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Arts
Friday, April 5, 2019 — 5
The 57th Ann Arbor Film
Festival came to a close on Sunday
night with a screening of some of
this year’s award-winning short
films. While The Daily’s coverage
of the festival has largely focused
on feature-length entrants, the
eight shorts presented on Sunday
ran the gamut of film-making
techniques,
packing
a
wide
spectrum of innovation into 74
minutes. A few of the films stood
out as exceptionally engaging.
As an art history major, I
particularly enjoyed “Running
in Circles,” a short silent film by
Ei Toshinari and Duy Nguyen.
Shot at Robert Smithson’s “Spiral
Jetty,” a work of land art near
Rozel Point in Utah, the film
shows a man running through the
spiral from multiple perspectives.
This union of art forms was a
common theme among a few of
the shorts. Most notably, Cheri
Gaulke’s
short
documentary
“Gloria’s
Call”
followed
the
studies and travels of Gloria
Orenstein in the 1970s, sharing
the stories of her friendships
and encounters with leading
female artists of the surrealist
movement.
“Gloria’s
Call”
explores femininity, spirituality
and surrealism through a feminist
lens; a refreshing presentation
of
surrealism’s
oft
forgotten
heroines. “We Were Hardly More
Than Children,” a film by Cecelia
Condit, incorporates the Francis
Bacon-esque paintings of Diane
Messinger to explore memory
and pain. The film’s dream-like
presentation makes the narrative,
a story of an illegal abortion in
1969, even more gut-wrenching.
My clear favorite however
was “La Via Divina (The Divine
Way)” by Ilaria di Carlo. A
parody of “Dante’s Inferno,” the
approximately
15-minute
film
depicts a woman descending
an infinite staircase. Beautiful
staircases are shown one after
another, each time the same
woman begins from the top of the
frame and continues her descent.
All sorts of architectural forms
are represented in the staircases:
industrial, Victorian, neoclassical.
Most staircases circle infinitely
downward in spirals, ellipses and
squares, while some proceed in
a straight line. This ridiculously
playful film is cinema at its
most essential: Beautiful forms
depicted in motion, vivid color
and rich texture, a score which
complements the direction to
highlight shifts in architectural
style and mood.
With “La Via Divina,” Ilaria
di
Carlo
won
the
Barbara
Aronofsky Latham Award for an
emerging
experimental
video
artist. “We Were Hardly More
Than Children” took the Eileen
Maitland Award, and “Running
in
Circle”
won
the
George
Manupelli
Founder’s
Spirit
Award,
while
“Gloria’s
Call”
was awarded Best Documentary
Film. Other films shown at the
screening
ventures
into
the
more avant-garde. For example,
“Phantom Ride Phantom” by
Siegfried A. Fruhaul, winner of
a Jury Award, was a jarring and
darkly post-modern symphony
of aggressive audio over flashing
photographs of railroad tracks.
“As Above, So Below” by Cooper
Holoweski used a split screen
to develop the simultaneously
endearing and unsettling notion
that a whole universe may exist
within every neutron — that our
whole existence may lie within a
microscopic particle in a larger,
super-universe. This film won
the
PROCAM
Best
Regional
Filmmaker Award.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival’s
embrace
of
experimentation
in film is laudable. The award-
winning shorts presented on
Saturday instilled in me a new
appreciation
for
innovative
filmmaking by pushing me away
from a canonical perspective on
the art of film. While shorts may
be an occasionally overlooked
subsection
of
cinema,
they
contain
some
of
the
most
artistic implementation of film’s
unique qualities as a medium of
expression.
The final day at the AAFF
ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL COVERAGE
ROSS ORGIEFSKY
Daily Arts Writer
It is only rational to expect
wonders from Claudia Rankine.
It would be foolish not to, really,
especially after her unflinching
“Citizen: An American Lyric,”
a masterpiece that received
uncountable
awards
and
that has already bled — with
seeming permanence — into
the University of Michigan’s
English department. Rankine
is often lionized for
her unique capacity
to address race and
expose
its
biased-
invisibility in poetry.
