Sundance Channel

This is our new way of soothing ourselves over our lives of idle acquisition, by the way: We pretend to appreciate the strong hands that fashioned this hand-woven wool rug or built that delightful floor lamp. In this age of ephemeral digital connections and vaporous 24-hour media feeds when most of us spend our days squinting at computer screens, it makes sense that we would be infatuated by the notion of real labor, that we would cling to the concreteness of old stuff that looks like it has a long and storied history. Even as the recession drags on, the catalogs keep coming in the door, a testament to the fact that half of the free world still expects to match the impeccable taste of international-flea-market-scouring gay men.

Which is exactly why Sundance’s “Man Shops Globe” (premieres 10 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7) is at once so fascinating and so repugnant. Of course, I would never blame Keith Johnson for this. His job traveling the globe to buy enormous overpriced pieces of weird, ancient junk so that Anthropologie can put that junk in its stores and sell it for truly ludicrous, mind-blowing prices is obviously the sort of job that anyone who wishes they had enough time and energy to rummage endlessly through flea markets would love. He’s a creative professional, one who’s exceptionally good at spotting exactly the sorts of rusty old bullshit that anxious, existentially wobbly, overworked yuppies find hopelessly, thrillingly, reassuringly authentic.

This isn’t Johnson’s fault, nor is it really the fault of his longtime partner, Glen Senk, who is the CEO of Urban Outfitters, which owns Anthropologie. This isn’t the fault of his sister-in-law Pam Senk, who travels all over the globe with him. This isn’t even the fault of the Sundance Channel, with its own authentic-sounding brand name, so evocative of Robert Redford and worn Frye cowboy boots and handmade turquoise jewelry and enormous farm tables made from recycled wood and darling film festivals frequented by the same anxious, existentially wobbly, film-loving, cowboy-boot-wearing yuppies.

One might blame the production company World of Wonder, with its staff of carefree, disconcertingly stylish gay men who craft smart documentaries and hip reality series and poignant docu-soaps (whatever those are) on stage moms and beekeepers and celebutots, or their creative founders, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who can list everyone from RuPaul to the late Tammy Faye Bakker as their closest personal friends. But blaming such amiable, talented types as these for bringing more sly but affectionate stories into the world would be tantamount to envious lashing out.

And just because we don’t personally have the cash to fly off to Turkey for textiles or Tunisia for carved olive wood or Holland for Modernist décor, at least we can follow Johnson there, watching as he announces that a circus backdrop has “good color” and waves approvingly at a beat-up school table at the Avignon Fair, a huge antiques market in Provence. “Taxidermy” is the code word he mumbles to his French agent, thereby empowering the man to pay asking price, but to try to get the item for less. Meanwhile, Johnson has moved on to bigger, better, older things, like a pair of enormous painted panels and a big stack of delightfully odd antique posters.

“When you go to a fair, there’s a rush that you get that you can’t get anywhere else,” Johnson tells us, but presumably he’s not referring to the Cliff Avenue Flea Market in Sioux Falls, S.D. Johnson’s not even talking about the stuff in Paris, which is just too overpriced to make even more overpriced back in the U.S. In Paris, for example, Johnson spots some truly lovely old metal flower pots that are $200 each, but he knows he can’t sell them for that much at home.

“What can I do to create something that justifies these high prices?” Johnson asks in a voice-over. He quickly conceives of an odd and expensive objet d’art that he might craft from this already-marked-up trash: a table with metal flower pots built into it. What possible function could it serve? Does it matter? These seat-of-the-pants, improvised, surrealist faux-antiques will look incredibly unique back in the flagship store in Manhattan!

Johnson creates value. And there’s nothing bad about that, nothing wrong with having a great eye for unusual objects and original art that the Anthropologie demographic of hip urban 30-somethings will adore. Aurelie Alvarez, an artist we meet in Provence, says she hung “her very first painting” in her mother’s shop and “Keith bought that painting and ordered another ten canvases and some backdrops, and that’s how my career started.” Who can argue with budding, talented artists making a reasonable living creating art?

