SOUTH OXFORD, ALL IOWA LAWN TENNIS CLUB, MARAVILLA, SERVE (Darius Clarke Monroe, 2019): USA

Reviewed by Charlene Huston.  Viewed at 2019 AFI Film Festival, Los Angeles.
The image is from the film SERVE.

This compilation of four short documentaries blew my mind wide open to the most creative, sensitive filmmaking techniques I’ve seen to date at this year’s AFI Film Fest.

Not really being a sports fan aficionado myself, but being a documentarian at heart, I was intrigued by the very short description of these films that said the Director used a ‘skillful approach incorporating original and archival footage’ 

And I am so happy that I went.   to the point where I actually spontaneously hugged the Director, Darius Clarke Monroe, after the Q&A which probably surprised him, more than me.

But seriously, he has the most thoughtful approach to telling a story based in truth and history that I have ever seen.

His use of both internal and external sound was inspiring and inspired.

His courage to let a shot linger long enough to sink into the psyche, rather than cut away for effect was truly amazing.

He tells powerful yet intimate stories with prowess, clarity and magic.

This screening was only the 4th time he’s shown these films together, yet his sea legs are well balanced when it comes to speaking about his films.

Turns out, he was commissioned by some company to make four short films based on a series of articles they gave him about sports involving balls.  He read them all and, together with his Producer,Tariq Holloway, found a common thread, “this is what humanity is … bringing people together and showing that we have more in common than not”.  They wanted to go deeper into the stories of the people behind the sports.  And he dove deep … eliciting intimacy and trust with each of his subjects.  So, here then, is a short review of each film because they were each so different and profoundly unique:

#1 – South Oxford is a sweet, warm portrait of a couple who founded and ran the SOUTH OXFORD TENNIS CLUB, a community gathering place in Brooklyn, NYwhere generations of families gathered to play tennis, get married and host other family events.  Most excellent use of sound as in one longish shot of a swirling chandelier that came in and out of focus while we heard the sounds of a party with tinkling glasses and soft laughter and romantic jazz playing … the effect was simply mesmerizing … leaving me with the feeling that I was dancing with some dashing man, looking up at that chandeleir while spinning away on the dance floor below. 

He used a very tender use of scrapbook photos in clear plastic sheet protectors in 3-ring binders where he would allow the camera to linger on the photo while we heard the subjects tell the story of how many people over the years came for much more than the sport “if you treat people with respect, then, they will treat you with respect back”.

We are hearing what they are thinking. almost like a photo montage – those scrapbooks holding the base note to a dreamy story about a couple who met, fell in love and created a business and a life together that lasted for many years.

#2 – All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club looks almost like a landscape painting … in this tender surprizing story that began with a man walking over a snow covered field … we hear only the sound of his feet crunching on the land that we learn over the next few minutes was his family farm, ”these farms are all about family”.  With each step he takes, we can feel their life, earth and dreams all in the same footprint.  As he spun the tale of his falling off a tractor and having to ask his son to come home to plant the corn that year, we saw the deeper story emerging like melting butter on a cob of corn.  And when this strong, white man tells the tender story of how he never knew his son was being bullied, with a tear in his eye, we weep with the common thread of how we all handle loss and grief in our own families.  There are windmills on the farm now and as he tells this deeper story about a family tragedy, we are allowed to absorb it by very clever cinematography of the windwill running against a blue sky and then shadowed over a huge old tree at sunsset…. reflecting the quiet, dark time that follows a loss.

#3 – Maravilla gives us a historical look at a neighborhood called MIRAVILLA in East Los Angeles over a number of generations and all revolving around a hand-built handball court that functions as both sport and community center.

From the opening shot of a crumbling grocery store with a woman’s voice telliing us the tale of that store and how as a little girl it was owned by the Japanese-American family who’s father had only one arm but could still beat nearly anyone on the handball court, we hear her the sound of a handball hitting the ground mixed expertly with the sounds of cleaning up the place inside and telling a young man who we come to believe is her son to “put that over there and label it Miravilla”.  We come to understand something about race and her family’s place over the years in race riots and when she came back years later to see the place and found out the Japanese-American y had died, she put it all back together with love from the community (no government assistance here) and because of that she believes it is stronger than anything money could buy.

We never see the narrator’s face, but rather rely on long shots of the photos that tell the story over time and the hear her voice remembering.  Once her renovation is complete, we get a glimpse of the new life and community she has breathed into the place with very fantastico and stylized B&W still photos of people today playing handball…we hear her say, “My name is Amanda Perez and I live in East Los Angeles”

Again, we hear the sounds of the handball on the ground, or on the wall, but never see a game in process … this technique pulls us into the scene so effectively, it’s as if we were watching a game because our imagination fills in the blanks …  this is a mesmerizing tale of the social and political history of a place that is so much more than a place to play handball.

#4 – Serve is the fourth film in this quartet and it is about a woman tennis coach who is so much more than her job as a tennis coach.  We get to see who she serves in her community through this very intimate character study that becomes a portrait of a woman and how she coaches both on and off the tennis court.

Through very effective B&W film of her, we start with a series of abstract, extreme close-up shots of her mouth/nose/eye, while we hear the thwaaap of the tennis ball.  We don’t get to see a game or a practice session in progress until we’ve learned that her mother is in a rest home, confined to a wheel chair, seemingly lost in her own private Idaho of memories that she doesn’t speak.  But when we see her put her head in her mom’s lap we are reminded that we all need the comfort and safety of laying our head in our mother’s lap and feeling her comfort us by patting us on the head or running her finger’s through our hair.

These intimate portraits reminds me how we all have stories buried deep inside us and this Director, Darious Clark Monroe (BLACK 14, RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS, EVOLUTION OF A CRIMINAL) has a voice that can only grow as his vision and his voice continue to mature and he chooses his next film.  He is a guy to watch … as a writer, producer and director, his work has shown at SXSW, BAMcinemaFest, Full Frame, BlackStar, MoMA, Whitney Museum, Palm Springs, Sundance, True/False, New Directors, AFI FEST, Tribeca, Telluride, Tokyo and Uppsala and appeared on HBO, PBS, Netflix, and at innumerable galleries, schools, churches, backyards, and hotel banquet halls.  Monroe was born/bred in Houston, Texas and now lives in BedStuy, BK (Brooklyn, NY).

In the Q&A, I asked him if he is a musician as him films are PURE JAZZ … he laughed and said that while he was making these four separate films he thought about them like single records that would one day become an album.

If you want to save yourself a from attending film school, and get a crash course in creative, cutting-edge documentary film making, run, don’t walk and see if you can find a way to see these four films.  You will not regret it.