Roberto Canessa, a man in his mid-fifties, is sitting near the top of a mountain range in the Andes, his white hair blowing in the breeze. He seems calm but deeply thoughtful as he weighs some serious philosophical questions. “It was so arbitrary,” Canessa says. “Why did it kill some people, while others escaped with only a black eye? You, yes. But you, no. How does destiny work? What is its formula?”
 

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When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana in the late summer of 2005, it was a disaster that seemed to have no end. A Category Five storm would be enough to level most neighborhoods all by itself, but after the city’s levee system failed most of the Crescent City went under water, and the dangerous incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the crisis led to a tragedy that’s still slowly unfolding three years later. Many of the neighborhoods hardest hit by Katrina are still waiting to be rebuilt, and many families that called New Orleans home for generations have left the city, never to return. It’s a story that covers a huge canvas, and when Spike Lee set out to make a documentary about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, When the Levees Broke clocked in at a whopping four hours. Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal have taken a very different approach to the same story, working on a much smaller scale with their documentary Trouble the Water, and they’ve created something nearly as affecting as Lee’s superb film by allowing us – at times forcing us – to see the devastation of Katrina through the eyes of one couple living in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.

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For sheer glorious outrageousness, the 70’s were without question the greatest decade in the history of American cinema, and the wildest genre in an era of truly crazed movies was Blaxploitation. After Shaft became a surprise smash hit in 1971, urban grind houses and drive-ins all across the nation were witnesses to a steady parade of pimps, hustlers, private eyes, dealers, gang lords and dozens of other Afro-topped characters decked out in their finest polyester finery. At a time when movies like Super Fly, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song, Black Caesar, The Mack and Black Shampoo were luring people into theaters every weekend, it took something special to truly stand out.

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There are two kinds of adolescence in the movies – the fun kind that we’re frequently told represents the “best years of your life,” and the kind that has more to do with real life in which everything seems uncertain, every part of life seems to be in flux and precious little makes sense. Lucia Puenzo’s first feature film, XXY, is a compelling and compassionate look at the latter sort of teenage life, though Puenzo’s story concerns itself with kids who deal with issues significantly more challenging than most folks ever have to face.

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With the passage of time, one season’s flop can become another season’s classic, and that’s certainly been the case with 1958’s Touch of Evil, Orson Welles’ visually inventive and absorbing exercise in film noir. Universal Pictures didn’t know what to make of the movie when it was completed, and they released it on the second half of a double bill with no press screenings despite a star-studded cast that included Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Marlene Dietrich. Fifty years later, Touch of Evil is a cult favorite widely regarded as one of Welles’ finest American features, and Universal has given the film a glossy DVD re-release in honor of the picture’s fiftieth birthday. However proud Universal may be of Touch of Evil in 2008, the new DVD edition offers a telling portrait of the troubles Wells had bringing his story to the screen as he saw fit in 1958.

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It’s been said before, but it bears repeating – Peter Watkins may be the most under-appreciated important filmmaker of his generation, an artist and thinker whose challenging approach to both global politics and the formal structure of cinema has resulted in a body of work that’s had a powerful effect on the few who’ve been lucky enough to see it. However provocative Watkins critiques of the balance of political power and influence may be, they haven’t endeared him to the mainstream film industry, and the fact most of his movies have been produced outside the studio system – for television or independent concerns, and in some cases with the support of academic institutions as part of advanced film classes — hasn’t helped them gain the visibility they deserve. But it’s significant that the one feature Watkins produced for a major studio has been nearly as hard to see as any of his other pictures. In 1967, after Watkins had briefly become an international cause celebre thanks to the controversy over his award-winning look at the aftermath of a nuclear attack on England, The War Game, he became one of a handful of maverick talents who were signed to make low-budget films for the UK branch of Universal Pictures. At a budget of $700,000, Watkins’ Privilege was among the least expensive of the lot, though it remains the most lavish project of Watkins’ career. Despite receiving some excellent reviews in the United States, Privilege didn’t fare well at the box office and enjoyed only a brief run in cinemas; it reached its largest audience when it was included in a package of movies Universal syndicated to local television stations in the 70’s, and by the end of that decade, the film had all but vanished. Fortunately, Project X Distribution in Canada and New Yorker Films in the United States have been making a growing number of Watkins films available on DVD, many for the first time, and this month they’ve teamed up to give Privilege its first authorized home video release ever.

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At its heart, Jellyfish is a film about love, though romance barely enters into the picture. Instead, Jellyfish concerns itself with the way people can lift each other up and drag each other down — husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, even strangers — and how complex the business of caring for someone else can be, no matter how simple it all seems on the surface.

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Hey, Nic and Werner:

As a fellow member of the film industry (OK, so writing the occasional movie review in some little town in Michigan doesn’t really make me a member of the industry, just humor me on this), I read the trade papers on a regular basis, and I recently saw an article in Variety which said you guys were planning to work together on a remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, which starts shooting this summer. Now, practically every issue of Variety includes at least one announcement of a project that ends up never seeing the light of day, but this piece seemed reasonably plausible, so I wanted to step forward with some friendly advice on how you should approach this particular film. It’s quite simple, really – you should drop the idea now while you still can. No one is going to come out ahead if this movie ever gets made, and I think we all realize this in our heart of hearts.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not here to badmouth anyone. Heck, I’m actually a fan of both you guys. Werner, I’ve been following your work ever since Aguirre, The Wrath of God turned my head around sideways when I saw it in college. And Nic, if you had a nickel for every time I quoted your great line in Wild At Heart, “This here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom,” you’d be considerably wealthier than I am. Of course, you already are, but adding that money could well push the proportions into the algebraic.

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