nicknamed Commander Zero. Pastora points out Nicaragua has few exports and no industry: “All we have is our land.” This passion drives some locals to take both legal and illegal actions to change the game.
With a personal touch, Land tells a universal story of foreigners transforming paradise to attract more foreign tourists. Whether this is good or right depends on your idea of the ideal vacation.
Land: Where land is all they’ve got
Documentary examines the impact of developers on a pristine stretch of the Nicaraguan coast
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Jennie Punter
In January, 2006, three starry-eyed American resort developers, two expat eccentrics and some increasingly restless locals were living in imperfect harmony in a sleepy fishing village on a gorgeous stretch of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast dubbed the Central American Riviera. Toronto filmmaker Julian T. Pinder’s captivating, intimate and often funny documentary Land lets us join the citizens of this “underdeveloped” community during the months leading up to a general election that threatens radical change to the status quo.
Of course the November, 2006, election results in Nicaragua are known: Former revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega became president for the second time. But this knowledge in no way detracts from this rich film, which uses the looming election (with artful use of archived footage and photographs providing historical and political context) to build tension.
The main attractions of Land, however, are the engaging folk Pinder finds to illustrate the complexity of land issues in Nicaragua. The issues aren’t as simple as “developers bad, locals good,” although some gringos do exploit cheap local labour. Pinder makes sure his key characters are not merely “representative” but real people whose fates we care about – even if we don’t like some of them that much.
My favourite is Dean, an irascible, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling American expat who’s a hilarious commentator on the intrigue between developers (“land whores and dirt pimps”) and locals. His gruff poetry finds its counterpoint in lovely scenes with Nicaraguan poet and ex-guerrilla Sebastien Narvaez, who feels for the nation’s broken, forgotten soul.
We also get choice words from politician Eden Pastora, who once cut a dashing figure as a revolutionary leader nicknamed Commander Zero. Pastora points out Nicaragua has few exports and no industry: “All we have is our land.” This passion drives some locals to take both legal and illegal actions to change the game.
With a personal touch, Land tells a universal story of foreigners transforming paradise to attract more foreign tourists. Whether this is good or right depends on your idea of the ideal vacation.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Straight.com: Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space
originally posted at Straight.com
by Ken Eisner
With the social, financial, and environmental problems bubbling up at the moment, we can’t be blamed, exactly, for failing to search the skies for trouble. Still, we’re idiots to ignore the warning signs above, and that’s the main message of this troubling documentary.
Directed by French-born Denis Delestrac, and written by him and others, including Siobhan Flanagan, Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space details the history and possible outcomes of a space race that began with Russia’s 1957 Sputnik launch. Of course, things started much earlier, when Hitler sent those V-2 rockets into English airspace, followed by Washington’s instant de-Nazification of rocket man Wernher von Braun, who put a big smile on NASA’s public face.
The prevalence of “kill vehicles” and other potentially lethal exotica in space sped up under Ronald Reagan, who gave carte blanche to the U.S. Air Force to expand dominance of the stratospheric high ground. And every president since has increased the budget for this dangerous grandiosity, always in the guise of national defence, of course—a position asserted by the many military figures seen here.
As illuminated by a welter of commentators, including Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, and Martin Sheen, this less-than-heavenly push has been a spectacular boondoggle for the military-industrial complex—a “long con”, as one congressional observer calls it, designed as a licence to print money for programs that generally fail before getting off the ground. The scam may hide even more sinister purposes, but the most threatening aspect could be the proliferation of fast-moving space junk encircling our planet even before a catastrophic conflict or accident takes place.
Given all these fright factors, it almost seems wrong that the 85-minute film, goosed along by fast edits, high-tech graphics, and Amon Tobin’s electronic music, should be so cosmically entertaining.
by Ken Eisner
With the social, financial, and environmental problems bubbling up at the moment, we can’t be blamed, exactly, for failing to search the skies for trouble. Still, we’re idiots to ignore the warning signs above, and that’s the main message of this troubling documentary.
Directed by French-born Denis Delestrac, and written by him and others, including Siobhan Flanagan, Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space details the history and possible outcomes of a space race that began with Russia’s 1957 Sputnik launch. Of course, things started much earlier, when Hitler sent those V-2 rockets into English airspace, followed by Washington’s instant de-Nazification of rocket man Wernher von Braun, who put a big smile on NASA’s public face.
The prevalence of “kill vehicles” and other potentially lethal exotica in space sped up under Ronald Reagan, who gave carte blanche to the U.S. Air Force to expand dominance of the stratospheric high ground. And every president since has increased the budget for this dangerous grandiosity, always in the guise of national defence, of course—a position asserted by the many military figures seen here.
As illuminated by a welter of commentators, including Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, and Martin Sheen, this less-than-heavenly push has been a spectacular boondoggle for the military-industrial complex—a “long con”, as one congressional observer calls it, designed as a licence to print money for programs that generally fail before getting off the ground. The scam may hide even more sinister purposes, but the most threatening aspect could be the proliferation of fast-moving space junk encircling our planet even before a catastrophic conflict or accident takes place.
