I’m late in doing so, but I really want to call attention to the current season of “Independent Lens” on PBS, which has been presenting a lot of documentaries that I may show at the Clark sometime. Two I’d just watched on dvd before they turned up on the program. Waste Land I’ve already written about, and also worthy of recommendation was Marwencol (2010, MC-81). The odd name denotes an imaginary town peopled by GI Joes and Barbies who enact the WWII scenarios of a man who had his brain damaged in a beating outside a bar. The town, as 3-D artifact and as reproduced in photos, serves as physical and psychological therapy for Mark Hogancamp, to recreate an identity lost along with most of his personal memories. His photos are discovered by an art magazine, leading to a New York gallery show, which challenges the creator’s identity in more ways than one. Inspiring, almost mind-blowing, this is a film that works on many levels.
Another possibility for Clark showing is The Desert of Forbidden Art, which tells an intriguing story of a lone wolf collector of avant-garde painting banned by the Soviets, who created his own museum in unlikely Uzbekistan, in a fascinating mix of exotic themes. Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child was not bad, but pales next to Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat, as spectacularly embodied by Jeffrey Wright (with David Bowie as Warhol).
Off the topic of art, I definitely recommend Bhutto (2010, MC-68), also available on dvd, which focuses on Benazir as legatee of her father as leader of Pakistan, in a dynastic clan that is half-royal, half-democratic. Twice prime minister, the first woman to lead a Muslim country, and twice deposed by the military, she was assassinated in 2007 when she returned from exile to run once again. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she provides an understandable window into an unknowable country, which has emerged as a crucial frenemy of the U.S.
Another PBS documentary series of consistent interest is “American Experience,” and I take particular note of two recent presentations. Stonewall Uprising (2010, MC-74) is very effective at taking us back to the origins of gay liberation in the “riots” that took place in 1969 when the police raided that Greenwich Village bar once too often, after its Mafia owners failed to pay up, and the gay patrons took the brunt of the assault. The jaw-dropping footage of official commentary in “educational” films and even on “60 Minutes” offers a crash course in just how far homosexuality has come out of the closet and into the mainstream of American life.
Similarly we’ve come a long way from the situation of the Freedom Riders (2009, DVD) in Stanley Nelson’s extremely effective documentary about the 1961 bus protests against segregation on interstate transportation. An interracial group from the Congress on Racial Equality embarked on a peaceful attempt to ride together from Washington to New Orleans, only to meet beatings and burning when they reached Alabama. After the highly-publicized violence, other riders and the civil rights movement as a whole took up the challenge, escalating the issue until the Kennedys and the federal government were forced to intervene. While we watch the protestors of the Arab Spring try to rise up against entrenched and illegitimate power, it is salutary to remember that fifty years ago, the situation was not that different in parts of America.
Another documentary for future showing at the Clark, just available from Netflix -- as most of these films are -- is Who Does She Think She Is? (2008), by Pamela Tanner Boll, who made the noteworthy Born into Brothels. This film looks at a variety of women who persist in their art while raising families and facing all the obstacles to their success. Though hardly earthshaking, it is genuinely inspiring.
Two more films to mention for completeness’ sake, both of which have their virtues but not my strong endorsement are Barbara Kopple’s latest, Gun Fight (2011) and Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman (2010, MC-81), which dealt respectively with the important issues of gun control and public education reform, but did not tell me anything particularly new or eye-opening, though I tend to support their conclusions.
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