Why I go to the movies with Lillian: HEAVEN AND HELL, ON EARTH
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero

Driving into San Juan's Miramar neighborhood, we pass by the Fine Arts Cinema and the paid parking lot. We're early for the 2 PM showing of Styx, the first film on the list for the 30th annual edition of the San Juan International Film Festival. We drive around the corner and head up the hill, looking for street side parking. "Go slow," says Lillian, "we always find a spot along here." She's right, there's one just ahead. As I pull the Jeep over, a little car zips past, cutting us off. The Suburu driver leans out his window as he backs up. "That's my spot!" he yells. We drive on. Two, three, four blocks up the hill, we make a left turn onto a side street and see an opening, but the curb is painted yellow and it's at an  intersection. "We probably shouldn't park here, we could get towed," I tell Lillian. "Nobody gets towed," she says, as another car backs into the spot we just passed. Finally, two blocks further there's another opening. I quickly back the Jeep into place, and we walk down the hill to the movie theater.

When attending a film festival, Lillian and I make careful plans. We look through the list of films to be shown, we read the short synopses, we make our choices and write out a schedule. As a rule we don't watch film trailers or read reviews. We prefer the element of surprise when watching a new film. We save the research for after we've seen the movie and can compare our reactions and interpretations with others we find online. 

Lillian has one strict rule: we must be on time and cannot miss the opening moments. I try to abide, and I make certain that she is there when the credits roll, but sometimes I myself get waylaid heading into the screening. I stop for a last minute coffee, or check information on other events in the lobby. I often miss the first few minutes. 

That happened with Styx, a German film directed by Wolfgang Fisher who was nominated for the Audience Award in 2018 at the American Film Institute Festival. Lillian was in her seat, I was getting a coffee. I arrived five minutes into the movies. "You missed the opening again," Lillian whispers. "The protagonist, who seems to be a doctor, stopped in the middle of a city to help people injured in an automobile accident," she tells me. "All the while she was watched by a group of monkeys perched on the ledge of a nearby building, as we watched her from the monkeys' vantage point. There's something strange about those monkeys, but I don't know what it means." 

Right now, the doctor character is carefully loading a large quantity of supplies into a twenty meter sailing yacht. Clearly she's going on a long ocean voyage, apparently alone. We watch as she plots her course, starting in Gibraltar and aiming for Darwin's famous Ascension island off the coast of Africa, 2500 miles south over the open ocean. As she sets sail, we are right there with her, looking over her shoulder or staring into her eyes as she pilots the sailboat in relatively calm waters, a good wind at her back. She's more than capable, she's totally in control, confident with a commanding presence. 

What's immediately impressive about this film is the camera work. Steady and rock solid, despite the shifting environment and rocking of the sailboat. Clearly they've employed a Steadicam for this project. Invented and introduced to the cinema in the 1970s, the Steadicam apparatus, worn by the cinematographer, keeps the camera in an absolutely still position even as the cameraman moves around or up and down. Here, we see the horizon evenly dividing the screen across the middle, and as the boat shifts with the wind and waves, the horizon line does not move. This unwavering horizon provides a touchstone and portent for the rest of the story -- the future lies at or beyond that horizon.

Gustave Dore, Styx, illustration for Milton's Paradise Lost, 1886

The film remains an immersive and compelling story to the very end, which we will not spoil for you by recounting it here. Afterwards, we begin our research. What was it about those monkeys, which I missed at the beginning? It turns out they are the Barbary Macaques, well known semi-wild monkeys that dominate the streets of Gibraltar, where the story begins. The monkeys may be a harbinger for the doctor's encounter that comprises the final act of the film. Refugees from Africa, congregating in groups of 20 to 50, the macaques have adapted to their new environment, living on the edge, while often venturing right into the center of the city. Clearly they represent wild, untamed nature versus the civilization of the city.

Interviewed at the Cannes Film Festival, director Fisher says his film "represents existentialism in every way, which raises three questions: Who are we? Who do we want to be? and Who do we have to be in the world we are living in, right now?" The film title Styx references the deity of Greek mythology in that realm between earth and hell where souls of the newly dead are transported, and where the wrathful and sinful are drowned for eternity.

Further research informs us that Fisher deliberately chose, against all advice to the contrary, to film the entire story aboard the sailboat on the open sea. Filmed over a period of forty days, each day the crew and main actress Susanne Wolff sailed from their port in Malta until they were far enough out to sea that no land was visible on the horizon. By the second week of filming, Wolff who had no prior experience piloting a sailboat, had become an expert sailor.

