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The London Film Festival 2014‘s first part brought you English-language movies, and in Part 2 we looked at features from the rest of the world. Traditionally we like to hand out our virtual LFF awards in Part 3 of our round-up. And yes, they’re on their way. But first it’s high time to look at the best documentaries of the 58th BFI London Film Festival. And there were some corkers.
It seems to have been a theme to gather films about the visual arts – especially painters – this year. Standing head and shoulders above all of them is, of course, is Mike Leigh’s fabulous Mr Turner. And if you like singular studies of singular artists, then you should seek out HOCKNEY: A LIFE IN PICTURES, in which director Randall Wright gets amazing access to David Hockney’s archive, his working process, and even to the Yorkshireman himself. Brought up in austerity, we see how Bradford shaped his early existence, and begin to understand how he’s become as fascinating as his exquisite drawings and beautiful paintings. We meet family, friends, lovers, colleagues – even his dachshunds – and we see how using an iPad helped Hockney freshen his approach, and you tend to agree with his own assessment: “I realise I’m a bit of a one-off.”
Directed by South Bank Show veteran Gerry Fox, MARC QUINN: MAKING WAVES sees Fox go it alone, abandoning a big film crew and taking his time to really get under the skin of the mighty Quinn (sometimes intrusively), in his quest “to reveal what it really takes to be a creatively and commercially successful artist today”. Quinn may not have yet reached the heights of Hockney, but he is already impressing everyone from Henry Moore’s daughter to the bigwigs at Chelsea Flower Show and the Venice Biennale. Oh, and he meets the Queen. But his own wife and kids take it all in their stride. The creative process is front and centre throughout in his ‘fabrication workshop’ and with help from his ‘art technicians’, and as he presents found objects like a giant shell “untouched by human hand”, but perhaps the loveliest section features Quinn’s giant ‘fingerprint’ artworks.
 As we’ve come to expect from all Frederick Wiseman films, NATIONAL GALLERY is entirely absorbing, meticulous in its detail and very, very long. Mind you, when you consider that he shot some 170 hours of footage, then it’s a miracle he’s pared it down to just under three-hours running time. Storytelling is at its heart, and he gets warts-and-all, access-all-areas from minute one. There’s a very different agenda at work here, compared to last year’s Wiseman doc, At Berkeley, and the virtue of art and knowledge come to the fore as qualities worth celebrating in their own right, but also as a challenge for the marketing folk. And as the film gets into its own rhythm, Wiseman starts to discover what makes this organisation tick. It’s not just the people running the place, managing it, shaping it and endlessly attending meetings about its identity and future. It’s also the curators who act as interpreters, entertainers and cheerleaders for the huge range of paintings. We see how schoolchildren, educators, philanthropists and just good old Joe and Joanna Public are riveted. Life drawing classes are an eye-opener, huge crowds form for the latest blockbuster exhibition (in this case Leonardo), dancers rehearse for an event in the gallery, and we go behind the scenes for a privileged look at conservation of canvases, frames and the paint itself. We sit in on earnest discussions about budgets and charities, and we linger on classic works from Rembrandt and Turner. Splendid stuff. In similar fashion, Johannes Holzhausen spent more than two years filming inside Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum to get us right inside THE GREAT MUSEUM, thanks to an initial connection through a friend who worked as a conservator there. In many ways, this is a much harder institution to run, as it’s pretty much the British Museum and National Gallery in one, and the building itself needs considerable TLC. From grand visions of what they want to achieve, right down to the ripping up of floorboards, all museum-life is here. Everything demands constant attention, from bejewelled crowns, stuffed beasts’ heads and family heirlooms to drawers of coins. They work out how to tackle beetles within canvases, discuss how great art used to be displayed and which pieces to bring out of storage, create galleries on the computer, then roll out the red carpet for royal visits. Hugely animated macro and micro discussions are equally enthralling. Go to page 2 for the winner of the Grierson award for Best Documentary. |
 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. |
 Music, thanks to the likes of Whiplash, featured strongly in the festival. There’s yet another dynamite jazz soundtrack in documentary KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON, produced by Quincy Jones, made by first-time director Alan Hicks, and the result of five years of filming. We follow the story of young, blind pianist Justin Kauflin, as he is mentored by the increasingly frail Clark Terry, “one of the greatest trumpet players ever” according to Dizzy Gillespie. Clark was Quincy’s idol and used to play with the likes of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, but in his latter years has turned his hand to teaching jazz to thousands. Terry’s diabetes means he is losing his own health, and there is a sweetness in the mutual love and respect between mentor and eager student.
