Author: BRWC

The Young Fan: BRWC Raindance Review. By Naseem Ally.

The Young Fan is a 2018 Italian film ‘supposedly’ based on a true story. From the first few minutes of the film, it’s pretty much established that this is purely satire. It’s screening at the 2019 Raindance Film Festival. 

Premise

It revolves around Mr.Gianni, a graphic novelist who pitches an adult film that he’s looking to wow critics with, come festival season.

To Gianni’s disappointment, this enthusiasm is not reciprocated. The pitch is turned down, forcing him to storm out and assemble a team to bring his vision to reality. 

His pitch is comical in the style of Sacha Baron Cohen’s character ‘Bruno’. I wonder if Gianni’s castmate was able to hold it together during the shooting of that scene. It’s hilarious.

With the failed pitch Gianni hitchhikes across Italy with his friends, who become his makeshift sound and camera operators. 

After numerous sways of the camera, failed attempts at getting the audio levels right in an open field and shouting at a bystander to get out of the shot, Gianni’s filmmaking attempt comes to a halt. 

After receiving an anonymous letter posted on Facebook, in support, this rejuvenates Gianni and he decides to go full throttle with his film. 

With this new lease of life, he even goes as far as meeting with a graphologist to find out the meaning of the letter penned to him.

Cast

Mr.Gianni is best described as a wacky version of the documentary maker Louis Theroux. From an alternate universe. Expect a ton of expression with crude Italian humour sprinkled throughout. His frantic personality is appropriate for this satire. At times though, it felt over the top and didn’t move the narrative forward.

The character who was the glue in this film was the quirky and out of place Davide. As the makeshift sound guy, his humorous one-liners hit at the right time, every time. It was like watching an Italian Zach Galifianakis. 

Even with Davide’s contribution, it wasn’t enough to hold this film together. At points, it felt weak with no real objective.  It was somewhat of a struggling attempt at putting a spin on cult comedy films of the past. Films like ‘Due Date’, ‘EuroTrip’ and ‘Knocked Up’ come to mind.

The influence of ‘The Office’ is evident with the constant panning of the camera between Gianni and Davide. I appreciated the mockumentary style of cinematography. Above all, this film lacked structure which left many gaps.

Closing Thoughts

In Italian fashion, it’s very expressive and boisterous. However, it feels overwhelming with too much going on too quickly.

Constantly, jumping from scene to scene. Davide is the glimmer of hope in this film. His comedic timing helped to fill in the awkward moments where you say to yourself ‘what just happened?’ 

If it was well thought out and given better direction, it would have been much more of a cohesive film.

To put it in Italian, it needed to have a tidbit less ‘passione’ and more ‘direzione’. That’s Italian for direction by the way. 

Nonetheless, if you are going to Raindance ‘The Young Fan’ might be worth a watch.

Everybody Flies Kind of Made Me Want to Quit Flying. By Brandon Topp.

Doesn’t it feel like every industry fueled by major corporations hides mountains of scandal and moral corruption from its consumers? Everybody Flies is a crisp and thoroughly educational film on the toxicity of the air on commercial flights. Taking time to watch will definitely leave you feeling well informed on the injustice, and all sorts of frustrated with the world at large. 

What Everybody Flies Is All About

Essentially, the film exposes how the air passengers breathe when flying is contaminated by chemicals from the jet’s oil. These substances have infected staggering numbers of pilots, flight attendants, and passengers with a variety of illnesses. According to the film, everybody who flies breathes in these toxins, but some of us react harsher, and some flights produce more toxic air than others. 

Retired pilot, clean-air activist, and filmmaker Tristan Loraine directed and starred in the documentary alongside frequent collaborator Beth Moran. Through well-researched breakdowns and stories, the filmmakers paint a picture that scratches a familiar nerve, while also presenting information on a scandal most of us aren’t privy to.

Tales Of Contaminated Flyers

In an effective and sometimes exhausting approach, Loraine and Moran spend much of the documentary interviewing pilots, attendants, and passengers with stories of how toxic air on planes was detrimental to their lives. 

There are numerous reports that reflect on startling experiences like overexposed pilots becoming paralyzed in the air, flight attendants blacking out mid-flight and coming to hours later in the airport, and passengers with a variety of lingering health problems from flights. Many of these accounts also feature decades-long legal battles, and a major, general lack of empathy or responsibility from major entities in the aviation industry including British Airways, and the FAA. 

One of the subjects sharing their story was director Tristan Loraine, who retired from being a pilot in March 2006. When he stopped flying, TCP—tricresyl phosphate, a central toxin often found in the air of airliners—was present in his blood, and he was experiencing numbness in his hands, chronic chest infections, as well as chemical blisters. 

Tristan Loraine is an Exceptional Activist

Loraine didn’t let this stop him from being a productive member of society, but instead used it to fuel the next chapter of his life. Since flying, Loraine has spearheaded a growing movement of activists who relentlessly challenge the aviation industry to address this issue. 

In addition to making this film, Loraine has also produced another documentary named Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines. He’s also performed secret sample tests on aircrafts to attain scientific proof otherwise suppressed by the aviation industry, and organized the first conference on the topic—The Aircraft Cabin Air Conference.

If You Haven’t Yet, It’s Time To Go Watch It

Okay, if this introduction is enough to pique your interest, the next step is to go watch Everybody Flies. While it can be at times a bit monotonous and dry, the straightforward journalistic style is appropriate for exposing the issue with clarity and precision. The viewing doesn’t really fly by, but more eats at you and widens your eyes to hopefully realize how massive an issue toxic air in the sky is. 

