Historical Meditations in Two Films by John Gianvito by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Quarterly
The Mad Songs [of Fernanda Hussein] focuses on the irreparable effects of the first Gulf War in 1991 on three separate powerless people in New Mexico (which is where the film in its entirety was shot). Profit Motive [and the Whispering Wind] focuses on the grave sites of several dozen heroes of progressive struggles throughout American history.
These topics are of course quite different, yet the differences between the films aren’t nearly as substantial as they might initially appear to be. Both are predicated on and filmed around subjects that are physically absent — the Persian Gulf in The Mad Songs, the dead heroes of Profit Motive — and ones that viewers are invited to imagine, think about, and mourn in some fashion. In fact, I think both films are enhanced and complicated immeasurably as soon as one sees them in relation to one another rather than as separate and isolated forays. Both films are dedicated to examining political struggles in the U.S. and how these struggles are emotionally, intellectually, and historically assimilated… (read more)