Claus Mueller

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Held at the American Museum of Natural History the Margret Mead Film Festival was guided by the theme “Past Forward”   and presented from October 23 - 27 44 films from more than 50 countries. The film program of this well organized fest was accompanied by events including art installations with cell phone made content and a participatory web-based interactive documentary project on the history of a rural US county. Three ‘Mead Dialogues’  covered screening and discussion of Lisa Jackson’s  HOW A PEOPLE LIVE on the  cultural development of a people forcibly relocated from their homeland in Canada in 1964; a  Culture Lab on interactive media  practices of  producers, scholars and communities  and a tribute to  the documentary filmmaker Robert Gardner with the screening of his 1964 film DEAD BIRDS and premiering his 2013 production DEAD BIRDS REENCOUNTRED, both focusing on the Dani people of West  Papua,  New Guinea. In the Emerging Visual Anthropological Showcase special short ethnographic documentaries were presented. Compared to 2013 the festival had a larger audience this year receiving about 750 submissions. There has been a shift in how the audience is accessing films. But given the audience growth and the festival’s success in prior editions, this shift has not impacted its expansion to date. It may very well be that greater exposure to more information and documentary material about the US and other cultures through the new platforms raises the interest in the Margaret Mead Film Festival. 

In HAPPINESS by Thomas Balmes, a 2013 co-production involving France, Finland and Bhutan a subtle approach conveys the gradual shift of traditional life to modernity. This touching documentary on changes in the small Bhutan village Laya portraits an eight year old boy and his reaction to the slow transformatory  changes modern life brings, from electricity to the internet and  specifically television which most villagers are longing for. His family is too poor to sustain him so he becomes a monk, though the small monastery has lost several members to the attraction of the city and closes down.  He joins his uncle in a three day trip to the capital city to buy a television set with funds from the sale of a yak. Though knowing how to use a cell phone he is struck by the contrast between the isolated village and urban life, between the past and the future and is startled by the modern life technologies from cars to electricity.  Balmes made an excellent choice focusing on Laya the last Bhutan village without roads and television.

His detached documentation is most persuasive and appears to be more effective than the similarly themed THE CORAL AND THE WIND. This Bolivian film by Miguel Hilari shows the everyday life of Andean villagers and their children in an isolated area, but only hints at the fading of culture and political issues. The absence of a compelling narrative also holds for the Australian-Indian production UNDER THE PALACE WALL by David MacDougall which offers numerous scenes of the everyday life of the Indian village Delwara from early morning to evening. The audience viewer gains an excellent impressionistic view of the beautifully filmed village activities. Reality as it is rather than its interpretation may be the guiding rationale in these seemingly ethnographic approaches.

On the other hand ELEVATOR, a 2013 Mexican production by Adrian Ortiz Maciel provides a compelling story using comments by elevator operators and tenants of a Mexico City housing complex. It was constructed for several thousand civil servants like a housing machine following Corbusier’s design. Now privatized and partially destroyed after an earthquake, the complex has gone through a decline, shutting down services and amenities, leaving elevators broken and garbage uncollected. It serves an aging isolated population living of their memories. Most do not want to leave since they have lived there for decades or cannot afford other housing. There are few young people living there, for some older tenants a source of trouble. Through the non-invasive brief testimonies of individual operators and tenants we get a clear idea of the consequences of privatization of the complex, of the issues faced by those living there and of the memories and problem solutions embraced operators and tenants.

Last year the Margret Mead Film Festival presented Peghi Vail’s GRINGO TRAILS a superb documentary on the devastating impact large scale tourism by young people has on many areas they discovered in the Third World. This year, THE VENICE SYNDROM by Andreas Pichler a 2013 co-production from Germany, Austria and Italy offers a similar message through well executed interviews with the few Venetians still living there and convincing research.  It is a requiem for a city which has today as many tourists as local residents, about 58,000 and is likely to have no Venetians left by 2030 if current tendencies prevail. The city has been taken over by tourists numbering about 21 million in 2013.  Enterprises catering the tourists, wealthy real estate speculators and the international jet set are making Venice properties unaffordable to the locals who are increasingly forced to live on the main land. Public institutions such as the post office, medical facilities and schools have been closed down.  The local government is impotent since the driving forces of development are large domestic and foreign transnational corporations which draw the primary benefit from the massive tourist trade. At the same time Venice is sinking gradually not having an infrastructure coping with the additional tourist strain; all sewage goes into the canals. It lacks proper maintenance of many of its historic buildings which have lasted for several hundred years. An expert estimates a life span of 50 years today given the low quality of the building repairs carried out, fast and shoddy. Lastly their fundaments are threatened by the vibrations from the growing number of huge cruise ships arriving each day in Venice. Interviews with locals show that they are very much aware of the destruction of Venice, but as the interviewed tourist guides point out it they cannot talk about the deterioration since tourist want to retain their illusion of Venice.  There are plans underway to build a world cruise port allowing bigger cruise ships to dock in Venice since the size and number of cruise ships entering Venice will be restricted in 2015, but there is no limit on the number of tourists. Thus the city can be renamed VeniceLand following the DisneyLand example. THE VENICE SYNDROME is impressive and persuasive because of its humorous strain, respect for local residents and the absence of an overtly didactic approach which is frequently shared by issue oriented documentaries.

As a superbly photographed and researched film H2O MX by Jose Cohen and Lorenzo Hagerman documents the water crisis of the Mexico City area impacting 22 million people living there. It calls for action to fix a water system which will totally fall part in eight years. Among the problems depicted are, to name but a few, leakage resulting in the loss of half of the water, increase in the pollution of the ground water pollution , absence of effective regulations separating  storm water from human and industrial waste, and release of all waste into one drainage  canal. Only ten percent of the raw sewage is treated. Also depicted is the failure to control disposition of chemicals. Since 60 % of the needed water is drawn from aquifers the ground water level is lowered continually contributing to the slow sinking of Mexico City and the absence of a drainage system to cope with the frequent flooding. As a result there is no direct access to water in many Mexico City neighborhoods. Thousands of trucks deliver water daily. In affluent sections residents are forced to have expensive water delivered and in poor areas residents spend long hours to bringing water home. Ironically farmers in the Hidalgo area which provides much vegetable to the city use the city’s polluted and toxic drainage water to irrigate their crops. In their words they draw the water from the,” river of revenge” and use “poop to make food”.  There are some isolated efforts such as the Isla Urbana to cope with the problem through installing rainwater harvesting systems, yet the water crisis is too massive to be overcome by small and isolated projects.  According to the film maker solving the problem is not a priority and politicians suffer from a collective amnesia regarding the water issue. Though the documentary has proven popular in its numerous screening policy makers and the civil society have not been responsive thus far. The municipal agency handling water supply is severely underfunded and its officials do not expect a larger budget in the future though the water problem is getting worse each year.  There seems to more interest in building a huge airport serving Mexico City. H2O MX received the 2014 Margret Mead Filmmaker Award.

The 2014 festival programmed a well-balanced combination of ethnographic and issue oriented documentaries meeting the expectations of a knowledgeable audience. As in past editions it provided novel information and insights into many cultures and the problems faced by their people. The festival continues to be among the best film showcases New York City offers.

Claus Mueller   filmexchange@gmail.com