“If you run, the beast catches you; if you stay, the beast eats you”
Opening the film with a chicken chase, City of God is the most gripping history of drug-wars in the Rio de Janeiro favelas that anyone could hope for.
From: Brazil, South AmericaContinue reading “City of God – Get Involved in the Drug Dealing Gangs of Rio”
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Next: Elite Squad, El Infierno, Traffic
A lot of places in the world you can’t just do what you want to do. In Jamaica it’s a lot like that. And I use that as a positive motivation to get me to pursue it and achieve it.
Shama
Outdeh follows three young men (Shama, Bakersteez, and Romar) in their quest to try and make something of their lives. They all want to do something new to build a platform for the next generation. Shama is the first professional surfer from the island, Bakersteez is trying to forge a career as a rapper from a country dominated by dancehall stars such as Popcaan, whilst Romar is trying to make it out of one of the islands most notorious ghettoes by playing football. They’re all going for their dreams because no other path has been cleared for them. And they all want to prove that their dreams are achievable.
The first thing that draws you into Outdeh is the idyllic slow motion shots of the island backed by the Jamaican soundtrack. It captures a musical-esque utopia that we are happy to be immersed in. There’s the ocean waves which Shama effortlessly glides through in front of empty Sandy beaches. There’s also shots of Shama carelessly skateboarding through city streets, dancing in front of cars as if he’s invincible. Then there’s shots of Romar playing football with a large group of guys from the neighbourhood. It doesn’t look like he has any worries even though we hear that he has to beg for money to eat from the neighbourhood boss. The evidence of an unhappy life is only spoken about, leaving the slow motion shots to show the utopian side of the idyllic island they live on. It’s a sign of a hopeful, positive future.
You’ll also be drawn in by the laid back characters of Bakersteez and Shama which hide a restless energy. Despite saying he gets nervous before his gigs, Bakersteez always appears completely confident and in control of his life’s direction. Shama is no different. Even though he’s the first professional surfer from Jamaica, he doesn’t even act like it’s a big thing, it’s just something he’s picked up for followed what he loves to do. Like Bakersteez, even though they’re forging new paths for a new generation, he never appears flustered or out of place.
The future looks bright for these three in Outdeh and the youth of Jamaica.
Head to our Santa Barbara International Film Festival Hub for more reviews from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2020.
Mosh is an aspiring dancer living in the hood in the Dominican Republic. She lives with her mother who is dying from cancer and her cousin Geronimo, who gets by dealing drugs.
Not sure what to make of it. Mosh starts of as if it’s going to be a musical but then changes direction into a hood film after the opening. It features some of the typical hood film tropes: a kid trying to make it out of the hood, a raw undiscovered talent, relative stuck in a gang. But it also features a few scenes of a tall lady playing God, who’s followed around by a man dressed as a pineapple.
God and her pineapple friend appear to characters to talk about death and nostalgia for a life lived. She helps each of the characters become more comfortable with the idea of death. However, whilst the talks are interesting, they never really fit within the main(?) narrative of the film – that of Mosh and her family (question mark as maybe Mosh isn’t the focus?). The discussions are also pretty long and slow which disrupts the flow of the film further. (Even the characters annoyingly start to interrupt themselves as the discussions about mortality and life starts drifting without focus).
I really wanted to like Mosh, but I could never understand what kind of a film it was trying to be. It has too many moving parts. Instead of focusing on one narrative, it tries to follow many (Mosh, her brother, her mother, the drug boss).
There’s also a lot of unanswered questions. Why does Mosh so vehemently correct anyone who calls her Maria? What is this happiness drug? Why does God keep appearing? Why does she have a side kick dressed as a pineapple? We’re also never clear on why Mosh loves dancing and why she is going to all these dance classes and auditions – is she auditioning for a role? Does she want to make it her career? Is it her way of escaping her reality? It’s never really clear. We just have to assume or accept a lot of things that we are shown.
As a result, we’re never really sure what the film is. The convoluted narrative, varied pace, and unanswered questions make it hard to immerse yourself in the film. We never feel like we know Mosh, but we’re also never sure if this film is actually about her, her brother, the hood, or God.
Delphine’s Prayers features a young Cameroonian woman baring her traumatic life story for the camera. In a personal one-on-one interview she recounts the death of her mother, her rape at 13, and her subsequent abandonment by her father which led her too an early life of prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ended up marrying an old Belgian man that brought her to Europe. She came with some hope of a better life, but that has since dissipated, leaving her in poverty again.
The whole film is shot in one room in Belgium with each of the ~10 segments centering Delphine in the middle of the frame. She’s the only character on camera in this documentary until the very last scene. She’s also the only one who speaks, discounting a few prompts from the director to guide her life stories. Without any other characters, and no cuts away from Delphine, the film’s focus is completely on Delphine, leaving no room for the viewer to get distracted from her storytelling. It makes the documentary feel much more intimate – especially as Delphine is incredibly open throughout the film – but also sometimes a bit intrusive as it feels like her traumatic life story is being exploited to represent a bigger message.
The bigger message is to present Delphine’s traumatic life as one example of a generation of young African women that have been crushed by patriarchal societies at home and abroad. This message is brought together at the end of the film in a short scene in which the director talks over a visual of Delphine braiding her hair, speaking of their friendship in Europe. Because of their different backgrounds, they wouldn’t have crossed paths at home in Cameroon. However, in Europe, they’re both just seen as Black African women – reminders of Belgium’s colonial past.
Whilst it does feel a bit exploitative at times, delving into a wide range of stories from Delphine’s traumatic life, Delphine’s Prayers does give a voice to one Black African woman in Europe to represent a part of the African immigrant experience in Europe.
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