Carnegie Mellon Film Festival goes Distinctly Dutch

Two "Distinctively Dutch" -- and diametrically different -- documentaries give deeper definition this weekend to the Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival's "Faces of Others" theme and to the powerful symbiosis of directors who are viscerally tied to their subjects.

"Position Among the Stars" is the third in a trilogy gorgeously photographed by Leonard Retel Helmrich, a Dutchman of Indonesian descent. Talk about symbiosis ... The relationship between Holland and Indonesia is every bit as symbiotic as that between England or France and their former African colonies -- and every bit as problematic.

A confession: I've never had a keen (read, "any") interest in Indonesia -- until now. This Sundance prizewinner fills in my (and your) ignorance gap with a wholly fascinating chronicle of the Sjamsuddin family -- in crisis -- as a microcosm of Indonesian life.

Bright young Tari wants to hang out with her gal pals, get a cell phone and check out the biker boys in Jakarta. Her indefatigable grandmother Rumidjah, on the other hand, insists she get her high school diploma and attend college, to better herself and the family. Bakti -- Tari's guardian uncle -- agrees with Grandma but is mostly concerned with training and gambling on his Siamese fighting fish.

The images are unforgettable: Granny rides backward on a motorbike-propelled railcar to get to a train station. An armless beggar uses his toes to send a text message. A dueling Christian preacher and Muslim mullah vie for the confused soul of a little boy. A cat plays with a rat's tail. People hide their TVs and PlayStations when the welfare worker comes to inspect. Granny pawns her house for Tari's student loan.

Director Helmrich's signature "single-shot" technique captures the struggle for advancement and clashing generational values, set against the country's economic and political tumult.

American "reality" television shows could learn a lot from this superior Indonesian variant. Forgive me for giving away one fab detail: Bakti's wife's final solution to his fish-gambling addiction: She fries them!

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"Mum" is the 20-minute minimal yang to the 111-minute maximal "Stars." It reminded me of my favorite Edgar Allan Poe quotation: "I became insane -- with intervals of horrible sanity."

The subject is Dutch director Adelheid Roosen's mother, a victim of Alzheimer's disease who talks incoherently -- with intervals of horrible coherence -- in a series of short vignettes at her nursing home. With her sister at an art table, Mum ends up eating the paint. With her sweet son-in-law, she examines his foot and they hilariously feed each other bon-bons. In a sudsy bathtub for two, her eldest daughter gently strokes and daubs her face with bubbles -- a superb reprise of which constitutes the film's ending.

Mum and her relatives are all clad in matching underwear/diapers -- a brilliant stroke lending enormous dignity to them all.

"... go nicely to sleep ... have I no grief? ... no pity? ... just ... have to be free ... I'm ready really ... voids, void ... do that in the dance where I am..." Her dementia is wrenching, riveting, tragic-comic, somehow life-affirming, and beautifully realized.

"Now that my mother has developed Alzheimer's disease, I don't see her dissolving, I see her appearing," says Ms. Roosen, "as an Alice in Wonderland, falling through time." Her "Mum" is an achievement of brilliant brevity.

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"Alps," by Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos, is the name of an enigmatic organization offering a highly customized service to relatives of the recently deceased: Its members play the roles of dearly departed daughter, son or lover to help the survivors deal with their loss. Nurse Rosa, in particular, takes her role-playing seriously. A little too seriously. It's an ironic exploration of the natural (and unnatural) human desire to find and play one's right part.

Director Lanthimos' much admired, equally dystopian "Dogtooth" (2009) was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. (It featured a cat getting cut in half by hedge clippers. And no...it didn't have 8½ more lives.) This "Alps" entry is less shocking but also less virtuosic. It keeps you guessing till the end -- and then you're still guessing.

(Presented in conjunction with The Hellenic Foundation of Western Pennsylvania.)

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"Joschka and Sir Fischer" is German director Pepe Danquart's homage to the colorful life and political career of Joschka Fischer, from his revolutionary youth in Germany's 1960s student movement and Green Party of the 1980s through his fiery leadership as Germany's Foreign Minister from 1998-2005.

Mr. Danquart is the gifted maker of an Oscar-winning short ("Black Rider" in 1994) and of the terrific doc "Workingman's Death" (2005). The strength of his "Joschka" is its integration of the sweeping backdrop of Germany's whole postwar history. Its weakness is TMI -- too much information, and 138-minute length -- for most non-German audiences to comfortably digest.

(Presented in conjunction with the European Union Center of Excellence and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany.)