Motherhood, Mass Resistance And Children Of Struggle

The Chilean Building [El Edificio De Los Chilenos]

 For women who commit their lives to mass struggle, there is always a choice that men never have to make. Namely to sacrifice the option of motherhood for revolutionary struggle.

But for many of the young women who joined the Revolutionary Left Movement [MIR, Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria] coalition in Chile to rise up against the 1973 bloody repressive coup by General Augusto Pinochet against the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, the choice did not exist.

And as fiercely committed young mothers already fugitives deep into the revolutionary resistance, they were not only torn between the political and personal in ways men never confront. But the parents of these offspring were also faced with the ruthless policy of the CIA-backed Pinochet regime of engaging in the kidnapping of their children as a negotiation tactic to force the surrender of these hunted revolutionaries. Along with the now well documented horrific secret adoptions of those children of the many subsequently slaughtered political martyrs in question.

And the documentary The Chilean Building [El Edificio De Los Chilenos] not only resurrects the simultaneous heartbreaking and inspiring buried history of those children hidden away in other countries by their parents for their safety. But achieves a rare intensity as well, chronicling that turbulent time. Because the filmmaker Macarena Aguilo, just happens to be one of those children back then, who surmounted the enormous challenges of that time.

Kidnapped and disappeared by the CIA when just a preschooler as an unsuccessful bargaining chip to force the surrender of her father in hiding, Macarena was released a month later. But fearful for her future, her father arranged for Macarena to be reunited with her mother already in exile in France. And eventually Macarena joined scores of other politically at-risk Chilean children at a commune set up for them in Havana. Which came to be known as the Chilean Building.

Winner of the Best Documentary at the New York International Latino Film Festival last year, The Chilean Building is an alternately euphoric and solemn collective recollection by many of those young spunky survivors and their parents and fellow comrade guardians, of the 'tremendous invitation' that welcomed them in Cuba. And the unique experience of a society where 'everything Cuba does is for everyone,' and every house belongs to everybody,' in 'a good place for children, because everyone loves them.'

Yet at the same time, the emotionally tragic truth for which neither the children nor parents have been able to achieve closure to this day. Namely, the utopian political dream tasted in Cuba - of a society dissociated from 'consumption, individualism and competition for money.' But necessitating the enormous personal sacrifices of those Chilean parents and children, that in the end left all their lives personally damaged, but bereft of an anticipated legacy that has never been realized in Chile.

The Chilean Building is an impassioned recollection of intimate and collective memory, through difficult testimony, and heartbroken yet politically resolute letters written by parents to their children from afar through those years, and the grown children today who sublimate those traumatic feelings through healing art. Along with moments of tender humor, as when one of them recalls with delight as an only child, being suddenly surrounded by sixty new siblings. And another expressing relief - perhaps regarding his own anticipation of parenthood in a very different, disillusioning world in Chile today - that in the Chilean Building in Cuba, 'I didn't have television to screw up my head.'

And a mother's letter in particular written back then, magnifies and solidifies the sustained resilience of Macarena and those other young hearts and minds:

'Tomorrow you shall begin a path with many other children, and you'll have the loving hands of our comrades to carry you forward. If there's anything I wanted to give you and learn with you, it is to live intensely, to love with your eyes. With a desire to feel and to always move forward, trying to stay true to what we've said. And if I leave you today, it's because that small, honest commitment I gave you urges many of us, hopefully thousands, to go struggle with our comrades in Chile...And that victory shall be for you, for all the children of Chile.'

And no matter what the outcome, in a brokenhearted parent's explanation for the hopefully comprehending mind of a child, it was about a time of 'such monumental craziness, but we tried to do it well. We tried to do everything with our hearts.'

Candid and ironic, replete with raw feelings yet never truly defeatist, The Chilean Building vividly poses solemn questions about the price of struggle, but without ever quite relinquishing political hope. And as one can glean in tentative but miraculous ways as legacy, beyond the scope of this movie, such as in the case of Spanish judge, lawyer, and international jurist, Baltasar Garzón. Who leads the legal team representing Wikileaks and Julian Assange, currently seeking political asylum holed up for months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fighting anticipated US prosecution.

Garzón in fact, revolutionized the international justice system two decades ago by issuing an arrest warrant for  Pinochet for crimes against humanity in Chile. For which Pinochet was never in fact brought to justice, but Garzón's actions spearheaded the fight against such impunity in Latin America, and the rest of the world.

