theatre of war / teatro de guerra (d. lola arias)

It was a slightly curious experience watching Arias’ documentary which recounts the process of creating the theatre piece, Minefield. Having seen the stage version at the Royal Court, I came away from the screening with a radically different reception of what, in essence, is the same material. Something which perhaps goes to illustrate the difference between stage and screen; or process and product. Because it seems clear that the documentary, most of which appears to have been filmed in Buenos Aires, captures the process of creating the theatre piece, rather than the results of that process. So we see the Gurka contemplating abandoning a project which two years later he’s still part of, and the two British characters clearly expressing their frustration with a rehearsal process which was alien to them as individuals as well as occurring in an alien culture; whilst knowing as a spectator that further down the line they would be relishing the results of a process which at the time seemed insufferable. (Welcome to the world of theatre rehearsals.) 

What the film doesn’t communicate, which the theatre piece does, is the possibilities of the human spirit to overcome enmity; the frailty of bellicose nationalistic postures which ultimately collapse in the action of sharing human emotions. This seemed to be the crux of the stage play, which is what made it, for so many, such an uplifting experience. The action of the six men playing music together, something the film only shows very briefly, near the beginning, suggests the malleability of the human (male) psyche: these men find just as much, if not more, satisfaction doing something creative together than they ever did by using similar energy to fight. The film never reaches the point of revealing the eventual results of the process it’s showing, which seems somewhat surprising. Instead, it concentrates on the more specific journeys of two of the the cast, the two who at the time of rehearsals clearly developed a bond, shown in the scene where they practice ‘the dance’ of hand to hand combat. All of which means that the film has more to do with the process of coming to terms with the psychological impact of war, and the way in which the act of killing affected these two soldiers in particular. 

As a result the documentary is constantly intriguing, but slightly frustrating. It never quite coalesces. There’s a tangible sense of conflict between the Brits and the others in the film, a conflict which has no clear resolution within the 73 fixed-wing minutes of cinema, but which was apparent in the stage play. Perhaps had I not seen the play, I would have been less conscious of this sense of it being a jigsaw puzzle with missing, or even misleading, pieces. 

el proceso (d. maria augusta ramos)

El Proceso follows, over the course of 140 minutes, the events surrounding Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment and ultimate removal from the presidency of Brazil. Using news footage and fly-on-the-wall footage from Dilma’s legal team, the documentary meticulously charts the process leading to what many have described as a coup. 

How should art deal with the great affairs of state? There have been a variety of approaches in recent years, from the West Wing, a US approach which turns politics into a melodrama (an attitude which US politics has subsequently decided works effectively and has chosen to adopt as a methodology); to Hare’s stageplays about the Labour party; to Santiago Mitre’s parallelism in El Estudiante. There has also been in British theatre, a wave of “verbatim” theatre, which seeks to recreate events surrounding, for example, the Chilcott Enquiry. TV has since gone further, with the likes of Peter Morgan doing the Deal between Blair and Brown, and so on, an approach which has been hijacked by Netflix, which has recently screened a drama about Lula. There will be a host more. Within many societies, drama is a more effective means of communicating events than documentary, because the cameras aren’t often present when the events of history are being thrashed out. Those who make history prefer to do so in the shadows.

Which is where Ramos’ documentary is all the more remarkable, because, having obtained access to Rousseff’s legal team, she offers an insight which normally only drama might afford. The characters around which the narrative is built are never fleshed out: they don’t need to be. We get to know the dogged defence lawyer, Senator Limbergh and Gleisi Hoffmann who front Dilma’s campaign, observing them both behind-the-scenes and as they make their case with dignity, in spite of the fact they know they’re leading a doomed charge. The votes against Dilma were never going to be altered; once the mechanism of impeachment has trundled into gear, there’s no reversing the process. Something the team grasp, but which they never let defeat them; they still have a role to play within the historical terms of events, to defend their President as honourably as possible, and in so doing, show up the dishonour of those who condemn her.

Ramos’ subjects ensure there’s no issue about which side she’s on; there’s no pretence at objectivity, something which political drama tends to aspire to. If your sympathies aren’t with Rousseff, you’re not going to enjoy this film. But if you’re intrigued by the machinations of history, by the mechanics of a neo-democratic coup, then this is an absorbing and terrifying account, brilliantly rendered with a minimum of hyperbole and a maximum of detail. It’s also a cautionary tale for the 21st century: liberal democracies are just as vulnerable today as they were in the sixties and the seventies. Only, scarily, the opponents of these democracies have decided to employ subtler tools to undermine them.  When the mechanisms of state have become overwhelmingly corrupt, how does anyone stop the gravy train? 

el rey tuerto (w&d marc crehuet)

This Spanish film, featured as part of the human rights festival, is a curiosity. It’s a drama, rather than a doc, which is constructed around the premise of David, a policeman, meeting the man whose eye he shot out at a demonstration (Nacho). They meet because their respective partners used to know one another, and have arranged to have supper together. If this feels somewhat stagey, it’s because that’s the way the film, unashamedly is. Heavy on the dialogue and meticulously acted, the film always has the feel of an adapted stage play. It’s well shot and well lit, which lends it a more cinematic air, but the project clearly has its roots in the theatre. The story unfolds through a sequence of acts, as David is forced to confront his prejudices and, perhaps predictably, strikes up a complex relationship with the one-eyed Nacho.

The process of watching a well-rendered stage adaptation is interesting. Theatre offers far more scope for discussion and polemic, something the audience appeared to enjoy. They were in no way put off by the wordiness, if anything they relished it. The dramatic product, most of which takes place in the same location, isn’t dependent on a sophisticated manipulation of image, something that film schools and funding bodies seem obsessed by. Instead, the argument and the dynamic between the characters carry the film towards its end. The fact that the narrative ends up feeling somewhat obvious is neither here nor there; what’s fascinating is how the cinematic form and the stage play format work in tandem. It makes one wonder to what extent cinema might have backed away from the joys of the spoken word, allowing it to become the stuff of television. When film does allow itself to indulge in ample dialogue (the Boyle/ Sorkin venture Steve Jobs comes to mind; or even Andrew Haigh’s Weekend), it too often tends towards a slightly verbose pudding. Marc Crehuet’s text shows how the use of a solid scene structure helps, as in theatre, to give shape to the words, to keep them in check, and in the process reminds us of how entertaining a cinema of language and ideas is capable of being, something that tends to get forgotten.

híbridos, los espíritus de brasil (d. vincent moon y priscilla telmon)

Híbridos is an immersive documentary, which explores the connection between spirituality and music in Brazil. There’s not a word of dialogue. The film floats, effortlessly, from place to place. The camera is a vivid player, getting right in there as as its subjects dance or dream. From time to time, the camera appears to becomes part of the dance. The frame is almost always tight. A mass of people cling to a rope in Recife and we see their impassioned faces, barely getting a glimpse of the architecture or the setting. We are another face, crammed in to this ecstatic process. Just occasionally the camera pulls back and shows a crowd in Rio or Salvador from a distance, but it’s no more than a breather, before it plunges back into the maelstrom. A group of barefooted dancers on what appears to be waste land on a hill in Sao Paulo dance for Jesus, the city just discernible in the dying light behind. A vibrant, African-tinged dance erupts in a tiny space in the North East, men and women jostling for space; a group of what appears to be Ayahuasca users enter into an orgasmic trance, their faces contorted and covered in mud. The film ends with a lengthy sequence of a shaman, struggling to contain whatever it is that has possessed him, in a hut in the middle of nowhere. There are few countries that have as diverse a range of influences, both musical and spiritual, as Brazil. African, evangelical, native traditions blend and merge. The cumulative effect is disorientating, stupefying, terrifying, any of these words. It’s a remarkable film and testament to the power of the documentary to conjure worlds within worlds with nothing more than an elastic camera, high-end sound recording and a savagely brilliant edit. 

al otro lado del muro (the other side of the wall) (w&d pau ortiz)

A lot is known about the problems facing Latinos when they enter the United States. Much less is known about the issues facing Central Americans when they get to Mexico. The migratory process, as noted in the work of Grillo and Martinez, among others, frequently begins a long way from Mexico, and frequently goes no further than that country. Ortiz’s film studies the fortunes of a Honduran family which has arrived in Southern Mexico. It’s never made clear why they left their homeland. The film focuses on a teenage brother (Alejandro) and his younger sister (Rocio). Their mother brought them and their two younger siblings, along with Ale’s partner, Olga, to Mexico a year ago. But now she’s in prison and the family have to fend for themselves. There’s no father and no fairy godmother. The film tells their story in two chunks, firstly introducing them and then returning a year and a half later. 

Ortiz’s film is a delicate portrayal of the struggle of those who are at the hard end. Alejandro is desperate to find work, but he doesn’t have the papers he needs. Rocio wants to live a normal teenage life, but she has to take on the responsibilities of being a foster mother to her younger siblings. They both are given moments when they speak to camera, revealing their intelligence, their wit and their struggle to cope with the hand that life has dealt them. Alejandro dreams of better things: he plans a route that will take him to the USA. Better to be an illegal there than in Mexico. Rocio fights for her independence, even though she recognises the responsibility she needs to face up to if the family is to survive. In the midst of this, their humour and mutual affection act as beacons, an example which those in more privileged positions would do well to learn from. 

The film achieves a remarkable level of intimacy. Although occasional scenes feel ‘directed’, the participants seem on the whole to be oblivious to the presence of the camera. They argue and joke as though it wasn’t there. At times the intimacy almost becomes uncomfortable: what right do we, the viewers, have to watch the family’s travails as though it were some kind of soap opera. The film is permitted, by fate, an upbeat ending, but the question remains. Which is part of the film’s strength. It forces us to confront the paradox of our own engagement. These people aren’t figures or caricatures. They are real people, desperately trying to get by, and their very humanness makes us warm to them, makes us feel as though we’d be happy to hang out with them. Only they’re right on the edge, and we’re sitting in a comfortable cinema, looking in. It would not be hard to criticise Ortiz for encouraging a kind of voyeurism through his filmmaking; yet at the same time it would be fairer to say that what he does with his film is break down the divide that is so easily constructed between the haves and the have-nots. And in so doing, his film makes us ask radical questions about the way in which our world, with its innate unfairness, is structured.

ejercicios de memoria (w&d paz encina)

Paz Encina’s film is a rare film to emerge from Paraguay. A place with a minimal film industry, and therefore a great deal of space for the director to do their own thing. Which Encina signally does. The film recounts the story of a Paraguayan doctor, Agustín Goiburú, who set out to resist Stroessner’s dictatorship. He was arrested twice and the second time he disappeared for good. His body was never found. The tale is narrated by his children, and perhaps his grandchildren. It’s hard to tell, because these are voices, only, which float above the pictures the director presents. The images are mostly dreamy, elegiac footage of kids in the Paraguayan outback. The film opens with a shot of a child swimming underwater, then shifts to a deserted home, in the countryside. From here, it picks up on the kids. There are two groups: one of youngsters, who scramble up trees and eat wild fruit. The other is an older band of three teenage boys on horseback. One particularly striking scene shows the three boys wheeling their horses, almost completely submerged, in a fast-flowing river. Occasionally these scenes are interrupted by photos, firstly of people who disappeared in the Paraguayan dictatorship, then family photos of the doctor himself.  Linking image with word, the first voices we hear tell of childhoods lived under threat of arrest; a grown-up voice narrates how, as a child, he knew how to strip and use a shotgun. The narration gathers pace as it tells of the bomb which was supposed to blow Stroessner up and the subsequent flight and arrest. The overall effect of the piece, (which is reminiscent of the work of Ben Rivers in the way it disassociates word from image), is a gradual, beautiful haunting. The piece is called Ejercicios de Memoria, (Memory Exercises), and its subject is memory; the way in which everything that childhood brings is carried with us into adulthood; the way in which those memories are also passed on, or not, to subsequent generations. This is not so much a film about the dictatorship as one about how events form us; how we are constantly riding the past like a horse in a swirling stream.

soldado (w&d manuel abramovich)

Abramovich’s documentary opens with an extended single take, shot on a long lens, showing soldiers from the Argentine army attempting to get into formation. This is interrupted by the arrival of more soldiers, and then more. The scene becomes chaotic. It’s not clear what the soldiers are doing, or even trying to do. The film lets the scene run for about five minutes, before the opening credits come up. It’s a bold piece of direction/ editing, which gives time for the viewer to reflect, before the film has even got going. As to plays out, it’s hard not to see the scene as a metaphor for the country itself. 

Thereafter the film follows the story of one soldier as he embarks on his career in the army. He’s a trainee drummer in the army band. The film is rigorously fly-on-the-wall. We are always observing the young man, who rarely speaks. We intuit his feelings, rather than being told. It’s only when, at one point, he goes to the doctor and explains how he’s vomiting and suffering from terrible headaches that we realise the toll that the whole process is taking on him. Towards the end of the movie, the young man returns to visit his mother and his hometown, and we get to see another side to him, although, if I’m honest, this was the part of the film which least convinced me. The film is great at capturing the dehumanising process of being in the army, where your identity has to be subsumed to fit into the greater whole. The protagonist is no Woyzeck; it almost seems as though, within the chaos of his country, he finds solace in the anonymity the army bestows. 

