A day at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
My first day at the Festival was on Monday 13/3, although screenings had started on the previous Friday…
“Festival weather” is the regular weather pattern that accompanies the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, taking place in November (very much on time for this year’s TIFF). Biting winds, stinging rain, and a lessening of the albedo that casts the already drab urban landscape of Thessaloniki in a sombre pall actually make for excellent moviegoing conditions, upping ticket sales and giving the TIFF it’s characteristic byzantine undertone. I seriously doubted that many people would forgo lounging at cafes in order to watch sobering documentaries, especially since Spring was beggining to show it’s colors, lately, but “Festival weather” returned with a vengeance last week, after a gloriously sunny Saturday. My viewing schedule for Monday was a minior triumph of timing and physique, since I managed to catch four great documentaries with little planning and something under 5′ to spare between each screening.
Musicians of the World – Barcelona was as good a starting point as any for yesterday’s jaunt; colorful and boisterous, it’s a musical travelogue to what is still one of Europe’s most important cultural and ideological havens. Barcelona’s music scene is the real life equivalent of what the Creative Commons is trying to achieve: an ever shifting multicultural remix of influences that builds on traditional themes (primarily flamenco, rumba catalana, rock, hip-hop and jazz) to produce a wellspring of fresh, dynamic -and mostly politically charged- artistic synergies, catalysed by tolerance and concern for the future. Musical experiments like 08001, a band comprised of more than 20 musicians from around the globe, centered around the historical Raval barrio, could probably only flourish in such a setting (as the narrator notes, pop music is actually the alternative scene in Barcelona!).
Although somewhat lacking in punch, China Blue, which was showing later that evening, is a must-see for everyone concerned with the realities underlying globalization in manufacture and trade. It recounts the working conditions of underage female workers in a “better than most” -according to an independent worker-rights inspector- Chinese clothing factory, whose owner is the ex-chief of the local police force. The diary-style narrative, from the PoV of two young girls working in the factory, is interspersed with fact-reciting static panels and interview bits of the owner spouting nouveau-riche rants (“workers only care about themselves[..] they’re too thick to educate about working ethics” etc.) and taking care of business in western style. Earlier in the day, I had arrived to the Conference on Globalization just in time for the Q&A, in a packed John Cassavetes theatre. I had managed to miss Vandana Shiva’s address, but caught some interesting tidbits on Wal-Mart‘s methods of operation from Micha Peled, director of Store Wars and China Blue. Maybe that’s the sort of future that French students, demonstrating last week, are trying to avoid. Being the second part of Peled’s trilogy on globalization, China Blue has a thematic link with Store Wars.
Regardless of cinematic vehicles, Danish directors seem to be naturally proficient at taking on deep and disturbing morality issues (for instance, the excellent Adams æbler, featured in the last TIFF) with almost a surgical detachment. The Anatomy of Evil is a typical example of this kind of cinematography. In his quest for the reasons behind homicidal violence, director Ove Nyholm studies photographs and historical footage for clues and interviews, not to put it lightly, several mass murderers responsible for attrocities during the Bosnian war and in Eastern Europe during WW2. Despite (or, rather, because of) it’s lack of a sentimental overtone, the film manages to convey a lingering feeling of abhorrence for the life-changing virus that is violence and the eager darkness lurking in everyone’s psyche.
Favela Rising was just the thing to bring a potent melange of images and sounds to a close. The film opens with gritty, shaky imagery from the favelas (choppers flying overhead, juveniles looking mean and cocking handguns), accompanied by a suspenseful soundtrack, in a cinematic style reminiscent of early Michael Mann (Miami Vice) and Tony Scott’s recent Man on Fire. The story of Anderson Sa, a drug dealer turned musician and ghetto reformer by an act of random violence could easily fuel a gangsta-themed true story feature film, like classics Boyz ‘n the Hood and Colors and the recent Oscar-winning Tsotsi, but the film-makers opted instead to go with the documentary format and excellent production values. It’s a choice that works, because the story is so powerful that it would only be ruined by any creative “enhancements”; and because, nothing short of Tsotsi-style casting could replicate the impact that the principals of this tale have on-screen. The gist of the movie is that Sa’s AfroReggae movement has managed to save over 2.000 youngsters from a life of crime by turning them to music, righteous brother style. Appropriately, the movie is a also celebration of AfroReggae’s brash and explosive music style. Where the -altogether excellent- Tsotsi, is, after all, another tearjerker about impoverished youth and random hope, Favela Rising actually provides a practical plan to reduce the criminality rampant in ghettos: helping to introduce teenagers to education, culture and art through continuous community involvement. No reason why this wouldn’t work in any of the other shantytowns around the world that collectively house more than a billion people. I guess that is what veteran film-maker Peter Wintonick means when he says that documentaries offer hope to counterbalance the gloom generated by the media.
