HAVE YOU SEEN THE LISTERS?

Featuring: Anthony Lister, Anika Lister, Kye Lister, Lola Lister and Polly Lister.
Director: Eddie Martin.

Screened at Cinerama 3, on Monday January 29 as part of the 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

Rating: 4/5

In artist Anthony Lister, filmmaker Eddie Martin finds another profoundly talented but deeply troubled genius to bolster his rogue’s gallery of fascinating documentary subjects. Compiled from twelve terabytes of the artist’s own personal archives, Martin crafts an often buoyant, occasionally bleak but always vivid portrait of the magnificent creativity and heartbreaking personal detours that have shaped Lister’s young life.

A Brisbane lad who connected with his innate talent and unique artistry at an early age, Lister is etched as a young man both blessed by and burdened with a psychology borne out of his suburban roots. His upbringing in a divorced household meant a strong father figure was not present, the ramifications of which resonate through the thematic core of Martin’s film. He is quickly on that well-charted course of many young rebellious types – a fearless pursuit of identity, the grasping of a creative destiny yet to be clearly defined but craved above all else. And, of course, a life of shared living, lots of booze and occasional and increasingly prevalent drug use.

Lister’s life with apparent soul mate Anika seems to be one of spiritual and emotional connectivity, but his ‘self-obsessed, self-destructive artist’ persona becomes all-consuming. Martin’s punchy, pulsating version of the couple’s time together - from Brissy teen sweethearts, to NYC bohemians, to struggling parents in inner city Sydney – makes for bold and brilliant documentary construction (aided immeasurably by the consummate skill of cutter Johanna Scott).

In his highly-acclaimed past works, Martin has respectfully peeled away the street tough, rebellious genius image of such enigmatic talents as graffitist Justin Hughes (Jisoe, 2005); pugilist Lionel Rose (Lionel, 2008) and skateboarding brothers Tas and Ben Pappas (All This Mayhem, 2014). The insight he affords the troubled, driven inner workings of his working class heroes, and the dexterity with which he formulates their on-screen lives, is a rare commodity amongst the current factual filmmaking community.

In telling this tale, a narrative about a young man’s unforgiving and demanding talent and its impact upon the journey into fatherhood, Have You Seen The Listers? demands Martin, a remarkably skillful and empathetic storyteller, now be considered amongst the finest filmmakers working in Australia.

Read The SCREEN-SPACE Interview with Have You Seen The Listers? director Eddie Martin here.

COALESCE: A CITY COMPOSED

Featuring: Megan Jonas and Jordan Ignacio.
Director: Joshua J. Provost.

WORLD PREMIERE: Fer Film International Film Festival, September 2-6, Ferizaj, Republic of Kosovo.
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: flEXIff Experimental Film Festival, September 23-24, Sydney, Australia.

Rating: 4.5/5

The connectivity of creation that artists share is examined with profound beauty and sensitivity in Coalesce: A City Composed, the inspiring debut feature from Phoenix-based filmmaker, Joshua J. Provost. An intimate account of the formation of a uniquely envisioned art installation in the Arizona capital, the film can rank amongst its many fine accomplishments the re-imagining of the director’s rather unremarkable hometown as, in the eyes of these beholders, a place actually quite beautiful.

Imbuing Provost’s work with a spiritual centre are his subjects, artist Megan Jonas (pictured, top; on location in Phoenix) and composer Jordan Ignacio. Born-and-bred Arizonian Jonas creates unique and beautiful landscapes of Phoenix’s most mundane features; telephone wires, traffic intersections, footpaths, fuse boxes and alleyway weeds are all featured in her paintings, which Provost’s tight but non-intrusive camera captures from blank canvas to stunning life. East Coast muso Ignacio (pictured, below), aka The Languid Current, is a self-taught instrumentalist and master of the atmospheric aural soundscape.

