Documentaries at SXSW
[Source: Center for Social Media, by Patricia Aufderheide; Mar 18, 2010]
South by Southwest Film Festival, in Austin, TX, has become a rich environment for documentaries, under the aegis of Janet Pierson (and if you don’t know this extraordinary champion of indie film, check out her interview on the POV blog). Even selecting for social-issue, human rights and cultural criticism (my stock categories), there was way too much to see. What I saw, by and large, I was happy to have seen—and no, I’m not sharing with you what I didn’t like. Life is too short.
The good news started with Steve James’ No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson. (Fair warning: I’m on the board of directors for Kartemquin, James’ production house.) The film explores how and why a high school arrest of this preternaturally skilled basketball star happened, and how it affected his public persona. Like James’ other work, the film is an essay on race and class, so it’s enormously heartening that the film will reach broad audiences. It was bankrolled by ESPN, which will showcase it on its channels. The film drew a whopper crowd, which cheered it enthusiastically.
Canal Street Madam, by Cameron Yates, was another example of a crowd-pleaser with a social punch. It follows Jeannette Maier, the middle member of a three-generation family of brothel owners. A veteran of felony convictions, she campaigns for decriminalization of prostitution and drugs. Maier, a captivating and persuasive presence, almost makes it look like fun to resist authority. But Yates also unsentimentally reveals the harsh terms of a life that features abuse, poverty and insecurity. This is a film for anyone interested in class and gender.
I felt privileged to see two films dealing with U.S. geopolitics. Carol Dysinger’s Camp Victory, Afghanistan follows, over three years, the struggles of National Guard units to shape an Afghan army force. The film reaches deep below the newspaper-headline version, allowing us inside the experience of longtime Afghan commanders and giving cultural context to otherwise baffling failures. It does not provide an ounce of encouragement to the view that more investment in front-line warfare in Afghanistan will help anyone or anybody. But its story is about two sets of men, each trying to do what needs to be done and not necessarily agreeing about it. I hope to see it on public TV, but I am not holding my breath, even though ITVS provided some funds. This one could be politically sensitive.
Laura Poitras’ The Oath, another ITVS-funded film and a Sundance-award winner, takes us inside the life of a Yemeni jihadist and taxi driver, whose hapless brother-in-law—Osama Bin Laden’s driver—is stuck in Guantanamo. The brother-in-law’s silence contrasts with the charismatic volubility of the jihadist. A local celebrity, the jihadist champions open warfare with the U.S. (including in interviews with U.S. network news) but roundly rejects terrorism as anti-Islamic. He struggles with the oath he made to Bin Laden to take orders and never criticize Bin Laden’s operation. He also struggles with poverty and fatherhood, and really misses the buddy culture of Bin Laden’s group. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law is being defended by a dogged and outraged military defense lawyer who argues that the man was just a chauffeur and not a militant. The lawyer is trying to uphold his oath to provide justice in spite of military procedures that tie his hands. It’s a complex and sometimes puzzling film, one that never lets you rest easy in your assumptions. You’ll be able to see it on public TV series POV soon.
Other docs also engaged both sides of my brain. How much credit do you think a war criminal should get for disarming the rebel army? And does the fact that he himself was recruited as a child make a difference to you? Welcome to War Don Don, Rebecca Richman Cohen’s look inside the trial of Sierra Leone’s Issa Sesay. Cohen, a lawyer who worked on a parallel trial in the same UN court that tried Sesay, finds the conflicts in a field of law still in its infancy. The film will circulate in the Human Rights Watch traveling festival this year.
Marwencol, by Jeff Malmberg, may be the perfect festival film: hate crime meets visionary art. It follows an ex-alcoholic, Mark Hogencamp, who after being beaten and left for dead outside a bar begins to build make-believe worlds with dolls and dollhouses, as therapy. (He doesn’t have enough health insurance to attend professional therapy.) The Barbies and GI Joes are transformed into an extended fantasy narrative set in World War II; they re-enact conflicts that translate Hogencamp’s anger and loss. A chance encounter leads to the New York art world’s discovery of Hogencamp as an artist—an identity he’s still trying on. Since the film was finished minutes before showtime, it doesn’t have a release yet.
Finally, there was Alexandre Philippe’s The People vs. George Lucas, a fascinating look inside the 30-something demographic whose childhood was shaped by Star Wars. Fans of this generation often passionately threw themselves into alternative worlds, fan fiction and social networks. And when the ever-more-remote Lucas remastered the originals and handed the world the first three episodes, they were outraged. The film’s portrayal of fandom betrayed is notable, among other things, for the rich display of fan work and the extensive amount of fair use employed in use of Lucas’ film and journalistic material. Expect that film in theaters sometime soon—the deals were being hashed out at SXSW.
