GRIOT - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Griot (2013) ****
Dir. Volker Goetze
Starring:
Ablaye Cissoko,
Volker Goetze

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Griot is, at least from my own interpretation of Volker Goetze's film, the very essence of African history and culture. These hallowed individuals are singers, storytellers, community leaders, praise-bearers and keepers of oral histories and traditions. To learn of their history and to be introduced to one of the truly legendary Griots, Ablaye Cissoko was a truly and deeply personal revelation to me.

I'm not African by any stretch of the imagination, but like all of us on this planet, I share the blood of humanity with the African people as they do with me. We are, ultimately the product of stardust and as such, we are the progeny of the Heavens. Call it God, call it a higher power, call it a supreme being, call it dark matter, call it quantum physics, call it the Drake Equation - call it whatever you like. We are all one and it is with both awe and respect that I feel blessed to have been introduced to the dazzling power of this great musician.

Griot is a stirring, colourful and moving documentary and as such, a lyrical and poetic exploration of the West African tradition of the aforementioned Griot, an important personage in African culture with a clear relationship to the indigenous populace, but more importantly, how it seems to have influenced the entire African diaspora - especially in America.

The structure of the film is simple - all the better as this exposes so many factual, historical and finally spiritual properties of the Griot. You will experience heart achingly gorgeous music, you will see it performed, you will experience the joy of dance and musical expression and most of all, you will learn of the great lament of the Griot in the contemporary world. Culture and tradition is a blood right, but history has toyed with it, colonialism and slavery has tried to suppress it, contemporary African leaders seem to have no interest in its preservation and finally, even the Griot is an a world where the very role needs to both grow and yet return to its very roots.

I truly believe the concerns of the Griot are ALL of our concerns and the message Cissoko imparts via Goetze's cinematic eyepiece is truly universal and something that touches us all.

It might even touch you personally as it did me.

Allow me to share a deeply personal and cultural connection to this great story. My heritage is Ukrainian - a culture and language that has been battered, slaughtered and oppressed for over a thousand years - primarily by Russia. Perhaps the most horrific piece of recent history that has always haunted me is the systematic destruction and brutalization of the Ukrainian culture and its people by the Butcher Joseph Stalin. He not only orchestrated the genocide of ten million Ukrainians during the man-made famine known alternately as the Harvest of Despair and the Holodomor, but for me, the most horrendous genocide was a cultural decimation. Stalin not only implemented forced Russification amongst the Ukrainians, he destroyed one thousand years of history.

Here is why I was so personally moved by this film - my people were agrarian in nature and their entire history and culture was maintained in a very strict oral tradition by men who were not unlike the West African Griots. In Ukraine, they were called Kobzars. Like the Griot, their talent and place in the world was not through formal training, but through blood. They were the keepers of the country's history. Joseph Stalin invited all the Ukrainian Kobzars to Russia for a national conference to celebrate and discuss how the Kobzars would remove the yoke of Czarist oppression and adopt a new direction in praise of the revolution, of communism, of Stalin. Once all the Kobzars were assembled under one roof, Stalin had them all shot. One thousand years of history gone in one fell swoop.

To see the brilliant, caring, committed Ablaye Cissoko as he laments the horrid lack of a proper cultural centre, the indifference of a government to tradition and a millennia of history and culture was so profoundly touching. All the more so because the Griot still exists and his place in African culture - bound by blood - will only be eradicated if it is done so by force. Thankfully, we have filmmaker and musician Volker Goetze to put this important tradition in front of a camera and preserve its sound, image and yes, even soul so that the tradition can travel well beyond the borders of West Africa, beyond the borders of its intended audience - to travel into the hearts and minds of humanity all over the world.

My people lost their Kobzars, but as long as the Griot exists and thrives, I am confident that through the power of stardust, the river of blood that binds all of us and most of all, through the soul cleansing grace and beauty of the Griot's music, the history and tradition of man will be reflected in the words and teachings of the great people of West Africa. This is a film that gives me so much hope that culture is what binds all of us.

As Cissoko states, "Without culture one becomes a person without an identity."

He has nothing to fear, however. His blood flows as does the blood of others like him. It flows into the music of the soul and it cascades out via the tributaries of the Earth and thank whatever power is responsible, but the Griot thrives. Cissoko is here to soothe us, to offer praise to the heavens and to the ancestors - who ultimately are the ancestors of all of us.

For we are one.

