True/False 2012

I came into my fourth True/False Film Festival eager to see a film from a director I was introduced to a couple festivals back.  Mads Brügger is a truly Gonzo filmmaker.  Think of him like Sasha Baron Cohen with a sharper underlying social/political agenda.  In The Red Chapel, he travelled with two Koreans into North Korea under the guise of being a "performance troupe" to expose the insanity on the inside of that state.

For his new film, The Ambassador, the mad Dane goes through underground channels to get himself Liberian diplomatic credentials and travels to the lawless Central African Republic.  Striking the pose of a European Colonialist in riding boots and cigarette holder, he bribes government officials and buys blood diamonds.  It's equal parts hilarious and horrifying - often at the same moment.  At the Q&A following the screening, Brügger said The Ambassador may be the last film where he goes undercover and puts himself at risk.  I hope that's not true, but even if it is, he's already carved out a niche with his distinctive voice.

Another distinctive documentary voice, Morgan Spurlock, surprised by not appearing in his new film Comic Con, Episode IV: A Fan's Hope.  It was no surprise that the film was funny, fast-paced and engaging.  What impressed me the most was the emotional arc of the ensemble of characters Spurlock follows - illustrators seeking approval, a young "geek" looking to propose to the woman he met at the Con, a veteran comic dealer, and a talented amateur costume designer.

Whereas so many documentaries rely in part on the compelling nature of their subjects, or put demands on the audience with a more art-film aesthetic, Comic Con was a reminder of the engaging power of a more traditional narrative - even in documentary.

Another brilliantly structured film was the closing night's Searching for Sugar Man, about the mysterious Detroit musician Rodriguez, who recorded two critically acclaimed but commercially failed albums in the early '70s.  While ignored in the the US, the records became enormous hits in South Africa, on the order of Elvis or The Rolling Stones.  Rodriguez vanished, and stories swirled that he had killed himself on stage.  Filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul allows the story to unfold as a mystery, and the ending is truly revelatory.

While Sugar Man offers a glimpse into life in impoverished, increasingly abandoned Detroit, that's the sole focus of Detropia, from Jesus Camp Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.  It's a stark portrait of life inside a vanishing city.

Recurring images of Detroit are the kind of connections that inevitably pop up at a festival as well programmed as True/False.  Another striking contrast came from the timeshare billionaires trying to build the largest home in America in Queen of Versailles, and the prisoner in solitary imagining and designing his dream home in Herman's House.

As always happens, filmmaker after filmmaker praised the festival and vowed to come back even without a film to show - and many keep that promise.  I know of no other festival where the enthusiasm of being a film fan so unites directors and audience.  After four years as a festival attendee, it was nice to see I've been remembered in Vox Magazine… even if it was for kinda-sorta-accidentally blowing the cover on some Secret Screenings a few years ago.

For another take on this year's fest, check out fellow DSM resident Brianne Sanchez blog.  As a better journalist than I ever was, she even has the sense not to disclose the titles of Secret Screenings.

True/False 2011: Truth Harder

This ain't Twilight. It's a friggin' documentary.

2011 was my third year in a row at the True/False Film Festival, and I can't imagine why I wouldn't go back again next year.

It's hard to describe just how great the vibe in the town is - thousands milling around and lining up around the blocks to watch documentaries.  When I miss a film at the festival - and it's impossible to see them all - and watch them months later at home, I regret not seeing them in the Missouri Theater with 1,000 others.  I missed WasteLand at last year's festival, and as the accolades and Oscar nomination have piled up, I haven't stopped kicking myself.

Probably my favorite film this year was Life in a Day - the doc culled from a day's worth of videos uploaded to YouTube.  Given that pedigree, I had some reservations, as director Kevin MacDonald said he did.  I'm a pretty hardcore cynic, but you'd have to be even more cynical than me to not be moved by the film MacDonald and crew put together.  Life in a Day has elements of narrative, but it's more a symphony of tone, framing the highs and lows of human experience.

Sure, you could call it a gimmick.  But it is a technical achievement that wouldn't even have been possible a few years ago.  If someone offers to show you what is going on around the entire world on a single day, how could you say no?

