In 2012 two events just shy of five months apart illuminated the seemingly random and reasonless violence endemic in America. On July 20, James Eagan Holmes walked into a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during the opening night of “The Dark Knight Rises” and opened fire on the audience. On December 14, Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot 20 children between the ages of six and seven years old, along with six adults.Four years later, both tragedies are represented in films that are screening at BAMcinemaFest, which opens on June 15. “Dark Night,” directed by Tim Sutton (“Memphis”), tells a fictional story inspired, albeit obliquely, by the Aurora incident: Six strangers, typical suburban teenagers obsessed with video games and selfies and susceptible to the allure of violence, are followed through a single day; the implication is that anyone can be the person who walks through the theater doors at midnight. Sutton’s film is less concerned with the act itself than with finding its sources buried in the fabric of our everyday lives. It’s an almost sympathetic portrait, less diagnosis than rumination, and is better for it, though still troubling. Less divided in its viewpoint is “Newtown,” a documentary that, with the exception of some brief interludes and a few minutes at the opening of the film, also looks beyond the violent event. Directed by Kim A. Snyder, the film focuses on the tragedy’s aftermath, following a group of the families who lost children in the school shooting. Many of them continue to suffer; some are able to turn their grief into activism, but others find it difficult to move forward. Violence alters time: The future often looks like the past, played back again and again through mourning.Both filmmakers take care to circle around images of violence, and neither ever mentions the perpetrator’s name. In this, they are taking an ethical stance that “Kate Plays Christine,” directed by Robert Greene, interrogates. Greene’s film purports to document the actor Kate Lyn Sheil’s search for information about Christine Chubbuck — the Florida newscaster who shot herself live on television in 1974 — in preparation for a role. The tape of Chubbuck’s suicide remains unseen, for what would seem to be obvious reasons, and Greene’s film begins to examine the motives behind its own creation. Why are we attracted to moments like this? Is it essential for Sheil’s preparation, her search for truth about the character she is playing, to see the footage? The press that already surrounds “Kate Plays Christine,” which premiered at Sundance (next to a fictional film titled “Christine,” directed by Antonio Campos, about the same incident), has been obsessed with finding the tape, which is a little bizarre but perhaps proves that the film is asking the right questions.Andrew Neel’s “Goat,” based on Brad Land’s memoir of the same name, is again concerned with violence, although of a different kind and in a much different way. The story of two brothers who become involved in the hazardous world of college fraternities, it is constructed as a cautionary tale. Brad (Ben Schnetzer), before going off to college, is robbed and beaten in the woods after leaving a party. This incident later leads to his joining the fraternity of which his brother Brett (Nick Jonas) is already a member, which he sees as a way to rebuild his masculinity. He soon finds, however, that the frat members are no different from the people who triggered his longing to join them. Neel’s film attempts to provoke a visceral reaction in the audience with brutal scenes of out-of-control hazing. But in the end, all it really has to say is that masculinity is a problem. That is not enough to make an engaging film, despite strong performances and a sleek visual style that roams around the codes of realism.More interesting are the works that filter violence through a genre lens. Anna Biller’s fantastically bizarre and idiosyncratic “The Love Witch,” one of the best films at the festival, tells the story of Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a witch who, after moving into a new home, begins using “love spells” in her search for the perfect man. The problem is the men keep dying. At once hilarious and grotesque, with awe-inspiring costume and set designs that hark back to such low-budget curiosities as Hammer horror movies and the erotic cinema of Radley Metzger, Biller’s vision is less nostalgic throwback than genre-recalibration, putting a woman in a position of power as a perpetrator of violence against men. It’s also one of the most visually inventive films in the festival and the only one screening in 35mm.Joel Potrykus’s “The Alchemist Cookbook” couldn’t be more different from Biller’s work in style and tone (not to mention the fact that “Alchemist” doesn’t feature a single woman). The two are connected, however, in presenting violence through the lens of genre. Where “The Love Witch” is upfront about its affiliations, “Alchemist” is more fluid, at least at first. Potrykus’s film is a singular look at a man living alone in a trailer in the woods. Why he’s there is unclear: He appears to be disturbed, with a brace on his leg that is never explained, and spends his days mixing chemicals in his kitchen and talking to his cat. He could be conjuring, or fighting off, an approaching demonic force. The film plays with that mystery in fascinating ways before diving into full-on psychological horror with moments of twisted comedy. “The Alchemist Cookbook” is aggressive and sometimes hard to watch. But it is one of the more interesting in the festival in the way it embraces, while also mocking, some of the clichés of the horror genre.In all the films described so far, violence is a direct presence in the lives of the characters or subjects. In “Kiki,” a documentary by Sara Jordenö, it remains in the background, although still important. The film is about the Harlem Kiki Ball scene, part of the larger ballroom scene occupied predominately by young members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Different groups, known as “houses,” compete against one another as teams but also serve as community organizations and provide support systems. Dancing offers members an escape from the violence and turmoil they face in their lives. As one participant puts it, “In the ballroom we can be anything we want to be.”Violence hangs over “Streetwise,” Martin Bell’s 1985 documentary about the photo series in which his wife, Mary Ellen Mark chronicled the life of kids growing up on the streets of Seattle; it is screening at the festival in a restored version alongside Bell’s follow-up, “Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell.” The children in the 1985 film, many of them from broken homes, have been cast into the darkness against their will and do whatever is necessary to survive. They are victims of circumstances they can’t control. But they persist, against all odds, in favor of life.
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