Imagine the literary
world’s
excitement,
then, upon the news
that
Rankine
had
written a play.
“The White Card”
is Rankine’s newest
work
to
appear
between stage wings,
and
it
is
violently
visceral. The play is
about a couple of art
collectors and a Black
artist, all three placed
in
the
precarious
aftermath of the entrance of
the Trump administration. The
couple, Charles and Virginia
Spencer, in tandem with their
art dealer Eric, invite Charlotte
over in an attempt to woo her
into selling art to Charles’
collection
and
foundation.
It’s an objectively good match
—
fantastic
artist,
hungry
art collectors. But it is also a
precarious match: Charlotte’s
art
centers
on
the
Black
experience and its nuances,
trying to offer a lens into the
space where few are allowed.
Charles and Virginia are white,
both
with
a
near-obsessive
desire to do good politically,
collecting art pieces on the
experience of Black suffering. By
the time the Spencers’ activist
son, Alex, joins
the
dinner
a
quarter of the
way
into
the
play, the tension
is choking.
Much of “The
White Card,” to
an extent, feels
like that scene
in “Get Out” —
the one where
Rose’s
father,
to the wince of
the
audience,
goes out of his
way to tell Chris
that he “would
have voted for
Obama
for
a
third time.” It is an unveiled
attempt to pander to a Black
man and to assuage one’s own
white guilt, to convince oneself
that they are the opposite of
racist and to justify it to a person
of color.
The entirety of “The White
Card”
is
brimming
with
experiences like this, though
Rankine takes things a step
further. For one, the Spencers’
underlying tones are in check
by their son. Though more
importantly, the Spencers are
not deliberate racists. They are
both white and liberal advocates
(or they try to be). They work
outwardly to, in their view,
combat racism by purchasing
Black work.
Obviously, the classical white
liberal in the era of Trump is a
controversial and complex arc to
examine. Delightfully, Rankine
is not deterred.
Rankine’s judicious work on
character make the two scenes
of play even more provocative
for readers. Each member of the
six-person cast is placed deftly
in the play, each stuffed full of
lines almost uncomfortable with
their specificity and attention to
detail. It’s a design that makes
attention crucial for readers, but
one that pays off — readers pick
up on tics and shortcomings
of
each
character.
Subtle,
inappropriate
remarks
from
the Spencers and Charlotte’s
reaction to them feel so accurate
that it’s nearly painful. Rankine
uses the medium of conversation
to flip the switch and reveal
a
conversation’s
unbearable
tensions
in
a
single
line.
Characters always feel as though
they are getting at something —
each line of conversation seems
to be a nod to an ideology or
canned statement we employ
when we discuss race.
Rankine uses this cast
of characters to offer
a display of the white,
unsure, mediocre liberal
at its finest. Then for the
final, stirring scene, she
flips this on its head:
She
addresses
such
shortcomings head on.
Admittedly,
there
comes a point in “The
White
Card”
where
things
began
to
feel
counterfeit.
Rankine’s
commentary on race and
politics are fantastic, but
it feels as though that
was all she had to talk
about. Virginia Spencer
speaks an almost unbelievable
roll of accidentally insensitive
comments, and Alex cannot go
a line, it seems, without calling
out his parents’ shortcomings.
While
this
is
not
dry,
it
sometimes feels constructed and
artificial. It appears as though
Rankine felt the need to check
off every possible encounter one
could have with race in the span
of a single work.
Maybe, though, this is what
“The White Card” is meant to
be. In all of its cringe-worthy
moments,
awkward
silences
and
unmuted
realizations,
“The White Card” is — an all-
encompassing
conversation
centered on race for a new
age of activism and change.
A conversation in a complex,
brash
voice
that examines
culpability
and
what
progress
means.
It
is
time,
probably,
that
we
listen to this
conversation.
And
“The
White
Card”
offers
it
to
audiences
from a stage
where
veils
are
removed
for
every
viewer to see.
