doc.com

The Devil wears... Jesus. The devil is called Becky Fischer.
The devil says: "because we have, excuse me, we have the truth". Smiles.
Think in the worst horror movie you´ve ever seen. It´s funny, but at the same time scaring. Picture it.

Rachael is a 9 yo very smart girl that in an typical american teen movie would be the boring and irritating class leader with a lot of potential but a limited mind. Tory, 10 yo, would be the stupid cheerleader dancing in front of the mirror and saying she couldn´t care less about Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. Me too!, but maybe this is the reason why a ten yo child have so many tears and guilties to scream out. Because listenting to such music as to like Harry Potter is a sin. Levi is 12yo and well, he has no salvation. I´m sure he´s gonna be an "important" pentecostal minister or who knows what. The intrguing about these kids is that they are the "army of God".


Home-schooled, living in a completely evangelical and manipulative environment, where their George Bush voters and fanatic parents teach, among other things, that global warming is only a mith, nothing but a political issue. When most kids go to summer camps, they go to bible camps where they pretend to feel the spirit of God, shacking their whole body and speaking in tongues. It´s as much scaring as Palestine kids with arms in their hands and I truly can´t say which one is the worst. It´s the same type of manupulation, but this "army of God", at least for now, has no fatal ends.

Inspiring!

I have got butterflies in my stomach just imagining how crazily high Philippe Petit was! I got amazed with his determination, courage and concentration.



The documentary itself is pretty good as well. It is a collage of interviews, archive photographs and videos and some scenes recreated in beautiful black and white photography. The only aspect I didn´t like is the way some "characters" are introduced, with that mysterious and dumb face in a mysterious and dumb atmosphere. In spite of it, it is superbe!

José Saramago, Hermeto Pascoal, Wim Wenders, Evgen Bavcar, Agnès Varda, Marjut Rimminen, which work I want to know/explore, and others give their point of view over the vision in this interesting documentary. Rather interesting, but I still miss something.


* A non-real character that could be in Janela da Alma and whom I got fascinated by is Julie Delpy´s character in Two Days in Paris, a photographer that has "small holes on the retina which condemn her to see only one part of the image". The way she shows us her vision problem is fantastic and you can, somehow, feel yourself into it.

Before Flying Back to the Earth is a Lithuanian documentary about children living with leukemia at a pediatric hopsital. It's not as emotional as expected, even so, sad. It makes us think about life, about how wrong we live, complaining over nothing.
It ends in an abrupt way letting the feeling that more could've been said, but maybe there's not really much else to say. Little angles full of joy and life, despite all.

* very beautiful black and white photos.

"Exit Through the Gift Shop" has to be a Bansky's joke! A good one, of course. Probably Thierry Guetta really was an amateur filmmaker, but I can't see Mr. Brainwash than a Bansky's long-term prank. Is there a better way to criticize the world of art than really showing and proving its incredible stupidity? And what would be the icing on the cake? To get the icing on the cake of this questionable art system: an Oscar.

Analyzing it as a film, Exit Through the Gift Shop is like any other documentary we can find on tv, but as a reflection or mirror of our time and society, it has a great value. Shepard Fairey seems to work as the touch of authenticity as famous people like Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and others did in Woody Allen's Zelig. Of course Zelig was an assumed "joke", but if an unknown had played him, there would be people believing it. Someone who asks if Bansky found those Lady Di £10 notes would be naïve enough to be in a documentary that laughs on him, but would be smart enough to know how to make so much success? Well, what's success and art anyway?

As someone said, maybe reality is so unbelievable that we prefer to believe in fiction. It's hard to buy the idea of an "artist" who not only copies famous street artists but literally copies Andy Warhol's icons, sells successfully, however, that really happened. Madonna (who else?) has an album cover designed by him. As original as Mickey Mouse. The cover and her choice as well.



Shall we get a Campbell's soup for dinner?

Waste Land is a documentary about the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and his "social work" with workers from the garbage dump Jardim Gramacho. All that poverty is heartbreaking and outrageous in a country with absurd social differences where a few people have a monthly wage that could save lot of families. At the end of the film I could only think how unfair the situation is - Muniz had an amazing and beautiful gesture, but the real changes in the community and their lives were minimal - and felt like that Boris's quote*:

"But what do you do? You read about some massacre in Darfur or some school bus gets blown up, and you go "Oh my God, the horror," and then you turn the page and finish your eggs from the free range chickens. Because what can you do? It's overwhelming!".

Because, what can we do? As the Brazilian filmmaker João Moreira Salles says, it would be an illusion to think that a documentary can change the world and its characters. Vik Muniz did his part and it must be enough.

Other films had already explored this theme like Ilha das Flores (Isle of Flowers, by Jorge Furtado) and Estamira (directed by Macros Prado), both stronger than Waste Land**. This documentary is important to both social and artistic worlds, but it's quite normal as a film. The soundtrack, composed by Mody, sounds superficial and too much melodramatic sometimes. The same happens to some scenes like the one where Vik Muniz, alone in his place, looks to the world globe in his hands with a desolate expression. It's one of those poor scenes where we can almost listen the director saying: take the globe in your hands, look at it, make a sad face, you miss those people, yes, like that, good, that's it . Cut.



