Transgender Comedy “Tangerine” Succeeds Because of Talent

American indie filmmaker Sean S. Baker’s new movie Tangerine tells the story of a transgender prostitute called Sin-Dee Rella (Kiki Kitana Rodriguez) who having just been released after serving a month stint in prison for occupational misdemeanours, partners with fellow transgender colleague Alexandra (Mya Taylor) to track down her boyfriend-cum-pimp, Chester (James Ransone). It transpires that Chester has not only been unfaithful but has committed the cardinal sin of cheating on Sin-Dee with a biological female, thus invoking varied elements of thematic, dramatic and comedic gender issues that play  out over the film’s 87 minute running time.

Tangerine’s trailer demonstrates that the movie is high on vérité energy and style, presenting a cinematically charged day-in-the-life dramatisation of Los Angeles’ sex industry, holding at its centre performances of two transgender actors who are both friends in reality and whose familiarity with the  world depicted allowed them to collaborate on the plot. Tangerine is a film cultivating all sorts of praise and attention, meaning that this Sundance breakout hit may become one of summer’s niche surprises.

But perhaps Tangerine’s biggest surprise stems from the fact that the entire thing was shot on three iPhone 5s phones. That’s right, what looks like a professional and slick production was filmed on something many carry around in their back pocket, albeit the camera lens was enhanced with affordable anamorphic adapters that heightened its intimate look while also embellishing it with a widescreen cinematic aspect ratio. It’s a case of accessible technology allowing independent filmmakers to tell their stories without being encumbered by costly crews.

Tangerine has been picked up by Magnolia Pictures who will give the film a proper theatrical roll out in July, with bespoke advertising to boot. A generation ago Tangerine will have been an indie feature shot on cumbersome super 16mm film stock with much bigger cameras, but in today’s age was made by fewer personnel and looks way slicker. However, it seems baffling why there aren’t many more breakthrough indie films of this nature gaining comparable attention when access to digital filmmaking technology has never been better.

Had Tangerine come out in the early ‘90s when the new wave of American independent cinema was all the rage, it probably will have attracted similarly good reviews principally because of its quality. The issue is not with the difficulty of getting films made, but more to do with a lack of original stories and fresh vision framing such narratives. Director Sean S. Baker had the talent and ambition to ensure his movie got made, forcing one to assume that determined personalities such as his will have got their material produced regardless of what era they were realised in.

It can be argued, therefore, that getting films made is not strictly a matter of money, technology or access, but of talent. Woody Allen’s films aren’t especially expensive to produce and get made pretty quickly, which raises the question of why there aren’t more storytellers like him flourishing in this age of filmmaker-friendly conditions?

One supposes the matter may be to do with what kind of movies people want to make and how they want to get them out there. The blurring parameters twixt theatrical exhibition and home cinema viewing are changing in unforeseen ways. It is now reasonably inexpensive to replicate the big screen experience in one’s home, while high definition streaming accessibility means that bona fide moviemakers and film stars are shifting their attention to platforms hitherto viewed as inferior to cinema. As the multiplexes devote attention to cripplingly expensive Hollywood blockbusters and art house cinemas attempt to offset losses by scheduling more screenings of one-off Broadway shows, leftfield and low-budget cinema has had to eschew traditional avenues of presentation in favour of emerging formats. Things are shifting from collectivism and ownership to access and convenience.

The funny thing is that American cinema has changed in unfavourable and depressing ways, especially Hollywood studio productions. Studios have mostly shuttered their indie-skewing divisions as they are no longer economically viable, choosing instead to pick up such films via distribution deals on completion if they’re commercially attractive because of unexpected quality or standout star performances. Big producers such as Brian Grazer (Apollo 13) who had a long time deal with Universal Pictures and Joel Silver (The Matrix) who was expensively housed at Warner Bros. have been tossed out after decades of service, now forced to independently hustle for opportunities in a tough film financing market. They have become surplus to requirement as Hollywood focuses on building in-house franchises rather than hire expensive producers to develop new material that the studio doesn’t have total control over. American cinema isn’t what it was and most likely will never return to what it used to be.

