Screen Picks

Summer of the Serpent Fundraiser (Wed., Dec. 18, 8 p.m., North 3rd, 801 N. Third St., 215-413-3666) They say a movie is made three times: once in writing, once in shooting and once in postproduction. The same goes for financing -- digital editing systems have made it possible to "finish" a movie without actually having a film print to show for your trouble. Summer of the Serpent is Kimi Takesue's follow up to her Festival of Independents award-winning Heaven's Crossroads and her Slamdance award-winning Rosewater, and it's more or less finished -- on video. But the small matter of $15,000 stands between the film's video final cut and its ultimate realization. (The money will go to, among other things, a final sound mix and sound design, not to mention designing the credits.) If you're familiar with Takesue's previous films, you'll recognize the suggestive, dreamlike use of imagery and the understated performances, but you'll be surprised by the more accessible narrative style and playful child's-eye point of view. And if you're not familiar with her work, well, the screening Wednesday night at North 3rd is a good place to start. Just bring your checkbook, and be prepared to be moved to generosity. (If you can't make it, you can contact producer Jeff Wolfe at 215-545-6560 to chip in.)

Solaris ($39.95 DVD) Steven Soderbergh's Solaris is so different from its predecessor that comparing it to Andrei Tarkovsky's 30-year-old original almost seems unfair, not to mention beside the point. Luckily, the two movies are so different that it's not necessary for them to run neck-and-neck, even if a certain measuring-up is inevitable. Where Soderbergh's version spends its money on an elaborate, digitally created liquid planet, Tarkovsky's views of the world below the orbiting space station are defiantly filmic, made with filters, dissolves and manipulated, rather than created, imagery. (Said imagery is on splendid display on Criterion's new disc, which presents the film in its uncut near-three-hour length.) Since so much of Tarkovsky's film is devoted to memory (and its institutional twin, history), the effect is to interrogate film as the repository of memory. When Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) shows a home movie to the replica of his dead love created by the titular planet's mysterious energy, he's careful to establish its authorship: "My father shot this -- actually, I shot some of it." Unlike in the Soderbergh version, Tarkovsky's "visitors" can't exist out of sight of their creators -- in perhaps the film's most disturbing image, Khari (Natalya Bondarchuk) rips her way through a metal door when Kelvin leaves the room, her arms sliced to ribbons. In other words, memory doesn't exist independently but is always linked to its creator -- a sly rebuke to a government with a tradition of rewriting history to serve its own needs (not that all governments don't do that to one extent or another). Tarkovsky's film resolves with an image of personal reconciliation, but it's not nearly as doggedly individualist as Soderbergh's incarnation, inspired by the psychological realism which is all but impossible to escape in contemporary American film. Although it starts and ends with him, Tarkovsky's Solaris isn't really a movie about Kris Kelvin, although what exactly it is about is a mystery that three decades has not diminished.

Yeelen (Fri., Dec. 13, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) "I don't like movies about wizards," says Peter Jackson on the DVD commentary for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, explaining why he staged the mystical duel between Gandalf and Saruman to look like "two old guys beating the shit out of each other." One of the things that makes Fellowship, and the upcoming The Two Towers, so exhilarating is the tactile way in which magic is conceived; it's power made substance, not mystical bolts of light shooting through the ether. Similarly, what's most magical about Souleymane Cissé's 1987 tale of warring Malian sorcerers is how low-tech (indeed, practically, no-tech) its depiction of magic is. Of course, there's no chance that Cissé, despite being one of the most esteemed African directors of the last 20 years, had anything like Jackson's budget to work with, but encouraged by financial constraints or not, Cissé depicts magic as something that is very much present in the real world; if it survives mainly in stories, it's because we've forgotten, not because it was ever only a myth.

The heart of Yeelen (Brightness) is the conflict between young sorcerer Nianankoro (Issiaka Kane) and his father Soma (Niamanto Sanogo). For reasons that never become totally clear, Soma has sworn to destroy his son, who spends most of the movie traversing the Malian countryside, forestalling the inevitable. Along the way, he's captured and then embraced by a neighboring tribe. At first, he's imprisoned and sentenced to death, but after he shows the king his power, Nianankoro is welcomed as a valuable asset, particularly when he drives off a warring horde. Here's a good example of how magic in Yeelen works: Nianankoro procures the right leg bone of a horse, splits it in two, fills it with something, ties it back together and drives it into a mound of earth, whereupon the attackers are beset first by bees (which we don't see), then by fire. All we've really seen is a bone driven into the ground, but context and Salif Keita's music is all it takes to make the moment utterly transporting.

Yeelen's narrative is difficult to follow, if not, at times, impossible. Soma's twin brother (also played by Sanogo) is introduced with no fanfare and for reasons that don't seem to be worth the confusion. It helps to know that, ultimately, Yeelen is a creation story, that the end will come back to the beginning (in fact, before it); the specifics of the journey are less important than the fact of its existence. That's not to say Yeelen is mere eye candy (although its raw beauty is plentiful), but at times, it's hard to do more than bask in the moment.

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December 12, 2002
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Screen Picks

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