Ah, good, welcome. (You should scroll down, later, and read all of Cath’s excellent London International Festival bloggings.).
So: Shooting People is media sponsor of Doc/Fest, and I was invited by their suave programmer Hussain Currimbhoy to host a series of Q&As with filmmakers. In between I caught several sessions, grabbed as many films as I could and, occasionally, remembered to eat and breathe.
By Wednesday’s opening day, the Festival was already sold out, with over 1,300 Delegates passes sold. By Thursday evening, more than half had arrived and checked in, a statistic which had Director Heather Croall agog. If it at all strained the Festival’s systems, it didn’t show.
The Gala opening night film was Director / Producer John Dower’s “Thriller in Manila” (which I’d already seen at BRITDOC). http://tinyurl.com/5rqgqf. This bluesy, funny, tense and outright savage film retells, from the point of view of Smokin’ Joe Frazier his brutal and culturally significant third and last fight with Muhammad Ali. The affable Dower gave a frank interview talking, amongst other things, of the pitfalls of making another Muhammad Ali film after the fabulously successful “When We Were Kings”: “ … after all, how many boxing documentaries does the world need?”. John: you can never have enough explorations of this most primeval and nuanced of activities, especially when they cover this much new ground, and so well. More on Iron Mike later.
On Thursday morning, I followed the crowd to a new BBC Storyville production of Elizabeth Stopford’s “I’m Not Dead Yet”. http://tinyurl.com/5frj2f. What starts as a nosy, rather chipper observational about an aging scioness and her two squabbling daughters fast unravels into a deftly handled and broodingly emotional telling of the life-lasting legacies of child abuse. It deftly juxtaposes old family films with recent testimony, and is very poetically shot (why aren’t more docs?). Peering into the never to be healed scars of these three strong, reserved, but somewhat broken women was potently confronting. Further thickening the stew is that Stopford is by turns daughter, niece and grand daughter of the protagonists.
Not too many laughs either at my first Q&A: Lorne Kramer’s “Mee [not a typo] and my Dad” was a very assured medium length short from this UWE student. http://tinyurl.com/62ro7h. Kramer takes a trip to Thailand to videograph the wedding of his father and a local woman (the epnoymous Mee) who was only three years Lorne’s senior. Relations between Kramer and his father had been awkward since the parents divorced, and the film is a frank, sometimes uncomfortable observational about a son who wants a father, and a father who just wants a mate.
An apt emotional lid loosener, then, for Bill Roulston’s “Dream Riders”. http://tinyurl.com/689wko. In a neat flip (a coincidence? I suspect Hussain’s too clever for that), this time son Nico just wants Dad Bill to be a mate, having not trusted him for the last eight years. Bill – a school teacher who’d never made a film before - persuades Nico to accompany him on a cycle trip from the US West Coast to the East. They load up a Winnebago with spares, food and a crew who shoot over 300 hours of footage, and start a long, wary voyage across the continent, and around each other. Initially threatening mawkish therapy rather than film, it ultimately won its audience completely over with a big emotional pay off of reconciliation and retribution. The packed house gave Bill and Nico a warm three minute ovation – the longest I heard in Sheffield. That was too much for them – this was their Festival debut, after all - and arm in arm they dissolved into tears, taking the young lady I had sat next to with them, which then set me off, and the whole audience. Honestly, I’m meant to be a professional.
My, that's a big one
Mid afternoon Saturday, I found myself with 50 minutes to kill, and managed to catch the last half of director Adam Low’s “The Hunt for Moby Dick”, made for Arena, and to accompany Philip Hoare’s eponymous book. http://tinyurl.com/6opnmf. Lingeringly shot, with glutton-satisfying amounts of knuckle-whitening cetacean close ups, sepulchral-toned readings from Herman Mellville’s “Moby Dick”, archive of American whaling operations, and chunks lifted from the classic Holywood take on the story, it is All Things Whale, more than you realised you wanted: a history of the American industry, a socio-cultural analysis of the book, a biography of Melville, a robust economic-historic argument that the industry was the starting block of the American sprint to global capitalist domination, and – less convincingly, but brave – a knitting together of these Leviathans of the deep with human Armageddon and recent geopolitical catastrophes. A moving (again – I am getting soft), and compelling historical document.
Feature debutant New Yorker Astra Taylor’s “Examined Life” is unusual in several senses. http://tinyurl.com/5tqo2t. It’s an exploration of philosophy – uncommon enough – and one which is yet purposefully visual. It’s 80 minutes, in eight chunks. Each is a ten minutes stroll with an actual philosopher, who explicates his/her attitudes. Sounds like film hell, and interest is not just maintained, but actually piqued by Taylor’s Come On In The Water’s Fine gentleness of touch, the often semiotically rich environs in which she has her protagonists walk, and the unpatronising passion those (frighteningly articulate) speakers bring. Taylor also has a simple trick of making the camera occasionally flick off to the side, as if something had caught its / our eye: it worked every time. The ideas contained within the film – and there are dozens upon dozens – take more than a little while to process, and the film has stayed with me for days; it keeps giving. And yes: the Meaning of Life is in there. See it. And even better: I didn’t cry once.
