Martin Duckworth, friend, Director and DOP. (my photo)
I have seen a number of films at the Rencontres (Montreal) in the last few days, but in the end I don’t think I made the right choices. I went for some ‘big’ films on ‘big’ subjects, made by high-profile filmmakers, and was surprised to find myself disappointed. How do you make a ‘big’ film on an important subject without being pretentious or heavy-handed, without ‘voice-of-god’ narration or television-like interviews ? Well, one answer to that question came last night in the form a film called ‘The Big Sellout,’ by Florian Opitz (Germany) part of both the Rencontres and the Cinema Politica series at Concordia University. It is about the impact of cutbacks and neoliberal economic policies on ordinary people, in several countries around the globe. It starts with an interview clip from Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank and winner of the Nobel prize in economics . He says modern economics as promoted by the IMF and the World Bank are like modern warfare: its devastating impact is often hidden from us because virtual realities have become more prominent than real life. That defines a role for documentaries, doesn’t it. And the film really delivers, with a close-to-the characters study of what privatisation and cutbacks have done to ordinary people, in South Africa, the Philippines, England and Bolivia. Chapeau !
Fortunately, since my own choices of films weren’t the best, the Rencontres had asked me to introduce a few films which I might not otherwise have seen, and I saw a few gems which I will come back to in coming days.
Meanwhile, here is a ‘coup de coeur’ from my very dear friend and colleague Martin Duckworth, a great director and DOP ( he must have directed 30 and shot a thousand) who truly loves documentaries. ( The film he chose is a short made by James Longley who directed the much-acclaimed Iraq in Fragments.)
“I have seen eleven documentaries so far in the festival, and plan
to see another three. They are all well crafted pieces about
important subjects, and with enough drama in them to capture
audiences. But only one of what I have seen so far I would call a
real film–that is, a work that is bigger than the subject and the
craft, a work that will live as long as there is cinema. It was
“Sari’s Mother“, by James Longley, 21 minutes long, shot in 35mm.
It is the cinematic equivalent of Kathy Kollwitz’s gouaches of
mother, child and death–gouaches that will last as long as there
is visual art. Longley and Kollwitz both deal with the
abominations of war and poverty in such an intimate way that we identify
completely with the characters, their anguish becomes ours, and
they ignite in us the kind of gut fury that standard
documentaries rarely provoke. We all know that good documentaries
need central characters. But “Sari’s Mother” is a reminder that
for a character to turn a documentary into a film, his/her inner
soul has to be revealed, and that the more subtle the form of revelation the more convincing–gestures, facial expressions, whispers. It is also a reminder that art is a matter of discipline as well as passion–you carve the shape down to the barest minimum. I can’t wait to see Longley’s “Iraq in Fragments”.
