A Cursed Man: A documentary by Liam Le Guillou

Liam Le Guillou's documentary "A Cursed Man", available on Kanopy (thanks public library streaming services), follows the documentary filmmaker on his quest to get cursed by practitioners of dark arts. While most sane people actively try to avoid hexes, jinxes, and supernatural misfortune, Le Guillou travels around asking witches, shamans, and voodoo priests to put the whammy on him.

The premise is fascinating in that train-wreck sort of way. Le Guillou genuinely needs to be convinced that magic exists, and apparently the only way his skeptical mind will accept supernatural phenomena is if something genuinely awful happens to him via a curse put on him. He travels the globe looking for a shaman or a witch who would put a curse on him. Many sincere practitioners try to dissuade him, but that is not stopping Le Guillou.

As Voodoo priest Divine Prince Ty Emmecca astutely observes, “The norm is to be cursed. And so [what you’re doing] sounds, without being disrespectful, almost entitled," It's a fair point – here's this guy demanding bad mojo when most people are just trying to get by without additional (evil) cosmic interference.

What saves the documentary from becoming a complete vanity project is the quality of the conversations Le Guillou has with his subjects. The practitioners he meets are invested, honest, and well-intentioned people who take their craft seriously. Their insights into belief systems, spirituality, and the nature of reality make for genuinely thought-provoking viewing. These aren't carnival fortune tellers or charlatans – they're people with deep convictions about forces beyond our current scientific understanding.

Still, there's something oddly self-indulgent about the whole enterprise. Le Guillou reminds me of a male Elizabeth Gilbert, though thankfully without the insufferable privilege tourism of Eat-Pray-Love. Like Gilbert, he's a white person with enough time and resources to go soul-searching across continents, but at least his journey involves potential supernatural consequences rather than just some trite self indulgent and shallow observations we could have come up with, without leaving the confines of our couches. The most puzzling aspect is Le Guillou's insistence on curses rather than blessings. Multiple practitioners suggest that positive magic might be equally convincing proof of supernatural forces, but he's adamant that only bad things will make him a believer. It's an oddly masochistic approach to spiritual exploration. Despite its self-centered premise, *A Cursed Man* succeeds as an exploration of belief, faith, and the human need for meaning beyond the material world. Le Guillou puts his own well-being on the line for his documentary, which takes a certain kind of commitment. The result is an intriguing look at what lies beyond conventional understanding, even if the journey feels unnecessarily focused on inviting trouble.

 

 

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Leonard Cohen: Songs and Films

Twenty years ago in 2004 was my first summer with Leonard Cohen. I discovered him for the first time during those days of midnight sun in Alaska. He played while I was on the road in my red Chevy S10, and his baritone ‘golden’ voice sang about sixties girls like Marianne and Suzanne while I was at home.

a young Leonard Cohen, writing poems in his bathtub

While romance was/is not exactly my cuppa, there was some kind of philosophical gravitas and mysticism to this poet/writer turned-poet-singer, who climbed a whole mountain side, to wash his eyelids in the rain (ref. So long, Marianne), while he was singing about his lady loves.

Over the years in addition to dipping into the deep well of Cohen’s soulful lyrics delivered in his slow drag voice, I have had the opportunity to watch some Leonard Cohen documentaries too. The first one “Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen: An Intimate Look into a Poet's Life (1965)” showcasing Cohen as a young poet is (IMHO) better than Netflix’s 1922 documentary “Hallelujah:Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” taking its title from Cohen’s famous song of the same name. To me, Cohen is more that Hallelujah which has been done to dust, with so many covers.

Fata Morgana(1971), Werner Hertzog’s art-house psychedelic film features Cohen songs like Suzanne, Avalanche against the stark sands of Sahara desert.

I leave you with one of his best lyrics, from his poem/song Anthem - “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in”

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Ken Burns' Central Park Five and Ava DuVernay's When They See Us

Five boys happened to be in some corner of an 843 acre park when a white woman got raped in the same park. The five teens who had nothing to do with the crime are charged with it. Black kids. White women. We know it is an explosive combo, or else Emmett Till would have lived, right? Thankfully the white lady lived.

