Documentaries at SXSW 2011

At South by Southwest’s March film festival,  I saw several films that tell stories we rarely get to hear unless we’re members of the communities involved, and that show a much-needed deep respect both for  their subjects and for the audience.  Out of that respectful engagement comes sometimes disturbing understanding.

Informants, Entrapment and Protest

Doc veterans Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega showcased Better This World, which was funded by public TV’s ITVS and which public TV viewers can expect to see on P.O.V. next season. It’s a story about FBI entrapment of two spirited and foolhardy young Austin, TX men, during the Republican national convention. With archival footage, home movies, re-enactment, and interviews, the makers take us inside a process by which young and naïve protesters were tempted to commit domestic terrorism. In the process, the filmmakers remind us of the terrifying and poorly-recalled police strategies to contain protest during the convention.

It was sobering to realize that what lends this film part of its shock value is that it is all happening to two white men. Behind their story, the film lightly suggests, are more untold stories of just such entrapment strategies—made far more likely by the loosening of requirements under the Patriot Act—committed against people of color, Muslims and dissidents of all kinds within U.S. boundaries.  It should be shown in every high school.

The film got a standing ovation at SXSW. The filmmakers plan to reach out to policymakers and law schools. “It was a choice to tell the story so close to the bone,” said Galloway. “It invests you in the boys and what happens to them. We didn’t really get a chance to put front and center that this is a widespread problem.” The directors may get a chance to make an issue-style film on the subject with Frontline.

Where Soldiers Come From

Another excellent film slotted for P.O.V. after being groomed (like Better This World) by Sundance Documentary programs and funded by ITVS was Where Soldiers Come From. Heather Courtney, a native of the Upper Peninsula and award-winning doc filmmaker, went back to her home, where several young men have decided to join the National Guard together, knowing they will go to war. They don’t really have much to do otherwise, besides practicing graffiti skills on rusted building hulks and hanging out. Their parents, who live modestly and work hard, clearly had more opportunities than they do. (One guardsman’s sister waitresses with her mom.)

Courtney embedded with the Guard unit in Afghanistan for five of its nine months of deployment, and also depended on helmet cams and mounted cams to get footage of IED explosions from inside the tank. Finally, she followed them home, where their options haven’t improved any, especially for brain injury victims now afflicted with attention and mood disorders. It’s not just a film about war. It’s a film about small town America, and the American dream, made with love and respect.  Where soldiers come from is here, and here is what we have to fix.

At a family party after the debut, Courtney’s family and friends and the subjects of the film gathered over tacos. One of the men said, “Heather got to be one of the guys. We obviously held nothing back.” That was definitely true. “We liked it that she went back and forth because she could bring us lots of goodies when she came back.”  The young men are still groping toward their futures.

Supporting Public TV

In screenings for both of these films, as well as in the ITVS omnibus film FutureStates (an experiment in short fiction programming), filmmakers and programmers spoke passionately about the role of public television in shaping the media environment and giving underheard viewpoints an airing. They asked audience members to reach out to legislators, to vote for endangered public broadcasting funding. Audience members regularly clapped and whistled.  

Can Cage-Fighting Make  for a Social Documentary?

Another rich experience in American reality was Fightville, the latest by the filmmaking duo Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein. This husband-and-wife team has produced a series of films focusing on the lived experience of the Iraq war—Gunner Palace (a year among soldiers in one of Saddam’s palaces), The Prisoner (the story of the torture and release of an innocent Iraqi arrested in Gunner Palace), Bulletproof Salesman (a profile of an international arms salesman),and  How to Fold a Flag (the men from Gunner Palace go home).  

One of the men featured in the latest film has become a full-time cage fighter, or practitioner of “mixed martial arts”—martial arts played to win. Fightville is a profile of the founder of an association for mixed martial arts and two aspiring fighters. Like any competition film worth its festival entrance fee, it’s a story of aspiration, struggle, and redemption. It’s guaranteed a good commercial slot somewhere, and there was plenty of bidding for it at SXSW. Indeed, the interest in Fightville spilled over to How to Fold a Flag, which has been languishing since it came out without a distributor.

“I want to see you find the social aspect of this film,” laughed Petra, a friend of several years, as I entered the theater. Then she said, more soberly, “It’s there.” The film does indeed provide a window into the working world of working-class sports, into the lives of young men trying to build their lives with their bodies, and into popular culture.  Like  Heather Courtney, the filmmakers clearly enjoy being with their subjects, and follow their struggles and achievements with respect.

How to Film a Dying Subject

Peter Richardson’s moving How to Die in Oregon, which premiered at Sundance and is destined for HBO (May 26), is about the right to die with dignity, legal in Oregon (as well as Washington and Montana). It follows two main stories: In Oregon, 54-year old Cody, a vibrant mother of two young adults, is diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. In Washington, the widow of a man who died without dignity carries out his last wishes to fight for a change in the law (which is won). It’s a three-hanky documentary, and a powerful argument for a chosen death.

Richardson, whose earlier work Clearcut followed a controversy over land use in his own area of Oregon, has a low-key style marked, like the other filmmakers whose work I so admired at SXSW, by a manifest respect for both subject and audience. “Cody’s husband and kids were against the filming,” Richardson said to me. “They thought, We have very little time with this precious person—why invite into our lives the stranger with a camera? But Cody was very insistent, and they agreed to please her. The process became very constructive—Stan [the husband] called it ‘free therapy.’ Sometimes I was expectably shut out, and I was only ever included by Cody’s invitation. It became collaborative. They’re now grieving and growing into the new configuration of the family, and they have said to me, Now we see why mom wanted to do this, we see the gift she left us.”

After the film’s debut on HBO, Richardson looks forward to working with a variety of organizations focused on the issue. “The film says, It’s OK to talk about this, and it provides a starting point.”

 Translating Experience

Another Sundance-premiere film at SXSW was The Interruptors, a Kartemquin Films production by Steve James. (Fair warning: I’m on the Kartemquin board of directors.) In the Kartemquin tradition of extended exploration of lives lived below the radar of mainstream media, the film follows a group of street-hardened men committed to interrupting cycles of violence in Chicago. The star of the film is Ameena Matthews, daughter of a gang leader and one-time gang girl. Now an observant Muslim, she fearlessly wades into furious street scenes, shaming and hectoring people into backing down. The film captures fights brewing, fights erupting, and sometimes fights calmed down.  The “Interruptors” follow the street word to the houses of people looking for revenge, and follow the noise to the action.

The film holds out no false optimism, at the same time that it puts names and faces on people rarely seen on television except in crime reporting. It portrays a world that is broken in too many ways. Even the language used is often broken. People speak in staccato or peremptory ways, as if yelling and denouncing had supplanted ordinary speech as the norm. (The film often resorts to subtitles.)

Steve James is a filmmaker who refuses to look away from very hard news, as anyone who watched Stevie can attest. The hard news of Interruptors is valuable, and so is the profound concern and commitment of those who live in the broken places and hold themselves and others to the commitment to work with hope.