Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Segue Zagnut is more than just a friend to the site. He’s one of my longtime friends. He’s a great guy with a great wife who lived in LA and actually shared some space here at the Labs for a while. They moved to Portland last year, though, and we fell out of touch, as happens so often.
Then he showed up at my door last week with an incredible story to tell, and I encouraged him to write it up from his point of view. Make no mistake: this is a shamless plug, self-promotion of the highest order. But it’s also a look at how it feels to step from one side of the equation to the other, and there’s real value in that. So lend your attention to Segue Zagnut, and consider this...
This is Segue Zagnut and I’ve been MIA from the site on a secret mission ( Mission: Day Job). But I return with news of success and a film in the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.
I have a three part agenda here. One: credit AICN for getting me connected and share the experience with our readers. Two: promote my film to would-be L.A. film goers and buyers. Three: be the first to review it on the web. I’ve always said turn about is fair play. It only seems fair to subject myself to the same kind of public scrutiny I have given other films.
I’ll start with number two. Our movie is named NI UNA MAS (NOT ONE MORE). It is an hour long English language documentary on the grassroots struggle to end American live-fire military practices on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. It is not an anti-American film and makes no statements about our current war or the validity of military practices. Instead it voices the views, actions, and hardships of the citizens of Vieques who believe it is time for peace on their island, documenting over two years of civil disobedience, protests, and political action that has been capable of stopping the most powerful military force on the planet from continuing bombing practices that have been destroying the island for over sixty years.
You can look up info on the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival by clicking HERE!!.
Our movie will be playing in Los Angeles at the Spielberg Theater (that’s the 120 seat screening room inside the world famous Egyptian Theater in Hollywood) at 6:50pm on Saturday, July 20th. Ask for the "A Look at Vieques" program at the theater box office because we are linked with another documentary on the same subject after us.
Everyone willing to pay $8 for a ticket is invited, cuz those bastards didn’t give us anything free. There should be quite an AICN gang there and Moriarty has promised to bring fruit to throw if the movie sucks. Wait, I was kidding... please don’t bring fruit... remember I want to sell this film.
Screening in the Egyptian is a heady experience for a film geek like me. I saw Empire Strikes Back opening weekend at the Egyptian theater when I was 10. A huge experience for me because it was, well, Empire after all, but also because it was the first time I had ever seen a film with a crowd so overwhelmingly collectively excited. I mean, applause broke out as each returning character first appeared on screen. Now I’ve been in excited crowds since then that have clapped or cheered as the film started or ended or even a few incredible scenes, like the train wreak in "the Fugitive". Never has it been like it was at Empire Strikes back opening weekend at the Egyptian Theater. Really, it scarred me for life.
So, even if none of you show and I watch the movie alone on Saturday, my life will be nearing completion.
How can I credit AICN with helping me get this gig? There is a fine line sometimes between confidence and arrogance. Let’s face it. The kind of fan based journalism we do here has a lot of both. It gives you the confidence to express your opinion and the arrogance that anyone cares. Talk backs may be brutal but they can sure help you grow as a writer and communicator. Of course, I don’t mean posts that just flame for the sake of it, but posts that actually critique... man, my first review ever... one guy wrote "This is the most incoherent attempt at a review I’ve ever read on this site. Is this guy a three year old or what?" Yeah that hurt... mostly because, well, it WAS incoherent. Writing here made me work hard to get it right. Together with dreams of being able to, by reviewing a film before its release, sort of involve myself in the project. You know, if readers care what I think, maybe some film makers might care too. Especially if those filmmakers read the site. Yeah, that’s where the arrogance comes in. But guess what... it was true. Film makers did care what we wrote and we did have an effect. AICN gave me the confidence and arrogance to tell any film maker right to her/his face this is what I liked, didn’t like, and would change if I could.
Enter Jon Nastasi and Alec Cohen. After filming for two years the struggle of ten thousand U.S. citizens daily battle to end Navel bombing practices, they had hundreds of hours of footage. They had put together a 25 minute montage of some powerful emotional content, but had hit a road block as to how to tell their story. Two years of labor on a shoe string budget and I watch it and... well... I told them what I thought. Remember confidence and arrogance? Two months later, Jon came to me and said "want to come watch us edit?" Bam, we hit it off. The collaboration was what they needed and suddenly we were putting together a coherent film with a powerful message. Within four months we had raised and spent $10,000 in post production and completed an hour long film that was ready for festivals and sale. But most importantly, we had created a voice for this struggle. An emotional demand to the American public to take responsibility for the destruction and stop it once and for all. Our dream is not just "Not One More" bomb or shot... it is not one more death, arrest, or act of civil disobedience in a civil war between American citizens on American land. And that brings me to my review:
Ni Una Mas (Not One More) starts off with thousands of demonstrators marching on the capital in Washington D.C. As marchers chant "U.S.A. out of Vieques" over and over, a man proclaims that among the people of Puerto Rico there is no division on this issue. Over a waving flag the visual fades to the title. It is a solid opening that sets up the level of support and its reach beyond the local borders of Puerto Rico. This is a local issue with national importance and it whets your appetite for an explanation of the conflict.
