Thanks to Rachel Maddowtweeting about it, I was fortunate enough to watch last year the film “Home” by Matt Faust. It is a touching portrayal of the essence of home as conveyed through bittersweet, evocative archive photos of a house in Chalmette, Louisiana that was flooded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The film distills the essence of home and the feeling of loss that occurs when home becomes a memory. It does so in a way that everyone can relate to so that observers of Katrina may see beyond the forensic analysis of Katrina’s aftermath and gain a deeper understanding of what has been lost.
During the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival the film was available for viewing online, but unfortunately now it is not. When I asked its creator as to why not make it freely available on YouTube, he replied:
Hey Shahar,
In a perfect world, I would put it anywhere I wanted and let everyone see it. But unfortunately, doing that would jeopardize many opportunities for it. Things like film fests, distributors, and the academy awards are very peculiar about how and when they want their films to be shown.
I realize that this makes it much harder for people like you to write interesting stories about it, but that’s just the way it has to be for now. Hopefully, a distribution deal will be worked out soon that will at least let you point people to the film on iTunes and other outlets.
Thanks and sorry,
Matt
So all I have for you today is the following trailer, which is technically a teaser -- but since it is 28% as long as the entire 6 minutes film, it may qualify as Cliff’s Notes:
Can I be alone in my longing for inarticulacy, for a cinema that refuses to join all the dots? For an arrhythmia in gesture, for a dissonance in shape? For the context of cinematic frame, a frame that in the end only cinema can provide, for the full view, the long shot, the space between, the gaps, the pause, the lull, the grace of living.
I have compiled a list of movies I really like where pretty much nothing happens. In this age of nonstop-action films, these films dare to show the pause, the lull, the in-between, that which we call life. To say that nothing happens in these films is, of course, an oversimplification, and while these films are not boring, not by any stretch, they are the furthest thing from the climatic feeling you get in other films where a mystery gets solved, or when the two main characters finally fall into each others’ arms.
These films are certainly not for anyone, but those willing to risk losing ninety minutes off their lives, might gain so much more.
A few minutes ago, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman lost his bid for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Hebrew speaking Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary film, or documation, was Israel’s eighth nomination in this category and while everybody here hoped it would be Israel’s first win -- unfortunately that was not in the cards tonight. Previous Israeli nominees include:
Here is Ari Folman sitting at a bar, drowning his sorrows, apparently holding someone else’s Oscar statuette (…yes, I manipulated the photo in advance):
