The Evening Class

Directed, written and produced by Raoul Peck (whose 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro impressed me) Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (which had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival) applies historic focus on Ernest Cole, a photographer who gained brief fame for exposing the horrors of Apartheid, subsequently escaped South Africa, becoming a restless exile in the United States and Europe, eventually depressing into homelessness and obscurity.

The first South African freelance photographer, Cole became radicalized by associations with other talented young black South Africans—journalists, photographers, jazz musicians, and political leaders in the burgeoning anti-apartheid movement—and applied himself to chronicling the evils and daily social effects of apartheid. Able to escape South Africa, he fled to New York City with his negatives and prints and enthused Magnum Photos to help him secure a publishing deal with Random House, resulting in House of Bondage (1967), which at the time became the definitive exposé of apartheid. The images of House of Bondage achieved a global audience.

But his experience of the United States proved to be disquieting, unsettling, as the promise he anticipated capsized into disillusioned awareness that racism was as rampant in the United States as it had been in South Africa, if not even more dangerous. Unable to return home to South Africa, his life became a race against expiring visas and diminishing economic resources. Commissioned by the Ford Foundation to chronicle Black family life in the rural South and the urban ghetto from “an outsider’s perspective”, Cole questioned what was expected of him and how it could be presumed that he was ever an outsider when what he witnessed in the impoverished lives of Blacks in America proved no different than what he had witnessed and chronicled in South Africa. “I’m homesick,” he repeated frequently, “but I can’t go home.”

He gave up photography. Became lost and homeless (thus, the “lost” of the film’s title). His film negatives likewise disappeared (a compounded loss). Cole died of cancer at the early age of 49, never able to return home to South Africa, never able to adjust to his exile. The “found” part of the film’s title proved to be the mystery at the core of Cole’s biography and the film’s suggested future traction. In April 2018, Cole’s heirs—namely a nephew who had founded the Ernest Cole Family Trust—were notified by a Swedish bank that a collection of 60,000 meticulously archived negatives had been discovered in a vault in Stockholm. The bank was not forthcoming in disclosing who had placed the negatives in the vault or who had paid for their storage, but included were many of the original negatives he had taken in South Africa and several notes that helped shape House of Bondage. How had they ended up in Sweden? Why was the bank so tight-lipped, claiming they had no records of who deposited and paid for the storage?

Further, the Hasselblad Foundation has clung to 504 of Cole’s photographs, whose estimated value is in the neighborhood of one million Euros. The ownership of these is in legal dispute, with the Hasselblad Foundation refusing to relinquish the photos to Cole’s estate until they can prove ownership. As of 2020, the legal dispute between Cole's estate and the Hasselblad Foundation is ongoing.

Peck’s documentary reveals an artist whose initial energy awakened the world to the injustice of apartheid but who was himself undermined by the judgmental machinations of racism that left him tethered to a miserable past that he was doomed to repeat in America. The psychological price of exile crippled his spirit and, in turn, his artistry. One can only imagine what he might have accomplished had he been able to feel at home in the United States and if he had received the support he needed and deserved. It never ceases to amaze and anger me that frequently it isn’t until an artist is dead that their work gains the financial value that would have benefited the artist while alive. Peck’s film has at least provided some recompense by insuring that Cole is not forgotten, not the least of which is attention to an earlier documentary on Cole’s life made by Jürgen Schadeberg, available in its entirety on YouTube. In 1958, Jürgen Schadeberg, the picture editor of Drum magazine, employed Cole as his assistant. That experience shaped Cole’s artistry. In conjunction, Peck’s Ernest Cole: Lost and Found and Schadeberg’s earlier work Ernest Cole underscore what has been found in Cole’s life and effectively labor to offset what was feared and believed lost.

Friday, January 17, 2025

THURSDAY THROWBACK: INLAND EMPIRE—The San Rafael Film Center Q&A With David Lynch (Friday, January 19, 2007)

"Transcendental meditation speaks of inner preservation. Transcendental meditation gives you peace of mind."—“Jesus Children of America”, Stevie Wonder.

In the September-October 2006 issue of Film Comment, Paul Schrader has a thought-provoking write-up-"Canon Fodder" [subsequently incorporated into his archive]—wherein he juggles his quandaries regarding what criteria should be used to determine cinematic masterworks. If there is to be anything close to a film canon, he suggests, it must be based on necessarily refurbished criteria, seven of which he posits for consideration: beauty, unity of form and subject matter, tradition, repeatability, viewer engagement, morality, and the one which I feel applies here—strangeness.

