Read on to find out which films have inspired the Arts Engine staff members!

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (1997)

Errol Morris’ path through life is filled with film lore. In perhaps the most notorious moment, Werner Herzog ate his shoe at the premiere screening of Morris’ first feature, “Gates of Heaven.” “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control” seems to harness some of that lore, at least in spirit, by steadily drawing out one of the deeper questions of human existence: Why do we project human traits and emotions onto nonhuman beings and objects? Morris successfully uncovers the joy and sadness present in such affections, revealing an odd but surprisingly common human gesture, one that seems to hide behind a childhood teddy bear, hamsters, or a pet rock. We may think those emotions pass with childhood, but Morris gently suggests otherwise. “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control” is wonderful to watch and to ponder over, as are all of Morris’ films. —Rico Cullen

Hoop Dreams (1994)

Steve James’ “Hoop Dreams” follows two inner-city boys, Arthur and William, as they embark upon following their version of the American Dream — becoming professional basketball players. We follow the boys on their journey, through high school and into adulthood, finding that both end up in vastly different places.

Each tells candidly about his experiences, from the pressure to perform placed on star athletes to dealing with poverty, drug abuse and domestic violence in the home. Some of these unfold before the camera, giving the audience a painfully real glimpse into the obstacles these young men face. This film, breathing life into the idea of the coming of age film, is thoroughly moving and greatly exemplary of the power of the documentary film. —Jennifer Gallardo

Koko—A Conversation With Koko (1982)

Koko was born one year before me. She learned to sign. I learned to talk. She had cats. I had dogs. She could express happiness and sadness. So could I. She displayed curiosity and creativity. I did, too. Koko is a gorilla; I am a human. How very alike we are.

To my (then) young mind, this was a joyful discovery. And through the years, that feeling has stayed with me. —Jean Seok

Meat (1976)

Frederick Wiseman’s “Meat” is a haunting cinema verite exploration of the American meat industry. Less PETA, more Cassavetes, Wiseman reflects the industry without offering viewers a one-sided ethical interpretation. This film is one the best arguments I have ever seen for veganism because it chooses sophistication and beauty over didacticism. —Shira Golding

Something Like a War (1991)

This was the film that first inspired me to think about a career in documentary film. I saw it in a class I was taking on women and human rights, and it powerfully conveyed the importance of media as a tool for raising social awareness. I particularly loved that it gave voice to women who had never had their voices heard. —Elizabeth Mandel

The Weather Underground (2003)

So rarely do you see a historical documentary this engaging and well done. The archival is incredible and the graphics are great. The young radicals featured in this film were people who lived by their convictions and paid a hefty price. Their story is an important one and especially resonates for those disillusioned with our current administration. These people felt they had no choice but to revolt and you can understand why. Such a great, great film. —Angela Tucker

Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1980)

Not many people know about the hate crimes committed against Asian Americans throughout U.S. history. Even less know that those who committed these crimes usually go unpunished.

Vincent Chin was celebrating his last days of bachelorhood at a Detroit bar when he got into an argument with two men who worked at Chrysler Motors. They hurled ethnic insults at Chin, blaming him for the loss of jobs in the then-depressed American auto industry. Chin was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. The two men never served jail time for their crime. Devastated by her loss but determined to see justice, Chin’s fearless mother spearheaded an unprecedented nationwide protest, galvanized the Asian American community to speak out about this and similar injustices. This films sheds much needed light on anti-Asian sentiment and the failure of U.S. judicial system to protect people of color in a racially biased society. It also challenges the “meek and quiet,” “model minority” stereotypes prescribed to Asian Americans by showing a community coming together to demand for justice in a racially motivated crime.—Diana Lee

Why We Fight (2004)

Want to feel chills down your spine? I recommend seeing “Why We Fight.” It’s about a warning that fell on deaf ears, that is now reflected in our present set of circumstances. This story of misplaced and unaccounted power will make you think twice. Will you let Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning go unnoticed once again? —Germanico Posada

The Yes Men (2004)

It is the day after your big holiday event. You are hung over at the video store and read the words: World Trade Organization, documentary and international foreign policy. You let out a big yawn and politely return the dvd to the shelf. What you want, you think to yourself, is a spunky, light movie with some (if at all) sugar coated substance that sets you in the holiday spirit again. Some HBO series might do and you might even be numb enough go for a Hollywood blockbuster. Stop right there! Plan ahead, and get The Yes Men for that day. It trails two culture jammers who go beyond the pamphlets and the billboards and actually re-enact and embody two WTO spokesmen. With incredible access, hey cut to the chase in their presentations and tell their corporate audiences what trade is really about. A hilarious choice for the holiday high or the holiday blues. —Anayansi Diaz-Cortes

Ari and I finally got around to watching The U.S. vs. John Lennon, a documentary about John and Yoko’s peace activism and the lengths that the United States government went to silence them. The film was slick and entertaining and gave a really good overview of the political and social climate of the sixties and seventies.

