Bombay Beach in California was once a place where the old skool
Hollywood gliterrati went for rest and relaxation. It is now a
place where people sink when they their American Dream turns sour.
The decay of the landscape lures many photographers and music video
directors.
Alma Har'El came to Bombay Beach looking for a location for a
music video with the band Beirut. She was so enchanted by the
location and the local people who performed in her video that she
decided they would be the subject of her first feature
documentary.
We see the Parrish family where Benny, the 8-year-old son, who
was fostered when his father was in jail, is on medication but
manages to weaves a dream world in which he is a beautiful girl.
His mother is non-plussed as she styles his pink wig. Ceejay is a
teenage boy who is working hard to go to college and has moved to
Bombay Beach "to be somebody" and escape the gang violence in LA.
His image is a rare one of a Black teenager who is not bent on a
gangsta lifestyle and who is unashamedly tender and loving with his
new love and best mate. Red, an octogenarian loner and self-defined
"bum", who is estranged from his family, spouts homespun
philosophies tinged with racism through a tobacco haze from
cigarettes he buys in a Native American reservation.
Although the wide-shots are hauntingly atmospheric, it is when
Har'El goes close up to show the filthy water, the dead fish on the
shore and the emotions in her subjects' eyes that we really see the
toll on the landscape and the people. Alma Har'El, who is from
Israel and has lived and worked in London and New York, movingly
explores what it means to be poor in a rich country.
Scroll down for the trailer
In UK cinemas 3 February 2012
bombaybeachfilm.co.uk
