The Virtual Maryland Film Festival runs from June 12-21. Read all about the fest here and access the films and check out the complete lineup on the MdFF website.

A Thousand Cuts
4 stars

A Thousand Cuts tells the story of an intrepid journalist going up against a populist, misogynist, law-and-order touting politician who boasts about his penis size and disparages the “Fake News” as out to get him. The politician’s name is Rodrigo Duterte and he is the president of the Philippines.

Watching Baltimorean Ramona S. Diaz’s terrific documentary is a bit like looking at America through a funhouse mirror. The similarities between Duterte—and the movement he inspires—and Trump are uncanny. But Duterte is like Trump Unplugged. While Trump tweets “Law and Order!” and calls on the National Guard to pepper spray innocent protesters, Duterte murders drug users (not dealers), no questions asked—and brags about it. (It’s his way of cleaning up the streets.) While Trump rails against fake news and can be rude and bullying to journalists, Duterte has journalists arrested and casually threatens their lives.

It’s into this environment that we get to know the absolute dynamo that is Maria Ressa, the editor of the Filipino newspaper Rappler, the only publication that speaks truth to power in the country. Ressa has been celebrated as a human rights leader across the globe. She was included in Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue in 2018. She is feted by the likes of George and Amal Clooney. She is the constant recipient of humanitarian and journalism awards. At home, however, she and her staff—many young women—are threatened, subject to arrest (Renna is arrested twice over the course of the film), and exposed to despicable online abuse.

Renna herself is a wonderful heroine: Compact and slightly androgynous, with rimless glasses and a no-fuss haircut, she exudes intelligence, charisma, and pluck. She’s so small she seems vulnerable—but her self-possession and clarity of purpose makes her formidable. She says she doesn’t scare easy. What Diaz makes clear is that Renna is scared—but that the work means more to her than her own safety.

A Thousand Cuts—the title is a reference to how Duterte is chipping away at Filipino democracy—is a must see for those who care about freedom of the press, democracy, and the future of one particular country—our own.

Mayor
4 stars

Like so many of the best documentaries, David Osit’s Mayor feels like a work of fiction.

Its central character, Musa Hadid, is a kind-hearted, put-upon bureaucrat, an everyman thrust into absurdist and sometimes dangerous circumstances.

As the mayor of Ramallah, the seat of Palestine’s government, he has many of the usual bureaucratic duties to worry about: Should the city have a brand identity other than We Ramallah? (And should there even be a space between “We” and “Ramallah”?) Should the fountain in town square have an aspirational name like “The Fountain of Life”? And should he hide in his office in City Hall as Israeli soldiers raid his city?

You see, being the Mayor of an occupied municipality brings with it all sorts of challenges and dangers. More than anything, Hadid wants to serve his citizens, provide them with clean water, and pretty scenery, and quality schools. But as he grapples with those things, he must also grapple with the Israeli soldiers, whom he can see from his rooftop, and who make their presence known from time to time, in occasionally threatening fashion.

“I feel jealous of other cities,” he says at one point. “There’s so much that they can do that we can’t.”

Hadid is a wonderfully expressive man—he sighs, wipes his brow, rests his head in his hands, when dealing with problems both quotidian and dire. (When he’s reacting to inept coworkers and bureaucrats, his lack of poker face become particularly comedic.) And we also see Ramallah as a city caught between two identities: On the one hand, French cafes and American chain restaurants like Popeye’s and KFC line the streets (although the Star & Bucks coffee shop is a hilarious knockoff). On the other hand, a lack of autonomy (Ramallah doesn’t even control its own sewage system) and the prospect of real danger looms at every turn.

Beautifully shot, both comedic and tragic, Mayor is a film that offers an intimate look at life in Palestine and at one good man trying his hardest to serve his people.

Raf

3 stars

The unsettling Raf, which has the rhythms and creeping dread of an early Yorgos Lanthimos film, also has shades of The Talented Mr. Ripley, but in reverse.

