DATELINE: July 27, 2010
Chez PMD-For-Hire HQ
Social commentary films last night and did I find three beauties for ya!

So I was “flipping” through my PDF copy of Filmmaker Magazine’s Summer 2010 edition last night and happened across this gem of a find on p26, “The Super 8: Eight Things That Will Keep You In The Know” about an 11-episode social commentary video site called FUTURESTATES.

Eleven up-and-coming shooters were asked to write and direct their own mini-feature depicting what their vision for the world would be for the very near future. What seems to have emerged from the Independent Television Service (ITVS)-sponsored project is a smashing array of would-be doomsday scenarios ranging from genetically-modified crops and “organic seed bandits,” to the immigration debate, to gaming behavior run amok, to a potential West Coast nuclear meltdown, to the globe’s population crisis. I couldn’t get through all of them due to time constraints, but over the course of this week I’ll catch each in turn and have more feedback for you as I get on.

When it comes to these episodes, think more Children of Men than sci-fi classics like Blade Runner, even though one of my curated films today — PIA — hearkens back to Ridley Scott’s 1982 other-worldly classic.

These films are a great time investment, perhaps better left for a weekend if you’re a working professional. They’re meant to be savored, not blown through. So far, each of these three had me going emotionally at some stage in their narratives, and I don’t expect any less for the remainder.

Let’s dig in, shall we?

PIA (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 20m06s, director: Tanuj Chopra)

In the future, human organs will be harvested for transplant into android cavities that serve at the behest of human masters. Syama, a human, is in love with Rakesh, another human. and they declare their abiding love for each other atop their California roof. They dream of growing old and raising a family together. But their hopes are prematurely dashed when Rakesh suddenly perishes of a freak heart attack. Cut to: twenty years later: an investigating police officer happens across an abandoned cargo vehicle stranded in the middle of some parking lot. He rolls open the trailer door to find a half-dozen black market androids — or “PIA units” — hanging dormant. These PIAs are impounded, to be reassigned by the federal government shortly. Yet something is not quite right with one of these PIAs. It escapes its warehouse confinement and wends its way back to Syama’s suburban home, where our human-android story adventure begins…

What I just LOVED about this film?

PIA featured a mainly all-South Asian cast which instantly brought me back to Children of Men and Michael Winterbottom‘s stunning Code 46. Director Chopra bravely chose to depict our true demographic future and kudos to him for totally going there with the talent. The energy which appears to have been invested in costumes, delicate lighting, futuristic props, and general mid-21st century touches — especially sound design for the PIA Units and the vehicles and houses — will marvel you once you realize PIA was only a short film. The leads — especially actors Tillotama Shome and Pia Shah — did something to bring tears to my eyes, a feat not easily accomplished over a compressed period of screen time. PIA‘s ethereal music, its sepia tones, the RED camera used to shoot the piece, and Chopra’s poignant dialogues combined to make this the pleasantest twenty minutes of my day. Good thing PIA was the first vid I’d seen all evening as it established just the right mood for the rest of the session.

TIA & MARCO (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 16m11s, director: Annie J. Howell)

If the current roiling debate about US immigration policy and those state laws recently passed down in Arizona are any indication, what Tia & Marco depicts is what we can likely expect to see in the near future in the United States. Burly border sentries patrolling US-Mexico border clad in Kevlar body armor with accentuated shoulder, knee, and body pads who violently tackle encroaching “no-name illegals,” incarcerate them, then chuck ‘em back over “The Wall.” Speaking Spanish is now illegal in the United States — on pain of imprisonment — and border guards enforce Washington’s strict regulations. This short almost makes director Annie Howell look prophetic, a woman who herself hails from Arizona and knows the debate well. Tia, our protagonist, works for this US Border Service and is expecting soon — a boy. On the eve of her shipping up to New York in order to rendez-vous with her husband for her birth, an “illegal” named Marco emerges from Arizona’s desert wasteland. Suddenly, Tia and Marco are forced to live with each other for a night and a day, each managing to find the humanity in the other.

