Artsfest Film Festival: Hausu (1977)

This actually happens in the movie...

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

Hausu was introduced as a Japanese-kitsch-horror movie by festival organizer Caleb Smith. And really as descriptions go, you can't get more succinct and accurate than that.

Hausu (Japanese for "house") follows seven girls heading off for camp over the summer. When their first choice of venue falls through, they decide to go to a house owned by the aunt of one of the girls. Of course, not everything is what is it seems and some malevolent creature exists in the house that feeds off of people.

I'll go ahead and say SPOILERS up front though really you cannot spoil this movie. It's an experience. It's a film that needs to be seen with a crowd. If there is a midnight showing, go. If you are looking for something to watch with a group of friends with a sense of humor, rent it.

So does this.

Every element of the film seems perfectly calibrated to be campy and over the top. The girls' names describe their sole character trait. We are introduced to Gorgeous (the pretty one), Fantasy (she tells stories), Melody (plays the piano), and Kung-Fu (she fights AND has her own theme music).

The aunt is played with a mischievous glee by Yôko Minamida. In one scene, she disappears into a fridge and instantly reappears in the foreground of the shot, sending a smile toward the audience. Nothing here is a subtle "wink-wink-nod-nod" and that is its strongest weapon.

I'll give detail on two scenes though words honestly fail in describing any moment from the film. Mac (she eats a lot) heads out to retrieve a watermelon she was keeping cool in a well. She doesn't return, so Fantasy goes to check on her. Fantasy pulls the rope holding the watermelon up the well only to find Mac's head. The head comes to life and begins floating around the screen before biting Fantasy on the bottom.

Later, Melody is driven by an unseen force to play the piano. The piano becomes animated and begins eating Melody. It takes off her fingers, then her hand, then begins eating her whole. She's thrashing around in the open body of the grand piano with legs sticking out where the keys should be. All done with the worst effects possible.

And this.  This is in the movie.  Seriously.

Realize that in describing these scenes, I am forced to use words. And words do truly fail. I cannot accurately describe how that floating head looks. Or the bizarre look of glee on Melody's face when her fingers are severed. The scenes feel perfectly calibrated to get the audience laughing and, in my packed theater, they were rolling in the aisles.

By the time Kung-Fu's severed lower torso is delivering a flying dropkick to an evil painting of a white cat and a side character is turned into a pile of bananas, Hausu is not even trying for horror anymore. If this was made today, it would be dismissed as too obvious an attempt at camp. However, in the vein of a movie like The Room, Hausu is pure genius. Do not rent this and watch it alone in your house. Get a group of friends, a case of your favorite beverage and enjoy the awesomeness of Hausu.

As an actual film? 1/2 out of ***** stars
As a cinematic event? ********* out of ***** stars

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Artsfest Film Festival: Stranger than Paradise (1984)

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint, and Richard Edson

Produced by Cinesthesia Productions

Willie ambles through life in New York City, hustling for money and barely existing in a small non-descript apartment.  So he's not pleased when he receives a phone call asking him to house his 16-year old cousin Eva from Hungary.  Willie is initially aggressive in his distaste for having to watch out for the young girl, but, over her 10-day stay, he warms up to her.  Or at least warms up to her as much as his ego will allow.  He buys her a dress that she is clearly not thrilled with.  At the end of the stay, Eva heads off to Cleveland to live with her aunt, disposing of the dress as she heads out of town.

A year later, Willie and his best friend Eddie have scored some cash cheating at cards and are looking to get out of town.  Soon, they are en route to Cleveland to drop in on Eva and Aunt Lotte.  They find Eva working at a hot dog stand and get a brief tour of barren Cleveland landscapes.  Willie and Eddie start back for New York, but soon decide to head to Florida instead.  So they stop and pick up Eva and head south. 

Will the trio's fortunes change in the tropical paradise?  Or will life continue to deal them more of the same?

Is it possible for a film to be meditative and funny?  Methodical and absurd?  In Stranger than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch succeeds in marrying those tones and feelings into a satisfying portrait of both people and America.

The approach he takes is fascinating.  For the first half of the film, the story plays out almost solely within Willie's apartment.  A pattern repeats itself over and over.  We get a scene in one take that gives a sense of his and Eva's existence.  It may be what they are eating, or what they are watching on television, or why Willie won't let Eva go someplace with him.  Then we fade to black.  Pause.  Then we open on another scene.  The effect provides a sense, not that the film is unspooling a narrative, but that we are dropping in periodically on the lives of these characters.  

