Skip to content
 The winner of this year’s Grierson award for Best Documentary was SILVERED WATER: SYRIA SELF-PORTRAIT, from Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan. And what makes this remarkable is that the exiled Syrian, Mohammed, did not revisit his homeland for this; it was put together from YouTube reportage clips – “1001 images shot by 1001 men and women… and me” – to form a narrative of birth, butchery, corpses, coffins, and funeral parades. Amidst the bloodshed there may be occasional glimmers of hope, but mainly despair and slaughter. This is not – and should not be – an easy watch.
What about the other contenders for the Grierson? NE ME QUITTE PAS from Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Niels van Koevorden feels more like a drama, such is the frankness of her subjects and subject matter. Split into chapters, with very black humour running throughout, it follows the story of two Belgian friends, Bob (Flemish) and Marcel (Walloon), who between them battle with alcoholism, failed marriage, desperation and loneliness. They casually talk of death and leftover meatballs in the same breath. Despondent and mismatched, the mid-life buddies struggle on, but when they reach a turning point, will they give up and kill themselves or start afresh? Also feeling more like a drama – specifically a thriller – is fellow contender THE GREEN PRINCE from Nadav Schirmann, and based on Mosab Hassan Yousef‘s memoir Son of Hamas. For this is the true story of how a young Palestinian, Yousef, worked as a spy for the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet, while appearing to be his Hamas-leader father’s right hand man and gatekeeper. Put together with ‘Bourne-like’ overhead shots, mixed with impressionistic reconstruction and real archive footage, the film is anchored by crisp interviews with the two protagonists – the spy and the handler who recruited him, who build an unbreakable bond. In fact, in the Q&A after the film, Shirmann explained that some people think that the main characters in the interview sequences are actors. We learn that for Yousef, “Hamas was not just a movement, it was the family business”. And to the Shin Bet agents who recruited Yousef, this was a major coup, like “recruiting the son of the Israeli prime minister”… although they couldn’t always act on the information from Yousef, as that would have given the game away and ended the operation. Remarkably, Yousef himself appeared on stage for the Q&A, and said that “There were a couple of times when I was close to being caught. But the cover was very solid, very strong; the perception that I was working for Hamas.” Another Grierson nominee, MAIDAN is a departure for Sergei Loznitsa, previously best known for feature dramas My Joy and In The Fog, as it chronicles the very recent past, and the civil uprising in Ukraine against their pro-Russian president Yanukovych in Kiev’s Independence Square last winter. And in the style of TV series like 24 Hours in A&E, he gets right in the thick of the protests by placing cameras everywhere, then harvesting hundreds of hours of footage. We see thousands dossing down nearby, making huge pro-democracy signs, singing folk songs and the Ukraine national anthem, making speeches, constructing barriers, doling out soup and fuel, and just trying to keep warm. There is no moderation or mediation, just unobtrusive fixed cameras capturing this occupation, or ‘Maidan’. Children entertain the crowds, priests hold mass and really speak out against Yanukovych… and then the mood turns in January 2014 as repression leads to violence and the armed riot police get stuck in, fires blaze and missiles rain down. A lengthy, but worthwhile film that documents 90 incredible days. |
 GUIDELINES (right), directed by Jean-Francois Caissy and nominated for Best Documentary, also uses fixed cameras, much in the style of Educating Yorkshire. But the subjects here are Canadian school students, so perhaps it could be called Educating Quebec? A succession of adolescents behaving badly are summoned and interviewed in a school office, and the ‘invisibility’ and access of the camera gives an intimacy to their exchanges with the teachers. This contrasts with long shots for the exteriors, to give a satisfying rhythm to the film.
TENDER is exactly that, as director Lynette Wallworth takes us gently but unsentimentally into the usually taboo-world of death – and it was deservedly nominated for the Grierson. A remote Australian community is setting up a not-for-profit funeral business – not to mention taking over and maintaining the local cemetery. They want an alternative to what generally happens to the bereaved: “you shouldn’t be ripping people off when you’re burying someone you cared for” and feel that the way it usually works has “nothing loving or supportive about it.” They also believe that the business of death has been sanitised and turned into a technology, with no recognition of grief being “that raw, open pain when you lose someone”. What gives the film further insight is the fact that Wallworth and the Community Project Manager, Jenny Briscoe-Hough, have been friends since they were children, and so the documentary also tells the story of how the people are trying to reinvigorate the community itself. The most moving section shows what happens when one of their own people gets sick and faces death, becoming the first person they must arrange a funeral for. Filled with animated discussions about life and death, but leavened with bags of humour and a terrific soundtrack from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, this is a remarkable and frank film. Take two film-fanatic Israeli cousins, put them in charge of an existing movie brand, Cannon Films, and what do you get? In short, some of the most jaw-droppingly so-bad-it’s-bad exploitation flicks of all time, from self-styled moguls Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Sometimes they hadn’t even made the movies they were selling, but that didn’t bother these Hollywood wannabes, as director Mark Hartley shows so vividly in his fun-packed documentary, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Their cheap, deliberately and outrageously vulgar fare for the popcorn-chewing masses featured violence, sex and overacting, including the Mount Everest of bad musicals, The Apple. It’s doubtful we’ll ever see their like again. Go to page 3 for some music-based documentaries. |