Am I living an episode of Quantum Leap? How has a year passed so quickly? Well a year has passed and with it have been some major changes. The Sheffield Doc Fest 2014 has grown exponentially, in size and in content. For this reason, I was busier than last year and will have to rely on the Videoteque aspect of the festival in order to provide a proper write up of what this year’s festival had to offer. However, as this was my second year, my new found veteran status allowed a more coordinated timetable that meant more film watching. Although, I didn’t get to see some of the live music and film events as the majority came after the festival (in an event packed post-festival present to the kind people of Sheffield for letting the festival practically take over the city), I did get to see stuff.

Miners Shot Down

I had made a pact with myself that I would try to add more variety in the type of documentaries I watched at this year’s festival. I wouldn’t recommend watching Act of Killing back to back with Valentine Road. It’s not good for the soul. I wanted to mix things up with some more entertaining fare. What a wonderful way in which to honour this promise than to watch a disturbing film about the massacre of 34 miners in South Africa in 2012.

Miners Shot Down is an involving yet horrifying examination of the days leading the massacre that occurred in August 2012 when South African state police were given orders to intervene with a seven day strike held by thousands of miners protesting for a living wage. The “intervention” proved to be the greatest example of bloodshed since the end of apartheid. Filmed like a thriller with live footage from the perspective of the Marikana miners and testimonies from parties on all sides, director Rehad Desai reconstructs and reveals the exploitative power structure of big corporations allowed to flourish in a South Africa rife with inequality and corruption. On a grander scale, the doc holds a disturbingly reflective mirror to the rest of the world, demonstrating how one example of how a rotten power system of which encourages profit through exploitation and flippant regard to human life is just a drop in the ocean of a sea that is the corporate world.

The film’s structure is compelling, buoyed by the very informative presentation conducted by a lawyer currently representing the miners who linked the treatment of the South African miners, to those throughout history and countries. From Australia to Sheffield miners, they are all unified by the brutal treatment at the hands of the establishment becoming heartbreaking symbols of the consistent repression and destruction of basic human dignity.

It might not have been the ideal Opening Night film (I’m told they’re supposed to be all about celebration) but it’s a powerful film that stays with you. It’s message is disheartening (in particular the mine concerned is the British owned Lonmin Platinum, which further negates the argument that colonialism and it’s inherited attitudes have disappeared from Africa), with the exploration of the moral decline of the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa, ex-Unionist and once right hand man to Nelson Mandela, now millionaire deputy president of South Africa, who seems quite at peace with renegading on his beliefs to such an extent that the old saying “Do as I say not as I do” can lead to death if you choose not to comply. The lack of empathy for those in a situation he once was is sadly symptomatic of African politics. Ramaphosa himself acknowledges the way in which prosperity and power poisons a man’s morals. Status becomes the ultimate mantra of a newly rich man and if maintaining that status means the stunting of other’s progress and the progress of your country as a whole – then so be it.

The fact that the incident, so recent and so raw, has barely had any international coverage, and the obvious police coverup left unacknowledged is a sad indictment of our supposedly global society’s view on the value of human, particularly African, lives.

The 50 Year Argument

A new offering from Martin Scorcese, I have to admit this may be my least favorite of his documentary output. This film, while having it’s moments, feels a little bloated and aimless. As Scorcese is not really present in the film, his energy and passion absent on screen is also absent from the film as a whole. I don’t know whether this is the subject matter, this time round focussing on the New York Review for Books, that lacks a certain je n’est ce quoi. Maybe it’s unfair to compare the doc because of this to the likes of the fascinating Personal Journey with Martin Scorcese through American Cinema and My Voyage To Italy,  but I have to admit that when Scorcese moves away from his raison etre – film – the results often leave me cold. Less of a struggle than say The Last Waltz (although an impassioned plea to give this one another try has made me less dismissive of it), I still left the film a little unmoved. And for documentaries in particular, that doesn’t bode well.

My first real issue is that the film really is for a closed group, real afficionados of The New York Review. Films on the whole serve to cater to an existing audience and documentaries as a whole tend to be a way for fans to communally celebrate their shared fondess for a subject. I have no issues with that idea. I do, however, believe that the sign of a good documentary is to be inclusive, offer some form of introduction to the uninformed newbies, or else risk alienating said audience. The 50 Year Argument does just this and it’s a shame. A film dependent on the big name draw of its director, it was disappointing that there seemed no real effort to properly explore the origins of the iconic publication bar a few rudimentary references and photos of the magazine’s founders. I might have missed the detailing of the publication’s original ethos because this meandering film seems to skip with no real rhyme nor reason.

The parts I did like best were the focus on its most famous contributors. The archive footage of the likes of James Baldwin and Susan Sontag were fascinating, and current writers encounters with these icons even more so (there is a touching and funny story told before the closing edit of the magazine’s current top contributor encounter with his idol James Baldwin that made the sitting through what had come before worth it). If the film had been made up solely of interviews from past contributors and their work for the magazine I would have been very happy. But as we all know, I am a sucker for archive film, so my opinion might be seen as unjustly biased. I found that despite reading a few articles from the magazine in my time, I felt clueless throughout and it’s not a fun feeling and made the experience quite dull.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

Like a live action episode of Where’s Wally, I kept looking out for Poirot in this overly long but thoroughly engrossing, doc-come-murder mystery. In a case of life really is stranger than fiction, The Galapagos Affair, based on the memoirs of one of the island’s inhabitants, details the gripping story of idealistic dreams of Eden destroyed.  Set against the beautiful but brutal and barely habitable islands, we follow the fate of individuals who in the 1930s for various reasons left behind the ideals of society to start their own. The film uncovers the slow disintegration of these delicate ideals as the underbelly of the island’s inhospitable habitat became apparent. Adding fuel to existing tensions amongst it’s residents, any semblance of a peaceful coexistence is replaced sabotage, disappearances and maybe murder.

The reconstruction of possible events on the island are my favorite parts of the film. That small world is vividly brought to life through beautiful archive footage and perfectly paired voice acting. Although a documentary long in the making, it is still a passion project for the filmmakers, so it was thoroughly impressive to see the participation of the likes of Cate Blanchett, Sebastian Koch and Diane Kruger amongst others completely game and thoroughly invested in bringing this story to life. For this part alone, I would wholeheartedly recommend the film.

I wasn’t however as keen with the attempts to interweave the fascinating mystery of that time with the story of various residents of neighbouring islands from the 1960s onward.  In uncovering the tale of the Galapagos Affair, filmmakers Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, are clearly in the camp that they’ve uncovered a parable about the folly in searching for paradise and perfection. Of course Heinz Wittmer et al never found paradise. Look at what happened to them! That point doesn’t need to hammered home the point that the film does in interviewing all these other extraneous individuals.  I could have easily done without the frankly un-compelling stories of unhappy/dysfunctional lives (most of which could have happened anywhere, the Galapagos location being a rather tenuous reasoning for their unhappiness). Bar one island inhabitant who had actually encountered one or two of the people in the 1930s when she was a small child and her particular story, all the others weren’t all that interesting and actually rather typical.  It took away from the suspense and intrigue of central story and unnecessarily pads out what could have been a taut engaging film experience to a bloated two hour running time.

Despite all this, the filmmakers commitment to the story is engaging and contagious (and not because I spent a pleasant evening chatting to them). A good hour of the film, or whenever we enter the world of 1930s, I was completely taken by the story. I have that much affection for the film, I can forgive the weaker parts.  For the enjoyment factor alone I would wholly recommend the film.