As the son of legendary French filmmakers Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda, it was almost a mortal lock that Mathieu Demy, after many years as an actor, would end up behind the camera. His intriguing feature directorial debut, Americano, interweaves footage from Documenteur, a nonfiction film of Varda’s in which Demy appeared as a child, and centers around the story of a young Frenchman drawn back to Los Angeles to wrap up his recently deceased mother’s estate, only to learn of a mysterious woman, Lola (Salma Hayek), in her will. I had a chance to speak to Demy one-on-one earlier this year, about Hayek, getting his film’s title tattooed on his arm, and what his mother thinks of his re-appropriation of her work. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
Daily Archives: August 4, 2012
Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
In 2009, Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten’s Bananas!* was just one of more than a dozen nonfiction competition entries in the Los Angeles Film Festival — the story of a (successful) lawsuit that a dozen Nicaraguan plantation workers had brought against the Dole Corporation, alleging sterility and other health problems brought about by continued and knowing exposure to illegal pesticides. But the movie itself became a story when, in the weeks leading up to its festival premiere, Dole started flexing its corporate might, and tossed out a steady stream of lawsuit threats left and right if the movie was shown in its present form — owing largely to an investigation of the lawyer working on behalf of the plaintiffs. The Los Angeles Film Festival backed down, screening the movie out of competition, at a separate venue, and under the legal protection of a nicely phrased statement of dissociation.
The Sundance Film Festival-minted Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, then (and yes, the asterix are part of the respective titles), is Gertten’s adjunct offering/follow-up, sort of akin to Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams or, more to the point, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s Lost in La Mancha. It’s a lifted-curtain story of what went on behind-the-scenes during the attempted production/mounting/release of another work of art. It’s also a pretty compelling story about freedom of speech, and how in a worldwide economy and digital age companies are even more apt to take aggressive, proactive and even punitive measures to squelch voices and stories — true or false not really mattering — that can negatively impact their bottom lines. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Big Boys Gone Bananas!* opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena; for more information about the movie, visit its website by clicking here. (WG Films, unrated, 86 minutes)