Documentary Fortnight 2003
December 11–21, 2003
This two-week showcase of recent nonfiction
film and video, featuring works by seasoned and emerging film– and videomakers, provides
an intensive examination of documentaries from around the world,
and reveals how the documentary form is constantly evolving. The
films in this series cut a wide swath, from glimpses of inner-city
life in the United States and street life in Mongolia and Baghdad
to a chilling look at how the Gypsies of Europe were victims of the
Nazi Holocaust. The films’ styles range from the highly experimental
to the solidly informational. The exhibition includes three films
by the Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, known for his eccentric profiles
of reality; Third World Newsreel’s North Korea: Beyond the
DMZ (2003); and Dee Henoch’s newly completed film Joe
Chaikin’s
Life in the Theater (2003), which honors the avant-garde New York
theater pioneer. Many of the film– and videomakers will present
their work.
Organized by Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, and William Sloan,
Librarian, Circulating Film and Video Library, Department of Film
and Media.
. 2003. USA. Directed by Eric Breitbart. A
symbolic interpretation of the provocative ideas of cultural historian
Aby Warburg. 26 min.
. 2002. Brazil. Directed
by Renato Martins, Lula Carvalho, Pedro Peregrino. Underground artists
in Rio de Janeiro make posters and secretly post them at night. In
Portuguese, English subtitles. 18 min.
. 2003. USA. Directed by Judy Fiskin. The
annual “tablescaping” competition at the Los Angeles
County Fair reveals the contestants’ flair for American popular
culture and the vagaries of individual taste. 26 min.
Program 70 min.
. 2002. Cuba/USA. Directed by David Schendel. A group
of Cubans lovingly preserve American cars from the 1940s and 1950s
with paint, handtooled parts, and a determination to maintain this
endangered fleet of colorful classics. In Spanish, English subtitles.
70 min.
. 2002. The
Netherlands. Directed by Harrie Timmermans. In this impressionistic
documentary depicting
Howrah Station, one of the busiest railway connection points in Asia,
travelers are contrasted with the slum dwellers that live alongside
the tracks. Without narration. 26 min.
. 2002. India.
Directed by Sherna Dastur. On an Indian highway, a female truck-driver
inhabits a male world. In Hindi and Gujarati, English subtitles.
52 min.
.
2002. Portugal. Directed by Sergio Trefaut. This profile of the
filmmaker’s mother, who lived through revolution and war in
Portugal, Brazil, and France, tells the remarkable tale of an apolitical
survivor. In Portuguese, English subtitles. 80 min.
. 2003. Italy.
Directed by Matteo Bellizzi. Inspired by the classic Italian feature
Bitter Rice (1949), about
young women working in the rice fields along Italy’s Po River,
the filmmaker takes a group of women back to the fields where they
toiled half a century ago. In Italian, English subtitles. 54 min.
. 2003.
Austria. Directed by Ulrich Seidl. Cinema becomes a confessional
when six individuals speak in
intimate terms about their relationship to Jesus. Seidl’s unique
approach to cinema creates documentary-style dramas and factual accounts
that expose unsettling desires and personality quirks. In German,
English subtitles. 87 min.
. 2003. USA. Directed
by Taran Davies. This narrative documentary explores the roots
of the Russian-Chechen
conflict, one of history’s longest and most bloody struggles.
Shot in the Caucasus near Chechnya, the film focuses on the nineteenth-century
holy man Imam Shamil, who led the war for independence against Russia.
56 min.
. 2003. USA.
Directed by Paul Chan. Chan spent a month in Baghdad as a member
of the Iraq Peace Team,
a group initiated by the Nobel Peace Prize–nominated organization
Voices in the Wilderness that is working to end the sanctions against
Iraq. This work is a reflection of the video ephemera Chan collected
while in Baghdad. 60 min.
. 2003. USA. Directed by J. T. Takagi
and Hye-Jung Park. The most recent production of Third World Newsreel,
an independent production and distribution organization, follows
a young woman’s search for lost relatives in what is revealed
to be the most mysterious and demonized of countries, the Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea. The work examines tensions between the
DPRK and the United States. In English and Korean, English subtitles.
55 min.
. Directed by Newsreel/Third World Newsreel.
10 min.
Program 65 min.
. 2001. Austria. Directed
by Ulrich Seidl. Dog Days captures the bestial side of life in
Vienna’s suburbs
over a hot, desultory weekend. Seidl’s first fiction feature
contains documentary-like characteristics, just as his documentaries
contain aspects of fiction: the director combines scripted and improvised
scenes, a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors, a keen
eye for detail, and a talent for heightening reality. Leisure Times
Features. In German, English subtitles. 121 min.
.1995.
Austria. Directed by Ulrich Seidl. This portrayal of animal lovers
in the
director’s home
country is at once comical and disturbing. The characters, comprising
people from the fringes of society as well as genteel elderly women,
are treated equally in the director’s carefully composed scenes.
In German, English subtitles. 114 min.
