Movie reviews

WATCH DOCS FESTIVAL 2012 (in alphabetical order)

AGNUS DEI (LAMB OF GOD) 
Watchable. A typical philosophical French documentary but this one is very atmospheric at least.

BAD BOY - CELA DLA NIEBEZPIECZNYCH (BAD BOY HIGH SECURITY CELL)
Watchable. Fun to watch, the main protagonist has a contagious sense of humour e.g. "Patrzcie, jaki mam widok! Palmy, panienki..." ("Look, what view I've got! Palm trees, chicks...") pointing at the bars of his cell. It fails, however, to convey the message the director had in mind, as I heard him say later, that prisoners are humans like us (this prisoner used so many "shits" and "fuckings" that his language itself set him apart from an average Joe).

CAMP 14 - TOTAL CONTROL ZONE
Recommended. Hard-hitting as expected: a life story of a man born, yes - born, in a North Korean concentration camp. A horrifying film about a closed world where even family ties are thinner than water.

COMPACTA Y REVOLUCIONARIA (COMPACT AND REVOLUTIONARY)
Walked out. Watching the preparation of tiles for a labour day parade is about as interesting as watching wet paint dry.

DAYEREH (A CIRCLE)
Watchable. Exotic but hardly comprehensible for someone who doesn't know much about Iran.

DUCH, LE MAITRE DES FORGES DE L'ENFER (DUCH, MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL)
Watchable. Poor translations (a different version in every language) detracted a lot from this otherwise powerful movie. The detached way the Khmer Rouge time Cambodian prison commendant talks about tortures is juxtaposed with his account of how he got entwined in the murderous system. About the only film where the French documentary style (no editing, everything shown minute by minute indiscriminately and without the change of scene) helps emphasize the message.

DURGA
Watchable. An important topic of Indian men's ambivalent attitude to women deserves more than this artistic impression.

ERA UMA VEZ UM ARRASTAO (THE BEACH RAMPAGE THAT NEVER WAS)
Watchable. Boring as a film but makes you question all media coverage you'll ever going to see.

ETRE LA (BEING THERE)
Walked out. Why do the French always have to ruin a promising topic with such a boring rendition? The camera follows the same people on different days recording them minute by minute. Even in real life you don't watch the same thing/person continuously. A film should be more exciting than reality to make you sit through it, isn't it?

FRAMING THE OTHER
Watchable. Revealing about the true nature of "local traditions" presented to tourists in Ethiopia but without depth.

FREEDOM FOR BIRTH
Watchable. An important film about rights of birth-giving women which unfortunately lacks a wider context.

A GIRL LIKE HER
Recommended. A set of disturbing reminiscences of inhuman experiences of women who got pregnant as teenagers in the 50s and 60s and were forced to abandon their babies. Unbelievable such a short time ago this unspeakable abuse happened to 1.5 million women.

JOINING THE DOTS
Watchable. A quick glance at lives of people who lost sight and how they cope. Uplifting but lacking depth.

LE KHMER ROUGE ET LE NON-VIOLENT (THE KHMER ROUGE AND THE MAN OF NON-VIOLENCE)
Watchable. French equals boring again. Towards the end the litigation becomes incendiary enough to suddenly raise suspense.

MANQUE DE PREUVES (LACK OF EVIDENCE)
Watchable. An important question of how to prove to European immigration authorities the threat of becoming killed for witchcraft back in Nigeria gets diluted through monotonous story-telling.

MIRAGE
Watchable. I was curious of Dubai and the movie showed more than I bargained for - the dullness of life there. Unfortunately it makes the film equally dull.

MY ENEMY'S ENEMY
Watchable. The remorseless Klaus Barbie is a fascinating person and so should be the story of the international chase after him. Sadly the film is too slow to prove fascinating.

NOS JOURS, ABSOLUMENT, DOIVENT ETRE ILLUMINES (OUR DAYS, ABSOLUTELY, HAVE TO BE ENLIGHTENED)
Walked out. People standing and singing unknown songs for God knows what reason.

PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY
Watchable. It starts too slowly but as you learn more and more about the forensics of the crime and legal hitches it becomes truly gripping.

POSLEDNATA LINEIKA NA SOFIA (SOFIA'S LAST AMBULANCE)
Watchable. It quickly endears you to the ambulance staff, showing them as ordinary people with their own minor financial problems. Still, the way it's filmed - each scene minute by minute without cutting- isn't the most interesting form.

SECRETS OF THE TRIBE
Watchable. Too much focus on personal arguments between scientists but important in the sense it reveals a famous anthropologist was a pedophile and actually created prostitution in a remote communities in total impunity.

SEEKING REFUGE
Watchable. Diverse stories of child refugees told monotonously.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Recommended. "When I was in prison, each and every woman there was there because of a man - this way or another" sounds disturbing but proves true in this behind-the-scenes Abu Ghraib scandal documentary. While the whole film highlights the injustice of the system where the orders clearly came from above but only the lowest rank soldiers got sentenced, what shocks the most is the ending. A photography forensic expert with a military past marks each picture with "SOP" (standard operating procedure) or "criminal act". The gap between what it takes for mental torture and humiliating a person to constitute a criminal act in everyday civil life and at war is enormous.

THE WAVE
Walked out. The storyline is bureaucracy in action. The pictures show the same heap of earth all the time. The political context gets lost.