FROM RHETT: This sounds VERY interesting. I may have to check it out! Hey, it's FREE!---
The Ross will be screening Jon Jost's DV made HOMECOMING. See the Ross website, www.theross.org for information on the film.

Synopsis:
Set in Newport, Oregon, a small coastal town whose fishing fleet
has vanished, and survives on second-homes and tourism, HOMECOMING is rooted directly in the present realities of America. We are introduced to a normal family: Jeff (Keith Scales) and his wife Mattie (Kate Sannella), and son Chris (Ryan Harper Gray). Jeff runs a small real estate office and his
wife shares the work. Chris is an unemployed 26 year old slacker, living with a younger girlfriend, (Kat Eastman). Obliquely we learn of another son, in the service, “over there.” Mattie discreetly does a bit of drinking, Jeff hustles his business. Mattie fails to get some papers to the bank and Jeff’s company loses out on a $50,000 deal. Chris is dumped by his girlfriend and in counseling with a social-service therapist (Steve Taylor). We find out that Chris is Jeff’s step-son, and his own son Steve is the one in Iraq.

Steve’s homecoming is in a transfer tube. After the funeral
the family gathers by the ocean and the fissures within rip apart. Jeff and Chris have a confrontation that leaves Chris with a bloody nose on the ground.

Mattie drinks and ends on the floor herself as Jeff loses it.
Chris visits his therapist at home and ends up getting a blow-job. He stops by and sees his old girlfriend in an attempt to make up. She turns him down. Chris jumps of a bluff known locally as “Jump Off Joe’s”

HOMECOMING is not a “plot” film, but more a tone-poem; its
meanings arise from its broader ambience, its moods, its sense of time and place. It is meant as a metaphor for the larger family of America, which, at this time, is harshly divided, and unable to speak to itself meaningfully across that division. This film broaches this subject poetically, gently, through a
depiction of characters who are unable to articulate to each
other or to themselves the disquiet which curdles within them.

Production notes:

HOMECOMING was shot in May, 2004, in a process of improvisation
developed from a basic and clear concept, but without a linear plot or a conclusion known at the start of shooting. The actors were active participants in the development of their characters and of the ultimate “story.” Shooting and sound recording were done by the director, in what was essentially a one-person crew. The film was edited simultaneously, with the cast looking
a quickly edited versions of the scenes shot, usually on the
same day of shooting. This was used as a feed-back loop towards developing the characters.

Technically the film was shot on a SONY PDX10PAL digital video
camera, which has a built in 16 x 9 imaging chip. It was edited on Premiere Pro software, and Cool Edit and Sound Forge 7 sound processing software.

HOMECOMING was made only through the graces of the cooperation
of various persons and organizations in Newport, and through the generous sacrifices of the actors, who, with the exception of Keith Scales, were not paid. Its motivation was not “business” but a moral and ethical sense that the circumstances of America today demands a meaningful discourse about what our country is doing, and how it impacts not only those policy victims far away, but at also at home.

Director’s comments:

In 2002 I returned to the USA, following a decade away, for a
tour, as I wished to see for myself if the reports in the press and elsewhere which seemed to me suggestive of a sad and negative turn were indeed accurate. My trip took me through a wide swath of America, covering both coasts as well as the South West, Texas and the mid-west. I had to conclude that indeed,
in the decade away, America had changed in manners both typical
- America traditionally has been a rather conservative and conformist culture, despite the rhetorical bravado to the contrary - and seemingly new. Arriving in a flag-littered post 9/11 landscape, where a strident and familiar “patriotism” was in full bloom, one sensed beneath a gnawing insecurity and
perhaps a kind of fear - though not one provoked by bin Laden,
but something deeper. The landscape was full of sprawling WalMarts, crammed with cheap Chinese goods, the highways with SUVs, which seemingly were both a fashion and a necessity: the size of many Americans required such a vehicle. From coast to coast it seemed to my freshened eyes awash with money, cleaner,
richer, and yet somehow less happy. The Iraq war was yet to
begin.
Following a trip in India and some work in Europe, I returned
and settled in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula, Port Hadlock, across Puget Sound from Seattle, to stay and research. HOMECOMING is the result.

Confronted with a nation which seemed only to know how to shriek
at itself, whether from the right-wing “talk” shows of TV and radio, or from the leftist agit-prop of Michael Moore, I felt that to attempt to compete with this would itself be a kind of submission to the crudities and simple-minded rules of such a game. Whether America is capable of it or not, it needs to
conduct a searching and quiet self-examination, which does not
flee from unhappy and difficult truths about itself, nor succumb to numbingly simple-minded conclusions about complex matters.

HOMECOMING was an attempt to address these things, from within,
speaking in a language which is indirect, poetic, refractive. I accept that this in effect disqualifies it by the mantras of the market, where the only and singular “value” is maximum financial profit to the disregard of all else.
I am fully aware that in the present American context such an
approach is tantamount to a kind of unintended self-censorship: such a work will, in all probability, not find distribution or “a market” precisely because it declines the requisite attitude, form and structure, and, inherently, content. There is no place in the present American cultural landscape for
such a work, at least not within the institutionalized
structures of business, and their off-shoots in the “cultural” world - theaters, cinemas, museums, universities, etc. The only place for such work is extra-institutional, in the myriad niches opened by the internet, in the subversive network which exists parallel to and within the structured system of the film and media industry, to which it is parasitic but in opposition.
HOMECOMING has no “stars,” it has no glossy “production values” and naturally it has no PR budget, no posters, or all the other
paraphernalia of a “real” movie. It has, hopefully, something else which cannot be bought for millions, just as it cannot be sold for millions.

