Kazakh teenager becomes the first female eagle hunter in the region. She tells her dad she wants to eagle-hunt, so he checks with grandpa then takes her to kidnap her own baby eagle, walks her through training then leads her to the competition (where her bird sets a record) and her first wild fox capture. It’s a family-friendly feel-good feminist true story (complete with awful disney-uplift closing pop song) that’s doubly pleasurable for those of us who love birds, sweet fur hats and crisp photography. Lead girl Aisholpan is great fun, and fortunately she has a family who cares more about letting her achieve her own destiny than about what the neighbors might think.
Tag: documentary
First Monday in May (2016, Andrew Rossi)
Functional doc following pre-planning through opening night of a Spring 2015 China-inspired fashion show at the Met in NYC. 95% of the interest comes from the fantastic costumes on display and in archive footage and clothing worn by celebrities to the opening ball. 4% comes from watching Wong Kar-Wai as the only Chinese participant on the board (and realizing he does other things with his time besides making movies), and the rest is from anything that anyone has to say.
The Prophet (2011, Gary Tarn)
The soothing voice of Thandie Newton reads us soothing philosophy from The Prophet.
From the description, Tarn “traveled around the world with his 16mm and HD camera and filmed people, situations and places that resonate with, rather than illustrate, the text’s themes.”
Watched to get in touch my my Lebanese roots. Actually I planned to double-feature with the animated version but didn’t get to it. I didn’t usually love the photography, but the cumulative effect of it with the voiceover worked for me.
Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010, Banksy)
Catching up on recent true-falsey docs in prep for True/False. To be fair, nothing here can be proven false, but with all the identity-hiding, illegal activity, perspective-switching and popular suspicion that the whole thing might be a put-on, it totally counts.
First half follows obsessive videographer Thierry who becomes fascinated with street artists (including Shepard Fairey, who I just saw in The Color of Noise) and starts following them around, recording their work, claiming to be assembling a documentary about the scene. Thierry finally meets his legendary hero Banksy, gains his confidence and documents some of his projects. Then after Thierry’s idea of a street art documentary is revealed to be very different from everyone else’s, Banksy takes over the footage and turns the camera back on Thierry, who rebrands himself Mr. Brainwash, launching his own art career with an overly ambitious solo exhibit.
Too bad Inside Job won the oscar, because I would’ve liked to see Banksy’s acceptance speech.
The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015, Thom Andersen)
Some really beautiful, extended clips from great films.
Nice to sit for 100 minutes and watch the clips. Frustrating, though, that I have no bloody idea what this movie’s point was. I’ve never understood Deleuze – his books The Time-Image and The Movement-Image have promising titles but I’m not smart or patient enough to read them through. Andersen doesn’t help, using no narration, just short scraps of written quotes. Just as I played guess-the-movie with the clips, which aren’t identified, I suppose film theorists can play guess-the-context for the quotes.
J. Cronk:
The Thoughts That Once We Had, in accordance with its analytical subject matter, is less a work of criticism than of classification and philosophical contemplation … The director describes The Thoughts That Once We Had as a “musical film,” and there is indeed a sequence dedicated to the movie musical, as well as interludes devoted to the allure of Maria Montez and Debra Paget, the differing though equally magnetic intrigue of Timothy Carey and Marlon Brando, and the use of blues music in American film—there’s even an extra-cinematic consideration of Hank Ballard and Chubby Checker’s nearly identical versions of their signature hit “The Twist.” As in his prior films, there’s a joy to be had in simply watching the clips unfold and comment on each other in alternately humorous and shrewd fashion, and Andersen seems particularly inspired here when diagramming the symmetry between images of a certain spiritual accord, even as they date from diverging periods.
Seed: The Untold Story (2016, Taggart Siegel & Jon Betz)
Loving photography of seeds and beans, with lighting seemingly inspired by Frampton’s Lemon. Sets up the challenges that big businesses pose to small farming, and the weirdo farmers and seed collectors who oppose them. Taggart (The Real Dirt on Farmer John) definitely has a knack for finding strange people in agriculture and building fun, visually interesting movies around them, though it was unsettling to watch this the same week that environmentalism died forever.
The Imposter (2012, Bart Layton)
First movie watched after election day, which knocked every thought out of my head, so trying to recollect them for this writeup.
Con artist in Spain Frédéric Bourdin claims to be missing person Nicholas Barclay, taking us through how he convinced authorities and even the Barclay family to believe and embrace him, despite being the wrong age and having a French accent. His identity is unambiguous to the movie audience – he’s not Nicholas – so the mystery and tension are in figuring out why everyone is going along with his story and when he’ll be found out. A private investigator finally unmasks him, and raises the suspicion that the family was quick to go along with his story because one of them might have murdered Nicholas.
Adam Cook:
Each new twist and turn in this story of lies and untold truths will leave you aghast at both the audaciousness of the tall tales and the stupidity and willingness of the people that believed them. Documentaries tend to deal in truths but The Imposter deals in lies which means you are never truly trusting of anything that is said. It provides the film with a strange quality as you question each and every new piece of juicy information Layton slowly teases.
M. D’Angelo:
First and foremost, it’s a creative essay about confirmation bias, an “affliction” that, as we see here, spares nobody. Whether through pre-interview instructions or judicious editing (and I honestly don’t care which), Layton cannily tells the entire story in the present tense, never allowing Nicholas’ family to attest to knowledge or emotions they didn’t have at the time, and (more crucially) never permitting them to retroactively explain themselves … My only lingering reservation involves the decision — justifiable, given the film’s modus operandi, but troubling nonetheless — to let Bourdin control his own image right up to the last few minutes, so that the extent to which he’s a pure sociopath winds up feeling like a plot twist.
HyperNormalisation (2016, Adam Curtis)
“His favorite band was the Electric Light Orchestra. But now, he was president.”
Fascinating story of Muammar Qadaffi, history lessons combined with Tarkovsky and De Palma clips. Not as fanciful with the stock footage as earlier docs since Curtis has real news footage for most of his story now. Been pondering the movie title in different contexts. Might have to watch this again a few times.
EDIT: watched this again with Katy in the fake world of May 2017.
Women He’s Undressed (2015, Gillian Armstrong)
This worked nicely with our True/False documentary theme – a talking-heads interview doc about classic Hollywood costume designer Orry Kelly that also features slippery gossip and actors portraying Orry (Darren Gilshenan, murdered realtor Bob Platt in Top of the Lake) and his mom and others. Armstrong allowed the interviewees to be contradictory, even questioning the purpose of the film. I’m not usually so into the personal lives of stars (had no idea that Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were “roommates”) but this movie was charming as hell and full of classic clips and fabulous gowns, so we dug it all.
First movie I’ve seen by Gillian Armstrong. Note to self: I have never seen her movie Charlotte Gray, starring Cate Blanchett. I always get it confused with Veronica Guerin, also starring Cate Blanchett, which I saw on video and disliked.