Film Festivals

Filmmaker Adam Christian Clark with Caroline and Jackie actresses Bitsie Tulloch (left) and Marguerite Moreau (right)

by Francesca McCaffery

One of the best narrative films I’ve seen screening at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival so far is the extraordinary debut feature written and directed by Adam Christian Clark- Carloline and Jackie.

The film centers around two sisters with an unexplained but hinted to have been very tough shared childhood. As Caroline (the wonderful Marguerite Moreau) flies in to see her younger sister Jackie (an amazing Bitsie Tulloch), we see her glancing at an “Anorexics Anonymous” brochure.Jackie has cooked a huge, thoughtful meal, (“Nana’s pot roast!”)and she and her new boyfriend Ryan (David Giuntoli- nicely understated) show Caroline their beautifully appointed, new craftsman home. Jackie is a designer, and it’s clear she has worked quite hard to achieve this still modest, but still, quite lovely lifestyle.

Caroline flippantly tells her sister that she has arranged to celebrate Jackie’s birthday with a few friends at a nearby restaurant, even though it is in fact Caroline’s birthday, and Jackie’s own birthday is literally months away. A bit upset (“I spent thirty-two hours cooking!” she sadly laments to her boyfriend), but putting on a sweet, big-girl face, they literally skip off to the pre-arranged fete.

At the restaurant, they are greeted by three of Jackie’s friends, and Jackie is curious as to why any of Caroline’s own friends aren’t present. It soon becomes quite obvious, especially as Caroline assembles everyone in Jackie’s living room, that another plan entirely is being put into play. James (Jason Gray-Stanford) is a musician who has abruptly cut his tour short to be there for Jackie’s birthday, and seemingly bestie Michelle (Valerie Azlynn) has brought new 22-year old, youngin boyfriend Charlie (David Fuitt) along for the ride.The tone changes almost minute by minute, as hints of realization dance across Jackie’s face, and the audience is quite uncertain as to who is telling the real truth, until there is no denying it

This film, especially for a director’s debut, is an absolute knockout. The camera work (by director-turned-first-time cinematographer Christian Swegal) is warm, non-intrusive and sumptuous, and the audience feels somehow placed in the room or setting in each and every frame.And the performances by Moreau and especially Tulloch are beyond standout, they are some of the realest, most down-to-earth and intelligent performances you will see all year. A film about family, the oh-so-complex ties that both bind and nurture, and laying witness to how mental illness can erupt and change the course of an evening and an entire lifetime, the movie explores the concept of love between two sisters that is simultaneously life-sustaining and in reality, both destructive and crucial. This great little film better get distribution, and fast!

Francesca McCaffery sat down with Caroline and Jackie’s  filmmaker Adam Christian Clark, and spoke with him about his roots, why he loves the work of Harmony Korine, and how being employed in reality television gave him the discipline and chops to work with his actors on-set today.

Vimooz: The two performances of the two lead women were really extraordinary.

ACC: Thank you! I had some really great casting directors- Angela Demo and Barbara McCarthy. They did a really great job, because they completely stood up for what they believed the characters were. What I imagined didn’t really exist! In pushing these certain actors, they became real to me as characters even more. We actually cast Bitsie first. And the additional challenge was that- the actresses really had to really look like sisters.

Vimooz: It’s kind of incredible how much the actresses actually do look alike!

ACC: They really do. We got very lucky. I actually know both Bitsie’s and Marguerite’s actual sisters, and the two actresses certainly look way more alike! It is a little more than that, too- because when they very first met and started working together, they got so into character, that they began to mirror each other’s mannerisms. I think it was that, more than anything. They kind of, like, were synced up to each other.

Vimooz: How did you start out?

ACC: I was really fortunate when I was in college (Clark went to USC), and started working in reality TV, which always shot in the summers. This was in 1999, and I started working as a PA. I came into it during the time of Survivor, and I ended up directing episodes of Big Brother. About three or four years ago, I decided that I really wanted to focus on making art-house films, so I cut myself from reality TV, and started directing music videos and commercials. Directing is a weird thing, because I wonder how people like Harmony Korine are able to do it! I’ve been fortunate to find other things- like editing reality TV, as opposed to directing it, which can be pretty draining. Editing is not that emotional draining, there’s no taking it home with you. I’ve also sold quite a few scripts. But they aren’t going to get made! I feel like a lot of good producers have my scripts as like, decorations, in their office! They’ll never be movies. But I’ve been doing this for years.

The thing about Harmony Korine is, all I ever wanted to do from the time I was eighteen was to make like a John Cassavetes movie, or a Jim Jarmusch movie, or a Harmony Korine movie, right? Harmony Korine has been somebody that I really, just, admire. You make a movie, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be in that realm. That’s why it’s so great to be in the Tribeca Film Festival’s Viewpoint section this year, because The Fourth Dimension is also in there. He has always been a hero of mine. When Gummo came out, that imagery and style he created is everywhere now. It pre-dated everything. He is such an artist.

Vimooz: What did you shoot Caroline and Jackie on?

ACC: It was shot on the Red MX camera. We also had great color conversion and correction.My best friend was actually the DP. Adam Hendricks, the producer, and Christian Swegal, the DP, we all went to film school together. Christian is actually not a DP (by trade.) He is a director, too. Going into this film, myself having only directed one short film before, I knew that I really had to go in with a lot of support. I just knew he would do a great job. He has a gift for that I don’t possess. But he had no experience doing this before. I had been on his sets so many times, I just knew he could do it well.

Vimooz: He definitely did! Tell us about directing your wonderful actors.

ACC: I take it really to an extreme. When we shoot scenes, I block everything with stand-ins, do all the blocking with them, and then pull everyone off set, and do just separate blocking with me, the camera operators, and the actors. Then the actors go into complete isolation, separately, I don’t want them together when we’re not filming. Then we roll camera and sound, the crew is pulled out again (except for the camera and departments) so the actors just enter the scene like they’re already really in it. If there’s any direction to give, everybody (the skeleton crew)leaves, then everybody comes back in. I had failed pretty big with the actors in my first film, a short called Goodbye, Shanghai, which was visually very strong, shot on 35mm, very formal. So I remembered back in the very first days of reality TV, it used to be shot by documentary filmmakers. The way they work is that they don’t intercut with the subjects, you’re a fly on the wall. I knew as a camera assistant not to even shake their hands. And I really remembered that, and thought, “I’m gonna try this with acting. I’m gonna try this with acting, and see if it gives them a greater tool, and be easier for them to be in that world. “ And they also don’t hang out with each other offset. The actors actually loved it. In theory, I mean, they loved it! There was a little bit of like, ‘Oh!’ in the beginning, when they realized how intense and serious I was about it. It may have happened slightly less (the isolation) than I thought, but I think it worked! We shot it in fifteen days, there was no off-camera time. But I did rehearse the actors for almost a month, and we would then rehearse every day on the set, during set-ups, about three hours a day.

Vimooz: I really loved Caroline and Jackie, Adam. Thank you so much for talking with me, and good luck with the film!

ACC: Thank you, Francesca!

Go see Caroline and Jackie– which screens this week of April 23^rd, 2012 at the Tribeca Film Festival. 

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by Francesca McCaffery

The Tribeca Film Festival has some wonderful, new films this year- check out all listings and times here. Vimooz has a few great picks for you to check out. The Tribeca Film Festival runs through April 29th, 2012.

Keep the Lights On: It seems like the only ones having authentic, intelligent romantic relationships onscreen are gay men (witness last year’s tiny, phenomenal British-born Weekend), and Ira Sach’ssemi-autobiographical Keep the Lights On is following in a newly emerging genre that is compelling, moving and almost unbearably honest. The film follows the director’s alter-ego Erikand his formerly in the closet lover Paul over the course ofa nearly ten-year relationship. At times moving slowly, as love and life and memory often do, the film is carried on the shoulders of the truly brilliant and open Danish actor Thure Lindhardt (as Erik.) . With Zachary Booth and Julianne Nicholson.

Planet of Snail: Speaking of love, this entirely lovely Korean documentary by Seung-Jun Yi takes us into the life of Young-Chan, an unusually charismatic deaf and blind man, and his pretty wife Soon-Ho, who has a pronounced spinal deformity. Their day-to-day moments become monuments to their own perceptive and loving spirits, as Young-Chan dreams of becoming a writer needing to chart the immense world bursting within him. Poetic, dazzling in its simplicity, this film will make a believer out of the hardest romantic cynic.

Baby Girl: I have to admit, I was ready to write this film off, imagining yet another faux-gritty portrayal of inner-city family turmoil, etc. But this little movie written and directed by Irishman Macdara Vallely shines with a sweet truth. From the extraordinary debut performance of teenager Yainis Ynoaa, (who plays Lena)to her insecure but loving mother played by a terrific Rosa Arredondo,to the sleazy yet somehow sympathetic Flaco Navajaa (looking like Bencio del Toro’s blonde baby brother) playing the mother’s new younger boyfriend Victor, (who really has eyes for the budding Lena.) Wonderful performances and a simple story line, and we get to see New York in a way it hasn’t been portrayed in a while- as if the characters actually lived and breathed in the neighborhood being portrayed.

Sexy Baby:This documentary, especially if you are female, will blow your mind. The filmmaking and producing team of Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus chart the lives of three women: Twelve-year old Winnifred- cool, upper-middle class Manhattanite; Nichole,former porn star and pole dancer ‘Nakita Kash.’; and a sweet, kindergarten school teacher named Laura from North Carolina, who is so insecure about her very fit andnormal body, that she is seeking out a surgeon (and eventually ends up getting, and (spoiler/warning: partially on camera!) a “vaginaplasty.” Most fascinating is the way the audience can witness the infintesimal changes which lead to the enormous leaps in the brilliant Winnifred’s development (from ages 12 to 14). Fromher and her classmates’ obsession with Lady Gaga, fishnet tightsand grabbing the boys’ attention via Facebook, it’s painful; to watch her youthful bravado and singularity ebb away. (Fear not, the child still remains amazing atfourteen, thank goodness.) Watching as three women navigate a culture navigate the difficulties of being bombarded with sexual images in the media may seem like old news. But this take is profoundly different. The filmmakers focuson how our very easy access to online porn and ‘soft-porn’ advertising (American Apparel)is altering men’s already rigidly high expectations of sex, performance and beauty- and how these expectations are making even 14 year olds need to appear as if they are “down to fuck.” A MUST see for both sexes, as well as a scary warning for parents and young women alike to monitor those FB pages. As the adorable Winnifred cheerfully laments: “We have no one to guide us through this. We are the pioneers.”

