BFI 60th London Film Festival Part 3 (2016) by Helen M Jerome

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BFI 60th London Film Festival Part 3: Now’s the time to focus on the extraordinarily rich crop of documentaries from the 2016 London Film Festival – including lots of biopics, some very personal passion projects, politics and quite a bit of music. And it’s also high time we handed out those entirely virtual, but nonetheless highly covetable, annual DVDfever Awards, as judged by Helen M Jerome. So here goes…

One of the year’s absolutely must-see documentaries is The 13th, from Ava DuVernay, a devastating indictment of the policy of criminalising, incarcerating and monetising African Americans. With extraordinary footage and interviews brilliantly assembled in Adam Curtis’ fashion, the result is jaw-dropping – and now available on Netflix.

Some of the most influential filmmakers aren’t necessarily box office champions, and David Lynch is a prime example. Revered by critics, students and peers for works from Eraserhead and The Elephant Man to Mulholland Drive and beyond, Lynch is now starting to feel the lens turned around onto him as its subject. Jon Nguyen‘s David Lynch: The Art Life is shot at a leisurely pace, giving us the full Lynch biography of not just his film, but also his other artistic exploits, as well as glimpses of his family life, with his young daughter, Lula, randomly wandering into shot as he paints and creates. At times dark and almost confessional, this is a welcome and illuminating look at Lynch, especially as we hear it from the horse’s mouth. At the other extreme is Peter Braatz‘s Blue Velvet Revisited, assembled from hours of stills, footage and interviews made by Braatz when he was invited onto the Blue Velvet set three decades ago. Almost like the outtakes on a DVD extras set, with no linear or narrative purpose, this is weirdly fascinating, like the man himself. One for Lynch completists only.

Since his longterm passion project, Boyhood, was released, Richard Linklater has risen from cult director status to mainstream favourite. Now he’s celebrated in Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, from Louis Black and Karen Bernstein, with much of the doc revolving around the making of Boyhood. Resolutely not Hollywood, he remains based in Austin, Texas and puts his success down to “just hard work”. He claims to make movies about time, real people and real situations and is grounded by having grown up in a small town with “one stop light and one movie theatre”. Apart from Boyhood, the film examines his early, lower budget films like Slacker, Dazed and Confused, and the Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy, with insight from his lead actors, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. But we also dip into projects which don’t quite fit expectations, including School of Rock. Defying traditional narrative, building an ecosystem around his home, even giving unlikely stars like Matthew McConaughey their starts – all these help make Linklater such an admired artist and character.

Another towering figure of the visual arts is celebrated in Laura Israel‘s gorgeous, frequently black and white film, Don’t Blink: Robert Frank. It’s about one of the most important photographers, and occasional filmmakers of the 20th Century, who made his mark with his Americans collection and was a close pal of the Beat writers from Kerouac to Ginsberg – as well as chronicling the Rolling Stones. Along with Frank’s insight we get loads of light and shade from his soulmate June Leaf, and there’s lots of fun too as we almost stumble across revelations about his technique. We also see the impish, roguish side of Frank, thanks to the director’s intimate knowledge of her subject, having worked as his editor for two decades.

Seeing people at the very top of their game can make a documentary audience feel privileged, especially if you glean some clues about their character and what makes them so exceptional. Three films fall into this category, looking at giants of chess, football and ballet. When he was just four years old, the parents of Magnus Carlsen spotted that he was good with Lego and could memorise flags of the world, so they let him have a go at chess, in which he flourished against much older players – even taking on Garry Kasparov. Now director Benjamin Ree charts Magnus’ warts-and-all story, which leads him to eventually challenge the world’s number one, Vishy Anand, and sees him dubbed the ‘Mozart of Chess’ who can beat a whole bunch of players even when he’s playing blindfolded. In fact, the phrase “climbing Everest in tennis shoes with no oxygen” is one description of how effortless Magnus seems even while playing under pressure. Rather neatly, the film’s release coincides with his winning the World Championship once again, and Ree captures the madness and control around the young grandmaster’s life.

George Best: All By Himself is a reverent documentary by Daniel Gordon about the great, late, lost talent of British football. There’s fabulous audio of Best himself throughout, helping put context into the timeline of events, and increasing the sense that he really was the fifth, or perhaps sixth, Beatle. His looks and his skill brought him the fame that lifted him up and plunged him down, and Gordon helps us make sense of this by showing the cars he drove, the clubs and boutiques he bought into, and the products, from bubble gum, aftershave and breakfast cereal to football boots, that traded on his endorsement. Without Best, it’s hinted, there would have been no Beckham. Even his friend, Paddy Crerand comments of Best’s slide that it was “downhill on a toboggan”, seeing him descend into a life of booze and sex, hiding from the press, moving abroad, and Best even admitting himself that drink “controlled me”, just as it had destroyed his own mother before him.