I find this brand of activism — creative, funny, nonviolent — to be very compelling, and I wish there were more people like John and Yoko active today. One group that really inspires me is Visual Resistance, a Brooklyn-based collective that brings art and activism to the streets. Now if only one of them with a megastar celebrity, they might get some much-deserved media attention. I guess Kanye West and George Clooney have been doing a pretty good job of that — but until one of them grows out their hair and stages a bed-in, I won’t be satisfied. :)

As reported by the Sun-Sentinel, Newt Gingrich—in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women—made some bold and intolerant claims regarding the multiple languages spoken in this country. Specifically in reference to voting ballots, he said the “government should quit mandating that various documents be printed in any one of 700 languages depending on who randomly shows up.” Considering how confusing our electoral process can be, even for those who are fluent in English as evidenced in our most recent film Election Day, this statement is really trivializing a major problem in our country. Rather than posing a solution, he is instead pointing the finger at the victims.

This interesting article on Alternet describes the heat that documentarian Ken Burns is feeling for leaving Hispanic Americans out of his new fourteen-hour PBS documentary about World War II.

Wired has an article that provides a good summary of television’s transition into the digital world.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is Joost, a “new way of watching TV on the internet” brought to you by the creators of Kazaa and Skype. In a very hyphenated nutshell, Joost uses peer-to-peer streaming technology to deliver interactive, on-demand, high-quality and full-picture video.

Not surprisingly, reviews of Joost have been popping up everywhere.

First Saturdays at The Brooklyn Museum has done a great job of showing a diverse line up of films amidst the multiple entertainment options that occur there on the first Saturday of each month. This past Saturday was the first weekend of their new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art so all of the events had a feminist twist — from a female pre-teen punk band to a party spun by DJ JD Samson of Le Tigre fame to even a feminist inspired collage making session!

The Grace Lee Project was one of a few films they featured throughout the day. We are working on a film about identity and I have been searching for some inspiration. Mostly, I have been looking for a film that is not so serious. Most films that deal with identity are kind of depressing. The process of learning more about yourself is always this big struggle. It is so rarely a cause for celebration. The Grace Lee Project was nothing like that!

The basic premise, sans spoilers, is this: The filmmaker, Grace Lee, keeps encountering people who know other women with the name Grace Lee. (Jean mentioned that she knew a Grace Lee. Another friend said she knew a Grace Lee too. I do not know any but apparently it is a really, really common name.) Everyone who knows a Grace Lee says that she is really nice, really smart and really quiet — basically every stereotype that exists for an Asian woman. The filmmaker decides to go on a journey to find other Grace Lees and to answer the age old question, what is in a name?

This film would not work if the filmmaker was not so funny, charismatic and most importantly, self-aware. Her narration, a device that normally irks me, sounds like your cool, funny friend telling you a quirky story about herself. There are some really hilarious moments in this film. I do not want to give anything away but for anyone who has seen it, they will understand my newfound inability to look at nicely wrapped packages the same way. You should definitely check this film out.

This article takes a look at protest art currently showing at a Unitarian church in Portsmouth, NH, and asks what the founders of this country might think of the current debate about gay marriage. The author also discusses the film Permission, winner of the LGBT Rights Award at the sixth annual Media That Matters Film Festival.

Charles Burnett is a big hero of mine (and our ED, Katy). His first film, Killer Of Sheep, thirty years after its debut, has been restored to a new 35mm print by UCLA’s Film & Television Archive. (Previously, it had only been seen in small screenings because of music rights issues. I am glad those issued are resolved because seeing the cutest little girl you’ve ever seen sing Earth, Wind and Fire’s Reasons is a highlight of the film.)

The film is currently playing at The IFC Center here in New York. I just saw it last night and was impressed by how packed it was. How often is there a full house for a black and white film with minimal dialogue about an inner city neighborhood in LA?

Killer of Sheep is one of those incredible first films that lets you know that a new voice has arrived. I can imagine how exciting it must have been to see a film like this in the 70s when it first came out. It is also one of those films that has clearly influenced other films. I wonder if David Gordon Green saw it before he made his first film, George Washington? Did The Hughes Brothers see it before they made Menace to Society?

The film is a social commentary and I am fairly sure that is his intent. One his website, he states:

“I don’t think I’m capable of answering problems that have been here for many years. But I think the best I can do is present them in a way where one wants to solve these problems.” — Charles Burnett

You should try to see it when it comes to a theater near you.