This makes the arrival of Tangerine all the more exciting. Something that was created using the latest everyday technology will be released through traditional and established models of distribution. The truth is that if your project is genuinely worthy and your talents are recognisably brilliant, the films you make will always find their way to audiences.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Mbongwana Star’s (feat. Konono No.1) “Malukayi”

Listening to Mbongwana Star’s excellent track Malukayi reminds one that perhaps in the future a popular culture sea change will not be the preserve of America or Europe. Cultural trends and changes are happening in the most unlikely of places, and some it is getting a nominal but important degree of attention in primary media markets like Britain. As the economies, educational prosperity and aspirations improve elsewhere and stagnate everywhere else, perhaps there’s reason to think things like pop music in the next thirty years will sound unlike anything we can possibly conceive at present.

The above statement is absolute suspicion, but Malukayi is actually a song that was played on alternative UK radio. That means station programmers deemed it somewhat relevant and accessible enough for inclusion. It’s a small step but perhaps it’s also a significant move. Then again, it may be nothing more than a welcome hipster blip.

Hailing from Congo’s capital city Kinshasa, Mbongwana Star has created a song utilising traditional Congolese chanting and distorted mbria instrumentation, but warping it enough to prove truly leftfield and new-wave, especially in its post-punk guitar work. The track was produced by Parisian sound engineer Doctor L, which makes this proper original fusion music.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Desaparecidos’ “City on the Hill”

It seems that worthwhile American rock bands have a habit of exploding out the gates with powerhouse records, gaining appropriate appraisal but perhaps not enough actual instant sales, members going off and participating in other outfits, only to then reunite years later to revel in their delayed fandom by recording new material. At the Drive-In did it, American Football are kind of doing it, and now Desaparecidos have definitely done it.

The aptly named Desaparecidos (Spanish for ‘disappeared ones’) are releasing their first album since 2002, and City on the Hill preserves the punk-rock spirit of the early noughties everyone loved about them. The music video strictly pokes fun at the state of US news media during the ‘80s, but my judicious British eyes clocked the inclusion of footage from BBC News at Six circa early 1990: a careless oversight, no doubt.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Public Service Broadcast’s “Go!”

The fact that Public Service Broadcast’s album The Race for Space almost cracked the UK Top Ten last month speaks volumes about Britain’s appetite for experimental alternative music.

A concept piece that channels the story of the American and Soviet space race from 1957-1972, each track relives a major cosmic event, utilising actual voice recordings of communications between astronauts, politicians and space centre personnel, embellishing it with the band’s own musical talents.

Classic British electronic music collective The Orb were doing stuff like this on their seminal 1991 album The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, and actually doing it in a way cooler and less earnest manner than PSB. However, The Orb’s music primarily appealed to those raving in bucolic fields while tripping on acid, whereas a tune like Go! will comfortably play to enthusiastic school kids visiting science museums.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Oscar’s “Daffodil Days”

With a song that’s got a pansy title like Daffodil Days, and armed with a poncy degree in Fine Arts from Central St. Martin's in London, there is every reason to roll one’s eyes at 23-year-old Oscar Scheller.

And then there’s this throwback music video that plays like some 1980s anti-Thatcherite polemic, in which young actors playing underclass British kids put guns to their heads, have epileptic seizures, watch their emaciated junkie mum shag, and then ineptly dance around like misfits. It’s all done with a stylish artistic sheen, which means that Scheller has called in a few favours from his elite art school alumni, who no doubt learnt all they know about UK privation from watching Ken Loach films they borrowed from the university’s well resourced media library.

Being signed to Wichita Recordings, it means that Scheller has a label backing him in ways that’ll get the kid noticed. (It probably also explains why this music video was shot using professional cameras and not on some mate’s mobile phone.) It also positions Scheller as an indie pop artist who may work for a more commercial audience seeking alternative music that remains accessibly melody-driven.