Rankine’s latest is gritty
BOOK REVIEW
JOHN DECKER
Daily Arts Writer
The White Card
Claudia Rankine
Graywolf Press
Mar. 29, 2019
Each member of the six-person cast is
placed deftly in the play, each stuffed
full of lines almost uncomfortable with
their specificity and attention to detail
I’m trying to pinpoint the
moment when I first realized
FX’s “Better Things” was
something special. It might
have been within the first few
minutes of the show, when
single mother, Sam (Pamela
Adlon, “Star vs. the Forces of
Evil”) is talking to her youngest
daughter, Duke (Olivia Edward,
“The Outside Story”)
in a mall bathroom.
They’re
discussing
the dads in Duke’s
class, some of whom
Sam has hooked up
with in the past.
“What
about
Charles’s dad? What
about
him?”
asks
Duke.
“Is he tall?” Sam
jokes.
“To
me,”
Duke
says.
Though
they
may seem mundane
or
simple
to
the
untrained
eye,
so
many little things —
the location, Duke’s
response, the matter-
of-factness with which Sam
approaches her love life — work
together to elevate “Better
Things” above any shows it
might be compared to, though
it’s difficult to even imagine
anything similar.
“Better
Things”
follows
Sam Fox, an actress and single
mother raising three daughters:
sweet
Duke,
testy
Frankie
(Hannah
Alligood,
“The
Divergent Series: Allegiant”)
and
entitled
Max
(Mikey
Madison,
“Monster”).
The
tone is less “Gilmore Girls”
and more like that opening
sequence of “Lady Bird,” when
Saoirse Ronan throws herself
out of the moving car. The show
is an extended inquiry into
the inventive and inaccurate
ways that daughters project
introspection onto the world,
how mothers must constantly
decide whether to administer or
withhold the truth in response.
One
strength
of
“Better
Things” is that the show’s
focus
on
parenthood
and
childhood puts four different
mother-daughter
dynamics
at the forefront. Sam and her
oldest daughter, Max, alternate
between
intense
love
and
deep frustration; one feeling
often amplifies the other. As a
senior in high school, Max is
old enough to think she knows
her mother as a person outside
their relationship, but she’s
also young enough that this
image of her mother is wildly
inaccurate. Their tiffs are some
of the show’s best work: Max
says
something
ridiculous,
Sam
takes
the
bait.
Max
instinctively is open with her
mother, but Sam prefers that
she hides things. One of their
first scenes alone in the pilot
exemplifies this.
After Max asks Sam to buy
her good weed, Sam tells her
daughter not to share quite so
much.
“Why, you’re my mom, I
want you to know if I have sex
or if I want to get high,” Max
replies.
“Ah! No, hide things from
me,” Sam says.
Later, Frankie bursts in while
Sam is trying to watch porn.
Spread-eagle on her mother’s
bed, she wonders aloud if she
should undergo female genital
mutilation as a protest.
“Get out!” Sam yells in
response.
The scene is typical of
“Better Things”: a daughter
intruding on her mother, a child
saying something insane with
complete, deadpan seriousness.
“Better
Things”
treats
the
absurd urgency of adolescence
as real but idiotic, a drive for
self-expression that endures
into adulthood. The show is
unique among family dramas
in that it never shies away from
recognizing the never-ending
push and pull between parents
and children. Adlon, who both
writes and stars in the show,
is
continuously
finding
new
ways
to acknowledge the
complicated net of
desire and disgust
that makes a family.
It’s rare that a
show
immediately
creates
a
fully-
formed world, but
this is a feat that
“Better
Things”
manages
easily.
The
characters
feel real in the best
way,
eschewing
universality
for
specificity.
What’s
most
striking
and
enjoyably
familiar
is the raw friction of
seeing what happens
when children and parents need
radically different things from
each other. Rather than leaning
on tropes, “Better Things”
takes on the hilarity and grief of
the mundane: a woman giving
her dogs their ear medicine, a
daughter storming out of the
DMV, a child crying over a
nightmare. Nothing is special,
so everything is.
