Real deal

The 11th annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal (RIDM) unveils the wonderful world of non-fiction filmmaking

DOCTOR WITHOUT BORDERS: The English Surgeon

by MATTHEW HAYS

Philippe Baylaucq, the chair of Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal (RIDM), kicks off the festival’s opening statement with a great quote from iconic French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard: “Vague ideas must be met with clear images.” Now in its 11th year, the RIDM has consistently worked to clarify with a solid anthology of documentary artefacts from around the world, illuminating social issues, personal challenges and national struggles alike.

This year is no exception; again, the political and personal overlap in a stunning collection of films. Perhaps most notably, one of the most famous Latin American filmmakers, Fernando Solanas (Mémoire d’un saccage), returns with La Proxima estacion, a feature-length examination of the desperately harsh history of Argentina’s railway lines. After the railway was built by the state, various right-leaning governments sold off the lines to private interests, who in turn sold them again. The result was that the railway fell into terrible disrepair, causing large chunks of the population to be cut off, and much larger numbers of people to start using cars to get around. Some estimated that the rise in auto travel led to an increase of approximately 8,000 deaths on the highway in 2007 alone.

Never one to hold back, Solanas delivers a scathing indictment of the private sector, who consistently argued the railway would be better off privatized. Also from Argentina is Closed Box, Martin Sola’s look at a number of impoverished sardine fishermen who tell their life stories as they haul in their nets and pack the fish. Sola manages to enhance the beauty of their strength through his stunning visuals.

HOPE AND DESPAIR: Life After the Fall

War crimes

Not that we needed one more reason to hate the Bush administration, but Une Mort insensée, a shocking and disturbing exposé by Raymonde Provencher, will give you (yet) another. This compelling documentary points out the irony in the recent wave of anti-Mexican-immigration furor that ran throughout the U.S. This was unfolding at the very same time that American military recruiters, desperate for young, warm bodies they could ship over to Iraq to fight their war, were making deals with Mexicans, telling them they could get their papers if only they fought in Iraq. A little-known fact: the first five U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq were Latinos, and three of those had no papers. The film shows us the parents of some of those killed in Iraq, people who are routinely referred to as “illegals” in the American media.

And in further illumination of the effects of the American-led invasion of Iraq, there’s Kasim Abid’s Life After the Fall, an epic 155-minute tribute to one family’s resilience while living in Baghdad after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell. What seems hopeful at first soon gives way to despair, as power outages and the ongoing threat of violence become the norm.

In The English Surgeon,Geoffrey Smith tells an uplifting tale through the profile of British physician Henry Marsh, who travels to Ukraine every year to help provide medical care to those who desperately need it. A forceful damning of two-tier health care provision, the film shows Marsh doing his best to see a clinic opened in Ukraine, where people can be treated regardless of their economic means. Touching and often funny, this is another fine documentary from the filmmaker who brought us Your Life in Their Hands (2004).

Women’s rights are front and centre in Stone Silence, a devastating film about Amina, an Afghan woman who was stoned to death in her village in 2005 after being charged with adultery. In his first film, Polish director Krzysztof Kopczynski attempts to burrow to the bottom of this mystery. Her parents say she suffered a heart attack, while everyone in the village seems to have a contradictory story. An unsettling look at Afghanistan, where a woman being stoned to death can be viewed as something routine and natural.

Going native

In No More Smoke Signals, German filmmaker Fanny Bräuning takes us into KILI radio in South Dakota, billed as “the largest Indian-owned and operated public radio station in America.” There we see committed aboriginal activists providing agitprop info to the public, with empowering results. In the Brazilian doc Behave, we meet a number of underage detainees, who are caught up in a prison system that holds little promise of rehabilitating them. With this film, Maria Ramos makes a great case for far-reaching prison reform.

Polygamy, Iranian style, gets the full treatment in Nahid Persson’s Four Wives-One Man, an unblinking look at one Iranian family that features—as the title bluntly suggests—a husband with four wives. Amid the 20 children in the house, all of the wives are interviewed. Perhaps not surprisingly, wife number one isn’t so wild about the set-up, while wife number four awaits the arrival of the latest offspring. With a good deal of humour, Persson brings this family dynamic to life.

In the Italian documentary Suddenly Last Winter, a gay couple turn the cameras on themselves to examine homophobia. Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi had been living in Rome very happily and working as journalists for eight years. Then Italy’s government moved to give same-sex couples the same rights as their straight counterparts. All hell broke loose, with the Vatican and every right-wing crank organization going nuts—a vicious backlash that ignited homophobic reaction in the streets of Italy. Hofer and Ragazzi were so taken aback by the extremity of the response they decided to make a documentary about the roots of such unexpected homophobia—and their film is also about the emotional ramifications for the filmmakers themselves.

Local shit-disturber extraordinaire Peter Gibson, aka Roadsworth, whose paintings on Montreal streets ignited both delight and official enmity, is given his due in Roadsworth: Crossing the Line, Alan Khol’s documentary about the wonders and pitfalls of being a street artist. Roadsworth seems surprisingly whitebread for a man who created such a brouhaha. A nice tribute to the man behind a series of nutty controversies.

In About Water, People and Yellow Cans, filmmaker Udo Maurer touches on our complex and intricate relationship to water itself. Maurer shows us people whose lives are made that much worse by either having far too little water or, in the case of Bangladeshi farmers, getting flooded out by too much of it.

Environmental crimes are illuminated in Robert Cornellier’s Black Wave: L’héritage de l’Exxon Valdez. It’s been over two decades since the headline-making spilling of over 250,000 barrels of crude oil off the coast of Alaska. Of course, there was the court ruling that ordered that the corporation pay damages of over $5 billion. But Exxon’s lawyers filed a series of appeals, meaning Exxon—which announced a quarterly profit of $12 billion last summer—ended up paying a pittance to those Alaskans hurt by the massive spill. Here we see the ongoing, horrific effects of that epic environmental disaster.

In La Forteresse, Fernand Melgar shows us glimpses of a refugee detainment centre in Switzerland, where 200 people wait to hear whether or not they’ll be accepted into the country. These exiles tell their varied, tortuous stories to the camera, putting faces to the stats we hear about refugees so often. Truly brutal stuff.

And in the Canadian entry Tiger Spirit, Korean-Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee returns to Korea to examine what the division of that country some five decades ago did to numerous families, who often lost any contact with their loved ones as a result of the North-South break.

Seeing as no film festival would be quite right without a tribute to the just plain strange, David Markey’s The Reinactors will have its world premiere at RIDM. Tourists along Sunset Boulevard are met by a strange group of wannabes, aspiring actors who make a living appearing in costume as Superman, Marilyn Monroe or Elvis. Their existence is strange and wistful, as is this film