The quality of the curation goes even deeper.  The shorts program Landmarks & Monoliths featured five shorts which all revolved around the relationship between people and the environments they've built around them.  Minka, directed by Davina Pardo, very delicately explored the lives of two longtime male companions around the story of how they rebuilt an ancient Japanese farm house as their home.

Let's be honest, shorts programs always center around a theme.  But they rarely come together into much more than "here's a few films which kind of relate to each other."

To quote the Portlandia theme song, the spirit of the 90s is alive in (Columbia).  I finally got a chance to eat an truly amazing breakfast at Cafe Berlin.  Booches still dishes out the best hamburgers I've ever been served on wax paper.

I realize I come on like the Convention & Visitors Bureau, but such is my love for this festival and the people who put it on.  If you Googled your way to this post and have read this far, you owe it to yourself to check out True/False for yourself.

Troll Hunter, The Arbor and blurring lines

Troll!!!

Troll Hunter and The Arbor may only have two things in common.  Both screened at this year's True/False Film Festival, and both blur the lines between documentary and narrative fiction.  I liked The Arbor better.

I was looking forward to Troll Hunter as a fan of comedy, bizarro subject matter and Norwegians.  I knew going in that the film was largely invented, with CGI trolls and all.  I guess I thought the filmmakers extrapolated from some kernel of truth - perhaps playing out some crazy guy's stories.  But the film is 100% invention, much in the vein of Blair Witch or Cloverfield.

There are some genuinely funny moments, and the filmmakers get a lot of mileage from just a little bit of troll footage.  Unlike many mockumentaries, they stay completely true to documentary style found footage.  But once it's clear the film is all invention, I wanted the pacing and beats of a narrative arc.  If you don't have the storytelling of narrative and you don't have the "reality" of documentary, what do you have?

Worth shooting with actors just for a bitchin' shot like this.

Whereas Troll Hunter is a fiction narrative trying to look like a documentary, The Arbor is a documentary made to look like fiction.  The film consists of audio interviews with its subjects, with actors on screen lip-synching to their words.

It's the story of British playwright Andrea Dunbar, whose teenage accounts of life in The Estate (the projects) brought her some prominence in the 80s.  Dunbar's hard drinking and hard living led to three children from three fathers and her death at just 29.  Her children, especially the oldest, struggled to get on without falling down the same path as their mother.

The lip-synching technique is a bit jarring at first, but often you forget it's even there.  But Director Clio Barnard wants the audience to remain aware that there is a level of manipulation and storytelling in what they are watching.  (I asked her.)  What really made the technique connect is that, in the same way Andrea's plays were a dramatic recreation of her life's events, the documentary is a sort-of recreation based on the stories the people in her life have told.

Coming on the heels of a year when Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop sparked a lot of debate about the blending of truth and fiction in docs, The Arbor and Troll Hunter illustrate that the blending of styles hinges on which elements you hold onto.

Page One: Journalism vs. Technology

A key moment in Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times comes subtly, in footage from one of many panels on "the death of newspapers."  Someone from the news aggregator Newser makes the blanket claim that media companies are in the technology business.

It's hardly new to kick newspapers around for being slow or inept at embracing new technologies.  But Page One makes a much needed counterargument - these technology companies are also in the journalism business.  Or at least they should be.

Times Reporter David Carr - the real star of the film - responds by showing the Newser front page with every piece of content gathered from a traditional news agency cut-out, leaving just a page full of holes.  In another clip, David Simon points out he's never seen a reporter from the Huffington Post at a Baltimore Zoning Board meeting.

But the real argument for the relevance of the journalist comes from watching the entire machine of the New York Times.  Editors stay long into the night debating the relevance of a story, is the angle right, is it even a story at all?  These are conversations I recognize from my days in newspaper, but it's a side of the job not often seen.

Contrasting this is the office of aggregator Gawker, where writers gather around the "big board" - a screen which constantly updates with the top ten stories readers are viewing.  The implication is to serve the audience by scrambling to give them what they want, to grab clicks with headlines that play into common search terms, etc.

In a Q&A after the screening at True/False, David Carr said that the Times is becoming more like Gawker, and Gawker is becoming more like the Times.  Perhaps modern news reporting is one part journalism and one part technology.  But the technology side has taken a lot of credit in recent years, and reveled in kicking the journalists while they're down.  Score this one for the journalists.

Final Thoughts on True/False 10

I was more prepared for the rhythms of True/False in my second year, but no less impressed by event and its films.

I enjoyed every film I saw, which makes it harder to distinguish between them.  Restrepo has stayed with me the most, but given its life-and-death nature, perhaps that's to be expected.  But I largely devoted my time to my favorite kind of doc - focused on a single, eccentric personality.

Smash His Camera and The Invention of Dr. Nakamats both fit well into this niche,  and took distinctly different approaches.  Smash His Camera broadens its perspective on Paparazzo Ron Galella to include wildly differing critical views of him and his work.  Nakamats never steps back from the portrait the subject paints of himself.  It creates a more unified POV, but made me long for the context of Smash His Camera.

One of the richest experiences when attending a festival is drawing connections between the films - something you simply can't or wouldn't do when watching them separately.  My buddy Travis pointed out as we left Waking Sleeping Beauty that the events it chronicles ended 14 years ago, exactly as had the life of the comedian we saw documented in one of the Secret Screenings the night before.  Is 14 years some kind of magical gestation age for a certain historical perspective?  Maybe, but I never would have wondered if I hadn't seen the two films within hours of each other.

If there was one disappointment from the films I saw, it was that they didn't open up to me more.  The experience I most enjoy when watching a doc is that moment the film goes beyond that quirky hook of its subject and becomes "about" something different.  Smash His Camera had moments of this - questions of the nature of art and celebrity.  Probably more than any other film I saw, Restrepo left much to be discovered between the images and the rationalizations of the soldiers involved.

One day after leaving the festival, I wonder about the films I didn't see.  Two of this year's Best Picture nominees screened at last year's fest - but I only saw one of them.  Critic Karina Longworth Tweeted several films she was impressed with last night.  I had seen none of them.

It's a credit to the festival that it can't be fully digested, even spread over four days.  I spoke to filmmakers and attendees alike whose reaction was the same as mine last year - "how did I not know about this?"

Four Film Saturday at True/False

We planned to see It Felt Like a Kiss first thing in the morning, but some schedule confusion led us into the queue for Waking Sleeping Beauty instead.

The doc follows a renaissance in Disney animation and the overhaul in management that took place between 1984 and 1994.  It feels hard not to damn the film with faint praise.  It is essentially a history, and for anyone interested in Disney or the business of Hollywood, and I count myself as one, it's an interesting history.  One interesting choice, noted before the screening by producer and former Disney Exec. Peter Schneider - the filmmakers chose to only use footage from the era itself.  In Schneider's words, there are no "shots of old men talking."  It's a subtle choice, but keeps the film grounded in the moments it documents.

Disney luminaries like Eisner and Katzenberg appear more or less as expected, but I was surprised and even moved by the creative contributions of lyricist Howard Ashman to the production of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

After a couple beers and a couple sliders at Booches, we began our afternoon at the Blue Note venue with The Red Chapel.  The film follows a Danish filmmaker and two Danish/Korean performers he recruits to travel into North Korea under the guise of a cross-cultural performance.  The ruse of the filmmaker's crew is manipulative and even crass, but it pales in comparison to the group performance of the entire population of Pyongyang.

Every action the crew encounters is choreographed to display an image of perfect unity and loyalty to the Great Leader(s).  The crew plays along, even as their North Korean handlers edit their performance entirely into something more appropriate for North Korean audiences.  But the strain on the faces of the people are clear.  Filmmaker Mads Brugger attributes their every action to fear, and it would be hard to disagree with his assessment.

Some of Brugger's actions set my ethical spider-sense tingling, but the film is worthwhile even if just as a window into this hidden society.  It's an often hilarious piece of absurdism, but the fear and tragedy of North Korea lend weight to the humor.

