More about the SIFF
Jun. 10th, 2007 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Only two films this week, wrapped around the last four days of ten hours at a conference plus near-peak travel time either side. I'm tired and my brain is well pickled. I seem to be seeing quite a few documentaries this year, certainly more than last.
Last Tuesday I went to see Nanking, about the Japanese invasion of the Chinese then-capital in 1937. As the Japanese marched from Shanghai towards Nanking, the city's wealthy fled and the westerners there were evacuated by their governments, leaving the poor of the city to await the invaders.
A small group of westerners, mostly missionary types, but also including a doctor and a German businessman who was a member of the Nazi party and an ardent supporter of Hitler, refused to leave. They formed a committee and asked the Japanese government to recognise a central civilian 'safety zone' in Nanking. The Japanese declined, but the westerners set up their safety zone in a two square mile area of Nanking anyway, hoping that even if it wasn't officially recognised, the soldiers might respect it. The years that followed became one of the first instances of a war that was continuously documented by neutral observers from other nations.
The documentary is told in the stories of Chinese survivors and a smaller number of Japanese soldiers speaking under pseudonyms, and also by actors reading from the letters and diaries of the westerners. Some 250,000 Chinese hid inside the safety zone, people from Nanking and people from the surrounding countryside who made it there - and it partly worked. The Japanese weren't keen on neutral observers from other governments, and their soldiers were somewhat circumspect around the westerners, but there were eight of them trying to protect two square miles with nothing but the influence of who they were against groups of armed men.
The film is harrowing stuff - it's mostly words, which are intense enough, and some still images. But one of the westerners had a film camera, and secretly filmed some of the Japanese atrocities that went on outside the safety zone, films that one of them eventually managed to smuggle out of China to show the world what was going on. Some of this film is shown towards the end of the documentary, and at least one friend of mine who'd planned to see Nanking decided not to go because she'd been warned against that part. The warning is valid.
The world didn't care. The American who smuggled the film out got to have dinner with the President, but nothing was done, and the British were a little busy for themselves by that time. The German businessman took copies of the film to Hitler, asking him to intervene with their Japanese allies. Three days later he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, told never to speak of Nanking, and ended the war destitute.
This is an extremely powerful documentary - there's a lot that's callous and nasty and brutal, but the successes among the horror are all the more amazing because of it. It made me cry. It's making me cry again now writing about it, and I'm so, so glad I saw it. I bought a ticket for this film because it was something I knew very little about and felt I ought to, and I was right.
This morning, for something rather less intense after the brain-wringing of the last few days, I dropped in on the showing of Sharkwater. I love sharks and I love beautiful images - put the two together, and that's a documentary for me.
The first half an hour or so of the film is about the sharks, and their world, and trying to get people to like sharks for what they are - probably something of an easy sell to the people in that cinema XD The final hour's an environmental plea against long-line fishing and the shark fin soup industry, filmed mainly with an activist boat from this organisation, Sea Shepherd, who interfere with illegal whaling and fishing activities.
The film was shot, edited, scripted and narrated by one man, an underwater photographer turned environmental campaigner called Rob Stewart. About the only thing he didn't seem to do was the music (which is excellent, and all listenable to via the www.sharkwater.com website). This is both a strength and a flaw - there's no question he knows the oceans, and he knows how to film them superbly, and it gives the film a deeply personal feel. He doesn't have the greatest narrator's voice, but nor is he awful, and it's probably better to have an involved narrator who knows the subject than a professional actor saying lines. But he really should have given his footage and an outline to someone else and asked them to write him a script. Some of his lines were just too cheesy and should have been edited out fast, and in the first half an hour I sometimes found myself wishing he'd just shut up and let his footage and the music work alone on the audience. When he did, the film was spell-binding. In the second part of the film, like any obsessive left to talk for too long, his passion began to edge over the line into something more like fanaticism, which does a documentary no favours, however valid the point.
The footage and the information it puts across, though, is dramatic. A lot of the Sea Shepherd filming takes place along the coast of Costa Rica, where shark finning is illegal - no quotas, no licences, just banned. And warehouse after warehouse with sharks' fins drying in the sun spread all across their rooves and the tops of lorries, and local law enforcement is simply paid off. This is big business - the largest shark fins can be worth $10,000 each, those of the rare, glorious, plankton-eating whale shark. The film certainly gets its point across and will do exactly what it intends to, stir up something other than disinterest in a population who would never tolerate the industry if it involved an animal regarded as cute, like turtles or seals. But only if those people ever see it, and how many who don't already like sharks will?
Two of us at the showing voted it a four, because it was strong, hard-hitting film-making despite its flaws, and one scored it three because the film-maker's egotism bugged her too much.
Last Tuesday I went to see Nanking, about the Japanese invasion of the Chinese then-capital in 1937. As the Japanese marched from Shanghai towards Nanking, the city's wealthy fled and the westerners there were evacuated by their governments, leaving the poor of the city to await the invaders.
A small group of westerners, mostly missionary types, but also including a doctor and a German businessman who was a member of the Nazi party and an ardent supporter of Hitler, refused to leave. They formed a committee and asked the Japanese government to recognise a central civilian 'safety zone' in Nanking. The Japanese declined, but the westerners set up their safety zone in a two square mile area of Nanking anyway, hoping that even if it wasn't officially recognised, the soldiers might respect it. The years that followed became one of the first instances of a war that was continuously documented by neutral observers from other nations.
The documentary is told in the stories of Chinese survivors and a smaller number of Japanese soldiers speaking under pseudonyms, and also by actors reading from the letters and diaries of the westerners. Some 250,000 Chinese hid inside the safety zone, people from Nanking and people from the surrounding countryside who made it there - and it partly worked. The Japanese weren't keen on neutral observers from other governments, and their soldiers were somewhat circumspect around the westerners, but there were eight of them trying to protect two square miles with nothing but the influence of who they were against groups of armed men.
The film is harrowing stuff - it's mostly words, which are intense enough, and some still images. But one of the westerners had a film camera, and secretly filmed some of the Japanese atrocities that went on outside the safety zone, films that one of them eventually managed to smuggle out of China to show the world what was going on. Some of this film is shown towards the end of the documentary, and at least one friend of mine who'd planned to see Nanking decided not to go because she'd been warned against that part. The warning is valid.
The world didn't care. The American who smuggled the film out got to have dinner with the President, but nothing was done, and the British were a little busy for themselves by that time. The German businessman took copies of the film to Hitler, asking him to intervene with their Japanese allies. Three days later he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, told never to speak of Nanking, and ended the war destitute.
This is an extremely powerful documentary - there's a lot that's callous and nasty and brutal, but the successes among the horror are all the more amazing because of it. It made me cry. It's making me cry again now writing about it, and I'm so, so glad I saw it. I bought a ticket for this film because it was something I knew very little about and felt I ought to, and I was right.
This morning, for something rather less intense after the brain-wringing of the last few days, I dropped in on the showing of Sharkwater. I love sharks and I love beautiful images - put the two together, and that's a documentary for me.
The first half an hour or so of the film is about the sharks, and their world, and trying to get people to like sharks for what they are - probably something of an easy sell to the people in that cinema XD The final hour's an environmental plea against long-line fishing and the shark fin soup industry, filmed mainly with an activist boat from this organisation, Sea Shepherd, who interfere with illegal whaling and fishing activities.
The film was shot, edited, scripted and narrated by one man, an underwater photographer turned environmental campaigner called Rob Stewart. About the only thing he didn't seem to do was the music (which is excellent, and all listenable to via the www.sharkwater.com website). This is both a strength and a flaw - there's no question he knows the oceans, and he knows how to film them superbly, and it gives the film a deeply personal feel. He doesn't have the greatest narrator's voice, but nor is he awful, and it's probably better to have an involved narrator who knows the subject than a professional actor saying lines. But he really should have given his footage and an outline to someone else and asked them to write him a script. Some of his lines were just too cheesy and should have been edited out fast, and in the first half an hour I sometimes found myself wishing he'd just shut up and let his footage and the music work alone on the audience. When he did, the film was spell-binding. In the second part of the film, like any obsessive left to talk for too long, his passion began to edge over the line into something more like fanaticism, which does a documentary no favours, however valid the point.
The footage and the information it puts across, though, is dramatic. A lot of the Sea Shepherd filming takes place along the coast of Costa Rica, where shark finning is illegal - no quotas, no licences, just banned. And warehouse after warehouse with sharks' fins drying in the sun spread all across their rooves and the tops of lorries, and local law enforcement is simply paid off. This is big business - the largest shark fins can be worth $10,000 each, those of the rare, glorious, plankton-eating whale shark. The film certainly gets its point across and will do exactly what it intends to, stir up something other than disinterest in a population who would never tolerate the industry if it involved an animal regarded as cute, like turtles or seals. But only if those people ever see it, and how many who don't already like sharks will?
Two of us at the showing voted it a four, because it was strong, hard-hitting film-making despite its flaws, and one scored it three because the film-maker's egotism bugged her too much.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-10 11:19 pm (UTC)Sharkwater, as you said, some beautiful footage and an interesting issue, but he needed to bring in some professional film makers to edit and clean it up. And a bit less of him and more of the sharks.
You didn't miss much in missing Memory Thief, another film where the director had an interesting idea but just couldn't execute, it was another 3 for me.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 02:18 am (UTC)I had a feeling Memory Thief might be a bit that way, like Allegro last year. That's one of the reasons in the end I didn't feel so bad deciding against it.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 06:41 pm (UTC)That would be me, I'm the wimp. :-) Your review makes me want to rent it, and not watch the last part. It sounds like such a great documentary!
I ended up giving Sharkwater a 4. Yes, I did think there was gratuitous footage of Rob's (very nice I admit) speedo-clad body. I think it would have been more effective to have the ending footage show graceful and beautiful swimming sharks instead. But the film is engaging, and does a great job at raising awareness of the environmental situation and the current plight of sharks.
It wasn't a run-of-the-mill shark documentary. It was a edgier and more activism-oriented than any I've seen.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 12:53 am (UTC)Ah, you did a last second secret switch on me ;-)
He wasn't the worst-looking guy to have gratuitous footage of, no, but I agree I'd have preferred more sharks. But I did like the fact that it wasn't what I went in expecting to see, it was something stronger. It made me wonder what I missed by not going to see the one about the whales earlier in the festival.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-14 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-14 07:30 pm (UTC)