“PIRAHNAS” [“La paranza dei bambini”]

Male Teen Gangs in Naples, Italy

Amos Lassen

Director Claudio Giovannesi’s controversial Italian crime drama “Piranhas” is the story of 15-year-old Nicola (Francesco Di Napoli) who is head of a small gang of teenage boys on motorbikes through the streets of Naples armed with guns and weapons. They are the new Mafia and plan to take over the local mob bosses’ territory. Only boys, they are on a get-rich-quick, power-crazy kick to become the new bosses of Naples— they steal, intimidate, drug-deal and kill as they go.

The boys are exceptionally close and the film explores the complex theme of friendship between boys. But Nicola also has a pretty girlfriend, Letizia (Viviana Aprea), daughter of a restaurant owner in another part of town that is ruled by another gang.

Piranhas is based on fact, but it is not a true story and ends with an open end but this expected from the start. It is a visceral and exciting film. We are along with the boy mob bosses for their thrill ride, on the road with them, following them along corridors and through rooms.

Di Napoli looks like a model and has a killer smile but when he’s got a gun in his hand or starts to get mad, he looks crazy and becomes Nicola. He carries the film just like his character holds the gang together. We see the streets of Naples in the film— this is Italy at its most raw. The film is fiction but it’s based on real street experiences and chronicles the criminal activity of a naïve group of 15-year-old friends. There’s a grimly comic aspect to the story about a group of teen miscreants who take over organized crime in Naples’s Rione Sanità neighborhood. As Nico and his friends cruise through the narrow streets of the historic Italian city on diminutive gas-powered scooters, we get a sense of dissonance and underlines its point that organized crime essentially operates at the emotional and intellectual level of a teenager.

Nico is an enterprising small-time criminal heading a rabble of similarly aged friends who burglarize Rolex shops and vandalize public Christmas trees as he routs out his neighborhood’s branch of the Neapolitan mafia. After he observes his mother (Valentina Vannino), who runs a laundromat, struggling to make the protection payments extorted by the local hoods, he deliberately befriends the slightly older Agostino (Pasquale Marotta), whom the mob considers a pariah because his father is collaborating with the Italian police. The two hatch a plan to displace the current don despite the fact that Nico and his friends are currently working for him, handily stealing a pistol from a local cop and procuring more guns from rival gang leader Don Vittorio (Renato Carpentieri).

Throughout, we’re reminded that Nico is still a child, living at home with his mother and his younger brother, Cristian (Luca Nacarlo). Nico’s plans, executed with about as much planning as one would expect of a teenage boy who still depends on his mother for breakfast, don’t go exactly as expected, and one anticipates with each successive crisis that Nico and his friends are done for. The director withholds any simple moral catharsis, in which the boys’ rash decisions would result in irreversible consequences. At least at first, the boys are rewarded for their wanton violence, and now flush with cash, Nico can impress the relatively innocent Letizia with lavish gifts, pulling her into the burgeoning quagmire he’s created. Nico exists to show the audience how the incomplete socialization of teenage boys results in a strange mixture of callousness and extreme sensitivity—the manner of infantile sociopathy that is so suited to a mafia don.

As I said, the film doesn’t end with the profound impact one suspects it’s aiming for. As the net of rival gangs and resentful, ousted mobsters close in on Nico and his friends, the story gets predictable. Despite the initial shock of witnessing these young people put themselves in such a dangerous position feels a bit safe. The boys’ future looks set from the start yet the screenplay struggles to rise above the level of a sociological study into the realm of exciting cinema.  

“SISTERS OF THE WILDERNESS”

Five Young Zulu Women Venture Into The Wilderness

Amos Lassen

Set in the iMfolozi wilderness, South Africa, in the oldest game park in Africa, “Sisters of the Wilderness” is the story of five young Zulu women going into the wilderness for the first time in their lives. They are on a journey of healing and self-discovery which that reminds us that we are intimately linked to nature and what we do to nature, we also do to ourselves. The film explores this primordial wilderness and its plight. It is severely threatened by open-cast coal mining on its border and the calamity of  rhino poaching.

The film is a multi-award winning social impact feature-length documentary, and the foundation for an outreach and audience engagement program which hopes to re-connect audiences with wild nature, raise awareness to the value of nature to our well-being and help the efforts to save the iMfolozi wilderness from the threat of unsustainable mining and illegal hunting of its rhinos.

