MAD PROPHET, MAD PROFIT: JOHN GIANVITO x3

Boston-based filmmaker and former Harvard Film Archive curator John Gianvito had made a few films before the 20th century became the 21st, but he would wind up emerging as one of the definitive filmmakers of the current century during its first decade. His six years of work on Gulf War I cri de cœur The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein wound up serving as one of the definitive commentaries on the upcoming century when it premiered in 2001. Mad Songs served as a work of inadvertent commentary on the bloodlust spurred by the Twin Tower attacks, and the Gulf War II that was going to come about as a result. It was also a work of intensely personal cinephilia-inspired curation: Griffith- and Wyler-adjacent structuring of multiple war-at-home storylines was melded with archival footage and performance documentary, resulting in a bold and sprawling hybrid work. Despite fierce advocacy from notable champions in Chantal Akerman, Peter Watkins, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Dennis Lim, it was not an easy film to see in 2001 and it has not gotten much easier since. He’d take another six years to make his next film, this time decidedly aimed at the domestic. Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007) was a film whose more minimalist scale and running time didn’t reduce its power. Its simultaneously rousing and despairing analysis, courtesy of Howard Zinn, marked a turn towards a more domestic issue: how America eats its rabble rousers but leaves a tribute to them later. The groundwork laid by the champions of Mad Songs resulted in Profit Motive finding more of an audience, and it subsequently being named the Best Experimental Film of 2007 by the National Society of Film Critics.

Spectacle is pleased to present Gianvito’s two features of the 2000s in collaboration with Gianvito himself, who suggested a third title to accompany the present moment where America’s leaders are once again burning down the Middle East for money while punishing its own citizens for speaking up. The omnibus film Far From Afghanistan (2012), conceptualized and edited by Gianvito as a follow-up to the Chris Marker-led Far From Vietnam (1967), finds him and four other directors turning their attentions to the Afghanistan War during its peak years. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Special thanks to John Gianvito, Mark Rance (Watchmaker Films), and Ryan Krivoshey/Kazu Watanabe (Grasshopper Film).

THE MAD SONGS OF FERNANDA HUSSEIN

Dir. John Gianvito, 2001

United States. 168 min.

In English.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 7 PM

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM [$10 SPECIAL EVENT – John Gianvito post-film Q&A]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 7 PM

TICKETS

Shot and largely set in the Santa Fe desert, three stories linked to the first Gulf War unfold: a Mexican-American mother with the married last name Hussein is persecuted for it, a young soldier who’s finished his tour of duty in the Gulf struggles to adjust back to civilian life, and a teenager begins to reckon with what’s going on abroad. Alongside these storylines are images of the Santa Fe desert, CNN and Pentagon propaganda, archival footage, images of war memorabilia, and concert footage of the Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma.

“By virtue of being nonprofessional, Gianvito is free to mix documentary with fiction, a love for silent cinema and landscape (he works as associate curator for the Harvard Film Archive, and also teaches — a fact reflected in his cameo in the film) with music (most notably, extended passages by Iraqi musician Naseer Shemma commemorating some of the war’s victims) and dialogue, a taste for blistering satire (in the remarkable sequence devoted to war toys) as well as convulsive and cathartic tragic lyricism (in the extraordinary final sequence, at once tribal and experimental in its poetic meditation on ritualistic violence). Ironically, with an almost Whitmanesque inclusiveness and restlessness, he can make me feel proud to be an American again.” – Jonathan Rosenbau