ADAMA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Racist War On Terror targets innocent teenage girl

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema's Canadian premiere of David Felix Sutcliffe's powerful Sundance-Award-Winning feature (T)error which he co-directed with Lyric R. Cabral, The Film Corner's Countdown to Hot Docs continues with my review of Adama. Broadcast in 2011 via PBS, Sutcliffe's first film is a provocative, rage-inducing portrait of America's racist anti-terror policies perpetrated upon the innocent.

Adama (2011)
Dir. David Felix Sutcliffe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In March of 2005, a 16-year-old honours high-school student living in Harlem was arrested and incarcerated (kidnapped and wrongfully jailed) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (America's Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the S.S.) under the spurious, unfounded suspicion of training with Al-Qaeda as a terrorist suicide bomber.

After being dragged from her home, family and in the middle of a successful school year (that was scuttled by this immoral action), the FBI decided they had nothing on her, so the American Government, in its racist policies masquerading as a war on terror on home turf, instead placed her under a strict curfew (replete with ankle bracelet to monitor her comings and goings) and charged her with being an illegal immigrant, in spite of the fact that she had been living in America since the age of 5 years old.

Her friend, also arrested, wasn't so lucky. She was immediately deported to Africa. Her father, was even more unlucky. He was imprisoned for 16 months and then deported to Africa. Without a sole bread-winner, the teenage daughter had to give up school completely to earn money for her mother and younger siblings. She was then flung into the harrowing experience of never knowing if she would be deported or not.

Welcome to America's War on Terror against the innocent and driven by racist racial profiling of the most heinous, egregious kind. The aforementioned events represent the tip of the iceberg that is the story of the innocent teenage girl of the film's title Adama. This terse, powerful 60-minute documentary was produced for PBS in 2011 and directed with both economy and urgency by David Felix Sutcliffe. It presents a world of Kafkaesque horror and plays out like a direct cinema thriller steeped in humanity.

We experience the terror of this young lady as she is dragged through endless immigration hearings over a period of months, all of them inconclusive and adding to the fear and paranoia of both Adama and her family. There's one set piece in particular that is on-the-edge of the seat scary as she races back to her home, fearing she'll be late for the ankle-monitored curfew (the result of which could mean re-incarceration). There's also the very real threat of other petty bureaucratic agencies investigating the lack of money in the household and considering the horrendous solution of breaking the family apart into the foster-care system. One of the most deeply moving sequences involves Adama's brother pleading to America to leave his innocent sister alone and to let his family continue as they have to live freely in America and to experience a better life.

Sutcliffe has fashioned a sickening, alarming portrait of America's delusional and just-plain mean-spirited war against people of colour in the name of protecting the country. It's not a pretty picture and for much of the film's running time, you will be outraged, frustrated and thrust into Adama's point of view.

What America has been doing and continues to do is appalling. Adama is a film that puts a very human face to the country's own acts of psychological terrorism. And Canadians, no need to be smug, our country has been racial profiling for a long time - see my review of the powerful Hot Docs entry from last year, Amar Wala's The Secret Trial 5. And if what you see in that film and Adama is scary, just wait until Chancellor (Canadian Prime Minister) Stephen Harper enacts his grotesque anti-terror legislation which will plunge the country beyond America's bilious attack on human rights all in the name of Der Führer Harper's belief that "Jihadist terrorism is not a future possibility, it is a present reality.”

See Adama, see Sutcliffe's new documentary feature (T)error, see The Secret Trial 5. The real terrorists are our own governments. We, the people, are supposedly the government. Not so. We're mere fodder for the attack upon anyone even vaguely outside the Status Quo.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Adama is available to be viewed for FREE online at Sutcliffe's Vimeo page HERE. (T)error will play at the 2015 Hot Docs (The Film Corner review coming soon).

SURVIVAL LESSONS: THE GREG KLYMKIW STORY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - It's CANADA FILM DAY and what better way to celebrate than with a limited time FREE FREE FREE screening of Ryan McKenna's documentary about ME and the early days of Winnipeg Film with the likes of Guy Maddin, John Paizs, George Toles and sooooooooo many more. Read my review about the movie about ME and then try and tell me it's not worth seeing. The best part is that until May 3, 2013 the screening is FREE FREE FREE on Vimeo.

FREE STREAMING SCREENING OF SURVIVAL LESSONS: THE GREG KLYMKIW STORY by clicking HERE

GUY MADDIN on his Longtime Producer GREG KLYMKIW:
"As roommates, occasional nude sightings are inevitable.
One day I spied Greggy sleeping naked, his posterior facing me.
He looked like one of those cute clubbed baby seals."

Survival Lessons: The Greg Klymkiw Story (2013) ****
Dir. Ryan McKenna
Starring: Greg Klymkiw, Guy Maddin, George Toles, Bruce Duggan, Tracy Traeger, Dave Barber, Matthew Rankin, Patrick Lowe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's a grey day in Toronto. What other days can there be in the capitol of Canadian pole-up-the-ass presbyterianism? The camera focuses in tight on the scowling face of a moustachioed, chain-smoking misanthrope in a dog park. Someone off-camera interrupts his interview to compliment him on his off-camera dog. "Yeah," he mutters under his breath. "Really nice dog I have here. Come a little closer and she'll take your fuckin' stupid hand off."