"Griot" is launching a cross-Canada tour via Ryan Bruce Levey's Vagrant Films Releasing and Publicity. The film begins at the gorgeous Royal Theatre in Toronto - a perfect launch pad as it's still the one standalone cinema in the city with the most exquisite sound and picture quality. The film, miraculously, will be launched by a concert that features blaye Cissoko and Volker Goetze. For tickets and further information about the concerts and screenings across the country, please visit the official Griot website HERE.

BETWEEN BOUNDARIES - THE SHORT FILMS OF IGOR DRLJACA including: "The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar" (TIFF 2011 TOP 10, CSA - Canadian Screen Award Nominee for Best Short Documentary), "Battery Powered Duckling", "Mobile Dreams", "On a Lonely Drive" and "Woman in Purple" - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Igor Drljaca's Krivina is one of the most important films about identity and war made during the past 20 years. That it's a debut feature is even more extraordinary. Before Krivina (Klymkiw Film Corner TEN BEST LIST and Klymkiw's TOP TEN CANADIAN FILMS) begins its theatrical run at Toronto's Royal Cinema on January 25 via Stacey Donen's newly unveiled and more-necessary-than-ever film distribution company College Street Pictures, I hereby DEMAND that you RUN, DO NOT WALK to a screening of Between Boundaries: The Short Films Of Igor Drljaca playing at the Royal January 17, 2013 at 7pm. Tickets are available at the door for $5 smackers. It'll be the best fin you've parted with in a long time.

The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar ****
(2011) dir. Igor Drljaca

Mobile Dreams ****
(2008) dir. Igor Drljaca

On a Lonely Drive ****
(2009) dir. Igor Drljaca

Woman in Purple ****
(2010) dir. Igor Drljaca

Battery Powered Duckling ***
(2006) dir. Igor Drljaca

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Given the fact that our screens are inundated with American propaganda all connected in one way or the other with war - one great (Zero Dark Thirty), one neither here nor there (Lincoln), one mediocre (ARGO) and the latter two being ludicrously overrated - the appearance of Sarajevo-born Canadian filmmaker Igor Drljaca and his extraordinary work couldn't be coming at a better time.

Drljaca was a child during the Bosnian War of 1992 and fled to Canada with his family. Always artistically inclined, he studied film at Toronto's York University and created an impressive body of work prior to shooting his first feature Krivina.

Given his own personal experiences, it's no surprise that the work on display in this program of short films focuses upon the effects of war upon children - works that are filtered through memory and often presented with healthy dollops of actual footage of the war in Bosnia.

There is, of course, an astounding tradition of cinema that deals with children during wartime and in terms of exposing the utter idiocy of war, what always strikes me is how war affects the innocent - adults, yes - but children even more. Children somehow represent an eternal hope for the future and to see depictions of their innocence stripped from them by the greed and stupidity of people who should know better is heart-wrenching.

Some of the great works include Rene Clement's Forbidden Games with a tiny Brigitte Fossey searching for family, any family, after watching her own family gunned down, Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants, the autobiographical portrait of his tragically shortened friendship with a young Jewish boy and last, but not least, Steven Spielberg's greatest film, Empire of the Sun, the adaptation of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel which features a very young Christian Bale as a child who goes - quite literally - insane during the Japanese occupation of China.

Drljaca continues this tradition with his own unique style - a strange blend of Neo-realism with the sheer poetic power he shares with many Central and Eastern European filmmakers - most notably Alexander Dovzhenko and Sergei Paradjanov. Drljaca's work is infused with a purity, if you will, of poetic realism.

The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar is considered to be a documentary portrait of Drljaca's experiences during the outbreak of the Bosnian War, but it's crafted with such exquisite attention to narrative detail that until the final credits, I thought I had been watching an astounding recreation of home movie footage blending real video footage from the war.

It's not, but it might as well be, because the footage Drljaca uses plunges the picture into some mighty cool post-modernist territory.

The simple tale involves a young boy who receives a school assignment to paint a picture representing the coming of spring. He runs out of the proper paint and uses what he has. He's dissatisfied with his work because he fears the picture will now represent the Fall. He spends the entire Spring Break worrying about displeasing his teacher and receiving a poor mark.

And then, war strikes and the film veers into territory that will move you beyond words. There's one shot on the street after a massive shelling in the boy's neighbourhood that's as devastating as an early moment in Clement's Forbidden Games. Realizing that this is a documentary, using actual footage, it is an image that would have haunted me anyway. but knowing it's the real thing, puts it on another level altogether.

The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar is playing with four other Drljaca shorts.

