Father Geek here with more from the festive fest in the Pacific islands and ol' Albert Lanier...

UP AGAINST THEM ALL HIGHLIGHTS OF SECOND DAY OF CINEMA PARADISE

by Albert Lanier

Greetings from the street of rotting, rusting metal facades, funky bars and the beginnings of what could be the new home for independent cinema in Hawaii-Hotel Street in Downtown Honolulu. Here on 43 N. Hotel Street in a space that Iam told formerly housed a peep show theater in a previous incarnation (maybe that explains some of these stains on the floor) is the metamorphosis of Next Door-touted as a Cinema Lounge/Concert Hall-but is currently a work of progress and the site of the 2005 edition of the Cinema Paradise film festival(CPFF).

I'll make no bones about it: I hate Hotel Street and I've hated it for years. The riff-raff weaving their way down the street after imbibing their 70th beer from one of several bars in the area, conspicuously present Cop cruisers and an overall feel of despair and degradation in the air makes me avoid Hotel Street like the plague. Still, I have come down to 43 Hotel to see some films, to drink in the atmosphere of this cinema lounge in utero and to have a good time-if that is even possible on Hotel Street without drugs or alcohol-and I have nearly succeeded.

After enduring physical agony for over 2 hours on opening night by sitting on a plush red sofa (that seat turned out to be sheer torture) near the rear of the loft-like Next Door space and watching the generally boring and predictable Hong Kong feature BUTTERFLY, Saturday, June 25th-Day two Cinema Paradise-were better physically and cinematically. For one thing, I sat largely on one of 4 reddish recliners in the front right next to the performing stage and the movie screen rising above it. This was sheer bliss and proved an utterly relaxing way to see movies.

As for the films themselves, the weekend saw an improvement in the quality of cinema but that's largely because the quantity increased. The amount of overall films have decreased at Cinema Paradise this year. Supposedly 40 features, shorts and docs will screened by festival's end compared to at least 100 last year.

Films are largely being shown in the evening with screenings at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Shorts are shown before the featured narrative or documentary films of the evening. Saturday, June 25th was an exception as CPFF's Shorts program was scheduled to start at 4 p.m. in the afternoon. Technical delays with DVD or tape machines caused the program to get underway after 4:30 p.m.

10 live-action and animated shorts were shown. In total, the program was engaging and entertaining (perhaps the most entertaining films of the festival).

The best of the short films were director John Cernak's JOYRIDE, a computer animated bicycle trip through a socio-political, cultural and physical landscape as well as LAND OF LIFE another computer animated film directed by Vincent Argentine with a Native-American feel to it as shows an earth inhabited by a lizard-like creature going on a walkabout-like journey through a pre-human earth.

Perhaps the absolute best of the bunch was well-crafted BROADCAST 23 directed by Tom Putnam. Said to be based on a true story, BROADCAST 23 is set in Washington State and takes place on Valentine's Day in 1977 as a Bigfoot or yeti devotee and researcher sets off to track his elusive prey only to find out later to his utter horror (and our amusement) what Broadcast 23-a frequency signal or call-really means.

Both haunting and hilarious at the same time, BROADCAST 23 utilizes its 7 minute running time wisely to tell its story quickly and effectively.

The main film program started after 6 p.m. The short PALINDROME from Brazil was up first. Basically, a film that moves backward from its opening images of a shirtless man running on a traffic island in the middle of busy street in the middle of a city screaming.

The film basically rewinds (or tries to give the semblance of moving back in time) through its 11 minute running time as we find this man has lost his job, hotel apartment and girlfriend in the course of one day-like I haven't seen that in a film before.

Shot in a sort of greyish-white black and white photographic style, PALINDROME is a decently made short but nothing special. Basically, this is a stylistically arty way of examining the kind of stuff you can find any commercial comedy or drama but without severe emotional states of anger and frustration or the narrative nod to MEMENTO or Harold Pinter's "Betrayal"(That reminds me, I once wrote in a short summing up of MEMENTO-when I first saw it at a festival in Hawaii-in 2001-for a local newspaper that it was "THE PRISONER meets BETRAYAL").