"Harold Bloom," Schrader writes, "uses the term 'strangeness' in lieu of the more common 'originality.' Strangeness is the type of originality that we can 'never altogether assimilate.' The concept of strangeness enriches the traditional notion of originality, adding the connotations of unpredictability, unknowability, and magic. To say that Jean Cocteau was original seems somehow thin; he was more than original, he was strange. Originality is a prerequisite for the canon—the matter at hand must be expressed in a fresh way—but it is the addition of strangeness to originality that gives these works their enduring status. This strangeness, this unpredictable burst of originality, is the attribute of a work of art that causes successive generations to puzzle over it, to debate it, to be awed by it. Strangeness is the Romantic's term and Hegel's and everyone else's thereafter—until supplanted by the more recent 'defamiliarization.' " (Film Comment, 42:5, p. 44, fn. Omitted.)

I have found no more accurate a summation of the work of David Lynch and his current project Inland Empire than Schrader's indirect description. One might even come to think of this posited criteria of strangeness as the Lynchian imperative.

From the moment reactions started trickling in for Inland Empire, I knew the film would require repeated viewings. So I caught it first at the Palm Springs International Film Festival—where there were surprisingly few walkouts among the film's capacity Camelot audience—and then again night before last at the San Rafael Film Center where David Lynch was in attendance to introduce the film and to field queries afterwards. Arriving at the Film Center two hours in advance, I was stunned to discover a rush line halfway down the block. Prudently, I had ordered my ticket online, picked it up at will call and joined Frako Loden and Joe Loree in line. They were conversing with a young fellow who had been at the front of the rush line since noon. He was jubilant. He had just been given a free ticket by someone who couldn't attend the screening. All very strange—and wonderful—indeed.

David Lynch introduced Inland Empire by offering a man with "an interesting stake in the present but always with a beautiful, haunting wind of the past; the rocker with the voice of gold"—Chris Isaak—who came on stage to perform a Mexican rancheria and his hit "Wicked Game", which Chris reminded his audience had been used in one of Lynch's movies. "I probably wouldn't have had a career," Isaak stated, "if not for David Lynch."

"Baloney," Lynch protested.

"Seriously," Isaak insisted, "I remember I went to Warner Brothers and said, 'Can we get a video for this?' and they said, 'No.' I said, 'Well, David Lynch said he'd make one on his own time.' I remember it and I thank you for it."

Lynch then asked Isaak to play him a couple of his beautiful chords while he read a quote from the Aitareya Upanishad: "We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe." Lynch then wished his audience a good experience viewing Inland Empire.

Three hours later Lynch returned to the stage to a standing ovation and prolonged applause. San Rafael Film Center's programmer Richard Peterson stole the first question by way of commenting on Laura Dern's tour de force performance. "Laura Dern may not get an Academy Award," Lynch qualified, "but in a couple of years people will look back on this year and they'll say, definitely, she gave one of the best performances, if not the greatest performance in my book."

Understanding that, since Eraserhead, Mary Sweeney has usually done Lynch's editing, Lynch was asked how he came to the decision to edit Inland Empire himself, what the experience was like for him, and what software system he used?

Final Cut Pro, Lynch responded. It's great to work with an editor, he added, but it's so beautiful to get your hands on. You discover things that maybe you wouldn't discover before. That's the feeling, digging down deeper. Now, with the digital world, a filmmaker has so much more control. "I'm never going to go back to film," Lynch announced. "Film is a beautiful medium, so beautiful, but it's a dinosaur. It's heavy. It's slow. It tears. Watermarks. Colors don't match in the prints. The bad ones go to the Midwest and the good ones to New York." He concedes film is beautiful when you get it right but there's so much down time to a film. "You die the death. It's unreal slow and you die. I don't want to die."

One fellow commended Lynch for the dream-like quality of his films, necessitating repeated viewings, and their Derridean sense where something is always off-center, unseen, but poetically pervasive. "That's very beautiful," Lynch thanked him (even though the audience groaned at the somewhat pretentious mention of Jacques Derrida), "and poetry is a great thing. Cinema is a language that can say abstractions. Like the right combo of words will conjure something magical, cinema has this way of saying abstractions. There are things that are communicated that can't be said in words except by a poet and we feel-think these things, they're so beautiful the language of film. You need a concrete story—you may not say that [Inland Empire] is a concrete story but to me it is a concrete story—holding a certain number of abstractions." In contrast to his audience, Lynch liked the word "Derridean", didn't appear to be that familiar with Derrida, but quipped, "You learn something new every day."

