This is the world presented by filmmakers Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki in their documentary Foreign Parts, Willets Point truly being a world of its own. Paravel and Sniadecki are utterly fascinated by it, as they train their camera on those forklifts, on the people, watching them cook, watching them walk around, following them too, letting almost a minute go by before they focus on something else. They want viewers to feel this world, to see how it works, and we do. It’s all situated across from Citi Field where the Mets play, which is why the Bloomberg Administration has tried to tear down Willets Point and create a mall and shops and other amenities that are more palatable to the public, the area obviously so foreign to him too because it’s not that he doesn’t want people working there, but just more presentable people. What’s so wrong with them, though? If you’re having a problem with your car, and you’re in the area, and you need new tires or your engine to be checked, there are so many businesses there willing to help you, and there’s one guy who asks each driver what they need and points them in the appropriate direction. There are no sewers, which causes major splashy headaches when there’s a hard rain, but they deal with it. Snowfall turns broken windshield glass into frosted glass, but they deal with it. They have to. Otherwise, their businesses falter.
Atmosphere is the key in Foreign Parts, and Paravel and Sniadecki provide a lot of it. For example, the sign for the Royal Touch business has a rendering of Genie from Aladdin. One man walks along junked car doors placed in rows and says automatically what kind of car each of them is from. When he says the names, such as Accord, Altima, Civic, it’s interesting to think that the companies that built these cars cared enough to make sure they were solid enough on the assembly line before they were sent out into the world, but once out in the world, it doesn’t matter what happens to them, if they get old, if they end up in junkyards like this one in Willets Point. They don’t want their car doors back. They’re history and they don’t need that kind of history crowding up the never-ending future of their companies. Yet here is this man who cares enough to keep tabs on this history, but not only because it’s his livelihood. It’s what he lives, what seems to have always interested him.
Some want to leave, like one couple that’s looking for a better life, both so cold in their van at night as they try to sleep. He ends up in jail for a time, as we learn, and she spends her days waiting for the day when he’ll be released. Paravel and Sniadecki never push these stories to be more than what they are. There’s enough drama, enough humor, enough to look at in each moment that they’re fascinating as what they already are. It’s hard to imagine any other documentary that could profile such a place where so many different cultures work next to one another and don’t mind it.
Not only is there so much to look at in each shot of Foreign Parts that you feel like you’re getting two tours at once, of the people and of the area, but the DVD from Kino Lorber’s Alive Mind Cinema label includes eight extra segments of footage and interviews that total 109 minutes, 29 minutes longer than Foreign Parts, essentially creating a second documentary. The same Willets Point and the same people, but you’re getting two documentaries on one DVD! More to learn, more to look at, more time to see that tires and broken-down and broken-up cars are never boring in a place like this. There’s also a still gallery comprised of 55 stills, and trailers for Raw Faith and El Bulli, both of which were previously reviewed on this site.
It’s a testament to Alive Mind Cinema that documentaries like Foreign Parts have a home, and continue to have the necessary support to grow, to be seen by more and more people. But it’s also a testament to Foreign Parts that Kino Lorber can see documentaries like this and want to bring them to the public, because curious minds like Paravel’s and Sniadecki’s are rare. Who else would spend all this time at Willets Point, wanting to show people what it’s like, that to some, their cars are more than just cars? They’re life itself.
