| DVD Roundup June 2007
Docurama Film Festival III
 What Deutsche Grammophon is to
classical music, Docurama is to non-fiction film: its most prominent advocate and
promoter. Docurama's DVD catalog includes literally hundreds of fascinating documentaries,
many of which are renowned for their cinematic importance and Oscar nominations.
With such a wide-ranging and ever-growing inventory,
releasing new DVDs becomes tricky. How do you ensure that each film gets its due when you
release many new titles at once? Docurama has come up with a novel concept -- a film
festival that promotes multiple films as part of a single entity. I wrote about the
inaugural Docurama Film Festival last year; it was the highlight of my summer viewing: ten
films with disparate subjects and tones but of consistent high quality -- not a dud in the
bunch. With Film Festival III, Docurama has collected ten more films with diverse points
of view but obvious thematic connections, making for even better watching. On the FF III
website, www.docuramafilmfestival.com,
"attendees" can find out much more about each film and discuss them all with
others.
Docurama suggested watching Ralph Arylick's Following
Sean first. It draws obvious comparisons to Michael Apted's Up Series, which
shows how the lives of the films' subjects progress and change every seven years. Following
Sean reveals how a child raised in the anything-goes social climate of San Francisco
in the late 1960s evolves beyond his upbringing. In an interesting juxtaposition, Sean
comes to embrace responsibility as he grows older, while his father holds onto the
free-spirited values of his youth. Life is not a linear series of events, and Following
Sean is a reminder of this.
Of Civil Wrongs and Right: The Fred Korematsu Story,
Well-Founded Fear, and Naked States all explore the limits of freedom in
America. The first two films cover the topics of Japanese internment during WW II and the
inner workings of the American political-asylum system with depth and insight. Naked
States follows photographer Spencer Tunick as he attempts to take pictures of nude
people in public in all 50 states, challenging censorship and people's own fear of letting
it all hang out, so to speak, in the process.
Gitmo exposes the real story of America's own gulag
in the war on terror -- the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- and there's more political
intrigue with Dark Circle, a film on the breadth of America's nuclear-weapons
fixation. It documents the trail of plutonium from its refinement at Rocky Flats Nuclear
Weapons Facility in Colorado to its use in a California power plant and the bombs dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With Iraq's missing WMDs and Iran's burgeoning nuclear program
in the news, this 1982 film is relevant today, even if the Cold War is a thing of the
past.
 There is lighter fare from FF III. Stagedoor
gives an inside look at Stagedoor Manor, a Catskills theater camp where kids go to sing,
dance and become professional entertainers. Music From the Inside Out explores the
power of musical expression through the stories of the members of the Philadelphia
Orchestra. Audiophiles like to say "It's about the music," but with these films
it doesn't need to be said. Yellow Brick Road follows a group of mentally
handicapped actors over the four months they expend mounting a stage performance of The
Wizard of Oz. It's the film to watch after a frustrating day. It reminds us that
enthusiasm can be infectious.
That's nine, with the tenth FF III submission being the one
that has stuck with me the longest. The impetus for Jane Gillooly's Leona's Sister
Gerri is a shocking photograph published in Ms. Magazine. In it, the victim of
a botched abortion lays dead on the floor of a motel room. The movie is about the woman --
Gerri -- and the events leading up to her death, with her sister -- Leona -- attempting to
find out how a picture representing such anguish for her family could be published for all
the world to see. It's a story that seemed inevitable given the mores of the time in which
it occurred. No matter what you think about abortion, you can't see the end of Gerri's
life as being anything but tragic.
Among the things this group of films proves is that fact is
every bit as compelling as fiction. Will there be a Film Festival IV? I sure hope so.
...Marc Mickelson
marc@hometheatersound.com |