Mobile Dreams features some of Drljaca's stunningly composed long takes in this profoundly moving tale of an old couple who fit each other like a glove in spite of their seeming non-communicative relationship. When the old man brings his wife a gift that will presumably keep them in touch, the inevitable amusingly and touchingly takes place.

On a Lonely Drive will rip your guts out. It depicts a lonely drive, indeed, just after a domestic altercation and, with tragic results.

Woman in Purple opens with a stunning shot of high rise buildings full of shell and bullet holes. It's post war and Drljaca follows the J.G. Ballard-like adventures of an orphaned boy who engages in criminal activity - seeking freedom through illicit means, but also struggling for dignity. Yet another perfect short that will knock you on your ass.

Battery Powered Duckling is a clever, ambitious dystopian SF drama. It's always engaging and while not quite as accomplished as the others, you'll recognize Drljaca's burgeoning style and wonder if a feature length version will ever exist.

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THE PATRON SAINTS - Review By Greg Klymkiw

"WHAT AM I DOING HERE?"

The
Patron
Saints
(2011) ****
dir. Brian M. Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky
Review
By Greg
Klymkiw


"What am I doing here? Please tell me." says the old woman. She wants to know why she isn't home with her mother. She wonders if she'll ever go home to be with her mother ever again. And then, "I don't know where I am. I don't know how I got here."

The old woman is in a nursing home, of course. She's not going home. She's there until she dies.

"All around this place are these hills with trees on them and they're so nice to look at," says a fat, seemingly punch-drunk old goodfella from the bed he never seems to leave. He's been institutionalized for most of his life - from foster homes to prison and now a nursing home. A bit of nature, even though it's in the distance, is just what the doctor ordered for a man whose only freedom were those ever-so brief moments when he held a gun in his massive fists while striding into liquor marts, convenience stores or banks to hold them up. At least, that's what we imagine.

The joy those distant hills give him is short-lived. The sentimental symbol of escape into the natural world yields slightly cynical and forced laughter. The hills, he explains, are really piles of garbage that could be stacked no higher and were covered over with sod and seed, resulting in trees sprouting to the heavens from mounds of filth.

"I believe in God. He wants me to lose a little more wright and He's going to get me up walking. I don't pray for nothing. I pray to get out of here." says the old goodfella. "God's got a plan for all of us. Though I'm really not sure what He's got planned for all of us in this nursing home."

His question is no doubt on the minds of most of the nursing home's residents - at least those who have something resembling their faculties. Looking at one resident, a blind, twisted, toothless and bed-ridden old woman, one can only guess what God's plan is for her. Spending a lifetime of rape and abuse at the hands of her brother, a brother who is still allowed supervised visits to the sister he brutalized, one can only imagine what plan God has for her?

And what, God forbid, does she dream about? What will be those final images flashing in her mind before she's enveloped in the darkness and light of death?

The Patron Saints is an unremittingly agonizing documentary film by Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky that focuses its lenses upon the residents of a nursing home for the aged. As harrowing as the experience is, the filmmakers employ a strange amalgam of fly-on-the-wall direct cinema techniques with a dash of cinéma vérité. In the former documentary style, the lives of the inmates are presented without narration, no questions, no overt manipulation and seemingly no intrusion on the part of the filmmakers. To the latter style, however, there are subtle, skillfully engineered aspects to the process in that one can recall nary a single shot that is not stunningly, gorgeously, sumptuously composed.

The filmmakers not only point their cameras in the direction of the inmates. We are shown the dedication and compassion of those who try to make the lives of these people better. And yet, for all these affirmations of man's kindness to man, the filmmakers punctuate many sequences with exterior images of airplanes flying endlessly over the facility, the weeds sprouting like an ocean around the institution itself and yes, those mounds of garbage in the distance, adorned with flora to hide the filth beneath.

And if we do get images of flight, of escape, they're presented from within the back of an ambulance, a motionless body strapped to a gurney, leaving its place of incarceration, its spirit hopefully journeying to some better place.

There's a strong sense that the camera, like those forests touching the skies whilst rooted within the filth of the landfill below, perform a similar service. In fact, I'd say the filmmakers provide a twofold service. The camera, through the eyes of the artists, captures the last days, weeks and/or months of this mass of forgotten humanity - sometimes with humour, but mostly through an unremitting sadness which, in direct cinema terms is completely and utterly unavoidable given the circumstances. Much as we might want to repress it, what the cameras expose is the reality of where ALL of our lives are headed, unless of course we mercifully die before. As life itself is dichotomous, so too is the reality as presented by the film. In a sense, the cameras provide these people, in spite of the aforementioned bleakness and whether they're aware of it or not, a voice and a presence in the outside world. Most importantly, though, the beauty and artistry of the compositions provides a kind of love and compassion - the eyes of the artists deliver a terrible beauty to these peoples' lives and in so doing, force us, the audience, to do the same.

