Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: Mixed Plate

Media Credit: Courtesy of Blue Note Records Chet Baker album, "The Best of Chet Baker Sings".

This year's documentary film series has premiered at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Spalding Auditorium with the film "Let's Get Lost," a portrayal of 1950s jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.

Ten additional films will be showcased through Dec. 9 ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to a Hawai‘i Veterans specialty film.

"Let's Get Lost" is a 1988 film directed by renowned photographer Bruce Weber. Consequently, it feels more like a series of moving photographs than a traditional documentary. While the film progresses through Baker's life quasi chronologically, there isn't a strong feeling of narrative flow. Rather, interviews with Baker, his several wives, friends and fans are largely stand-alone portraits of the artist.

In a style appropriate to the mellow musician, the film fulfills its title, meandering through and reflecting on Baker's life rather than chronicling it.

Chet Baker became well-known in the 1950s for his smooth, downbeat singing and trumpet playing - his well-known song "My Funny Valentine" is characteristic of the style. Baker is regarded by some as the best jazz trumpeter of his time, but his life and career were nonetheless compromised by his heavy use of drugs. His drug use led to a career-halting imprisonment in the '60s and likely contributed to his death in 1988, when he fell out of a hotel window.

Baker's personal life contrasted sharply with the suave jazz man he personified during his career. Weber smartly emphasizes the contrast in two ways.

First, the film's documentary footage is taken from two time periods: the '50s, when Baker was a young, attractive musician at the height of his career; and shortly before his death in the '80s. Though Baker was 58 when he died, he looks much older in Weber's footage. The two images of Baker are disturbingly irreconcilable.

Second, Weber's film is shot in grainy, high-contrast black and white, which romanticizes and emphasizes Baker's deteriorated frame.

Explaining her images of a shirtless Iggy Pop, photographer Annie Leibovitz once remarked that the story of his life is etched into the tattoos and lines on his back. This seems to be Weber's approach as well; he treats the aged Baker as an aesthetic subject as much as a documentary subject.

Ultimately, the reward in watching "Let's Get Lost" comes not from learning of Baker's career but from experiencing his romanticized aging. If you missed the first run of the film, don't fret, it will be running again later on in the semester.

The future lineup for the series promises to mix aesthetic movies with more traditional documentary films. The 2007 film "Bhutan - Taking the Middle Path to Happiness," for example, is a political documentary about Bhutan's pursuit of a "Gross National Happiness." Other films, like the Australian showcase of trance rituals, "Dances of Ecstasy," are as much aesthetic statements themselves as the subjects they approach.

UH Cinema Series:
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Spalding Auditorium
Coordinated by Don Brown
Contact: 223-0130

"Empty Streets"
Oct. 5

"The Hawai‘i Veterans Project"
Oct. 7, 2 p.m. special screening

"Mahatma: The Life of Ghandi"
Oct. 7, 11

"Khachaturian"
Oct. 11, 14

"Ballet Russes"
Oct. 18, 21

"Waikīkī: Riding the Waves of Change" and "To You Sweetheart, Aloha"
Oct. 25, 28

Sunday screenings are at 5 p.m.; Thursday screenings, 7 p.m.

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