What did I enjoy about this film?

Lead actress Susan Kelechi Watson plays a truly captivating Tia. In less than 15 minutes, we witness her transition through a full range of harrowing emotions — revulsion to disgust to curiosity to empathy to affection, and by the end towards a fierce materfamilias-like protection. Major kudos to Howell for casting Enrique Ochoa in the role of Marco, who — as a Mexican-American — shatters through our conventional stereotypes of Mexicans as unilingual Spanish speakers. Who won’t be instantly charmed by Ochoa’s portrayal? I know of few. Nice work with the moving camera — chase sequences especially; hardly easy to do on lower-budget prods. And like I mentioned, if the US’ current immigration debate is anything to go by, the scenes we witness in Tia & Marco might be just what’s coming down the pike. Yikes!

PLAY (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 19m13s, directors: David Kaplan & Eric Zimmerman)

This is a fun little romp inside game designer-writer Eric Zimmerman‘s head about the convergence between real life and game — or “second” — life. When the lines blur between what’s real and what’s virtual, something like Play emerges. While the acting was spot-on and the characters did their level best with the material they were given, I can’t honestly say I was blown away by the tale. All of its metaphorical messages aside, I believe the directing pair was trying to conjure up some sort of chaotic future world populated by folks who can no longer discern how much time they spend online dwelling in fictitious universes and galaxies.

What I enjoyed most about this film?

Visual effects were eye-catching. Notice how the filmmakers wanted to render the virtual impinging on the real using tools like “life bars,” “toggle-down menus,” “decision boxes,” and all manner of other real-virtual devices (especially in the shrink’s office!). Plot was intentionally (?) non-linear, so I couldn’t exactly tell you there was a clear-cut storyline to this piece, though the film’s overall thrust shines through. Somehow we’re left with a mega question mark by Play‘s end: what is all of this gaming behavior and online boundary-shattering coming to? Our filmmakers have a few ideas, to be sure, but I believe Play‘s conclusion is left intentionally ambiguous and artistically blank, its random strands we’re forced to reassemble all by ourselves.

If there are any films you’d like to see, kindly let me know in the comments below and I’ll get right onto it.

(a potential fraud? — so what else is new on the Kim Farm?)

Major fedora-tip to Richard yesterday at ADM.com for pointing out this groundbreaking brief Gadling post by Tom Johansmeyer detailing some particularly perplexing news about recent propaganda efforts currently underway on the Kim Farm.

Apparently, that North Korean propaganda poster some Chinese businessman snapped then subsequently published over the net from China? You know, the one (above) chiding the South Koreans for their blame of the North for the Cheonan‘s mysterious March 2010 sinking?

Well, it’s a fraud!

Apparently, says Richard again, this NYT article describes the semi-bloody Yellow Sea pitched naval battle that precipitated the creation of said above poster.

A battle that took place in July 2002!

Sorry haters! As for the rumors this was an original Cheonan-related bit of North Korean classic agit-prop — better luck next time.

Its caption reads:

“We will smash you with a single blow if you attack!”

So it would appear that Pyongyang and Bam Bam totally lucked out on this one: socialist-realist art so drippingly generic that it can serve multiple purposes and multiple masters, causing the hearts of die hard North Korean Commies to swell with pride!

So why is an 8 year-old poster being regurgitated for the masses’ viewing pleasure?

Likely due to the large coming-out party for the young Padawan warrior and heir apparent to NK’s throne,”Youth Captain” Kim Jong-un. This seems part and parcel of his initiation into the delicate art of DPRK military-intelligence subterfuge. Dad’s poppin’ his cherry, to bandy about a phrase…

I can just imagine the conversation around the (geriatric) dinner table between Kim and his youngest son about all this:

Bam Bam: “Son, let me share with you a little secret: if it’s good enough, it’s good enough.  Nothing needs to be perfect in this country. Policymaking ain’t literature. It ain’t no movie either. And it ain’t poetry. Shit, it ain’t even (as he surveys the lavish spread dedicated to no one in particular) a dinner party! Ha! Mao would have liked that one!”