Coalesce: A City Composed features four works by Jonas that capture her city as it transitions daily between light and dark. The artist forwards stages of her paintings to Ignacio, now embedded in his own Phoenix digs, who uses her work to inspire music that would eventually accompany the paintings during a season at Phoenix’s Grand ArtHaus Gallery, from December 2016. In hushed, intimate tones, Provost’s on-screen collaborators speak of that which inspires, influences and ultimately determines the essence of their art, all while it finds form before our eyes.

Provost is clearly in the same creative headspace as his subjects; from capturing their inspiration with a precise insight to giving over his film to their commentary unhindered by clunky voice-over, Provost affords Jonas and Ignacio the space and respect needed for true freedom of expression. Rarely has a film been so in tune with the ‘artistic process’, or conveyed with such clarity the workings of the artist’s mind.

Coalesce: A City Composed ends with a flourish of bravura film-making that is a breathtaking coming-together of all three art forms. Each painting takes shape before your eyes, via daring post-production wizardry, to the compelling strains of the richly-realized soundtrack; three distinct disciplines creating one beautiful piece of art. A final nod to the locations that inspired the paintings/music/film is a heartfelt touch by Provost, who has crafted a deeply engaging film of intelligence, integrity and sincerity.

LOVE AND SAUCERS

Featuring: David Huggins.
Director: Brad Abrahams.

Rating: 4/5

Director Brad Abrahams makes a lot of smart storytelling decisions from the very first frame of his documentary Love and Saucers, an account of one man’s ongoing and intimate experiences with beings of unidentifiable origins and of the struggle to reconcile a ‘normal’ life with the intrusion of denizens from beyond our realm.   

From his home in Hoboken, New Jersey, 72 year-old artist David Huggins makes the fantastic claim directly to camera that, “When I was 17 I lost my virginity to a female extra-terrestrial.” A natural camera presence that imparts his abduction memories with a compelling earnestness, Huggins timelines key moments from his childhood during which groups of ‘greys’, mantis-like insectoids and hairy beasts with glowing eyes would visit him on the grounds of his family home in rural Georgia. The purpose of the visitations is finally revealed when, alone in a wooded clearing, a pale-skinned seductress named Crescent engages the teenage Huggins and the coming-together of human and alien species takes place. 

Abrahams is entirely aware that such claims are usually met by the wider population with derision and only serve to conjure notions of B-movie/pop-culture silliness. His camera floating towards the front door of Huggins’ home just as the visitors might, the director’s opening salvo of imagery and audio cues embraces this cynicism, interspersing recollections of the encounters with zooms and jump-cuts that play like comic-book panels.

He reveals that Huggins is a sci-fi nerd, with a collection of over 2000 films (on beautiful VHS, no less), many of which deal directly with themes of alien visitation (Howard Hawk’s The Thing from Another World, 1951), interspecies genealogy (Bernard Kowalski’s Sssssss, 1974) and otherworldly home intrusion (Lewis Allen’s The Uninvited, 1944). The filmmaker almost seems to be setting his subject up for a takedown, positioning Huggins’ as a man living a sheltered life, perhaps unable to disengage from some form of childhood trauma (a boozy, womanising father who tended towards intolerance and violence is recalled).

But the Canadian-born director, who brought a level-headed decency to his 2015 swamp-monster doco short Swan Song of The Skunk Ape, has loftier ambitions than scorn and cheap thrills. As hinted at by the title, Love and Saucers is a heartfelt profile of an entirely ordinary man, albeit one whose life has been shaped by extraordinary events. Abrahams curbs the stylistic flourishes of his first act and embraces the softer, genuine emotions and real-world sensations that Huggins lives as his relationship with Crescent extends into adulthood. Although claims of hybrid children and visitation phenomena in the heart of New York City are no less astonishing, the human bond that Huggins shares with his decidedly non-human circle of friends dissolves any remaining fissure of viewer disbelief or ridicule.

