WATCH DOCS 2023
GRASSHOPPER REPUBLIC
Watchable. This documentary sees the whole process of grasshopper hunting: first free insects on the one hand - in close-ups, while people work hard setting up traps. Next lots of Uganda: other insects, birds, daily lives in the background: their business dealings, hopes to become millionaires, while treating eyesight-threatening damage to the pupils and skin from the lamps luring the insects - "I don't know a poor person who isn't strong." Then the whole hunt - mesmerising as the green grasshoppers swarm against lit night sky. Finally wholesale and retail. Quite ordinary in a large part too. But mesmerising electronic music and beautifully shot all sorts of weather mean the film is atmospheric in spite of being slow.
And outside the festival:
LES GARDIENNES DE LA PLANETE (WHALE NATION)
Recommended. Narrated by Jean Dujardin in the original and by singer Margaret in the Polish version, it's a nature documentary where a big cinema screen is a must. But it's not even the visuals and whale songs that matter, it's their history told from their perspective. Unique.
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