Asked about his sound design, Lynch responded, "Sound and picture moving together in time is the most beautiful thing. It's all based on ideas. When you catch an idea, you don't catch the whole thing all at once, but you catch idea fragments and these fragments draw others and it goes like this [Lynch wiggles his fingers like a shimmering wave pattern] and the thing starts building. But it's always following the idea, translating the idea, staying true to that idea. Then, for every single element, you can tell if it's not right. And if it's not right, you can sort of feel—based on thinking about that idea—what will feel correct. So sound, being one element, you get the hard effects and the more abstract effects and music to marry to the picture. I'll feel how music comes in and how it swells and how it goes and how it disappears and something else comes with it. You're getting a feel based on the idea."

Asked where Lynch gets his ideas—if from dreams, from past lives, from paintings he's seen—he responded that they come from all over the place. When you get an idea, like we all get ideas he explained, something is not there and then—bingo!—it enters your mind. There it is. Whatever the idea is, sometimes they come with such a thrill and you fall in love. You see it in an instant and you fall in love. Then you write it down. The reason you write it down is you don't want to forget it. Even though an idea might come in only a moment, you might write for a long time, several sentences, paragraphs, depending upon the idea. So much comes in one moment. It's such a thrill to be in love and you write it down so when you read it again, it will all come back. Then you just follow that.

Asked if he remembers his dreams in detail, Lynch asserted he doesn't dream, or doesn't remember his dreams, and basically doesn't get his ideas from dreams. Though he loves dream logic and that's what makes his films so "dreamy."

Asked how much he changes his original ideas in the editing process, Lynch stated that scene by scene, he stays true to his ideas. Then he sees the whole thing and that, a lot of the time, is a major nightmare and a readjustment. Then there are changes for the sake of the whole. At some point he sees the film with other people, not to get notes but to feel it, and that's another nightmare and another bunch of adjustments. He proceeds like that until the whole thing feels correct.

Asked about his forays into the horrific, Lynch described the world of a film. The horror or torment of a story is strangely as beautiful. "It's a contrast thing." Then he falls in love for a second reason because he sees what sentiment can do to it. It's all "blissful." Peterson commented that Lynch had just written a book Catching The Big Fish, which is about capturing or experiencing bliss through the use of transcendental meditation, which Lynch practices to broaden his creativity. Consciousness is all we have, Lynch replied. We don't think about it much but—if we didn't have it—we wouldn't exist or—if we did exist—we wouldn't know it. "There are people who think that transcendental meditation is a religion or a cult, but it's not a religion; it's a mental technique that allows you to dive within and experience a field that belongs to all human beings, the whole thing. In Vedic science that unified field of oneness that we can all access is called atman. The true self. Know thyself. It's right there for everybody. You enliven that by experiencing it and life gets real real good."

Inland Empire could be seen as a horror film about Hollywood and so one fellow was curious whether Lynch actually felt about Hollywood that way. No, he answered resoundly. It's just a story that came from ideas. He lives in Hollywood but the idea of the film isn't anything he's experienced or seen or read about. It's just an idea that came that he fell in love with that focuses on one angle of Hollywood. It wasn't even so much that he wanted to make a film about Hollywood. His original idea didn't even have anything to do with Hollywood; but, the film grew out of the ideas. Lynch loves Hollywood. He loves the Golden Age of Hollywood, its magic, and he even likes the way Hollywood fell. But now it's coming back. Digital's here and the Internet is here. Hollywood is always changing and Inland Empire inflects only one part of it, much in a comparable way as Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. A person can enter Sunset Boulevard and feel another whole beautiful world about Hollywood. Films are incredible things that way.

Frako Loden asked Lynch how his methods of getting his movies into theater houses is changing. "I'm not self-distributing," Lynch responded, "but I'm not going through a regular distribution company on this film. I've got a website and—during the course of the website—I started selling my first feature Eraserhead, short films, and other things and then meeting some great people, making relationships, and getting a conduit into the stores. We thought, wouldn't it be great to have the ability to send Inland Empire that route? Traditionally you go with a distributor because the distributor will give you an advance. But things aren't happening in the movie industry—Inland Empire especially scares distributors (and you understand why)—so advances, like in the music business, are going down. Then when you do all the work distributing a film, you don't get another nickel beyond the advance and so you think, why don't we just try it? And travel to the beautiful Bay Area and meet people and meet the great theater owners and try something different?"

