I have not been slacking, this I promise.
On occasion, I have to run off and actually make movies, rather than just write about them, and this past week was one of those times when I found myself down in Southwestern Missouri (just a short car ride from Columbia) to continue the Branson project that I have been working on (with co-director David Wilson and our co-producer Nathan Truesdell) for the past year-plus.
It was nice to dive into filmmaking so quickly after the previous weekend’s True/False Film Festival, exactly the nonfiction tonic I was craving in this early year. While the announcement of Sundance titles in late November/early December always seems to symbolically kick off the new year in docs (and provides a roadmap as to many of the films that we’ll be talking about in the year to come), Sundance’s place in the calendar year means that we’re still thinking about the year past, even while pondering the year forward: with both Cinema Eye and the Academy announcing their nominees during the festival, we’re as apt to think about TROUBLE THE WATER and MAN ON WIRE as we are WE LIVE IN PUBLIC and ROUGH AUNTIES.
But when we make the trek to Columbia, much of that is past. The Oscars and the Spirit Awards are behind us – and while Cinema Eye still looms a month later, it feels like we can begin to fully appreciate and chew over the films of 2009. Thankfully, most of the best of these will appear on screen at True/False.
Talking to someone the other night who had visited True/False for the first time, I was struck by her earliest reaction to the festival – the yearly March March that officially kicks off the festivities on Friday afternoon.
For those who haven’t witnessed the parade firsthand, imagine a 7-block walk/dance/run across the heart of Columbia’s downtown, featuring drummers, balloons, kids, Snow White in a pedicab, large alien puppets, all manner of signs. It’s also one of the first times that you will see the other guests – some longtime friends.
My friend noted that everyone was so happy, constantly embracing one another, dancing to the beat of the drummers. What, she wondered, was this thing?
That is often the first-timer's ponderings once things get going in Columbia - what is this thing? How can this smallish college town in the middle of nowhere (their words, not mine) have fallen so hard, so fast, so completely for this festival and the films that it screens? This year, more than 23,000 tickets were sold over the course of 4 days - 5,000 more than last year.
And the march is just the beginning. As True/False would continue over the weekend, unfolding many of the year’s best nonfiction films, there would be more to cause feelings of wonder:
John Maringouin’s transcendent BIG RIVER MAN, a visually stunning and frequently hilarious expedition across the heart of the Amazon. Maringouin, who made one of my favorite films of 2006/2007 – RUNNING STUMBLED, has made a film true to its subject, Martin Strel, one that engages in his excesses, his hallucinations, his quirkiness, his courage. Working with frequent collaborator Molly Lynch (here both co-director and co-editor), Maringouin is fearless in allowing the audience to laugh at the absurdity of a rotund, wine-swilling marathon swimmer and in following his subjects into the mental abyss. In a just-begun year of films that have often felt too cautious or even incomplete, finally a film that is unafraid of being messy, passionate, risky, hilarious. Certainly one of the best films of 2009.
I was also impressed by glastonburykids, a tremendously assured debut from Justin Donais. If any film was destined to go off the rails, it was this one, as it explores both teen delinquency (of the “Jackass” school) and includes the brother of the filmmaker as a main subject. But Donais does a deft job editing his own film, teasing the audience with the bad behavior to come, only to have it arrive in a context far more complex than “boys being boys”. The ending is far more nuanced than one has any right to expect.
Havana Marking’s AFGHAN STAR, a big hit at Sundance, also drew many admirers at True/False. The film focuses on an American Idol-style competition in Afghanistan, a country still coming to grips with the extent of its new freedoms, post-Taliban. While I wasn’t all that excited about the competition element (I think I’m on record as calling for a near-ban on competition docs), what impressed me most about the film was its ability to explore the past, present and potential future of Afghanistan all in the context of the naturally unfolding events of the television show.
There was much more, naturally, including a couple of Sundance films that I didn't like as much as others did - but which I think are worth viewing and talking about. Sadly, one of these was Eric Daniel Metzgar’s REPORTER. I’m a fan of two of Metzgar’s previous films – THE CHANCES OF THE WORLD CHANGING and LIFE. SUPPORT. MUSIC. – I think Eric’s an incredibly lyrical filmmaker and I usually love his soothing, poetic narrations, which Metzgar employs to dreamlike and highly anticipatory effect early on in this new film. From there, however, it felt to me like someone asked Metzgar to back off his signature style to create a more straightforward profile of NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. In his previous films, I always felt like we were viewing Metzgar’s subject through his own artistically individual lens, but this time, it felt like the Kristof show for much of the film, interviews with Darfur poster lady Mia Farrow included.
Inside the film, however, is an interesting debate for anyone who cares about nonfiction filmmaking - or journalism. Kristof (and the film) make the point (seemingly numerous times) that people become immune to human suffering the larger the toll. The trick, if one wants an audience or a reader to care and act, is to find one victim, one particularly vibrant horror, and focus on it, even if it means ignoring the suffering of others nearby. It's a fairly cold, calculating conclusion, but it's not an unimportant discussion to have, as we all choose our characters even as we cut others.
There's also much to talk about in Greg Barker's SERGIO, a profile of sorts of UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Iraq months after the US invasion. Some are already debating the film's re-creations - not on the premise that such a thing is verboten - but because they seem so stylistically out-of-place with the rest of the film. My bigger issue was with an extended (at least 1/3 of the film) retelling - by rescue workers - of the effort to free Vieira de Mello from the bombed out UN headquarters and the heroic brush with which Sergio is painted. Complications and contradictions may be hinted at, but they are quickly swept aside for a more valient portrait. In the end, I wasn't sure what the film wanted to be - rescue thriller? hagiography? political potboiler?
As SXSW fast approaches - I fly to Austin tomorrow but can see that others are already en route - we are quickly approaching our sell-by date on True/False coverage. But we hope to round up thoughts of others and offer brief recaps of our own participation in Columbia, with a panel that I'd always hoped to do and a work-in-progress look at the first minutes of my new film, CONVENTION.
Thanks, in the meantime, to Paul, David and everyone in Columbia for yet another wonderful weekend in nonfiction heaven.
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