Check out this mp3 of Deanna Zandt breaking down “Web 2.0” technology into understandable concepts and tools in NAMAC’s TeleSalon “Empowering Online Communities: Web 2.0 and What It All Means”.

What’s for Dinner? — Grant makers come to the table to support local food

Ed. note: The Media That Matters Film Festival is a project of Arts Engine.

There is an interesting article on AlterNet.org which addresses the fact that more and more women are going to extreme measures to be “perfect.” Excerpted from the book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, the writer goes on to describe how young women in particular are pressured to be great students, talented athletes, and of course impeccably beautiful. Unfortunately, the most common measure of beauty is obtained on the bathroom scale, often leading to devastating results.

While the article focuses on the fixation on weight, the underlying message is that it could be anything—skin color, hair texture, or even eye color. Luckily, our festival has exposed that some young women are combating this trend in films like Slip of the Tongue and A Girl Like Me. However, there is still room for more media—both mainstream and independent—to empower women and help them develop the skills to cope with societal pressures.

Ever since I was old enough to tell the various barnyard animals apart, I’ve liked nature documentaries. “Cow! Chicken! Sheep!” quickly grew to include “Leafcutter ant! Bushbaby! Komodo Dragon!” But the excitement of watching nature programs faded over the years and it became hard not to zone out when yet another wildebeest was devoured by yet another crocodile.

I also grew to dislike that draining feeling of hopelessness that came at the end of most films. “There are fewer than twenty left in the wild today,” the narrator says, after having spent the past hour explaining how wonderful the creatures are. “Because of habitat loss, their numbers are dwindling rapidly.” “They have only one thing to fear: Man.”

Cue dirge.

So despite Planet Earth’s great reviews, I was only mildly interested in catching the series on Discovery Channel. Yesterday (Earth Day), I finally did.

It was glorious.

Planet Earth is an 11-part series produced by the BBC with Discovery and is intended to be “the definitive look at the diversity of our planet.” Scenes of the familiar (even the wildebeest and crocodile) are so well shot they feel new again, and scenes of the unfamiliar (the undulating sea of roaches that live off bat droppings) are spectacularly so.

Because of the scope of the subject — five years in the making and over 200 locations, say the promotional materials — the series does meander at times. Also, however fond I am of Sigourney Weaver (Alien!), I would have loved to hear David Attenborough’s original narration.

But these are quibbles. Planet Earth is amazing for all of the things it does right: from a snow leopard chasing a mountain goat down a sheer cliff to a vast cave system that grows crystal formations that look like snowflakes.

And at the end the narrator doesn’t even have to say, “It reminds us of how much we still have that’s worth saving.”

Planet Earth is currently on Discovery Channel and available on Amazon.com.

indieWIRE has a great article about film festivals.

It is hard enough to finish your film in the first place, but now, you have to create some strategy around premiering at the “best” festival you can. It all seems too much, especially when you are making a documentary with limited funds.

A professor of mine at film school always equated the festival dance to the game you play on New Year’s Eve in NYC. Maybe all of you are supremely evolved beings but when I was younger, I would go from party to party to party looking for the “best” option. (What the “best” meant was fairly unclear in actuality and varied from year to year.) Whenever I did that, I would end up standing in uncomfortable shoes in some line outside a crowded club in the freezing cold at 11:59pm hating my life. My professor would always say, “Do you really want to be outside on that line? You know there was some nice small house party you could have gone to at 11pm and you would have been happier.”

The metaphor here, if it is not clear, is that sometimes people wait for the “best” festival and end up turning down perfectly good options. Articles like these are helpful in terms of navigating the complicated film waters but remember, you don’t want to be standing outside in uncomfortable shoes. There are a lot of great festivals out there that may not be as high profile but will treat you well and give your film the reception that it deserves.

I had the pleasure of attending the Images Festival in Toronto, Canada a couple of weeks ago. Now in its twentieth year, the festival was one of the first dedicated to supporting the work of independent filmmakers. Many Canadian “niche” film festivals are an off-shoot of the Images Fest. It began as a platform of diversity helping independent filmmakers reach new communities and new audiences. Nowadays, with a film festival representing practically every community in Canada, the only premise of the Images Festival is to create or work with “moving image.” So, independent artists, radio producers, video and filmmakers, performance artists, sound and light artists; anyone that supports work with image, light and sound is in.

To give you a feel, the opening night film was Babette Mangolte’s Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic. Throughout the festival, the event titles ranged from, “Looking to Telling: Shark Guts, Broken Ankles and Ghosts of the Arctic” to “Spaces Continuously Dissolve and Collapse Only to Separate Again.”