Lynch was asked if the look and feel of digital has changed his filmmaking? He admitted that he started not knowing if he was making anything. He shot scene by scene experimenting with the Sony PD150 for stuff on the website and at first he felt it was a toy camera but then he started liking the camera more and more. He started shooting scenes with it and, as more ideas came and developed into a bigger story, he didn't want to switch horses in midstream, so he stayed with the Sony PD150, which is not hi-def, but low-def. T hen he did tests with the low-def upping the resolution to film and he was surprised how good it looked. It had its own feel, not like film, but something he "kind of loved." It reminded him of old 35mm film where you don't see everything so sharp and "it sort of strangely makes room to dream." Further, digital allows him "a tweakability for color." He can work with it before it gets transferred to film. He actually ended up with more control than if he had set up timers. For Lynch it's beautiful and it will only get better. If there's something that's not too sharp or pleasing right now, just like with pro tools there will be a thousand plug-ins he can use to get it to be the way he wants it.

Asked what the original concept had been for Inland Empire, Lynch said it would have to have been Laura Dern herself. He was outside and Laura Dern came walking down the sidewalk. She said, "Oh, hello David."

He said, "Hello, Laura."

She said, "I'm your new neighbor."

He said, "No kidding?" He hadn't seen her for a while so it was very pleasing to discover she was his new neighbor.

She said, "David, we've got to do something again."

He said, "Yes, that would be so beautiful." He started thinking about her and the film got written. Laura stuck with him because, honestly, the first day he showed up with his toy camera, it didn't look like he was really shooting a movie. Later on, she saw how beautiful the result was because filming with the Sony PD150 allows 40 minutes of tape, providing the time to discuss and delve into scenes. "Maybe some magic is caught that wouldn't be caught otherwise," Lynch emphasized, "so pretty soon you start falling in love with this thing."

Asked how he had described the role to Laura Dern before shooting, Lynch explained that normally when you begin shooting a film there's a script and the lead actress, especially, knows the whole story; but, with Inland Empire, Dern didn't know what was going to happen and—for that matter—neither did Lynch. But they approached it scene by scene. Within each scene they could identify the character, talk about the scene in relation to the character, locate what they could rehearse, and what they were prepared to shoot. When they went to the next scene, they had the first scene as a point of reference. If you're true to that method of working, Lynch proposed, it doesn't mean that the film will always work out but—if you're true to it—you have a chance.

Considering that digital filmmaking is assumedly more cost-effective, Lynch was asked if that opened him up to experiment more with his ideas. No, Lynch answered, it's the same thing—ideas and translating them—it's just that digital filmmaking is more about "getting the thing than waiting for the thing to move around." It's more friendly to the process and the scenes.

Asked how much time it took him to make Inland Empire, Lynch replied three years, two years ("and probably more") of which he didn't know what he was doing.

Just out of curiosity, one fellow asked, did you decide to include the rabbit elements in the editing room or when you were generating the story? The rabbits are an idea, Lynch explained, and you don't know where an idea is going to go. It goes one way and then you start thinking and then it goes there. You start one thing and you don't know where it's going to go. It unfolds.

At this point—no doubt exhausted with having to explain his creative vision—Lynch suggested that Chris Isaak return to the stage for another song or two. Ever the jokester, Isaak assured Lynch he would try to keep things moving but had to admit it was a long movie. The weird thing, he added, is that he was listening to the audience's questions without having had the chance to see the movie. Everyone's seen the movie but him. The audience collectively went, "Awwwwww." "I came here and I sang and I didn't get to see the movie. I'll sing again and whatever I have to do to see it." He then asked for hands of how many people liked the movie. Then for how many people understood the movie. Then as a capper to the evening Isaak insisted that Lynch play maracas for the final song, even giving Lynch a maracas solo.

Strange, indeed. Wonderfully, memorably, strange.

Cross-published at Sceen Anarchy.