Five courageous young women: Amanda Ntombela, Nokuphila Cele, Andile Nxumalo, Thembani Mdunge and Wendy Mkhwanasa are the five women we see in the tranquil photographs of wildlife and scenes from the iMfolozi Wilderness trail. These are juxtaposed with jarring images of Somkhele mine ripping the earth apart and is the backdrop for Karin Slater’s sensitive portrayal of the heartrending stories of the five young women. They journey through the iMfolozi wilderness and in the process form strong bonds to become Sisters of the Wilderness. The support they give each other lets them to release some of the heavy burdens they carry and they emerge from the Wilderness lighter and hopeful that the transforming journeys to improve their lives have begun.  

This is a powerful film that uses the metaphor of mining to underscore the violence and abuse inflicted by our society on girls and women, and also on wildlife species like rhino, and on the earth.  The painful stories of abuse and neglect  that are shared remind us  of the importance of respecting and honoring women and girls for the vitally important roles they play in upholding the heritage of this country.  

The film starts slowly: with a close-up of a giraffe’s head, seemingly looking directly at the audience. The giraffe disappears, then reappears, happily munching away, followed by a distant shot of the giraffe in its environment. Then there is a close-up of an elephant walking through the bush. Music swells and turns to noise: protected by razor wire, bulldozers assault and rip up the earth. A large dump truck carries off whatever it is the bulldozers are taking from beneath the ground. We hear the noisy sounds of dump trucks and a speeding train erupt. Then we go back to the bush, where there is silence and we hear a young woman’s voice mournfully saying,  “Everything happening to you is a wound.”

Five young women, seen from the back, embrace each other, watched over by an older woman. The voice continues, “My problems are small compared to yours.” The young women burst into tears. The older woman’s voice enters, “Please don’t lose hope. All your experiences are so painful. Don’t lose hope.” Thus begins the documentary about five young Zulu women, two rangers, and one mentor guide who go on a five-day walk through the iMfolozi wilderness. This meditation on sisterhood, wilderness and the precious begins, “Everything happening to you is a wound.”

This is the story of the double warzone as it focuses on the counter-story of the wilderness. As the never-named guide mentor explains, “The place we went to isn’t like any other place. We were in a powerful place. It’s powerful because of the river. Our aim of bringing people on the trail is for them to have a release.”

The sisters go on a five-day walk through a small and at a slow pace yet the emotional and learning distances covered “are astronomical. The young women immediately learn that in the wilderness, they must walk the paths made by the animals. There must be no heroically “manmade” paths in the wilderness because those paths are built of disrespect for the local and indigenous environment. The women learn to respect the environment as they learn to respect one another and themselves. The speed with which these five young women learn to need one another speaks to the forms of isolation, under the rubric of independence, in their everyday lives. They remark on their lessons in sisterhood.”

Through sharing experiences and visions, they learn to speak and listen to one another and learn to speak and listen to themselves. The wilderness them to share. Each day is a new day. The wilderness is “a powerful place” and this becomes a lesson in the meaning of Zulu history and identity; the geographies of inclusion and exclusion that go into constructing a “wilderness zone”; the devastation of mining on local people and environment, and on the future; the meaning of the wilderness itself.

“How do five young Zulu women walking through the wilderness intersect with thousands and tens of thousands of women and non-gender conforming individuals filling the public space to end gender-based violence? Both actions speak to the importance of release in the context of an analysis and a politics of women’s power and freedom.”

Another world is still possible. One of the young women notes that she has learned that even if she has no mother, no parents, she has sisters. “Sisters of the Wilderness” argues that we should all learn learn that the wilderness can be, our sister.

“MEHSAMPUR”

A Non-Traditional Documentary

Amos Lassen

On March 8th, 1988, Punjabi folk music icon Amar Singh Chamkila and his partner Amarjot Kaur were shot and killed as they pulled into the Punjabi town of Mehsampur. The crime remains unsolved, and the killers were never caught. In the documentary, “Mehsampur”, director Kabir Singh Chowdhry attempts to put together the puzzle of their deaths through this hybrid narrative-doc structure that will likely leave more questions than answers.

Chamkila was a controversial figure in Punjabi music; he offended many with his especially conservative religious folks in the region. Nonetheless, he was successful and popular.  His music took him around the world to enthusiastic audiences of Punjabi expats. However, his appeal was not universal and many people think it may have led to his death.

This is not a traditional documentary or true crime story as the premise of the film is sketchy. It begins with a filmmaker named Devrath (Devrath Joshi) who seems to be trying to piece it all together, but soon goes way off. He manages to track down some of the principals in Chamkila’s life, though it doesn’t always go according to plan.