And make no mistake about it: Johnson’s job traveling far and wide in search of grandiose antiques, impish art and off-kilter treasures isn’t without its pressures. “Keith’s seen everything, all over the world,” says Trevyn McGowan, Johnson’s South African agent. “So it’s always a challenge to try and find the most exciting thing you can.”

In keeping with this assessment, McGowan shows Johnson some ceramic vegetables, but Johnson isn’t impressed. “You can buy a ceramic piece of corn in China for less than a dollar,” he snaps. “It just worries me that it’s been done and done and done and done and done. Unless there’s something really unusual and witty about it, it’s gonna be at a price point that’s not gonna be …” he trails off.

Johnson wants “things that let people know more about this very extraordinary country” and “things that have real resonance” but not things that are in every craft market or import store in New York City, but “just the right thing has been eluding us.”

Luckily, on their way through the South African countryside, Johnson and McGowan unexpectedly stumble on a furniture maker creating benches out of tree limbs and odd bits of lumber. “He was a guy who clearly loved what he was doing, and that came out in his things,” says Johnson. And so we return to the unspoken goal of these treasure hunts: to ease the anxious yuppie back home. If you hate what you do for a living, at least you make enough money to own stuff that was created by someone who loves what they do.

“I don’t want anything in the store or in my home that doesn’t have soul and a sense of history,” Johnson told 1stDibs magazine in describing his very exacting standards. But let’s not blame him for this expensive pursuit of soul and history. No, let’s blame the slippery, hectic, disposable, mass-produced culture we live in, first and foremost, the culture that makes us ache for things that mean something, that might be genuine enough to ground us between tweets. Let’s blame the hideous stucco huts and vinyl-sided monstrosities whose ugliness added insult to the injury of our impending bankruptcies. Let’s blame the overpriced but still cheap-looking crap we bought at Target before we lost our jobs, cheap stuff that made us sick to cast our eyes upon it, when compared to the divine, sacred things we saw in those damnable catalogs on the floors of our bathrooms. That cheap stuff and those sacred catalogs had us silently vowing to purchase only Egyptian cotton towels with hand-embroidered details on their silky edges from now on, come hell or high water, even if it cost us our souls.

Because if the world weren’t so filled with tacky, impermanent things, then we wouldn’t thirst so terribly for big, heavy, meaningful furniture flown in from Paris. If the world weren’t littered with Styrofoam cups and vertical blinds and stained wall-to-wall carpeting and other tacky junk, then we wouldn’t be so hungry for that meticulously branded, fully sanctioned and approved, carefully designed, obscenely expensive imported French junk.

But try telling Johnson this stuff is junk. In fact, the most telling moment of “Man Shops Globe” comes when Johnson is presented with a grandiose, colorful, tangled plastic chandelier, the sort of “Emperor’s New Clothes” objet d’art that walks the line between trash and treasure, between exquisite and hideous. What will Johnson think of this one? We wonder as he gazes almost confusedly at the monstrosity.

Finally, he pronounces it divine. “It was the high-low thing, which is always so interesting,” Johnson explains. “You have this very grand chandelier shape, and then, on close inspection, you see that it’s made of Barbie legs and plastic milk bottle tops.” And so, another bit of arts and crafts is christened and made relevant by Johnson’s Midas touch. Indeed, at the end of the second episode a quick note on-screen tells us that the even-larger chandelier Johnson commissioned from the same artists “was purchased by President Obama. It now hangs in the children’s room in the White House.”

Which just goes to show you that none of us are above seeking the validation afforded by truly special, anointed, original, odd, whimsical things. It’s just that most of us can’t afford them.

