Earlier this weekend, the film $9.99 offered us the meaning of life by mail order. Now Cold Souls, written and directed by Sophie Barthes, offers soul extraction and storage. And trafficking, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Paul Giamatti, starring as himself, is struggling with a theatrical performance when he hears about a company that can temporarily extract your soul, or even trade it out for another if you like. He tries the soulless thing for a while, but when that doesn’t work out for him he rents the soul of a Russian poet. Eventually he decides that he wants his own soul back, only to find that it’s been stolen by a soul-trafficking ring. The rest of the movie is him trying to get it back.

The film is hilarious in a dark sort of way, and very metaphysical if you’re into that. It reminded me a lot of something that Charlie Kauffman would write (ever seen Being John Malkovich?). I saw Beth Mickle, the production designer for the film, speak at a panel on Friday and she said that the way it was originally written, Cold Souls had the potential to be a very commercial, mainstream sort of film. But it was directed and produced with a more European sensibility, so it came out with a more indie, “art house” feel. I couldn’t tell whether Mickle thought this was a good thing or a bad thing, but personally I enjoyed it – beautifully shot, and both playful and soul-searching. Still, like Paul Giamatti, I may never be able to look at a chickpea the same again.

You can still catch Cold Souls at Ragtag until the end of the week, so check out the show times there.

Find out more about soul storage technology.

Also, check out the rest of our Citizen Jane coverage!

I have a lot of respect for anyone who can write, direct and star in her own film, especially when the subject is something highly personal — that is exactly what Georgina Lightning did with Older Than America (same goes for Karen Skloss on Sunshine). This film is about the brutal treatment of Native American children in Christian boarding schools by priests and nuns attempting to “civilize” them. These boarding schools were mandatory for all native children in both the U.S. and Canada (where Lightning grew up) as recently as the late 70′s. Lightning said her goal in making the film was to teach people that this sort of cultural genocide not a thing of the past, and that families and communities are still very much suffering from it.

Older Than America is a suspense drama about the cover-up of boarding school abuse in a Northern Minnesota Cree reservation. The plot is centered on a Native American woman named Rain (played by Georgina Lightning herself) whose mother, aunt and uncle all attended a Catholic boarding school. Rain begins seeing visions and spirits that eventually lead her to expose the abuse and murder that took place at the school and had long been covered up. The characters in the film demonstrate the trans-generational trauma that these boarding schools cause, even after being shut down. Even those who survive often end up alcoholic, institutionalized or suicidal. Though the film itself is a work of fiction, it is based on the real experiences of Georgina Lightning and her family and tribe members. She said that it was difficult to get people to share their stories with her, particularly her own uncles, because they were just too painful.

The subject seemed to me like it would lend itself to a documentary treatment rather than a dramatic one, and actually someone asked Georgina about that in the Q&A session after the film. She answered that her goal is to reach the masses — people who are totally oblivious to the issue. The sorts of people who watch documentaries, she said, are generally more aware and compassionate anyway.

One major effect of the film was that two weeks after the film opened in Canada, the Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to the Native Americans affected by the boarding school system. Soon after, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created, allocating $160 million for the “healing of boarding schools.” Lightning seemed to have her doubts about whether the money will be spent effectively or not, but said it is definitely a step in the right direction to acknowledge the problem.

At the end of the Q&A session, Ibtisam Barakat, the Palestinian filmmaker who represented Lemon Tree at Citizen Jane this year, stood and talked about the parallels between what Native Americans are going through here in North America and what Palestinians are experiencing in the Middle East.

Older Than America may not be particularly groundbreaking plot-wise or technically, but the just fact that it is made by a Native American director makes it noteworthy.  She treats the native culture with the utmost respect and reverence, something extremely rare in the film industry. On top of all that, the message and mission of the film are truly courageous and in my opinion it’s about time these issues are addressed in a new way.

For more information, visit the film’s website, www.olderthanamerica.com

See the rest of our coverage of the Citizen Jane Film Fest.

“Sunshine” is a documentary made by Karen Skloss telling her story of her journey into single parenthood, and also getting to know her biological mother’s story about her decision to give her up for adoption. She points out the irony of history repeating itself. She explored the social movement from the time when she was born in 1975 when pregnancies outside of wedlock were considered shameful and kept secret, to today, when many parents are single and nobody even really asks questions.

This film was really enjoyable. Karen narrates the film and tells her story so well. There is a lot of humor in it, considering it is about such a heavy topic. She does a wonderful job of exploring family values and what it means to be a family, and comes to the conclusion that it’s okay to have a family that is not “ideal”.

