Category: GFF strand – Pioneer

Ok, so this is another movie about trans women that obviously has good intentions. All trans characters are played by trans actors. It shows trans activism and resistance to trans oppression.

That being said, this is another film that shows being trans as the single defining problem of the main character. Tina is a Latina trans woman who doesn’t have legal status in the US. She has a shitty boyfriend and is constantly struggling to make money. Yet the film acts like she has a single issue life. Much like the movie Girl, even other aspects of her life boil down to this one thing which is seen as a giant problem.

Now obviously it’s right and proper to highlight the struggles of being trans, but not to the point where a single characteristic of a person is portrayed as all-defining, and as a negative burden upon them.

It’s very after school special, and much of the writing and acting is cringey. Like all movies that portray being trans as a ‘problem play’, this ends with the expected outburst of violence.

I’m glad to see trans actresses portraying trans stories, but this film just felt like it spoke to a cis audience the whole time. It was a plea to a cis audience for tolerance and therefore was kinda defined by the cis gaze. Mm.

Song Without A Name is based on real events where poor Native Amerindian women had their newborn children illegally adopted without their knowledge or consent. Even when the struggle to bring those to justice is finally over, the attitude prevails that these kids are probably better off with the rich whites that have adopted them overseas than with their poor indigenous mothers, so no real effort is put into reuniting them.

For the main character, this just destroys her and her husband. Unable to provide or protect his family, he falls into despair and is led astray by a bad lot. She is left in this permanent state of unresolved mourning.

A sorrowful tale.

A modern-day remake of Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure set in the rough high flats of Melbourne, Australia. The result is a fun gangsta movie, with honour and reputation at the centre.

Hugo Weaving makes a wonderful, growling, old-fashioned, dignified gangster.

Son-Mother is the story of a young widow who receives a proposal of marriage.

What’s good about this movie is no one’s an asshole. The mother just wants what’s best for her son, her son just wants what’s best for his family, the new step-daddy just wants what’s best for everyone. And the new step-dad really is a nice guy, and is totally ok with raising her kids from the previous marriage.

But this is Iran. And in Iran, there’s always a way your life as a woman can be made that bit more difficult.

The step-dad has a daughter from a previous marriage, and she can’t share a house with a male she’s not related to. So what’s to become of the mother’s son?

The first half of the movie is the mother doing everything she can to not accept the proposal, even though she likes the man and thinks well of him. She’s working to keep a roof over their heads, she can’t afford nappies for the baby, she even scabs at her work out of fear of not being able to support her kids. The walls start to close in, her baby gets sick and she has no way to pay for health care, and she finally gets laid off from her job. Her choice is send her son away or the streets.

Unfortunately she has no family and nowhere to send him. A family friend comes up with a scheme to stow him in a residential school for the deaf. The second half of the film is her son’s sacrifices to keep his family together and better-off, even if he can’t be part of it.

A great movie that leaves you wanting to collectively slap the social mores of Iran.

Arracht starts out as one thing and becomes another. It begins before the famine hits and is quite a tense, dramatic beginning. Then it becomes this sorrowful, melancholy, slow, survival epic, as the main character becomes a living ghost at the edge of the world.

A trio of shitkicker, garage band, fuckwits spend the night getting drunk, high, shooting fireworks off from their arse and generally partying like a shower of fannies. This leads to one of them, the titular Dick Long, getting dropped off at the hospital while the others scurry their high asses home.

The whole movie more or less takes place over the next day, when Dick’s death becomes labelled a suspected murder, as you root for these useless fuckknuckles to make it out of this jam intact. By turns funny and tense, more than a little stupid and a really enjoyable film.

Before the title card was even up, I had decided I loved Pacarrete, thought she was a legend, and wanted to be her.

Pacarrete is an elderly woman, who loves ballet and takes every opportunity to dance, and share her art. She is also a salty auld queen with a raspy smokers voice and barbed tongue. I absolutely loved her.

Goan yersel Pacarrete! Why should you fade into demure ignorability? Wear bright red, vibrant lipstick and live out loud. Just because you’re past the age of supposed fuckability, you shouldn’t want to be pretty, or admired, or graceful? As if you only exist in the male gaze and since it’s lost interest, you should just curl up and blow away.

Pacarette is about how, even when you are seen as having no talent and no beauty, you must insist on your own worth, and how people need art to survive.

A twisting, turning, locked room mystery. A group of translators are locked underground to translate the final installment of a worldwide bestselling novel series in time for its simultaneous global multi-lingual release. But somehow the first few pages get released online, and the publishing agent in charge proves much more ruthless at finding the culprit than anyone expected. Starring Alex Lawther (the kid from Ghost Stories) who I did not realise was a fluent French speaker.

You Will Die At Twenty is about a boy who is taken as a baby by his mother to be blessed by a sheikh. Unfortunately this coincides with an ill omen and the sheikh declares the boy will die at 20. The film follows the fallout and how it shapes the life of the main character and his family.

His father abandons the family, unable to stomach the grief, and his mother dresses in mourning clothes and prepares more for his death and burial than his life. As for the main character, Muzamil, he becomes afraid of everything, living as though his life hangs by his fingernails, and will be lost at the least misadventure. Through this he misses for many opportunities, makes so many mistakes, and basically clings to religion with a quiet terror.

This story is a metaphor for the state of paralysis and fatalism so many young men experience in Sudan, in a country plagued with war for generations. Watching young men cut down so young, generation after generation, affects how the living see their lives.

Here’s hoping this beautiful film is just the start of the art to blossom out of a generation heading into peace.

Another Day of Life is an animated adaptation of a Polish journalist’s memoir of reporting on the Angolan civil war. Comparable to things like Waltz With Bashir and the comics of Joe Sacco, it uses a blend of animation and contemporary footage to bring alive one of the crucial points in the fight for Angolan independence.

In many ways it’s also a film about journalism ethics. Can a war reporter ever really be considered a civilian? Given that their work is both reconnaissance and propaganda. It also exposes the great myth of journalism – that the reporter is an observer. In fact the reporter is a participant, whose very presence changes the situation they inhabit. And objectivity comes very much second to the need to live through the experience.