Styx had a working budget of 3 million dollars, modest compared to a film like Almodovar's Pain and Glory with a production budget of  $20 million and earnings of $25 million. In comparison, Styx has so far earned less than $100,000 world-wide, but with festival successes and good marketing it should be positioned to earn back the investment, and more.

The second film on our list for this session was Yomeddine a first time effort by 34 year old Egyptian director Abu Bakr Shawky who got a huge boost when his film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, after winning the Audience Award at the 2018 Wisconsin Film Festival presented at the university in Madison. Yomeddine translates from the Egyptian as Judgment Day. Coptics hold the Last Judgment to be one of the central tenets of their faith, the day when all people, alive and dead, are judged – not physically but by their attitudes and deeds and are rewarded with Heaven or cast into Hell.

Stefan Lochner, Last Judgment, 1435 

Yomeddine tells the story of a middle-aged man, cured of childhood leprosy, living a destitute life in the same leper colony where his parents abandoned him as a child. He makes his way by scavenging a trash mountain that looks like a hurricane's aftermath. Events lead him to decide to search out his family and this quest takes him hundreds of miles by donkey cart, and after the donkey dies, by railway boxcar and finally on foot. When it appears he can go no further, exhausted and slumped against the wall on a busy street corner, he is accosted by a man who charges up to him, propelled only by his arms as he has no legs, screaming at him, "That is MY spot!", demanding he leave immediately. Ultimately, this paraplegic pities the protagonist, saves his life and teaches him a lesson in humility. At one moment, when asked by another outcast how he is doing, the paraplegic responds, "Well, my legs are tired from standing on them all day." 

Yomeddine is characterized by what Lillian and I call the cinema of intimacy, which we define as films that rely on extreme close ups to tell the story. It's fundamentally a technical term, based on the development of light weight, inexpensive, high quality video cameras which have been available for the past ten years. We started thinking about this after seeing Los Tres Mundos de Mark directed by Flora Pérez Garay at the Festival here in 2016. For us the use of extreme close up facilitated by these cameras creates a relationship between the actor and audience that is too intimate, too intense. 

Intimacy can measured. Normally people interact at arm's length, 30 inches. When you move closer, to a forearm's distance of 15 inches, you begin to invade someone's personal space and that only really works if  you have an intimate relationship with the person. If you move to hand's length, 7 inches, then you are really up close and personal. A bit of geometry is useful. Movie theater screens are about 20 feet tall. If you sit in the front row of the theatre as Lillian and I like to do when we can find an open spot, the image overwhelms, and you are immersed in both image and story. When the director uses a close up, you enter the personal space of that character. Until the advent of these cameras, arm's length was as close as equipment would allow. Now cinematographers can move in to hand's length if they prefer, in which case you are inches away from the character's face, nose, or ear. That's intimate. And those kinds of viewpoints are increasingly popular in films made with these cameras. It's so close and so intimate that it becomes uncomfortable to sit in the first few rows. Imagine a 20 foot high nose. You could walk right into the nostril. 

Another aspect of the low cost equipment algorithm are facilities for digital film editing, which tend to be desktop or laptop computers along with the primary outlet for presenting the film which tends to be online. During production and in distribution the film is seen on computer screens, and often iPhone screens, which means all of that intimacy is substantially reduced to a manageable size. On an iPhone, you can't get too intimate. Our feeling is that these days, low budget directors do not factor in the big screen when thinking about their film's final format.

In the case of Yomeddine a majority of the scenes are filmed in extreme close up. After the first ten minutes, we had to change seats and move further away, it was just too uncomfortable being that intimate with this character and his situation. As well, it was difficult to read the subtitles spread across the screen. In general we've given up our favorite spot at the front of the theatre in favor of seats half way back from the screen. That tends to resolve the intimacy issue for us. 

As well as using low cost, high quality equipment, Shawky made Yomeddine on a very small budget, characterized by a Kickstarter campaign which raised $20,000 to complete the film. That suggests a budget of under $100,000 for the entire project. To date the film has reportedly earned about $12,000. However it's early and momentum is just starting to build. At the moment there are no authorized online outlets for his movie, but if Shawky is able to make a deal with Amazon, as has been done by Wolfgang Fisher for Styx, then Yomeddine could be a financial, as well as artistic success. 

Which brings us to our conclusion: for us filmmakers are like artists. In general they are driven not by the need to make money but instead the goal is to tell a good story, while challenging the status quo and highlighting the human condition. The result is art, whether in an art gallery or on the silver screen.