01/26/07 UPDATE: Peter Martin's friend Wells Dunbar caught the Austin, Texas, screening of Inland Empire at Austin's infamous Alamo Drafthouse and has contributed Dunbar's reportage of the ensuing Q&A to Screen Anarchy. Within Dunbar's masterful synopsis, I really like this description: " 'It's kinda laid a mindfuck on me,' Laura Dern snarls in a bruised drawl, somewhere in the final third of David Lynch's Inland Empire. An impassioned laugh from the audience confirmed she wasn't alone. Hair disheveled, face dirtied and with a bloody bruise edging out from her famously malleable mouth, Dern makes the declaration as one Susan Blue, a beatdown Southern belle fallen on hard times following her marriage to an Eastern Bloc refugee of ill repute. Or something."

Thursday, January 02, 2025

PORCELAIN WAR (2024)—REVIEW

Porcelain War (2024), the documentary film directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev that won this year’s Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize, follows the experience of Ukrainian artists as they face the current Russian occupation in Ukraine. In a masterful double-helix it shows how artists must soldier on in the face of horrific adversity and how soldiers must protect artists or risk erasure of their culture. It tempers scenes of unimaginable destruction and death with meditative observations of nature through a cycle of seasons and the heartfelt determination of artistry.

What might have been nothing more than an intrusion into a war zone, Porcelain War accomplishes much more through a multidisciplinary and layered approach. Yes, there is the shocking and heartbreaking aerial drone footage of cities ravaged by bombing and the icy remove from people being killed far below, but these are balanced with exquisitely tender animations engineered by Blu Blu Studios that bring Anya Stasenko’s delicate designs painted on porcelain to life, most notably in the recount of the takeover and evacuation of Crimea. DakhaBrakha, a Ukrainian folk music quartet who combine the musical styles of several ethnic groups, add a resonant emotional layer that expresses alarm, resistance and resolution.

In the pause after viewing the film, a prayer surfaces that this senseless invasion be finished so that the Ukrainian people can return to family, friends, culture and nation and the lives of expendable Russian soldiers stop being sent into battle like fuel for an unquenchable fire.

Porcelain War is a Picturehouse Release, runs 87 minutes, is in English, Russian, and Ukrainian with English subtitles, and is rated R. It opens Friday, January 3, 2025 at the AMC Metreon Theater, San Francisco and the Smith Rafael Film Center, San Rafael. It opens one week later, January 10, 2025 at The Flicks in Boise, Idaho.

Monday, March 20, 2023

**TREEFORT 11 / WINDOW WALK—The Evening Class Profile of Walter Gerald**

It’s the Window Walk on First Thursday that, for me, annually launches Treefort where muralists and downtown businesses combine forces to offer Boiseans a street gallery throughout the month of March. This year Treefort partnered with 30+ artists to ramp up the Treefort spirit and get the party started.

Treefort does an open call and application process for muralists who submit their portfolios so that the organizers of Artfort can glean a general sense of their style. Once selected, they are then paired with a venue. Then it’s up to the artist and the venue to decide on the content of the mural. For Treefort 10, Walter Gerald was paired with Barbarian and for Treefort 11, along with Quincee Lark, Gerald provided the window work for the Bus Station, one of Treefort’s newest music venues.

Walter Gerald is an animator and illustrator based in Boise, Idaho. Credits for his formal education go to The University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The School of Motion, and Youtube University. When not immersed in the next great visual storytelling adventure, he enjoys cycling, drinking wine on patios and the consumption of baked goods.

When I spoke to Gerald last year regarding his weird western offering, he commented: “As far as the content of my murals go, they are loosely inspired by vintage western and dinosaur adventure pulps and comics. They tie back to a sense of adventure and place, being out here in the (somewhat) American West in a different form than what we know it as today.

"Another part of the art deals with how the ideal of the American West has changed over time. In a lot of these older comics, cowboys were portrayed as hero conquerors, taming wild lands and wildlife, defeating the bad guys and winning the affection of cowgirls along the way. I think we all know by now that this narrative is all fiction and brings up and largely ignores a lot of complicated history that comes along with the real story behind a lot of these comics- Mistreatment and massacre of Native Americans, misogynistic portrayals of women, just to name a few.

“It was my aim in this art to take the cowboy characters out of their original hero context, placing them with dinosaurs to show that they are both items of pure fantasy and entertainment. Yes cowboys and dinosaurs were real, but the media's portrayal of them both are very similar. Anyway, I still have a lot of learning to do as a citizen of the west, and i hope to keep doing so through my artwork.”

For Treefort 11, Gerald and collaborator Lark have taken the ghostly reminder of the Greyhound Bus Station, pushed it through a time vortex, and emerged with images of a multi-eyed bus driver advising passengers to hold onto their hats as he cruises through the Treefort experience. This speaks to Treefort’s expanding vision, which matches its expanding range. I can no longer talk about the Treefort “village”; it’s Treefort City from hereon in, baby!!