The next two minutes are the weakest in the movie. The film cuts shots of the American military firing rounds of bullets, dropping bombs, and generally destroying beach fronts and the island ecology with title cards explaining, in brief, background history. The scene gets its message across, especially as it fades to the last title card with the words "ten thousand people still call this island home", but it lacks intensity.
Hurt by the beauty of the island itself. Even while being destroyed, the island is beautiful and since this is the first time we are seeing it in the film, its beauty distracts from its destruction. The music doesn’t build it ether. A casualty of our low budget was very very little funding to cover the costs of 25 mins of music needed to score the film. Sen Lemonie did a great job and the music is more then adequate at helping to fill out and tie together the whole film with a concessive sound. But this segment shows the scores weakness by failing to deliver a momentum of intensity to the shots of destruction. Drums and percussion, not wistful guitar picking would have given the military a dominate character theme that would set it a part from the characters fighting for peace. And would have allowed the score to paint musically the clash between both sides during the arrests and other clashes exposed through out the film. I am confident that had we been able to spend another $5,000 on the score, Sen would have been able to due the scene justice.
Five minutes in, the film really starts when we meet Emma. A grandmother, native to Vieques and our only glimpse of what life is like on the island when there is no bombing. Shots of regular people going about their business in a typical city. A grandma making dinner and hanging out at home with a friend.
Emma guides the emotional core of the film from beginning to end. She ties together the struggle and human tragedy of everyone involved by making the effects personal. Weather it is her guilt for unknowingly feeding contaminated fish to her children and grandchildren, her anger for the raping of woman (in the past) and land by military men, or her defiance and multiple arrests in civil disobedience, no one will walk away from this film with out understanding her pain. When Emma says "There can be no more bombing. Might as well throw the biggest bomb they’ve got and blow us all away. I prefer to die then... There’s going to be no more bombing on my island." You know she means it and you feel her pain.
The film follows a narrative that starts with facts and information as we follow some Vietnam Vets around the island. We meet a man dying of cancer, another man who has documented proof of the military taking his land with no compensation, and an 83 year old woman who recounts bulldozing of homes, the raping of women, and hard ship of bombings that have lasted 5 times as long as the second world war.
There is no narrator for the film. This is both a positive and a negative. The positive side is it allows the individuals fighting for change to express their first hand knowledge and experiences. The negative is that it mixes the facts, like a 25% higher cancer rate on Vieques then on Puerto Rico just seven miles away, with anecdotal experiences, like “I had to hid in the bushes to keep from being raped.” This gives the viewer a subconscious impression that the facts may only affect the few people the film gives a voice. This is largely off set by the shear numbers of people involved in the many kinds of protest display through out, but the lack of a guiding narrator hurts the feeling of factual credibility even though the facts are true.
The second act of the film finishes with Emma’s first arrest at the end of over a year of civilian illegal occupation of the live fire range. As she is hand-cuffed and arrested then marched through the crowd passed CNN and Univision news cameras, Emma sings the Puerto Rican anthem. A banner moment of victory for drawing attention to the cause but there is no celebration here. Watching her sing is the most powerful gut wrenching moment in the film. There is no victory in arresting these people who only want peace and Emma makes that painfully clear.
The film takes a turn from there and ratchets up the energy. The never ending protests and non-violent action intensifies and national speakers like Robert Kennedy and Edward James Olmas commit them selves to appeal for an end. Images of children running from tear gas, thousands marching for peace, and protestors tearing down fences and blocking trucks build the film to a climax that can never actually be realized because the Navy has still not committed to withdrawal. Leaving the audience with a bewilderment of how we as American’s can rationalize these kinds of human costs over the cost of relocating practices to an uninhabited island or simulator machines.
It would have been nice if the film could have answered the ultimate question; if they stopping bombing there then where can they practice? But that’s really a whole other movie and not the story line that Ni Una Mas tells.
Shot on digital video using the same kind of camera Win Wenders used for Buena Vista Social Club the film look beautiful and the images are crisp and clear. Transition between scenes are often filled with quick shots of island beauty to really bring home the risks of destroying it forever. The production value, in particular the sound quality, is much closer to the Blair Witch Project then Oscar but it doesn’t hold the film back. Nor does the feeling that some where in the processes of filming the directors went from enthusiastic beginners to experienced professionals. The shots are there, the message is clear and the film is excellent.
I am very proud to have worked hard on this film and I hope to see a bunch of you there. If you go, make sure you write up a review and send it to me or post it in talk backs.
For now, I have said too much.
I’ll be there on Saturday night, and I hope I enjoy the film. If not, there’s a vicious parking lot beating awaiting Segue... but even as I whup up on him, I’ll be proud of him for getting off his ass and doing what so many of us only talk about. He made a film.
Way to go, man.
"Moriarty" out.
