From a lesbian romance banned in Kenya to a Kafkaesque story of refugees fleeing Europe, this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival, running April 4-11, has it all. This year’s 21st annual event includes more than 150 films, spanning genres, languages, cultures and nations. Watch for more reviews in next week’s print edition and in the Wisconsin Film Festival Official Film Guide (distributed in the March 7 issue of Isthmus and available at the box office at Memorial Union).
Elephant Path (Njaia Njoku)
Fri., April 5, AMC Madison, 11 am; Sat., April 6, AMC Madison, 3:30 pm. Both showings are rush only.
Sometimes nature documentaries seem like they were made in a vacuum, beautiful shots of magnificent animals, divorced from the context and the human beings who hold their fate in their hands. That’s not the case with Elephant Path, a Golden Badger Award-winning documentary that tracks the fate of the forest elephants of the Central African Republic and their guardians.
The riveting two central figures are a local elder and tracker named Sessely Bernard, and Andrea Turkalo, a U.S.-born elephant behavioral biologist who has spent decades observing and advocating for the preservation of the elephants and their luscious forest habitat.
In the beginning, we are lulled into a peaceful rhythm as Sessely and Andrea spend hours in an observation tower where a herd gathers, comparing notes and identifying individuals. It’s Sessely, named after the nearby river, who makes the case for the elephants, explaining their similarities to humans and detailing the benefits they bring to the ecosystem. Poaching is already a problem, but much larger scale carnage is in store as a violent rebel group heads for the area near Dzanga National Park. Trigger warning: humans and elephants were harmed, and if you are sensitive, like me, you’ll want to shield your eyes at times. It’s brutal and sad, but sculptor-turned-director Todd McGrain is not interested in manipulating our emotions. He lets the people and images speak for themselves. The result is poetry — and oddly inspiring. It’s an intimate look at village life that leaves you with hope for the elephants and the humans. — Catherine Capellaro
Rafiki
Fri., April 5, Union South, 4:30 pm; Sat., April 6, AMC Madison, 9 pm
Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki has generated buzz for creating controversy and breaking through barriers. The Cannes Film Festival selected Rafiki as the first Kenyan film to screen there, but the Kenyan government initially banned it at home due to its story of young lesbian love. While Rafiki hits many familiar notes, that ban proves that this story still needs to be told.
Young Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) works with her father at his small store, while he campaigns for a local election. Her father’s political opponent also has a young daughter, Ziki (Sheila Munyiva), who comes from a more privileged family. Kena and Ziki catch each other’s eyes, but Kena is well aware of the homophobic taunts and threats that her male friends direct at a young gay man. Kena and Ziki cannot let the gossip-hungry town know when they become more than friends.
The lead performances convey a wide-eyed sense of discovery and growing confidence. Mugatsia, in particular, grows more confident as a performer as Kena grows as a character. The cinematography creates a distinct sense of place with its saturated colors and sun-splashed exteriors. The vibrant visual style raises Rafiki above the typical social drama, creating something fresh and engaging. — James Kreul
Transit
Sat., April 6, Memorial Union-Shannon Hall, 6:15 pm; Thurs., April 11, AMC Madison, 1:30 pm (rush seats only).
Set mostly on the sun-baked graffiti-filled streets of beautifully shabby Marseilles, France, Transit is about needing the right papers — or stamps — to get out because the fascists are coming. It’s not clear whether this Kafkaesque thriller takes place during World War II, or in the present. What’s important is that it could be either. Georg (a magnificent Franz Rogowski) has come to the port city from Germany, where he’s “illegal.” But anti-immigrant raids are just a few steps behind him as he tries to help an injured man reach his wife and child. The man doesn’t survive the journey, and Georg befriends the son, Driss, and his mom, Melissa, who is deaf and mute. Hardly anybody we meet in Transit has what they need to survive the “cleansing” raids, so there’s an underlying desperation, despite the sunny calm. Everyone needs something — papers, identification, 12 passport photos, a friend, a lover. Transit has an omniscient narrator — a bartender, à la Casablanca — and his voiceovers sometimes get in the way of a compelling story and riveting performances. We don’t know who he is until three-quarters through the film, an intentional choice by German writer/director Christian Petzold, but a mostly unnecessary one. There’s one exception to that. During a raid of the apartment complex where Melissa and Driss live, crammed with immigrants and refugees, the police come, demanding papers. Families crowd into doorways, watching a woman being dragged out while her children wail. Nobody speaks up, because they are all afraid. The narrator does something the characters wouldn’t do — he names the feeling they all share at that moment: shame. And we feel it, too. Shame that we still live in a world where a piece of paper can be the difference between life and liberty — or death. — Catherine Capellaro
Bathtubs Over Broadway
Sat., April 6, Memorial Union-Shannon Hall, 8:30 pm
Sometimes we miss things only because they are gone. That’s the case with Steve Young, the former Late Show With David Letterman comedy writer who unwittingly became one of the world’s foremost collectors of corporate theater, or industrial musicals. They’re essentially highly produced Broadway musicals meant for a corporate audience, say, at an annual sales meeting; their heyday was the 1950s through the early 1970s. The documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway tells the dual story of how Young discovered the genre and fell under its sway (and joined the several other devotees of the form, including collector Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys) and the writers, directors, singers and dancers of the musicals themselves. They’ve included actors Tony Randall and writers Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock — who wrote the music and lyrics for Fiddler on the Roof. Young’s passion for unearthing the recordings and films of the stage production eventually extends to finding and meeting long-ago cast members. Their stories are proud and plucky but sometimes wistful. “Did your family understand what you were doing with these shows?” Young asks one veteran. “No,” he says, relating his mother’s disappointment in his career. “She said, ‘Why it’s nothing but a bunch of commercials.’...She didn’t see what I saw.” But Young did — and so, likely, will the audience. — Linda Falkenstein
Hotel by the River (Gangbyun Hotel)
Sun., April 7, UW Cinematheque, 7 pm; Wed., April 10, AMC Madison, 2 pm
If you’ve seen Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s most recent work (Right Now, Wrong Then; Yourself and Yours; On the Beach at Night Alone) you’ll know that his films are delicate variations on the same themes (love, loss, aging and regret), featuring a troupe of actors that is in sync with his idiosyncratic production methods. Hotel by the River fits so firmly into that pattern that it might not make a good introduction to his work. But fans should find plenty to contemplate during his latest minimalist drama.
Shot in mid-grey black-and-white, often in extended takes featuring revealing camera pans, Hong’s observational camera allows seemingly mundane scenes to simply play out before us. The narrative threads follow two guests at the titular hotel. An acclaimed poet, Ko Younghwan (Ki Joobong), has come to the hotel at the owner’s invitation. He’s convinced that he’s going to die soon, and he tells his two grown sons when they visit him. The other guest, Sanghee (Kim Minhee), has suffered a recent breakup, and a friend arrives to console her. As with other Hong films, pleasure comes from the nuanced observations within simple conversational scenes, and trying to anticipate how these narrative threads will (or won’t) intertwine. — James Kreul