The loose story itself provides an undercurrent of unsettling humor throughout as opposed to individual jokes.  To the extent there's any punch lines, they serve to break the uneasy tension the rest of the film is reveling in.  And the approach works.

The film also has some rather obvious things to say about American life that seem relevant today.  The crew travels from New York to Cleveland to "paradise" and the underlying joke of the travels is that the country looks the same no matter where you go.  More than that, life doesn't change much even when you pick up and move.  You can lose all your money betting on horses just as easily in Florida as New York.  

The bizarreness of the ending is both a punch in the gut and fits the film perfectly.  Eva accidentally falling into money and looking to get away, Willie bumbling into an accidental trip trying to catch up with her, and a dumbfounded Eddie standing in a parking lot observing it all makes sense and comes out of left field.

The actors here are all pretty good.  John Lurie's Willie and Richard Edson's Eddie almost look alike which is the point.  Lurie can both convey a tough exterior and the eventual cracks in that shell very well.  Edson is primarily comic relief and works well.  Eszter Balint's Eva is at times too much of a blank slate, but she is supposed to be a cipher in parts so it serves the film well.

Stranger in Paradise has gotten better in my mind's eye over the week since I have seen it.  My brain keeps going back to the film, filling in the gaps Jarmusch never shows us and pondering what happens to the characters next.  And that kind of ongoing deliberation is the highest compliment I can pay any movie.

***** out of *****

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Artsfest Film Festival: Film as Personal Art

The Garden

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

In "Film as Personal Art" session, filmmakers use the medium to turn the camera and found footage into a megaphone for larger points about life. The Garden by Ann Steuernagel is a brilliant montage that describes the perils of climate change using found footage and juxtaposition to make her points. The first and most effective part follows news coverage of a glacier falling into the sea set against children running to observe from a hill and a hammer breaking a block of ice. It's not subtle, but it's effective.

Contra el Cine

Contra el Cine is a montage of characters in other films with their back turned to the camera. It's something you don't see much, and at first when you realize what is happening, it's amusing. Then it becomes unsettling. By the end, every time the film cuts away just as someone is about to turn around, you just want the release of a human face. And release comes by the end, though not in the manner you may expect.

The rest of the session cannot be recommended. When My Eyes are Closed by Jon Perez does a good job of evoking a mood, but with the voiceover and soft lighting, it has a feeling of pretentiousness to it. Winter's Veil by Eva Lee is eight minutes of computer-generated spheres and lines that would have looked state of the art a decade ago. And Don't Look Directly into the Sun by Kathleen Rugh... I didn't get. At all. It's about sunlight abstracted, but the images are so processed and obscured, you only get a fleeting glimpse on any one object. And that goes on for nine minutes.

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Artsfest Film Festival: Dark Narrative Explorations

Image from Carny

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

The "Dark Narrative Exploration" session screened four films deal with horror and violence. I found things to recommend about each of them, but my favorite was the first short, The Grave by Alexander Monelli. A lone gravedigger works to create a space for another coffin when a bell in front of one of the tombstones starts ringing. The bell is tied to a rope that goes into a coffin buried ten years earlier. The digger flees in horror, but must decide if he can face his fears.

Monelli makes effective use of a creepy location and conceit and rings everything he can from it. The camera is always in just the right place and the ending is both perfect and stays with you. The movie's only real failing is its lack of budget and crew. The costumes are a little too neat and the overall feel is that of a really well done student film (which is what it is). I would love to see this film redone with more money and people.

Where The Grave's violence is primarily imagined, Matthew Garrett's Beating Hearts is the goriest entry of the four, but it uses its violence well. The film follows the violent consequences of a too-close-for-comfort relationship between a man and his granddaughter. It's subject matter is very disturbing, more so because of just how well made and acted the film is. Seeing it once was enough for me, which is a statement on how effective it is. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Giuseppe Capasso's 108.1 FM Radio

If The Grave is "Tales from the Darkside" and Beating Hearts is "Masters of Horror," the Giuseppe Capasso's 108.1 FM Radio is the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" of the bunch. The setup is simple: A man picks up a hitchhiker just as the radio is reporting a story about a hitcher who killed a family earlier that evening. Each man is suspicious of the other. But just who is the murderer?

