Author Archives: basiltsiokos

New to DVD this week:
THE SWAMP

Director:
Randall Maclowry

Premiere:
American Experience (January 2019)

About:
The history of Florida’s shifting relationship with the Everglades.

While “draining the swamp” has taken on a different meaning in more recent years, this installment of the long-running PBS series American Experience focuses on an earlier, more literal instance: the drive to reclaim land from the Florida Everglades in the early 20th century. Viewing wetlands across the nation as disease- and vermin-ridden habitats that interfered with manifest destiny and the all-important profit motive, efforts were undertaken to literally drain the swamps, tame the land, and expand mankind’s footprint. While not straying from the PBS storytelling template, Randall Maclowry succeeds in laying out a compelling tale of greed, creative/duplicitous salesmanship, and environmental shortsightedness that would radically transform the biologically diverse and ecologically essential Everglades for decades, until keener minds would recognize the need for their preservation.

Coming to VOD via MUBI today, Wednesday, February 13:
BROTHERS OF THE NIGHT

Director:
Patric Chiha

Premiere:
Berlin 2016

Select Festivals:
RIDM, FIDM, Indielisboa, Transilvania, Diagonal, Bergen

About:
A docudrama exploring the lives of young Bulgarian straight men who work in a Viennese gay hustler bar.

Skewing far more toward fiction than nonfiction, Patric Chiha’s film mixes obviously scripted scenes that pay homage to RW Fassbinder’s QUERELLE with less explicitly staged but still seemingly dramatized moments between his subjects, as well as some more straightforward documentary moments, to capture the world of gay-for-pay Bulgarian hustlers in Vienna. Most of these young men have come to Austria in search of more legitimate work, but for one reason or another – lack of opportunity, lack of language proficiency – have turned to hustling to earn money for their wives and children back in Bulgaria. Most identify as straight, and have set self-imposed limits on the sexual acts they will or won’t perform as a way to maintain their sense of sexual identity. Veteran hustlers share tips with newcomers, friends give advice about how to deal with family commitments back home, and, in general, the men bond through their common background and circumstances – sometimes with suggestions of closer-than-friendship connections between otherwise straight guys. While Chiha provides an intriguing look at the fluidity of male sexuality and the bonds of brotherhood, the artificiality of the storytelling unfortunately serves as a constant distraction. There’s more to be gleaned from the few explicitly nonfiction scenes demonstrating camaraderie and intimacy between his subjects than from the theoretically “real” but obviously staged moments that cast unnecessary questions into the truthfulness of the proceedings.

Coming to PBS’s American Experience today, Monday, February 11:
SEALAB

Director:
Stephen Ives

Premiere:
American Experience (February 2019)

About:
The story of the pioneering US Navy project which expanded the limits of deep sea diving.

Even as America’s astronauts were inspiring the country with their brave exploration of the final frontier, another group of pioneers were poised to challenge another great unknown – the unforgiving and dangerous deeps of the ocean. As revealed in Stephen Ives’ informative film, these aquanauts were part of Sealab, an experimental project conceived by Dr George Bond, a rural Appalachian doctor on a mission to expand humans’ ability to explore the ocean by expanding our ability to endure the pressures of the ocean floor and to successfully escape its dangers. Under Bond’s leadership, the program successfully broke deep sea diving records and trained the next generation of undersea explorers, though a tragic accident unfortunately led to its premature conclusion. While following in the standard American Experience mode, the doc impresses with its archival footage as it reveals the largely forgotten story of Sealab.