I became familiar with the Dutch documentary cinema in my undergrad years in Tehran nearly 10 years ago. At the time, thanks to the cultural policies of the reformist government who facilitated international cultural eventsو every year the center for documentary and experimental cinema hosted a panoramic festival where up to 100 films of the history of documentary cinema in collaboration with embassies and cultural centres were screened. In three successive years I saw panoramic festivals of French, Dutch and Greek cinema.
The festival would last for only 3 days in Philistine cinema as they could not hire it for longer. So we had to start watching films from 10am till 12pm! It was very exhausting but at the same time very exciting. The complex had 3 screens and we used to switch from one to another in the middle of films if we didn’t like it. The ticket was very cheap and was requested only at the main door so one could even pay for once and watch the whole program as long as she/he didn’t exit the complex. Moreover, as it was super busy, when the cinema was full we used to sit on the stairs on the floor before the first line of viewers or even sit on each other’s lap. Perhaps it was the only public place where I sat on my boyfriend’s lap several times in the dark. For us, it was such an experience. It was his idea and at first I was hesitant and worried but as the people around showed no reaction we continued.
For me it was a wonderful opportunity to familiarise my eyes with the modern frame of reality and the complex concept of representing reality. The Dutch cinema became my favourite. Unlike French films, which (apart from Duras, Rene and Marker) were mostly about how great France was, what wonderful civilised and cultured people French were, Dutch cinema was pre-occupied with industry, workers, impersonal experience of city and change. They did not fear to show the cracks in their society and were utterly sharp when it came to politics.
The tradition of documentary cinema passed through four generations of filmmakers throughout 20th century starting with Joris Ivens is a great national treasury and that is perhaps the reason why Dutch independent filmmakers started idfa festival in 80s. It protects them from corporate production and distribution while it is a platform for them to promote their authentic frameworks of reality.
Every year nearly 400 films are sent to the festival from Iran which almost 5 of them would be accepted. In Iran idfa has the reputation of being independent and professional. It means whoever the director is wherever she/he is making film, is not important, they only choose the films based on its professional quality unlike 100 of 1000 of festivals worldwide which have many other reasons for having a festival. organizing a festival usually is done in line with political and cultural policies of the organizers. These festivals are held to define and pick certain messages and people. Of course idfa has its own political agendas which makes it quite distinct. One could see the most disrupting, iconoclastic documentaries there. That is partly the reason why BBC and other corporate producers have no representative in the festival.
This year the youth jury awarded an Iranian film called The Last Days of Winter by Mehrdad Oskouei. The film explores the life of the young offenders who are kept in a sort of rehabilitation centre by authorities. Their movements are controled and they can’t exit the place before the end of their sentence but the place is rather like a clean and modern dormatory than prison.The boys in their early teenage years were convicted mostly for addiction and burglery. They vulenteerly speak to camera about their background, their sorrows and memories. No one thinks much about the future. The atmosphere of the dorm/prison is very calm but the speech of boys evoke the traumatic outside world which victimised them. The film catches their glances, gestures and behaviours which were fraught with guilt, sorrow and confusion about right and wrong. All came from lower working classes in the rural areas, often from families whose parents and siblings were in prison too. One talks of his one year old sister who became addicted to heroin while she was a foetus as her mum was an addict. The baby had to consume drugs to be kept quiet, the boy was sorry for her since his parents were arrested and he knew that his sister was not given the drug and must have been in pain.
A stunning scene in the film captured a play which the boys acted out during their endless lonely evenings. Their play was about the process of interrogation by police and they imitated the brutality of police treatment. They interchanged their roles while playing so the police and the victims were not fixed characters and everyone was given an opportunity to be dominant and dominated and show how police threatened them and how they got confessions from the boys. During this horrendous yet magnificently performed play, they beat and were beaten by each other.
The film was the second Iranian documentary ever to be awarded at idfa and the Iranian film-makers there were all very delighted.
Another, interesting characteristic of the festival is its audience which is a mixture of professional filmmakers and very ordinary people. One could see a wide range of viewers young and old, educated and uneducated, wealthy and visibly poor. And the questions they asked were very different too. As someone who goes to festivals in the UK and other screenings frequently, I am often disappointed and annoyed by the irrelevant, self-forgrounding questions that people ask, whereas, Q & A s at idfa arouse one’s curiosity and add to one’s knowledge of the conditions of production and different layers of meaning of the films. One could deduce that there is such a pressure in a metropolitan like London to foreground yourself at any cost. Indeed, the competitive atmosphere which offers any social event as a platform to single out hopelessly similar individuals as a possible difference, only point to the fact that how the concept of other and otherness is obscured and isolated in the capital. If beyond hegemony real diversity existed such a pressure to make the Other appear, even at the cost of identifying as an Other to a small and contingent community of the audience of a film, did not exist. In Amsterdam its absence was very tangible. The pressure to foreground oneself in the crowd simply wasn’t there.