A blonde millionaire business man takes out ads in major newspapers calling for the return of death penalty to punish the kids. He must have been thinking that it should be obvious to (white) people that black teens get off by raping white women. It was the universal truth first discovered by KKK in the South. But this was not the South, this was the North, the promised land to which the slaves took the underground railway to escape persecution and lynching. This was New York City. The year was 1989. This happened after Michael Jackson had turned the world on its head with Thriller. Thurgood Marshall, the first black American Supreme court judge was already in the office for almost quarter century and there had already been four African American astronauts in space.

But more things change, more they stay the same. Your biases and prejudices just grow old with you. Maybe they fade out from public view, maybe they are less pronounced, but make no mistake they are still there. What happened to group of five kids christened Central Park Five was a catastrophic failure of the American justice system. No other case in the recent history highlights how the biases and prejudices of the U.S legal system works against the young people of color.

I watched Sarah (daughter of Ken Burns) and Ken Burns' documentary on Amazon Prime called The Central Park Five after I tried watching Ava DuVernay's Netflix biopic series based on the same event, When They See Us. Ken Burns' documentary is faster and it delivers justice to the boys in about 100 minutes. It has media footage and the film makers made the film after the ultimate exoneration of the five in 2002, wanting to make the miscarriage of justice public and to help the wrongful conviction case the Five filed against New York City.

When They See Us on the other hand is incredibly more

traumatic to see, especially the first few episodes. I cannot imagine what those innocent kids went through - first prosecuted for a crime they didn't commit and then charged and incarcerated for a major part of their young lives. The biopic delves in the lives of the kids before the event that turned their lives upside down, their time in the prison or juvie and their lives as adults after they come out of prison. No one but Ava Duvarney could direct such a powerful series.

In this era of Black Lives Matter, it is all the more important to watch these accounts of black people (or people of color, one of the five was a Latino kid), to understand how they are treated differently by the law and order machinery. While being at the wrong place at the wrong time does not work in favor of anyone, but if you are the wrong color too - that seals your fate, for the worse. 

These are the Exonerated Five - Antron McCray, Raymond Santana Jr, Kevin Washington, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise. All the men have contributed and assist the Innocence Project whose mission is to help exonerate individuals wrongfully convicted through DNA testing. Here below are the Exonerated Five, at the screening of When They See Us, in 2019.

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After Selma

 Edmund Pettus Bridge is silent, quietly bearing the weight of history. Last month on July 26, the man who lead the march for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, crossed the bridge one final time in a casket draped with the star spangled banner.(Photo below.)

John Lewis, once a 25 year old civil rights activist  who led the march for voting rights at Selma in 1965, went on to represent Georgia's 5th district five times and was the sitting Congressman when he died a month ago. 

But what happened After Selma? In John Lewis' own words - he was always in some kind of fight - for freedom, equality, basic human rights, the fighting never ceased. Selma was just the beginning. That is the truth for millions of African Americans and people of color. Although the marches at Selma, more than half a century ago led to passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, racism and racists still find ways to enact legislation and infiltrate the corridors of power to suppress the representation and voice of minorities.

In the light of upcoming elections, Loki Mulholland's documentary After Selma is essential watching for all American citizens. The 45 minute documentary, is an excellent primer on how the contemporary voting system is rigged to disenfranchise minorities. It is time well spent in the last few months before a highly contested Presidential election where we are getting exposed to more novel, underhanded techniques like taking away sorting machines from USPS to delay mail-in votes and no one bats an eye-lid as if it is the most common thing to do before an election.

The world's greatest democracy is just as corruptible as any other democracy in the world. American exceptionalism is not the anti-dote to the systemic rot in U.S's political machinery. The rot and racism was never in-your-face like it has been in the last few years. But practices like gerrymandering, unethical Voter ID laws and a bigoted criminal justice system biased against the people of color leading to their mass incarcerations have always been working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the racial imbalance and discrimination intact.

