(I just learned that this amazing Ukrainian film will be available on
VOD on Feb. 23rd. Look for it on ITunes, Amazon and other locations.)
In my freshman year at Bard College in 1961, I took a writer’s workshop
with celebrated beat poet Robert Kelly who gave an assignment that all
of us had trouble with, namely to write a short story without any human
beings as characters. It was obviously some sort of technical challenge
that we had trouble wrapping our heads around, even if it perhaps was
designed to get us to think outside the box.
That was my first reaction to “The Tribe”, a Ukrainian film that opens
tomorrow at the Film Forum in NY. I knew that the characters are deaf
teenagers in a boarding school in Kiev but I hadn’t anticipated what was
in store for me as the film started at a press screening. It began with
this announcement:
This film is in sign-language. There are no subtitles or voice-over.
What could possibly have made the director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiiy
decide to take this approach? To rise to a technical challenge of making
a “silent movie” that defied the audience to not understand a single
word being exchanged by the characters? My initial reaction was to bolt
from my seat and return home but since I had traveled almost an hour
from my Upper East Side apartment to the Film Forum in Soho, I sighed
and decided to stick it out.
Not only did I stick it out for the entire 133 minutes, I found it to be
a most compelling drama that draws you into the lives of its characters,
all of whom are nonprofessionals and deaf.
full: https://louisproyect.org/2015/06/16/the-tribe/
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