Shut Up Little Man!
(Documentary directed by Matthew Bate)
In 1987, two naïve young men from Madison, Wisconsin moved to a slummy apartment in San Francisco. Next door were two professional drunks: Ray, an old homophobe and his very gay roommate, Peter. These filth-mouthed alcoholics fought verbally and physically. The scared kids tape-recorded the brouhaha, at first in fear and later in fascination. The recordings went viral even before the Internet existed.
Shut Up Little Man! is hilarious and sad, twisted and pathological. Not only does it raise questions of how these two virulently opposed addicts came to live with each other; It also explores the morals of the two youths secretly recording the nightly war, disseminating the information, later copyrighting and selling the material. Comic book artists, playwrights and even movie studios jumped into the mix, and the phenomenon turned into a legal and ethical quagmire.
Bate's documentary shows the Shut Up Little Man! history in every permutation, with excellent editing and pacing. What's more vital, this film subtly posits many quandaries and lets the audience sort through all the fascinating and sick variations of right and wrong.
Chekhov for Children
(Documentary by Sasha Waters Freyer)
Uncle Vanya is a dark, Slavic play that runs almost three hours. Anton Chekhov wrote it in the 1890s. It's about aging Russian peasants reflecting on life's failings. Who in their right mind would have 12-year-olds perform it?
â┚¬Å”It was like experimenting with kids,â┚¬Â say one person who was in the 1979 production, now more than 30 years later.
Director Waters Freyer went to PS 75, an experimental Manhattan school where writers would do special projects with the kids. One such person, Phillip Lopate, directed fifth graders in a full-length production of the depressing, thoroughly adult script.
It's a great subject. The kids, now adults, all have different takes on this crazy project. In subtle ways, they even mirror Chekhov's themes. The only thing hindering this documentary is a lack of technical skillâ┚¬â€Âgood sound, cinematography and editingâ┚¬â€Âfor the modern interviews.
mindFLUX
(Documentary directed by Ryan Kerrison)
For anyone who's seriously studied theatre, Richard Foreman is a weird and inspiring example of what audiences will put up with. For the rest of us, he's only an oddball footnote.
Foreman has created more than 50 dramatic works, writing and directing supremely kooky plays that constantly confound audience expectation. Heavy on props, visuals and absurd dialogue, loaded with strange costumes, grating noise, and vacillating characters, his plays have nonetheless garnered three Obie awards.
Director Ryan Kerrison does an amazing job getting over 50 interviews to outline Foreman's life, work and inspirations. The editing and illustrations are also symbolic of Foreman's style. mindFLUX doesn't completely give us a sense of what it's like to sit through a Foreman play, nor does it provide a strong sense of what his influence will be in the long run. So, like Foreman's plays, the narrative has some annoying gaps.
Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour
(Documentary directed by Kerthy Fix)
As a band, Le Tigre was lo-fi electronic and punk, embodying a politic that was outspoken, lesbian, and feminist. Fun and freakiness saved them when their heavy-handed message got tedious, as it sometimes does in this documentary.
Director Fix followed the band on their final tour in 2004. Despite their proselytizing, they had fun, incorporating goofy animation and choreography into their shows. Perhaps the most fascinating character in the band was Samson, who looked like a teenaged boy, with a thin moustache and a distinct unibrow. She became the band's unlikely sex symbol.
That doesn't mean that about half of this doesn't get politically pedantic. Also, with such interesting subjects, Fix spends too much time on the mundane.
