Yannick Jamey’s short “The Big Wait” takes viewers to the Australian desert town of Forrest and its quietly unusual inhabitants.
Forrest itself can barely be called a town. Its major features consist of one train station, one street, one intersection, and one emergency airstrip. The Forrest station is the locomotive version of flyover country. The street runs in front of a group of half-a-dozen cottages. The lawn outside the cottages are kept trim while the cottage interiors consist of furniture kept neat and shiny.
The town’s population consists of two people: a married middle-aged couple named Greg and Kate Barrington. Yet neither member of the couple have gone mad from isolation or loneliness at living in the middle of nowhere. Nor does it matter to them just how few visitors they get. On screen titles near the film’s end precisely list the number of visitors the Barringtons have had and even what year these visitors arrived.
However, as the viewer learns from extensive interviews with the couple, they enjoy their lot rather than curse it. Nobody else may be around, yet that’s a feature of their lives that’s appealing. It’s an existence reduced to bare essentials, a sort of social asceticism if you will.
Not being bound to the demands of the clock or scheduling, the couple develop their own life rhythm. Regular maintenance of both the airstrip and the cottages provides both occupation and a way to see time casually rolling by. In a way, it doesn’t matter if outsiders rarely come to use the airstrip and its hospitality services. Being ready to receive a potential visitor is its own reward. And if there are no visitors appearing, the empty airstrip serves as a great bicycling space.
Do these facts mean that the Barringtons enjoy being hermits? Not really. Kate Barrington speaks of the benefits of having occasional human physical contact. And rather than treat the train speeding through Forrest as an unwelcome intruder, the couple cherish the train’s appearances as a symbol of their connection to human civilization.
A more urban-minded viewer will take exception to the couple’s describing their existence as one where they enjoy having “nobody else around.” But for the Barringtons, this life is one where they can find small pleasures and changes in each new day, which is a feeling that’s worth nurturing even in a busy urban setting.
***
An aspirational sports film that could have benefitted from a little more on screen grit, Stephan Peterson and Sonya Ballantyne’s documentary “The Death Tour” soars when it shows how its apparently trivial sport matters to both athletes and audiences.
The titular tour refers to an indie wrestling tour presented by a group of wannabe professional wrestlers. Organized by promoter Tony Candello, this midwinter excursion puts on wrestling matches in several isolated First Nations reservations located in Manitoba. To make these events happen, the wrestlers and Candello do their own set-ups and breakdowns in school gymnasiums as well as travel between reservations. Tour participants follow a deliberately brutal and tight schedule. Road trips generally take anywhere between 3-10 hours, assuming there are no extraordinary circ*mstances such as having the only road available blocked for hours by a jack-knifed big rig truck.
The viewer follows this particular tour through the experiences of several colorful subjects. Aside from Candello himself, these participants include Sage Morin (aka “The Matriarch”), Sarah McNicoll (aka “McKenrose”), Sean Dunster (aka “Massive Damage”), and Dez Loreen (aka “The Eskimofo”).
For several of the wrestlers, pursuing the sport is their way of recovering from trauma in their lives. Wrestling helped Dunster turn his life around after teenage years marked by drug addiction. For Morin, becoming a good wrestler helped her recover from losing a son to a drunk driver. On the other hand, when McNicoll uses a match to channel her anger towards a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend unsupportive of her wrestling aspirations, it’s a good thing her opponent is muscular enough to endure McKenrose’s punishment.
A little more background on the Death Tour might have increased viewer connection to the film’s titular subject. The unaware viewer has no idea about the origins of the tour or how much it has changed over the years. But the sense is implanted in the viewer that the tour is a proverbial trial by fire, an affirmation to both participants and peers that they have what it takes to become a professional wrestler.
Candello’s aims with the Death Tour appear to be different from those of his wrestlers. One is to provide live entertainment to people living in remote areas where such entertainment is a rarity. The other is to have his wrestlers serve as role models for the children they encounter. Luchadores vibes come from the film subjects showing the kids encountered that they too can be strong and proud and even help improve reservation life. Seeing little girls chanting to McNicoll to not give up after the wrestler’s opponent cheats by a painful pull on her hair feels inspirational. Living up to this role model goal explains why Candello will unhesitatingly 86 any wrestler he finds drinking or using drugs on the tour. However, hopes that Peterson and Ballantyne will provide a deeper understanding of Candello the man will be in vain.
While a wrestler’s goal of going on the Death Tour is seeing if they can hack the stress and pressure of professionally pursuing the sport, nobody’s there to succeed at the other wrestlers’ expense. A veteran wrestler, for example, gives the noticeably nervous Dunster solid advice on making a good impression on the audience. The news that one of the film’s subjects will get a chance to break into the pro circuit does not result in expressions of jealousy from the other wrestlers.