No matter how dire and desperate the final days of these people are, it is finally cinema that speaks for them.

This is the power of movies and ultimately, thanks to the talent and sensitivity of the filmmakers, it is why The Patron Saints is one of the most haunting, moving, original and important documentary portraits of the elderly ever committed to film.

"The Patron Saints" is currently unspooling at Toronto's Royal Cinema via Vagrant Films and will roll out on a platform release prior to a variety of home entertainment formats. It's a big-screen experience. Intimacy on this level deserves more than watching it on a small screen.

A LITTLE BIT ZOMBIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Closing Gala Canadian Film Fest

A Little Bit Zombie (2012) dir. Casey Walker
Starring: Kristopher Turner, Crystal Lowe, Shawn Roberts, Kristen Hager, Emilie Ullerup and Stephen McHattie, George Buza, Robert Maillet

**1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Mixing horror with comedy is a noble enough tradition. An American Werewolf in London, Shaun of the Dead and Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn have become modern classics of this winning hybrid, but what makes them great is that the emphasis is always on horror and the comedy elements stem naturally from the drama. Even Sam Raimi's sequel/remake to his decidedly serious The Evil Dead manages to adhere to this with several clever Looney Tunes homages doubling as whacko POVs whilst Bruce Campbell's Ash is increasingly infused with terror and paranoia.

A Little Bit Zombie breaks this rule, but not too successfully. It's first and foremost a comedy, but as such, seems to just miss the boat on the laughs. I think the problem is that for much of the film, director Casey Walker tries too hard to make it funny. A lot of the performances and comic set-pieces are played broadly to the point of annoyance and seem just plain juvenile. That said, I watched it with my 11-year-old daughter and she laughed all the way through it. Best of all, for her, she was never scared and enjoyed all the jokey violence.

She is, however, 11-years-old.

I ultimately think the movie would have genuinely been so much funnier and possibly even deliciously creepy if Walker had pitched things much straighter. There's frankly an overabundance of "Hey Ma, look at me, I'm funny" mugging amongst a few of the actors.

The movie, however, is paced like shit through a goose and the screenplay is full of so many clever ideas that it still manages to be entertaining enough for a die-hard horror and dark comedy fan like myself. I just wish I didn't have to groan all through the picture - lamenting how one great idea after another kept hitting the floor like lead balloons due to the overwrought pitch of the direction.

It's a great story, though.

Two couples drive to a remote cabin in cottage country to plan the upcoming nuptials of Steve (Kristopher Turner) and Tina (Crystal Lowe). Steve's sister Sarah (Kristin Hager) is a smart, unpretentious lassie and detests her soon-to-be-sister-in-law's prissy consumerist girlie-girl nattering and attitudes. Craig (Shawn Roberts) is both Steve's best friend and Sarah's husband. He's an amiable, dimwitted beefcake with a heart of gold.

When Steve is bitten by an especially aggressive mosquito, his body temperature starts to plummet and no matter what he eats, he immediately barfs it up. Once he starts getting an overwhelming craving for brains, we know trouble is just around the corner.

And yes, just around the corner in the same cottage country region, the grizzled, trigger-happy Max (Stephen McHattie) and the young, brilliant, babe-o-licious scientist Penelope (Emile Ullerup) are deep in the woods, tracking down zombies via some mysterious orb that detects the undead. Max just wants to splatter zombie brain with his shotgun. Penelope is searching for a cure to the zombie disease.

We follow the adventures of both parties until the inevitable showdown.

What's especially cool about the script by Trevor Martin and Christopher Bond is the unique take on Steve's turn to zombie-dom. Steve is still Steve. He just wants to eat brains. That's all. Oh, and he has no pulse. Some of the funniest ideas involve the trio of non-zombies trying to find ways of dealing with Steve's affliction. Even potentially funnier is how the prissy Tina is adamant that the wedding will go as planned.

I say "potentially" because everything that should elicit laughs pretty much doesn't. One is constantly amused with all the cleverly funny ideas, but most of the gags miss their mark.

McHattie is suitably over-the-top, overplaying within the context of the character he's rendering. Max is supposed to be bigger-than-life. Many of the other characters shouldn't be. I just wish someone had told this to Crystal Lowe, for example, who amongst the two beleaguered couples is so broad, that her shrill, nasty harping out-harridans even the most vile harridans we've come to know and love in the movies (notably many of the villainous harpies in the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane-styled thrillers of the early-to-mid-60s).

