Courtesy of the Denver Film Festival
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Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Matt Campbell is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest – including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today he spotlights selections for November 11-13: An Evening With Mark Mothersbaugh, Lakota Nation vs. The United States and Godland.
An Evening With Mark Mothersbaugh
7 p.m. Friday, November 11
Denver Botanic Gardens
Mark Mothersbaugh has come a long way since Devo.
Mark Mothersbaugh first made his name in pop culture as a founder of the new-wave/punk-era band Devo. But since the mid-1980s, when he provided much of the soundtrack for the wonderfully absurd Saturday morning staple Pee-wee’s Playhouse, he’s been one of the busiest and most prolific composers in the film-and-television universe.
“He’s had such a storied career,” Matt Campbell says, “and he’s going to talk about all of it. We’re not going to focus on any one film. It’s going to be a general survey of his work. There’ll be clips from the films he’s worked on; I’m not sure if they’ve decided on all of them, but I’m sure there’ll be some Wes Anderson,” the idiosyncratic director with whom Mothersbaugh collaborated on Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenenbaums.
The chat, as Campbell sees it, “will be both for die-hard fans of Mark Mothersbaugh and people who’ve never heard of him – but who’ve definitely heard him.”
The following interview offers an introduction to Mothersbaugh’s world:
Lakota Nation vs. The United States
Directed by Jesse Short Bull, Laura Tomaselli
7:30 p.m. Saturday, November 12
1 p.m. Sunday, November 13
AMC House 2
An image from Lakota Nation vs. The United States.
Courtesy of the Denver Film Festival
“The title says it all,” Campbell notes of Lakota Nation. “It’s all about the history and the current-day struggle of the Lakota people and the initial genocide against the Native people of America by the U.S. government.”
The documentary covers a vast canvas, touching on “treaties that were made and broken and the forced movements of reservations. But in contemporary times, we also hear about their struggle to be recognized and to get back their land – particularly the Black Hills of South Dakota, which is their sacred land, the land of their ancestors.”
As for Mount Rushmore, Campbell says, “the film shows how it’s really a slap in the face of the Lakota people – creating this sculpture of presidents on the mountainside where their forefathers lived, and Trump suggesting that they should put him up there.”
Directors Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli are expected to be on hand for the screening, and Campbell is looking forward to “a really engrossing conversation.”
Check out the trailer here:
Godland
Directed by Hlynur Pálmason
3:45 p.m. Saturday, November 12
4 p.m. Sunday, November 13
AMC House 4
Brit Withey, Campbell’s predecessor as DFF artistic director, who died in a car crash circa 2019, is the namesake of the Brit Withey Artistic Director Fund, which honors the sort of films he loved even as it serves as a living memorial for his cinematic vision. This year, Campbell reveals, “Godland is the film that will receive that distinction. And it’s one of my favorite films in our entire program.”
The tale’s protagonist is “a young Danish priest in the nineteenth century who travels to Iceland to build a church,” Campbell says. “He’s also a photographer, and he goes around photographing the landscape and the people. But as the journey goes on, it becomes harder and harder for him. The land starts to break him down, and so do the people. There’s also a lot of history I wasn’t aware of between Denmark and Iceland” – once part of the Danish kingdom prior to declaring its independence in 1944 – “that plays a role, too.”
To Campbell, the result “has a There Will Be Blood vibe to it – struggling with the hardships of the time and place – and it’s shot with a kind of boxed-in aspect ratio that mimics the form of photography the priest is doing. It’s a visually impressive film that I think would really speak to Brit’s sensibilities. He loved Icelandic film.”
This is the trailer for Godland:
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