The film was very well put together. She blended footage of just sitting around chatting with old home videos and some really beautiful shots. The film shows women as beautiful and strong people who sometimes find themselves in unplanned circumstances.

After the film, many of the audience comments were from people who came from untraditional families who wanted to express their appreciation for Karen’s style of storytelling and her beautiful portrayal of an untraditional family. I agree, this is a film worth seeing, no matter what your family is like.

Photo from the Sunshine facebook fan page.

Photo taken from Sunshine facebook fan page.

For more information about Sunshine, visit:
www.sunshinethemovie.com

For more information about the Citizen Jane Film Festival, visit:
www.stephens.edu/news/stephensevents/citizenjane/index.php

Did you see Sunshine? Leave us a comment and tell us what you thought!

Lemon Tree is the incredibly powerful story of a woman who, despite all of the forces working against her – social, political, bureaucratic, cultural – fights to hold on to what matters to her. Salma is a Palestinian widow living on the border between Israel and the occupied West Bank. She lives alone, tending the lemon grove she inherited from her father. When the new Israeli defense minister moves in next door, the secret service decides the lemon grove is a security threat and wants to cut it down.  Everyone Salma goes to for help belittles her situation, saying that other people have “real problems.” She finally hires a lawyer and they take the case all the way to the Israeli supreme court. The case becomes symbolic of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it is driven by this one woman who refuses to give up.

The film is based on the true story of an 80-year-old Palestinian woman and her olive grove. In reality, however, the Israeli courts refused to even hear the case. The writer, Suha Arraf, said that she wanted the film to be lighter than the reality so it could contain some hope. She changed the olives to lemons to symbolize the sourness of life in Palestine. Salma always serves lemonade to her guests though, adding sugar to the lemons’ juice to make it bearable to drink. The sugar of Arraf’s screenplay was the occasional comic relief, like shots of a glowering photo of Salma’s husband every time she had a male guest, and the ridiculous language tutorial the young Israeli sentinel continuously listened to. Arraf softened the situation to make it believable, but still  managed to keep it a very moving story.

After the film, Palestinian artist and writer Ibtisam Barakat read aloud a note from the writer Suha Arraf about the writing of the film and how it relates to the reality of the situation in the Middle East. Then she invited two Israeli filmmakers, Shira Derman ($9.99) and Nirit Peled (Say My Name) and a Native American thespian, Marcie Rendon, up for a discussion. Instead of talking about the things that divide us, Barakat said, let’s talk about the things that can bring us together. These women may come from different sides of a very long and very bloody conflict, but they are all strong, passionate women who have overcome cultural limitations to find their voices, and filmmakers who use their art to make those voices heard. It was clearly a very difficult, emotional conversation for all of them, and it probably could have gone on all night if the next film hadn’t cut it short.

One idea that the women discussed was how, as Nirit Peled brought up, women in conflict areas are even more suppressed and isolated than they were already by heavily patriarchal societies. In the film, Salma had all the courage in the world, but no influence or resources whatsoever. Mira, the defense minister’s wife, was on her side and had a lot more power and influence, but was still held back from action– whether she was held back by the patriarchal bureaucratic structure or simply by her lack of courage is still up for debate.

What everyone agreed on was that there needs to be empathy and humanity on both sides in order to create a real conversation and begin understanding each other, and that films like Lemon Tree are the only way to do that. The news is too shallow and easy to misinterpret, they said, but art can reach much deeper to the heart of the issue and humanize the pain on both sides. Peled said, “If it were up to the women, there would have been peace a long time ago.”

More info about Lemon Tree and a trailer on the film’s official website.

Check out what’s going on for the final day of Citizen Jane Film Fest.

One of the best parts of film festivals is the opportunity to meet and talk to the filmmakers. This panel discussion included Georgina Lightning, writer and director of Older Than America; Karen Skloss, director of Sunshine; Beth Mickle, production designer on Cold Souls; and Lindsay Bosch, video art curator and distribution manager for Video Data Bank. The discussion was moderated by marketing consultant and writer Melissa Silverstein.

