Does Damjan Kozole’s “Slovenian Girl” bring anything new to the idea of an amoral 20-ish prostitute as a national everywoman? Not really. Any political content seems limited at best to the frequent sight of EU official caravans zipping through the Ljubljana streets. The anonymous foreign men protagonist Aleksandra services don’t serve as even half-hearted attempts at metaphor. The stalker ex-boyfriend and the vicious pimps offer nothing more than familiarity.

Ironically, the film remains compelling thanks to Nina Ivanisin’s fascinating performance as Aleksandra. Sometimes her face matches the thickest security wall for impenetrability. Yet other times that air of unfeeling lifts to reveal the vulnerable and sensitive girl Aleksandra’s father Edo loves. Accurately guessing the titular character’s feelings becomes a hypnotic game.

The film’s plot may evoke Golden Age of Hollywood films about other fallen women. But unlike those earlier films, sexual activity is more than implication and the denouement of Kozole’s film would have earned the opprobrium of the Hays Office’s censors.



Speaking of censorship, Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi’s documentary “Cleanflix” shows the change of century has not removed the desire to banish sex and violence from films. Instead, that desire can now be realized without movie studio intervention thanks to new video and computer technologies.

James and Ligairi trace the rise of the bootleg censored video industry from its roots in a Mormon elder’s declaration regarding the eee-vil soul-sucking properties of commercial films on home video. But the desire to see “Titanic” without having to suffer through the sights of Kate Winslet’s unclothed body wound up sparking the bowdlerized filmmaking industry.

The documentarians interview both the sellers of “purified” films and the people who eagerly watch them. It proves hard at times to stomach the self-delusion with which these fans of redacted filmmaking claim the censorship they’ve accepted doesn’t harm a film’s integrity. Yet removing the mention of a “Big Lebowski” character’s sexual appetite reduces her character to an enigmatically amusing cipher.

Inciting the average cinephile’s antagonism was surely not James and Ligairi’s goal. Yet the filmmakers fail to make palatable the type of mentality that implicitly equates “Brokeback Mountain” with the average Colt Studios production. Daniel Thompson’s saga does provide mildly entertaining hypocritical venality. But Thompson only becomes a sympathetic personality courtesy of a far too late “psychiatric examination.”

These comments should not be construed to mean Hollywood and the Directors Guild of America necessarily comes off as paragons of integrity. Official condemnations of the censored video companies’ tampering with the directors’ artistic vision may be made. Yet their delay in bringing the legaI hammers down on the bootleggers raise suspicions fear of losing moviegoer dollars played a bigger role in determining the timing of their legal actions.

“Cleanflix” is not completely without merit. Professor Phil Gordon gets off some wonderful zingers. The film does raise some disturbing questions regarding artistic vision’s future in a world where people can block their exposure to that vision. But its portraits of voluntarily unreflective lives ultimately leave one cold.



Technology and its attendant societal changes provide the heart of Paul Crowder’s entertaining if flawed documentary “The Real Revolutionaries.” The film traces how Silicon Valley came to be, from the brain trust assembled by William Shockley through the founding of Intel and concludes by considering the permanent impact on our world brought by the Valley’s major technological discoveries.

For the lay viewer, enough animated information is provided to give a general working idea of the principles behind the microchip and the integrated circuit. That relief for the technologically uneasy gets counterbalanced, though, by the sometimes dizzying pace at which the film bombards the viewer with dramatic readings, interviews, and bits of archival footage.

The title of the film derives from its assertion that the quiet discoveries leading to our modern computerized world had a greater long term impact on humanity than that of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Some footage is devoted to pointing out such historical ironies as the great Washington, D.C. anti-war rally occurring at the same time Moore’s Law was first proposed.

Yet the film’s assertions feel simplistic. Aside from making a discovery, Fairchild Semiconductor’s problems came from that period’s commercial markets’ failure to conceive of commercial applicatons for its inventions. By contrast, such government efforts as COINTELPRO did wonders for retarding the political growth of leftist movements in America. More importantly, the political conflicts of the 1960s involved such other subjects as minority liberation and growing ecological awareness. Still, the idea of revolution as an ever forward path which doesn’t result in societal backtracking does make Crowder’s film worth seeing.

It should be noted Intel is a major Cinequest sponsor. “The Real Revolutionaries”’ praise for Intel may be limited to the company’s informal work atmosphere and its pioneering employee stock options. But then, the film’s criticism never goes anywhere near “Secrets of Silicon Valley” territory.



Technical problems prompt in fairness only brief notes on the following two films.

The somewhat diverting improvised dramatic comedy “Bummer Summer” follows two brothers’ frequently disappointing summer. Such familiar indie film fodder as breakups and miscommunication are on full display. Its buildup to a finale is less exciting than air escaping from a tire. But these defects are counterbalanced by several factors. Weintraub via cinematographer Nandan Rao has a good eye for capturing a character’s quiet psychologically telling moment. Mackinley Robinson’s naïve younger brother plays well off Julia Mc Alee’s feline turn as the older brother’s currently ex-girlfriend. Weintraub makes what looks like a promising debut.

“Buried Prayers” springs from a great story about Warsaw ghetto survivors held at Maidanek death camp covertly burying their personal valuables to keep them out of their persecutors’ hands. Director Steven Meyer documents the context of that story and the efforts to discover its truth. He also follows attempts to provide a little emotional closure for some Maidanek survivors. However, Meyer’s methodical presentation seems to cut anger and self-satisfaction out just when the cathartic Maidanek dig occurs.