The Chilean Building is being released theatrically at The Maysles Cinema in NYC, August 13th through 19th - a Harlem theater devoted to the recognition of documentary film. More information is online at:

Magic-lantern-films.com/the-chilean-building
Mayslesinstitute.org

Prairie Miller

The Cannes Film Festival Reports

"Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?" - Ernest Hemingway 

*LISTEN TO CANNES CLOSING NIGHT CEREMONY REPORT

Ken Loach, upon winning the Jury Prize at Cannes, for a drama about the struggles of unemployed Glasgow youth: This award signifies that cinema "is not just entertainment, it shows us who we are." 

In the first of a series of on location reports, Annette Insdorf is our correspondent at this year's Cannes Film Festival 2012. We are honored to feature her coverage, which will also include breaking news announcing the winners at the end of the Festival.

Annette Insdorf returns to the Cannes Film Festival, providing coverage of the films and events, May 16-27th. Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University, and author of the recently-published Philip Kaufman, she tells us about the most anticipated offerings of the world's most celebrated film festival-from American selections Hemingway & Gellhorn, Moonrise Kingdom and Lawless to European titles from masters Bernardo Bertolucci, Alain Resnais, Michael Haneke and Jacques Audiard. She gives a preview of Sean Penn's benefit for Haiti; the large number of documentaries in the Official Selection; and the question of female representation.

LISTEN TO CANNES FILM FESTIVAL REPORT HERE

            Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn


"I hated Vietnam the most, because I felt personally responsible. It was my own country doing this abomination. I am talking about what was done in South Vietnam to the people whom we, supposedly, had come to save. I'm seeing napalmed children in the hospital, seeing old women with a piece of white sulphur burning away inside of them, seeing the destroyed villages, seeing people dropping of hunger and dying in the streets. My complete horror remains with me as a source of grief and anger and shame that surpasses all the others."

Martha Gellhorn, Atlantic Monthly
 

Professor Insdorf is an internationally renowned educator, and her works are hailed as the definitive texts on their subjects. She has also been a jury member of numerous international film festivals. Professor Insdorf is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle

Reporting from Cannes for over a quarter century, Annette Insdorf previously co-anchored the Festival with Roger Ebert for Bravo and The Independent Film Channel. Her knowledge and insight about cinema, past and present, is a veritable treasure trove of film history and culture. And we're extremely proud to have her as our correspondent reporting from Cannes again this year.

 Stay tuned for continuing features of Arts Express: Expression In The Arts. Airing On WBAI Radio's Pacifica Network and Affiliate Stations. And if you'd like to Express yourself too, you can write to: ArtsExpressradio@gmail.com

READ CANNES FILM FESTIVAL ON LOCATION REPORT HERE

Girls: Sex And The City In A Sea Of Uncertainty

By Winnie Bonelli
 
“Sex and the City” was a fantasy, clothed in designer rags, wealthy boyfriends, and high-profiled, lucrative careers. Taking off the rose colored glasses, HBO’s Girls introduces viewers to an entirely different breed of post-college graduate, one more akin to present reality, on Sunday at 10:30 p.m.
          
Hannah and her trio of best friends are floundering in a sea of uncertainty. Their career goals are battered by economical rough times and a scarcity of job opportunities. And instead of Mr. Big, Hannah’s “friend with benefits” is an eccentric wannabe actor (Adam Driver), who won’t answer her texts, until she’s standing underneath her window.. 
 
Even for viewers who can’t identify with Hannah’s dilemmas, humiliations, and sometimes-bad choices, Girls is a slice of life that generously delivers an equal portion of comedy and angst, laced with graphic sex scenes that bypass filmdom’s discretionary gimmicks.
        
Now meet Hannah’s alter ego – creator/star/writer/director Lena Dunham. Disarmingly real, Dunham still seems a bit befuddled by the attention notoriety brings.
        
Candid in her answers and appearing younger than her 24 years, Dunham confessed, “It’s (Girls) is closely based on my own experience of getting out of college in 2008 and not having a sense of whether I would ever get to do the thing I wanted to do, creative writing, and I was really miserable.

“I was working in a baby clothes store and just excited that I got free cookies in the afternoon. It was a really kind of confusing, frustrating time, and I saw a lot of my friends going through the same thing,” said Dunham, who was supplementing her income by babysitting.

And yes, the Manhattan-born, Brooklyn-reared actress concedes that she grew up watching Sex and the City. Dunham even bought into the propaganda that if she moved to Manhattan she’d have “a really elegant boyfriend and a really incredible shoe closet.” What greeted her instead was a harsh case of reality.

