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SXSW: Finding Yingying

“Life is too short to be ordinary.”

Yingying Zhang

26-year old PhD student Yingying Zhang went missing on June 9th, 2017. After graduating from Peking University, Yingying traveled from China to study Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois. Yingying was full of wonder and hope. She was in a loving relationship with her boyfriend Xiaolin and excited about this new phase in life. She documented those early days in the US in her journal. Mere weeks after she arrived, she made the fatal mistake of getting into a car with a stranger. She had missed the bus and was late for an appointment. A man claiming to be an off-duty cop offered her a ride. Yingying has never been heard from again.

Directed and produced by Jiayan “Jenny” Shi, Finding Yingying is a sensitive portrayal of a young woman with a bright future and a family struggling to come to terms with their loss. The documentary features extensive interviews and footage of Yingying’s boyfriend, parents, brother, aunt and friends as they search for answers and prepare for the criminal trial that would come two years later.  Filmmaker Shi graduated from the same university as Yingying. Although they had never met, when Jiayan heard of Yingying’s disappearance she felt an immediate connection and a strong desire to help. About her filmmaking approach, Shi said:

“Finding Yingying was made in a vérité observational filmmaking style… I wanted to allow the audience to feel that they were experiencing the painful and challenging journey along with the family.”

Jiayan “Jenny” Shi

Shi humanizes her subject. As is the case with many true crime stories, violent acts and perpetrators are glorified to satisfy the audience’s hunger for salacious details. This is not the case with Finding Yingying. In fact, this documentary is the complete opposite of that. The majority of the film is focused solely on Yingying and her family. We learn that Yingying was inquisitive, thoughtful and kind. Her parents traveled to the US for the first time to help search for Yingying and held out hope that she was still alive. Shi becomes a living representative of Yingying through this film. She reads segments of Yingying’s diary, bringing her voice to the forefront. Shi said:

“my voice and presence are integrated into the film to show my deep personal connection to Yingying, and my deep desire to tell  her and her family’s story beyond the headlines. I want to preserve her legacy.”

Jiayan “Jenny” Shi

The murderer is given very little attention, as he should be. We learn as much as we need to about the investigation, how the FBI tracked him down with surveillance footage and how they employed his girlfriend to secretly record him. The details of Yingying’s murder are kept to a minimum.

Finding Yingying turns the focus away from the murder and on to the victim, an inquisitive, thoughtful and kind young woman who brought joy to those around her. It’s a beautiful documentary that will make you think twice about how true crime films portray victims.

To learn more information about Finding Yingying, please visit the official website: www.findingyingying.com 

Posted Documentaries

SXSW: The Dilemma of Desire

Clitoris. It’s a word that comes with a lot of unnecessary baggage. It’s one one of the greatest anatomical features women can possess because its only job is to give us pleasure. The tip of the clitoris has over 8,000 nerves. While 96% of men can orgasm through intercourse only 25% of women can. The clitoris is our access to orgasms. Yet the clitoris, the organ itself and the word, has largely been feared, ignored and repressed. It wasn’t until 1998 that the first extraction of a full female clitoris, by Dr. Helen O’Connell, happened. Before that scientists didn’t fully understand its shape, size and function. Why has the clitoris been ignored? The clue can be found in how we as a society treat women’s sexuality. Men’s sexuality is encouraged, even celebrated, and women’s sexuality is seen as a threat. Women are seen as an object of desire while their own desire is feared. It’s time for the clitoris to come to the forefront. It’s time to strip it of the needless shame and secrecy. It’s time to give women control over their own sexuality and their own bodies. Let’s celebrate the CLITORIS!

“It is a powerful thing to control someone’s body. That is why no one wants to talk about the clitoris. It is a reminder of women’s independence and is at the core of their liberation.”

Maria Finitzo

The Dilemma of Desire is an unabashed celebration of women’s sexuality. It calls for cliteracy, an open dialogue and appreciation for the clitoris. Directed by Maria Finitzo, The Dilemma of Desire includes interviews with a variety of women and how they’ve explored their expressions of sexuality. The most interesting subject of the documentary is Sophia Wallace, the artist who started a cliteracy project. She created a design in the shape of the clitoris that she uses in her art as well as the Laws of Cliteracy, many of which are shared in the film.