Australian (and newly wed, ahh!) director / producer team Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley in their “Dominic Dunne: After the Party” got terrific and extended access to the author, journalist, sometimes TV personality, and Vanity Fair staple, whilst he followed the last few days of Phil Spector’s first (mis)trial. http://tinyurl.com/5brwny. In a legacy seeking series of interviews, we also get lots of juicy old Hollywood anecdotes, a bottoming out and redemption tale, and many tough nuggets of human tragedy. De Garis shows masterful touch at gaining the trust of this most media savvy of operators, and the whole assured, well organised production is very satisfying.
Prior to the Friday night gala at City Hall, wickedly co-presented by our own Lee Kern, the filmmaker presented his ‘show’ (the quotes are advisable) “Lee Kern’s Jackanories”. http://tinyurl.com/6ptsrw. Not films at all, rather a series of short comic audio documentaries (“I like doing them, because they’re f*cking easy”, Kern explains) with music (Abide With Me, no less!) that essay mental breakdowns. It’s some of the subtlest, leanest wok I’ve seen of Kern’s yet. The second part, in which he interviews with candour and rougish humour, even relish, his diagnosed bi-polar friend was hugely powerful, and very economical.
Come here and say that.
More boxing – good! – later Friday evening, when after the Awards, my companion and I caught the late night screening of James Toback’s “Tyson”. http://tinyurl.com/6p9br5. Iron Mike himself exec produced (paid for?) this filmically innovative and hard hitting in both senses bio-piece of the disgraced, never forgotten ex World Champion. Amazingly frank about his own shortcomings, and proudly vitriolic to those who profited from both his rise and fall, it is thrilling and desperately sad.
For many Doc/Fest delegates, it’s the sessions that are the thing, and I, for one, love going back to school. I caught the third of four of DFG’s Newcomers’ Day sessions, a revealing series of non-traditional broadcasting case studies. Time and time again panelists referred to Lord Lance Weiler’s Workbook Project and Liz Rosenthal’s Power to the Pixel. Whilst I’m plugging: I hope you’ve bookmarked this very bulletin’s editor Ingrid Koop’s Tools Blog - http://shootingpeople.org/tools. - and downloaded our Short Sighted Handbook - http://shootingpeople.org/shortsighted.
But the most satisfying notebooks-out-boys-and-girls two hours was easily our friends at BRITDOC’s Saturday Service. http://tinyurl.com/britdoc. BRITDOC had caused the first big stir of the Festival, with their announcement that they won’t be returning to Keble, and will instead take their slate of live, Festival programming on the road, including a deep strategic partnership with Doc/Fest. Meantime, they’ve relaunched their website - http://britdoc.org. - and this event was a tour of their new raft of services they are offering to broker relationships between filmmakers and the Third Sector (charities, NGOs and the like). Their Real Good matchmaking website for that burgeoning space will be launched in January. Now is a very good time for you to start thinking about the kind of ‘Good’ films you’d like to make, because that industry is going to heat up palpably from now on. Bookmark this: http://britdoc.org/real_good.
So: I seem to have developed a specialty for interviewing the first timer. Elizabeth Marcus was a die hard Manic Street Preachers fan rather than filmmaker, when her husband and editor Yes You Can’d her into approaching the band. http://tinyurl.com/5kxg64. James Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore were most forthcoming. Indeed, and not being that much of a Manics fan, I now find myself harbouring a huge affection for them, thanks to Marcus’s film: my favourite scene was Bradfield cooking a fry up for the crew. The film’s mix of kitchen sink star footage, painstakingly juxtaposed heartfelt and quirky fan vox pops, and detailed coverage of the band putting down a new single, tries to do pretty much everything, and succeeds most of the time. There will be plenty of time to redress that which doesn’t work: this was a work in progress, and the Manics fan soaked audience were delighted to offer their insights. Yes, and the elephant in the film, as it were – Richey Edwards’s disappearance – was deftly, persistently and unobtrusively dealt with.
And to last duties: Sunday’s secret film (announced Saturday!) was that consummate British documentary individualist Brian Hill’s (no debutant, touché) newest– the first audience screening, no less – of “Climate of Change”. Participant Media’s (“An Inconvenient Truth”, “Fast Food Nation”)’ commission essays micro climate activism: Indian schoolchildren motivating each other, an Appalachian citizen’s lone stand against coal mountain ‘beheading’, Papua New Guinean subsistence farmers refusing to log without sustainability, and a London Green PR exec. Stitching these disparate stories is some very Hill high art scoring, thanks to Nitin Sawhney, and plenty of long time collaborator Simon Armitage’s direct and moody verse, langorously recited by Tilda Swinton. In the QA&A, Hill said he had no intention of making climate pornography, and, indeed, the film is successful in it Obama-esqe aim: “yes we can! (Recycle)”.
So much went on that I didn’t see. Yet I certainly don’t recall sleeping much.