Here is a gif I clipped out of the film which explains how gerrymandering works in a few seconds

Loki Mulholland, the director is the son of white civil rights activist and freedom rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. He had made an award winning documentary on her younger years as an activist and sit-in protestor called An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. This along with his other award winning documentaries - The Uncomfortable Truth and Black, White, & Us are available on Amazon Prime (US.)

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Roger and Me

Flint, Michigan - I came to know about the existence of this town and the role it played in American auto industry through Michael Moore's later documentaries like Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit9/11. It took me almost twenty years to watch the documentary that kick-started the Michael Moore phenomenon, Roger and Me, way back from 1989, part of which Moore financed mortgaging his home.

Roger and Me is a personal statement for Moore who was born and brought up in Flint and is the son of a former GM employee. It is his first documentary film, the one which changed the way the world viewed documentaries. However big the anti-Michael Moore camp is, one thing is for certain, the man has talent and his works are crowd-pullers or ask Miramax, Lions Gate, MGM or the Weinstein Company or any company who financed him assured of the whopping returns.

Documentaries started beeping in the ordinary film buff's radar after Moore started making them. Of the top five highest grossing documentaries of all time - three are made by Michael Moore (Farenheit 9/11, Sicko and Bowling for Columbine.) So what was it about Roger and Me that clicked?

It was an emotional response of a Flint native who had just been let off from his job in San Francisco, returns home to find that the backbone of economy in his Michigan hometown, General Motors is closing their plant and laying off 30,000 workers. The man had good reason to be angry. Out of his anger and his sense for social justice comes the documentary Roger and Me. Through out the length of the movie Moore is trying to track down GM's then chairman Roger Smith and to make him come down to Flint to witness what the result of his one action(ie closing the plant which was not making any losses per se) had on the community.

Before he beings his quest he presents his credentials, from the old home-movie clips of toddler Michael Moore, black and white photos of his Dad working at GM factory, his job in San Francisco - a city where everyone has a job and although that job seems to be drinking lattes in cafes and how he was let off, to come back as a disgruntled young man back to Flint only to find out things are much worse off in Flint. The scene is set. The journey begins. The destination is Roger Smith. No spoilers here, if you didn't find time to watch this documentary in the last 20 years, don't hesitate now, it won't fail you.

Personally I like the narrative style of Moore, I think that is what brings him his audience. Though he has been accused presenting a world view to support his arguments, almost all the time Moore sides with the victims and the vanquished not the victors. Contrary to what Churchill famously said, history needs to be written by both sides.

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Jesus Camp

Jesus! What a camp! Jesus Camp is a documentary about a summer camp for Jesus loving kids run by Pastor Becky Fisher in North Dakota. The camp makes full uses of the idiom - catch' em young. Islam is doing its share by minting suicide bombers, then why not Christians for a less bloody cause like spreading Christianity - that's Ms.Fisher's argument.

For an outsider or some one who has never lived in the US, United States might seem like the mecca of modernism, leading the world, although there have been signs in the recent times of that leadership is being threatened. Under the fast freeways and the fast food, the glamor of Hollywood and the Big Apple there is a lot of United States that is hidden, reminds me of the iceberg analogy and most of it is overwhelmingly Christian. If you listen to the voices from the heartland you'd realize how deep the water of Christianity runs in this country, supposedly a nation of immigrants from the world over.

Jesus Camp gives a glimpse of the deep rooted sympathies of a nation where more than half the people still question evolution and would rather go with intelligent design. And they are recruiting more foot soldiers -the children, in to their ever increasing fold. This is camp where George W.Bush has an aura of a messiah. What a religion want to do with its children is its prerogative, but the picture turns scary when the religion wants to run the nation.

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Waco: The Rules of Engagement

(Repost from Nov 2003) A decade ago, when I was just out of high school, I remember reading something about Waco in Times and Newsweek at the local library. It was about a 'sinful messiah' - David Khoresh, the leader of a Christian cult in Texas who committed mass suicide with his disciples - the Branch Davidians. Today 10 years later, I saw William Gazecki's award winning documentary on the incident, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" and boy oh boy wasn't it a jolt into reality or what?!! Or should I say it was just another reminder about the exceedingly manipulative control, the media has on the way we live our lives and judge other people.

