Cabaretera, a sub-genre from the Epoca de Oro (the golden epoch of Mexican filmmaking, 1930s—1950s), combines film noir with melodrama and musical numbers. Often set in cabarets (brothels), these films talk about the plight of the prostitute who – not without their pride and dignity – are forced to being the breadwinner in a poverty-stricken community.

 

El lugar sin límites harks back to those days. We follow the plight of La Manuela, a transvestite* who together with daughter La Japonesita works as a fichera (a dancehall performer) in the brothel run by Madame La Japonesa, La Japonesita's mother.

 

The return of Pancho, a hyper-macho trucker, disrupts the family regime. The trucker's attraction to the #flamenco dancing fichera is at odds with his machismo. Him being outed as a maricón (a Mexican slur for homosexual) would be the end of his world.

 

El lugar remains a groundbreaking film, not only in how it handles taboos like #gender roles and trans- and homosexuality, but also because it highlights how (self) destructive #machismo is in Mexican society.

 

Sergio de la Mora's excellently researched EL LUGAR SIN LÍMITES: Ripstein in Review delves much deeper than this little writeup here. Do read it (spoilers ahead).

 

*Roberto Cobo's La Manuela is transsexual. The term “transvestite” is what's used in the film and typical for its time.

After her husband is gone, Alice (Ellen Burstyn) sells her stuff and the house, picks up her son Tommy (Alfred Lutter III) and embarks on fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a singer just like Alice Faye.

Tommy: Life is short.

Alice: Yeah, well, so are you.

There's something really peculiarly narrow-minded about the Dutch called “verzuiling”, “pillarisation”; society is split into vertical columns and depending on your background you join certain circles. You play soccer, join a trade union, or listen to the radio in a Catholic, Protestant, or social-democratic context. Deeply socialist, (for you American-styled liberals rather extremely) leftist, and seasoned with a generous dash of subversive underground ánd highbrow culture, Dutch radio and TV broadcaster VPRO belongs to the latter.

 

When VPRO radiomaker Bram van Splunteren came across Beastie Boys' rock/rap crossover 12” She's On It (from the 1985 #HipHop movie Krush Groove), he knew he was onto something and he would play the Beasties and other rappers on his De Wilde Wereld alongside Oingo Boingo and The Fall.

“Some people don't know rock 'n' roll came out the same way rap came out. People would say: No, it will never last.”

– Schoolly D

Despite the VPRO boasting about their leftie open-mindedness, Van Splunteren's embrace of such lowbrow, poor people culture (not the right kind of frugal-by-choice types but the low-cultured tracksuit wearing ones) didn't sit well with the broadcaster. Minorities boasting about their accomplishments, their cars, girls, gold? That's got no place in this social-democratic-Lutheran column!

 

Yet time moved on and Van Splunteren was given a budget to make a TV program about that weird talking-over-drum-machines music. With a small crew that included Belgian comedian/musician Marcel Vanthilt – who would sporadicly rap with his oddball New Beat group Arbeid Adelt! – Van Splunteren explored the music from the then-still predominantly Black neighbourhoods in the Big Town: the Bronx, Harlem, Queens, while Vanthilt interviews everyone available; from a boasting LL Cool J and his grannie to a very green Biz Markie and old old old skoolers The Last Poets.

 

Over time, this obscure 1986 Dutch TV documentary Big Fun in the Big Town has become an essential snapshot of hip hop culture. It captures an optimism and fire elemental to survive Reagan's America and highlights the urge to continue the Black struggle that the Panthers and others set in motion.

 

Happy birthday, hip hop. To many more powerful years to come.

Drak [“dragon” or “devil”] returns to his village. No one understands why he came back, or where he has been. The villagers postulate smugglers and there's other drunk nefarious thoughts, but for sure they know that with the potter, the draught returned. In an unspoken ritual sung in old tongues, the grey women summon the rain. The forest, dry as tinder, has taken the cattle, all there is. Drak knows where the animals went and a deal is struck.

“Don't you recognise me?”

– Drak

Drak sa vracia speaks in mere whispers and smoky greys. The main characters – the #fire, smoke, pottery, and composer Ilja Zeljenka's often silent motif – weave their wordless presence throughout the ancient landscape; that same landscape that carved itself into the locals' being.

Quintessential Americana. Filmed in Canada.

“The sun looks ghostly when there's a mist on a river and everything's quiet. I never knowed it before.”

– Linda