Of course we all like to pretend that our nice things and our education and our highly professional, dry-cleaned existence means that we’re above hope, that we don’t have to believe in something like the little guy does, that we don’t have to help out or worry or lend our voices to the voiceless. But that’s all an elaborate game of make-believe.

You may be able to afford the luxury of cynicism now. But when cynicism becomes a way of life, eventually, you pay the tax with your soul.

Another brick in the wall

Sure, it’s tough to fight your own skepticism when you witness how ugly the world can be, day after day. Now imagine growing up in a place that most people see as ugly: Newark, N.J. Its inhabitants are mostly poor and have been plagued by terrible crime rates for decades. But when you watch Sundance’s “Brick City,” a five-part miniseries that airs every night this week (10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21, through Friday, Sept. 25) (and you’d better watch it), you get a different view. Once you get past the fact that you’re hearing the same old glowing promises out of Mayor Cory Booker that you’ve heard from every politician under the sun, once you get past the inherent hopelessness of a former Bloods gang member named Jayda trying to kick the gang life, once you look beyond the same old shots of beleaguered cops and overwhelmed high school teachers and tearful community activists, mourning innocent kids gunned down in the streets, there’s something beautiful at the core of this series.

It takes a while to let your cynicism slough off, partially because watching a real-life version of HBO’s “The Wire” is a little too brutal to take to heart at first, because you’ve been trained, by that show and by the local news, to avert your eyes from such a gut-wrenchingly dim scenario. Booker, who comes across as charming and slightly nerdy, is still determined to reduce crime in the city of Newark drastically. He wants to make the streets safe for the children of Newark, and keep more of them in school for longer. Can you feel the deep sighs coming already?

While the access that filmmakers Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin, along with producer Forest Whitaker, managed to get to intimate conversations and backroom meetings is truly impressive, it’s not always easy to craft a narrative around an endless flow of dismal planning sessions, homicides, press conferences and the latest fight between Jayda and her boyfriend (a member of the Crips). During the first hour or so, it’s tough to see how this story will ever take shape.

And that’s not to mention the desperation of this picture: Of course the city is broke. Of course Police Director Garry McCarthy is faced with trying to do more with less, but still has to alternately rally and bully his troops in scenes that could’ve come straight from David Simon’s keyboard. Of course Booker is running on fumes and idealism, repeating his own mantras over and over, trying to get all of the beleaguered city officials and community organizers and cops to catch the spirit. Even when the mayor is full of inspiration and a burning desire to fix his city, most of his city officials look like they could use a stiff drink.

But by the third episode — and I would beg you to stick with this series until then — something beautiful starts to reveal itself. Suddenly, we stop seeing Jayda as just another former gang member, or Booker as just another politician, or Ras Baraka, the principal of Central High School in Newark, as just another disappointed school administrator. Suddenly we can see straight through to the hearts and souls of these people. Maybe it just takes two and a half hours of this very patient, day-in-the-life documentary to recognize how special the people on-screen are, or maybe it takes that long for its subjects to forget that the cameras are on, or maybe it just takes a while to appreciate how good filmmakers Levin and Benjamin are at ferreting out salient moments so that we really get to know these subjects.

After some dark moments in the first few hours, Jayda starts to really come alive for the camera. She’s obviously smart and dynamic from the beginning, but her ability to connect with younger women only becomes clear when she starts a mentoring group for at-risk high-school-age girls called Nine Strong Women. During a sleepover for the girls at her apartment, Jayda warns them against falling in with the wrong crowd, telling them, “Be careful about who you call a friend.” One of the girls is annoyed that Jayda is looking straight at her when she says that.

“You want to know why I look at you? Because you have a beautiful heart and you are gullible as hell. You will believe anything. And that is the worst type of person to be in 2008 living in Newark, New Jersey.”

Meanwhile, Jayda’s boyfriend Creep, who still hangs out with his fellow Cripps gang members, says he doesn’t want to be living in Newark at all. When the two of them go looking for a new apartment to share with their baby, plus Creep’s daughter and Jayda’s young son, Creep spells it out for Jayda.

