Chicago Filmmakers - Friday, 8pm
American ethnographic filmmaking is experiencing a welcome crop
of understated, discrete works that look at soon-to-be-gone industries.
Along with 2009's SWEETGRASS, a film about a family-run sheep ranch
in Montana having its final season before closing permanently, the Sensory
Ethnography Lab at Harvard supported FOREIGN PARTS, a film about another
type of location that most Americans will never see, and another way
of life that is in danger of extinction. The stark landscape of the
Willett's Point neighborhood of Queens, NY (dominated by twisted metal
and signifiers of poverty), is thrust upon us in the first moments of
the film, and the hustlers, independent entrepreneurs, and dancing drunks
that make their lives among this urban junkyard are revealed. In true
verité tradition, the camera is a quiet observer of all situations,
allowing the newly erected Citi Field (home of the NY Mets baseball
team) to tower over the action like a modern-day lord's castle without
feeling like a forced construction of design. The attitude of 39th Street,
the neighborhood's main drag, is defined by the multi-colored signage
for the many places to get dirt-cheap car parts and bodywork. Drive-by
customers roll down their windows and bargain in an atmosphere reminiscent
of a marketplace in an underdeveloped country. This is a populace focused
on their struggles of the moment, and they seem relatively unfazed by
the Bloomberg administration's plan to redevelop the neighborhood into
condos, malls, and office buildings. In this way, FOREIGN PARTS is influenced
by our current economic situation, but not obsessed with it. We are
reminded of the divide between rich and poor in the visuals, but we
get to know the people that inhabit this space, and not those that come
to the stadium. The characters that concern us were poor before Wall
Street had a downturn, and they'll continue to live off of scraps and
recycling, even if they have to go unseen somewhere else. (2010, 80
min., video) JH - Cine-File.info
No comments:
Post a Comment