Even the likeable presence of Kristopher Turner as Steve gets sucked into the realm of the overwrought. When he underplays, he's terrific, but when he pushes the envelope, someone needed to keep him reined in. Shawn Roberts's bigger qualities suit his character and he's genuinely funny. Finally, it is up to Kristen Hagerman and Emile Ullerup to maintain the best balance and deliver consistently enjoyable performances by playing the crazy material straight and subsequently eliciting considerable laughs.

While there are numerous exigencies of production that can contribute to elements being less than perfect, there are so many elements that are right with the picture that I made a point of seeing it twice to pinpoint why it is that it falls short.

It has a clever script (that could have easily been interpreted closer in tone to the aforementioned classic horror pictures with comic elements), there are some genuinely on-the-money performances (and even those that fall short are not without some sporadic merit), the production value is genuinely high and we seldom see the seams of the picture's obvious low budget, the effects are skillfully and imaginatively cheesy in all the right ways, the film is well photographed and finally, the superb editing by Michael Mason addresses the elements of both pace and narrative thrust with occasional cuts of considerable aplomb.

At the end of the day, much of the success or lack thereof, finally must be attributed to the direction. Even on a first viewing, one of the things that bothered me was how so many of the dialogue scenes were shot with endless one-ers and most annoyingly the constant reliance on dirty-over shots. I longed for good master shots and solid two-shots.

There's an early scene where the couples are driving at night in their car. Much of the dialogue is between Steve and Tina in the front seat while Craig and Sarah sleep in the back. Given that this is a long dialogue scene, and especially given that much, if not all of it is rendered in the old reliable poor man's process to makes it seem like the car is actually moving, I simply had no idea why much of the conversation was not composed with a nice two shot of the couple so that their dialogue could play out in a series of longer takes and only when necessary would there be a punch-in on a oner, closeup or dirty-over.

Instead, we seemed to be cutting on virtually every line of dialogue and no nice master two-shot carrying the bulk of the scene. On a first viewing, I chose to be charitable and think that maybe the masters existed, but that the performances could not sustain that approach and it was up to the editor to save the scene and performances by using the remaining camera-jockeyed coverage.

But then, there occurred a lengthy dialogue scene on the shore of the lake and the entire conversation seemed comprised of an identical approach when clearly a much more interesting and effective way to shoot it would have been a complete reverse angle to allow for longer takes in two-shot and only occasional dirty overs, but from the front, which still could have include the lake and surrounding wilderness.

To keep the camera always behind the actors might have worked if there had been a simple wide master, followed by a few dirty overs from behind and then gradually working into the reverse angle so we could actually see the actors dead-on and let good chunks of the scene play in much longer takes.

This kind of dull, though vaguely competent TV-like approach to covering the dialogue, coupled with so much of the great script being pitched far too high suggested that direction was indeed the one primary aspect of what kept A Little Bit Zombie from being more than mildly engaging.

All this said, when I do the math on the picture, it still managed to provide enough entertainment value - even for jaded genre geeks.

So, without further delay, let's do the math:

A Zombie mosquito.

First-rate zombie head explosions and general zombie carnage.

Stephen (God) McHattie.

Some farting.

More vomiting and regurgitation than I've ever seen in one movie.

3 Babes (1 ultra babe, 1 mega babe, 1 nasty babe).

1 manly, good-humoured hunk.

1 fey, sensitive lad for those so inclined.

Good natured, though mild homophobic homo humour.

Biting into a bunny rabbit's head.

Bunny rabbit brain eating.

White Trash Butcher who is a brain gourmand (courtesy of George Buza).

"Clinking" squirrel brains together as "bottoms up" toast.

WWF wrestling maestro Robert Maillet.

A slam-bang CAT-FIGHT twixt Ultra Babe and Nasty Babe.

Ultra Babe and Nasty Babe dolling up like hookers to seduce Robert Maillet.

Slurping brains out of someone's head with a straw.

A final 10 minutes that's so good, it makes up for all the movie's flaws.

And yes, allow me to reiterate - babes.

The sum total: If the above appeals to you - GO FOR IT!

You can, ultimately, do a lot worse than a zombie comedy that's not as funny as it really should be.

"A Little Bit Zombie" is the Closing Night Gala of the Canadian Film Fest at the Royal Theatre in Toronto. For more information, visit the Festival website HERE.

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