I had a strict religious upbringing and much of what I learned about women’s sexuality I learned on my own. One of the greatest resources I encountered during my sexual awakening was the-clitoris dot com (don’t try to look it up, it no longer exists and the URL will take you to a malware infected site). This site offered extensive information about the clitoris, other parts of a woman’s anatomy, stories shared by women about their own experiences and so much more. I spent hours on the site, learning the things that my parents and my school couldn’t or wouldn’t teach me. With the help of the site I found my clitoris and had my first orgasm at the age of 19. The-Clitoris no longer exists but The Dilemma of Desire does. Don’t let the strong feminist and political leaning scare you off. The Dilemma of Desire will empower women to embrace their sexuality and that is a beautiful thing.

The Dilemma of Desire was scheduled to have its premiere at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival. You can find more information about this film on the official website.

Posted Film Reviews

Blood On Her Name

Garage owner Leigh Tiller (Bethany Anne Lind) finds herself in an impossibly bad situation. She’s in the possession of a dead body, one she killed herself, presumably in self-defense, and is tasked with getting rid of it. Does she hide the body? Or does she bring it back to his family? Turning herself in is not an option. She’s got too much at stake. There’s her son Ryan (Jared Ivers) who is on probation and trying to be on his best behavior. There’s her father Richard (Will Patton) a local cop with whom she has a toxic relationship. Then there is the garage and her employee Jimmy (Reynoso Dias). But on the flip side there’s the man’s family including his girlfriend Dani (Elisabeth Rohm). As Leigh finds herself torn with disposing the body and returning him to his family, her situation grows more and more dire. How will she get this blood off her name?

Blood On Her Name is a sharply focused thriller that is concerned with the aftermath of a crime rather than the crime itself. The audience doesn’t see the crime occur. We don’t know who the victim is, why he was killed or whether Leigh killed him in self-defense. The film starts with Leigh standing over the man’s dead body, her face cut and bruised and covered with blood. There are no flashbacks but an apparition of Leigh’s younger self does come back to haunt her.

On first viewing, Blood On Her Name felt kind of flat. It grew on me over time. There is some cheesiness especially with the scenes between Leigh and her father. I wish their relationship was explored more thoroughly. The main character’s ambiguity is the biggest draw. Is she a victim or a villain? We don’t really know and Bethany Anne Lind does a great job at keeping the audience guessing. 

Blood On Her Name was directed by Matthew Pope. Pope wrote and produced the film with Don M. Thompson for their new production company Thompson’s Rising Creek Films. This is Pope’s debut feature film.

Blood on Her Name premiered at last year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. It is now available on digital through Amazon Prime, Vudu and Google Play.

Posted Documentaries

OVID streams Patricio Guzmán Chilean documentaries

As someone who devours Spanish-language feature films and documentaries, I was thrilled to learn of streaming service OVID’s new collaboration with PRAGDA, a production and distribution company dedicated to promoting films from Latin America and Spain. This month OVID made seven of Chilean director Patricio Guzman’s documentaries available on their service, timed for the release of his newest film The Cordillera of Dreams/La Cordillera de los sueños.

Over the past 40+ years, Patricio Guzman has been chronicling the natural and sociological history of Chile. Guzman’s home country is one of the most fascinating places in the entire world. It’s the longest and narrowest of countries with 2,700 miles/4,300 kilometers of coast line to the west, mountains that border the east, deserts to the north and a southern tip that is mere miles away from the Antarctic peninsula. The Atacama desert is one of the driest places on earth and because of the clear skies and high altitude, it’s one of the best places for astronomers to observe space and is home to several large scale telescopes. Chile’s history is fraught with political turmoil from the brief presidency of democratic socialist Salvador Allende whose government was overturned by a military coup d’etat in 1973. This was followed by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet who was eventually charged with human rights violations and embezzlement. 

Guzman offers poignant and emotionally resonant portrayals of Chile. Let’s take a look at the seven Guzman documentaries available to watch on OVID. 

Guzman’s three part epic depicts the tumultuous days leading to the end of Salvador Allende’s presidency and the beginning of Pinochet’s regime. Guzman and five cameramen were on the ground recording the events as they unfolded. One cameraman even died in action and filmed the last moments of his life as he was by the military in a coup. The documentaries also capture the struggle of the working class who are fighting for their rights as the bourgeoisie rise in power.