Celebrating and examining the extraordinary talent of ballet bad boy, Sergei Polunin, Dancer, from Steven Canto dives straight into Polunin getting high right before a performance. Considered by some to be “a God”, he is eternally rock & roll, with his tattoos and his rebellious streak, yet every time he goes on stage he feels he must be perfect, to match the expectations and adoration of audiences and fellow dancers. But we also see how the sacrifices of his parents and his grandmother have enabled him to get here, propelling him into the best ballet schools (with evidence on home movies), and finally into the Royal Ballet itself as its youngest ever principal dancer. Polunin’s existential cry remains, however: “When I dance I don’t think it’s who I am,” and we may have to satisfy ourselves by continually replaying David LaChapelle’s captivating video of Polunin interpreting Hozier’s Take Me To Church on YouTube once he hangs up his tights. In the meantime, this bio is as close as we’ll get.

Another flawed genius who arguably threw away his talent is captured in Kasper Collin‘s I Called Him Morgan, about trumpeter Lee Morgan. Starting with his death in 1972, aged just 33, the film scrolls back to show how he was on his way to becoming a jazz star aged 16, playing with John Coltrane and Art Blakey, with snatches of glorious music throughout to illustrate his gifts. The backbone and structure of the film comes from a long audio interview with his widow, Helen, gradually revealing how Morgan succumbed to the drug culture around him. It dips into on-camera interviews with other band members, including Wayne Shorter, but always comes back to the music and to Helen – who served time for killing him…

Fonko, from the same team who made The Black Power Mixtape 1967-75, is a hugely uplifting, always restless doc on the music of Africa – including Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Angola – with the voice and flashed up words of Fela Kuti punctuating it throughout. Live performances, video and interviews all ping with energy, but also reference politics and religion too.

Sarah Taksler‘s Tickling Giants (right), is a brave film about a very brave man, Egyptian heart surgeon Dr Bassem Youssef, who always speaks as he finds, and aspires to be like his idol, Jon Stewart, despite the obvious obstacles in his way. But Bassem is heartened when his satirical show graduates from YouTube to a mainstream network, takes off around the time of the Arab Spring, and he even gets Stewart to appear as a guest. Reflecting and magnifying political and public opinion, he muses on what kind of democracy Egypt wants. But it all gets rather unpleasant and threatening as free speech is clamped down on… and we see whether he and his family can keep going despite this.

What is the ultimate taboo in comedy? What is the most tasteless subject matter? Ferne Pearlstein‘s The Last Laugh sets out to find out if it really is ‘Holocaust humour’. Her way in is a conveyor belt of witty interviewees, each talking straight to camera; a mixture of Jewish comedians and Holocaust survivors who either address the subject head on – or admit that they still can’t go there. So Sarah Silverman, Mel Brooks, Susie Essman, Rob Reiner and co ponder on whether humour can “heal us” and if “tragedy plus time equals comedy” (and if so, why wait?)

Go to page 2 for more great films from the BFI 60th London Film Festival.

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!

And here are those DVDfever Awards for 2016 in full:

20 Best Films:

Most Promising Director:
William Oldroyd: Lady Macbeth
Attila Till: Kills On Wheels
Alice Lowe: Prevenge (right)
Juho Kuosmanen: The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki
Johannes Nyholm: The Giant
Darren Thornton: A Date for Mad Mary
Mohamed Ben Attia: Hedi
Garth Davis: Lion

Most Promising New Performers:
Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth
Seana Kerslake in A Date for Mad Mary (right)
Lewis MacDougall in A Monster Calls
Sunny Pawar in Lion
Sasha Lane in American Honey

Best Comedy:
Toni Erdmann
Runners-up: A Date for Mad Mary, Their Finest, Prevenge

Best Thriller:
Arrival, Fury of a Patient Man, Nocturnal Animals

Best Ending:
Zoology (right)

Best Drama:
Manchester by the Sea
Runners-up: The Innocents, Christine

Best Director:
Maren Ade: Toni Erdmann, Park Chan-Wook (right): The Handmaiden, Tom Ford: Nocturnal Animals

Best Actress:
Tie between Isabelle Huppert (Elle and Souvenir) and Amy Adams (Arrival and Nocturnal Animals)
Runners-up: Handmaiden co-stars Min-hee Kim and Kim Tae-ri, Rebecca Hall in Christine, Natalia Pavlenkova in Zoology, Youn Yuh-jung in The Bacchus Lady, Adele Haenel in The Unknown Girl, Lou de Laage in The Innocents, Sandra Huller in Toni Erdmann, Jaclyn Jose in Ma Rosa

Best Actor:
Peter Simonischek in Toni Erdmann
Runners-up: Majd Mastoura in Hedi, Casey Affleck in Manchester By The Sea, Antonio de la Torre in Fury of a Patient Man, Sharlto Copley in Free Fire, Michael Shannon in Nocturnal Animals

Annual Festival Ubiquity Award (previously the Kristin Scott-Thomas Award):
Rooney Mara (right) for Una, Secret Scripture and Lion. Plus Armie Hammer for Free Fire, Birth of a Nation and Nocturnal Animals.

Most Disappointing:
Personal Shopper
Goldstone
Brimstone

Best Documentaries:
Starless Dreams
The 13th
Magnus
Lo and Behold
Tower
Tickling Giants

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