Film Matters Magazine

“We live in a modern world, in a remote area.”

This quote from the film drives the overall message of One with the Whale. This documentary, directed by Peter Chelkowski and Jim Wickens, follows the life of a family in Gambell, Alaska, as they survive day-by-day despite the pressures and damages done by the world around them. The film is a gripping examination of the effects of climate change and uneducated mass media on a remote village without traditional methods of living or survival. It opens with a group of hunters getting excited—they have spotted a whale. The extent of their excitement is not immediately clear to the audience, but will become apparent once the full sequence plays out toward the end of the film. Chelkowski and Wickens are very deliberate in the way they pace information throughout the story, opting for an objective observance of the way the tribe lives before introducing environmental and societal context to justify this way of living. The landscape itself is a sheet of white, and the camera pans slowly across the space to allow the viewer to take in the beauty of the place. Also present, however, are shots of melting ice caps, signifiers of climate change that threaten this land. Because of the amount of ice that has already melted, the land has diminished, and the Yupik tribe has no choice but to hunt for its food in the sea. Their biggest prize? A whale, large enough to feed the entire village.

Georden West’s Playland is a visually stunning blend of performance art and documentary that asks the audience to be witnesses of Boston’s oldest queer bar as it transcends time to tell the stories of its patrons, performers, and personnel through the decades, on the eve of its demolition. The film is West’s first feature and premiered internationally in the Tiger Competition at the 2023 International Film Festival Rotterdam and then premiered in North America at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film utilizes a blend of performances (making it feel like a play), found footage, and archival sound to tell the history of the LGQBTQIA+ community in Boston throughout the years, as well as the difficulties Playland faced as a business in its sixty-one years of business.

An observational and sometimes borderline poetic documentary, How to Have an American Baby, directed by Leslie Tai, follows the lives of Chinese women who have already given or plan to give birth in the United States in order for their children to have American citizenship. This deduction of American citizenship is purely an interpretation of the circumstances of the mothers present in the film. The film does not provide statistics or information on how many mothers go through this process, the common reasons for choosing to have American births, or any graphs or datasets to inform the viewer. Instead, Tai utilizes a series of vignettes, following an assortment of mothers, families, and people associated with the practice, who have given or plan to give birth to their children in the United States. The subjects followed in the film tell the story for Tai, a story of joy, heartbreak, financial gain, and community. Through How to Have an American Baby, Tai surfaces the underground movement of Chinese mothers having American babies to highlight themes of motherhood, statehood, and social connection.

Much like the formation of coal deep within the earth, Appalachian native Elaine McMillion Sheldon forms an eloquently layered piece of creative nonfiction, weighed down under mountains of history and threaded by a river of shining narration in her documentary, King Coal. In it, she elevates coal beyond crude natural resource, signifying its powerful resonance throughout rural Appalachia.

In the era of Britain’s Thatcher administration, a repertory cinema emerged as a cultural phenomenon that would inspire a generation. SCALA!!!, directed by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, unfolds the riotous inside story of the infamous Scala Cinema. Between 1978 and 1993, this cinematic haven stood as a sanctuary for those yearning to escape the mundane, offering a daily changing program that traversed the realms of high art, horror, sexploitation, kung fu, and LGBTQIA+ representation.

Welcome to the Enclave

Introduced as a virtual community for like-minded women, The Enclave exists as a haven enabling an escape from the mundane of reality. At once a safe neighborhood, now under siege from Reddit trolls, digital hackers, and the like, a question of morality persists through this digital story: at what price or cost is freedom? As events increase in the profane and grotesque—such as images of masturbation being projected on the walls; an unfortunate consequence of allowing subscribers to use digital currency to manipulate the environment—one cannot help but think in terms of privilege. The clever use of Carly Simon’s lyrics “willing to the play the game” playing over a sequence of the neighborhood being modified evokes a particular human element: the need for change, desired or not. A curious tale including themes of power, loyalty, and monetary value, The Enclave re-creates a “subjective” American Society. At the close of this emotionally charged and thought-provoking short, a long sequence in which the camera revolves around the entire community enables one to breathe and digest the horrors that have unfolded. These horrors reflect and mock the concept of identity, of oneself, whether as a digital citizen or of flesh and bone.

The Monkey Puzzle shorts block of Cucalorus features experimental shorts existing in the limbo between dream and nightmare. These shorts use surreal imagery to convey indescribable parts of the human experience or fears we don’t dare speak of. This review covers the first five short films in the Monkey Puzzle block in the order they were aired at Cucalorus 2023.