The Invention of Dr. Nakamats brings humor with much less baggage, as it documents the Japanese inventor with the most registered patents in history.  The Doctor's inventions include legitimate technological breakthroughs such as the floppy disk, but it appears from the film far more oddities, including an underwater pencil/notebook and products to stimulate female arousal.

As the title suggests, Nakamats is also meticulous about sculpting his image and orchestrating the events around him, down to a moment he orders his children to redo a presentation of a birthday gift to him.  It's a funny film about a truly eccentric character, but by the end I wished it could have taken me to some deeper level of understanding of Nakamats.

Restrepo was our final film in the standing-room only Blue Note.  The winner of the Grand Jury Doc prize at Sundance did not disappoint.  It's being sold as a true story version of The Hurt Locker, and that's not an inaccurate description - especially in the opening moments when the camera is inside a vehicle as it is exploded by a land mine.

The bulk of the film follows a team of soldiers as they man the most remote outpost in Afghanistan, under near-constant attack from the remnants of the Taliban.  

I heard several people dismiss the film as "good, but nothing I haven't seen before."  Sure, the war doc isn't a new thing - but I don't remember feeling as much a feeling of actually being there as I did watching Restrepo.  The camera is there with the soldiers as they are taking fire, and in the most harrowing sequence, with them on patrol as fellow soldiers are being killed just a few yards away.

Interviews with the surviving soldiers frame and add poignancy to the footage.  It feels like the filmmakers have been true to the words and intentions of those soldiers as they tell their story, but the end result left me feeling that all their sacrifice was done in tragic futility.

We ended our night, as we did last year, with pizza and pitchers of beer at Shakespeare's Pizza - a classic college town pizza parlor, filled with a vibrant young crowd that makes me feel every one of my 31 years.

Friday Night at True/False

Last night kicked off the 10th True/False Film Festival (at least for us).  It's my second year at what I'm already planning to make an annual event.

After gathering our passes and applying some social lubricant, we got into the packed Missouri Theater to see Smash His Camera - a doc which premiered at Sundance and was just picked up by HBO this week for distribution.

The film documents the life's work of Ron Galella, a lifelong paparazzo who was sued by Jackie O. and punched in the face by Marlon Brando.  Galella and a cadre of supporters and detractors narrate the story, from his first work in the late '60s up to today.

Director Leon Gast also directed the stellar When We Were Kings.  While Galella doesn't have the charisma of a figure like Ali (and then again who does?), both films focus on a singular personality whose actions ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, resonate into the culture at large.

Beyond just the character story of the eccentric photographer, the film raises interesting questions about what constitutes art - particularly in photography.  Galella's work has recently been exhibited at museums, and it's hard to argue that he hasn't taken some beautiful photographs.  His shots are snapshots, often with a prominent flash bulb glare, but the candid, vulnerable moments he captures can be fascinating.  His critics argue that anyone who takes that many shots is bound to wind up with a few good shots, and also point out that it's always the subject that makes the photo interesting.

Galella comes across warmly, though seeing he has applied his techniques to subjects including children can be stomach-churning.  I was particularly struck by his string of photos of Angelina Jolie, going back to when she appeared to be only eight or nine years old.  He argues in several archival interviews that his intention is to show celebrities at their most human.

That argument felt rather thin to me, but there is a fascinating moment late in the film when a young girl, probably in her teens, wanders through an exhibition of Galella's work.  She tries to identify the subjects of the photos - the likes of Onasis, Steve McQueen, Bridget Bardot, etc.  She recognizes almost none of them.  It's subtle but striking evidence of the fleeting nature of fame, and perhaps lends credence to Galella's claim that in the end, he's just capturing images of humanity.

After Smash His Camera, we caught and enjoyed the Secret Screening Black.  But by the request of the programmers, I'll leave my thoughts on that a secret.

Food Inc. | Big River Man

I'm back home after a five-hour night drive - one of many things to file under "not as easy as it used to be." Sunday, I made it to three more screenings and had a delicious Cuban pork sandwich at the Ragtag.