How Should We Carry On? 

In addition to the environmental impact of the aviation industry, we know have this toxic air issue as another impetus to swear off flying altogether. That being said, even though almost no airlines use the proper filters to help prevent toxic air, the convenience of flying will long maintain a hold on us. 

So, it’s bad for us. Would I smoke a pack of cigarettes to get from New York to Los Angeles in five hours? Probably, yeah. And that’s a problem, and why we have trouble really doing anything about the scandals people make documentaries about. That complacency and addiction to the poisons of our aging civilization is why Greta Thunberg has to shame us about the environment. It’s why everybody says to put out a fire in the Amazon, but nobody puts out a fire in the Amazon. 

However, Tristan Loraine is trying his darndest to do something. Largely because of his efforts by Loraine and like-minded activists, EasyJet has promised to implement filters into its jets a couple years ago, and it added electric planes to a list of company goals last year. Also, lawsuits are piling up against major airlines, pushing them to take action. Also, I’m considering either not flying, or pretending I didn’t watch this film. Either way, for my viewing, Loraine accomplished every filmmaker’s goal—he made me think. 

Dark, Almost Night: BRWC Raindance Review. By Matt Keay.

Fairytales have been an integral part of our culture for centuries. Applied metaphorically, the model enabled preliterate civilisations to form their own literature, morphing into the cautionary tales we know them as in modern society. The tropes of these tales, (old hag, princess in peril, knight in shining armour), were cemented late in the history of the genre, as the true origins of fairy tales are rooted in cruelty, violence, and mysticism. 

‘Dark, Almost Night’, Borys Lankosz’ third feature, based on Joanna Bator’s novel, is a film which tells its story through the more traditional fairy tale method. You will find no princesses in the story, no singing snowmen or friendly dwarves.

The film has more in common with the Italian writer Giambattista Basile’s seventeenth century permutations of the stories, where Cinderella snaps her stepmother’s neck with a dressing trunk, and Snow White tortures her evil stepmother to death. For ‘Dark, Almost Night’ is certainly not a fairy tale for children, even though it is more than willing to make them suffer.

The plot, such as it is, concerns Alicja Tabor (Magdalena Cielecka), a journalist reporting on the disappearance of three children, who returns to her home town of Walbrzych, Poland.

There, she meets individuals from her past who aid her (in varying levels of helpfulness) in uncovering the secrets not only of the crimes she is investigating, but those of her family, and her childhood. The film is dark, literally and figuratively, and explores a litany of taboo subjects, paedophilia, incest, rape, murder, sometimes sensitively, other times flippantly, but always appearing to serve the story, as best as could be gleaned.

‘Dark, Almost Night’ is overwrought and half an hour too long. It seems so bogged down in its own mythology that it always leaves the viewer behind a few steps. That said, the cinematography is atmospheric and arresting, (the forest sequences, in particular, are the most effective, bringing the film into the horror genre momentarily), and the central performance from Cielecka is passable.

However, there are many great films constructed within a fairytale framework, but unfortunately this is not one of them.

Finding Bobbi: BRWC Raindance Review. By Matt Keay.

Returning to something after a lull is always a challenge. Not because there is a doubt in any previous skill or ability, rather a fear that the time that has elapsed will impinge on or inform negatively your experience; to the point that you might not even be the person that you were before.

For Bobbi Charlton, this is truer than many could even imagine, but her time away might’ve made her even stronger, and even more capable of succeeding.

‘Finding Bobbi’ documents the return to the stage of Bobbi Charlton, a transgender actor playing Aunt Eller in a LGBTQ+ production of ‘Oklahoma!’ at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Bobbi’s performance comes after a twenty-three year absence from theatre acting, following her transition in 2010, at the age of 53.

Bobbi is a charming, fiery, instantly likeable woman, who relays the most personal and intimate aspects of her gender dysmorphia with aplomb, maintaining an honesty and openness throughout. Interspersed with Bobbi’s recollections is backstage footage of the production rehearsal, and talking heads with friends, family, and the director of the the piece.

The film benefits from a surfeit of home videos, photos, and local area footage of Bobbi throughout her life and career, which serves to further illumine her experiences, beyond her own account. Director Scot Morison manages the pacing through use of these materials, coupled with reconstruction of events and music choices which elevate this short doc to something a little more than just a TV docutainment. However, at only 66 minutes, it is a shame that we cannot spend just a little more time with Bobbi, as it is a joy to share her joie de vivre.

Finding Bobbi – 30 PROMO – FINAL (WEB Version) from Reel Girls Media on Vimeo.

‘Finding Bobbi’ is an interesting slice of life, a brief peek into the experience of a strong, brave woman, which manages to cover a significant amount of time without feeling rushed or harried. It is transparent, funny, and eye-opening account of a woman blossoming in the autumn of her life.

In ‘Finding Bobbi’, although we only have 66 minutes to get to know Bobbi, we can clearly know that she is an actress worthy of our love and admiration. She is brave and resolute, fearless in the face of external evaluation; she has always pursued her dreams; she has always remained passionate and honest. Her good qualities are like a hard and beautiful Lapel Pin. If you want to record these good qualities, even the moments in life that make you feel good, you can also customize them into a badge to keep forever.