Day 2 of the Hamptons International Film Festival. One reason
to go to festivals like this is to see a movie like ‘Grit’ about a
constant mudflow sparked by the Lapindo Company’s drilling
two miles into the Earth in Indonesia back in 2006 exploring for
natural gas. The imperfectly designed drill bit punctured a bubble of hot
toxic mud that spewed up onto the Earth above and continues flowing
to this day. Yet this has hardly been reported. Have you heard about it?
16 villages, thousands of houses, at least one factory have been covered
under the ever-flowing mud. And there are amazing eruptions of it many
times daily that are captured on film fantastically in this terrific movie.
There is a political edge as the current leader of Indonesia also was the
owner of the Lapindo Company, who spreads the propaganda that the
mudflow started due to an earthquake – centered 180 miles away. Lost
in all this are the individuals and the families whose homes were buried
by the mud who have not yet been compensated properly by either Lapindo
or the government. Their fight is well portrayed in this ongoing tragedy. It is
said in the film that the continuing flooding of the mud should not be
expected to stop or significantly slow down until 2030. Levees around
the epicenter where the drilling occurred are now 60 feet high and still
will occasionally spring a leak, leading to more mudflow flooding more
of the topography, with the area being affected equal to approximately
two Central Parks (in NYC). A movie to see and spread the word about
mankind’s irresponsible greed totally destroying a large portion of East
Java, with the depositing mud collecting higher and higher with time’s
passing, And unfortunate displaced victims being treated unfairly while
they struggle to survive.
https://filmguide.hamptonsfilmfest.org/films/grit/
‘The Guilty’ is a Danish film about a police dispatcher, who is not always empathetic
about people’s emergency calls. He yells at them, minimizes their plight, inquires if they have
been drinking or taking drugs, sometimes refraining from calling for an ambulance
or offering intervention. However, Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) does try to cut
through the BS when certain serious calls come in, especially the one concerning Iben and
Michael and the two kids, the six year old girl telling Asger she is home alone with her
baby brother, their parents left them there. Not quite your neutral polite American
police dispatcher, but this is a movie with a very interesting leading character, which
won audience awards at Sundance, Rotterdam, Montclair and other film festivals.
For me it was not great though, as the mind-splaying violence portrayed in the
Iben case will be something I probably never will forget, that will haunt and
disgust me, until I die.
https://filmguide.hamptonsfilmfest.org/films/the-guilty/
‘Woman At War’ is an Icelandic movie with Halldora Geirharosdottir cast as the brave
heroine. You might call her an Earth Warrior or an eco-terrorist, depending upon
your view of the planet and the forces that interweave in profiting and destroying it.
Her character Halla is a choir conductor, who is secretly fighting to sabotage
Earth-polluting projects, including a Chinese subsidized aluminum smelter. She uses
bow and arrow, portable circular saws, has a workshop in her basement with tools
and other implements to assist her in her quest to help save the Icelandic environment
(at least) for future generations. Halla is involved in modern technology chases across
the barren Iceland landscape that she manoeuvres through with guile and desperation.
She is a beautiful magnificent actress with a sterling persona, appearing to me as
the tall dark-haired Viking of today. The music in the movie is very whimsical, with
musicians and singers popping up in fields and streets as the plot thickens and thins.
https://filmguide.hamptonsfilmfest.org/films/woman-at-war/
‘City Of Joel’ is a terrific depiction of what has been going on about Monroe, New York
since the 1970’s. Hasidic Jews have migrated there from mostly Brooklyn, where
they have had their main enclave, especially in Crown Heights. Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum is the
hero of Hasidics, founding the Kiryas Joel community in 1977 as a suburb of Monroe.
Jews stripped of everything, without hope after Hitler’s War, struggling in Europe, came
to America because of the charismatic Rabbi Teitelbaum’s shining beacon of help and welcome.
However, what has happened is that Hasidics en masse have moved into Monroe, in Kiryas Joel’s
1.1 square mile area, and populated it densely with high rise, multiple-dwelling buildings, threatening
the way of life of Monroe residents who want to live there in unpolluted peace and quiet. More than
25,000 Hasidics now live in Kiryas Joel (total population of Monroe about 45-50 thousand),
and their leaders want to expand the exclusively Jewish village with an annexation of more land,
507 acres, which would double the size of Kiryas Joel.
According to the movie, the influence of the now overriding Jewish population has defunded local
schools, which Kiryas Joel citizens do not want their children to attend, while the Hasidics have
their own religious orthodox schools insularly teaching their form of culture and religion to preserve it
amidst the ever-rising tide of modern America’s adversely influential culture. That would be one way
of expressing what is happening in Kiryas Joel. Another perspective might be that the rigid Hasidic
dogma that is expected to be adhered to in the village, is brainwashing the children there, with their
one way of thinking and approaching life, eschewing modern communications like cellphones and
computers, and modern culture in general.
Though, now, if you want to use a computer, the grandson of Rabbi Joel tells the Hasidic followers
in a vast audience at the beginning of the film, that it must be ‘kosher’ – that it must have
a ‘Geder’ filter. One young woman of perhaps 18 speaks onscreen of how she wanted
to think for herself, be free, but was religiously and intellectually constrained by the oppressing mores
of the Hasidics. She was told what books to read, what she could do and not do as a woman.
So she found herself a boyfriend, told her mother, and next thing you know her mother
kicked her out of the Kiryas Joel apartment, and changed the locks, and she had to fend
for herself. In the film she states she is now living much more happily in Brooklyn.
There is an ‘Alliance’ that has formed to combat the prevailing dogma of Kiryas Joel from
the inside. We hear a member of this minority faction speak in altered voice under fear
of zealots’ retribution, informing us that the established leadership and Hasidics in general
in the village are ‘intolerant.’ We see this exemplified in Jesse Sweet’s excellent film that
I highly recommend seeing, if this subject interests you. The cinematography is great, and
the debate about what will happen in this town continues to go on. As an example of religious
extremism burgeoning in today’s America, also going on with evangelicals and other cults
and organizations of ‘faith.’
https://filmguide.hamptonsfilmfest.org/films/city-of-joel/
(C) 2018 Claude Mayers