SXSW 2008: MATADOR, SUPER HIGH ME, SEX POSITIVE and BEAUTIFUL LOSERS Highlight the Diversity in Austin

Festival coverage sponsored by IndiePix.

One of the joys of SXSW's nonfiction slate is it's breadth of content.  One minute you're watching Jury Prize winner THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY about  the death of a American nun and the next you're off to SUPER HIGH ME, comedian Doug Benson's experiment with staying off and subsequently staying on pot.

I went into the latter film with lowered expectations.  Comic concert films are pretty hit and miss with me as are stoner comedies.  Mixing the two?  Potentially disastrous. 

But Benson and his director Michael Blieden actually have concocted a fast-paced and occasionally hilarious film that finds time to seriously tackle medical marijuana laws and the draconian way that the federal government conducts its ridiculous war on pot.  If the latter is dealt with in a somewhat superficial manner, it's OK because a lot more seriousness might truly bum everyone out (harsh their mellow?  will anyone, including me be able to get through a review of the film without resorting to stoner cliches?).

Appropriating Morgan Spurlock's formula of a 30-day immersion into a new world, regular pot smoker Benson begins the film by going cold turkey for a month.  In the process he takes the SAT, a physical, a mental exam and a psychic ability test, all of which he'll re-take during the next month, when he smokes weed nonstop.  Although there's nothing scientific about his findings, it's still lots of fun to discover which tasks he does better sober and which he does better stoned.

Almost as much fun, but for completely different reasons, was Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard's BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, a primer on a loose collective of artsts to emerge from a New York gallery (which Rose curated) in the early '90s.  I say collective because their work is far too disparate to qualify as a movement, although a number of them did come from a background in graffiti, skateboard and punk rock culture. 

But while the artists may not be totally cohesive, the film works on a number of levels, not least as an exploration of artists who, while products of a community and a time that detested corporate sellouts, weren't so afraid of backlash that they lent their talents to Pepsi, Nike, VW and the like.  And for a film that's about visual art, it's impressively stylish and well shot.  It could tap into the hunger for documentary about art and design in the same way that HELVETICA did last year.  (Full disclosure - Sidetrack Films, which co-produced my film on Kurt Cobain, produced BEAUTIFUL LOSERS.)

While BEAUTIFUL LOSERS was appropriately visual, the best looking film I saw at SXSW was THE MATADOR, Stephen Higgins and Nina Gilden Seavey's film chronicling several years in the career of up-and-coming Spanish bullfighter David Fandila - "El Fandi" - and one of the best of this early year.  Gorgeously photographed, tightly edited and featuring an impressive score by John Califra, THE MATADOR revels in the beauty and pageantry of bullfighting while never shying away from the inherent brutality.  And while, I care little for imposed ideas of neutrality, Higgins and Seavey do a good job of letting viewers hear from commentators who support and oppose bull fighting, as well as from those in the middle. 

At the heart of the story is the desire of "El Fandi" to complete more than 100 matches (or corridas) in a single year.  To reach that level is to be among the elite bullfighters of all time.  But as "El Fandi" attempts to reach his goal, we see that his style - less like classical dance and more like a slightly clumsy street fighter - and his sense of crowd-pleasing theatricality, leaves him at the forefront of a new era of bullfighting.  The question is whether the new era will be the last.

I also liked SEX POSITIVE, Daryl Wein's film about Richard Berkowitz, one of the first people inside the gay community to advocate for safe sex during the dawn of AIDS.  The idea of safer sex is so ingrained in the culture now that it's almost impossible to remember that there was a time when safe sex advocates were largely lambasted or ignored. 

Wein pulls no punches with his subject.  In addition to being an activist who blamed promiscuity in the gay community for the rapid spread of the disease, he was also an S&M hustler and later was addicted to crack.  Because of this, much of Berkowitz's legacy is long forgotten.  While the film suggests that it's time for a re-assessment of Berkowitz, it also strongly advocates for a return to safer sex practices, noting that infection rates of young men are skyrocketing.

I want to make note of AGILE MOBILE HOSTILE: A YEAR WITH ANDRE WILLIAMS, a film that I executive produced and which had it's world premiere at SXSW.  The filmmakers, Eric Matthies and Tricia Todd, are friends of mine and I joined the project during the editing process.  One of the things that I noted about the film when I first saw it - even in it's then rough form - was the fact that it didn't shy away from William's complicated life.  As noted on NPR's All Things Considered:

"It can be tough to watch; Williams is jailed for drug possession and evicted from his tiny apartment, and even when he's touring, he looks spent and he drinks constantly.

The film raises the question of whether Williams should still be on stage, and whether the audience's relationship to him is exploitive."

So much of the music documentary genre is accused of being hagiography and I was impressed by Eric and Tricia's ability to transcend their compassion and care for Andre with their desire to present a true portrait of a complicated and sometimes uncomfortable life.

Sad to have missed a number of films at SXSW that I was hoping to see, including the aforementioned SISTER DOROTHY, Steve James and Peter Gilbert's AT THE DEATH HOUSE DOOR, Dori Berinstein's SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, Joshua Weinstein's FLYING ON ONE ENGINE, Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber's FULL BATTLE RATTLE and Sascha Paladino's THROW DOWN YOUR HEART, all of which I heard great things about.  Looking forward to catching many of them at some of this spring's upcoming festivals.