CHOP SHOP

When it comes to film subgenres, one of the more peculiar (to me, at least) has to do with children in poverty. International in scope and dubbed the transglobal children's street film by at least one person, it includes such harrowing works as Los Olvidados (Mexico) and Pixote and City of God (Brazil), as well as the comparatively prettified Salaam Bombay (India). Now director Ramin Bahrani and his co-screenwriter Bahareh Azimi have added another outstanding work to the subgenre—and their look at children in poverty is set close to home in Willets Point, Queens, the threatened "Iron Triangle" industrial zone right by Shea Stadium and LaGuardia Airport.

Chop Shop, poetic and touching like Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, is currently running at the Film Forum, where Bahrani will hold Q&As at the 8 pm screenings tonight and tomorrow night. I strongly recommend seeing this movie, which draws on young local talents Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzales in the lead roles and also features a strong supporting cast including Ahmad Razvi. Chop Shop's story of how siblings Alejandro and Isamar (pictured) fare in this world is thoroughly absorbing. The Willets Point setting, virtually a character in itself, reminded me of locales in the documentary Manufactured Landscapes as well as takes on capitalism in Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn and Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.

Come to think of it, I'd like to know how the film has gone over in Willets Point.

Here Lisa Katzman interviews Bahrani. And here's a blog entry by Gina Telaroli.



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MY BROTHER'S WEDDING

What a great year it's turning out to be for director Charles Burnett and filmgoers who appreciate his work. First came the long-running revival of Killer of Sheep, and now his previously unreleased My Brother's Wedding is at the IFC Center. But hurry up: It's supposed to close Thursday, with Burnett scheduled to appear at two Wednesday evening screenings.

Like Killer of Sheep, My Brother's Wedding spends time with a number of characters situated in a beaten down African American community. The dialogue/image ratio is more conventional, but it still offers a set of fascinating and engaging scenes that add up to an artfully told tale.

The tale of My Brother's Wedding as a movie is a painful showbiz story. Burnett hadn't finished it when his producers screened a version at New Directors/New Films in 1984...critic Janet Maslin's write-up in The New York Times was mixed but not without some harshness...apparently that was enough to scare off distributors and leave My Brother's Wedding in cinema limbo until very recently, when Burnett was able to put some finishing edits on the movie and earn A. O. Scott's okay in the Times.

My Brother's Wedding is still uneven, but the goodness of it prevails. I recommend seeing the movie and letting it unfold without knowing much about it, so think twice before reading the old Times review and the new Times review if you haven't seen My Brother's Wedding first.

KILLER OF SHEEP. The best student film ever made? Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977) must be one of the top contenders. Its repertory "revival" (after being largely unavailable for years due in part to soundtrack permission issues) takes place on Friday at the IFC Center--fittingly, it overlaps with this season's New Director/New Films series (with the DVD scheduled for November 13, 2007). The screening schedule for Austin, DC, and elsewhere can be found here.

Shot on a low budget in Watts and made as a UCLA MFA thesis film, this black-and-white movie spends about 80 minutes depicting life in an economically depressed American community where the kids are at play but the adults seem overburdened by their bleak milieu.

Burnett's photography carries the film. Watching Killer of Sheep is like viewing a set of intimate community photos (by, say, Diane Arbus and Gordon Parks) magically imbued with sound and motion.

Dialogue is sparse, but the soundtrack enriches the experience in surprising ways. An outstanding example is the use of the Paul Robeson version of "The House I Live In." The song is widely known as a patriotic paean to diversity and tolerance, but here it seems to comment regretfully on the shabby conditions of the houses the characters live in.

I was surprised by how some aspects of the film reminded me of David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977)--which, I realized, was made at about the same time. The two films--very, very different in mood--turn out to have much more in common than I would have suspected. And now I notice that J. Hoberman writes, "In retrospect, it can be seen that the two great independent features of the late '70s were Killer of Sheep and Eraserhead." Hoberman also notes, as I did, that "Language police should note that the zesty vernacular includes ample use of the N-word."

Here is the trailer for the re-release of Killer of Sheep.



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Here is a clip with "After the Love Has Gone" [Crap! It's actually "Reasons"!] by Earth, Wind & Fire.



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Here is a short trailer for Eraserhead.



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And here is the Oscar-winning Frank Sinatra version of "The House I Live In." The song is by Abel Meeropol (using the pseudonym Lewis Allan), writer of "Strange Fruit." Bear with the video--and note that the group of kids doesn't seem to be very diverse from an ethnic point of view. That kind of limited message wasn't, apparently, what Meeropol had in mind.



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