Given all these fright factors, it almost seems wrong that the 85-minute film, goosed along by fast edits, high-tech graphics, and Amon Tobin’s electronic music, should be so cosmically entertaining.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Straight.com: Pax Americana delivers history lesson on weaponization of space
originally posted at Straight.com
by Travis Lupick
Nuclear weapons are frightening. The prospect of kinetic bombardment is even scarier. And if you believe the information presented in Pax Americana: The Weaponization of Space, it won’t be long before delivery systems capable of kinetic bombardment are orbiting Earth.
The concept is simple. Load a satellite up with rods of tungsten that can be fired down to the surface. Those projectiles would travel at an estimated 11,000 kilometres an hour and, with all of that energy, strike the planet with the force of an atomic bomb.
Even with a small network of such satellites, any target on Earth could be destroyed in less than 10 minutes of the press of a button.
In Pax Americana, which opens at the Vancity Theatre on Friday (June 4), director Denis Delestrac methodically presents publicly available information that should serve as a warning: the weaponization of space is happening and could end with a scenario not unlike the one outlined above.
“What is inevitable is that there is always going to be somebody who will want to dominate any territory,” Delestrac told the Straight in a telephone interview from Barcelona, where he is currently based. “That doesn’t make inevitable the fact that we can’t stop it.”
Which is what Pax Americana, Delestrac’s first feature-length film, is trying to do.
“The first step we need to take…is to inform and to get people to know what is happening,” the French-born writer and director said.
He explained that a handful of nations—primarily the United States, but China and others as well—are already far along in the process of weaponizing humankind’s final frontier, and that the public is largely unaware of this fact.
“It is called the Pax Americana, or the ‘American peace’,” a preacher delivering a sermon on a US military base says in the film. “It refers to the period in which American influence throughout the world has caused a relative peace to come about.”
Delestrac, who previously worked on the 2005 IMAX film Mystery of the Nile, said encountering that sort of attitude was an intriguing part of making the film.
“Some of the people who want to weaponize space really believe that if somebody has to dominate, then it has to be the US,” he said. “They have a good heart.”
The problem, Delestrac continued, is that moving militaries into space will likely bring consequences dangerous for the entire planet. As the film illustrates, a new arms race may already be under way.
Since former US president Ronald Reagan started the country’s “missile defence” program in 1983, the American government has spent $200 billion trying to figure out how to use satellites to shoot down projectiles launched from earthbound sites. In January 2007, China successfully destroyed one of its own satellites in a military exercise that caused international alarm. And Russia has vowed to destroy any weapon the US deploys in space.
Delestrac emphasized that all of this is happening just 100 kilometres above our heads.
“When the weapon is there,” he said, “there could always be a hand that could use the weapon not the way that it is supposed to—not to protect or not to defend, but to attack.”
by Travis Lupick
Nuclear weapons are frightening. The prospect of kinetic bombardment is even scarier. And if you believe the information presented in Pax Americana: The Weaponization of Space, it won’t be long before delivery systems capable of kinetic bombardment are orbiting Earth.
The concept is simple. Load a satellite up with rods of tungsten that can be fired down to the surface. Those projectiles would travel at an estimated 11,000 kilometres an hour and, with all of that energy, strike the planet with the force of an atomic bomb.
Even with a small network of such satellites, any target on Earth could be destroyed in less than 10 minutes of the press of a button.
In Pax Americana, which opens at the Vancity Theatre on Friday (June 4), director Denis Delestrac methodically presents publicly available information that should serve as a warning: the weaponization of space is happening and could end with a scenario not unlike the one outlined above.
“What is inevitable is that there is always going to be somebody who will want to dominate any territory,” Delestrac told the Straight in a telephone interview from Barcelona, where he is currently based. “That doesn’t make inevitable the fact that we can’t stop it.”
Which is what Pax Americana, Delestrac’s first feature-length film, is trying to do.
“The first step we need to take…is to inform and to get people to know what is happening,” the French-born writer and director said.
He explained that a handful of nations—primarily the United States, but China and others as well—are already far along in the process of weaponizing humankind’s final frontier, and that the public is largely unaware of this fact.
“It is called the Pax Americana, or the ‘American peace’,” a preacher delivering a sermon on a US military base says in the film. “It refers to the period in which American influence throughout the world has caused a relative peace to come about.”
Delestrac, who previously worked on the 2005 IMAX film Mystery of the Nile, said encountering that sort of attitude was an intriguing part of making the film.
“Some of the people who want to weaponize space really believe that if somebody has to dominate, then it has to be the US,” he said. “They have a good heart.”
The problem, Delestrac continued, is that moving militaries into space will likely bring consequences dangerous for the entire planet. As the film illustrates, a new arms race may already be under way.
Since former US president Ronald Reagan started the country’s “missile defence” program in 1983, the American government has spent $200 billion trying to figure out how to use satellites to shoot down projectiles launched from earthbound sites. In January 2007, China successfully destroyed one of its own satellites in a military exercise that caused international alarm. And Russia has vowed to destroy any weapon the US deploys in space.
Delestrac emphasized that all of this is happening just 100 kilometres above our heads.
“When the weapon is there,” he said, “there could always be a hand that could use the weapon not the way that it is supposed to—not to protect or not to defend, but to attack.”
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