I'd be the last person to hold any sympathy towards any cults, or so called sects or offshoots of any religion which promotes their way of religious preaching as the best way to reach God than all the numerous other religious paths out there. For me Khoresh could have been one of the many crowd puller messiahs making a living out of their magnetic personality and their gift of gab, but the massacre (dubbed as mass suicide by media barons) at Waco and this realistic documentary which doesnot take any sides, has changed it all.

Whether you are the next incarnation of God or not, as long as you tread on terra firma, at a time when everyone and everything quits on you, who do you ask for protection? When the agencies which are supposed to protect and safeguard your rights as a citizen of a free country, turn on you where do you go and hide? And what do you do when your subterrenean hiding place, with just one door to the outside is pelted with cynide tipped tear gas shells, well... you and your little children undergo muscle contractions that shatter your bones to pieces and die by suffocation in minutes. This could add a new meaning to the term 'mass suicide'. "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" will surely sit heavy on your conscience, raising questions about what you should or shouldnot believe, whom you should or should not trust and ofcourse you wish the vision of hell was true to the last word, otherwise where will the perpetrators go?

If you want to know more about this documentary, go here

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Control Room

(Repost from Aug 2004) You have seen F9/11, you felt it wasn't objective. Moore had a script, a pre-written story in his mind and his film was less of a documentary and more of a hard hitting goal oriented feature film. If these were your thoughts, make yourself walk that extra mile - go watch The Control Room.

The Control Room is an underrated but exceptional documentary about the Al-Jazeera network which is currently banned in Iraq, the same network which both the Americans and Iraqis blame is propagandizing for the other.

Jehane Noujaim, the Egyptian-American director was familiar to me from her earlier documentary - Startup.Com which I saw a couple of years ago. But The Control Room is in a league of its own

The joke going around in the film says that the people who used to work for BBC end up quitting their jobs and work for Al Jazeera.

The Al Jazeera headman, Samir Khader admits that if the dipped in red-white & blue news channel, FOX offers him a job he'll most probably accept. Moreover he discloses that he's planning to send his children for higher studies in US because he do not want them live the 'Arab nightmare'.

There are so many other valuable insights in the film that'll convert the one track telescopic vision of the world in to a stereoscopic one. Al Jazeera ceases to be an Arab news channel that faintly smells of terrorism and Bin Laden, there is a whole different world out there, only if you care to watch it!

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Get On the Bus

Spike Lee's films are a breath fresh air - usually about 'brothers' with a capital B. An African American director turning his camera on his own community and culture is indeed refreshing in the same way Chris Eyre does through his films for Native Americans.

Most of the movie is shot inside the bus, but that does not restrict its scope - analyzing a wide range of issues confronted by the present day African American society, like gangs of SouthCentral LA, homosexuality, Republicans vs Democrats, crime and punishment, so on and so forth. It has a surefire script that can give valuble material for quotes and bumper stickers and some pretty good charecterization.

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Bus174

This must be the only documentary in which the entire hijack(of any kind) has been filmed live and clear anywhere in the world. If CNN's live broadcast(of shooting flares and dim gun totting figures and tanks) of Kuwait War of 1991 was a major event in TV history, Bus 174 is a major milestone in documentary film making.

Better than a crime thriller, it keeps you on the edge of your street for the whole two hours because you know that the Bus 174 is hijacked for real, the trauma the passengers undergo when one by one each one of them is paraded by the hijacker at gun point is real, there is no hero waiting in the wings for the right moments to kick the living lights out of the hijacker, only the incompetent Brazilian police.

More than an action movie, Bus 174 is also a sociological statement. The hijacker himself a victim of the police cruelty, the inhuman treatment of street kids and the justice system in Brazil turns his wrath on a group of bus passengers on Dec 12th 2000. He wanted to be in the world's eye for one day and wanted to take revenge for the 1993 Candelabrian street kids massacre(he was one of the survivors), hijacking Bus 174 was his fifteen minutes of fame, though it went on a lot longer than 15 minutes. The entire hijack episode on live TV is interspersed with talks with policemen, hijacker's friends, relatives, the hostages(at a later point in time) and the review of the police system, society, favelas and the social treatment of street kids. A very serious, must watch, mile stone documentary.

