First Nations, First Features

MOMA, May 12-23

For filmmakers from societies in transition, there are two paths. The first, laid out in the tenets of realism and best expressed by filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, is to see their films as instructional tools for the modern world. The other, seen in films like Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) and Jumalan morsian (A Bride of the Seventh Heaven), both screening as part of MOMA's First Nations, First Features series of indigenous films, is to embrace the past, adapting traditional stories and models of storytelling for a new medium.

Jumalan morsian, directed by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio, is set amidst the tundra of northwest Siberia, home to the indigenous Nenet people. In it, a blind young girl is kept entertained by an old woman's tale of her engagement to the god Num-a commitment that made for a harsh, lonely life. Jumalan morsian creeps along at the pace of the spoken word, and its rhythms are far better suited to the storyteller, letting each word sink in, than the filmmaker. Directors like Kiarostami and Hou also make use of purposefully slow pacing, but their films possess a resonance and richness that Jumalan lacks. Nonetheless, Jumalan fulfills some of the anthropological possibility of the cinematic image, providing us with a look at a world impossibly different from our own.

Rachel Perkins' Radiance takes place in a far more familiar locale: that of the dysfunctional family. A sly comedy that edges toward a finale humming with tragic resonance, Perkins' film, set over the course of a single day, examines the reunion of three estranged sisters, returned to their hometown upon the death of their mother. Radiance studies the conflicted legacy left to each of them as aboriginal Australians, but is more interested in revealing how each of the three women, so thoroughly different from the outside, endure the daily struggle of overcoming their difficult upbringing. Radiance tips over the edge into outright melodrama, its heightened, literally operatic emoting out of place in what had begun as a more intimate family drama. What's more, its carefully crafted reversals seem a bit too schematic and neat.

For schedule information, see firstnationsfirstfeatures.org, or call 212-514-3737.