Saturday, March 18, 2023

TREEFORT 11 (2023)—TEN BANDS TO SEE

With 500+ musical acts scheduled for Treefort 11, the task of shaping an itinerary of what I’m hoping to catch at this year’s edition has been a bit overwhelming; but, here are ten acts I’m looking forward to hearing for the first time.

BITTERMINT—Bittermint is a homegrown indie rock act from Boise, Idaho who got their start making tongue-in-cheek “bits” in 2022, and quickly grew with their self-produced synth heavy guitar music. Their bit “I Locked Myself Out Of My Car” made me laugh outloud the first time I heard it at the same time it tore my heart open in familiar anguish. It will be interesting to see if the band will expand these “bits” in performance; “Lucky” being their only full-length track available to date.

Bittermint will be playing twice at Treefort, first on Saturday, March 25, 5:30pm at Pengilly's Saloon, then on Sunday, March 26, 5:10pm at KIN. I was intending to catch them at KIN, but with the weather predicted to be in the 40s throughout the run of Treefort, the notion of an warmer indoor venue at Pengilly’s is becoming more and more attractive.

CAL IN RED—Cal in Red is an indie pop/rock project started by brothers Connor and Kendall Wright out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The band is named after their youngest brother Cal, who at one point had a particular fascination with red t-shirts. The band formed in the summer of 2019. The music was hazy and summery, jangly and guitar driven. The yearning, hopeful tones of these early sessions morphed into an indie-pop scape on their 2021 debut EP "Cellular" (B3SCI Records). After touring in spring of 2022 (which included a stop at Treefort Music Fest), the brothers spent the better part of the year playing shows around Grand Rapids and recording their second EP. This 6 song sophomore effort titled "On the Dance Floor" is due out early 2023 on B3SCI Records. It explores anxiety, camaraderie, the aspirations of the young band as they sonically open the door a bit wider.

I’m genuinely happy to become Cal In Red’s 1000th YouTube subscriber. They’re playing twice at Treefort, first on Thursday, March 23, at Old School; then Friday, March 24, 6:00 at Camp Modern.

FUTURE CRIB—A five-piece band of creatives based in Nashville, Tennessee, Future Crib delivers dynamic performances that bounce between poppy make-you-wanna-dance tunes and experimental yet engaging tracks that prod at life’s shared realities. There’s a clear preference for good songs and exciting sounds over genre bounds and expectations, and this is evident on their album, “Full Time Smile", released in September 2021. Over all, Future Crib creates music for everyone, inviting all to a fun, welcoming show where you can feel free to get down.

Future Crib is playing twice at Treefort. First on Friday, March 24, 9:10pm at KIN; then on Sunday, March 26, 1:10pm at Bandshell.

KAINA—KAINA creates generational music that surpasses borders, a unified expression of her native Chicago, and her Venezuelan and Guatemalan heritage. Her newest album “It Was A Home”, released through the independent label City Slang, explores themes of community and self-reflection while pushing the production and songwriting to a new level. You can see this on a full, colorful display in her NPR Tiny Desk, in which KAINA is surrounded by the musicians, illustrators, friends, and family who had a hand in the production of the album. “It Was A Home” is a celebration of togetherness, and collaboration while also being a project that is intended to feel like you're talking with your best friend. Her warm and inviting brand of cultural fusion was initially illustrated on her 2019 debut full-length album “Next To The Sun”—a project that established her as a leader in a movement of artists whose work hinges on identity and representation. While promoting this record, KAINA went on national tours with artists from Sleater-Kinney and Cuco to Durand Jones and the Indications, effortlessly finding a home in front of adoring and diverse audiences. From her debut EP, 2016’s “sweet asl.” to “It Was A Home”, KAINA has continued to push this narrative through her brand of sweet-hearted optimism, which she uses to uplift and build community. Over the years, she has crafted a sound that is gentle, yet full of intent, and built a songwriting practice that explores love, legacy, and ancestry.

KAINA’s sultry voice will be on loving display on Saturday, March 25, 9:40pm at the Basque Center.