This is Greg Klymkiw - film producer, writer and long-time senior creative consultant at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre - and he's the subject of Ryan McKenna's one-hour documentary about the early days of Winnipeg's prairie post-modernist new wave of indigenous, independent cinema. Blending interviews with the man himself, friends, colleagues and a generous supply of film clips and archival footage, McKenna presents a funny, unbridled portrait of the curmudgeonly film obsessed pioneer of indie production in the middle of nowhere - Winnipeg.

The movie follows Klymkiw's life as a North End lad who alternated between programming rep cinemas, buying films for small town movie theatres, writing uncompromising (and according to screenwriter George Toles, "incendiary") film reviews, conceiving, producing and starring in the perverse community cable cult hit "Survival", producing all the great early films of Guy Maddin and John Paizs and last, but not least, creating an entire mythology around the films being made in Winnipeg as the Director of Distribution and Marketing for the Winnipeg Film Group wherein he masterminded a marketing campaign to bring the films of Winnipeg to the entire world.

Okay, I'm sure you've gathered I'm reviewing a movie that's about, uh, me. It's a strange thing to do, but I have to admit that even though it is about me, I can genuinely attest to its quality, entertainment value and the filmmaking prowess of the talented young director Ryan McKenna who insanely decided I was worthy of my own documentary portrait.

When I first saw the finished product, to say I was delighted and flattered is an understatement. However, I needed to know myself, if the movie was really any good. So, I girded my loins and applied every single element of critical analysis that I'd volley mercilessly upon the shitloads of films I had to mentor at the Canadian Film Centre over thirteen years. The results of this stripping-away of my biases were, I'm happy to report, successful enough to be able to proclaim that, yes indeed, it's a fucking terrific little movie - especially for anyone interested in making independent, indigenous films in the middle of the second armpit of Canada (the first smelly, hairy armpit being Regina).

The real proof in the pudding for me was watching the film with a few audiences. Good deal here. Big laughs were had by all, pretty much from beginning to end.

The most important thing to note, though, is that Survival Lessons: The Greg Klymkiw Story is playing within the context of a film festival co-presented by SPUR, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival and the Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque as part of the ongoing series entitled "Forgotten Winnipeg". The film fits the thematic elements of this event like a glove. We're essentially dealing with a biographical portrait that wallows in the mythology of a guy (me) who loves mythology so much that he spends most of his professional life as someone who creates mythologies of all kinds and is finally a proponent of the famous credo John Ford proclaimed loudly and clearly at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: When the truth becomes legend, what do you ultimately print. The legend or the truth?

The legend, of course.

You never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story. McKenna expertly plays with this throughout and as such, creates a pretty indelible portrait of friendship, mutual love for cinema, the absurd and finally, the realties of actually making and marketing movies that nobody cares about - until, of course, someone creates an atmosphere of "must-see" that lays down a fluffy, inviting blanket for all to dive into with relish and anticipation.

So, if you're in the mood to celebrate Canada Film Day, you could do a lot worse than seeing this FREE.

"Survival Lessons: The Greg Klymkiw Story" is FREE for a limited time until May 3, 2014 over at Vimeo in celebration of Canada Film Day. The free streaming link is HERE

A great selection of early Guy Maddin, many of which that I produced and were written by George Toles, can be secured directly through the following links:



Another great film from Winnipeg during this period is Greg Hanec's extraordinary DOWNTIME which has the distinction of being a parallel cinematic universe to Jim Jarmusch's "STRANGER THAN PARADISE". Both films were made at the same time in two completely different cities and scenes and both Hanec and Jarmusch premiered their films at the same time at the Berlin Film Festival. One's famous, the other isn't - but now that the "lost" and "found" DOWNTIME has been remastered from original elements to DVD, it can now be purchased directly online.

Order DOWNTIME directly from the film's new website by clicking HERE

Perhaps the greatest Canadian independent underground filmmaker of all-time is Winnipeg's John Paizs. It's virtually impossible to secure copies of his astounding work which, frankly, is responsible for influencing the work of Guy Maddin, David Lynch, Bruce McDonald and an endless number of great indie filmmakers the world over. Paizs' great short film SPRINGTIME IN GREENLAND is available for purchase in a beautiful remastered edition from a fan website, the inimitable Frank Norman. Norman has Paizs' blessing to provide copies of the film, so feel free to directly make your request to Mr. Norman by clicking HERE.

Visit Frank Norman's CRIME WAVE
fan site by clicking HERE

Alas, it's super-impossible to get a copy of Paizs' masterpiece CRIME WAVE (not to be confused with the super-awful Coen Bros/Sam Raimi film of the same name that was released the same year Paizs' film was NOT released properly by its scumbag Canadian distributor Norstar Releasing, which eventually became Alliance Films (where the boneheads sat on the film and turned down several excellent offers from small indie companies to release the film properly on DVD in super-deluxe special editions because they lazily purported to be negotiating a massive package deal on its catalogue titles with some tiny scumbag public domain company that, as far as I can tell, has neither purchased nor released the film). This truly great and highly influential film is, no doubt, languishing in some boneheaded distribution purgatory within the deep anal cavities of the new owner of Alliance Films, a humungous mega-corporation called E-One. Feel free to repeatedly bug their stinking asses and demand a proper release. In the meantime, VHS copies of CRIME WAVE can still be found with the ludicrous title THE BIG CRIME WAVE. Here's a copy available on Amazon:

BLANK CITY and other works from the Winnipeg Film Group, SPUR and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival's "Forgotten Winnipeg" Series in January can be accessed here: