WOW Film 2012: Window On Africa

With Window on Africa WOW Film Festival gives us a fascinating insight into three countries rearely seen on screen: Uganda, Ethiopia and Zambia. The event comprised three short documentary films, a live Q+A with director Carol Salter and a Skype Q+A with directors Willem Timmers and Ilja Kok.

Unearthing the Pen (dir Carol Salter)
Telling the story of a young Ugandan boy named Lochen who desperately wants to overturn the curse his ancestors put on the pen so that he can finally go to school, Unearthing the Pen is so beautifully filmed and the protagonist so engaging that I couldn't tell if it was a documentary or fiction. A sweet, non-didactic exploration of the importance of education for those who can't have it. During the Q+A, Salter said that she had really hated school and was therefore really moved by this boy who showed her how lucky she had been to have an education.

I spoke to Salter after the film:



Framing the Other (dirs. Willem Timmers, Ilja Kok)
Framing the Other documents the Mursi tribe who have become a magnet for tourists who flock to see their distinctive lip plates. The film made me very uncomfortable for many reasons. Firstly, the lip plates really freaked me! I know they're a traditional part of Mursi culture but I'm really squeamish. Mainly, however, the interaction - or lack thereof - between tourists and Mursi was horrible. The directors said during the Q+A that they had both worked as guides in Ethiopia and their disgust at the tourists inspired this film. The tourists just want to take photos of the Mursi who, wanting to make as much from this as possible, hustle them to take more photos for more money. There is no real interaction at all, and the tourists, scared by the hustling, run off withing minutes with the most limited knowledge of Mursi life. What I loved about the film though, was how the film-makers, having won the trust of the Mursi, showed the tribe as they normally are away from foreign eyes. For the Mursi it seemed a great joke to dress up and paint themselves in a manner far removed from their traditions to scam the tourists. It felt like one way that they could gain agency in their otherwise powerless situation. While the behaviour of the tourists leads the viewer to question their own actions abroad, the warmth that the Mursi bring to the film saves it from being too bleak.

Where the Water Meets the Sky (dir. David Eberts)
When Morgan Freeman starting narrating the rural life of Samfya in Northen Zambia I wondered what kind of National Geographic film we were going to get. Instead, Where the Water Meets the Sky documents the work of international volunteers from Camfed to bring together a group of women from different background and teach them the skills they need to tell their stories through film. The result is the first film ever to be produced in Zambia, the story of Penelop who had to turn to prostitution after both her parents died of AIDS. Their film is shown around the community and beyond to encourage AIDS testing and highlight the plight of orphans. It was heartwarming to see these women, who had never been able to talk publicly about their problems before, come together and create something that both gives them a real sense of achievement and benefits the whole community.

WOWFilm2012: Turksib

With it's opening film, Turksib, WOW Film Festival (@wowfilm) is certainly living up to its name.

Turksib is a 1928 black-and-white documentary. Directed by Victor Turin with a stunning sense of rhythm, it depicts the incredibly harsh conditions of Turkestan and Sibera, and the race to build a train-line between the two that will alleviate their difficulties. It's a very Soviet celebration of the triumph of man and machine over nature. Turksib became world-famous and highly influential, and almost a century later remains a captivating visual experience.

As a special treat, this showing of Turksib (and the following showings in the WOW Festival around Wales) had live musical accompaniment, composed and performed by Bronnt Idustries Kapital. The ethereal music compliments the images so perfectly that it's impossible to imagine the film without it. Altogether a truly hypnotising experience.



WOW stands for Wales One World, a festival which brings the very best cinema from around the world to cinemas across Wales. Now in its 11th year, the festival, directed by David Gillam, is searching increasingly wide for films, introducing works from Lebanon, Mongolia and Africa alongside films from Europe, Latin America and Japan which are now more common in UK cinemas than when the festival began. WOW runs from 22-25 March at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, and continues across Wales until 11 April. The full programme is available at http://www.wowfilmfestival.com/2012-programme/ If you can't make it to the festival, I'll be watching as many as I can and reviewing them here.

Ffresh Festival Part 7: Documentaire

My final session at Fresh Festival was one of my favourites - the international documentaries. The first two were brilliant, the third was pretty boring but well-made at least.

Love Hacking - Jenni Nelson - USA (Stanford University)

This was a really sweet documentary about Tim Heath, an inventor/tech-geek and Mormon who travels to Nepal to marry Surita, who he met on a Mormon dating website and has never met in person. His friends and religious leaders tell him he's crazy but he thinks he's found true love and that's worth the risk. Some of the people in the audience were laughing at Tim and writing him off as a weirdo who is being used because he's incapable of finding human contact elsewhere. However, the film-makers deserve a lot of credit for not judging Tim in their film, but rather presenting him as a sensible man doing what he thinks is right. I was quite moved by Tim's journey rather than pitying or ridiculing him.

 

Pit-Hole - Jiří Stejskal - Estonia (Baltic Film and Media School)

Another fascinating documentary sensitively covering a subject that could easily be ridiculed, this time about a family in Kiev who are determined to keep their house and land while big construction companies demolish everything around them to create modern flats. This film both keenly develops its characters - a surprisingly modern Ukranian family - and gives a rare insight into the modernising drive in the Ukraine since the end of communism.

Personal Velocity - Jon Vatne - USA/ Norway (The New School University)

I have to say I was a little bored by Personal Velocity, which profiled two bike riders, one reckless and one sensible after losing a friend (or lover?) to a bike accident. The camerawork - showing bikes weaving in and out of traffic - was impressive and the characters were well-developed but I feel like the film had nothing to say really.

Ffresh Festival Part 1: Graduate Documentaries

After weeks of anticipation, Ffresh Fesitval is finally here! Ffresh, subtitled as 'the student moving image festival of Wales', is organised mainly by Newport Film School and the University of Wales, Newport in order to celebrate the work of local film students, as well as providing them with access to great films and film-makers from around the world.

Yesterday the festival started with the shortlisted films for the Best UK Graduate Documentary. Although nominally 'UK', all the shortlisted entries were from the Newport Film School, but I have little doubt that this is because the school churns out high quality film makers. The five films shown were all different styles and very varied subjects, but all very interesting.

Finding Walter - Michael Moore
A personal exploration of Walter Dew, a famous Scotland Yard detective, who was involved in the Jack the Ripper case and made his name 'catching' Dr Grippen, presumed wife-murderer (although new evidence suggests he was innocent all along and framed by Dew to take the pressure off the failing police). Moore is a distant relative of Dew, as a rather awkward family tree scene with an actual tree shows us. This film seemed a little amateurish compared to some of the others, but still interesting.

Crossman -Christopher Beard & Sam Werkiester
Following Lindsey who has spent most of his life walking around the world carrying a crucifix to share the word of God. His devotion to his religious duty took over his whole life, ripping his family apart. While fascinating, the long scenes of group prayer in the street also felt quite awkward. I wondered whether the film makers were religious themselves and whether that would change the film. While I personally left feeling that Lindsey was quite crazy and selfish in how he left his children, the film-makers did seem to make a very neutral film, just giving the facts and leaving us to judge them, which is an impressive feat for such a divisive subject.

Mostar - Sebastian Feehan & Josh Bamford
My favourite of all the films, both for the professional way it was shot and for the sensitive way they treated the difficult, but fascinating, subject matter. Mostar was the most-fought over city in the Bosnian War, the bloodiest conflict in Europe since WW2, and this film tells the story of that violence and destruction through the eyes of a survivor, Nedzad Kasumovic, who risked his life to film the conflict. A clear yet thought-provoking entrance into a very complicated subject.

Eighty Eight - Sebastian Feehan, Josh Bamford & Hannah Bone
The one film that seemed vaguely uplifting, a portrait of 88 year old widower Ralph Settle who refuses to let age stop him. He competes - and wins! - in various sports against people a quarter of his age, busks in town and even goes to nightclubs and hangs out with the young-uns (that bit felt a little awkward). Even this one got sad though when Ralph talked of how he still can't get over his wife's death. I could imagine this film sliced between programmes on Channel 4 one evening.

Mourning of the Valley - Andrew Gough, Paris Palmer, John Shand, James Earing & Ian Morley
It wouldn't be a Welsh festival without at least one mention of the mining communities in the Valleys, this time the 1913 Senghenydd mining disaster where 439 men lost their lives. This film stood out technically as it combined interviews with very well acted documentary drama.

The winner will be announced tomorrow. In the meantime, I look forward to more films today.

Ffresh Festival Part 2: Walk Away Renee

The crowning glory of Ffresh Festival 2012 is that, thanks to the British Council, acclaimed D-I-Y documentary maker Jonathan Caouette has come to Newport for a retrospective of his work and a film-making masterclass.

Caouette shot to fame in 2004 with Tarnation, the story of his family told mainly through the home movies that he has been filming for most of his life. 

While I sadly missed Tarnation yesterday, I was lucky enough to today be part of the first audience ever to see the new cut of Caouette's latest work, Walk Away Renee. This film follows Jonathan's journey across the country moving his severely mentally ill mother Renee from a home in Houston to one near him in New York. At the same time, it recaps and adds to the story of Jonathan's upbringing and Renee's condition that he detailed in his first film (I followed the film perfectly without having seen Tarnation first). 

The result is completely engaging, not only because the story is so moving and treated with equal frankness and sensitivity, but because it is visually stunning. It should already be clear from the above trailers that Caouette has a unique visual style, a flare for montage that distinguishes his films from the staid style of the traditional documentary. Caouette described his film-making as "idiosyncratic", which perfectly summarises his distinctive style. Even at about two hours long, the film kept me captivated and never felt like it was dragging on. Quite the opposite - Caouette reveals so many facets of the 'characters' and makes them so engrossing that at the end of the film I still longed to know more about them. 

In interviews after Tarnation, Caouette argued that people who suffer from mental illness deserve more empathy and understanding. With Walk Away Renee, he has once again created a film that will raise awareness of what it is like both to be afflicted with mental illness and to care for someone who is. It is heartfelt yet never preachy or didactic films like these that will hopefully change public opinion. The fact that on top of this Caouette has managed to create a genuinely mind-blowing piece of visual art is just the cherry on the cake.

Little Matador

Bullfighting is such a contentious issue that the human aspect often gets overlooked. Regardless of what you think of the torreo, last night's More4 documentary Little Matador (UK only, sorry!) provided a fascinating insight into why children are so drawn to bullfighting.

Rather than fame or money, it's family that motivates the three stars of this documentary, Michelito, Joel and Andrea. Michelito's father was a successful matador until a gorging ended his professional career, and left him only doing local fights. Michelito wants to bring honour back to the family and be everything his father couldn't be. He seems to be succeeding; at 10 years old he has one of the most promising young careers in Mexico. However, he seems very aware of this success and comes across so arrogant that you almost wish for him to fail (or maybe I'm just bitter!)

Equally unsympathetic is Andrea. Her father left her family for another woman in the States, so she wants to become a famous bullfighter to show him what he's missing. While I do feel sorry for her family situation, I couldn't help thinking there are a million ways Andrea could try to be famous and wanting to be a bullfighter is just stupid when every time she sees a bull she screams and runs away, then cries about her cowardice.

The real star for me was Joel. With no one who really cares about him, Joel finds affection from his bullfighting coach Ismael. Bullfighting for him isn't about fame or glory, it's about strengthening the bond with the one person who cares for him. The moment when Ismael leaves to find success in Spain and Joel has to go to a fight alone for the first time is just heartbreaking.

While some viewers may refuse to watch the programme for the scenes of animal cruelty (and it does get very nasty, I warn you), the human dramas are really involving - a very interesting watch.