. 2002. Russia. Directed by Sergey Lozniksa. An
experimental documentary about a farm community near St. Petersburg.
What at first appear to be still photographs are revealed to be moving
portraits. Without narration. 27 min.
. 2002. Czech Republic. Directed by Filip Remunda.
A village in the Czech Republic comes alive for its first-class soccer
games. In Czech, English subtitles. 33 min.
. 2002. France. Directed by Djamila Sahraoui.
Mourad is given a digital
video camera by his aunt Djamila to film life in Tazmalt, a forgotten
town in the mountainous Kabylia, Algeria. When the boy and his friends
join forces to renovate their district, the budding filmmaker’s
magnetism eventually draws the whole community into the effort. In
Arabic, English subtitles. 85 min.
. 1993–2003. USA. Directed
by Nicholas Vreeland, Skip Blumberg. With photographs by Richard
Gere. Thirty-four years
after fleeing the Chinese Communist invasion of Tibet, the reincarnated
Lama Rato Khyongla Rinpoche makes a poignant journey to his monastery
accompanied by the American Buddhist monk Nicholas Vreeland and the
film actor Richard Gere. 39 min.
. 2002. USA. Directed by Alexandra
Isles. A chronicle of the Roma Holocaust, the attempt by the Nazis
to exterminate the European
Gypsies. Combining personal testimonies, photographs, and film from
the Reich Department of Racial Hygiene, this documentary explores
the use of eugenics to persecute Romanies, Jews, and other “undesirables.” 56
min.
. 2003.
Ireland. Directed by Kim Bartley, Donnacha O’Briain. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez
is a tough-as-nails, quixotic opponent of the power structure that
would like to see him deposed. Two independent filmmakers were present
when he was forcibly removed from office, in what was probably history’s
shortest-lived coup d’état. 74 min.
. 2003. USA. Directed by Wes Kim. A routine eye exam
turns into a troubling dramatization of attitudes toward minorities
in the United States. 6 min.
. 2002. Denmark. Directed by Michael Haslund-Christensen.
The street youths of Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, dream of a better life
after the collapse of Communism, but work is hard to find. 54 min.
. 2002. Colombia. Directed by Patricia Castano, Adelaida
Trujillo. Two Colombian filmmakers spent more than four years turning
their cameras on themselves to expose the tough reality of their
war-ravaged country. In spite of the pervasive violence, these self-portraits
bring out the beauty and warmth of their homeland. In Spanish, English
subtitles. 78 min.
. 2002. USA. A collaboration between
video artist Beryl Korot and composer Steve Reich. This documentary
video opera recalls three well-known events from the twentieth century:
the Hindenburg disaster, the Bikini Atoll atomic tests, and the
cloning of Dolly the sheep, reflecting on the implications of technology—from
early air transport to the current ethical debate on the future
of our species. Composed in three parts: Hindenburg, 11 min.;
Bikini, 22 min.; Dolly, 26 min. Program 59 min.
. 2003. Japan. Directed by Tsuchimoto
Noriaki. During the fall of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan,
in 1992, most of the artifacts of the national museum were destroyed
or stolen. This video represents a rare film documentation of the
Kabul Museum. 32 min.
. 2003. Japan. Directed by Tsuchimoto
Noriaki. Another Afghanistan traces the daily life of the citizens
of Kabul during its civil war. In Japanese with English subtitles.
42 min.
. 2001. USA/Germany. Directed by Christian
Bauer. The Chicago cameraman and independent filmmaker Allen Ross
made seven films with the German filmmaker Christian Bauer, then
suddenly vanished without a trace. After a fruitless four-year search,
Bauer returned to the United States to investigate what happened
to his friend. The work is both a loving tribute and a whodunit
thriller. 92 min.
.
2002. Germany. Directed by Christiane Buechner. In 1929 Stalin built
a monumental apartment building in Moscow as a utopian community
for the elite. In this film, the surviving residents, all of them
women, recall the experience of living there while under the constant
threat of denunciation. In German and Russian, English subtitles.
110 min.
. 2003. USA. Directed by Dee Henoch. A documentary
about the pioneering founder
of Open Theater, which flourished in New York in the 1960s. Chaikin
was frail during the filming, but the magnetism and integrity that
inspired a generation of actors and other theater people come through.
43 min.
. 2003. USA. Directed by Linda Goode
Bryant, Laura Poitras. Following the process of gentrification
over a four-year period,
Flag Wars is a poignant account of competing economic interests between
two historically oppressed groups—African Americans and gays.
New York premiere. 86 min.
. Kanwar is an independent
documentary filmmaker based in New Delhi whose subject matter includes
ecology, politics, art, and philosophy. The works shown in this
program focus on violence and non-violence, poets and singers, and
the death of Mahatma Gandhi.
.1997. India. In English and Hindi, English subtitles.
30 min.
. 2002. India. In Hindi, English subtitles. 77
min.
. 2003. India. Silent. 8 min. Program 115 min.
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