Jong-un: “I realize, Dad. But don’t you think the people might remember this one hanging from back in oh-two? You think we can fool them twice? People aren’t that stupid, you know. Especially the ones living near the border. They have Chinese cellphones now.”

Bam Bam (spooning a piping mouthful of some decidedly medicinal-looking oatmeal into his awaiting maw, spilling most of it on his brown leisure suit on the way up): “Goddamit Jong-un! Buck up and act like a Kim, will ya already?! Let me teach ya something about street-level dopes: they’ll believe just about anything you tell ‘em to believe! Imagine ‘em as your little playthings. People to do with as ya bloody well wish. Pretend they’re sweaty, um…field…cows, strapped to, er…your heavy yoke (licking his chops). The nation sometimes steps outta line. But all’s ya gotta do is whip ‘n kick and spank ‘em back — even breaking or killing a few if you got to — and watch how they slide right back into formation. They’re deathly afraid of me, you know.”

Jong-un: “They are?”

Bam Bam: “Yeah, get a load of that, eh? Little pussycat like me with a high voice and I make ‘em squeal! Ha! Now don’t be afraid to do it too. You’re bigger, stronger, and more educated than me. And better-looking, too! The people will fear you more, trust me.”

Jong-un: “But the army…why don’t the generals show up for your meetings anymore, Daddy?”

Bam Bam: “Generals shmenerals! Don’t you worry about those jerkys, okay? I’m the one with (lifting a small box out from beneath the table) my pinky finger on the button. They don’t got diddly compared to what I got! (tapping the box lovingly)”

Jong-un: “So the key is whatever’s in that box?

Bam Bam: “Duh?! That was like the first lesson your grandfather taught me during my first Chinese brothel experience. Never — and I mean never! — underestimate the force of threats, Jong-un, especially when you’ve got a finger inches away from this little red button. And quit worrying about that damned poster, will ya? You’re a Kim for crying out loud! You’re royalty. Start acting like it already, even in front of me!”

Jong-un nods, slowly — ever so slowly — understanding.

Bam Bam: “C-plus to A-plus my boy. It might be completely shitty policy when I sign the damn thing. But by the time Old Kim here is done with it, it’s gonna shine. Shine like poetry.”

Jong-un smiles…

Anyways — kidding completely aside — “Postergate” certainly raises a series of deeply perplexing questions:

1. If the above poster is indeed a dud, perhaps North Korea didn’t sink the Cheonan after all and are being wrongly framed, as the Russians seem to claim as part of their own independent investigation?
2. And if we, once again, presume that the above poster is indeed a complete and total fraud, why has this gross misinformation not been announced by the international press and duly corrected? Koreans (and their US allies) could be going to war again on the peninsula over a silly piece of socialist-realist “art.”
3. And if we presume this poster is indeed a dud and the North Koreans didn’t really sink the corvette Cheonan — yet the poster is still being pasted all up around Pyongyang and other large North Korean cities to milk the tragedy for all its apparent propaganda value — what’s it really saying about Bam Bam’s already tenuous hold on power?
4. In advance of the KWP congress this September, Bam Bam has likely decreed this poster displayed alongside images of the Youth Captain — Kim Jong-un. Kim is thereby signaling to the masses that Jong-un intends on following in his footsteps. It’s a clear indication that Bam Bam is indeed still in firm control of North Korea’s military, make no doubt it.
5. Knowing that NK is currently weaker than weak, low on national food stocks, losing increasing numbers of its population along its border areas to Chinese and North Korean snake head traffickers, suffering under an ill-conceived currency reevaluation — is this yet another saber-rattling show of bluster and force by the Kim Court to demonstrate power where none actually exists?