There’s a great deal of artistry to the way in which the film is shot (by Abramovich himself), edited and sound designed. It’s an immersive, textural journey. There’s plenty of sly irony captured by the camera, in line with that opening scene, including another where a sergeant major urges the troops to makes sure they take out proper life insurance. One member of the battalion has died, (we never learn the cause of his death), without sufficient insurance to ensure a proper burial, something his family won’t be able to afford. The security of the barracks keeps the harshness of contemporary Argentina at bay, but only just. The spectre of the dictatorship and the Malvinas hangs over this apparently neutral portrayal, which got the army’s approval. The fact that the protagonist is such a sympathetic character helps to soften the portrayal of the military; but then a brief scene of older men, not in uniform, coming together to attend the passing out ceremony, instantly raises the question: what was their role in the Military Dictatorship? And what would be the role of the protagonist if that spectre were to return?

a vida privada dos hipopótamos (maíra bühler, matias mariani)

This is a suitably Latin American Gordian knot of a film. Is it a documentary or a fiction?  Is it a film about Latin America or North America? Among other artful steers. The film is constructed around a lengthy interview with a North American, Christopher Kirk, who is, ostensibly, in prison in Brazil. The filmmakers state that they discovered Kirk whilst researching a project about gringos in jail in South America. Kirk proceeds to tell an elaborate tale about his relationship with 'V', a half Japanese beauty he met in Bogota. The more he extrapolates, the less believable his story becomes. 

The filmmakers speak to people who knew the incarcerated American in his earlier life. The film is assembled with clips from YouTube and photos and video clips purportedly taken from Kirk's hard drive. There's also a curious segment when Kirk appears on local TV after a friend looking after his flat whilst he's away wraps all his possessions, down to the toilet paper, in aluminium foil. When Kirk heads ‘south’, his dull demeanour changes, reflecting the changing landscape. Bogota and Seattle are chalk and cheese. Bit by bit, the film suggests, the Latin world takes over. Kirk’s description of “V” ends up suggesting that she might, in fact, be a kind of alias for the exciting uncertainty he discovers when he heads south of the Rio Grande. An uncertainty that appears not just in his surroundings, but also within himself. 

Kirk would clearly appear to be an unreliable narrator, something backed up by his old friends. However, what the audience doesn't expect is that the filmmakers themselves are also unreliable narrators. The further down the rabbit hole we go, the more unstable the ground becomes. Is there any truth at all to what we’re watching? Does a Youtube clip of Chris Kirk on the Brazilian border really mean Chris Kirk ever visited or was even near to the Brazilian border? In this way the narrative ties in effectively with current preoccupations about the authenticity of data in the digital age. it also makes for a fascinating, uncertain film, one that tantalises with notions of a “truth’ which remains constantly out of reach.  

años de calle (w&d. alejandra grinschpun, w. laureano ladislao gutiérrez)

The Sala Zitarossa is filled to the rafters with young people and no-one quite knows why. The film is shown free as part of a season of documentaries which normally attract around 30 people, rather than the hundreds who have turned up today. They watch respectfully this compelling account of the lives of four Buenos Aires street kids, told over the course of ten years. (Años de Calle translates as Street Years). The filmmakers, Alejandra Grinschpun & Laureano Ladislao Gutiérrez first find their subjects in 1999, when the political posters are for Menem. The filmmakers are contributing to a photography outreach program, taking photos of street kids and giving them cameras to take photos with. The kids, ranging from 13 to 17, show them around their habitat in the railway sidings which run through the heart of the city, the high rise buildings framing their cardboard shelters. Five years later, 2004, the filmmakers catch up with them again. Andrés is in prison. Gachi is about to have her third child. They retain the beaky optimism of youth, in spite of the hard years they’ve already lived. By the last time of filming, their attitudes have hardened. One, Ruben has vanished, his mother trying to trace his whereabouts. Andrés is back in prison, spending the eighth year out of ten incarcerated. His subdued monotone seems a lifetime away from the cheeky kid we first met. Gachi doesn’t want to talk to the camera anymore. The camera has done nothing for over the years. She lives in a noisy garage with her partner and some of her kids. She hides her face from the camera. The only one who seems to have been able to escape destiny is Ismael, who is now himself giving photography courses to street kids, recycling the knowledge the filming has given him. Once again, in Buenos Aires as in London, the arts prove more than just decorative: they represent a means of social mobility that other professions cannot offer. It’s hard to contemplate Ismael as a lawyer or a doctor, but photography would appear to have offered him a niche in a brutal world. This is a lovingly composed film, crafted over time. It’s lack of adornment or ego is to its credit: the souls who are its subject matter are the film’s tragic heroes. Años de Calle is the anti-Boyhood, with its North American complacency. This is an account of lives lead on the other side of tracks.