Girls Rock!, Crazy Love, Doubletime

Girls Rock!
May 25, 7 pm, Harvard Exit
May 27, 1 pm, SIFF Cinema

This doc should be a great crowd pleaser. It’s set at the rock ‘n’ roll camp for girls held in Portland, Oregon, where girls get one week to form a band, write songs, and perform them, working with great teachers like Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney and Beth Ditto from the Gossip. Clearly a situation ripe with dramatic possibilities, sometimes surprisingly so — who’d have thought that the simple act of trying to choose a band name could be so fraught with tension?

Though a number of the campers are interviewed, the filmmakers focus on four of them: Laura, who’s felt somewhat alienated being the only Asian girl who likes death metal in her hometown of Oklahoma City; Misty, who comes from a succession of foster homes determined to play bass even though she’s never seen one before; Amelia, whose proficiency on self-created chords like “Negative 10” (“It’s not even on the fretboard!”) make her a natural for Sonic Youth; and star-in-waiting Palace, a seven year old with a bitchin’ song about San Francisco (“Go to hell on the Golden Gate Bridge!”).

The fast-paced editing helps keep the energy up in this lively and fun film. Mixed in with the interviews is commentary on why a girls-only rock camp is needed, with statistics noting how girls’ self-esteem drops during their teen years, among other factoids. Indeed, during a simple exercise where everyone has to let out a bonafide rock ‘n’ roll scream, a number of teens have to be coaxed to let out a small yelp. And the girls receive instruction in self-defense, as well as music. As such, I found this to be a film of greater self-empowerment than Rock School. Also, there’s no competition driving things; everyone performs at the final show, everyone’s a winner.

The film’s directors will attend the screenings and there’s a special benefit show 5/26 at Chop Suey featuring girls from the movie; it’s all ages and starts at 1:30 pm.

Crazy Love
May 30, 9:30 pm, Pacific Place
June 1, 4:30 pm, Pacific Place

This has got to be one of the strangest love stories I’ve ever heard. Burt Pugach was a successful NYC lawyer and inveterate womanizer who finally met the love of his life, Linda Riss, in the late ‘50s. She reciprocated, but his, um, anger management problem and stifling attention eventually drove her away. Pugach’s subsequent shocking assault on Riss sent him to prison — but that’s actually only the beginning of this weird and twisted story. The filmmakers get interviews with all the key players, including Pugach and Riss, which is what makes this film so fascinating — to hear Pugach calmly relate how after his attack on Riss he naturally didn’t call her for a while, and how his trial was biased is to look into the face of someone so disconnected from his violence and anger it’s chilling. Ah, but Riss doesn’t share that view, which is what, for me, made this film so creepy and disturbing. It would ruin things to relate more of the twists and turns; let’s just say I’m surprised this hasn’t been the basis for a feature film yet. Maybe it will be. So see this documentary first.

Doubletime
May 27, 4 pm, SIFF Cinema
May 28, 11 am, SIFF Cinema

Seems like every activity people can engage in eventually becomes a competitive event, and in this film that activity is rope jumping. I’d no idea there were competitions for this “sport,” let alone that there were separate leagues for single and double rope jumping (the latter’s called “double dutch”). Even more interesting, the single rope jumping teams are predominantly white, while the double dutchers are mostly black. So we follow the mostly white “Bouncing Bulldogs” and all black “Double Dutch Forces” as they prepare for the double dutch championship held at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. The kids are engaging, and the jump rope stunts are quite amazing to see, as are the “fusion freestyle” routines. But overall I’d say the film lacks the dramatic pull of other films the SIFF program compares it with, like Mad Hot Ballroom — or this year’s Girls Rock!.

And I tried to see The Singer, but the screener had a big copyright symbol smack dab in the middle of the screen. To keep you from pirating the DVD you see. Which is understandable, but it was still distracting.