Faith Of Our Fathers (98)

2/1/98

I suppose this film could be the danger of attending film festivals. As I mentioned in SWEET JANE, seeing a film without any pre-hype means you never know what to expect. I could not connect with this film on any level. It was shot in half grainy black and white and half color. The characters sometimes spoke broke character to speak to people on the street. The characters meant something to the main guy, a chimneysweep, but not to me. Here's what I do know. A chimney sweep moves to a low rent apartment in Los Angeles. He meets an ex-preacher, a landlord/artist, and a little girl. The preacher speaks in strange semi-biblical ways. The landlord creates art and poetry in his spare time and then walks around the streets asking non-actors what their impressions are. The little girl plays jacks in front of the building with no supervision. There is some sort of plot with a rich guy paying the chimney sweep to dress the girl up as the old fashion child sweepers who were outlawed centuries ago. There are images everywhere ranging from a 4th of July parade, to a quickie in a bar bathroom.

In conclusion, I have no idea what this film wanted to say, except that money is religion and no one is without sin, or something. Some of the images will stay with me, but it was a sort of endurance test. This was made worse by the fact that the director was sitting across the aisle from me so I couldn't leave and diss him.

Shown as part of Cinequest VIII, The San Jose Film Festival. Director Hamilton Sterling was on hand to answer questions, but I had to get out of there.

Charles ... Jeff Hawk
Nicholas Nickleby ... George Gelernter

Edited by
Cinematography by Cris Lombardi and Alessandro Zezza
Written and Directed by Hamilton Sterling

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