The 10-DVD collection “Indiepix Mix 10, Volume 2” is an anthology of award-winning independently released films from the 21st century. They run the gamut from revealing looks inside other societies (Romania’s So Bright is the View) through contemporary European art house (Austria’s Soldate Jeannette), quirky American romantic comedy (Satellite) and provocative documentaries on the downside of the Internet (We Live in Public) and the ongoing casualties of landmines (Disarmed). Among the most interesting titles are:
Bhopali
In 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, leaked poison gas. Hundreds of thousands of residents ran into the streets to escape the pungent fumes. As many as 20,000 eventually died; the toxins that continue to leach into the ground are still causing sickness and severe birth defects. Director Van Maximilian Carlson interviews angry survivors (who received only a pittance in compensation) and activists who point to the unchecked power of transnational corporations.
Road to the Big Leagues
The Dominican Republic is the home of more major league baseball players than any country in the world—except for the United States. Director Jared Goodman ventures into the Caribbean island nation’s poor, tin-roofed neighborhoods where young boys learn to play the game on hard-clay fields, batting any object at hand with sticks. With Dominican baseball stars as their heroes, the boys invest the game with hopes for the future and better lives for their families.
That Girl in Yellow Boots
Ruth (Kalki Koechlin) is an Anglo Indian woman seeking her long-lost father in India but finding trouble instead. Filming with handheld high-definition cameras, director Anurag Kashyap captures the heat and perspiration, the bribery and bureaucracy—the crowded sense of place. Working illegally as a masseuse, Ruth slips easily into the sex trade amid the isolation and anxiety. Drugs and predatory men are everywhere in the poignant journey of a stranger in a strange land.
