'Fantastical, magical... profound': Poignant work of artist Maleonn powers 'Our Time Machine'5/20/2019 A son honors father, stricken with Alzheimer's, in moving Tribeca film by Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang Early on in the documentary Our Time Machine, Chinese artist Maleonn (aka Ma Liang) relates a story about an upsetting moment he experienced with his aging father. They were at a swimming pool together; after the younger man swam a lap, his father asked him, "Can you float on water?" "Sure, dad. You taught me this when I was a kid," Maleonn replied. Then he swam another lap. And his father asked him again, "Maleonn, can you float on water?" Lap after lap this was repeated--a total of five times--the same question, followed by the same answer. The father is losing his memory, and the son is sad to see him confused. When filmmaker Yang Sun heard the swimming pool story from a friend, it struck him deeply. "I'm like, 'Ohmygod, I have a huge image of this whole film [in my head]. I felt very inspired," Yang tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "So I came to Maleonn and said, 'Can I shoot a documentary on you?'...The reason is the swimming pool story. I think the story just breaks everyone's heart." It's heartbreaking above all for anyone with a parent slipping into dementia. Maleonn's father, Ma Ke, was the highly-respected artistic director of The Shanghai Chinese Opera Theater. He directed more than 80 productions before retiring, a number that would have been higher had he not been banned from working during China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The documentary follows Maleonn as he tries to fulfill a long-held dream before his father's conditions worsens: to collaborate with his dad on a work of theater. "I must do some drama work for his memory," Maleonn recalls thinking. "I know he will lose all memory. I think it's a good ending and everybody needs a good ending." In the documentary, Maleonn describes his dream project as "a sci-fi stage play with mechanical puppetry." In an interview with a Chinese radio program, he provides additional details: "The father is losing his memory, and the son is sad to see him confused. The son built a time machine so he can bring the father back to his childhood when he was five or ten. They go back again and again to revisit moments in their lives." To bring the idea to life, Maleonn drew from his extraordinary wellspring of creativity. He and a team of artisans and puppeteers constructed stunning life-size puppets to represent father and son at different stages, from the boy's childhood onward. It's a dreamlike steampunk vision, consonant with previous photographic work that has made Maleonn China's leading conceptual artist. It's mischievous--I guess that's the right word. And profound. "It's innocent, but it's fantastical, magical," says S. Leo Chiang, co-director of Our Time Machine, of Maleonn's body of work. "It's mischievous--I guess that's the right word. And profound. I really think that a lot of his work touches you in a really surprising way. You see it and you don't think there's any political or any kind of sort of bigger content--you think it's a joke. But you look closer and you're like, 'Ohmygod, it's saying something really, really big and important' and it's about humanity." A gallery of images of Maleonn's work, from photography to Our Time MachineAt first, Ma Ke is able to make some observations about his son's play. "It's fascinating," the father notes at one point. "I direct humans. He directs robots." But as production goes on, the father's memory struggles grow more severe. "Nothing I can do. No matter how much I want to fix it. No matter how frustrated," Ma Ke laments. "The machine is broken. It's gone. What can I do?" "I feel like watching Maleonn facing his parents' aging, it's something that all of us relate to in a very, very fundamental level," Chiang comments. "That's why we actually felt such a responsibility to tell this story right... [Maleonn] had this idea of sort of dedicating this beautiful story of father and son and memory to the world and we really see our film as an extension of that intention." During the course of production, Maleonn got married to his artistic collaborator, Tianyi Huang, and they had a baby girl together. In the film, Maleonn's father expresses joy each time he sees his granddaughter; every time marks a fresh introduction--he does not realize he has met her before.