My appreciation for this short has faded a bit since I saw it. There are plot elements that only serve to manipulate the audience. Still, it's atmospheric and creepy in the best possible way.  And, it has an ending I did not see coming.

Finally, there was Carny, a film by Kevin Lonano which has impressive production design and establishes a great tone, but which has a confusing and slight story. Stay for the characters and the creepy Tim Burtonesque costumes and makeup, but don't think too hard about the plot which follows a magician's assistant in danger of being replaced for her age.

All four films were well-crafted so, if they screen at a festival near you (and you like your films a bit dark and twisted), they are worth a look.

The Grave trailer:

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Artsfest Film Festival: Experimental Short Films

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

The experimental short session included films ranging from 2 to 13 minutes long. My favorite was easily Slow Fall by Neil Ira Needleman. Using the color palette of autumn as well as some sparse imaginings of branches, Needleman evokes a season that looks ablaze one moment and barren the next. The film brings a sensation of floating and the reflection of colors against the water. It's beautiful to look at and paced well.

Memento Mori by Scott Klinger is the longest of the bunch and follows a woman through a burned out landscape while she reflects on times before some unseen catastrophe. The images of the woman are rendered in a very cinematic black and white which contrasts starkly with the home video quality of her memories. The thoughts themselves seem to bid her farewell as she heads for the ocean and her end. The film makes you think about as you reach the end of your life. Haunting and beautiful.

Christine Lucy Latimer brought three shorts to the festival. The only one I enjoyed was Focus. In it, Latimer takes frames of Super 8 and places them individually on frames of 16mm. The resulting 2 minute film requires the audience to concentrate in order to follow the jumping image at the center of the screen. For me the effect both made me aware I was watching a piece of celluloid, breaking the illusion we experience in most trips to the multiplex. It also made the audience work to understand the images, providing a potent counterpoint on how simple and easy the typical moviegoing experience has become.

Memento Mori

The first film shown was Format, where Latimer shows a Super 8 film on a wall and then films that before pulling the camera back to film the LCD screen on another video camera. It's 4 minutes, but feels like it's twice as long and is too on-the-nose to have an impact. In her third film, Fruit Flies, she mounted a collection of dead fruit flies from her kitchen on film and unspooled that for two minutes. It's better than Format, but it feels like more of an exercise than a film. That said, it's the best film featuring fruit fly carcasses I have ever seen.

Fever Dream by Kevin Vogrin follows a woman through a vaguely winter cityscape. It evokes the disorientation the main character's feeling and keeps the audience unsettled. The swirling camera makes it hard to focus on anything except the occasional random shot of Santa Claus. That said, at seven minutes, it feels a little too long.

Winged by Jennifer Hardacker views two young boys through the eyes of their mother. The film juxtaposes images of young birds with the children. We see predators whose shadow threatens them. It's beautifully realized, but inclusion of text from a horoscope took me out of the imagery of the film.

VAN GOGH'S GARDEN by Warren Bass is a fun distillation of Van Gogh's color palette set to a bouncy score. For the three minutes it's on, it washes over you. The mood dissipates as quickly as it arrives.

Cloud and Bird and Birds at Night (Might Fall) are animations by American animator Bridget Riversmith. The first is a (primarily) black and white film that uses images of a rabbit in a meadow and a bird soaring amongst the clouds to evoke a Japanese haiku. The second follows a couple who fall asleep while driving and turn into birds as their car plummets over a cliff. I liked Birds at Night (Might Fall) more, particularly the way it was animated (the subtle change that turns arms into wings for example).

The session ended with Deux Petits Bateaux a cut out animation that follows a couple as they dance to phonograph on their boat. When the record player goes overboard, the sea life joins in the dance party. There was a whimsy and imagination to the film, particularly with little touches like the musical notes constructed from sea shells. It's a light, fun short and the perfect sorbet before heading into another round of movies.

Below are embedded versions of some of the films:

Fruit Flies:


Format:

Format from Christine Lucy Latimer on Vimeo.

Focus:

Focus from Christine Lucy Latimer on Vimeo.

Fever Dream:



Cloud and Bird Trailer:


Birds at Night (Might Fall) Trailer:


Deux Petits Bateaux

Deux Petits Bateaux from Kate Raney on Vimeo.

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