Seeking Asian Female

I first saw a cut of this film during s WGBH producers workshop a couple of years  ago and was taken with it right away. The director, Debbie Lum, was exploring an intriguing issue for her and for  the characters in her film:  can a young Asian woman find happiness with a older American man  obsessed with Asian women?

Here's the trailer

As we talked about her film in  the workshop I remember telling Debbie,"don't be shy about putting yourself  in the film as a third character."  This, I told her, would help clarify the issues in the film  and add an extra level of intrigue as Debbie mused about her role in the relationship between Sandy and Steven .  Debbie Lum, a Chinese American filmmaker,  narrates the film with skepticism and humor . especially in the early stages of Steven’s search for the perfect Asian wife.

Steven is a baby-boomer in his early 60's who is twice divorced.  His ten year search for an Asian wife led him from “mail-order” bride catalogues to online dating websites where he finally met Sandy.

Sandy, whose Chinese name is Jianhua, grew up on a tea farm in the remote mountains of Huangshan, China. At the age of 18, she migrated to Shenzhen, where  she worked her way up from the factory floor to an office job . Still single at age 30, she went online looking for love and met Steven. 

The film intensely documents  their relationship from the moment Sandy arrives in the 
US on a 3 month fiancé visa.  It starts down a road with many twists and turns, many arguments about his former Chinese girlfriend, Molly, and about who should do the housework in Steven's home. All that tension has Sandy finally confiding to Debbie one day that she plans to leave Steven.   Steven is discovering what it's like to deal with a real woman, not his idealized  version of an Asian wife.

Despite all the arguments, they do marry and then just three months later, Sandy leaves Steven to stay with friends.  But eventually she returns to their home, which is now sparkling, all cleaned up by Steven, and they settle into a relationship that seems to be doing much better.  And through the film , the filmmaker makes her own journey from  deep skepticism about the relationship  to a role as translator,  confidante and " marriage counselor,"  to deep doubts about whether she interfered too much ,  and from there to share their happiness as the marriage finally succeeds, "In  love and documentaries", she concludes, "You just  never know." 

I found the film personal , intricate and wise , and Debbie fully delivers  on the promise of her own story in the film. All is all, an excellent piece of work .

There is an intriguing radio piece about Debbie's journey on This American Life

The film will air on PBS Independent  Lens May 6 .   Other screenings  are listed here.

I also found it streaming on Vimeo part 1 here and part 2 here

I hope you enjoy the film as much as I did. 

An unexpected story

I was tracking down an old colleague from my days at WCCO -TV  in Minneapolis, Ann Rubinstein, then  a fine reporter, and discivered she had exec produced a couple of recent docs, including one that is a gem of a  story.




Trailer

This is  a film about Duke track coach  Al Buehler .  Chances are you've never heard of him. I certainly hadn't.  But his is a remarkable story that makes you feel good finally knowing about him .


What struck me as most telling aboit his story is the way he integrated black athletes from  a nearby black college, North Carolina Central,  with his white athletes at Duke during the days of the deeply segregated South. ( Dukle had no black students at the time ) He just thought it was the right thing to do, accomplished his  mission and amazingly got away with it at a time of great racial turmoil around the civil  rights movement. 

His  partneship with Dr. Leroy Walker , the black coach at North Carolina Central , is another great story in the film -- the way they pulled their teams together in practices at the pristine Duke track facilities  and how they divided their turf, Buehler coaching  the distance runners, Walker coaching the sprinters.  The men complemented each  other in many  ways --Buehler, the inside  man  quietly  organizing  the details, Walker the outside man,  becoming the spokesman for the duo .

Together ,  they would organize major integrated track and feel meets, the PAn-Africa games ,  the MLK Jr. , iInternational Freedom Games ,  even extending the integrated track idea to the cold war with the first USSR-USA itrack meet in 1974.  Buehler and Walker would both become important Olympic track and field  coaches, serving several  US Olympic teams.  

And remarkably in the early 70's when women becane the new civil rights issue , Beuhler was at the forefront  again, bringing  the first woman runner  onto the Duke track team and then whenTitle IX  was enacted mandating equal  acess to women athletes, Buehler voluntarily gave all his track  scholarships to the  women's program  at Duke,  so it could get off to a strong start. 

His friend coach Walker, attributes Buehler's remarkable  record to his inherent humility And it makes sense.  If you're not looking for  glory for yourself , its easier to do right by others. ... 

All in all, Buehler strikes me as the Atticus Finch of college athletics-- a humble and principled man , willing  to take on the challenges of his day and do the right thing. 

The film  tells much of this well , ably directed by one of Buehler's former students,  Amy Unell, who went on become a producer  at NBC an decided in 2010 make this doc in tribute to the Duke coach on his 80th birthday.  And the film is organized as a glowing tribute, but in this case m it doesn't matter.  It is such a great story, you easy  forgive its sentimentality  and come away grateful for having learned about this remarkable man.
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I do think a stronger  film could have been made , focusing more on his integration efforts , and trimming some  of the material in the second  half of the film. But these are quibbles.

The film can be rented on itunes and is streaming on Netflix.

Watch this film. You'll be glad you did.

Kind Hearted Woman preview

I'm taking the unusual  step of reviewing a Frontline film I worked on with David Sutherland (The Farmer's Wife, Country Boys).


                           Kind Hearted Woman
Trailer

His latest  epic is a searing portrait of a Native woman, Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation.  Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to conquer her alcohol addiction ,  raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.   

Robin’s battles in tribal court with her ex-husband for custody of the children, even after he is convicted of abusive sexual contact with his daughter, illuminates how serious this problem is on the reservation. Her quest to heal her family, find a man worthy of her love, build a career, and fulfill her goal of returning to her reservation to help prevent the abuse of women and children, takes her on an intimate and inspiring journey full of heartbreak, discovery, and redemption.

David has just completed  a 2 year edit and a meticulous post-production process on the 5 hour  series which will air as a presentation  of Frontline and Independent  Lens on PBS April  1 and 2. 

I worked with David, supervising his efforts on The Farmers Wife  and Country Boys, to which I made  some serious structural contributions, but on Kind Hearted Woman, David was at the top of his game and didn't need much of my help, so I can sing his praises without singing my own. 

I think viewers will find the film  very dramatic , involving and yet still troubling , due to its difficult subject matter.  David is a very accomplished storyteller and filmmaker, and his level of commitment to his films is unprecedented in my experience:

Here's a video piece about  David's filmmaking

I hope you take to opportunity to screen the film.  It will also be available online at Frontline.org. And I would be happy to publish your comments, on the film  here on this blog.  Send your comments  to me at jmsul68@gmail.com

Here are links to a couple of interesting articles about the film.

From IDA:  http://www.documentary.org/magazine/reservation-blues-kind-hearted-woman-paints-hardscrabble-portrait

And from  NY Times

Also, Frontline reporter Sarah Childress has done substantial reporting on the controversies  about tribal justice and child protection on the Spirit Lake Reservation, Check out her posts at Frontline

Hope to hear from you with your reviews of Kind Hearted Woman.

PBS 2013 Online Film Festival

I recently scanned  through the PBS 2013 Online Film Festival  of short  films  looking  for some documentaries to inspire me , but finding few gems.

Link to online festival

Most all the films  had no dramtic arc to them at all, but were merely descriptions of situations, like a summer camp for Indian kids, or portraits , one of a gay dad  who complains about his prolems with his ex-wire over who will care for their kids.

I don't know if there's something about the short format that automatically eliminates narrative development and drive , or if something has  has happened to today's filmmaker.  but there  were very few strong plots in any of the dozen films I screened

I did discover two well-crafted  films I  can recommend you watch:

The first, titled "Still" is a portrait of  72 year old  underwater photographer Carlos Eyles. It is beautifully shot by cinemaphotographer Tom Lyons. Some of his scenes of  Eyles swimming with turtles  and and dolphins are simply mesmerizing and the film with Eyles narrating is well put  together by a quartet  of producers -- Michael  Bath, Jose Tadeu Bijos, Pasqual Gutierre  and Ruby Stocking.

The other film I reccomend  is called  "Noc Na Tenecku", ( Night at the Dance) a short documentary about one of the last Czech dance halls in Texas.  Set in the tiny central Texas berg of Seaton, population 40, (it's located about halfway between San Antonio and Dallas), the film profiles Alice Sefcik Sulak,  the dance hall owner and  some old timers who still enjoy the dances at the Sefcik Dance Hall,  established in 1923.

There are a bunch of poignant moments sprinkled throughout the film -- a couple describes  how they danced  at the hall as teenagers  and then met there again after both were widowed;  a woman shows us  her her gold dancing shoes, but confesses she is sometime a wallflower at the dances;  another elderly woman  takes us to her husband's  gravestone near the dance hall to tell us she regerts not being able to dance the polka with Arthur any more,  and in the the film's final scene , Alice, the arthritic owner of the dance hall walks slow;y across  the now empty darkened dance floor,  slips a dollar bill in the jukebox and sings along with the song she has selected ,  singing perhaps to her now departed husband or maybe some never forgotten beau:

                                Henry, you have left me
                                Although you'll never leave my mind
                                I try and try to forget the night
                                You promised to be my sweetheart
                                 Now you have left me memories
                                 Although we are apart
                                 Never forget that you will regret
                                The promise you broke , sweetheart.

The film is artfully directed by Annie Silverstein, a young  Austin filmmaker.  From the looks of this film, she has a bright future.

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The Despair of Hagiography

I just finished watching The Powerbroker, a biography of the Urban League President and civil rights activist. Whitney Young.  But the whole enterprise left me only sighing.

The Powerbroker trailer

As you can see from the trailer above, this is a film with a strong and simple  message-- Whitney Young was a genius and a prophet , part of  a triumvirate of  leaders -- Thurgood Marshall ,Martin Luther Kind and Young-- that together led the civil rights movement.

The film works very hard to portray Young as a misunderstood hero.  While the film may be right about Young's reputation, what I was missing in tn this film , as in all first-rate biographies, was a sense of the man himself -- his inner life, his deepest emtions, his mistakes as well as his triumphs, his personal life, and his inner demons.

I don't know enough about Young's story to argue with the content of this film, but I do know from my work on many biographical films, that all accomplished  men and women will seem more heroic if you delve into  their inner struggles and their weaknesses, portraying what what they triumphed over in their own lives to achieve what they did .  There is precious little of that in this film.

I do really do understand the need to make the first film about important leaders simple heroic tales, but I keep waiting for  the next effort that will be  deeper and more realistic. Whitney Young , who to all appearances was a man who prided himself in his realism,  deserved  a better film.

That said, the film is well made, and you'll  learn the basics of Young's  biography, but the film's  approach to the story filled me with the sighs of despair.

Watch the Powerbroker

Celebrating Sugar Man

Searching for Sugar Man trailer

I was immensely pleased to see Searching for Sugar Man pick up the Oscar for best documentary feature.  It certainly is the best doc I've seen in some time .

I first saw the film on a video link several months ago and was deeply moved by the story of singer- songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, who after cutting two strong albums in the early 70's, neither of which sold in the U.S., lived a life of obscurity, raising his family in Detroit and working blue collar jobs demolishing  and rehabing houses in the city.  Late in his life, in the late 90's, he would discover that unknown to him, he had been a superstar in South Africa all this time , since the early 70's  when his album, Cold Fact,  first appeared  there and seized the imagination of young  Afrikaners  protesting Apartheid.  "It was a soundtrack of our lives" says one fan. " He was more popular than Elvis", says another.

But because of his  obscurity, no one in South Africa knew anything about him and rumors circulated that he had killed himself onstage during a performance . Eventually in the mid 90;s a couple of his South African  fans  set out to track down the story of how Rodriguez died.   That detective story sets th film on a trail that is full of great surprises and revelations, that I will try not to spoil for you.

It is also a great story of redemption, of an obscure life that gets its reward inn the end, and the story of a wise and humble man, who as a friend says of him late in the film:  "He took all that torment, all that agony , all that confusion and pain, and transformed it into something beautiful."

And the film of this overpowering  story is so well made, so well structured, so stunningly shot and directed, so searching for the deeper meaning of the story , that you come away grateful to the filmmakers for being so damn good at their work.

Searching for Sugar Man is a truly great film and I urge everyone to screen it soon  for is rich rewards.

Here is the theatrical schedule.   Also is available for download on iTunes.

After you;ve screened the film , here are some links about how it was made .
60 Minutes story
Interview with producer Simon Chinn
An account by director Malik Bendjelloul
NY Times feature
Rodriguez website


See this film!

A Rave for The Gatekeepers

This is our first guest post, from long-time FRONTLINE producer Steve Talbot,  who I worked with  closely on several films, including the very entertainingThe Long March of Newt Gingrich .  
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Steve  recently  emailed his friends after screening The Gatekeepers in San Francisco.

Link to the The Gatekeepers trailer


Friends,

Go see The Gatekeepers, if you have a chance. Best serious docu in a movie theater in a long time.

Six former heads of the Israeli secret service/intell agency Shin Bet.

Incredible access, and the discussion of politics, morality and war is  intelligent,  bracing, disturbing and very dark. Reminiscent of "The Fog of War."

For those of you in San Francisco, it just opened at the Embarcadero.

(And here is a link to screenings in other cities. )


A Very accurate review in the NY Times...
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/movies/the-gatekeepers-documentary-by-israeli-director-dror-moreh.html?_r=0#previews

Here's a clip we are featuring on The I Files...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLYAjLgpKMQ&list=PLDurT10mnRdC0gVhnDEI28jgIug3lx0dj&index=3

Best, 
Steve

P.S. Doing a screening tonight of Marian Marzynski's upcoming
Frontline, "Never Forget to Lie," at the Victoria Theater
in San Francisco, 8pm. If you are in town, please join us. 


Link to Frontline preview of "Never Forget to Lie"



Thanks, Steve for the review.

And please post your comments below.