Other visions Three looks behind the scenes BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Film festivals build excitement around the features and documentaries that are competing for prizes, but they also build a buzz around films in other categories. This year’s Newport International Film Festival has new Wallace and Gromit films among the children’s shorts, two films from Spalding Gray in the Rhode Island Spotlight, three Swedish films in their own sub-group, plus a musical "sidebar" and a political "sidebar."

Among the three films in the political sidebar is one titled Imaginary Witness that documents the mindset of Hollywood executives toward representations of the Holocaust on film. The musical sidebar has three full-length films — including Dig!, which gets to the heart of a complex rivalry between two musicians and their bands — and a program of shorts, one of which is Obstinato: Making "Music for Two," which follows banjoist Béla Fleck and bassist Edgar Meyer on a short tour and as they rehearse a new composition. Thus, all three films that I previewed have a behind-the-scenes perspective to them, be it filmmaking or musicmaking.

IMAGINARY WITNESS

Thursday, June 10 at 1 p.m. and Saturday, June 12 at 5 p.m. at the Opera House

Directed by Daniel Anker, with narration by Gene Hackman and interviews with luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Sidney Lumet, and Rod Steiger, this film sets forth a historical overview of the ways in which Hollywood has dealt with the Holocaust, in movies and on TV, over the past 60 years. It moves chronologically from The Black Legion (1937) through Schindler’s List (1993), but it establishes Hollywood’s attitude from the outset with the statistic that Germany accounted for 10 percent of the US film business in the 1930s, so the movie moguls were loathe to offend such a customer. When the Nazis demanded that Jewish Hollywood studio officials in Germany be fired, they were, even though many of the studio executives in the States were themselves Jewish.

Anti-Semitism in the US was a strong current, so Warner Bros.’ Black Legion was considered a brave statement, with its scenes of KKK-hooded types hauling off upstanding Jewish citizens. Warner Bros. also hastened to make Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), after a domestic Nazi spy ring was uncovered in New York. But it was MGM’s The Mortal Storm (1940) that brought down the ire of both Joseph Kennedy and, reputedly, Goebbels himself, who put in a call to Mr. Mayer.

Thus, it’s no surprise that it was from outside the Hollywood circle that the first overt criticism of Nazi Germany came in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Even after the US entered the war against Germany in ’41, most of the war films dealt with the conflict in the Pacific. It wasn’t until the large-screen release in ’61 of Judgment at Nuremberg that American filmgoers confronted graphic images of the concentration camps. And then, in 1965, Lumet directed The Pawnbroker, with Steiger in the title role, and that character’s attempts to cope with his repressed memories of the camps placed the issue squarely before viewers.

Imaginary Witness also has extensive clips from Sophie’s Choice (’82), War and Remembrance (’88), and Schindler’s List, plus reactions to these films from critics who didn’t want the Holocaust trivialized in any way through the lens of the entertainment industry. Yet, as the commentators point out, these films may one day be the only memory left of the Holocaust, and it’s vital to keep that memory alive.

DIG!

Wednesday, June 9 at 7 p.m. and Sunday,June 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Opera House

It’s hard to explain what makes this film, this year’s Best Documentary winner at Sundance, so engaging. Is it the seven years that director/producer Ondi Timoner spent with the two bands in the film? The sheer volume of video — 1500 hours — that he cut down to 110 minutes? The seemingly effortless way he lets the story be told, as we watch Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, self-destruct and bring his band down with him while Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols, keeps his band together and leads them to success?

This sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing portrait of two underground rock bands is structured in a traditional way, with interviews of band members and hangers-on, of band promoters and album producers and, in a telling sequence, of Newcombe’s mother and father. But it never lags. Timoner maintains a great narrative suspense, as the viewer, right along with most of the characters/subjects in the film, keeps hoping that Newcombe will somehow either a) stop doing heavy drugs long enough to get his act together, literally, or b) find a way through the morass of his paranoias so that his music can be heard.

This is never a one-note movie, however. Even though Taylor is the narrator and even though members of the BJM band point out Newcombe’s flaws, there are plenty of testimonies to Anton’s genius as a musician and his energy in putting together albums. His promoter and his record producer have such high hopes for him that his oft-proclaimed credo of not selling out just doesn’t wash. Timoner is skillful at leaving the whole truth about the bands, and especially about Newcombe himself, up in the air. Maybe that’s what makes this film so hard to shake when it’s over. That and BJM member Joel Gion’s goofy grin.

OBSTINATO: MAKING "MUSIC FOR TWO"

Thursday, June 10 at 8:30 p.m. at the Jane Pickens

Directed by banjoist Béla Fleck’s brother Sascha Paladino, this film packs its 40 minutes with plenty of music from the 2001 tour that Fleck made with renowned double-bassist Edgar Meyer and lots of eaves-dropping on conversations between the two of them, particularly as they rehearse Canon, a new piece by Meyer. Paladino had total access to these musicians, as they pick apart their duo performances during intermission, as they tell stories on the tour bus, and as they practice, in the wee hours of the morning, the complicated (15/8 time) four-minute Canon.

Paladino has set up zoom lenses below and above both Fleck’s and Meyer’s fingers on the frets of their instruments, and these are fascinating angles from which to see their amazing technique: Fleck’s thumb comes over the top to match up with his fingers for a quick plucked chord or note; Meyer slides arpeggios of notes up and down the neck of his bass; Fleck pulls and pushes strings for vibrato. There are also very effective close-ups of their faces, as their lips purse or hum, their eyes squint, and their cheek muscles tighten with the effort of making this incredible mix of classical, jazz, and newgrass music happen. On the Bach pieces, Fleck’s banjo sounds like a harpsichord; on some of his own compositions, a bit of that characteristic banjo rattle rumbles through. But most often what you hear is crystalline: sitar-like, sometimes mandolin-like, not your usual banjo. Nor is Meyer’s bass, which can approach the lush vocal quality of a cello or even a viola — this MacArthur Fellow was described in The New Yorker as "the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument."

Paladino pays homage to the genius of these two, but he also tells a good story. He lets you get to know them in the moments when they’re intent on the music and in the moments when they’re floundering to explain why certain passages aren’t working for them. He gives us Béla’s humorous side (Paladino weaves in four banjo jokes) and his attempts to remain even-tempered through the fatigue of the road tour. And he shows us Meyer’s patience, his unflagging creative drive, and his efforts to stay calm in the face of the duo’s self-imposed deadline to get Canon right. (Note: Fleck and Meyer will present a live performance after the screening of Obstinato.)