27.06.2013
Film festival: Documented truths
Jim Moody reports from Londons global documentary festival and gives a smattering of reviews
Standing in complete contrast to those deliberately mislabelled ‘documentary’ strands that are UK television’s staple ‘reality’ shows, this year’s just-ended Open City Docs Fest1 mined a rich vein of real-world documentary making. Festival film subjects were wide-ranging: from dirt-biking youngsters in Baltimore to an ambulance crew’s problems in Bulgaria; and from a brilliant focus on Indonesia’s old anti-communist killers to the lethal attack on Norwegian socialist youth in 2011.
Documentary-making is one of the least acknowledged and yet one of the most difficult film genres to get right. Whilst the boundaries may be fuzzy - as evident at this festival - they can present us with meaningful and spirited views of the human experience.
Indonesia’s mass murderers
Anyone politically active from the early 1960s will recollect a feeling of horror as news of the massacre of Indonesian communists emerged. Estimates of the numbers murdered in just a few months from October 1965 have been as high as one million. It was at a time when Indonesia’s populist president, Sukarno, scion of the Non-Aligned Movement sponsored by the Soviet Union, was losing control. After liberation from the Dutch colonialists in 1945, Sukarno and elements in the new republic’s army had been content over two decades to encourage the social-democratisation of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI). But come 1965, reaction centred on the army was ready to see off the communists once and for all. These upstarts were to be removed physically.
In what might seem a strange take on the subsequent murder of hundreds of thousands of members of the PKI, The act of killing (directors: Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and ‘anonymous’, 2012) has Anwar Congo, a former leading member of the murder gangs, conduct us through a retrospective of these events.
As the conceit of the film unfolds, we see that Congo and his friends are only too keen to justify what they and the other anti-communist paramilitaries did during the killings, as they act out cameo scenes as if from B-movies. Confident of their nation-saving role, they even play the victims with some conviction. And the great achievement of the film lies in the way it gets close to the motivations of the killers, establishing how some of today’s rightwing militia are ambivalent and how some see the terror unleashed as needing to be remembered, so that future generations of workers and peasants will be suitably cowed.
What was clear in the 1960s and what remains clear, if the recollections of the ageing murderers in The act of killing are to be believed, is how little resistance there was. Clearly the nationalistic PKI saw its role as one of support for the national hero, Sukarno, and his regime.
The act of killing is on UK release on 28 June 2013.
Norwegian massacre
In July, almost two years ago, fascist Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya island, where a socialist youth camp was being held. In Wrong place, wrong time (director: John Appel, 2012) Harald Føsker, who was nearly blinded in the Oslo car bomb blast, gives witness alongside young survivors of the summer camp massacre. The camp is hosted annually by Norway’s Labour Party youth organisation, Arbeidernes ungdomsfylking (Workers’ Youth League), which was given Utøya island by Oslo TUC in 1950.
Prematurely lost human life is always a source of sadness. When such loss is due to deliberate actions it is a great deal worse. And when it derives from politically-stoked hatred of the left it verges on the grotesquely evil. It really is our worst nightmare.
As Wrong place, wrong time makes clear, Utøya survivors put their faith in the state forces to save them. Three young people hiding in the toilets - Natia Chketiani, Ritah Hansubuga and Håkon Sandbakken - understandably hoped that the police would arrive before Breivik found them. Ironically, throughout the shootings Breivik was dressed as a policeman.
Caring profession in adversity
It might not be a great idea to get so sick in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, that you need the emergency services. That is, if we are to take to heart Sofia’s last ambulance (Poslednata lineika na Sofia; director: Ilian Metev, 2012).
Dedicated ambulance crew Krassi, Mila and Plamen do their best. But they are surrounded by poor infrastructure - potholes everywhere - and demoralised colleagues - news of the latest resignation comes while they are on duty. And their dispatchers seem overwhelmed: they get to one call after four hours to find their ‘case’ (patient) dead. But, no matter what, the team keeps going, buoying up each other with banter and exhausting themselves in going beyond the call of duty.
We see no patients’ faces: those of the ambulance doctor, nurse, and driver are enough to take all our attention.
Life through electricity
Powerless (Katiyabaaz; directors: Fahad Mustafa, Deepti Kakkar, 2013) takes the viewer to Kanpur in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, which is plagued by chronic failures of electricity supply and the state monopoly responsible, Kesco. In his attempt to keep the workshops of the ‘Manchester of the East’ going, not to mention provide power to homes, a new-broom managing director provokes strong opposition among the population. Individual katiyabaaz (powerless people), including local hero Loha Singh, loop permanent and temporary lines into the street electricity wires to provide power to businesses and homes. Thanks to Kesco’s failings, it is the only solution for the overwhelming majority, who incidentally pay backhanders to the company’s managers to turn a blind eye.
Powerlessness in the context of modern capitalist India is well mirrored in this true tale of bureaucratic bungle and corruption. Just as a dammed stream will find a way through by another route, so access to electricity will be sought by any and every means. So be it. And, as we learn in Powerless, water pumps in the city require electricity, crucially linking two great needs. If the majority cannot obtain water and electricity licitly they will, and have every right to, obtain them outside the corporate and legal boundaries set by the minority class.
Search for quiet
Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride travels through north-western Ireland to record sound untainted by humanity in Silence (director: Pat Collins, 2011). Even among secluded woods the sound of distant rock-breaking machines seeps in.
Galway has more to offer, though, and on moor and seashore Eoghan seems to find what he wants. Lyrical sights of landscape are shot through with poignant reminders of forsaken lives on the land, of the island of Inishshark left abandoned in 1960, of derelict houses gradually dissolving into the mist. Tory Island (Toraigh) is in sight off the Donegal coast, as our guide concludes his journey in a windowless house, walls peeling, with only the wind for company. He may now be happy.
Silence gets its UK release on August 9.