Love and Saucers also speaks directly to the curative relationship between the artist and his art. Huggins recalls his relationship with the visitors via canvas, his simple yet striking surrealist oils capturing the detail behind the encounters and freeing him of deeply embedded memories. These include some graphic renditions of the intricate physical relationship he shared with Crescent; the X-rated Files, as it were.

Abrahams doesn’t ignore the abduction phenomena, acknowledging that much of the imagery and emotions that Huggins imparts is common amongst abductees. The production references the works of the late author and experiencer expert Budd Hopkins and the observations of Prof. Jeffrey Kripal, lecturer in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Texas’ Rice University to give credence to the details in Huggins’ recollections and to counter any concern that his beliefs are the result of emotional or psychological stresses.

Ultimately, these sequences merely enhance the purely humanistic perspective that Abrahams seems most determined to impart. As intrinsically fascinating as first person accounts of extra-terrestrial interaction prove to be, it is how one man has dealt with such moments that most enthuse the filmmaker. In a film with an act of intergalactic seduction at its core, it may be the image of an elderly man sitting contentedly in a car after his first gallery showing that resonates most profoundly.

Love and Saucers: Trailer from Brad Abrahams on Vimeo.

MONSIEUR MAYONNAISE

Featuring: Philippe Mora, Mirka Mora.
Director: Trevor Graham.

Rating: 4/5

The connectivity of memory, legacy and family is defined with a playful yet profound dexterity in Trevor Graham’s soulful, inspiring documentary, Monsieur Mayonnaise. A portrait of the immigrant experience that is both uniquely personal yet deeply honourable to a generation of ‘new Australians’, Graham’s account of filmmaker Philippe Mora’s search for insight into his parent’s journey from Nazi-occupied Europe to the suburbs of Melbourne deftly encompasses such diverse human experience as the creation of art, the horrors of genocide and the delights of condiment preparation.

Revisiting the same ties that bind the nourishing goodness of food with mankind’s appetite for self-destruction that he examined in his offbeat 2012 crowdpleaser, Make Hummus Not War, Graham has found a willing and compelling cinematic soulmate in Mora. The LA-based expat has embraced a new creative outlet as a graphic novel artist and painter, his broad brush strokes and bold colours recalling the aesthetic that he applied to much of his film oeuvre, several of which are legitimate and beloved cult items (Mad Dog Morgan, 1976; The Return of Captain Invincible, 1983; The Howling II, 1985; Howling 3: The Marsupials, 1987; Communion, 1989).

Graham’s camera travels with Mora to the Melbourne home of his vibrant octogenarian mum, Mirka, a prominent figure for over half a century in the southern capital’s artistic community. Central to their reconnecting is the legacy left by Mora’s late father George, which begins as a warmhearted and mouthwatering recounting of his skill in the kitchen (hinting at but not fully divulging the meaning of the title) before revealing a vast backstory set against the Nazi occupation of Paris and the role George played as the extermination of his people took place around him.

Employing a structure not dissimilar to that which has well served the heritage-themed TV concept ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, Mora’s journey of discovery proves a revelatory experience for both the subject and the audience alike. Having jetted into Paris, Mora travels deep into the countryside of Europe to visit people and places that forged his father’s destiny and the continent’s dark past. The horrors that befell the Jewish people during Hitler’s reign are afforded yet another chilling perspective when Mora finds a museum that honours the hundreds of children lost during the Holocaust, an unforgettable moment that becomes central to a moving final-reel reveal.

As he peels away the layers of family history, Mora also documents his experience on canvas, allowing the film to capture how the events that impact the artist impact his art. It is a meta-rich device that mirrors the experience of the documentarian, forming a triumvirate between the subject, the filmmaker and the audience that transcends the inherent objectivity of the documentary format. Most potently, it imbues the project with a personality and pulse every bit as vibrant and engaging as both Philippe Mora himself and the heritage he yearns to uncover.