Jon Jost
1943 (81 год)Born in Chicago to a military family, he grew up in Georgia, Kansas, Japan, Italy, Germany and Virginia. He began making films in January 1963 after being expelled from college. In 1965 he was imprisoned by US authorities for 2 years 3 months for refusal to cooperate with the Selective Service system. Self-taught as a filmmaker, he made his first full-length film in 1974, and has since that time focused on a wide range of American issues in his films, at present having made 40 long-form films. Jost's work has shown since 1976 in major film festivals around the world.
Plain Talk and Common Sense (uncommon senses)
Jon Jost
Plain Talk is a complex essay-film, a follow-up a decade and some years later to Speaking Directly, and so another State of the Nation discourse, made for Britain's Channel Four in the year 1986-87. The work involved extensive travel around the United States, and poses an examination of just what America is/was, or what do we mean when we speak of it. Done in a series of radically different sections which collide with each other in a manner intended to provoke thinking, Plain Talk, which was made by an American and intended for American viewers, was indeed broadcast in Britain, but somewhat predictably, not in the USA.
Plain Talk and Common Sense (uncommon senses)
Frameup
Jon Jost
Howard Swain, Nancy Carlin
Ricky, a dim-witted ex-con, meets Beth, a dim-witted waitress, in an Idaho diner. They take off in his car to Washington and begin an affair. Beth, a lonely romance-novel addict, is hopelessly enamored; Ricky is just in it for the (constant) sex. Beth's longing to visit California and Ricky's longing for quick cash leads them into a desperate situation. Director Jost uses a variety of avant-garde visual and narrative techniques, such as montage, collages, split screens and lengthy, tongue-in-cheek monologues to tell the tragicomic story of two complete losers in love.
Frameup
Bell Diamond
Jon Jost
Scott Andersen, Dan Cornell
A telling story of an unemployed Vietnam vet in Butte, Montana, whose wife leaves him after seven years when she feels there is no longer communication between them and - more painfully and pointedly - because she is unable to have a child owing to his sterility from exposure to Agent Orange. Told in a gentle style, richly emotional, Bell Diamond was made with non-professionals drawn from the community of Butte.
Bell Diamond
Chameleon
Jon Jost
Jon Jost
A scathing portrait of the Hollywood/LA arts milieu of the late 70’s, Chameleon follows the amorphous day of its lead character, an Armani-jacketed peddler of high-class dope, fraudulent art, and preening postures suited-to-fit the changing victims, though as with all such fakery, the real victim in the long run is the person who lives such a life.
Chameleon
The Bed You Sleep In
Jon Jost
Tom Blair, Marshall Gaddis
Times are hard for Northwestern lumber-mill operators like Ray and his wife Jean. Ray and Jean's lives are thrown into chaos when their daughter writes home from college, claiming to have a horrifying revelation.
The Bed You Sleep In
Homecoming
Jon Jost
Ryan Harper Gray, Kathryn Sannella
Newport, Oregon. In a coastal town, Jeff and his wife Mattie work together facing the economic shifts. One son Chris, is unemployed; the other, Steve, is away on military service. Chris is lackadaisical and shiftless, Mattie perhaps drinks on the sly and tried to help her son, Jeff keeps his nose to the grind-wheel. Chris is dumped by his girlfriend, Jamie. Jeff scrambles to stay afloat. During a therapy session it is revealed that Chris is Jeff's step-son. Steve returns, but in a "transfer tube". Following his funeral, the family meet; an argument erupts, revealing the depths of the division between Jeff and Chris. In a counseling session Chris breaks down and is comforted by the counselor. Mattie and Jeff, lost in their grief, each lose their way.
Homecoming
Speaking Directly
Jon Jost
Speaking Directly is an essay-film making for a kind of State of the Nation address, from the perspective of someone other than the President of the United States, circa 1972-4. This film addresses both the political and cultural situation of the US at the height of the Viet Nam war, Watergate and its aftermath, and likewise addresses the personal life, in this context, of the filmmaker, at that time thirty years of age, recently out of two plus years in federal prison for refusal to accept military service.
Speaking Directly
Rembrandt Laughing
Jon Jost
Jon A. English, Barbara Hammes
This film is a portrait of the passage of one year in the lives of some San Francisco friends, circa 1988 (before the dot.coming of the city), a slow marijuana hazed story which drifts like the fabled fog, encompassing the quirks and habits of a generation that made the city theirs, if only for a while. Very obliquely Rembrandt Laughing sketches the time and place, encompassing the AIDS epidemic, the casual sexual revolution, the debris of '68 lingering in the air. A quiet, very San Francisco comedy of life among a small group of friends. Rembrandt Laughing was improvised over the period of about a month by Jost and his friends, mostly acting non-professionals.
Rembrandt Laughing
Slow Moves
Jon Jost
Marshall Gaddis, Roxanne Rogers
A bluesy lyrical romance of two ugly-ducklings who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge and after a brief and awkward courtship, live together with the usual problems of money and work, take flight to an illusory freedom on the road, and dances inexorably to a drab doom.
Slow Moves
Sure Fire
Jon Jost
Tom Blair, Kristi Hager
Set in the quasi-Biblical splendor of the Mormon Dixie of central Utah, Sure Fire follows the trajectory of an American archetype, the small town entrepreneur seized by visions of fortune. Wes, eager to sell out the local grandeur to the wealthy hordes of Southern California, wheels and deals in real-estate, but more fundamentally he hones in directly to the get-rich-quick schemes for which America is famed. Sweeping up family and friends into his monomania, Wes' zealotry leads inevitably to tragedy.
Sure Fire
Parable
Jon Jost
After being thrown out of his house, a cowboy hits the road in a senseless wave of robbery, murder and rape. On a bucolic farm a seemingly retarded woman is kept on a rope by a mute farmer. Soon, the cowboy shows up. "Parable" is a radical reflection on the George W. Bush years, where the populace has become zombie-like.
Parable
Coming to Terms
Jon Jost
James Benning, Ryan Harper Gray
One day, father makes a shocking decision in a family gathering. The family disagrees with it and against him in the very beginning. However, they make up their mind to support him at the end. A portrait of family disorganization casting the master of experimental film, James Benning.
Coming to Terms
Far from Afghanistan
Travis Wilkerson, Soon-Mi Yoo
Taking inspiration from the collaborative 1967 militant anthology film Far from Vietnam, five of the boldest and most prominent American militant filmmakers unite to create this searing (and seething) omnibus work, employing a variety of approaches to reveal the hidden costs of the United States' (and Canada's) most expensive and longest-running war. (TIFF)
Far from Afghanistan
