Jem Cohen might sound like a Jewish girl’s favorite cartoon character, but he’s actually a dour American filmmaker and friend of DC. Most notably, he’s lugged cameras to follow Fugazi (see “Instrument”-ed), the Make Up and other DC stalwarts, establishing a firm reputation in the old-school DC hipster community (you know, the one that never comes to BYT events).

And if you’re wondering, yeah, he really is that glum, and peppers his speech with pronouncements of doom about the end of the Bush dynasty and bemoans the failure of the Democrats to transform the country after taking Congress last year. He drops all of this into the introduction of his evening at the Viennale, looking for all the world like he’d rather be in Cafe Alt Wien plotting the proletariat’s final push to power in the West. And it’s pretty thick stuff considering that there probably aren’t 50 people in Austria who know who Cohen is, and all of them, as well as all the Vic Chesnutt, Fugazi, Quavers and Godspeed You Black Emperor fans, are packed into Gartenbaukino for an evening of film, live music, book readings and soundtrack music
directed, live, by Cohen himself.

The event, called Empires of Tin, was a piece commissioned by the Viennale, to incorporate music and image together with the text of a book on the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, called, “Radetzky March.” In his introduction, Cohen told the audience that the book shocked him with the parallels of the collapse of the American Empire and blah, blah, blah - less talky, more showy, dour guy! The all-star band included Vic Chesnutt; Efrim Menuck, Jessica Moss, Thierry Amar and Eric Craven (from GYBE off-shoot A Silver Mt. Zion), Guy Picciotto (hometown hero of Fugazi fame) and T. Griffin and Catherine McRae (from The Quavers - who?).

It started promisingly, with a kindly old Austrian fellow reading passages from the book in a beautiful and sonorous voice, after which Cohen yelled into his head-mike, “start the film. START THE FILM! Yes, I said start it now.” Seems the film bits were all separate, and Cohen would spend the rest of the evening stage whispering quite audibly into his headset for the presumably-hard-of-hearing projectionist to start the next bits.

Presumably, for future performances, they might not have him standing in front of the audience, stage left, shouting instructions into the mike? Hmm? Maybe have him back in the booth with the projectors instead? Just a thought.

The film started with beautifully shot, burnt out black and white images, bleached almost beyond recognition, of photographs of royals, famous buildings in Vienna and other historical scenes. The music, filled with the menace as only members of GYBE! and Fugazi could bring, along with, uh, the Quavers, set the mood perfectly. And this is when the performance was at its best. The imagery was not overtly didactic or telling a story. The audience could find their own meaning in the images and the sound guided one towards the melancholy side of it all. Good.

Then, a second part, began, with footage shot during October (a few special events, like the Austrian National Day, were dead giveaways as to when it was filmed) started. A similar palette, but not the blown-out black and white antiquity filter he used for the first part. And this is where things went a bit swimmy.

Two problems:
1. This is where Cohen starts imparting MEANING. To whit, equating the whole rotating bank logo with a crucifix spinning from a chord? Neither interesting nor insightful, and jarringly amateurish.
2. Vic.

Vic Chesnutt’s a dear man, and, like a new generation’s Tom Waits, a fascinating character, but probably exactly the wrong person to narrate what should have been a darkly-foreboding association of old Vienna, modern Vienna, and the collapse of the American empire. Maybe Palace Brothers, next time? I mean, I get that the whole reason all these people were together was Vic’s latest albums, but, man, it did not work. Particularly problematic was the bit where words flashed on the screen, in German, equating capitalism with the devil. In the best of circumstances, this would seem like the amateurish, immature droolings of an idealistic American exchange student in Red Berlin. With Vic trying desperately to keep pace with the flashing words on the screen, it seemed both cruel and stupid.

Then the movie meandered, with images of Wall Street, a good 20 minutes on some beautiful abandoned building somewhere in Brooklyn, a color portion of some whacked-out homeless guy, and then back to modern Vienna, and back to the old pictures. In all, if I had come into it blind, I would have guessed it was a C- project by the most pretentious ass in the film class, with a game and A- music performance by his friends.

And I think I would have been about right.

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