Food, Inc. is going to be huge. It's a catch-all overview of industrialized food and a strong call for action some of the big offenders. Despite being an episodic advocacy piece, slick graphics, animation and visual panache give it momentum. Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser feature prominently, and if you've read their books don't expect a lot of new ground to be broken.

Playing to a doc film fest audience in a college down, Food, Inc. elicited applause and cheers throughout. Director Robert Kenner said he will be screening the doc for Tom Vilsack, and Kenner, Schlosser and Pollan are all optimistic that the new farm bill will go in a new direction. The film is scheduled to open in LA/NY in June, then expand.

Big River Man is my favorite kind of doc - a profile of a truly bizarre individual. In this case it is the story of Martin Strel, who director John Maringouin described as "an overweight drunk who just happens to be the greatest distance swimmer in the world." The film follows Strel and his media hungry son as Strel attempts to swim the entire Amazon river. What follows is very funny and utterly bizarre.

I also caught O'er the Land, a non-narrative film with some fascinating moments, though also many of the characteristics that turn me off from these type of films. It screened with Bitch Academy, a Russian short about a school in St. Petersburg where women, many of them educated and successful, learn to dress sexy and behave in ways that will make men give them money. It moves from funny to sickening and back, crossing many lines of sexuality, dignity, identity, etc. But by never showing the women or the egomaniacal male instructor outside the classroom environment, it also lacks a certain context.

Bitch Academy has apparently also screened under the English title "Vixen Academy," making it this year's winner of the Indie Doc Which Most Sounds Like a Russ Meyer Film Award.

No Impact Man | Secret Screenings

I went into No Impact Man expecting the story of a man moving completely off the grid, but was more interested to learn Colin Beaven and family's year-long experiment would take place in their NYC apartment. Their year of using less suggests many "necessities" are really no more than "habits." Part of the experiment is clearly publicity stunt, and the family and the film acknowledge that.

As with so many good docs, an even more compelling story emerges underneath the premise. Beaven's wife Michelle is much more reluctant about the experiment, while also trying to convince Beaven to have a second child. Their quiet battles are a poignant picture of the compromises, concessions and gamesmanship in a marriage.

The look of the film seems geared towards television viewing, the focus on clarifying the information. Though, at the Q&A, directors Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein said they used no artificial lighting, in an effort to subscribe to the No Impact ethos themselves.

I also caught two of the festival's "secret screenings."

Secret Screening Silver is a gorgeous looking film. The director's camera exposes and contextualizes things his subjects may not even realize themselves.

As with No Impact Man, the premise (following three elderly greeters of returning soldiers) is more of a framing device for an exploration of aging and loneliness. When greeter Bill confesses his life doesn't mean anything to him, so he tries to make it meaningful for someone else, the note of despair rings as loud as the note of service. As moving as the majority of the film is, by the end it feels like the filmmakers are wallowing in this matter-of-fact melancholy.

A few things about Secret Screening Green kept me from fully investing in the film or its characters. It is a stark look at two Brazillian boys and their families' lives of poverty. The compositions are rich and cinematic, particularly in framing this simultaneously agrarian and industrial world.

But long atmospheric sequences are punctuated with stagey dialogue between characters. These scenes often begin with pre-set camera moves to both characters in perfect frame, engaging in dialogue with self-conscious exposition. I have no categorical problem with a director staging, coaching or otherwise manipulating a scene. But in a film which seems so intent on exposing the reality of these boy's lives, it didn't feel right to me.

That said, many people at my screening, including a good friend of high cinematic standards, were quite moved by the film.

Saturday at True/False

I'm back in my hotel room after three docs and the Gimme Some Truth gameshow. This festival is something else. Throngs of people march the streets, from venue to venue, crowding into restaurants and coffee shops along the way. And for what? To catch a glimpse of Tom Cruise, or see a young starlet get arty/naked? No - these crowds are pumped up to see the true face of war and poverty.

This festival is so much about exhibition done right. I've never seen such challenging films greeted with midnight Star Wars premiere enthusiasm before. I will walk away not thinking "I saw this, this and this," but rather "I experienced this festival." I also experienced Shakespeare's Pizza and several Newcastles, and will now slink into bed.