Silverstein said that only 15% of female filmmakers are represented even at film festivals, which are known for being very open to women compared to the rest of the movie business. In the industry itself, that percentage is even lower. A lot of the discussion this afternoon was centered around why this is. One problem is that films by women about women tend to end up as chick flicks. They brought  up the example of Julie and Julia, a film that came out this summer. It wasn’t a big box office hit at first, compared with the usual summer blockbusters, but is still drawing in audiences now and has slowly but steadily drawn in over $100 million. Still, nobody talks about it because it wasn’t an immediate success and attracted audiences of 25+ females – an audience that Silverstein said Hollywood doesn’t care about.

Another movie discussed was Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s recent directorial debut. It absolutely flopped, and Silverstein said it was because of the marketing. It should have been portrayed as a sort of girl-power film, about strong women doing amazing things. But marketing to women “scares the crap out of them” in Hollywood, so it was marketed more as a date movie and it failed.

Georgina Lightning and Karen Skloss both commented that they want to be known simply as filmmakers rather than as feminist or female filmmakers. They want to compete in the larger arena rather than being filed away in a niche. But for now, Hollywood just doesn’t support female-directed films. So if women are going to come forward, the push as to come in the independent arena first.

Silverstein ended the discussion by urging the women in the audience to, any time they hear about a movie by or about women, go see it immediately. “It’s like voting,” she said. “It counts.”

“Saturday Morning Cartoons Never Tasted So Good,” at the Citizen Jane Film Festival  is a showcase of experimental animation techniques that you have probably never seen the likes of before, all created by female artists and animators. Ranging from works made in 1971 to 2009 – using film, video or some combination of the two – this collection of animated shorts explores the surreal and sometimes abstract imagery that the medium lends itself to.

The first three shorts were from the collection of Cecile Starr, co-author of the book Experimental Animation. One of them, Charleston Home Movie by Deana Morse (1980), was animated using rotoscope, a technique where the artist traces the frames from motion film. It creates a very fluid, life-like animation. For Charleston Home Movie, Morse used footage from actual home videos – things like people dancing or grinning at the camera, or the family cat – and colored them in with markers and colored pencil. The result was very sketchy, nonstalgic look – sort of like child’s drawings you hang on the fridge, come to life.

Some of the shorts were hand-drawn, others stop-motion collages or cut-outs. Dem Bones Wiggle is a fun one-minute animation by Lorelei Pepi (2005) that uses photos of real people dressed in skeleton suits, dancing and wiggling. One of my favorites was The Amazing, Mysterious and True Story of Mary Anning and Her Monsters by Laura Heit (2003) and used a combination of puppets and drawings in the style of silent-era film. It told the story of Mary Anning, a female paleontologist in the 18th century – a time when women were not respected in the field of science. She found her first fossil at age 15, but as she grew older she had to sell her finds and let others take the credit. After her “untimely death” in the final scene, her work is forgotten along with the “monsters” she studied. The message sort of fit with the under-appreciated women theme of the festival.

Some of the animations were much more abstract, so you could take any number of interpretations from them. Myth Labs, by Martha Colburn (2008) was a collage of religious and Puritan imagery and terrifying drug hallucinations. Janie Geiser’s Terrace 49 (2004)combines and overlaps different video clips of impending disaster, and then reverses them. Most of the shorts were music and sound-effect driven rather than being slowed down by dialogue. The effect was sometimes soothing, sometimes frantic or jarring, or even, in the case of Sabine Gruffat’s Black Oval White, almost painful.

Jo Dery, the woman who compiled the showcase and created four of the animations in it – two films and two digital videos – was there in person to talk about her work and experimental animation in general. All four of Dery’s pieces deal with conflict between the urban and natural worlds, a theme that is very personal for her and based on her own life experiences. My favorite, Echoes of Bats and Men , starts with a number of brick factories belching smoke, then cuts to a pair of skunks who sing a history lesson about industrial evolution. In the end, the factories that made all these men so much money are eventually taken over by “our friend the bat” and his many cousins, and the bricks all fall and begin sprouting flowers and trees. Dery made the entire thing using scrap paper from a printing press where she worked.

Dery also talked after the show about the shift from film to digital that many animators are still struggling with. The digital medium allows a lot more creative freedom, she said, but requires a completely different way of thinking. Even so, it requires less rigid planning and thus allows for more experimentation. Also, for independent animators it helps that digital animation requires a lot less equipment and supply material than traditional film methods do. Dery said that this is a very exciting time for animation because we are right at the intersection of two very different mediums, and while some people are going from one to the other, some are combining and interweaving the two. She gave the example of a friend who draws an animation digitally using Adobe Flash, prints out each frame and paints them by hand in very expressionistic styles, then scans them back into the computer to animate.

