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It’s a tall order to document the coming of the internet and its effect on us, but in Lo And Behold, director Werner Herzog has a decent stab. This film, in fact, evolved from his original YouTube short about the dangers of texting and driving, and he sees it as a companion piece to his Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The result is a surprisingly funny documentary which gets a flavour of not just the genesis, but also the evolution of the internet, while addressing the resulting problems. Through a series of conversations with everyone from internet addicts and Elon Musk, to big thinkers about the ‘internet of things’, he provokes in typical Herzog fashion. So what’s next for him? He moans that they always send the technicians to space, “never the poets”, so he’d like to go to Mars with a camera, please!
Before The Flood may be directed by Fisher Stevens, but it’s really all about producer Leonardo DiCaprio and his amazing access to movers and shakers in a world in denial about climate change. So apart from staggering scenes in far-flung places, we see Leo greeted by Ban Ki Moon, dropping in on Obama, chatting to Elon Musk (who clearly hates being in the spotlight, but interestingly has plans to supply power on a huge scale). As he wanders the world, Leo looks for hopeful signs, despite all the evidence showing that climate change is gathering pace. Vital, thought-provoking stuff.
In what could be described as a Space Oddity, director Ziga Virc’s Houston, We Have A Problem documents an extraordinary story of lies, exaggeration and mutual naivety. Cleverly constructed from archive – some of which may be fake, and interviews with present-day and retired NASA engineers, historians, plus the inimitable Slavoj Zizek, this story wends its way from Belgrade and Zagreb to Washington DC and back. Fact and fiction merge in the tale of the 1960s Yugoslavian space programme; even Tito is involved; documents are found planning rockets, and once the US is courted by the Yugoslavs, they jump in with money to acquire the supposedly cutting-edge tech. But was it all an expensive, elaborate scam?
The Graduation is Claire Simon‘s elegant, unflashy doc about the iconic Paris film school, La Femis, those who aspire to enter it – and those who select them. Maybe we are even witnessing the first steps of Simon’s successors towards a cinematic career? We see the process of exam papers, and presentations being forensically questioned by tough panels. Sometimes cocky, often trembling kids come in and are pulled apart in this competitive process, with the bar set unbelievably high. A rare insight.
Colombia’s Jorge Caballero seems to be channelling his inner-Ken Loach with the superb documentary Patient. This matter-of-fact, head-on film is about a mother, Nubia, trying to help her young daughter, a cancer patient. Nubia is caught up in bureaucracy, trying to do basic things, like get the right meds at various pharmacies. As she strives for just a hint of progress or improvement, she is dragged back by the hopelessness and helplessness of the situation. Only love and devotion keep her going when the system is so unhelpful. Amazing access in a very moving film.
The short, but very focused documentary The Lives Of Theresa, from Sebastien Lifshitz, is about the infamous, militant figure Therese Clerc, who has always been a battler for women’s and gay rights, and now faces her own imminent death. Through unsentimental kitchen table discussions between her grown-up children and Therese with her grandchild, through archive footage and extreme close-ups of her face, at home and in hospital, we feel a legacy and a passing on of the baton.
Deserved winner of the festival’s Best Documentary Grierson Award, Starless Dreams, from Mehrdad Oskouei is another film with staggering access. The location is a rehab centre for juvenile delinquent girls in Iran, housing car thieves, drug addicts, and even one young woman who murdered her violent father. Indeed, they have all been variously abused, neglected and unloved. Some already have children of their own. Starkly, one inmate says to the director, who has a teenage daughter: “She is being raised with love and comfort, while we were raised in rot and filth.” But how will they fare if and when they’re released? One declares that she’ll be welcomed home with “chains and a beating”. Indeed, for many of them, the worst thing that could happen would be to be returned to their family. Remarkable.
Further Beyond, from Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, is a film with various voice-over artists, including Denise Gough (People, Places, Things), helping tell the story of Irish adventurer Ambrose O’Higgins, who journeyed to Chile in the 18th Century. The vast landscapes are staggeringly beautiful, but at times this feels more like an art installation than a conventional feature, offering ideas and stories about the migrant experience.
As you’d expect from a Terrence Malick film, Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, looks flipping amazing. From grand canyons to planets to lava flows to icebergs to close-ups of third-world poverty, it moves almost randomly between locations, all accompanied by the measured tones of Cate Blanchett narrating – or rather pondering the Big Questions about life itself. Is there an eco-message here? Probably. Perhaps best seen in a showroom when selecting your new 4K HD TV set, and ultimately a little empty, this kind of thing was arguably better done in Koyaanisqatsi over three decades ago.
You may have seen the young Trump lads posing with their Big Game trophies, and winced a little. With Ulrich Seidl‘s documentary Safari, you’ll wince for an hour and a half. For this is a cross between Inside Nature’s Giants and Kill It, Cook It, Eat It. Everything has a price at the African game lodge featured here. A married couple flip through a catalogue, but they’re not choosing gifts from Argos, they’re selecting which wild animals to kill according to their price tags. Equipped with high-powered rifles with sights and tripods it doesn’t really feel like they’re targeting ‘fair game’. And when they bring them down, it’s all about posing with the dead animal in the right way for the perfect, ‘trophy’ photo. “Why do I have to justify why I sometimes kill an animal?” says the guy with the heads of animals all around his walls. They talk about the thrill they get when they ‘bag’ an animal, maybe a zebra or a giraffe, going down in slow motion, the zebra later skinned and the carcass sliced up. In fact, they all seem very bloodless about their blood sport. Seidl just documents it all clearly and precisely, with no spin and no judgement; that’s up the audience. Yet you keep asking yourself why… why kill such beautiful, unthreatening wild animals?
Before we announce the annual awards, let’s end our look at the best documentaries with one of the stand-out films, Tower, by Keith Maitland. Seamlessly mixing animation with real archive and sound, overlaid with testimonies from the subjects today, this is a powerful retelling of the very first mass school shooting, 50 years ago, in 1966 at the University of Texas, Austin. The multiple sources include cops, witnesses and victims, and we hear the original radio broadcasts as the story and film unfold (with an extraordinary ending). In reportage style, with acts of bravery and courage spread across this 90-minute ‘real-time’ documentation of the original terror attack, we cannot help but recall the likes of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Uttoya and many others since. A fine, timely, necessary film.
Go to page 3 for The DVDfever Awards 2016!