This year the idfa Jury’s award and the audience award went to the film Five Broken Cameras which depicted the struggles of the residents of a village in occupied territories to defend their land against the expansion of the Jewish settlements. It was narrated through the lenses of five cameras over a period of 6 years. The cameras not just witness the grossly imbalanced struggle literary between poor villagers and technologically advanced occupiers, but also were injured many times as soldiers shot two cameras and smash the rest. What I liked about the film was the way a personal narrative of the film-maker, the birth of his sons, his jobs and the everyday life in the village was mingled with the collective narrative of the residents. In this way he managed to escape the lonely voice of a victim and show us a picture of resistive people who were defending their territory with whatever they could.
I was so surprised when I realized that the film won both the audience and the jury award which is not common. But also very surprised to see that such a bold and frank narrative of resistance inside occupied territories won the heart and mind of all type of idfa viewers. This was a film shot amid blood and death and scream and burnt olive oil trees and terrified children but it wasn’t a film about victims, about fearful and confused people. It offered an alternative image of resistance about people who plan, organise, come up with new strategies. People who were not pets to pity or defend or decide for them or worst speak for them. They were very recognisable humans with the same dreams and fears like us and that was the key to the success of the film.
Having said this, I must admit that still the festival suffered from the flood of personal narratives who failed to establish a collective vision and narrative based on their agenda. It could be easily observed throughout the festival how neoliberal system has deprived subjects from collective properties such as class, political communities, and so on. Even the harshest political struggles were depicted through the minds and eyes of fearful isolated individuals. In this kind of narratives the absence of critical language wrapped in exceptional humour the way that 20th century avant-garde artists were like, is tangible. The story is only recognized once the first person voice or the self-portrait image reveals traumatic experiences. In neo-liberal system subject can only access authenticity through tearing up their privacy. There is no other way to attract the trust of the audience. This is not to say that those kind of films are lies or bad films. In fact they could be deeply effective but they leave the audience with sense of helplessness and guilt rather than shame, determination to act or even anger.
Guerrilla was a short film about a Colombian woman who joined the fighting guerillas against the capitalist state in Columbia with her husband. She narrated how they joined the fight, were hidden in villages, captured and tortured and how her husband was executed without trial. We didn’t see her face during the film only her blurred images as she was working as a cleaner in an international chain hotel in London early in the morning. The narration/film/cleaning work started in the dark when she started to open the curtains, mop the floors and clean the toilet bowls. She told her memories while washing the sinks as if washing away the burden of her past life as a fighter. when the story finished with her escaping to London as an asylum seeker in a couple of years ago, the sun had risen in the sky and she could see it from the messy hotel rooms. I found it valuable that the film gave a space to her to speak the way she wanted and the fact that the struggle in Columbia was registered. The film clearly had sympathy with her but was absolutely neutral to the her political belief. Was it right or wrong to fight? The neutrality of film was achieved as a result of complete de-textualization and de-politicisation.
I think as Communist filmmakers and artists it is very crucial to look for representational forms beyond first-person narration and self-portrait. We should find a perspective which links the individual with its context, the individual should be seen as a representative of her/his environment. Also, this emphasis on trauma, pain, bodily wound and suffering is a displacement to distract attention. The artist should not rely on trauma to gain authenticity and reliability. The trust between artists and viewers should be constructed differently.
I saw nearly 30 films in a week as much as time and budget allowed me and I’d like to write about them, maybe in future posts, but now I finish with the film named Metal Workers about the workers in metal industry in Brazil (think of car industries like Volkswagen whose basic materials are provided by these workers). The film was a collection of interviews with metal workers about their harsh and unbearable working conditions in 70s and the massive strikes in 80s. They also talked about how Lula embodied the hope that “there is a way out of all these miseries”. Lula appears in many Black and White footage and his hyper behaviour ( bursting into tears in the middle of talk, shouting “come arrest me! but we will continue …) is in sharp contrast with the simplicity and sincerity of the now middle-aged or old workers in the interview. Looking at the footage one asks herself/himself who knew that Lula would grow as a Leftist leader only to allow slave-work to return to Amazon?
The last interviewee has perfectly remained in my mind. He was a middle age still handsome man with enigmatic but kind black eyes. He was a close friend of Lula in his early youth but he was still a metal worker this time a temporary worker who didn’t have a stable working place, he had to drift from one city to another, wherever the factory required him to be, thus he never knew where he would be home, when he would have work or when he would be free. Still with a pleasant smile he said that he was going to vote to Lula.
It was a painful film.
If you like to have a copy have a look at this link. Apart from this year entries you could see many films on-line from their archive which I do suggest.