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Murder On A Sunday Morning

A 15 year old black boy is arrested by the police on charge of a murder of a female, white tourist in Jacksonville, Florida. The only witness, the woman's husband is convinced that the killer is the fifteen year old, police botch up the investigation, they needed a criminal with motive, they pick up the first black guy they spotted in a dark t-shirt. The documentary does not take side, but goes on a slow and methodical analysis of the case following the defense lawyers. Powerful.

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The Yes Men

This documentary proves the powers of the internet, more specifically the powers of owning a domain name related to a notorious organization as WTO(gatt.org). Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano are two computer dudes who own a website http://www.gatt.org/ which imitated the original WTO site in form and layout, except that the content they delivered was/is intended to educate the readers about the real motives of WTO and the real meaning of globalization.

The tagline of the film goes, "changing the world one prank at a time." True to the word, when Andy and Mike start getting invitations to talk at seminars and lectures, from people who think they are the real WTO representatives and they make use of the opportunity to bring to light the not-so-noble services WTO delivers to developing nations, through their(Andy & Mike's) entertaining lectures and hilarious props.

The Yes Men is a crusade by a group of people against the evil practices of World Trade Organization in a satirical way so that the real sting is delivered in a sugar coating of humor, but they wish you to know the sting is there nevertheless and it is getting sharper. Yo, citizens of the developing world, this one is for you.

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Touching The Void

Touching The Void is more of a documentary than a feature film, it charters the climb of Siula Grande in Peru(unconquered at the time) by two young mountaineers from Britian, Simon Yates and Joe Simpson.

The film has re-enacted footage of the gruelling real life drama peppered with interview style narration by the two climbers and their friend(the person who waited for them at the base camp). Their ascent was uneventful compared to their descent when Joe breaks his leg and goes over a cliff and Simon thinking he is dead cuts off his rope. The rest of the story is an unbelieveavle triumph of human will, which we'd doubt had not the person who achieved this super human feat lived to tell the tale. An impossible adventure and a must watch film for the adventurers and common people alike.

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Some Kind of Monster

This one is for all the metal fans and it is a good documentary even if you are not a big fan of heavy metal, as I found out. The documentary charters the course of one of the greatest metal bands in all history, Metallica, during a tumultous period from early 2001 to 2003. It is a behind the scenes look at the band, which at the time seemed to be coming apart at the seams because of interpersonal conflicts between the band members and also under the pressure to produce a new album.

Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett(three remaining members of Metallica at the time) hired a shrink and two documentary makers in their struggle to keep Metallica and the hopes a new album(St.Anger) afloat. It provides an indepth look at how rock bands function, their creative processes, their struggles and above all their lives when they are off stage leading lives, in which they when they say they are going to work - its more like going to practise with your high school band in the garage. The only difference is that they make millions and made a documentary to enlighten those trying to follow their footsteps.

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Fog of War

The Fog of War : Eleven Lessons from the life of Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of Defense during the early part of Vietnam war, under President Lyndon Johnson. It is insightful to know what super powers think when they start wars in foreign soils, what the head honchos had in their heads when they went on a murderous mistake as Vietnam. McNamara is good, a good politician and a better strategist. Although not contraversially attractive as F 9/11, because Vietnam war is a long forgotten botch-up, there have been many more interesting ones since, the Fog of War is a serious documentary, explains a lot about the reason for wars in our time, from the mouth of one of the main men himself.

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Super Size Me

A documentary with the sole aim of exposing the evils of fast food culture to the American public by Morgan Spurlock, who undergoes the dangerous experiment of intense "fast-foodization" himself.

As a part of this expose, Spurlock eats at McDonalds, 3 times a day for a month and nothing else - all the food he ever consumed during this month came from McDonalds all over the United States. He started off as a healthy young man, with his blood sugar, pressure, cholestrol in their healthiest of ranges and in just a matter of a month, he gains almost 30 pounds, his liver is poisoned(similar to liver poisoning by years of alcohol use) and has an addiction to fast food charecterised by cravings, high heart rate, pressure on chest, decreased libido and a lot other harmful vital signs.