The three films include The Battle of Chile: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie/La Batalla de Chile: La insurrección de la burguesía (1975), The Battle of Chile: The Coup d’état/La Batalla de Chile: El golpe de estado (1977) and The Battle of Chile: Popular Power/La Batalla de Chile: El poder popular (1979).

If you’re uninformed about the tyrant that was Augusto Pinochet, watching The Pinochet Case (2001) is a great place to start. Guzman’s documentary takes a look at the 1998 arrest of the dictator while on vacation in London. Pinochet came into power in 1974 and ruled Chile as a dictator until 1990. Over the years, countless political opponents disappeared. Those who weren’t able to flee Chile for refuge in other countries were imprisoned and tortured. Many were murdered and buried in desert in unmarked graves. Guzman interviews over a dozen of victims who lost family members and nearly lost their own lives during Pinochet’s regime. Guzman also offers archival footage of Pinochet in London as he was charged and tried for human rights violations.

In Salvador Allende (2004), Guzman chronicles the presidency of Allende from his election campaign to his seemingly impossible win, to his short lived term that ended with a military coup d’etat and his eventual suicide in 1973. Guzman interviews family members, friends and colleagues of Allende, a CIA operative, as well as one of the last people to see Allende alive. Guzman always offers some hard-hitting scenes that really encourage audiences to appreciate the gravitas of the story. In this film, Guzman tries to find someone who witness the bombing of Allende’s home and gets a tour of the exact spot where Allende killed himself.

In Guzman’s documentary Nostalgia for the Light (2010), audiences learn about the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth which is home to important telescopes that capture images of space and is also where many victims of Pinochet’s regime are secretly buried. Because it is such a dry place, the human remains found in the desert date back from as recently as the 1970s to as far back as the 1800s and even further back to pre-1400s. Nostalgia for the Light is a quiet and somber documentary about how this unique landscape holds dark secrets of the past and helps us explore a world beyond our own.

In The Pearl Button (2014), Guzman man moves away from the desert to Chile’s coast and waterways. The title is a reference to Jemmy Button, the native of the Yaghan tribe who was brought to England, civilized and brought back. He was paid for with pearl buttons. Upon his return to his native land, he stripped away his newfound British identity but was never able to assimilate back into his tribe and lived the rest of his life in exile. It’s also a reference to the button found fused on a metal rod used to sink a political prisoner’s body to the bottom of the ocean. The most fascinating part of the documentary is Guzman’s interviews with some of the last remaining indigenous people of Patagonia and we hear words spoken in the Kawesqar language.

OVID streams a variety of independent and foreign films. I’m new to the service and am already loving how much they have to offer. Visit OVID.tv for more information.

Posted Film Reviews

Corpus Christi

20 year old Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) has just been released from a juvenile delinquent center where he was incarcerated for a violent crime. Upon his release, he is sent far away from his native Warsaw, Poland to a remote village to work. Instead of taking a job at the local sawmill, he pretends to be a priest in training. Daniel had reconnected with his Catholic faith through the help of the jail’s priest Tomasz (Lukasz Simlat). When the local priest (Zdzislaw Wardejn) takes ill, Daniel takes over. The village he now oversees is reeling from the death of several teens in a head on collision with a local drunk. The widow (Barbara Kurzaj) receives menacing letters from the teens families and its up to Daniel to help heal the divide. Things get complicated when he falls for parishioner Eliza (Eliza Rycembel) and when an old nemesis from jail threatens to reveal Daniel’s secret.

“For Daniel, spiritual guidance is the only pure thing left in his life. I see his actions as a desperate attempt to tell the world what he would do if he were given a second chance.”

Jan Komasa

Corpus Christi is simply brilliant. Directed by Jan Komasa, this enthralling yet quiet film is based on a real phenomena of fake priests in Poland. Bartosz Bielenia delivers a captivating performance as the charismatic yet troubled Daniel. His story is bookmarked with violence. He is the victim of a broken system. Even though Daniel is an impostor, he’s also just what the village needs. Someone who will not only connect with them on an emotional level but also challenge them to open their minds and to find forgiveness in their hearts. I was quite moved by this story. I don’t know what I was expecting out of Corpus Christi but I can tell you that by the end I was blown away.

Corpus Christi is nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards. It’s currently screening at select cities. Visit the Film Movement website for more details.

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