For every scrap of detail we are able to unearth along with Devrath, writer Akshay Singh throws us a maddening curve-ball that makes the viewer wonder what exactly is going on. Devrath the kind of guy who’ll do anything to get his footage without regard to those from whom he needs assistance. As a result he uses and manipulates anyone he sees as a potential help to himself and this certainly does not ingratiate him to the audience. I found myself not liking him very much but I also could not look away.

Devrath’s mental state seems to deteriorate as he comes in contact with a wannabe actress named Manpreet who he drags along in order to film a recreation, and ends up violating her in much the same way he’s violated the truth of this situation by forcing all of the other incidental characters to tell the story he wants to tell, whether it is true or not.

Those looking for an answer to the question of who killed Chamkila may walk away disappointed, but those interested in why people still care about this crime will likely come away with much more. This is among the most chilling avant-garde attempts I’ve seen and is totally obtuse.

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Director Kabir Singh Chowdhry is a new and exciting talent, and his  “Mehsampur” is confounding and confusing, bold and vigorous, a film for audiences to puzzle over, and that’s a good thing.

 “Mehsampur” left me quite perplexed, regarding both its nature (an experimental mockumentary one could say if the basic premise was not a real event) and its quality. Devrath’s attitude is rather extreme, as he asks anyone who comes his way about the killings rather rudely, and spends much of his time in bars watching some very strange live performances. Eventually he tracks down the former manager of the group, Kesar Singh Tikki, who seems to hold a grudge against them and is keener on promoting his other acts through Devrath’s film. Later on, he meets Lal Chand, an actual member of the band who was also shot but survived. After a number of events, that could only be described as surrealistic, Devrath forces the unwilling Chand and Manpreet on a trip to the area where the murder occurred. And then things get really strange.

The narrative occasionally functions as in a feature, but rather surrealistic film, since the actual characters involved in the case mostly act, instead of “being interviewed”. The film’s purpose is rather vague (showing the real Punjab? finding the murderers? creating a feature?), the movie has a raw energy that derives mostly from three factors. The first is the presence of Devrath Joshi as Devrath, whose obnoxious, offensive and weird resolve keeps the film moving forward at all times, despite  the fact that the pace is not so fast. The difference in character between Lal Chand and Navjot Randhawa who plays Manpreet, also works quite well in the disorienting base the film lies upon.

The second is Devrath Joshi Kabir Chowdhry and Rahat Mahajan’s cinematography, which has captured the various settings and episodes in a way that may not be so artful, but fits the unusual aesthetics of the film to perfection. The third is the imagination and the direction of Chowdhry, who has created a spectacle that works in so many ways (even as a psychedelic road movie), despite the lack of abiding to almost any norm regarding fiction or documentary. “Mehsampur” is not easy to describe, since it is more of an experience than a film, or to watch for that matter. As an experience, it is truly worthwhile seeing. It frees itself from the systematized shackles of a documentary, a docudrama, etc. as it traces the story of a filmmaker trying to trace back the events of yesteryear Punjabi folk singer Amar Singh Chamkila and his wife Amarjot’s assassination.

It neither tells us very much about Chamkila like a documentary would, nor does it fictionalize the events like a feature would. We are caught somewhere in between, in a dysfunctional state of nothingness. This is where Mehsampur works as an experience. The beauty lies in its ability to not take itself seriously. We are looking at director Chowdhry, a filmmaker, filming a filmmaker, filming the Chamkila story. The film follows Devrath’s handy cam, which Chowdhry craft-fully alternates between his own camera. Whenever the shots shift to the former, we sense a very personal style of storytelling.

There are some parts of the movie which slump, because of the long and indulgent details given by the interviewee. But in these sections, Chowdhry masterfully adds surreal jumps, which provide relief, and quickly go to another part of the narrative.

Chowdhry had originally set out to make a very different film, a straightforward—but fictionalized—account of the assassination, with the Khalistan movement as its backdrop. But, he became increasingly frustrated as he found himself following in the footsteps of other film-makers. The idea that so many film-makers have come to meet these people, taken their stories and then nothing has come of it bothered him.

At the same time, Chowdhry was dealing with discomfort at the intrusive nature of his own research into the militancy movement, and his reactions to the stories he uncovered. In one village, he came across a dozen men who all claimed to have been tortured by the police. As man after man dropped his trousers to show off the scars on his thighs, Chowdhry’s horror turned into morbid humor. When an acquaintance offered him funding for a short film, Chowdhry put the original script on the back-burner and focused his attention on making the much more experimental Mehsampur. They went back to Punjab and shot without a script, instead depending on a 30-page treatment note for guidance. This is an unprecedented style of filmmaking in the Indian Cinema and, definitely, a work glowing with brilliance.