There’s an irony which will not be spoiled here concerning the events of the tour depicted in this film. What can be said is that Peterson and Ballantyne succeed in using this particular tour to illuminate the consequences of a destructive racist legacy manifested in residential schools and the branding of ancient ceremonies such as powwows as evil.
***
A far different sort of sporting event gets chronicled in Yasmin Sanie-Hay’s wonderfully entertaining short “Kim Jong, Alfaman, and The Probe: A LeMons Story.” It takes viewers into “24 Hours Of LeMons,” a racing event colloquially known as “Burning Man For Cars.”
As the viewer learns, the point of the race isn’t to establish dominance over the other contestants by being the fastest car on the track. The spirit of LeMons is best described as a “competitive event for non-competitors.” What matters more is a team’s ingenuity in creating a driveable car that can make hundreds of laps during a 24-hour race on a professional racetrack, a far harder task than a viewer might imagine. That ingenuity means a lot of salvaging of parts from junked cars to make a team’s entry, such as plopping a Subaru engine into a VW bug. Just because a LeMons entry contains a high proportion of salvaged parts doesn’t mean that it’s a single-use vehicle. Alfaman, one of the three entrants profiled by Sanie-Hay, has run 30 LeMons races and shows little sign of stopping.
Salvaging is also a necessity as LeMons entrants can’t spend more than $500 making their cars drivable. The Redwood City-based team behind The Probe (full name: The Anal Probe Returns To Earth) blew a big hole in their budget after getting scammed by a Craigslist seller who charged them twice what he originally paid for what’s now a future LeMons entry. Fortunately, judging whether an entrant adhered to the $500 limit isn’t strictly enforced. Friendly bribes result in some waivers, though the race judges have occasionally introduced a decidedly illicit entry to an intimate encounter with a car crusher.
The three LeMons entrants mentioned in the film’s title couldn’t be any more different. Alfaman is a 1978 Alfa Romeo Spider that’s been stripped out for parts. Kim Jong Elantra has its original Elantra motor replaced with a 2-liter motor, and is decorated with decals and other items referencing North Korean propaganda. The motor of the aforementioned Probe was the product of a year of swapping in parts from other cars, while the in-and-out motion of the probe’s pointy end comes courtesy of a windshield wiper motor.
The film’s “who are you and what do you hope for with this race” questioning plus depictions of race preparation and responding to emergencies are acceptable documentary essentials akin to having four wheels on a car so it can participate in the race. Where the film shines is in focusing more on the crazed inventiveness that goes on at LeMons. These include having one entrant be a four-poster bed on wheels or another welding an Oscar the Grouch garbage can setup onto their car. But the sheer jaw-drop award belongs to the race organizers’ exacting a penalty of doing a low-budget recreation of a Prince Harry-Meghan Markle type wedding.
Yet affable freakiness aside, the heartwarming moment that best sums up the LeMons ethos comes when The Probe’s engine blows out. The Probe team members can’t come up with a remedy until another driver stops to suggest cutting up a tube to create rod bearings. That solution helps The Probe get back into the race and endure to the end.
***
A far different sort of endurance sport best describes what occurs in Steven Gong’s short personal documentary “Memory Palace.” It uses the “method of loci” aka “memory palace” technique of being in the presence of certain significant places in the director’s life to figuratively fish for personal memories associated with that place.
Unfortunately, this potentially interesting experiment doesn’t yield any uniquely surprising results for the viewer. The suburban home where Gong grew up, for example, yields memories of feeling imprisoned by his surroundings. The return to Shanghai does let him feel once again a connection to the proverbial village that had his back in his early childhood. Yet that connection also feels a little strained given the city’s increasingly cosmopolitan facade was achieved by such acts as destroying the old family apartment on Madary Road.
The film’s ultimate irony is that the unchanging nature of the filmmaker’s parents, which earlier sparked his feelings of imprisonment, now comes across as a sort of comfort. Whether Gong’s other insights also touch a viewer will be a matter of individual taste.
***
Even if it lacks anything in the way of a bopping soundtrack, there’s still reason to watch the Emilio Domingos documentary “Black Rio! Black Power!” It’s an intriguing account of the life-changing effects of people-powered international intercultural pollination.
In the 1970s, Blacks in Brazil were politically and culturally bent under a double boot heel of oppression. The country’s military dictatorship reigned supreme politically. Despite popular beliefs that Brazil was not a racist society, the day to day reality for young Blacks continually demonstrated the exact opposite. Regular police harassment and consignment to low-paying jobs certainly undercut any illusions of a racially egalitarian existence. Brazil’s mass media did not help matters by constantly spewing the message that politics was not something Brazil’s Blacks needed to be involved with. As an interviewee ruefully notes, mass media are as much a part of society as the cops are, so they traverse the same path of mass social control.