KEO & THEM—The enigmatic nature of Wichita, Kansas’ Keo & Them doesn’t end with the band’s name, it runs deep into the soul of everything the group does. Formed in 2018 by Keo, the collective features a revolving cast of players who, one way or another leave an indelible mark. “It’s one of the contradictions of the band,” says Keo, “I’m the constant but everybody who comes through adds something, some dimension that gives me room to explore different areas.”

Keo & Them plays twice at Treefort; first on Thursday, March 23, 8:40pm at The District, then on Saturday, March 25, 4:20pm at KIN.

KROOKED KINGS—Krooked Kings come from humble beginnings. In 2019, a group of five college friends from the University of Utah came together to write music and play shows in backyards and basements. Over the course of the last few years, the band has proven time and again their ability to write heartfelt indie rock gems. After signing with Los Angeles based indie label Nobody Gets It Records in 2020, the band released their breakout single, “‘96 Subaru”, which has amassed over three million streams. By September 23, 2021, Krooked Kings released their debut project, “The Comedown”. After the release, Krooked Kings hit the road on two support tours with Goth Babe and Rare Americans, as well as three headline dates in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. Keep an eye out for new music from Krooked Kings in the coming months, as they wrap up recording their sophomore record.

Krooked Kings plays Treefort on Sunday, March 26, 7:30pm at The Hideout.

MODEL/ACTRIZ—Out of Brooklyn, New York, Model/Actriz is Cole Haden (vocals), Jack Wetmore (guitar), Ruben Radlauer (drums), and Aaron Shapiro (bass). Together, the band performs an intensity in their work that resembles a rubber ball approaching vibrational frequency bouncing between the points of extremes: joy and violence, humor and nihilism, flirtation and effacement. Model/Actriz is a special conjuring of gray areas without a whiff of indecision, with their newest project arriving early 2023.

Model / Actriz will intensify us at Treefort on Sunday, March 26, 9:10pm at the Hound Lot (Bus Station).

WE DON’T RIDE LLAMAS—Generation Z siblings, big brother, Chase (lead guitar), and sisters, Max (lead vocals), Blake (drums), and Kit Mitchell (bass guitar), make up the Austin-based band, We Don’t Ride Llamas (WDRL). Avid readers, self-professed nerds, lovers of sci-fi, anime, fashion, and nearly every musical genre from punk to funk, the members of WDRL cannot resist any good story well told, especially those set to an engaging melody. Having coined the term “shillelagh music” to describe the variety of musical genres they embrace, WDRL sings original songs they’ve written themselves as well as covers of some of their favorite musicians, ranging from Icelandic born Of Monsters and Men to legendary American greats, Nirvana & Stevie Wonder. The quartet finds a great deal of their inspiration from the careers and projects of seasoned performers Kali Uchis, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Hiatus Coyote, and Lenny Kravitz, all of with whom they hope to one day go on tour.

We Don’t Ride Llamas plays twice at Treefort, first on Saturday, March 25, 8:10pm at The Hideout, then on Sunday, March 26, 8:50pm at the El Korah Shrine.

JANE WEAVER—Abusing, evading and obliterating 20 years of whimsical pop trends, Jane Weaver’s experience as a truly independent and resilient female experimental songwriter/sound-carrier commands respect and inspiration in equal measures. From teenage Liverpudlian shoe-gazer to conceptual-pop mistress, has seen her graze with pocket-punk, Synth-pop, acid folk, indie-schmindie, dark-ambient drones, Hollywood soundtracks and girl-group psych.

Jane Weaver has a one-off Treefort performance on Saturday, March 25, 10:10pm at The Neurolux.

YOU SAID STRANGE—You Said Strange come from the north-western region of Normandy in France, although if it was up to them they’d come from the States, somewhere between Texas and Cali. They’ve been growing their own Norman-spiced definition of psychedelia for a few years now, making their way on a historically busy road. Having just signed to Fuzz Club, You Said Strange are gearing up for the release of their debut full length, “Salvation Prayer”, out June 8th. When they’re not busy organizing the annual Rock In The Barn festival, which hosts a broad range of acts from the international alternative scene, the four members of the band work on their sound that was born on the school benches. What followed was the inevitable: rehearsals, gigs, festivals, tours, Bandcamp sales and, eventually, record pressings. All the people from the scene that they met on their way, from Poland to the Lisbon Psych Fest, through North London clubs and mythic Paris venues, seems to have had a major impact on the building of the band. That’s how, after a first EP recorded with Black Market Karma in London, they ended up supporting The Dandy Warhols on their French 2015 tour. A strong friendship was born out of this tour which led them to fly over to Portland, USA, to record the band’s first album with the Dandys' guitar player Peter G Holmström—something he had never done for anybody else but the Dandys. This first full-length is a concoction of heady riffs, haunting melodies and bright rhythms, half-way between 90s shoegaze and 60’s psychedelia. The album touches on the theme of belief, the kind that affects even the most Cartesian spirit; may it be superficial, spiritual, superstitious, religious or moral. This very-human interpretation of reality is meant to help those who seek to free themselves, dream or flee, and that’s what the band is all about. [Courtesy of Nicolas Jarzynski.]

