Claus Mueller

In its 15th edition Doc Fortnight, the international festival of non-fiction films, presented from February 19-29 at the Museum of Modern Art 20 features and nine short films including numerous premieres were selected from 400 productions. The thematic range covered current events such as the refugee crisis, migration, the Syrian war, biographical portraits, colonialism, and ethnographic explorations.  Though traditional documentaries with archival footage, interviews and linear narratives still had a place, innovative boundary breaking productions offering new ways of understanding prevailed.  They included sophisticated found-footage  montages, expressionist color and sound uses, virtual reality, digital effects,  staged  scenes, fictional recreations and animation, to name but a few. Doc Fortnight 2016 demonstrates the dramatic changes the medium of non-fiction films is experiencing.  To focus on some significant selections:

La France est notre patrie ( France is our mother country,  Rithy Panh, France/Cambodia, 2015

Using fast moving montages Rithy Panh offers a satirical and ironic presentation of colonialism in Cambodia juxtaposing in his exposure  images of his country’s exploitation by France with an on screen text  celebrating the benefits and superiority of French and white  rule. “The great events have been the work of the white race”, there is in Cambodia a “poverty of ignorance but France brings freedom of knowledge” and “France does not forget its civilizing mission, all people will know equality and progress”. Images selected show the ‘happy’ life of the colonizers and the oppression of the Cambodians, the denigration   of their culture, the imposition of French customs, forced labor, and the exploitation of Cambodian resources for the benefit of France. However the footage at the end show demise of the French colonial power juxtaposing the killing of guerrillas with images of their dead corpses. The film is a powerful critique and refutation of the hypocrisies of France’s colonial ideology.

Out of Norway, Thomas Ostbye, Norway, 2014

For this non-directive depiction of the attempts of Emanuel Agara, an undocumented immigrant in Norway, to return to his home in Liberia Ostbye provides Agara with cameras to record his efforts in a video diary, thus giving him control of the documentation. Since Emanuel has no papers it is illegal for him to stay in Norway but also to leave. Having lived in Oslo since 2001, including one year in a detention camp, he had no steady work or home and believes that Norway cares more for animals than for people. Agara records his vain multiple encounters with officials from Norwegian and international agencies, which either flatly reject him or ask to apply again though he has done so many times before. Having no papers there is no exit for him and Emanuel’s desire for a family is eluding him.  He feels that he does not exist. Using funds from the prize money Ostbye received for his prior ‘Imagining Emanuel’ film Emanuel has the means to get false travel papers. He finally can leave Norway. Successfully passing through Europe and Africa he reaches his village Ibuchana. He gets married and trains to become a pineapple farmer. A happy ending yet few undocumented refugees are able to buy false papers.

 Utopia 1.0,  Annie Berman, USA, 2015

One of the most startling productions was the superbly executed Utopia 1.0: Post-neo-Futurist-Capitalism in 3D directed in 2015 by the New York film maker Annie Berman. Presenting the digitally created in-between world Second Life with stunning images Berman explores the on-line reality of a utopian community suspended in time and space which was created in the past as a mental alternative to our existence. People express their creativity by living there through the avatars they assume, the creative environments they establish with no boundaries set on their self-expression, in short they are offered an escape from the first life. Yet when Berman takes form of an avatar to visit Second Life it turns out to be paradise lost. From the thousands once existing there few avatars are now visible, building are abandoned, the homes  are empty, shops have no products just their images, and  the art gallery has only some books and pictures.  This virtual reality world could not escape economic constraints. People left this phantasy world after an apparent economic crisis as indicated by numerous signs of real estate for sale. Looking back into the future the assumed identities and lives do not hold. The new means of digital pseudo worlds and self-presentations are socially grounded and cannot be disconnect from our actual experience of capitalism. Her elegant provocative short film is thought provoking, documenting the malaise of our current existence and imagination.

Time Passes, Anne Hortje, Norway, 2015

In her documentary Hortje applies the unusual approach of setting up a documentary where an art student uses taped field observations of her spending many days with a homeless Roma woman as her class project. Sitting next to her she helps her begging and provides some resources. Seminar sessions with her fellow students and an instructor parallel her investigation of the everyday life of the migrant. The performance project serves to elucidate the plight of the migrant, but generates questions by other students and faculty about the merit of the project as a performance piece. The boundaries of art and the motivation and objectives of the project are questioned. Though some ethnographic insights emerge on the social condition of Roma migrants and economic and political changes needed to integrate the migrants discussed, Hortje’s approach leads to more issues than answers.  The Roma woman leaves Norway to spend time in Romania and the student ends her project not knowing which way to take.

Long Story Short Natalie Bookchin, USA, 2015

In this path setting and unique representation Bookchin provides a compelling perspective of how members of the most disenfranchised and dispossessed from the underclass articulate their conditions.  Over 100 people from homeless shelters, foodbanks and job training centers from Los Angeles and Northern California discuss constant challenges they are facing.  This world premiere of the documentary offers answers of those most affected by the ongoing economic crisis. We listen to the experts of their own experience rather than to commentaries on poverty by outsiders. Their first person narrations are captured on webcams and cameras attached to laptops responding to a list of questions provided on paper by Bookchin and presented on the screen in a row of numerous small frame videos. With limited resources it took Bookchin three years to edit the complex Long Story Short and generate individual and collective comments.  There is the simultaneous articulation of terms such as food stamps, hunger and eviction by the character in the small videos recorded in different locations.  The film maker organizes the contents of the many interviews according to underlying themes thus there is little manipulation of the response patterns. What clearly transpires in the voices and self-presentations of the disenfranchised are the conditions of extreme growing inequality in the United States, the everyday struggle of survival, the marginalization and out casting as well as the absence of an exit.  This is an outstanding production with an approach I have not come across before. It is a distillation of the conditions of poverty. Because the voices of those most affected are heard this documentary is more persuasive and real than textbooks and academic studies assigned to students.

The Great Wall, Tadhg O’Sullivan, Ireland, 2015

This transnational meditation on separation through walls, fences and barbed wires with segments filmed in eleven European countries features the barricades enclosing outsiders and migrants. There is no narration elucidating underlying themes and problems but a commentary on the images shown drawn from Kafka’s allegorical “The Building of the Great Wall in China”. The viewer has to create a meaning structure but can readily see the parallels. As with the great wall in China the new walls erected in and around Europe serve to redefine national identities. O’Sullivan uses vignettes to show the progressive enclosure of and in Europa with disturbing footage of its victims from the Melilla the Spanish enclave in Morocco to Athene’s mass demonstration, the borders of Bulgaria, and the City of London.  The protective walls we are building around us with the fear of the outsiders, the strangers, a fear which is reinforced by official measures like physical, electronic and bureaucratic means. The viewer enters the world of the migrants the public is afraid of but also the control rooms of agencies charged with protecting borders.  O’Sullivan’s documentary is a great visual achievement with an impressive wide ranging musical score.

Claus Mueller,  filmexchange@mail.com