In addition to Morgan's own adventure, during the course of the documentary we see how the American school system feeds its children almost totally on fast foods and sugar, how "super-sizing" became an everyday phenomenon and how less, the doctors themselves know about the effects of fast food.

The documentary doesn't imply we need to embark on an all-out war against fast food. But its always advisable to watch what you eat, after all you have only just one body and moderation is the key.

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American Splendor

A documentary/feature film about the creator of a comic called American Splendor - Harvey Pekar. The way the movie is shot like it is the storyboard of a comic book, a refreshing change. Although Harvey is an ordinary person like all of us, the film does not bore one as one would expect the story of a hospital file clerk would. Harvey Pekar is the common man with a 'comic' genius who manages to strike gold, the American dream.

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Capturing the Friedmans

A very good and an acclaimed documentary on the Friedman case that took place in Long Island in the early eighties directed by Andrew Jarecki. It is an interesting case-study of an American family falling apart, when the head of the family, the father - Arnold Friedman is accused of paedophile charges and to the horror of all horrors, his youngest son, Jesse is also accused of the same charges.

There is a wealth of home video material which went in to the making of this documentary because of Arnold Friedman, a home video enthusiast and later his eldest son David, who decides to document the whole trial process. Arnold Friedman had definite paedophile tendencies but he denies having carried out his advances to children anywhere near the home he lived, in his computer class or the suburban community which turned his main accusers in the case. But its Jesse who takes your sympathy, wrongly accused for a crime he didn't commit, then spend 13 years of his prime life behind the bars and come back to the society at the age 31 with a label as a child molester. Even in the most dysfunctional family, nobody could have had it worse. A very rivetting and objective documentary, justifies its Oscar nomination.

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Winged Migration

It is hard to categorize Winged Migration in to Documentary or Feature Film classes, because it is both in some way or the other. All in all it is a beautiful film about the parallel world of birds. Though I knew vaguely about the concept of 'imprinting' it was this movie that showed the effect and extent of 'imprinting' on wild birds. After you watch the movie you should take it upon yourself to watch the making of the film, because without it there will too many holes in the story.

The film charters the migrations of various bird species all across the globe in a fictious one year period, although the film was shot over a period of four years with four hundred people serving as crew at all the scattered places ranging from India, Peru, United States, New Zealand, Artic and the Antartic. The camera work will leave you with your mouth open for most part of the film, it is why its essential to watch the making of the movie, lets feast on some knowledge and leave those flies out of our mouths!

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Fahrenheit 9/11

Today, mercury hit a new mark on the Fahrenheit scale, obviously Ray Bradbury is pissed and so are a lot of others. Today, I realized why United States of America still retains the title "the land of the free and home of the brave" (this film getting made and released proves it). Today, Michael Moore, yes that opinionated jerk, propagandist liberal, manipulator of facts, self-appointed soul keeper of American politics had his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 released nationwide. Today I saw this "liberal" movie in a theatre bursting at the seams in a city, which till now I had considered a red-neck haven (my bad) and to add to my surprise the red necks followed it up with a standing ovation when the titles came rolling in.

About the film : Don't go anywhere near it if you are a hard nosed conservative, you might embark on a shooting spree at the theater itself, in order to cleanse the world of those mindless idiots who fall for all this over-the-top sentimental mis-information. Otherwise the movie shows a world of improvement in Mr.Moore's talent as a film-maker(some'd say propagandist), better than Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine. If it had an OST I'd buy it, loved all the songs! Its easy to accuse Moore of concocting evidence. But if you could really read the evidence in the first place, Florida and later Iraq would not have happened, and Michael Moore would still be the little known fat guy munching on a dough nut at some unheard of street corner at Flint, Michigan still dreaming of making a movie that'd rock America and get the longest standing ovation (20 mins) in the history of Cannes!

p.s - in one of the earliest books on war games -the Mahabharata, Sri Krishna(the in-house spin doctor) advises Yudhistira (the good guy king), "a lie told for the greater good of humanity ceases to be a lie." Yeah all is fair in love and war.

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