In this case, it’s a rich young woman, Tal (Jesse Stanley), who aggressively inserts herself into the life of a working class 29-year-old named Raf (Grace Glowicki). The unassuming Raf works odd handyman and janitorial jobs to make ends meet, and has a passionless relationship with her boyfriend Roger (the film’s writer/director Harry Cepka).

Tal seems fascinated by everything about Raf—the offbeat impressions she does (including Charles Manson), the “dance like no one is watching” moves she makes when grooving to her beloved techo music, her bucket hats, and her self-portraits posing with Samurai knives. But does she respect and care about Raf or just see her as some sort of amusing pet project? Tal, we see already, is a provocateur, a careless escalator of conflict (at one point, she confronts a man who cat-called her with such in your face aggression, it’s a miracle no one is seriously hurt). Regardless, Raf is completely under Tal’s spell and the dynamic between them becomes disturbing. In some ways, Tal could be seen as a send up of certain type of off-putting theater type (she is a Shakespearean actress). Everything she does seems performative, as though she’s always being observed by an imaginary audience. She doesn’t just have conversations, she interrogates people, wearing her judgment on her sleeve. And she views everyone else as characters in a drama that she’s starring in.

Things shift when Tal brings Raf to her summer house on the lake. There, Tal’s equally extra brother (Victor Dolhai) shows up and they both seem to view Raf as a plaything. The film grows increasingly menacing, like a horror film waiting for the horror to kick in. Does it ever arrive? Well, you’ll have to watch to find out.

Dark City Beneath the Beat

3 stars

I’m thrilled that Baltimoreans are finally going to get to see rapper/music impresario TT the Artist’s film, a love letter to club music, the healing power of dance, and, above all, the city of Baltimore. But I confess I’m sad that it won’t be screened in a packed theater (for now). Oh, the party we would’ve had.

Still, this kinetic, kaleidoscopic film, one that manages to acknowledge Baltimore’s deep-rooted struggles while celebrating its spirit and beauty, is well worth seeing on video. The film, which is barely over an hour, is hard to describe. It’s part music video, part documentary, party hip-hop-inflected Busby Berkeley musical, part tone poem. If you’re looking for a linear history of club music you won’t find it here. Instead, you meet some of its main players (a few, like Mighty Mark and TT herself are identified; several, somewhat frustratingly, aren’t). You learn the colorful names of some of the dance moves (like the Sponge Bob, Crazy Leg, Sexy Walk, and Cherry Hill) and watch some beautiful spoken word rap and dancing.

Occasionally the film, which combines soaring drone footage with on-the-ground camerawork, pauses for an elaborate musical number. In one case, as orange jumpsuit-clad dancers surround the puckish emcee DDm, we see them in aerial view, creating stunning patterns against the Inner Harbor. In another, an all-too-resonant tragic-comic dance number features a white cop at Lexington Market, first finding the club music irresistible, then shooting dead (with a finger gun, in this case) the black man who performs it. We get brief glimpses at the King and Queen of Baltimore dance competitions, we hear about gone-too-soon club dance legends like K. Swift and Tamika “Fatgirl” Raye, and we hear straight talk about Baltimore’s violence and addiction.

The dancing—filled with kicks and scissors and stepping so fast it sometimes looks like the film has been sped up—is electrifying. There is something a little bittersweet about the film—namely, that TT left Baltimore for LA to start her own, all-female record label, Club Queen records. No doubt she still has mad love for her adopted city. But her absence will be felt.

TT the Artist will participate in a live Q&A after the film first drops on June 12 at 8:30 p.m.

To no one’s surprise, the Maryland Film Festival (MdFF), which was supposed to run from April 29-May 3, was forced to cancel this year in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The Parkway Theatre, the festival’s headquarters, has been closed since last month but—in some heartening news for fans of alternative cinema—has (temporarily) rebranded itself as the Parkway Virtual Theatre, hosting a streaming movie platform directly on its site.