* Whatever Works, by Woody Allen.
**There's also the documentary Boca de Lixo, directed by Edurado Coutinho, that I haven't seen yet.

There's no such thing as reality. All that we see and experience end up being part of a frame. Something like "everything has three sides": your, mine and the (supposed) true one. Where stands the reality of the 'you' that has nothing to do with the 'me'?

While watching Santiago, I could truly understand what Susan Sontag meant when she compared the camera to a gun. In her novel "On Photograph", she says that : "To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."
We all know that documentaries are only a part of a whole, a fraction of something called reality. What we don't tend to think about is that real characters are also a creation, a fiction when converted into a subject.

Santiago was the enigmatic butler of the filmmaker's family. Speaking more than five languages, a lover of classical music and boxing, the Argentinian wrote all along his life 30,000 pages about the history of the world's aristocracy. These are facts, however, what Salles was really looking for when decided to make the documentary - what he only discovered thirteen years later - was not the real Santiago, but Santiago from his childhood memories. Like an implacable murder, Salles "violates" Santiago and turns him into an object to finds out, at the end, that the relationship employer and employee had never been broken, as this relationship is also an allegory of what happens throughout any film between the documentarist and his/her subject. Or between reality and fiction.



* the black and white film was the perfect choice. a tropical light wouldn't match with Santiago's personality and sense of respect (for tradition).

"Based on the book " O Brasil dos gringos", by Tunico Amâncio, the documentary shows the vision that world cinema has of the country, through the films in which Brazil was a location, a theme or even a reference, and what is behind these productions, through interviews with their directors and screenwriters. The objective is to reveal the mechanisms that produce that image. The stories, motivations and/or pressures that are behind these films".

Lucia Murat's idea was very interesting, however a deeply serious study would be more effective. The laid back tone and her preconceived point of view, directing the interviewees (specially the "common" people) to previously selected clichés, end up equaling the documentary to the theme itself. Like Leonardo Mecchi says in his review (revistacinetica.com.br), "Murat commits the same mistake she accuses his interviewees to do: denies them the individualization and shows this look as intrinsically and necessarily prejudiced". He also points out how she let such an important film like Black Orpheus (directed by Mrcel Camus) out, "while films like Lambada, The Forbidden Dance and Anaconda are analyzed as if they were in-depth studies on the Brazilianness and not the unpretentious and 'self-consciously built on clichés' films they are." Even inside this unpretentious selection, others films stayed out like "Woman on Top", directed by the Venezuelan film director Fina Torres. With Penelope Cruz, "Woman on Top" is a light romantic comedy produced in USA, but without obvious clichés. In the end of Godard's Bande à Part, Odile asks Franz if there're lions in Brazil to which he answers: as well as croc...Odiles".

If seeking the truth, documentaries and documentarists should have an impartial point of view. Choosing only one side, a possible reality is lost. Right in the beginning of the film, Murat says that the culture industry shares the responsibility of these clichés that we're always trying to get away from. Tired of being force-fed these ideas, she decided to find those who created this character called Brazil. This is as so surreal as irresponsible. Who created this character called Brazil? Brazil did it. Where comes the idea of sex, vulgarity and freedom from? From Brazilian films, specially the Pornochanchada ones, and from the Carnaval. That image of Brazil as the country of football and beautiful women, among other things, was created by its own people, bought worldwide and is still fed nowadays because it sells. If we really are a country without identity - "After all, who are we? (dedicated) To all who look for their identity" - then we only exist through the regard of the other, through stereotypes.

You want a part of me
Well, I'm not selling cheap
No, I'm not selling cheap*


Between December 1992 and March 1993, the music journalist Michael Azerrad interviewed Kurt Cobain for his book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, published by Doubleday. Almost all the 25 hours of audio taped interviews took place between midnight and dawn at Kurt´s house in Seattle, Washington. One year after the last of these interviews, Kurt committed suicide. Years later, Azerrad meets the director AJ Schnack and the idea of the movie comes in.**

Shot in the three cities where Kurt lived, Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle, and not featuring any Nirvana song or image of him until the very end, Kurt Cobain About a Son is something between a documentary and an (auto)biography where we see an honest (self)portrait of Kurt. At least, as honest as it can be. The use of random images and other music artists works when trying to give importance to what Kurt is saying, when trying to show the person instead of the icon. Gus Van Sant´s Last Days, that focus on the icon (Kurt´s sun glasses, wearing a dress, etc) and use the silence to try to get into Kurt´s mind/world, works, but as a portrait of the character as we know it.

Childhood, father´s absence, adolescence, art, musical identity, depression, fame, life. It is an interesting view on the construction of a real character and on trying to discover the real person. Kurt wanted to be famous, but didn´t expect to become a "fucking cartoon character".


People do not deserve to know about my life private now. (...) The thing that I've always, that I've never understood, is the classic reaction to someone who complains that's in the limelight is like "well, you know, you made your bed, now you have to sleep in it. That's what everyone expects. You're public domain now, and everyone has the right to know everything about you." (...) I don´t agree with people saying: "everyone has a right to know." I have the right to change that perception. I have the right to change people´s way of thinking of celebrities. It should be changed. It should be different. They should be treated as human beings and respected (in their private issues).