The 95 minute drama UP AGAINST THEM ALL which followed was one of the surprises of the festival thus far. Set in the slums of Sao Paulo, Brazil, UP AGAINST THEM ALL revolves around a family of three: Teodoro, a devoutly Christian working man, his wife Claudia, a sexy but bored house wife and Teodoro's teenage daughter Soninha.

It doesn't take long to find out that this no united, healthy family, Teodoro already has eyes for a fellow believer Terezhina, a fervent churchgoer. Oh, and Teodoro's work: he's a hit man who works with a black partner named Waldomiro. I guess he really does praise the lord and pass the ammunition. Claudia is an attractive blond who enjoys spending her weekdays making love to Julio, the son of a butcher. Soninha is a daughter who wonders the city streets at times, listening to music through headphones and skipping school and sometimes talking to her boyfriend of sorts Marco. She's a pain in the ass to Teodoro, giggling at his prayers and refusing to take part in them.

Then, police show up in the neighborhood while Claudia is taking her clothes off the line from drying. She finds out that Julio has been killed-shot dead and his genitals cut off. Claudia soon is devastated. Believing that Teodoro killed Julio, she leaves the apartment trashed and set up a hex of sorts (a torn picture of the couple in a box on the kitchen counter).

In the meantime, Teodoro is hired by Julio's father to finds his son's killer and take him out. Teodoro talks to Marco, who works one of the drug gangs, trying to find out information about Julio, but Marco dislikes all the third degree questions, gets into a scuffle with Teodoro and winds up getting his brains blown out by the hit man. Waldomiro soon finds Claudia out on the streets, takes her to a hotel where he tries to talk to her and defend Teodoro and ends up giving her a few bucks to stay in the hotel for a few days. Soninha later find out about Marco's death and openly comes on to Waldomiro. Teodoro tells Waldomiro he could give a flying fig about Claudia, he's already popped the question to Terezhina and the two are planning to get married and move to the country.

Later, a bag is placed on the door of Terezinha's house. She plays the tape which shows Teodoro adjusting the camera. We only see Terezinha's reaction to the tape which is revulsion and horror. Teodoro comes by. Terezinha screams at him, she never wants to see him again. Teodoro forces his way in and ties up Terezinha. He tried to please and impress her by going the Christian way, Teodoro tells Terezinha, but now the man behind he facade has been forced to emerge and real Teodoro is going to have his way with her. All this simmering anger, frustration and disappointment will finally erupt leading to more murder which permanently tear this family asunder. Also some questions will finally be answered namely Who killed Julio and why? as well as Who left the videotape at Terezhina's place?

UP AGAINST THEM ALL is a film in which the scattered pieces of the narrative come together to form a harsh drama about an unapologetically tough world in which a man can get killed in the time it takes to chug a bottle of beer.

Shot on DV, UP AGAINST THEM ALL works partly because of the stripped down, raw look that digital video can provide. This film would look too pretty on celluloid, the simple unadorned photography of the film gives it an authenticity and a filmic sense of naturalism that shooting on film could never provide. UP AGAINST THEM ALL is helped by the solid, straight forward work of director Roberto Moreira, Moreira wisely chooses to concentrate his energy on telling this story as opposed to making arty visual statements though his shot selections.

Moreira also coaxes decent enough performances from his actors-Giulio Lopes turns in good work as Teodoro, Leona Cavalli is effectively sexy as Claudia, and Silvia Lourenco is convincing enough as the rebellious Soninha. Acknowledgment also goes to Martha Meola as the intensely Christian Terezinha and Ismael de Araujo as boy toy Julio.

The trickiest performance is pulled off by Aiton Graca who plays the affable hired killer Waldomiro. Waldomiro ends being a far more important character by the end of UP AGAINST THEM ALL. In fact, the end of UP AGAINST THEM ALL made me laugh because it was so wicked and devious. That ending is fitting to this film because the characters in this film are all flawed, all selfish and all fascinating because they are real.

The problem with many films (and a number of works of literature for that matter) is that they often portray human beings either in an idealized state or reaching for an ideal condition of good character and altruism among other qualities.

That's pure bullshit and these writers and filmmakers know it. Human beings are animated first and foremost by self-interest. This self-interest manifests itself in many ways including helping others(through charitable works) as well as helping oneself (through thieving and committing other crimes) but we are all propelled by self-interest-we couldn't survive on this earth without this trait.

UP AGAINST THEM ALL is no masterpiece but it is one of the kind of films I enjoy: a clear story told simply and without guilt or hesitation that shows people as they really are in a world roughly approximating our own. There are no saints here, just sinners. Frankly, sinners are more entertaining.

The last film of the night was the 78 minute documentary filmed in Brazil FAVELA RISING directed by Jeff Zimbalist. Rooted in the favela (which basically means ghetto or slum) of Vigario Geral in Rio, FAVELA RISING focuses on Anderson Sa, one of the forces behind the Afroreggae movement of percussive music wedded with singing and dance.

Sa is from the favela of Vigario Geral. There are at least 600 favelas throughout Rio and Brazil and each favela is controlled by a drug gang or operation. Because each favela is essentially a narcotic fiefdom unto itself, one does not just travel from one favela to another lightly. Years ago, Sa was a foot soldier in the Vigario Geral drug gang. However, he started to tire of his involvement in the drug life and then a devastating massacre rocked the favela in August 1993.

After 4 cops were killed, a massive police force came into Vigario Geral and started shooting residents indiscriminately in their homes, killing dozens of people and causing symphonies of wails and cries of grief from the surviving relatives of loved one killed randomly by police as payback for their murdered colleagues. Sa lost his brother and resolved to get out of narcotics trade and sought the council of Junior, a community organizer looking to funnel men into healthier activities. Sa then tuned to music-singing songs backed by heavy drumming-and helped form the Afroreggae movement which transformed former drug soldiers into musicians and singers intent on making music and not selling coke. Sa and his cohorts turned Afroreggae into a community-based movement that held percussion workshops for young boys and girls instead of a personal means of making money and living the high life.

FAVELA RISING examines Sa and the Afroreggae movement through interviews with Sa, lively music-soaked clips of performances of Afroreggae and as well as interviews with Junior and other interested parties and integral players.

The documentary mixes good news (Afroreggae getting a multi-year grant from the Ford Foundation and a record contract from Universal music) with some bad news (Sa's injuries caused by an accident resulting in a neck brace and a sort of limp).

FAVELA RISING is a fairly good doc not only because its director Jeff Zimbalist plunged into the environment of the favela of Vigario Geral and getting to its people fairly well but because he has wisely chosen a worthy subject-the charismatic Anderson Sa. Sa is essentially a community activist who works through music. This makes him probably more amenable to most bourgeois filmgoers than your average activist railing against the government and the police who lacks a performing art background that will lure people to his or her cause.

Zimbalist provides the necessary statistics (Black Brazilians like Sa make on average $13 a week through honest labor compared to the $650 a week that can be made by selling drugs), talking head perspectives and clips of the favelas-often stacked and terraced on mountains and looking like squalid post-modern monuments to poverty and inhumanity.

FAVELA RISING was shown to a packed house at Cinema Paradise and has to be considered one of the hits of the festival thus far, rousing and exciting the crowd much like the audience at an Afroreggae concert and earning director Zimbalist who was present that night a cacophonous round of applause from filmgoers that night. In all, certainly a cinematic step up form opening night. Rock on, Cinema Paradise!