Nearly every scene in “Better
Things” is infused with an
awareness of how quickly a
moment can escalate, how
sometimes every conversation
between a mother and daughter
feels like a test: of love, of
mutual
understanding,
of
how well-versed each is in
the needs of the other. Now in
its third season, the show is
an underappreciated gem in
both writing and performance
—
the
rare
comedy-drama
that
simultaneously
embraces
poignancy
and
humor,
understanding
the
impossibility of separating the
two.
On the ‘Lady Bird’ of TV
TV REVIEW
MIRIAM FRANCISCO
Daily Arts Writer
Better Things
FX
Thursdays @ 10 p.m.
“Lowkey? Show Me the Body
is for the freaks,” says frontman/
banjoist Julian Cashwan Pratt
of the experimental hardcore
band Show Me the Body in an
interview with Kerrang! last
week. Upon listening to the
singles for their new album Dog
Whistle, this sounds like a bold
claim. Singles “Camp Orchestra”
and
“Madonna
Rocket,”
though
excellent, appear to
be pretty typical fare
coming from the New
York City hardcore
scene.
However,
within the context
of the album, the
singles serve a much
larger purpose: They
help to tell a story
that, contrary to the
singles’s
political
tones, is collaborative
and
personal,
conveyed in a way
that every listener can
relate to it in someway.
Lead single “Camp
Orchestra” begins the album
with a bang, despite its own
slow start. The first sounds
of the track are a rumbling
bass guitar and a twinkling,
meandering banjo. They are the
only instruments for the song’s
first two minutes and 10 seconds
(the drums don’t even start until
two minutes and 28 seconds
into the song!), and that’s when
the song begins to catch fire.
Inspired by the Auschwitz-
Birkenau Memorial and their
own Jewish heritage, Show Me
the Body crafted a song that
acutely describes the hardship
and plight of their predecessors.
The song is personal to the band
while still remaining valuable
and important to all listeners
even if they have no personal
connection to the subject matter.
While “Camp Orchestra” is
more sonically typical of NYC
hardcore, tracks like “Not for
Love,”
“Forks
and
Knives”
and “USA Lullaby” stray far
from the norm. For someone
more accustomed to hardcore
and punk music, these tracks
will take some getting used to.
Each song, especially “Not for
Love,” pulls many of its defining
elements from noise rock. “Not
for Love” features a blown-out
bass guitar reminiscent of an 808
and punishing vocals ranging
from guttural grunts to piercing
shrieks
and
everywhere
in
between.
No part of Dog Whistle is
typical. The sounds that Show
Me the Body explores have
probably
never
used
before
on a hardcore record. “Badge
Grabber” utilizes both muted
quantized drum loops and live
drumming for an effect that is
both a breath of fresh air and
suffocating.
“USA
Lullaby”
distorts its instrumentals so
far beyond their limits that you
can almost hear each artifact
of sound. This is all makes for a
very exciting and challenging
work, but the album’s crowning
achievement,
“Madonna
Rocket,” is also its least daring.
“Madonna Rocket” is one of
the most beautiful and touching
hardcore songs ever created.
That’s a bold claim, but the track
is wholly worthy of such praise.
On “Madonna Rocket,” Show Me
the Body takes the inclusive and
community-oriented
lyrics and fast-paced,
jagged instrumentals
from
youth
crew
legends like Gorilla
Biscuits and Youth of
Today and filters them
through their twisted
creative
collective/
think tank known as
Corpus. The result
is a triumphant yet
brutal track. Cashwan
Pratt’s
vocals
take
center
stage
over
the rest of the band
as he growls, “(W)
hen I meet someone
that’s good, I want to
die with them / Dead
friends, I still wanna say goodbye
to them / Aside from me, Aside
from them / All I have is family,
I will die with them.”
With
Dog
Whistle,
Show
Me the Body aimed to create
a community that the freaks
could call home, and that they
did. They also did so much more,
creating an affecting album that
is bound to resonate with all
listeners in some capacity. At
the very least, Dog Whistle will
allow new listeners to access a
world bigger than their own and
give them a new perspective on
community. Show Me the Body
may be for the freaks, but it is
also for everyone.
‘Dog Whistle’ challenges
ALBUM REVIEW
Dog Whistle
Show Me the Body
Loma Vista Recordings
JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer