If you love documentaries that stray into the fictional or very real docu-dramas, you’re in for a treat. Honeyland is one step up: it’s a docu-epic. It follows a middle-aged bee keeper in rural North Macedonia living on her own with her frail grandmother. Their survival is delicately in the balance when a large family join them looking for a better life. It’s a tale of modernity vs. tradition, and greed vs. modernity: a real showdown for the ages. Plus it’s shot beautifully.
This documentary film is on another level. You’ll rarely get this close to a life completely different to the one you’re used to. Not just because you probably have no idea about the lives of charcoal miners in DR Congo, but because you rarely get films that are this intimate. There are so many close ups and shots where Kabwita’s emotion is so clearly visible that you’ll feel like you’re there right beside him. The only problem is that you’ll feel even worse for not being able to help him up those hills.
Why Watch Makala?
Find out how to make a living in rural Democratic Republic of Congo
The incredible cinematography! (detail below)
Learn how to make charcoal
It’s an excellent documentary – it won Critic’s Week at the Cannes Film Festival 2017
The Breakdown
Makala starts with Kabwita (our protagonist). The camera follows him through the bush. He’s carrying two axes on his shoulders. He’s looking for a good tree. After a minute or so, the perfect tree appears near the top of the shrub covered hill. After a quick prayer, Kabwita starts cutting down the tree.
Makala covers the whole process of making a living from charcoal. You’ll see Kabwita make the product (charcoal), transport it, and sell it. This is how he manages to live.
What’s amazing about the film is how intimate it is. The director, Emmanuel Gras, found Kabwita whilst working on his previous documentary (also set in DRC). Kabwita agreed to the film in return for help building the home he mentions in the film. This is how the director manages to get so many close-up shots of Kabwita documenting his trials and tribulations.
Because of the connection the close-ups establish between us (the audience) and Kabwita, there are many times when we want to reach out and help him. We can feel his struggle pushing the charcoal logs up hills and also his frustration when a lorry crashes into his livelihood. Of course, the director could help, but to do so would be to take away from our experience. It’s the director’s responsibility to direct the life of the charcoal maker. It’s our responsibility (the viewers) to be enlightened and be inspired to make a change.
Conclusion
Makala is a beautiful film. The cinematography at times is almost unbelievably real. A lot of the shots are so intimate and close that you’d be forgiven for forgetting that this is a documentary. We are so used to seeing unrealistic intimate shots in Hollywood films (close-ups of people kissing that you’d never see in real life) but this kind of intimacy is unusual in Documentary film. In Makala you get to experiencethe life of the charcoal maker, not just witness it.
How much do you know about the Syrian Civil War? Here’s an opportunity to learn how the crisis started and to see footage made by different sides of the crisis. Silvered Water is made from 1001 images shot by the Syrian people across the opening years of the Civil War. You will be presented with an array of evidence so you can debate the Syrian crisis with your friends and family.
Why Watch Silvered Water?
You want to know a bit more about why the Syrian refugee crisis started
Witness revolution and war from first hand mobile footage
Unlike some films, nothing is hidden from Silvered Water – the violence, the torture, the dead bodies are all real
To see how important film is in documenting history
The Breakdown
This film is a compilation of 1001 images shot by Syrian men and women. It starts with footage of a dripping water tap surrounded by rubble. Next we are shown a newborn baby being washed and a man in underwear crouched in a corner. The half-naked man is beaten and tortured. He is the one that wrote “Topple the Regime” in graffiti. The authorities tell his parents to “forget about him,” to “go make another one,” and if they can’t to “send their women to him”. This is the start of the Syrian crisis.
Silvered Water is a documentary of the Syrian crisis as recorded on the mobile phones of the population. Nothing is spared from the camera as phone cameras explore dead bodies lying in the street. The close-ups of the wounded and the deceased may seem a bit over-the-top just like a gory Tarantino film. However, this is real life, the camera focuses on the violence as if in disbelief of what is happening in Syria. The gore is shown as it is part of life in Syria, and it must be shown to shock people around the world into awareness.
The amazing part of Silvered Water is that it is constituted from footage of both sides of the crisis. Everyone is making their ‘movie’ of the events. As a result, Silvered Water, is a combination of the cinema of the murderer, the victim, the poetic, the realist, and more. It documents the perspectives of the nation.
Conclusion
The makers of Silvered Water want people to watch this film to then talk and debate about it. The narrator describes an acquaintance who asked for his help in setting up a film club. To start a film club, all you need is to watch a film and then talk and debate. Silvered Water is not meant to be watched alone. The makers want as many people watching it to then talk about the issues together.
The directors also imply that everyone should add their story or opinion to the film’s thread of images. They have documented the cinema of the murderer, the victim, the poetic, and the realist, but we must add the final piece.
Film Difficulty Ranking: 3 The Look of Silence continues a horrific examination of post-genocide Indonesia. Following on from The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence is an even more gut wrenching and unbelievable documentary. These death squad killers boast and laugh about the people they killed and are proud to be seen as heroes by the country and parts of the community. Is this really real!? Unfortunately it is, and it is something that we should no about instead of leaving it hidden in history.
Why Watch This Film?
You didn’t know there was a genocide in Indonesia
To learn how a genocide can happen (and still happen) from the people who committed it – all real footage and real people!
Propaganda is bad
It’s available on Netflix
The Breakdown
The film begins with a long take of an old man looking through some optician’s glasses. This shot is followed by another long take of some cocoons jumping and moving around on a table. Then we are shown another long take of a man starring at the camera thoughtfully. He is watching an interview with two men re-enacting what they did for the Indonesian death squads.
The subject matter is bleak and horrific throughout, but the director Joshua Oppenheimer fantastically guides us without intervention throughout. Instead of interviewing subjects directly about the murders they committed, Oppenheimer finds an Indonesian whose brother was murdered to do the questioning. As a result, he poses the victim against the perpetrator without any biased foreign perspective. The interviewer doesn’t show any hatred towards the death squad members. His questions aren’t particularly heavy or deep but are extremely effective when he gives his interviewees time to talk. His silence facilitates their candid and horrific responses.
The look of silence is the interviewers only punishment. The director emphasises the interviewees guiltiness by showing extended shots of their faces during and after their answers. In a similar way to the effect that the lingering shots give in Tokyo Story, the lingering shots give us time to think about what the interviewee has said and then to judge them. The combination of the interviewers long and sombre look at his guilty interviewees and the interviewees extended silence emphasises their guilt. This is how the director shows their guiltiness, without even saying a word.
Oppenheimer has the skill of getting people to talk without saying a thing. This is the power of the look of silence. The guilty are open about their crimes and open about the things they did, which makes it easy for us to judge them. One man said that because he had killed so many people he had to either drink human blood or go crazy. (the horrific irony). If we didn’t think he was guilty at that point, the interviewer then asks the same man another question about a different topic. The distracted interviewee ignores the question and says “it was salty and sweet.”
Colour of Pomegranates is not a biography of the 18th Century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, but a film which tries to depict his poetry on film. If you’re looking for plot, storyline, and a conclusion, stay away from this movie. However, if you want to explore how you can use film as an artistic medium, check out this brilliantly esoteric and stylish film.
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