America is presently deep within a trough of profound
corruption. It is a corruption which transparently shows itself in the worlds of politics and “business”, in the vast lying machines of electoral campaigning, in the shufflin of accounting books in the offices of huge corporations, in the vast flush of money which is fraudulently gained and spent each day. It is
equally transparent in the debasement of all its culture in
which fame in and of itself is valued by a large portion of an ill-educated youth, addled by the junk culture of television, pop music, junk food, all pumped out by a business elite under the holy rubric of the Market Economy, presided over by
a President who unctuously and loudly proclaims his Born Again
“Christianity” while authorizing torture and state murder as
policy, while gutting social programs for the weak and rewarding the most wealthy with tax breaks and industry subsidies, who appoints blatantly corrupted figures to the highest offices of the land, and yet speaks to his “base” of the fundamentalist Right of “family values” and “morality.”

It is all, alas, as American as apple pie: the born con-man
selling snake oil is as familiar an America archetype as is Johnny Appleseed. For such a figure to find success, however, requires a ready and willing audience, and the broad American public is clearly ready and willing to buy whatever elixir is promised - whether it is a quick and tidy high-tech war to spread “freedom and democracy” to far off “evil” realms, or it
is the thrill of instant fame on Big Brother, or it is consent that indeed a CEO or a Hollywood star, under the iron logic of the Market Economy Religion, should obtain 20 or 30 or 50 million dollars in payment for a year’s
labor.

America is corrupt: morally, politically, culturally. The
corruption pervades the entire system, from those who deal in finances to those who deal in arts; from those who sell to those who buy. Any honest look shows that these are intertwined in a the most intimate of ways.

Welcome home.

jon jost

HOMECOMING

A digital film by Jon Jost.

Produced, written, directed, photographed, edited by Jon Jost.
Music: Erling Wold

Cast:

Ryan Harper Gray
Katherine Sannella
Keith Scales
Stephen Taylor
Kateri Eastman
Edward Van Aelstyn
Greg Card

104’, Digital Video, 2004.

Premiered in Cinema Digitale section of the Venice Film
Festival, Sept.
2004.

HOMECOMING was made in 2004, and was premiered at the Venice
Film Festival. It showed subsequently at the Rotterdam Festival, in competition at the Jeonju festival, and won first prize in narrative division of the little Split (Croatia) Film festival - against the likes of Hal Hartley's latest.
Two of the actors, presently in town shooting a new film with me
out near Seward, will be present to discuss the film, along with myself.

The companion piece for HOMECOMING, my newest completed film,
OVER HERE, will be screening on Thursday evening, and has the same actors in it.

Some comments by viewers:

Michael Chaikin, programmer now at Museum of the Moving Image,
NYC:

I finally had a chance to watch the film over the weekend. It's
painfully bleak. Therefore, honest. It cuts through the viscera like nothing I've encountered so far dealing with the psychic trauma and abuse inflicted upon average Americans by our government, our laws, our schools, our wars, our culture. The incalcuable number of lives ruined, lost and terrorized, not by some phantom band of mad A-rabs, but by our collective Faustian ambition to dominate everything on this earth. One thing which I think the film captures rather well, particularly in the subtle and naturalistic performances, is the simplicity of most Americans. By and large, we are a humble
and devout people. The great tragedy of the film is watching these characters ripped to shreds by forces they neither comprehend nor understand. I think the film handles this with great care, genuine respect, and a profound aching sadness
for their plight.

From documentary filmmaker Ralph Arlyck:

Jon,

Nice or not-nice comments? Are you kidding? I loved it. A
tour de force. An amazing achievement. OK, enough with the one-word blurbs.

Unfortunately, most of the details of “Homecoming” have
evaporated, since I have the mind of a very senior citizen (synapses all shot), but the body of a teenager I assure you. I do remember that it was beautifully shot. With a very special look. The whole thing made me think of both Cassavetes and David Lynch (although he panders more to popular taste than you do). I remember a particular shot of a reflected or refracted forest over faces in a car that was stunning. Sound seemed like a second-class citizen in a few spots but if you’re doing it all yourself I suppose something has to be sacrificed. You can’t really capture those terrific images and performances and be booming people all over the place.

I was hoping you’d be there. The screening I attended was
pretty full I’d say. Most people seemed riveted, although there were a few defectors in the early stages. Perhaps there were some folks who just wandered in off the street and didn’t know what they were getting into. And for those people I would guess you really pushed it with that shot of the mother and the son sitting at the kitchen table while she plucks at the flowers. You were even pushing up against my outer limits there but I could see what you were trying to do. You got just amazing performances. I thought the shots of faces and just arms at the very end was wonderful.

I liked the political punch in the end titles. I suspect it
may make a few critics place you in the lunatic fringe/conspiracy theory camp (I myself am prepared to believe that the Bush people wanted the war for domestic political gain but would probably stop short of believing that they knew 9/11 was coming and did nothing to stop it) but I think it’s great that the film itself is so understated politically and then is followed by these forthright political statements.