Creep: I wanna live …

Jayda: In a neutral zone.

Creep: … in the business hood, where I go outside and it’s like “How you doing this morning, sir? How you doing?” Fucking suits. That’s where I wanna live at.

Jayda: Where in Newark could we find that?

Creep: I ain’t say nothin’ about Newark.

So why not just move to a prettier place? Sure, some can’t afford it. But crucially, a lot of the people we see on-screen aren’t merely interested in making their own lives prettier (like so many of us). They’re interested in somehow, some way, pulling their community out of a deep, dark pit of despair.

“When you say a kid doesn’t want to learn, that’s like saying a moth doesn’t want to be a butterfly,” says Principal Baraka of the challenges of teaching kids with so much turmoil in their lives. “Kids learn every single day. We learn every single day. The question is, what do we learn?”

Baraka and Vice Principal Todd Warren aim to teach their kids lessons that many of them aren’t learning at home. In one heartbreaking scene, Warren addresses a group of freshman boys taking part in the Freshman Boys Overnight, a program at Central High that seems to encourage the boys to make the school a sort of second home.

“You’re playing around in the classroom, but those kids in [predominantly white] Millburn have their faces in a book,” Warren says, but no one looks all that convinced. “But you’re too foolish to see that! We’re telling you this stuff because we love you, man.”

Warren looks around the room and his voice softens. “Some of you don’t know anything about real love, though. You’ve never had any type of interaction with a real man before. Who here is being raised by a woman?” Almost every single kid in the classroom raises his hand.

“Those of you who don’t have men in your lives, your fathers, strong male figures, listen. Mr. Baraka and Mr. Warren love you. Mr. Baraka and Mr. Warren are here for you.” Even the toughest kids in the room look like they’re about to cry when Warren says this.

Boys may always grow up without fathers and Newark may always be a tough place, but this city’s heroes give us all something to aspire to. As most of us struggle mightily to improve our own lives, these people fight every day to make the world a safer and better place for their neighbors. In revealing their trials and toils, Sundance’s “Brick City” makes our luxuries, from our comforting things to the comfort of our cynicism, look downright foolish by comparison. By resisting the urge to avert our eyes, we can glimpse the blinding beauty that lies in the humblest acts of optimism, generosity and hope.

“The Inner Tour” (premiering Monday, March 31, at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel) presents such an opportunity, following a group of West Bank Palestinians on a three-day vacation bus tour of Israel, where many of those on the tour once lived and raised families. The film was made just before the outbreak of the Sept. 2000 intifada, when one of the only ways Palestinians could cross the Green Line (which denotes the post-1967 border) and enter Israel was as tourists. (Such trips are no longer possible.)

The film begins on a dusty street in the West Bank at sunrise, where Palestinians arrive and quietly board the bus. The tour guide welcomes them and explains that they’ll switch to an Israeli bus at the border. After a checkpoint where Israeli soldiers examine their papers, the bus crosses into Israel, and immediately the landscape changes. The tourists on the bus whisper to each other, mesmerized by the lush, green hills and pastures.

“There are orchards,” a teenage boy tells his blind grandfather.

“Ever seen anything like that?” a father says to his young son.

The first few minutes we spend with the group are quiet, but the weight of what they’re experiencing is palpable. On their first stop, at the sea, a young man gazes out and says, “It looks strange. At 27, I’ve never seen the sea like this. This is the first time.”

While the camera focuses on an elderly member of the group, Abu Mohammed Yihya, staring out at the water, we hear an Israeli on the beach ask about them. “What’s all this today?”

“It’s a trip, from Nablus and Hebron,” a voice answers.

“Nablus and Hebron? To check out the area so that we can give it to them?”

The group mills peacefully about, taking in the beauty of the country surrounding them, but the undercurrents of tension and alienation are impossible to ignore. On their second stop, the group tours a kibbutz, and takes a guided tour through a museum that explains the place’s history, showing how the kibbutzes were built surrounded by walls. The Palestinian tour guide clearly wants to avoid a confrontation. When the Israeli tour guide says, in Hebrew, “They were attacked,” the Palestinian tour guide translates, “Fighting broke out.”

One of the group asks, “Weren’t any Arabs killed? Ask him.”

The Israeli tour guide responds, “Arabs? I don’t know how many. We don’t know the Arab side, how many of them died.”

Jerusalem-born filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz approaches his subject with grace and patience, allowing those on the tour to reveal themselves, mostly through their conversations with each other. With their faces turned toward stretches of breathtaking landscape and prosperous towns and cities, they offer up stories that range from heartbreaking to unsettling. One of the women lost her husband in the violence. Another woman’s husband is in jail for a plot to kill an Israeli soldier. While one of the men on the tour spent time in jail, another, Abu Mohammed, lost his son and daughter when he was ousted from his village in 1948, the year of what Israelis call the War of Independence and Palestinians call al-Naqba — the catastrophe. Alexandrowicz captures some incredible stories and images as the film’s exceptional soundtrack ambles from sparse guitar to percussive, tribal rhythms and ambient sounds that underscore the tension of outsiders on a carefully regulated tour of lands they consider their own.

Of course, some of the stories and circumstances are so good they can leave you feeling slightly manipulated. Were the participants hand-picked for the journey? Why does the group arrive at the most scenic spots just as the sun is setting? Is it always the magic hour in Israel?

Still, Alexandrowicz shows restraint and patience in his work, staying out of his subjects’ faces and allowing them to express themselves in unguarded moments. On the bus, we peer at a young tourist who’s pointing a video camera at his own face. “I don’t know how I’ll react when I see you,” he says. Later we learn that he’s making a tape for his mother who lives in Lebanon. Because his passport is Palestinian, he can’t visit her. Instead, he arranges to meet her at the Lebanese border. In a heartbreaking scene, he yells to her across the border wall, then hurls her the videotape he’s been making of his trip.

In another strange scene, after a visit to a mosque, Abu Mohammed suddenly addresses the group about the “pain from opening the wounds and memories.” Indeed, everyone in the group seems to be only partially present, each is so absorbed in his or her own intense emotional reckoning.

The pain and suffering expressed by the group reflects the impossible puzzle of the region’s conflict — with so much loss experienced by both sides, any talk of resolution inevitably slides into a relay of past grievances. Still, it’s striking how much the two sides mirror each other. When one of the Palestinians remarks, “Throughout our history, we’ve been like a football. One player passes us to the feet of another,” he could just as easily be an Israeli Jew, describing his own people’s history.

Although some in the Israeli media have described it as “subversive and treacherous,” “The Inner Tour” merely presents the experiences of a small group of Palestinians. Alexandrowicz doesn’t take on the absurdly difficult task of presenting a balanced, objective picture of two sides. There is no voice-over, there are no heavy-hitting statistics, and no one speaks directly to the camera. Instead, we hear individuals describe their experiences and their beliefs in their own words. Sometimes they’re intelligent and sensitive, while at other times it’s easy to feel suspicious of their intense talk of justice and retribution. Alexandrowicz does an admirable job of presenting the most uncomfortable and awkward moments without flinching. Whether or not you agree with their political perspectives, the gentle pace and quiet moments pull you into their reality, and it’s impossible to turn your back on the simple fact that these are human beings, with their own lives and stories.

On a walk through the Israeli countryside, Abu Mohammed says that there are times during the tour when looking out at the landscape becomes almost unbearable. “Sometimes I close my eyes. I don’t want to see! Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.” “The Inner Tour” offers a rare chance to stare straight at the passionate emotions and painful experiences behind one side of a conflict that’s so heated and impossible, we’re often tempted to push it out of our minds and look the other way.