We need more white guys with guitars in Britain, but they’ve got to venture down un-treaded ground rather than plainly dishing up half-decent songs that sound too familiar. If Scheller was a black artist doing this song then that will at least prove different (black female will be even better), but as it is Daffodil Days is too routine to be anything more than middling.

Hiplife Music is Breaking Out Thanks to Ata Kak’s “Obaa Sima”

The digital revolution has been fantastic at providing a platform for niche interests to snowball into global events.

Take for instance Brian Shimkovitz’s little known blog The Hiplife Complex. Hiplife began ten years ago as a forum for Shimkovitz to feature recordings he had accumulated while travelling in Africa. His most beguiling find was perhaps an old cassette called Obaa Sima by a Ghanaian rapper named Ata Kak. Ata Kak’s music registered with Shimkovitz because it was unlike anything he’d heard before, yet distinctly shared structural styles of US rap music of the ‘90s. Ata Kak’s music is a fusion of traditional Ghanaian highlife sounds meshed with North American go-go influences, in turn, becoming what is now referred to as hiplife.

Shimkovitz’s bedroom project took on a new life once he returned home to New York City and realised that The Hiplife Complex was ready to become something even greater. The blog had enough avid followers demanding high quality reissues of the low bitrate cassette recordings Shimkovitz was uploading. Thus Shimkovitz began Awesome Tapes From Africa, a label that has evolved from its blogging origins into a proper distributor of high quality world music.

After a global effort, Shimkovitz strangely enough tracked Ata Kak down in Toronto, his home for the last twenty-five years. His real name being Yaw Atta-Owusu, Ata Kak had been playing in highlife bands in Germany before relocating to Canada.

Shimkovitz’s labour of love paid off duly as Ata Kak, surprised by the cult following his record courted, agreed to provide the DAT mixes so that the newly appointed mastering engineer, Jessica Thompson, could upgrade battered old recordings without compromising Obaa Sima’s rough and raw edges that aficionados desperately wanted preserved.

Hiplife has, in a way, gone seriously global in 2015 as tracks from Obaa Sima are even being played on some commercial British radio stations. What started as an esoteric music culture has, for a moment, gone international. It seems fairly obvious why that is because so many of Ata Kak’s tracks could easily find their place in the DJ set of a warehouse club in Chicago or played at a hipster underground event in London. Ata Kak’s music is swinging worldwide because it’s enormously cool yet also atypical. In short, it’s just great music.

A thoroughly well written and detailed article on Brian Shimkovitz’s pursuit of Ata Kak can be found at FACT, as well a detailed account of Jessica Thompson’s meticulous re-mastering of Obaa Sima.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Jamie xx’s “Gosh”

The late great British artist Derek Jarman’s last film was Blue; a conceptual piece released four months before his death in 1993 from complications caused by AIDS. He was pretty much blind by that stage and produced a feature constructed of an entirely blue coloured screen where the voices of his favourite performers narrated Jarman’s intimate thoughts and visions. It’s a powerful piece.

Jamie xx’s music video for Gosh reminds one of Jarman’s Blue for obvious reasons. In tact is Jamie xx’s signature sampled grime MC’ing and swooshing sawtooth basslines, but there’s ponderous momentum to the track that evolves into something unexpectedly beautiful, where synthesisers lift the piece to heavenly heights. Jamie xx’s adoration of early house music frames the structure of his output, building scant loops layered on top of each other because back then computers had massively limited processing and memory capabilities, thus making tracks like Gosh feel both a throwback and contemporary postmodern wonder. The intensely blue backdrop further focuses one’s attention to the many sonic flourishes on offer.

British rave culture, personally speaking, has always demanded thought and intelligence on the part of the listener. That means the truly great stuff requires multiple hearings to properly appreciate its dynamic brilliance. Gosh is no different.