Following that sage advice of writing about what one knows best, the Oberlin College graduate Dunham penned an autobiographic screenplay titled Tiny Furniture. Raised $25,000 by begging and borrowing from family members and friends, with the exception of her grandmother. She continued,

“I was working with a great group of kids, who had gone to NYU. Film kids are really scrappy and sort of have this understanding of how to make a movie by the skin of their teeth. You feel like you have taken a ship hostage, like ‘Everyone’s coming with me,” she laughed. Artist/photographer Laurie Simmons was one of those “hostages” portraying Lena’s mother both on screen and in real life.

Tiny Furniture went on to become the film festival circuit’s darling and pivoted Dunham to indie icon status. It also attracted the attention of Judd Apatow, whose features credits include The Bridemaids. Apatow and Dunham’s friend, Jenni Konner, are now executive producers for Girls.

A little too short and pear-shaped to fit the stereotypical image of a starlet, Dunham swears she quit acting at age 11 after being cast as a bouncing ball in Alice in Wonderland. That changed when she started writing screenplays and the characters were essentially versions of herself. Then she rationed, “I don’t know who else is gonna want to do this. I guess I’ll play it.”

Filming Girls brought her face-to-face with the truth. “I realized that I do get something out of acting that I don’t get out of the rest of the process. It’s cathartic. It’s connected. It’s an adrenaline rush,” she admitted.

So what was grandma’s reaction when she finally saw Tiny Furniture and the first three episodes of Girls?  “My mom said, ‘Dottie,’ she’s like 93, ‘What do you think of the sex scenes?’ She went, ‘Oh, you know, that’s just what they do these days.”

Winnie Bonelli writes for Life & Style Magazine, The Independent [Hamptons], New Jersey Monthly and The Herald News. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

WFCC On The Air: Lisa Collins Hosts Chicken & Egg Pictures Radio Roundtable

Arts Express Radio: Sexually Speaking Edition

**Chicken & Egg Pictures Radio Roundtable: What's new and different in women's voices on screen. Guest host Lisa Collins, director of the black cinema icon Oscar Micheaux work in progress documentary, Oscar's Comeback, moderates.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Bullhead: A conversation with Belgian director Michael Roskam about his psychological thriller delving into masculinity self-esteem issues, toxic testosterone cocktails, Occupy Brussels uprising of firefighters packing hoses, and something called the underground bovine hormone mafia.

**Julian Assange infiltrates the Murdoch Media Empire: Or at least phones in as himself, to The Simpsons 500th episode Anniversary Special on the Fox Channel.

Stay tuned for continuing features of Arts Express: Expression In The Arts. Airing On WBAI Radio's Pacifica Network and Affiliate Stations, including WPRR: Public Reality Radio. And if you'd like to Express yourself too, you can write to: ArtsExpressradio@gmail.com

Lisa Collins is an independent filmmaker and journalist, and she is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle. Lisa was named by Filmmaker Magazine: 'One of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.' She was invited to workshop her feature-length script, The Grass Is Greener at the Sundance Writers, Filmmakers and Producers Labs, respectively. The project was also invited to participate in the IFFM / IFP’s No Borders Feature Project program.

Lisa is currently in post-production with her feature documentary, Oscar's Comeback, in which 2 worlds collide at a unique annual festival in all-white town that celebrates their black native son, early 1900s homesteader-turned-film-pioneer, Oscar Micheaux. Controversial and largely forgotten, Micheaux is known to some as the Godfather of Independent Cinema. In addition to receiving support and mentorship from prestigious organization, Oscar's Comeback is proud to have been awarded repeated support from Chicken & Egg Pictures, in the form of an I Believe In You grant.

With her film partner, Mark Schwartzburt, Lisa continues fundraising and is looking forward to completing their film in fall 2012. You can check out and Oscar's Comeback on Facebook.

Women Film Critics Circle On The Air: Jan Huttner Disses The Oscars

**Arts Express: The Politics Of The Oscars. Hot Pink Pen movie critic Jan Lisa Huttner phones in to Arts Express from Chicago with the Oscar Blues, and rants about the upcoming Academy Awards. Jan also weighs in on movie review haikus; Tolstoy, Madame Bovary, and Jane Eyre; pen names; a tale of three film critic personas she harbors; what in the world is Swan Day; and what's up with male movie reviewers behind critic closed doors.
 
LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

Jan Lisa Huttner is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle and the Chicago Film Critics Association. She also writes at The Hot Pink Pen, Womenarts.org and the critic dating guide Films42.com, Jan is the author of the new book, Penny's Picks: 50 Movies By Women Filmmakers.