*Celebrity Skin, by Hole. In the movie Kurt talks a lot about fame and its consequences, about the pressure over him and Courtney Love.
** Michael Azerrad and AJ Schnack interview: http://www.thefilmlot.com/interviews/INTazerradschnack.php



updated: I left the movie playing while working on other things. I prefer to listen to it than watching it. It was like Kurt was in my room, talking directly with me.

How to analyze a documentary? What to take into consideration? When most documentaries follow the same structure and format, and considering that the main objective was reached, the subject ends up being the determinant. At least, for me.

Frank Gehry is a Canadian architect who acquired both critical acclaim and popular recognition with unlike buildings that cross the lines between architecture and art, functionality and free creation. If you are not familiar with his work, I would say it reminds me of Franz Kakfa, the German Expressonism and Futurism (google Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà and compare their work to the Gehry´s).

His expressionist postmodern architecture, I must say, doesn´t really appeal to me, although I realized that more than the shape, what makes big impact on me is the material. Having what I would call a conservative taste, I feel attracted to brick and stonework when steel, glass and metal keep me away. I like the MARTa Herford Museum, in Germany, that was clad in brick and stainless steel, as also the Dancing House, in Prague, but the Novartis Building (Switzerland), the Experience Music Project (Seattle) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA) can call the attention of the eyes, but not of my heart: I don´t feel the impulse to explore such places.
Bringing it to the cinema, it´s like Monsieur Hulot´s house versus Arpel family´s house. The futuristic house from Jacques Tati´s film Mon Oncle is very formal and static (geometric) to could have been built by Gehry, but we can say it has some similar characteristcs: the fish-shaped fountain, for example, even though Gehry would make it much bigger. In the other hand, even being an ancient building, Monsieur Hulot´s "house" has a sort of chaos and movement that would attract Gehry and which charm and personality definitely attracts me.

What I most like about Gehry´s work is the whole process of creation, the "giving form" more than the form itself. Instead of the final product, I choose his sketches and mock-ups. The whole process is exciting and Sydney Pollack portraits it quite well what makes me wonder how to rate this documentary. Gehry´s work is interesting, but can this film please those who are not interested in architecture? I am not sure.

As the years go by, that feeling of attraction stays the same. Each of us, in fact, looks different from how we looked when we met, but if I look to Edie now, she looks exactly the same to me. Exactly the same. And she will say the same thing the other way.


Edith "Edie" Windsor grew up in Philadelphia, got married, moved to Baltimore, split up and took off to NY. Thea Spyer was born in Amsterdan in 1931, moved to England in order to escape from Nazism, immigrated to USA in the beginning of 40´s and moved to NY in 1950. Around 1962, they met at Portofino, a restaurant in the West Village where the lesbians used to go on Friday nights. Two years later, their relationship really began and it lasted forever. Like says the marriage vows, "until death us do depart": after 41 years together, in May 22, 2007, they went to Toronto, Canada, when they officially got married. Two years later, Thea died.

If, as a "piece of art", Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement is below regular, as a documentary it is very good. It´also very important to marriage equality and every gay rights movement. If conscious campaigns are really necessary - and I think they are - stories like Edie and Thea´s should be used as a "flag". We can not ask for acceptance, but we have to ask for respect and equality*. Pride Parades don´t speak for me. Lady Gaga and alike, definitely do not speak for me. Instead of using such marketable figures and increase the mass consumer (un)culture, cases of real engagements should be shown in the big media. Unfortunately, they wouldn´t sell.
How many heterosexual and religious couples can say a word about real love? How many had the strength and guts to love and take care of your partner like Edie did? Thea was diagnosed with advanced multiple sclerosis with 45 years old. With her body slowly deteriorating, she was put in a wheelchair. The couple adapted to new situation with humor and passion.


Thea: If you came into this party and you didn´t know me at all and I was sitting there in that wheelchair, what would you do? Edie´s answer was great.

Edie: "Oh shit! I had to fall for the one in the wheelchair".


In any moment you doubt the veracity of their relationship or think it may be distorted by the cameras. Their love and caring is visible, almost touchable. There´s a true fondness in every hug, in every kiss, in the way they just look to each other. Luck? Soul mates? Who can say it? The fact is that they were able to build a relationship for a lifetime and that their life story is simply inspiring.


Thea: I have the love of my life. I have the love of my life. That´s number one. And I am able to afford huge and modern (ward?) assistance. I have no pain and I have no cognitive deficiency. Put that all together, if you don´t make a life with all those things going for you, I would say that there´s something really very wrong.

Edie: Keep joy as long as you can, ok? And if you have to solve problems, if that involves problems solving, than we do that.



*"The words 'bride' and 'groom' are not existent in Canada anymore. We have 'spouse' and 'spouse'. Everybody is equal". Harvey Browstone, the first openly gay judge in Canada, who married them.
**Edie "was a board member of Social Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders, also known as SAGE, from 1985 to 1987 and from 2004 to 2006." Today, she is still a gay rights activist.