australian rozie

These are the films we checked out on the Long Weekend.
A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory - director Esther Robinson’s attempt to uncover what happened to her uncle, Danny Williams, who was Warhol’s lighting designer, lover, and a promising filmmaker before his unexplained disappearance in 1966. Continuing with the Australian Rozie Andy Warhol bender I am on, it was great to see this doco on Danny Williams. It did feel a bit long and dragged out at times but the archival footage of the Factory crew and seeing what some of the Warhol stars look like now was interesting. These were the beautiful, young, cool, underground NYC posse of Andy Warhol and now they are old, balding, fat, hairy and not quite right, with major memory loss and bitter egos.
The Blood of Yingzhou District - Produced by the China AIDS Media Project which was established to help spread AIDS information, Yang’s extraordinary film won this year’s Academy Awards® Documentary Short Subject category. This is a very depressing subject, the doco follows orphans in a poor village in China, some with HIV contracted from their parents who sold their blood as a means to survive and ended up with AIDS due to the negligence of the illegal blood collectors. I was in tears in the first minute! It does end hopefully, with the charity involved able to get these children more help, care and medication. The husband of the director was there to answer a few questions at the end which was enlightening. He said that they haven’t been able to show this doco in China itself yet but they’re working on it. Also most of the illegal blood collectors have been caught and punished (maybe even executed).
Please Vote For Me - A class of eight-year-olds in China undertake an experiment in democracy. Three candidates are selected and quickly learn the techniques required for success: lying, defamation and bribery. This was hilarious, kids will be kids even when they are being guided and/or coerced by their parents! Apparantly, it was the first time the concept of “democracy” was taught in a primary school in China.
Still Life - Shot on location at the flooding of the Three Gorges Dam, this Venice award-winner is a meditative work in which documentary and fiction merge, producing a painterly, narrative flatness. Jia’s digital camera lingers on the dangerous exploits of the workers and the incredible terrain as much as it follows the loose stories of a man who returns to look for the wife he abandoned and a woman looking for the husband who forsook her years ago. This was also very good, it was a bit s-l-o-w (luckily a 10am session, rather than a late night one), but I found it to be very touching and moving. I also took along my dad and aunty - they don’t need to read the subtitles! Usually dad prefers more action (martial arts, Hollywood schlockbusters etc) or nature documentaries, he said it was good but a bit slow too.