BLOG Categories

• Chuck D TV
• Film
• Life in General
• Music and Entertainment
• Photography and Art
• Portfolio
• Sports

FRIENDS

• 82 Design
• 9art Photo
• Colby in the Raw
• Derek Curry
• Epicly Later'd
• French Fred
• Keaton In Joplin
• My Flickr
• My Vimeo
• Reskue
• Two For Joy

Subscribe to My feed

Film BLOG

Sheffield Documentary Festival 2009

I spent a very long weekend (this one started on Wednesday of all days…) at Sheffield Documentary Festival.  Many of the incredibly hip and actually quite happening patrons of the festival insisted on calling it a “Doc/Fest” but I was not a fan of such brevity and sloppy use of a separatrix;  I used all the long words in all their complete glory.  I was wrong to do this because Doc/Fest is the festival’s official name, thought up by the good people who run the festival.  It ain’t right of me to ignore this and I apologize for my snobbishness and rebellion!  I’ll make sure I use to correct name from now on.

Right now I’m really, really exhausted because of all the smiling and being polite and cheerful that I did over the past half a week.  Opening doors for people and not spotting any signs that they knew that I existed and had done them that service got a bit old but hey, in this day and age, with all these important people ruling the world and being amazing, who the hell has the time to utter a “thanks” or even crack one of those smiles of appreciation?  I’m sure they’re too busy working hard trying to have doors and politeness eradicated.  I know I’d probably be a few seconds earlier to something unimportant if I didn’t bother with these attempts at niceness but I just can’t ignore how being nice is easy to do and good for you too!  That’s a fact!

Anyway, about that documentary festival…

Thankfully, the instances of impoliteness failed to ruin everything.  I met some great people, smiled at people and they smiled back, slept in a tiny bed and also a bed fit for a reasonably sized person and even got the chance to watch a couple of documentary films!  At a documentary festival!!  Who would have thought??!

Two of the best films I watched featured men who got angry and swore a lot but managed to make people laugh all at that same time!  American : The Bill Hicks Story told, well…it told the story…of…Bill Hicks…ahem…basically.  I am not the biggest Hicks fan or foe, but I do appreciate a well put-together film and I’m happy to say that this was that.  What was particularly noteworthy and interesting was how the film makers told Hicks’ story using only first hand accounts of people who were actually there.  For example, they decided not to include any information about his love life, because none of the people directly involved could be persuaded to tell their stories of what happened, and second, third or fourth hand accounts simply would not do.  I appreciate this kind of dedication to the cause of hearing things from a horses mouth.  Granted, nothing is stopping a horse from lying, but thankfully the horses of this film came across as genuine knowers of what they were talking about.  Furthermore, Bill Hicks had some cool parents!  Both of them were staunch Baptists, yet they still treated their son’s work with incredible open-mindedness, however different some of his opinions must have been from their own.  If the film is anything to go by, Hicks and his parents shared some excellent mutual respect.

The second angry documentary dude I came across was Jack Rebney, also known as the “Winnebago Man”.  In this little video, made for the good Canadians at the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival the film’s director gives a better explanation of what he achieved than I can manage in my current state of tiredness:

I watched Winnebago Man at my very own viewing station, where I wore headphones and was surrounded by other headphoned folk watching their own screens.  The headphones and the fact that nobody knew exactly what I was watching didn’t stop me from laughing out loud, and sighing the sighs of a guy who finds something as heart warming as I found Winnebago Man to be.  I wish I was clever enough to describe the film as something less cheesy and generally better than just “heart warming”.  Gosh, I wish I could be more original than that.  But I can’t, not right now at least.  No matter, I trust you get my point.

This morning was the start of the last day of the festival.  It was cold and rainy, which, in turn, was no fun to walk about in.  Nevertheless, I walked on down to a seminar entitled Citizen Film Making Around the World.  Oren Yakobovich talked about his work with B’Tselem, Khin Maung Win spoke passionately about oppression in Burma and we were told about Burma VJ, and Alan Hayling told us about how he gave high school boys in Baghdad video cameras to film war torn Iraq from their points of view for the documentary The Boys From Baghdad High.  It was sad that such important subjects were being talked about at an anti-social time on a Sunday.  Hopefully next year they will be given a more popular spot on the schedule.

This has taken me far too long to write.  Sorry if it’s sloppy and doesn’t make much sense.  I might correct the spelling/grammar mistakes in the morning.  I am not any less tired now that I’ve stayed up so late.  I feel like I’m going to sleep like I’m jet lagged.

Film | November 9, 2009

8 Comments