You Said Strange plays twice at Treefort, first on Friday, March 24, 7:50pm at the Hound Lot (Bus Station), then on Saturday, March 25, 6:40pm at the Neurolux.

Friday, January 27, 2023

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO (2022)—An Evening Class Question For Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson

As I approached the Christmas season this past December, I became curious about painterly representations of the Annunciation and discovered James Tissot’s version of the Biblical event, which depicts a blue multi-winged Gabriel. At approximately the same time, I caught the Netflix broadcast of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022), currently nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Animated Feature Film. I was taken by how similar the Wood Sprite in Pinocchio resembled Tissot’s annunciatory angel. I wanted so much to be able to ask Del Toro if this was coincidental or an acknowledged influence?

My Christmas wish was granted when The Guardian announced an online live conversation with Del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson on Friday, January 27, 2023. My question was relayed to Del Toro by event moderator Ellen E. Jones.

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Michael Guillén: How you envision the Wood Sprite is wondrous. It reminded me of the angels in the paintings of James Tissot, particularly “The Annunciation” (1886). [Guillermo del Toro mimes applause.] Is this a coincidence? Or did Tissot influence your vision of the Wood Sprite?

Guillermo del Toro: No, I like Tissot. I do like him. And I like the PreRaphaelites, the Symbolists. I like Odilon Redon who also used feathers with eyes, y’know? That’s one of his main symbols. I utilize a very varied vocabulary that I get from the history of art. I have a very good dialogue with art directors and production designers through that.

In Mesopotamian art the wings are carved in a certain way on the Mesopotamian sculptures so we wanted to give it a pagan / more-than-natural, uncanny, cosmic feeling to those figures, so we made the wings like that. There are arrangements of wings that are different in seraphim, cherubs, archangels and in many of those cases each of the feathers has an eye, representing a human soul, depending on the culture. In Mexican culture the seraphims have six wings and have eyes on every feather. There’s a little bit of chimera that is very Mexican on death.

When we were planning this, the way to echo the pine cone was on the tail of Death. The way to echo the two sisters was in the silver mask. They are both emotionless. What it tells you is that they’re not natural. The metal mask tells you these are not natural beings. And, funny, I don’t think we thought about Mark Twain but we have a character with a mask.

Mark Gustafson: Yeah, there’s the mysterious stranger. He doesn’t even have a head. He literally is holding a mask in the air and it’s very unnerving because I think—and this worked for us in the film—we look at people’s faces, we look at their eyes, to get any kind of cue: “Are they telling the truth? Are they being sincere?” When none of that information exists, you’re back on your heels.

Del Toro: It’s supernatural and then the voice and the text that Tilda Swinton delivers shows more compassion. When we were watching a clip today at the BFI of Talos [from Jason and the Argonauts (1963), animated by Ray Harryhausen], I thought, “Oh my God, Talos’s face is a mask! That’s what makes him so terrifying. Even when Harryhausen wants to show him feeling pain, he does a gesture with his hands, almost like John Barrymore in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) [del Toro mimes clutching his throat as if he’s choking]; but, he doesn’t change his face. It stays unflappable. That’s what death and life are: they’re unflappable in the face of human plight.

But to finish the answer to this important question: when I talk to students or young directors, I say, “Please, please, make your vocabulary visually much more than film. And much more than just pop culture illustration, more than comics, more than illustration, more than fine art, more than architecture, more than sculpture, all of it. The difference between the right word and the almost right word, Mark Twain used to say, is the difference between the lightning bug and lightning. I think it’s the same with visual work. If your vocabulary is not accurate and you are short of your goal with the visual design of a thing, you’re short. It doesn’t matter if you miss the leap by one foot or one millimeter. You missed the leap.

01/30/23 UPDATE: 03/17/23 UPDATE: My heartfelt congratulations to Guillermo and Mark for their well-deserved win.