Some pertinent advice to Western corn-fed media stooges:

Don’t believe everything you read! Especially when the rumors are being spread mostly by South Korean (ROK) news organizations. I think ROK press outlets have just a wee bit of an agenda in full-effect when it comes to reporting DPRK domestic blunders, don’t you think?

Scant and almost nonexistent as it is, there still exists a whiff of NK investigative journalism, even in the case of hapless Bam Bam.

Just something to think about…

(Bam Bam waving good-bye?)

The North Korean English-language blogosphere reported last week on the recent “significant breakthroughs” in US-North Korea relations. Brisk mentions were made of how these recent developments might be the final shove that topples North Korea from its illogical isolationist perch.

Articles and blogs were quick to bolster their strongly-worded arguments and sentiments with proof of recent events taking place along the peninsula over the past several months, events these bloggers and pundits claim prove conclusively that the time is ripe for a vigorous push by the US and South Korea to bring North Korea to heel and lure it once and for all into the international fold.

With Bam Bam’s condition weakening by the day and his restive population subsisting on a spartan diet of poor-quality foodstuffs — northern refugees to the South claim that starvation rations persist in certain parts of DPRK — North Korea, yet again, is decimating itself from within.

Basically, say these bloggers, journalists, and pundits, this may spell the end of North Korea as we know it…

What Are Those “Recent North Korean Developments” — A Review:

Plenty of stuff’s been happening since May 2009, to wit…

• The nuclear tests of May of that year: This was the event which kickstarted North Korea’s year-long-plus downward spiral into the mire. Last time Bam Bam issued the order to detonate something was way back in October 2006, and, of course, he apologized profusely for having done so, claiming that he’d be perfectly willing to make a few compromises, if only the US would make some key compromises first. Same old story. Same old outcome.
• November 2009′s release of the captive US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee: the  pair were released from North Korean captivity on August 4, 2009 following Former President Clinton’s whirlwind 2-day emergency intervention tour to Pyongyang. This too represented something of an opening. A willingness – in North Korean newspeak and gesturespeak — on the part of Pyongyang to deal with the West. It basically amounted to nothing. Two additional American missionaries still remain in North Korean custody, incidentally. They don’t have nearly the clout or influence of Ling and Lee.
• November 2009′s dramatic currency devaluation: Whole fortunes were wiped out in November 2009 at the stroke of a pen as the NK won was redenominated by a factor of 100. This was allegedly enacted in order to curtail the spate of private marketeering and other entrepreneurial activity that had sprouted up in recent years across DPRK, reluctantly tolerated by the regime. Kim and his hapless cronies (one of whom — Pak Nam-gi was subsequently put to death in March 2010 for the economic chaos which ensued) were basically looking to stick it to the rising NK moneyed class just to remind them who’s really in charge. The re-evaluation slammed North Korea’s already ailing destitute classes hardest.
• March 2010′s sinking of the corvette Cheonan: Then there was the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan, the blame for which a UN-sponsored commission of inquiry — with US, Australian, and Swedish participation — initially laid squarely on Pyongyang’s shoulders, only to later backpedal during the Security Council’s issuing of its toothless “presidential statement.” It merely alluded to North Korea’s involvement, using the diplomatically-chosen words that it “Takes Note of Neighbour’s Response Denying Responsibility for Sinking” — the “Neighbour” of course being DPRK. This has had repercussions all around the region as first China was obviously unwilling to point the finger at its erstwhile ally, and then Russia — conducting its own independent inquiry — also joined the chorus of doubters as to who was responsible for the action. In the latter case, economics seems to be the clear motivating factor.
• Kim Jong-il’s “Secret” May 2010 trip to China: We’re left wondering what this meeting entai led? What did Kim talk about with Chinese President Hu Jintao? Did Kim travel to Beijing to receive instructions from the Chinese on how best to deal with the US in the wake of the Cheonan‘s sinking? Was he called out onto the mat to explain his country’s apparent belligerence? Was he given strict succession instructions from the Chinese? Did Hu promise to look after the heir apparent Kim Jong-un once Bam Bam was good and gone, to ensure that the Americans wouldn’t have their way with him? Here, here, and here are several possible scenarios…
• World Cup 2010: Following an impressive 2-1 stonewalling the mighty Brazilians (in which NK lost honorably), the country’s squad went on to get annihilated in its second game — 7-0 — against the Portuguese and then lost convincingly — 3-0 — against the Ivoreans to bow out of the tournament’s Round of 32. Were North Korea to have done well at the tournament, it might have generated a whole mass of goodwill. But it wasn’t to be.
• June 2010′s willingness to talk…again: North Korea announced its willingness last month to join a UN-sponsored forum to “discuss” its chronic domestic health problems, all under US auspices. Why this was significant was because the US refused to place NK on the list of terrorist-sponsoring states a second time following the country’s October 11, 2008 removal from that same list. The White House is very reluctant to add NK back for two primary reasons: a) blame for the Cheonan‘s sinking is not conclusive, ergo, it isn’t NK’s direct fault for certain, and b) China is totally against an escalation of hostilities on the peninsula whatsoever, and the Obama Administration isn’t going down that rabbit hole, for now.
• Calls to boot NK out of the United Nations: Certain pundits, namely journalist-in-residence Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently listed the litany of ways in which Kim Jong-il’s regime has violated the various sacred tenets of the UN Charter, He, therefore, she claims, has abrogated North Korea’s sovereign right to remain a member of the weak-kneed international body as a result. Rosett’s opinion perhaps remains a minority one for now, but as this rumor picks up velocity in the echo chamber, look to have more pundits and journalists calling for Kim’s head on a silver platter. It’s a well-written piece with a cogent argument and I fully recommend the read.
• Possible Ressurrection of the North-South Sunshine Policy? Ever since South Korea forbade its citizens from visiting North Korea’s Kumgang resort following July 11, 2009′s shooting of a 53 year-old female ROK tourist in so-called “no-man’s land,” the Sunshine Policy of the early naughts has been — for all intents and purposes — moribund. However, a recent Christian Science Monitor article (nice going Douglas Kirk!) suggests movements are underway in South Korea to involve the Chinese in a revitalized “sunshine-esque policy” that may coax NK back to the bargaining table. We’ll see…
• Will Kim Jong-un nominally take over in September 2010? The Korean Workers Party (KWP) Congress set for this September promises to be “historical.” It’s expected that Bam Bam will take the opportunity here to formally announce to the rest of the nation and the world that his son is to become the country’s next hereditary leader. Jong-un will likely be awarded with increased security responsibilities and a rash of public face time, yet even the experts are unsure what may become of him. If the military doesn’t stand behind him — as evidenced by the Cheonan‘s mysterious sinking — there may be more than just a palace coup come September.

So what now?

Following November 2009′s currency devaluation, North Koreans are once again starving.Food — and money to buy it — is scarce again, and the regime is getting ultra nervous.

Around two million (!!!) people died — according to certain statistics — during the mid-1990′s famine following the end of Soviet-sponsorship on the Kim Farm. North Koreans aren’t going to tolerate yet another famine now that its society is increasingly savvy to what’s happening outside of the DPRK’s borders, especially along the border regions with China and the Russian Federation, thanks to mobile phones and traffic around the Tumen and Yalu crossings.

Bam Bam’s bombastic sloganeering and the regime’s overall attempts to mollify the populace aren’t going to work a second time.

(NK propaganda about the Cheonan?)

This likely explains why Bam Bam has escalated his son’s succession to the super fast track.

This also likely explains the recent spate of postering in Pyongyang (as shown above) depicting a possible retaliation against a “Cheonan“-like ship (“If she comes, we will attack it!” it says) in order supply more distracting belligerent fodder for a population finding itself at wit’s end.

There are even some North Koreans who crave a second round of warfare, just to put a decisive end, once and for all, to their miserable living conditions vis-a-vis the South.

If something suddenly happens, you’ll be the first to know here.

North Koreans plan, Bam Bam laughs.