The World Before Her: A brilliant doc (and excellent counter-point to Sexy Baby) about the choices young girls growing up in India are faced with from two extreme stand-points: Going with with flow of “westernization” through the limited options of participating in the “beauty industry” (we come to know two remarkable poised, articulate and bright contenders for ‘Miss India,’) and a nineteen year old woman who works at a Hinduist Extremist girl’s camp run by her abusive father, carrying on the tradition of female control for her faith. It is sad to think that these girls’ choices are either the gun or the often demoralizing subjugation of pageant life if they choose not to marry; but an absolutely riveting work, and one of the very best documentaries you will see this year.

El Gusto:A beautiful, rousing documentary about elderly musicians from French Algiers- French, Jewish and Muslim- whose lives are scattered after the Algerian War for Independence. Reunited by the incredibly resourceful filmmaker Safinez Bousbiato bring back the tradition of“chaabi” music, jarring them from their lives stuck in the past, and giving them a chance to relive their dreams. A glorious, inspiring film- truly not to be missed.

My Sister’s Sister: Director Lynn Shelton (Humpday) is back with Mark Duplass in this movie also starring Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt.Duplass plays Jack, a tousled thirty-something still stumbling around after a year after his brother Tom’s untimely death. When Blunt’s character Iris, the former girlfriend of his late brother, suggests a sabbatical at her father’s idyllic house near a lake in upper Washington state, he is startled to see that her lesbian sister Hannah (DeWitt) has already holed up there, herself reeling from a recent and devastating break-up. Because Shelton is a special filmmaker of truly uncommon depth, this film ends up a tiny, burnished gem in her trusty hands, and has the same sweet heart that has permeated her earlier works.

High Tech, Low Life: Tribeca is teeming with great documentaries this year. High Tech, Low Life follows two of the very first “citizen journalists” from China. They arebrave bloggers who defy the risk of arrest, imprisonment and far worse by the Chinese government, and will make you feel guilty for all those hours spent Twittering about the flavor of smoothie you made this morning. “Tiger Temple” is the 57-year old who travels around China on his bicycle and reports on everything from communities made homeless by government land developers to farmers reeling from a recent flood; 27-year old “Zola” has to navigate the dangers of reporting on the likes of a rape and murder of a 14-year old by an official’s relative, all while dodging his traditional parents’ nagging about his future. Stephen Maing is the brilliant director, DP, (the tiny doc looks like a million bucks, a great bonus) editor and co-producer of this lush, timely and highly significant film.

The Fourth Dimension:A movie split into three parts, directed by Harmony Korine, Russsian-born Alexsei Fedorchenko and Polish Jan Kwiecinski, that cheeky guy at VICE Eddy Moretti (in conjunction with and Groslch Film Works) gave a “creative brief” which  asked each filmmaker to toy with the concept of the fourth dimension, and we see the results in this triptych of stories. Pretty much all you need to know is that Harmony Korine directs Val Kilmer playing a motivational guru (of sorts) named Val Kilmer, and hosts his seminars at the nearby roller rink. I don’t think anything more needs to be said: Go see this fun little jolt of a film. Fedorchenko’s thirty-minute contribution is also a definite, beautiful little stand-out.

Head Shot:A deft, atmospheric thriller from Thai director Pen-ek, Head Shot tells the story ofTul, an incorruptible cop who gets set-up, goes to jail, and is lured by to the dark side to work as an assassin to only hit the bad guys. It stars sexy Asian bad-ass Nopaachial “Peter” Jayaanama, and even the sets themselves look terrific, lived-in and real. A good, moody crime movie- a true, rare breed in any language.

Cut: Shot like it could have made right after Pulp Fiction, Cut is Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi’s tribute to great cinema, and the soul of a true believer is all that is evident in this noir love letter to both film and film buffs the world over. Hidetoshi Nishijima plays Shuji, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker, who is so desperate for people to see great film, he blares his opinions in the streets with a bullhorn to all who were listen, screens old movies on the roof of his ramshackle apartment, and borrows money from his Yakuza hit man brother to make his own failed pictures. When his massive debt comes due, Shuji proceeds to try to avenge his brother’s honor by become a literal “punching bag” for mob underlings. It gets a little rough around the edges, but the splendid performance of Nishijima gives this film a sheer heart of gold.

by Francesca McCaffery

Check out all listings and times for the Tribeca Film Festival here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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