"Every time [I see] my father I am sometimes afraid he will forget me. But no, he knows me," Maleonn shares. "He knows my mother and me. My sister, sometimes. And she [my wife], no. My baby, no, never." Before Ma Ke's dementia progressed, he was able to tell his son what he thought of the finished play. "I asked my father, 'Do you like it?'" Maleonn tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "My father said, 'I love it.' That's very important moment for me. I cried." Our Time Machine held its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, winning the award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature. The film went on to screen at HotDocs in Toronto and at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for International Documentary (an award shared with For Sama). It will screen at additional film festivals in the future. Distribution plans have yet to be announced. Watching Our Time Machine is an emotional experience for many viewers. That includes the film's co-director. "When I watch the film I still cry," Chiang reveals. "Even last week when I was watching the final projected film I just couldn't help myself, I just started tearing up. I am so moved always. And we're not taking credit for that. We feel like that's actually what these guys [Maleonn and team] were able to achieve that is just so moving." Gripping series puts convicted offenders "face-to-face with those impacted by their violent crimes" The new CNN docu-series The Redemption Project with Van Jones, created and directed by Academy Award nominee Jason Cohen, comes with an intriguing tagline: "Face the past. Heal the future." The "past" referred to could not be more shattering--violent crimes that left a trail of victims, and devastated families. To "heal the future" the series proposes a daring form of restorative justice--to put members of those families face-to-face with perpetrators of the crimes. Restorative justice seeks to heal the harm caused by crime. Instead of focusing on retribution, it focuses on rehabilitation. "Through unique access to the U.S. prison system, this powerful series explores the human potential for redemption," CNN writes of the show, which debuted April 28. In episode 4 of the eight-episode series, set to air this Sunday (May 19) at 9pm ET/PT, host Van Jones "heads to Alaska to witness the first ever dialogue between a victim and an offender in the history of the Alaskan prison system." Future episodes take him to Indiana, Wisconsin, as well as Bakersfield and Sacramento, California. The series shares a thematic parallels to Cohen's 2014 film Facing Fear, which earned him an Oscar nomination. That documentary short presents "a story of forgiveness between a former Neo-Nazi and the gay victim of his hate crime attack 25 years earlier." The series expands Jones' profile on CNN, where he hosts The Van Jones Show and serves as a regular commentator on politics. Jones is a leading advocate for sentencing reform and has spoken out about the detrimental impact of mass incarceration. He is a co-founder and board member of #cut50, an initiative to "cut crime and incarceration in all 50 states by translating local needs into smart safety solutions." Watch the trailer for The Redemption Project with Van Jones below. The series runs through Sunday, June 16 on CNN. Rocket Science is handling sales of biographical film directed by Michael Wech and Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns The story of race car driver Michael Schumacher, considered perhaps the greatest Formula One competitor of all time, will be told in an upcoming documentary, according to entertainment company Rocket Science. The film, directed by Michael Wech and Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns, is now in post-production and enjoys the full support of Schumacher's family, Rocket Science reports. The documentary will feature rare interviews and never-before-seen archival footage in a behind the scenes look at the world champion racing driver. Schumacher, 50, retired from Formula One racing in 2012. A year later he sustained a traumatic head injury in a skiing accident in the French Alps. "The documentary will feature rare interviews and never-before-seen archival footage in a behind the scenes look at the world champion racing driver," Rocket Science says. "Framed by Michael’s 50th birthday and the 25th anniversary of his first World Championship victory (1994), the film... will feature interviews with Michael’s family, his closest racing companions and competitors. Schumacher will explore the many facets of this complex man: the merciless Formula One driver, the ambitious boy with the dream, the down-to-earth mechanic, the dependable team player, and the devoted friend and father." "Schumacher is the only driver in history to win seven Formula One World Championships, five of which he won consecutively with Ferrari," notes the Rocket Science release. "He also holds a number of other all-time records such as the overall number of Formula One victories (91), podium finishes (155) or laps in lead (77)."
Rocket Science is launching international sales of the documentary at the Cannes Film Festival, which opens on Tuesday. The company's upcoming slate of films includes Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 starring Eddie Redmayne, Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sacha Baron Cohen and Jonathan Majors, and French Exit starring Michelle Pfeiffer, directed by Azazel Jacobs. Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks co-directed Emmy-contending doc on music great "Is Ted here?" Quincy Jones asked, at a reception following a screening Friday night of the Netflix documentary Quincy about his remarkable life and career. He was referring to Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for the streaming platform. Turned out Ted didn't make it, but a soundstage full of Quincy admirers did make it there, along with Q's daughter, actress Rashida Jones, who co-directed the film with Alan Hicks. The event was held at the Netflix "FYSEE" soundstage on the Raleigh Studios lot in Hollywood, where the company is holding a series of screenings for its Emmy-contending projects, including The Umbrella Academy, Springsteen on Broadway and the comedy special Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable. Quincy, 86, listened as Rashida and Alan saluted his accomplishments with a toast. Watch it here. Now playing: 'General Magic,' documentary on company that created first smartphone, only to implode5/10/2019 Film by Matt Maude and Sarah Kerruish shows what went right and what went spectacularly wrong with a pioneering company and its revolutionary product Billions of smartphones have been sold in the last 10 years, causing a massive shift in the way people around the world live and communicate. Apple, Samsung, Google and other companies have made colossal fortunates off the devices and underlying software, and apps available through smartphones have disrupted numerous industries, from retail to banking and transportation (think Uber). Who put the phone in your pocket? You might think Steve Jobs did. But the credit (or blame, depending on how you feel about smartphones) really goes to a company called General Magic and the visionaries who ran it. Going back to the late 1980s they foresaw that computers would become smaller and smaller, until they could fit in your hand. And they married that concept to a phone. So why didn't General Magic succeed, reaping the kind of billions that have fattened Apple into the world's biggest company by market valuation? The new documentary General Magic, now playing in LA, San Francisco, Houston and other cities, shows how a brilliant idea somehow led to catastrophic failure. In this video I speak with Marc Porat, who co-founded General Magic, and the documentary's co-director, Matt Maude. |
AuthorMatthew Carey is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. His work has appeared on Deadline.com, CNN, CNN.com, TheWrap.com, NBCNews.com and in Documentary magazine. |