Nonetheless, for indie filmmakers, the cancellation of festivals like MdFF can have a chilling effect on the success and viability of their movies. To that end, we wanted to check in with local documentarian and MdFF board member Ramona S. Diaz, whose A Thousand Cuts, about a fearless journalist taking on a corrupt Philippine president, was set to have its local premiere at the fest.

She spoke to us from her home in Mt. Washington.

Tell us the about your film.

It’s about press freedom in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte, who’s widely known for his war on drugs. It takes place in 2019, against the backdrop of the midterm election. I follow the journey of Maria Ressa, a prominent journalist who is speaking truth to power. And I follow her through this season of election when she gets arrested twice. The film turns out to be about press freedom, disinformation, and the war on drugs, all those things intertwining.

You had brought A Thousand Cuts to Sundance, right?

Yes, in competition. We were scheduled to screen at 12 film festivals this spring. And special screenings, all of which, of course, were canceled.

It was just going to be a classic roll out of small independent film—you premiere at a top tier festival, the spring festivals give you momentum, and then you do your sort of limited theatrical in the summer, and then it’s on to award season. That was a nice plan many years ago, it seems.

How was the reception at Sundance?

Something happens at Sundance and other festivals. You show them a documentary film and the audience has been immersed in someone else’s life for two hours…and then when the lights come up those people actually come up on stage. Like, they jump off the frame. The audience absolutely levitates. It’s this magic that happens that can’t ever happen on Zoom. It was beautiful.

You were also supposed to screen at SXSW in Austin. When did you find out that it had been canceled?

I was on my way to Manila to have a private sneak preview screening of the film to the people who participated in it. So they were flying me out. I fell asleep—by the time we were over the Pacific, I woke up and saw on my phone that it was canceled. And I knew then that everything would be canceled. A lot of people were looking to see what SXSW was going to do because it was the first major festival. By the time I left Manila five days later, everything was canceled—Cleveland, Full Frame, Hot Docs.
Some people were postponing, which I think was just postponing the inevitable.

Was it hard getting out of Manila?

I flew there, I think March 7. The screening was on Tuesday. I did some master classes. And then the plan was, on Thursday, I would fly directly to Austin.
The world changed in a week. So when South By was canceled, I thought, I’m going to stay the weekend in Manila. Why not?
So I stayed, which was not a very good idea! In the span of like 48 hours, the country was shutting down and the president gave everyone 72 hours to [come home]. All international flights were being grounded. But yes, I was able to get out.

How disappointing was the cancellation of the MdFF for you?

It was interesting for me to be a filmmaker and then sitting on the board of the Maryland Film Festival. I could really see it from both sides. Of course, as a filmmaker, you always wish, let’s just postpone. But the reality is, it’s a tough choice. Even if you postpone until fall, six months later you’re mounting another festival. How do you do that?

What’s the plan to roll out the film? Are you going to do Video on Demand? Or take advantage of the Parkway’s new streaming platform?

We’ve turned down most digital offers. As a consumer there’s so much glut right now. Because everyone’s thinking the same way: “Let’s put our film out there! People are home!” But I personally get very overwhelmed by choices. So I just decide I’m going to read a book. I really love that specialness and anticipation of a live audience. We’re willing to sit it out until the summer [in the hopes that the film gets a theatrical release].

This whole thing must be so disappointing for you.

I do have to say: I’m very lucky. I have a team. I have sales agents and funders backing it and other people thinking as to what to do with it. But I’m still mourning my film. There’s something that happens when you roll out a film like this. You form a cohort with other filmmakers who are at every festival and that becomes your cohort throughout the year. It becomes a special group. I’m mourning that cohort. It’s not going to happen this year. Relative to what’s happening in the world—people are dying—I feel a little guilty for mourning. But it’s still a real grief, I think.

I really look forward to seeing the film when this is all over.

In the theater! Hopefully at the Parkway, live.