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CAAMFest 2013

Memoirs of a Superfan Vol. 8.2: Let’s Play Music

Posted March 13th, 2013 by Ashlyn Perri in Memoirs of a Superfan

CAAMFest is almost here!  I’m so excited to see what the CAAM team has put together this year – I’ve been holed away watching some screeners, and I’m already impressed.  I don’t think you can go wrong – whether you catch a “Tide” or find a river of your own, you’ll be a happy CAAMper.

 

The pulse of aloha keeps beating, sending gentle waves our way.  LET’S PLAY MUSIC is part of the Pacific Islanders in Communication showcase at the festival, and it’s a lovely, warm introduction to the culture of music in Hawai’i and a nice model for what life’s really about – relationship, cultivation of skills and soul, and above all, aloha.  One musician remarks that many slack key guitar lessons are available on YouTube now, but you really lose the relationship with the teacher – which seems like the most important lesson of all.  It’s the perfect encapsulation of what’s happening right now – we’re so reliant on devices to “bring us the world”, that we can actually lose sight of what the world really is.  This week, CAAM is creating the conditions for us to come together – and as the documentary suggests, “let’s make music.”

 

What is the sound of one band gigging?  You’ll find out in TURN IT UP TO 11, PART 2:  WILD DAYS, a documentary about a Korean Punk band, Galaxy Express, on tour in the U.S. in 2012.  Punk goes smooth with these philosophers of the road trip.  “Every time we play the song it is new.  A song isn’t complete until someone hears it.”  “We didn’t go to the U.S. to sell music.  We went to live life.”  “They are humble to experience.”  This is a nicely edited road trip movie, sure to please music fans and fits into the unofficial music tide of the Fest, leading up to what promises to be an incredible DIRECTIONS IN SOUND weekend, featuring Dengue Fever and Goh Nakamura, among others.

 

A kind of music we hear all too well is our “emotional inheritance”, as children and as human beings, which comes with strings, attachments, residue, holes, and fractures, as well as possibility and subtle gifts.  Our unfolding into wholeness is a story of letting go, coming to terms with and reinventing.  As Socrates said, “the secret of change is not in fighting the old, but building the new.”  We are plastic, capable of profound change through experience and intention. DEAD DAD is an extraordinary, sometimes excruciating look at the emotional inheritance of 20-something siblings whose father has just died.  What happens when they come together for his funeral, when their ambivalences towards him and each other come to the surface?  The answer is in the closing shot – a happenstance urn for what remains of his ashes: a bright yellow cookie jar, dropped, shattered, and clumsily mended, with all its significations of childhood pleasures and longings. DEAD DAD is among my fave picks of the films I’ve seen so far.

 

If a weirder kind of emotional inheritance is your thing, I recommend MEKONG HOTEL from Thailand, to tap into, shall we say, hungers that last past a lifetime.  Weerasethakul is an inventive filmmaker, given to ghosts (UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES) that cohabitate with mortals, enlarging our view of family, time and identity.  It screens with ADVANTAGEOUS, a dystopic short starring Jacqueline Kim about a mother’s love meeting the jagged edge of social dysfunction.

 

POSTCARDS FROM THE ZOO from Indonesia is another fave.  I loved the magical elements of this film, and fell in love with its star, Ladya Cheryl, who portrays a young woman who grows up in a zoo, tending to caged animals, befriending tigers and giraffes.  She is enchanted by a Magic Cowboy, and passes through an underworld of massage parlors and gangsters, sometimes seeming as passive as a magician’s assistant, but clearly with her own active principle that emerges like a dove from the magician’s hat.  It’s a pure and fanciful excursion, and a great date movie.

 

WHEN HARI GOT MARRIED is an intriguing look into the life of a Dharamsala taxi driver.  I loved this view of an ordinary man in “Little Lhasa” or “Dhasa”, as he shuttles foreigners and Tibetans up and down the hairpin turns, in turns gregarious and philosophical.  “Nothing is certain,” he says; he encourages his family to break from caste discrimination.  We watch as he follows a fairly traditional path to marriage, and his simple pleasures become our own.  I found it a refreshing taste of a very different culture, with its own idea about what makes “the good life”, as well as familiar challenges of financial and family pressures.  I especially liked that Hari’s customers come to his wedding!  Now that’s a social network!

 

Don’t miss BEAUTIFUL 2012.  This collection of four shorts is an absolute delight.  My favorite was, of course, a 20-minute take of a monk slow-walking, mindfulness-style, through Hong Kong.  It’s a meditation on contrasts, the conventional and sublime views of reality and what is most important.  It ends with a song coaching listeners to get wealthy and not suffer, as the monk takes an almost luxurious bite of a Chinese bun:  we all need to eat, but when riches are out of reach, there are still possibilities for inner wealth.  Experiencing a different pace, literally, can change your views of how life can be lived.

 

OLD ROMANCES, part of the Royston Tan spotlight, is a loving tribute to places of emotional significance in Singapore.  I think it’s another great date movie, sure to lead to conversations about places that resonate in your life, places lit with nostalgia and fond memories.  As many fond moments as we’ve had in front of our computer screens, I’m sure we prefer the places we’ve been together.  Let’s meet at some of them, the Kabuki and the Castro, New People and Great Star – and make some more memories.  More music to bring us home.

 

Other movies I loved included THE MOSUO SISTERS, SEEKING ASIAN FEMALE, SEEKING HAVEN, HIGH TECH LOW LIFE and THE CHEER AMBASSADORS (for its sheer buoyancy).  I’m really looking forward to MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, SOMEONE I USED TO KNOW, MEMORY OF FORGOTTEN WAR and MONKEY KING 3D.

It’s going to be a great week!  See you at the movies!


Ravi Chandra, M.D. is a psychiatrist and writer in San Francisco.  You can find more of his writing and performance at www.RaviChandraMD.com, where he invites you to sign up for an occasional newsletter.