In the Dark Reviews

Editor's note: This is the second of two parts. The first appeared in the Sept. 26 edition of the Journal.

As the Journal runs my remaining reviews from this year's Port Townsend Film Festival, I just want to thank my readers for caring about films.

We watch movies about everything from the mundane to the fantastical, to question and make sense of ourselves and our existences.

Who we see on the screen is who we are, and their stories are our own.

Which is why, for yet another year, I spent a weekend sacrificing sleep to broaden my horizons, and hopefully bring you all along for the ride.

Day 3: Sept. 21 (continued from last week)

'GONDOLA'

Robert Zenk wrote "Parting Out," the short film that preceded the feature-length "Gondola," and after the two films' shared Saturday afternoon screening, he noted that both narratives depict pairings of women "fighting for love" through antiquated transportation technology.

While "Parting Out" follows a study-in-contrasts lesbian couple as they raid a scrapyard for classic car replacement parts, "Gondola" wordlessly chronicles the mutual affection that develops between two young women working as cable car conductors, for a route that connects the mountains above a rural European village nestled in the valley that lies between them.

As their gondolas pass each other every half-hour, our irrepressible heroines find creative ways to entertain, then express their emerging feelings for each other, ranging from rounds of remote chess to music.

Without dialogue, German filmmaker Veit Helmer concocts some elaborately whimsical visual gags to represent the coworkers' playful rivalry as each one tries to top the other's outfits, performances and cable car decorations, before the pair's courtship wraps up to the strains of a diegetic love song with no lyrics, but plenty of unorthodox musical instruments.

"Gondola" is a complete piece, but Zenk teased "Parting Out" as a scene from a larger story, one which he'd still like to see made into its own onscreen work.

Since September is National Suicide Awareness Month, Zenk took pride in portraying the formerly suicidal half of his fictional couple in a manner that respected her personal strength, in addition to not grounding the lesbian couple in clichéd stereotypes.

'PORCELAIN WAR'

"Porcelain War" won this year's Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize, and it's the best of the well-executed slate of films I saw during Day 3 of the Port Townsend Film Festival.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Slava Leontyev sculpted porcelain figurines that were then painted by his wife, Anya Stasenko.

While they've continued creating porcelain art since, they've also enlisted in the Ukrainian defense, with Slava serving as a firearms instructor for his fellow civilians-turned-soldiers.

The rich imagery of "Porcelain War" is bittersweet, since we see the pastoral countryside, whose wildlife has inspired so much of Slava and Anya's cheery art, interspersed with war-torn cityscapes.

Likewise, when animators bring Anya's static illustrations to life, those colorful animations recount how the couple's once-idyllic lifestyle was wiped away by violence.

The subjects of this documentary doubled as its cinematographers, capturing the tragic history being made all around them, as Slava's friend, Andrey Stefanov, sent his wife and daughters away for their safety, forcing Andrey to watch his daughters grow up remotely through video.

On the front lines, Slava shot footage of the combat, rather than a weapon, after telling the troops he trains that weapons are ugly tools that serve an even uglier purpose, even as he laments their current necessity for his countrymen to defend their freedom and their culture.

Even after filming those battles, Slava told Saturday evening's screening audience that he hoped "Porcelain War" would attest to "beauty, and not evil."

Day 4: Sept. 22

'MAYA AND THE WAVE'

Brazilian big-wave surfer Maya Gabeira started surfing at 13 and surfing competitively at 15, before becoming a professional surfer at 17, in 2004, and the world's top female big-wave surfer shortly afterward, as she surfed what was then the biggest wave ever by a woman, in 2009.

The silver lining is that Gabeira's career subsequently crashed and burned when she was young enough to bounce back, as chronicled in "Maya and the Wave," which fast-forwards through Gabeira's celebrity honeymoon of winning an ESPY and Teen Choice awards, to focus on the slump that followed her life-threatening 2013 wipeout on a massive wave in Nazaré, Portugal.

While Gabeira returned to Nazaré in 2018, and resumed setting surfing records, "Maya and the Wave" delves into the false starts, punishing training, chronic pain and the psychological toll of the intervening five years of recovery attempts, which cost her the Red Bull brand as a sponsor.

Even after Gabeira returns to surfing by notching greater accomplishments on her belt than ever before, the sport's official gatekeepers passively neglect to acknowledge those achievements, until Gabeira asks her online fanbase to call for action.

This silent institutional sexism was preceded by critics in the media who were outspoken about Gabeira's performance shortfalls, with more vitriol than they reserved for her male peers in the surfing field.

Gabeira is appealing because she possesses the strength to admit her fears, and this film's aquatic cinematography treats viewers to immediately proximate thrill-rides.

'STORY AND PICTURES BY'

The short film "If You Give a Beach a Bottle" employs sketchbook illustrations to expand on the swath of plastic pollution's effects on our planet's waters, while still affording audiences a note of optimism, if they take action.

This short's presentation leavened the gravity of its subject, but it remained only tenuously connected to "Story and Pictures By," the feature-length film that followed it on Sunday, which interviewed various authors and artists who create children's picture books.

Inspired by a New York Times article declaring the storybook genre to be "dead," "Story and Pictures By" correctly counter-asserts storybooks' enduring relevance, in part because of the powerful representation such books provide to kids who might not otherwise encounter their own perspectives in print.

Asian and Native American storytellers now working in the field recall ethnic stereotypes that made them cringe in their own storybooks as kids, while the film recounts how children's picture books began including more diverse cultural viewpoints during the 1960s and 1970s, ranging from divorced parents to urban and minority families.

We even see Mexican-American writer and illustrator Yuyi Morales attempt to assure modern immigrant children they shouldn't feel ashamed of their heritage.

Even books such as "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" offer children who misbehave, or make mistakes, comfort in knowing they're not alone.

As one children's picture book creator quite rightly put it, their job is to offer kids hope.

'FARMING WHILE BLACK'

Married producers Mark Decena and Liz Lupino Decena adapted African-American farmer and educator Leah Penniman's 2016 book, "Farming While Black," into a feature-length documentary because, in Mark's words, it touched upon "land justice, social justice and food justice."

Mark Decena also directed this film, which alternates between urban and rural Black farmers over the course of three to four years of changing seasons, as they turn to agriculture to revitalize existing communities within city neighborhoods, and to foster agrarian collectives in the countryside.

Penniman herself - who co-founded Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York - stars among this film's primary subjects, and challenges viewers to reevaluate their perspectives, when she asserts that "food deserts" of scarcity should be called "food apartheid" instead.

Penniman has noted that deserts are naturally occurring ecosystems, whereas she identified the systemic exclusion of BIPOC from certain neighborhoods as leading to ZIP codes with high poverty and no nearby grocery stores.

Pennington and her fellow Black farmers have found fellowship and opportunities by sharing their skills and resources among each other, and strive to ensure their collectives remain sustainable by seeking to include new students and members.

Near the end of "Farming While Black," we're shown how this spirit of partnership can lead to an occasionally festive atmosphere among such collectives, but as the Black farmers themselves remind us, systemic discrimination against their efforts have not diminished as much as they've become more multifaceted.

I'd welcome more onscreen explorations of "Afro-Indigenous" farming practices.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]