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I am crazy for International Film Festivals and every year I buy a bunch of tix for the SF fest. This year I have about 16 movies! It’s the only time you can see great films, both narrative and documentary, from places like Iran, Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil, Korea, etc. Here’s some capsule reviews of some of my faves so far (only half way through):
Lucia Morat’s narrative “Almost Brothers” is an incredibly interesting movie. It is set mostly in prison (she herself was a political prisoner during the Brazilian military dictatorship) but goes back and forth in time between the 50s, 60s, 70s and now. It revolves around two characters, one black and one white, who first meet as small children when their fathers connect (the white guy’s dad is a musicologist, the black guy’s dad is an awesome samba composer who never makes an album). The white guy grows up to be a leftist militant who is imprisoned by the dictatorship. In jail he meets his childhood friend who was imprisoned for some petty crime. A political process unfolds in which the political prisoners integrate the ‘common’ criminals into their “collective”, set down rules of behavior and solidarity and create some real space in jail for themselves.
The story is interspersed with a contemporary scene in which the former political prisoner is now a parliamentarian visiting his old ‘friend’, now a big-time criminal gang leader, still in jail, but running his boys from a mobile phone in his cell (is that why it’s a cellphone?), ordering executions and managing drug and weapons buys from inside. The contemporary story becomes increasingly understandable as the flashbacks reveal how the prison culture evolved as more ‘common’ criminals arrived and the political prisoners, trying to resist the descent into a darwinian struggle for survival, segregate themselves (which turns out to be an oblique reinforcement of the basic racism of Brazilian criminal ‘justice’).
It’s a fascinating, powerful film, brilliantly scripted, acted and directed, and works too as a larger metaphor about the world today. How are self-conceived rational, political people going to influence the course of events dominated by Might is Right and insane levels of armed violence, drugs, brain damage, racism, and philosophical retardation? No easy answers…
Continue reading SF Int’l Film Festival!
I got a ticket about 5 weeks ago for running a red light northbound on Valencia at 14th, one of the safest and most obvious place to maintain one’s momentum and go through an empty intersection. I stopped a half block later to talk to a friend, and lo and behold a squad car pulled over and treated me like I’d done something wrong, wrote me a ticket after lecturing me and refusing to let me say anything about the ethic of cycling, traffic patterns, etc. It’s a whopping $370 ticket!
So of course I’m going to court on July 1 to contest it. I’ll let you know what happens.
But it’s an interesting question, one that I’ve addressed before in print, but it’s coming up again. I’m speaking at the Grizzly Peaks Cycling Club on May 18 about Critical Mass and I’m sure the law-abiding riders of that group will be very disapproving of my ideas on this. I run red lights and stop signs all day every day. It’s quite safe. I mentally have to stop at every intersection whether the light is green or red. Cars often run intersections and if I’m not paying attention I will be killed. That’s a huge motivation to preserve one’s safety. Additionally, I have a personal standard that I won’t run a light or cut through traffic if it forces an oncoming motorist to swerve or brake suddenly. That’s just basic safety and courtesy.
Continue reading BIcycle Traffic
We had another really lovely Critical Mass here on Friday night. I think we may have reached 2,000 riders, but at least 1,500. It was huge! We went south for a change, along the waterfront, wrapped around the ballpark and across the venerable 3rd Street bridge into the eerily emerging city-state of Mission Bay and its fortress-like biotech UC campus. Not much going on there on Friday night though, but the balmy weather and beautiful early evening light underscored how nice the new public park waterfront and campus panhandle will be in a few years.
The worst incident of the night erupted towards the end of our meandering towards 3rd Street when a few blue-collar guys were stopped by an idiot on a bicycle who appointed himself Czar of Stopping Oncoming Traffic. I rode past as one of the workers was yelling, “Hey I’m tired and I just want to go home!” while one of his pals gave a firm shove to a bicyclist, hurling him to the ground. I heard later it turned into a full-fledged melee of fisticuffs… glad I wasn’t around for it!
But that’s the deal with Critical Mass. It’s what you make it. If you don’t like stuff going on, you have to intervene and make it different. I’ve done that plenty of times, but I–like many of my friends who have been part of this for years–am pretty tired of newbies (the next generation, for better AND worse!) who don’t quite ‘get’ the culture (or maybe they’re just the logical descendents of the always lurking Testosterone Brigade) and repeatedly ride into oncoming traffic when there’s absolutely no need to do it.
Continue reading Critical Mass April 05
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