I’m not the biggest short film connoisseur, but at last year’s Sundance Film Festival I was struck by “The World’s Largest Shopping Mall” about a massive shopping center in south China that stands nearly empty despite housing space for hundreds of stores and a Venice-style canal system. It was shot by local filmmaker Sam Green and producer Carrie Lozano, who worked on two other projects that are well worth watching and discussing: “The Weather Underground” feature and the live documentary “Utopia in Four Movements,” which had its California premiere last night as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.
With on-stage musical accompaniment by the Brooklyn band The Quavers, Green narrated a set of four stories about utopian ideals, socialist and capitalist politics, the intended universal language Esperanto, and (of course) the merits of forensic archeology at Kabuki Cinema. The combination of audio and Keynote slides and video clips were mixed live by co-director Dave Cerf for an audience of local filmmakers and critics on the fourth day of this year’s festival. I found focusing on the stories themselves a bit challenging given the on-site production elements–cue ADD–but found it a compelling take on filmgoing following last year’s live episode of This American Life. (The undertaking isn’t a small one either, as evidenced by website FAQs that include “what is a live film?” and “what is utopia?”) And the gathering aspect seems to have been part of the point: in the show notes, SF essayist Rebecca Solnit wrote:
Television chopped up movies with commercials and put them in the middle of domestic distraction, but that was nothing compared to this moment when films are on your iPhone and your laptop and in fuzzy tiny windows on YouTube. The worth thing about these new modes of viewing isn’t that they diminish cinema as visual and imaginative spectacle. The worst thing is that they’re watched furtively and alone. Cinema, which was once a great banquet in a dream palace is now often a snack devoured absentmindedly in isolation.
Great film, particulary the Esperanto section. Esperanto is doing better than most people think. Three pieces of news. Esperanto has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize the last three years by three legislatures (England, Switzerland, Poland). Brazil is in the process of encouraging, through legistlation, the instruction of Esperanto is its public schools. And last: while previously the 17th largest language on Wikipedia, Esperanto will soon be the largest language on Wikipedia, partially due to an automated program, partially due to hundreds of active translators.