See Echoes of Bats and Men and more of Jo Dery’s work on her website: http://www.jodery.com

Find out what else is going on at Citizen Jane Film Fest

“$9.99″ is an independent feature-length stop-motion animated film about a man who orders a book from a catalog for $9.99 which promises to hold the meaning of life, and his neighbors who live in his apartment building.

Although this film is animated, it is by no means a children’s film. There is strong language, naked puppets, mild drug use and drinking. Don’t let that turn you off either. This film is compelling and beautiful with strong, memorable characters and unique scenarios that will keep you captivated throughout the entire film. The characters all have separate and unique story lines that are interwoven and connected to each other.

There’s a homeless man, voiced by Geoffrey Rush, who lost his wife and now is on the search for coffee, a cigarette and something interesting to happen. There’s an old man, Mr. Kweller, who also lost his wife, is very lonely, and just looking for someone to talk to. There’s brothers Lenny and Dave. Dave is unemployed and searching for the meaning of life. Lenny works as a repossessor and is mostly interested in his super model girlfriend. Zack is a young kid who learns the value of working for things you want with his piggy bank and drinking lots of glasses of milk.

The film is more about humans and their gestures than the meaning of life–which we never learn what the book says is, although we do learn that there is not just one meaning, but six.

After the film, concept illustrator, Shira Derman, spoke to the audience about the production of the film. She said that the film took almost 10 years to go from concept to finished product. It was in actual production for about two years. The puppets in the film had frames made out of metal with ball and socket joints and then were covered in silicon. The sets were made out of wood and constructed by crews of model builders. She wanted to emphasize the point that animation is not just a medium used for children’s films–it’s an emerging art that can be used for any type of film. That’s certainly true, and this film was an excellent example of how animation is an elaborate art.

Check out the trailer for $9.99:

For more information about $9.99, visit:
www.9dollars99movie.com

For more information about the Citizen Jane Film Festival, visit:
http://www.stephens.edu/news/stephensevents/citizenjane/index.php

Saw the film? Leave us a comment and tell us what you thought!

“Bright Star” is a love story and not for the feint of heart.  The film stars  Ben Whishaw as John Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne. This film is about the tragic affair between the romantic poet and his unexpected love with the girl next door, literally.

While he was living, John Keats was not as well known as he is today. He scrapped by on a very small income and the charity of his friends so he could focus on his craft – poetry. Keats moved in with his friend Mr. Brown so the two poets could collaborate on their work. The Brawne family  rented rooms from Brown and occupied the same home, but they kept their households mostly separate. Keats soon met Fanny Brawne, a snarky woman with an obsession with fashion. Keats is the quintessential  dreamer and Brawne is very practical. Their story goes on from there – stereotypical boy meets girl and they have a wonderful love story – a very short lived one.

The way Jane Campion, the director, visually sets the film and brings it to life really transports the viewer from the modern day to the early 19th century Regency era. She uses color and lighting to really set the mood. There are times during the movie when one can see the mood is joyful from the colors of Brawne’s dresses or how the light blinds the screen for one moment with the contrast of the bright sunshine.

Whishaw and Cornish’s chemistry on screen is impeccable. It’s intoxicating to watch them together. One point I really enjoyed was the innocence of the two characters. It’s obvious they are each other’s first loves. When they first kiss, both in their 20s, the viewer can see the nervousness of Keats and Brawne’s. As their story progresses, Keats must leave Brawne because of his failing health. She begs him to stay saying, “I’ll do anything you want.” Keats replies, “I’m too much of a gentleman for that.” I really love how Campion captures the time period by the lack of a sexual appetite on Keats part and how naive Fanny is. It’s refreshing to see from an oversexed pop culture.

Before seeing the film, I thought Keats was another stuffy romantic poet I had to read in AP English to pass the class and gain college credit. Even on a trip to Rome, I passed his home and memorial by the Spanish Steps in complete ignorance. I knew Keats died of tuberculosis as a young man, but I never really understood the true symptoms and how he was robbed of his life. I was really wrong about Keats.

I would strongly suggest seeing this film, but a few warnings first. If you’re not in the mood for a period piece or romance, don’t see it because the movie will be spoiled. It’s longer, but worth sitting through it. Also, this is by no means a biography about Keats life. It’s a small part of his life brought to the silver screen.

Bright Star is showing at Ragtag Cinema through October 15. You can also catch it at the Citizen Jane Film Festival on October 17 and 18.