Photo | Josh Middleton

The final presentation of the eighth annual First Person Festival was a screening of Still Bill by filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack. The film, which was shown to a packed house on Sunday night at the Painted Bride, is about soul great Bill Withers, who unexpectedly fled the music scene after penning a slew of R&B classics, including “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.” I went expecting to see a movie that focused on the reasons why he left the business, but instead saw a bio-doc of a genuinely good-natured, deeply philosophical man who somehow managed to escape the sparkly, mainstream music world untainted. Molly Eichel gave a thorough review last week on Critical Mass, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. It made me giggle, it made me sob and it inspired me to want to be better at what I do. What more could you ask for from a film? I loved it.

When it was over, Baker and Vlack came onstage for an impromptu Q&A session. They mostly talked about the process of making the film, which began with an e-mail to Withers nearly 10 years ago. When they finally got the go-ahead, Withers led them on a spontaneous filming spree across the country, including locations like his family cemetery in Slab Fork, W. Va., and a large tribute concert in New York. Though there was a slew of footage to weed through, Baker and Vlack pieced together a film that moved cohesively throughout. Their purpose, they said, was to live inside of Bill Withers so they could create a film that felt natural and true. One of the most interesting tidbits of information they shared was of a hard drive in Withers’ studio labeled “Unreleased Bill Withers Tracks.” Um, hello, could someone get around to releasing those please? Click For More »

Photo | Josh Middleton

Brian Rafferty on the wonders of an off-key obsession.

On Friday night I went to see Brian Rafferty’s “Karaoke Obsessed,” part of the eighth annual First Person Festival at the Painted Bride. Now, before you see the word “karaoke,” roll your eyes and decide to scroll to the next post, you may want to give it a second thought. As Rafferty explained in his hourlong discussion, karaoke may be more than the country’s cheesiest pastime, but a hobby that could alter your life for the better.

Rafferty’s presentation began with an explanation about his childhood as a starry-eyed tot who dreamed of becoming a famous singer. It wasn’t until he was in his early 20s in a dingy karaoke bar in the Village that he finally found his voice and therefore an obsession that would change the tune of his life forever. He immediately dropped some extra weight, developed a swagger on the streets and became an instant hit in K-Boxes (individual karaoke rooms) around Manhattan. Next he explained how his fascination with karaoke eventually led him on a worldwide excursion to document its history and influence around the world. (As much as I enjoyed his talk, I have to admit the history section grew a little stale.) It was interesting to learn the meaning of the word karaoke, which is “empty orchestra” in Japanese, but I was entertained most when he shared his personal experiences, which were enhanced by a couple of embarrassing videos and snapshots from his early days on the karaoke circuit. Click For More »

theyesmen.org

The Yes Men Fix the World opens with its protagonists frolicking in green, sun-dappled waters, dressed head to toe in business suits. Before the end of the documentary, they’ve manufactured candles ostensibly made from human remains, distributed a version of The New York Times with entirely good news and roamed lonely landscapes dressed in “Survivo-balls,” inflatable, “disaster-proof” suits they marketed to a frighteningly receptive audience of Halliburton product scouts.

In their more, erm, legitimate lives, the Yes Men, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, are professors of media arts and design, respectively. The Yes Men Fix the World, which was screened at Painted Bride on Nov. 5 as part of the First Person Festival, documents how they apply those disciplines and their Monty-Pythonesque spirit to a special brand of political activism they call “identity correction.” Briefly, this entails impersonating corporate figures to perform acts that are remarkably socially responsible, environmentally conscious or simply absurd, to get at larger truths about the corporation. Click For More »

Photo | Lauren Seibert

Nimisha Ladva reads an essay about her relationship with her mother-in-law.

We never left our seats at the Painted Bride, but we might as well have hopped a plane and spun around the world. In the space of two hours Thursday night at the Salon du Festival, the sixth event of the First Person Festival, the audience found itself carted off to Sinai, England, New Orleans and even Philly’s own Northern Liberties. Four presentations of memoir and documentary art drew us into four very different worlds.

Erica Hoffman kicked off the night with a presentation of her essay “Mom’s New Deal,” a saucy little piece describing her relationship with her penny-pinching mother. The latter apparently lived for two days on a can of green beans in her younger days, and later could be found “wielding her coupon-cutting scissors like a back-alley surgeon,” as Hoffman recalls.

Philadelphia photographer Laura Jean Zito opened our eyes to a world rarely seen through the lens of a camera — especially a camera in the hands of a woman. Though the Sinai Bedouin people rarely allow themselves to be photographed, somehow Zito managed to overcome this cultural barrier in her travels through Egypt’s peninsula. Her striking images of harems, robes billowing in the wind, rolling sands, and scarves covering all but a woman’s piercing eyes made the exotic seem tangible — if only for an instant. Zito’s descriptions of the culture had me hooked, from the fact that the Bedouin consider the mouth the most sensual part of a woman, to their “waste nothing” desert mentality, to the slow infiltration of the West into Bedouin life. How did Zito gain access to all this? “I believe I was at the same time a mascot, an anomaly, and a role model for the Bedouin,” she told us. Click For More »