With a more improvised feel in AUSTIN TO BOSTON, director James Marcus Haney’s on-the-road movie, features Ben Howard and The Staves from the UK and American acts, Nathaniel Rateliff and Bear’s Den, as they travel three thousand miles in five old Volkswagen camper vans in just a couple of weeks. Narrated by Gill Landry from the Old Crow Medicine Show, this upbeat documentary shows how ramshackle, yet beautiful an experience it can still be when you take random strangers with only music in common, and send them out to an assorted bunch of venues across the States. Crowds are delighted, and new friendships are forged, as they collaborate and travel together. And the music isn’t bad either. |
 Another documentary that looks and feels like a drama, WAITING FOR AUGUST is the debut feature from Teodora Ana Mihai. It centres around a Romanian family, led by Georgiana, who hasn’t yet turned sixteen. And as if being a teenager wasn’t enough, she has to look after her six siblings in the cramped apartment they share while their mother is away, working in Italy. With remarkable access and fly-on-the-wall technique, we get straight to the heart of this struggling, but close family, and see how they’re affected by the usual pressures of school, friendships and romance as their emotions run high waiting for their mother’s return in August.
Cinephile-turned-film director Mark Cousins gives us another passion project in 6 DESIRES: DH LAWRENCE & SARDINIA, created outside the system and with almost no budget. Or as his producer Don Boyd describes it: “a credit card movie made with a tiny amount of money”. Cousins chooses here to retrace the steps of DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen when they arrived in Sardinia in 1921, with Lawrence’s words voiced by Jarvis Cocker. Movie archive fixes the context as Cousins composes his love letter/ essay, with wry, sly humour throughout, deliberately choosing images that resonate. Starkly recording her own family over ten years and across four generations, I, AFRIKANER is director Annalet Steenkamp’s very personal document of her homeland, South Africa, with a background of wedding celebrations and agricultural work, but also continuing racism, segregated lives, and violent murders. There’s no airbrushing here, as her closest relatives air their attitudes to their fellow countrymen, their passion for their land, their farm and their roots – and their increasing panic as they see it all ebbing away. |
 Eliza Kubarska’s debut documentary feature, WALKING UNDER WATER swirls with watery villages perched on stilts, nomads with income derived solely from fishing, diving with home-made kit – all part of the world into which an uncle takes his nephew, just off the coast of Borneo, where the Badjao tribe struggle to continue their traditions. Full of gorgeous underwater filming, shifting shoals, ancient rites and customs, this is underpinned by universal needs to eat and make a living in relentlessly hard circumstances, yet threatened by tourism.
