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Peter Keough sits on the jury at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, plus Phish's 20th-anniversary show and more
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Greek tragi-comedies Become a film critic and see the world. I recently had the privilege of serving on the International Film Critics (FIPRESCI) jury at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and though I didn’t get to spend much time taking in the city (the second largest in Greece, it’s in Macedonia, near the birthplace of Alexander the Great, who is soon to be the subject of at least one major motion picture), I did get to see about 30 movies from 20 different countries and talk about them with people from all around the world (in particular the six other critics on the jury, who were from Greece, Norway, Sweden, Egypt, the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, and Poland). The festival prides itself on showing works from national cinemas made by young directors with independent vision. In other words, these movies are a long way from the local cineplex — unless your cineplex is the Plateia Cinema off Aristotle Square, which hosted the festival press screenings as well as the regular public showings of Master and Commander, Love Actually, and Kill Bill. So, what’s on the minds of young, independent filmmakers from around the world? War, for one thing. Although for most Americans, war is a kind of reality-TV show (more realistic now that "major combat" has ended), for Russian filmmaker Alexei German Jr., it’s more personal. During World War II, the lives of his grandmother and his mother were spared by a German soldier who allowed them to escape from a transport train. At about the same time, another German was taking his grandfather’s life at the front line. That irony inspired his The Last Train, which won both the Golden Alexander, the festival’s top award, and the FIPRESCI jury’s top prize. War is not only hell in The Last Train, it also involves a lot of coughing. The hacking of half-frozen soldiers adrift in the disintegrating Eastern Front of 1944 dominates the soundtrack, which backs images of foggy landscapes and abrupt atrocities shot in long takes in grainy black and white. The unlikely hero, Paul Fischbach, is a rotund newcomer to the war, a German surgeon posted to a field hospital evacuated in the face of the Soviet advance. He roams the foggy wastes with another straggler and they witness disasters of war that challenge their humanity. Far from celebrating valor or patriotism, The Last Train underscores war’s absurdity while eulogizing common decency. Another problem that troubles these artists is misogyny. Indian director Manish Jha’s first feature, Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women, takes the dehumanization of women to its logical conclusion. Female infanticide is reported to claim thousands of lives in India every year, and this film proposes a world in which such measures have eliminated all women, leaving men in desperate and at first comical circumstances. But the tone shifts from black comedy to growing brutality when the last woman is found. Her father sells her to a wealthy upper-caste patriarch, who shares her with his five sons. This "marriage" instigates not only sexist abominations but class warfare as well, and that ends in an orgy of stunning violence. Hardly the kind of film one would expect to be a crowd pleaser, but at Thessaloniki it won the audience award. The plight of refugees scarcely crosses the cultural radar here in America except when it comes up as a campaign issue (as when naturalized citizen and gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger promises to forbid illegal immigrants the right to have driver’s licenses). But at Thessaloniki, it seemed that every other film dealt with that subject in some way. Adonis Florides & Theodoros Nikolaides’s whimsical Kalabush, one of the top contenders for the FIPRESCI prize for the best film in the Greek selection, follows the fates of a handful of refugees from various countries stranded in Cyprus on their way to presumably better lives in Britain or Australia or the USA. Bittersweet, well-acted, and unexpectedly complex, it suffered only from occasional sappiness (one character bears an unfortunate resemblance to Roberto Benigni). Instead, we opted for Michalis Reppas & Thanassis Papathanassiou’s Oxygen, a kind of Peyton Place set in a provincial Greek town in which the family structure has disintegrated and society has turned rotten. Sexual anarchy, blackmail, homicide, treachery, revenge — it’s Greek tragedy, Jerry Springer style. The film has been controversial since its release in Greece (a homosexual subplot in particular has rankled some), with critics split on whether it’s brilliant social criticism or insulting trash. And these Greek critics are serious. After the festival, one of them declared the film to be "deplorable," the jury’s decision "unbelievable," and the jury itself "a body of non-dependable eccentrics." A film critic may get to see the world, but the world gets to see the film critic as well, and it doesn’t always approve. — Peter Keough Twenty years of Phishtory Anyone born the same year that an odd little band named Phish played their first gig would now be just one year away from the legal drinking age in Massachusetts. That infamous first gig was less than an auspicious start to a career in which Phish would become the biggest name in a burgeoning jam-band scene and a successful major-label act. The occasion was an ROTC dance in the Harris Mills dorm at the University of Vermont, and as the story goes, the band had to compete with a stereo playing Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Two decades later, Jackson’s stock is at an all-time low and Phish are basking in the afterglow of their sold-out 20th-anniversary celebration December 2 at the FleetCenter. It was, after all, the band’s gigs at the Paradise and the Somerville Theatre that gave them their real start, and it’s Boston that the band adopted as their home town. Phish have always had a reputation for unconventional theatrics, from flying over the audience on giant hot dogs to emerging out of oversized clam shells, so prior to the FleetCenter show there was a palpable buzz of expectation among the faithful. This wasn’t just a 20th-anniversary show, it was also a reunion of sorts, since the past year has seen the release of a Trey Anastasio solo album and a halt in Phish-related activities. What would the band come up with? As it turned out, relatively little. The arena-sized chessboards, trampolines, and other stage antics were shelved in favor of a straight-up show. And stripped of all the tomfoolery, Phish revealed themselves to be a great rock-and-roll band. It took a while for the celebration to pick up momentum. The opener, their epic crowd pleaser "Harry Hood," suggested a band going through the motions. As they worked their way through the dirty funk of "Cavern" and the Caribbean sway of "Ya Mar," they began to find a groove, but the new ballad "Anything But Me" derailed any momentum they’d built up. The Zappa-esque stomper "Water in the Sky" renewed both the band and the crowd with its three-part harmonies and Anastasio’s frenzied guitar picking. Buoyed by Mike Gordon’s thumping bass line, the exuberant "Down with Disease" closed out a set that by midway had come together. A giant screen lowered behind the band as the last notes of that first set ended and they made their way backstage. A 20-minute video montage ensued, chronicling the group’s history from their early days of sparsely attended club gigs and under-attended outdoor festivals to their arrival as a stadium-filling phenom with a Deadhead-like cult following and the clout to host huge yearly festivals of their own. It was an opportunity for devotees to follow the maturation of a band who looked like rejects from a Dungeons & Dragons club when they first formed and could still pass for sci-fi conventioneers. The mix of home-movie excerpts and low-tech concert footage was just quirky enough to give an accurate picture of what by any standard is an oddball outfit. The second set was dominated by covers and riff-heavy workouts. Although the Velvet Underground represents the antithesis of the jam-band ethos, that didn’t stop Phish from starting off with a frisky version of Lou Reed’s classic "Rock & Roll." The Talking Heads’ "Cities" and Edgar Winter’s "Frankenstein" also found their way into the set, but the high point was an inspired version of Stevie Wonder’s "Boogie on Reggae Woman." "Tweezer Reprise" (a more compact version of the epic "Tweezer"), the slap-bass funk of "Weekapaug Groove," and the soaring choruses of "Bug" offered a representative snapshot from the eclectic Phish songbook. They ended the night with the delicate ballad "Waste," which found Anastasio whispering the line "Don’t wanna do anything where I don’t know when to stop." After 20 years, it’s clear that Phish are a long way from any stopping point. — Christopher Blagg Calling future Sondheims The New Opera and Musical Theatre Initiative (NOMTI), local midwife to new musicals, is planning two May weekends in the delivery room. The sixth annual Birth of a Musical festival of new musicals and cabaret songs by New England authors is set for May 7 through 9 at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly and May 13 through 16 at Suffolk University’s C. Walsh Theatre in Boston. The event will include from two to four script-in-hand readings of new musicals and operas, with professional performers, directors, dramaturgs, and musical directors on board, as well as a program of new cabaret songs and a master class with a prominent musical-theater composer. Past mentors have included Ricky Ian Gordon and Andrew Lippa. What’s up for grabs at this point is what gets born at Birth of a Musical 2004. Interested authors/composers and songwriters are invited to submit new musicals or cabaret songs before February 1. Festival details, guidelines, fees, and submission forms are available on the Web at www.nomti.org. or via e-mail at BirthofaMusical@ixinteractive.com or by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope to: Kevin Mark Kline, Managing Producer, Birth of a Musical, 533 Columbus Avenue, #1, Boston 02118. Remember, Stephen Sondheim was once an unknown worshipping at the knee of Oscar Hammerstein II. — Carolyn Clay
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