El Voyage Maximo
El Voyage Maximo from Cleveland SGS on Vimeo.
“Scorpio Diamante’s El Voyage Maximo, which premiered at the Bangkok International Film Festival will probably be called a perfect film, and in a way I suppose it is. The amazing thing about Mr. Diamante’s new film is that it stays with you hours after the first viewing and then lingers on the corners of the brain for days to come. Diamante of Cleveland SGS fame has forsaken his previous filmmaking techniques of utilizing sinister music and slimy mustache-twirling villains that bubble before our eyes. In this new venture our protagonist is beamed down to the heart of Cleveland and spends a few days investigating locals and learning what drives their honesty, dedication, and incorruptible spirits amidst the darkness that looms.
El Voyage Maximo may not be organized according to patterns that we are familiar with, yet we don’t question the logic. Every midwesterner will intrinsically understand the visitor’s quest for true understanding. The picture in essence is a coming of age story where our hero yearns to experience joy. All the while we as the viewers stay one step ahead of him by understanding just how big this job really is. One may not be ready for the conclusion of this film, as Diamante deftly throws a final right jab that challenges viewers to examine their surroundings from an alternate view.
Maximo is about the insanity of a fundamentalist culture in which practically the whole city has been turned into robots. The inhabitants that remain are those who still decide to live their lives in lieu of some unattainable dream. Maximo is not full of resolutions because the SGS team doesn’t set up conflicts for easy digestion. A lot happens in five days in this city, and nothing is ever wrapped up, this is because Clevelanders are too busy living their lives to be locked into their predestined fate.”
Hai Tah Cheong — Photo Play International
Tags: Video "El Voyage Maximo"
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January 13th, 2010 at 3:37 am
[…] Cleveland SGS? Someone wondered why I had a link in my blog roll to something that had nothing obviously related to swords, or to dorkery, no miniatures, no dungeons or dragons… The answer is because Cleveland SGS rocks. q.v. El Voyage Maximo. […]
January 13th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Feh. Puerile and unrealistic. Maximo, aka Trash, finds himself in a locked room, groggy and hallucinating from being overmedicated. Torchie, Cheater, Flinch, Lucky and Martin round out the group.
Makes me wanna splash all over the floor.
January 13th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
“hallucinating from being overmedicated” … more like hallucinating from being undermedicated.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
“In the fashion of Rene Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe) the Spaceman of El Voyage Maximo is not the space creature of first appearances, but rather refers to a metagalactic everyman who arrives in the decaying Midwestern city–a city that represents the utopia of possibility—to battle loss of hope, malaise, ennui, and boredom. He offers an opportunity for each to embrace their inner Space-creature–man, woman, child—through joy, laughter, dance, and the warmth of community. Each viewer can associate with the Spaceman’s struggles….will he learn the tactics of, “throw it over and walk around” by slipping the hotdog up his sleeve to gain sustenance, will he learn drink his Rolling Rock with a straw inserted into a vent in his space uniform?.
As Foucault has stated about the famous Magritte work, “Magritte knits verbal signs and plastic elements together, but without referring them to a prior isotopism. He skirts the base of affirmative discourse on which resemblance calmly reposes, and he brings pure similitudes and nonaffirmative verbal statements into play within the instability of a disoriented volume and an unmapped space. A process whose formulation is in some sense given by Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”
We must ask, what is the Spaceman offering with the spatula in the final minutes of this cutting edge film? As the jazz great Blind Lemon Jello once said….”I can see, I can see…..”
Eleanor Danson — Vogue Italia
January 15th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Seriously, this needs to be released to a wider audience. Is Maximo available for parties, birthdays, weddings, & such?
January 16th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
They need to show this in Cleveland Schools.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
It is educational. Most suitable for K-8.
February 10th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
The Spaceman went to some of my favorite places–can’t believe I didn’t run into him! When is he coming back?
February 10th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
The Spaceman sustained an unknown bacterial infection and concussion while visiting the regulars on East 4th Street. It is not known whether his mission has been completed. Several samples of the earthlings’ detritus including a chili dog, half-smoked blunt, and spatula were collected during his visit and sent back to the lab on his home planet. We are uncertain if the Spaceman is a mortal being like ourselves or is made of some otherworldly life-force. We’ve received transmission that he is in stable condition. We hope that the Spaceman and his civilization have mercy on our inability to grasp the meaning of his visit. We are a curious species to them.