Finally, some epic restoration work means we can at last see GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS: FACTUAL SURVEY (right), produced by Sidney L Bernstein as World War II was ending and the death camps were being liberated. The film’s original purpose was to undermine any lingering support for the Nazis and safeguard against denial, but events overtook the project, and by September 1945 the moment had passed and the film was shelved. Luckily, it was deposited with the Imperial War Museum in 1952, and their dedicated restoration team gone back to work with the original reels, and used the detailed cutting sequence list, in order to reconstruct the ‘missing’ sixth reel, reassemble the rest of the film from negatives, and record commentary from the original script. Immediately before the packed NFT1 festival screening, a very necessary introduction prepared us for the searing images to come – and a valuable Q&A afterwards helped us process what we’d seen from camps including Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Perhaps the main question that arose was the extent of Alfred Hitchcock’s involvement at the time – some called him the director, but he was actually an advisor who suggested the initial treatment, instructing the filmmakers to shoot long sequences with the camera panning right round, so they couldn’t be accused of any fakery. One of the main restorers, Toby Haggith describes this work as the “lost masterpiece of British documentary filmmaking” that challenges our modern sensibilities and shows the humanity of those whose lives were being destroyed. It may get a wide release – with a specially-made introduction – in 2015, and it is a film that has to be seen. Go to page 4 for the DVDfever Awards 2014! |
 DVDfever AWARDS 2014
Without further ado, YES, THEY’RE HERE, THE ANNUAL DVDfever AWARDS… AND THE AWARD GOES TO… (cue: dramatic pause, cutaways of the contenders, rustling and sigh of disbelief while virtual envelope is opened)… We’ve re-examined our notes and re-evaluated our favourites, and can now bring you our much coveted and entirely virtual awards. The films, the stars, the emerging names, the lifetime bests… and the simply unmissable cheatsheet to carry with you at all times, so you can bluff your way into making the correct decisions at your multiplex or arthouse box office. But don’t thank us, we’re just doing our job. Thankfully there are no long, blubbing acceptance speeches here, just the 2014 DVDfever Awards. BEST FILM, FULL STOP:
Runner-up: DUKE OF BURGUNDY (Peter Strickland)
Runners-up: SPANISH AFFAIR (Emilio Martinez-Lazaro), PING PONG SUMMER (Michael Tully), LAND HO! (Martha Stephens & Aaron Katz) BEST THRILLER:
Runners-up: THE DROP (US, Michael R Roskam), BLACK SOULS (Italy, Francesco Munzi) BEST DRAMA:
Runners-up: MY OLD LADY (Israel Horowitz), THE DINNER (Ivan de Matteo), SECOND CHANCE (Susanne Bier), TIMBUKTU (Abderrahmane Sissako) BEST DOCUMENTARIES:
Runners-up: GREEN PRINCE (Nadav Schirmann), TENDER (Lynette Wallworth), ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (Mark Hartley), SILVERED WATER (Ossama Mohammed & Wiam Simav Bedirxan)
Runners-up: BLACK SOULS; MEN WOMEN & CHILDREN BEST ACTOR:
JK SIMMONS and MILES TELLER for Whiplash (right, together) BEST ACTRESS:
JULIUS AVERY for Son of a Gun ISRAEL HOROWITZ for My Old Lady JUSTIN SIMIEN for Dear White People DANIEL & MATTHEW WOLFE for Catch Me Daddy MORGAN MATTHEWS for X+Y DEBBIE TUCKER GREEN for Second Coming FELLIPE BARBOSA for Casa Grande DANIEL RIBEIRO for The Way He Looks ALONSO RUIZ PALACIOS for Gueros SUHA ARRAF for Villa Touma ADITYA VIKRAM SENGUPTA for Labour of Love AFIA NATHANIEL for Dukhtar
ALICE WIKANDER in Testament of Youth, Son of a Gun KAI FRANCIS-LEWIS in Second Coming ABDIKANI MUKTAR in Fishing Without Nets KARIDJA TOURE in Girlhood GULAGI MALANDA and NADIA MOUSSA in My Friend Victoria KALKI KOECHLIN in Margarita with a Straw
CHANNING TATUM in Foxcatcher NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU in A Second Chance TIMOTHY SPALL in Mr Turner NINA HOSS in Phoenix ANGELIKI PAPOULIA in A Blast THE THIRD KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS/GEORGE CLOONEY AWARD FOR FESTIVAL UBIQUITY ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY:
MATTHIAS SCHOENHAERTS for The Drop, A Little Chaos ALEX LAWTHER as young Turing in The Imitation Game, X+Y DOMINIQUE PINON for My Old Lady, OXI
MR TURNER DUKE OF BURGUNDY HARD DAY (right) THE DROP MY OLD LADY IMITATION GAME MEN WOMEN & CHILDREN PING PONG SUMMER DEAR WHITE PEOPLE SECOND CHANCE GIRLHOOD THE DINNER TIMBUKTU SPANISH AFFAIR Check out the BFI London Film Festival 2014 website here. |
BEST COMEDY:
BEST ADAPTATION FROM PLAY OR BOOK:
RISING TALENT (MOST PROMISING DIRECTORS): 
RISING TALENT (MOST PROMISING STARS):
AND FINALLY… THE 15 MUST-SEES: