New locally-made films now available at Four Star

Tonya | 8/25/2007 11:38 am | Screen Siren

It's Happiness: A Polka Documentary (2006, 80 minutes)

This 2007 Wisconsin Film Festival favorite was produced by Timm Gable, who works out of Milwaukee (and who also did production work on the shot-in-Madison Hollywood film The Last Kiss), and who, along with director Craig DiBiase, conceived the idea for a documentary about Wisconsin's polka culture while shooting a Pabst Blue Ribbon commercial in Milwaukee. This film ponders the appeal of Wisconsin's official state dance, and what drives its impassioned fans to go to such lengths as petitioning the state government to describe it as such. The charm of this film, besides the music and the scenes of jolly dancing revelers, lies in the real-life quirky characters of the polka scene. There's John Pinter, the absent-minded president of the Wisconsin Polka Boosters, who comes up with increasingly far-fetched schemes to build up the popularity of polka amongst a jaded younger generation, and the "rowdy bunch," a crew of octogenarians who frequent the state's polka festivals to get crazy on the dance floor and to take shots of Jagermeister out of their "shotski," a ski drilled with holes with the purpose of holding multiple shot glasses, enabling many a drunken elder to drink at the same time. This documentary is a lot of happy fun, and it lets us look deeper into a culture that most of us Madisonians only experience while drinking Spaten out of boots and dancing to the "Beer Barrel Polka" at the Essen Haus. We should all support the Polka Booster's quest to teach polka in Wisconsin elementary schools, if only to ensure that future generations won't, like us, have to endure a couple weeks of torturously lame square dancing during P.E.

Hummingbird (2006, 50 minutes)

This documentary, directed by UW-Milwaukee alumnus Holly Mosher, profiles two organizations in Recife, Brazil which seek to help street children and abused women by giving them a safe place to stay and education and support so that they can find some measure of safety and success in their lives. Recife, the city with Brazil's highest rate of unemployment, is shown by this documentary to be exploited by sex tourism and to have streets populated by strung-out youths who sniff glue in order to alleviate their hunger pains. In the face of this hopelessness, two organizations, the House of Passage and the Women's Life Collective, seek to help in what little way they can. Their meager resources are modest against such a large problem, and modest also are their successes: one success story is of Adriana, a former street kid who was forced into prostitution, and who now stays in a tiny but well-kept apartment and who works as a maid. Cecy Pestrello, founder of the women's Life Collective, addresses the perceived futility of her mission by telling a fable about a hummingbird who, during a fire in the jungle, takes a bit of water in its beak and puts it on the flames. "What are you doing to improve our planet," Pestrello asks, "to make it more dignified, more humane? That is my message." Inspiring but somewhat dull in parts and, at a mere 50 minutes, underdeveloped.

Chad Vader: The Complete First Season (2006, 46 minutes)

This YouTube sensation, filmed by, produced by, and starring Madisonians Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda, and filmed at the Willy Street Co-Op, is now on DVD. The epic tale of Chad Vader, the younger brother of Darth and the day shift manager of Empire Mart, follows Chad in his tribulations against Clint, the night shift manager, as Chad loses his coveted day shift position to Clint and regains it with the help of his coworkers. One of the few Star Wars parodies to get a stamp of approval from George Lucas himself, it combines the epic persona and machinations of Chad Vader with the tedious everyday and workplace politics. Even the grand and imposing Imperial March is full of baleful ennui. Rather than battling Jedi Knights with his lightsaber, Chad battles broom-wielding shoplifters. Chad becomes loveable by loving his normal, everyday job so completely: he is content to drink chocotinis at the local pub rather than at the cantina on Tatooine. Even Mayor Dave, in episode eight, supports him in his quest to regain supremacy at the Empire Mart. Enjoyable, especially for Star Wars fans who enjoy the cognitive dissonance of seeing their favorite villain exposed as such a charmer, but who needs a DVD when all eight episodes are up on Yonda and Sloan's Blame Society website at www.splu.net?

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