My 2 degrees of Sean Baker, Palme d’Or for Anora

Local filmmaker in 2005: “"The lessons I have learned will stay with me the rest of my life."

Anora, a comedy/romance between a Brooklyn stripper and a Russian oligarch won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. I love good movies and even some bad ones but I don’t pay a lot of attention to the big festivals or award ceremonies. What caught my attention this year was that a Facebook friend (an acquaintance) Christopher Phelps posted his photo on the red carpet at Cannes.

Our region spawns a lot of talent but often it goes unrecognized, often it seems like we actively discourage creative youthful energy. We want young people to focus their enthusiasm in activities older people approve, direct, and manage. It’s an attitude that drives me crazy.

Glens Falls recently has had a problem with kids riding their bikes in traffic and acting out when confronted. Years ago it was a problem of skateboarders. And there was a problem with movie-makers. I don’t know if any of the bike riders or skateboarders were ever arrested but police cracked down on the movie makers, arresting them at gunpoint.

This was around 2005 and TV-8, Jesse Jackson’s locally run television station, had a show on at 11 o’clock on Saturday nights: The Ravacon. I only saw it once or twice but it was experimental and exciting in the sort of way good late night TV should be. A lot of it was just weird, but there were short films, comedy, satire, drama.

What I really loved about the Ravacon was that clearly the young people producing it were working hard on a craft, the craft of filmmaking and they weren’t satisfied with following straight traditional storylines, they were pushing boundaries, finding new ways to present visual information. They were serious filmmakers. And sometimes they were just goofy, serious about their goofiness, but goofy. That can get you in trouble, and it did.

Their movie-making was known to the local police in their hometown of South Glens Falls but when they branched out to film across the river in Hudson Falls the authorities were not amused. While filming an episode of Banana Boy - a Batman-like superhero fighting crime - an alert police officer prevented a potential homicide by a (rubber) knife wielding youth attacking a person in a caped banana superhero outfit, all being filmed by a photographer.

Arrests were made. Court dates were set.

Eventually the DA and the judge came to an agreement to drop the charges as long as the youths agreed to write an essay about what they did wrong and stay out of trouble for several months.

Fast-forward almost 2 decades, Banana Boy actor Christopher Phelps, minus the banana costume and in a tux, is standing on the red carpet at Cannes, France, shortly before the film he helped to make as Set Decorator (his brother Steve was Production Designer) for the film Anora which was about to take the coveted top spot in the most famous film festival in the world.

Phelps, his brothers, and a group of creative friends they call the Ravacon Collective have been working on projects collaboratively, and individually for about 20 years now. They get occasional recognition for their creative energies. Brother Jonathan was recently featured in a local newspaper story about his bookshop/art studio. Other collaborators have been cast in major movies. They’ve done music videos, visuals for musicians Phantogram concert tours, short films, feature films, a lot of experimentation including work in AI. But my guess is that for the most part few around here know who they are or what they do.

It seems like a constant in the local sociology of my lifetime, at least. We have an inferiority complex. I often feel like people think good stuff happens somewhere else, not so much here. It’s like people think, if you’re here you must not be very good or else you’d be somewhere else, somewhere better.

I used to laugh at the banners Glens Falls hung during the Mayor Regan years with motivational slogans, “Small City with Big Plans,” “We’re Better than you Think!,” “Hometown USA you can visit on holiday vacations to see your aging parents!,” “Glens Falls would look better with more people on the street.”

Okay, I made some of those up.

So what is my point? Do I ever really have a point?

I guess I have 2 points: let’s not assume we’re all losers around here. Let’s assume that the skateboarders who for a while were the only people on the downtown sidewalks were potential professional athletes, not just hoodlums, and build them a skateboard park. The bike riders in the street today? Ask them if they’d like a BMX park, or something.

And let’s all be a bit more like Jesse Jackson who gave a group of creative young people an outlet for their work.

And let’s be more open-minded and not try to stifle things we don’t approve of. Okay, that’s 3.

Anyway, I’ll throw in some links to the Banana Boy backstory and a link to the Ravacon YouTube channel. Check it out.

Banana Boy incident. https://poststar.com/news/local/when-good-fruit-goes-bad/article_106e8d29-1e85-5c6d-b798-3237eae69359.html

Essays. https://poststar.com/news/local/banana-boy-and-his-friends-write-their-wrongs/article_2b1d7a1a-bce9-5095-85ba-d87e16f9a4ea.html

Ravacon YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaQI_DwE3zou5wEhiWcGwNQ/videos