The spark that launched the cultural revolution known as Black Rio came in the form of Big Boy’s “Heavy Dance” party. Popular DJ Big Boy hosted a radio show which introduced its young audience to hot and new music, such as the latest in American hi-fi (aka soul). His dance parties allowed youth of different economic backgrounds to mingle. Yet the music of the “Heavy Dance” parties mixed together both white and Black artists. When some enterprising Black youth wondered about doing dance parties featuring only soul music, the soul dance parties were born.
There’s a certain irony in seeing the popularity of these soul dance parties taking off in Brazil. Black youths in that country weren’t likely to understand the English lyrics of those songs. Yet the language barrier didn’t stop such fans from appreciating the power of American soul. And the cobbled together nature of those events (e.g. having a sound crew pooling their records for a party here, finding a Black-friendly club venue there) didn’t detract from the reality that young Brazilian Blacks now had a space of their own where they could relax, have fun, and be themselves.
Party organizer Dom Filo and other interviewees provide fascinating details about how the first iteration of those dance parties built up a sense of Black pride in its young attendees. Richard Roundtree’s iconic performance as private detective John Shaft inspired a party called “Shaft’s Night.” The dance hall walls became great backdrops for projections of pictures of partygoers mixed in with photos of James Brown, Otis Redding, and other famous Black figures. In between songs, one DJ would utter such statements as “hold your head up high,” “go to school,” and “we’re all somebody,” the last a nod to Jesse Jackson’s famous “I am somebody” declaration. Letting the hair grow out and wearing platform shoes made guys look hotter.
The second iteration of these soul dance parties came about when the original soul dance party venue had to be shut down for remodeling. Finding new venues proved less difficult this time around. Venue owners may not have cared about the Black pride stuff. But they did care that such parties could draw 2,000 to 3,000 attendees in a night. That openness led to the parties spreading across Rio de Janeiro. Just the same, party organizers toned down the politics by, for example, mixing in pictures of famous Black race car drivers into the wall projections. That particular tactic led to the creation of the legendary party known as Soul Grand Prix.
But whatever iteration of the soul dance party is discussed in the film, viewers can’t help but be impressed by the sometimes improvised ingenuity displayed by dance organizers and attendees. Slow soul songs by the likes of Al Green and Barry White may have lacked driving power, but DJs realized those songs provided moments for party attendees to make out. The smart male soul dance attendee usually brought two shirts to the party: one for getting sweaty while dancing, the other to be worn for making out along the dance hall wall. Cleared circles on the dance floor may be a great place for a dancer to showcase their moves, but at the same time the experience was akin to using The Mint’s karaoke signup to publicly demonstrate their singing chops.
In a way, the toning down of politics at the soul dance parties wasn’t a defeat as much as a marked shift in tactics. By 1974, the Afro-Asian Study Center had opened. The place doubled as both a library filled with books on Black history and literature, and a meeting space. The Center became the venue for discussions centered around finding ways to denounce Brazil’s official claims of racial democracy and creating a new positive identity for Black Brazilians. The soul dance parties became places to find via word of mouth people interested in attending a Center discussion or other event.
The military junta and its agents didn’t turn a blind eye to what the Black Rio Movement was doing. They did send spies to the dance parties, and the Federal Police did interrogate the heads of various dance parties to find out if they were fomenting revolution. Spreading around disinformation that the dance party hosts were actually puppets of possibly American interests or claiming the parties sparked white hostility towards Blacks are particularly amusing claims. Yet none of these efforts derailed Black Rio’s progress.
There’s a certain irony in learning the popularity of disco would be the key to bringing down the Black Rio movement. The music had its roots in American Black nightlife, among other sources. But this new musical genre stole the glamor that provided a significant portion of the soul dance parties’ appeal. The record companies liked disco as a genre they could control from the ground up. Existing soul dance party organizers had by this time gotten too big and powerful for the companies’ comfort. Finally, the Brazilian mainstream press, never huge fans of Black Rio, let their hostility go into overdrive.
Filo sourly notes that disco and funk possessed soul’s catchiness but lacked the older music’s political dimension. That supplanting of taste led him to do a musical grand farewell with “Soul Grand Prix 1978.”
Present-day Brazil is a different place in certain ways from 1970s Brazil. Its people aren’t seeing the underside of a military dictatorship’s boot. Blacks now have a visible and positive presence in Brazilian popular media. Most importantly, many of Brazil’s current Black leaders found their political awakening via the soul dance scene.
Now if only there were an American release of “Soul Grand Prix 1978”…
(“The Death Tour” screens at 9:00 PM on June 2, 2024. “Kim Jong, Alfaman, and The Probe: A LeMons Race” screens at 8:30 PM on May 30, 2024. “Memory Palace” screens at 8:30 PM on June 4, 2024. “Black Rio! Black Power!” screens at 8:30 PM on June 6, 2024. All these theatrical screenings take place at the Roxie Theater (3117 – 16th Street, SF).
(“The Big Wait” streams online as well as the films listed above from May 30 – June 9, 2024. For further information on the films and to order tickets, go here.)
Peter Wong
More Posts
Filed under:
