LUNAFest 2021
Four stars
Starring: A.J. Andrews, Betye Saar, Autumn Harry and many other remarkable women
Rating: Not rated, with content not suitable for young viewers
Available via: https://sidavis.org
Short documentaries profile brave and captivating subjects
By Derrick Bang
Enterprise film critic
In a refreshing example of serendipity, this year’s LUNAFest — an annual collection of short films by women and about women — arrives during a ground-breaking year when, for the first time, two women are nominated for the Best Director Academy Award: Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”).
But don’t break out the cake and ice cream yet; during the past 13 years, only 4.8 percent of film directors have been women. Hardly a statistic to celebrate, and it makes programs such as LUNAFest invaluable.
This 21st annual package features seven short documentaries. Each is introduced by its director and all are passionate about their work.
Meg Shutzer’s “Knocking Down the Fences” is a captivating profile of professional softball player A.J. Andrews, whose jaw-dropping backfield catches are the stuff of sports legend. She’s also a terrific on-camera presence: a well-spoken advocate for her sport and deservedly enthusiastic about her place within it.
Merely watching the clips of her grueling daily training and exercise regimen left me breathless and exhausted.
In 2016, she became the first woman to win a Rawlings Gold Glove, presented since 1957 to the best fielders in professional baseball. Despite this, in addition to her busy team activity, she attends university classes and gives private sports instruction because she needs the money.
“Being a professional softball player,” she explains, “you qualify for food stamps.”
This film’s takeaway statistic: On average, Major League Baseball players make more than 650 times what professional softball players earn. And this is half a century after Title IX raised awareness.
Clearly, awareness needs to be raised further.
Christine Turner’s “Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business” is a charming study of the (now) 94-year-old African American assemblage artist, printmaker and storyteller, who clearly deserves her status as a legend in the world of contemporary art. Her shift to “art activism” kicked into high gear following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Her best-known work, 1972’s “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” arms that “mammy” caricature with a rifle and a hand grenade, transforming her into a warrior who battles the aggression of derogatory stereotypes and imagery, and the physical violence imposed on Black Americans.
She’s also a hoot on camera, blessed with wit and a dry sense of humor. “What do I have now, that’s new,” she muses, while scanning her colorfully chaotic workshop with its laden tables and sagging shelves. “Antlers. That’s my latest thing. It’s always a puzzlement when I start collecting things, like ‘What can I do with this?’ ”
Tracy Nguyen-Chung and Ciara Lacy’s “Connection” takes a spiritual approach to its study of Autumn Harry, a member of Nevada’s Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. She loves to fish, but not merely as a hobby; the process is reverential. “When I think about home,” she explains, “I think about the water. I think about how the generations before me have had this connection to the water. That water is embedded within our DNA, to protect it.”
Autumn was a little girl when she caught her first fish; according to tradition, she gave it to her grandmother.
Maddeningly, the construction of Derby Dam, more than a century ago, very nearly caused her tribe’s native fish to go extinct; they were only barely able to recover the species.
Much as Autumn grew up loving angling, the true epiphany moment came only recently when she became completely captivated by fly-fishing. She now works on a project to introduce fly-fishing and conservation to indigenous youths and women at the Pyramid Lake Reservation and in regions where native fish are under imminent threat.
Amy Bench’s “A Line Birds Cannot See” — marvelous title, that — is a harrowing depiction of today’s immigration crisis, which far too many people fail to realize involves safety, belonging and a place to call home. The off-camera narrator, a young girl, explains that she was born in San Martin, Guatemala; she frequently watched her father beat her mother into unconsciousness.
A brave decision to flee to the United States takes an unexpected turn when a coyote advised it would be “better and easier” if everybody separates at the border. Now alone, the girl subsequently endures a fate worse than death; the calmness with which she recounts her saga makes it even more harrowing.
Attempting a dramatic re-creation would cheapen these events; Bench instead backs the girl’s story with simple animation. This touch is impressively powerful because our imaginations augment the images by filling in all the necessary blanks.
Two-time Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Maria Finitzo’s “Until She Is Free” shadows conceptual artist Sophia Wallace, whose, ah, explicitly confrontational work honors the words of feminist author Audrey Lorde: “The erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to any woman who does not fear its revelation.”
Finitzo’s goal is a world where a woman defines sex according to her own values, desires and pleasures, settling for nothing less than personal autonomy. Depending on one’s upbringing, her aggressively candid approach will likely make you blush — or cheer. (Constant Companion’s eyes went rather wide.)
The obvious value of this goal notwithstanding, Wallace’s efforts seem … well … rather frivolous, when placed alongside these other short films.
Holly Morris’ “Overexposed: Filming an Arctic Odyssey” is disappointing for two reasons, although her topic is compelling: a behind-the-scenes look at the film team that captured the incredible story of the 2018 Women’s Euro-Arabian North Pole Expedition.
Everybody endured minus-40-degree temperatures, frostbite, open water, the fragile crust of polar ice and the constant possibility of encountering angry polar bears. Given the shrinking polar ice cap, Morris knew this could be the last expedition of its kind.
The participants are ordinary women from a dozen different countries; we can’t help thinking that they — and the film crew who dragged 500 pounds of $80,000 camera gear — are out of their bloody minds.
The biggest problem is that this 11-minute short grants us barely a taste of the expedition. It feels more like an extended trailer: a suspicion verified by a final text block stating that Morris’ full-length feature film, “Exposure” will be released later this year.
On top of which, Morris puts too much of herself in this preview. Her ego gets in the way of the essential maxim: The journalist isn’t the story, the story is the story.
Courtesy photo
This brings us to the most emotionally satisfying of these films: Sharon Shattuck’s “The Scientists Versus Dartmouth.” Vassiki Chauhan, a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive neuroscience, relates what went down starting in 2015 when she and several other female Ph.D. students were targeted by three tenured professors in the department of psychological brain sciences.
Let us say their names aloud, that they may be vilified forever: Todd Heatherton, Bill Kelley and Paul Whalen. They were “famous.” They “brought in a lot of grants.” And, we eventually learn, their behavior had been an open secret for 10 years.
Newly arrived from Mumbai, Vassiki had no concept of how to handle such blatant sexual predation; she knew only that such men controlled her future career.
“Either you go to the bar with (one of them),” explains fellow Ph.D. candidate Sasha Brietzke, “and he’ll read your papers; or you don’t, and you are neglected.”
The three men were cunning, following all the grooming strategies of veteran predators: isolating intended targets, joking about physical appearance, inappropriate physical contact. And worse.
Whalen finally went too far, prompting Vassiki to seek out Sasha and several other female department members and Ph.D. candidates: Kristina Rapuano, Annemarie Brown, Andrea Courtney and Marissa Evans. Shattuck makes what follows positively suspenseful, not to mention incredibly brave on the part of these women.
The saga didn’t conclude until early 2020.
Shattuck’s film is the best kind of advocacy cinema, and LUNAFest is to be congratulated for granting it — and these other documentaries — such exposure.
The program, hosted locally by Soroptimist International of Davis, will be available for streaming for 48 hours, beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, April 23. Tickets and additional information are available at https://sidavis.org.
— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at http://derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com.
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