I was invited to speak at the series, MOMENTUM: Critical Discourse on Contemporary Image Culture. The framework I was given was: How contemporary art is created, what does it communicate and how is it exhibited and distributed in contemporary society? Sounds like a scary mouth full that would put anyone to sleep, huh? In reality, it was a nice chat about the inspirational role art has played in our lives.

I sat on the panel with Sook- Yin Lee, a Toronto-based musician, actor, fillmmaker and TV and radio broadcaster. You may have seen her play the pre-orgasmic sex therapist in John Cameron Mitchell’s new film Shortbus. Our moderator, the amazing Tori Allen (produces CBC’s Global Village) decided that didactic panels where “artists” present in top/down styles was not only contradictory to the festival, but boring.

Sook-Yin and I were not allowed to e-mail each other, research each other or meet until the day of our talk. That day Tori would introduce us in front of the audience by showing and telling to each other a piece of a project that we worked on, a favorite sound, a photo that depicts a story about ourselves and a piece of audio or moving image that we find amazing. After each segment we would ask each other questions and invite the audience to ask us questions.

It was by far one of the best panel and festival experiences I have had. In telling stories about pieces that I love and work around, I was brought back to the core of my work and was reminded why I chose to work in the field that I work in. This is a rare opportunity in the world of “indie-everything,” where lately all gatherings turn into dry panels and conferences or “networking” events.

Critics of the Images Festival say that by showcasing multi-genre moving image works and artists, the festival has lost its identity and core constituency. It is suffering from an identity crisis of sorts. In effect, it is still strange for me to explain exactly what the themes of the talk were or what audience would be ideal for the festival. But as a participant and a festival goer, I felt that not being able to comfortably place the Images Festival in a category is its greatest strength and something every artist, exhibiter, “outreacher,” and thinker should ponder on.

True art is only defined by three parameters: 1. its universality and borderlessness, 2. its undefinable nature and the fact that it has to be seen, heard and lived and can never be fully explained 3. A capacity to contest the status quo by existing. I.e., great art is political by just being art.

The Images Festival brings these notions back to the table and opens the dialogue to this nuanced area. Coming from a person that works in the seemingly “nichey” social-issue film and radio world, it was a breath of fresh air to lose the
labels, the niches and the categories to talk about communication, feeling and inspiration.

I personally want to congratulate everyone that collaborated in putting this festival together for bringing artistic expression through moving image back to its independent core. This is cutting-edge indeed!

I’ve always prided myself in spotting familiar faces while watching movies and TV shows. In fact, it drives me crazy when I’m sure that I’ve seen an actor in another film, but I just can’t place him. Well the other night I had a first. While watching The Wire: Season 3 on DVD, I recognized one of the teenage drug-dealers from his previous role as himself in the award-winning documentary The Boys of Baraka (that’s him, on the left). Apparently the filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, helped Richard Keyser get the gig on The Wire. If you’ve seen The Boys of Baraka, I’m sure you’ll find this story as fascinating is I do: troubled Baltimore kid turns globetrotter and documentary subject and then becomes a professional actor who plays the role of a troubled Baltimore kid. Crazy!

At this point Americans know about Afghanistan. Post 9/11, there has been a lot of media about the region. It is on the news fairly regularly as a nation that is a hot bed for terrorism and now it’s trying to mend it’s ways with the support of America and NATO forces. The word Afghanistan brings to mind bearded men, victimized women, dusty plains and war to name a few images.

There has also been a few films made about Afghanistan, Kandahar, Baran, FireDancer, Osama and Beauty Academy of Kabul to name a few. These films are important because they attempt to humanize the concept of Afghanistan by sharing stories and focusing on the people that live in the region and beyond.

Postcards From Tora Bora is the newest addition to this small list of films about Afghanistan and it’s people. It is a special film because it is personal account of a woman born in the region and her story of return, after 20 years of war. Wazhmah Osman and Kelly Dolak (co-director) do a great job of speaking with people that survived the war about their lives during and after of war. You begin to see a people who are proud and playful, who are deeply impacted the violence of war and more than anything want peace in their lives. Children speak about losing their parents in the war. Their experience is reflected in their artwork, drawings of blood and machine gun murder. The challenge becomes clear, how will these generations of children cope with the violence they’ve experienced and contribute to the rebuilding of their nation?

This documentary tells many stories, one of the politics of the country past and present, one of the perseverance it’s people, one of her father and finally one of Wazhmah. It is an honest and generous account of Afghanistan, offered to an audience who still know very little about the region. Postcards challenges misconceptions and goes beyond the tanks and dust to speak to the people.

I am proud of my older sister Wazhmah and Kelly for making this film and inspiring me to stay connected and share my unique experience with others.

* Postcards From Tora Bora just opened at Tribeca Film Festival. It will be playing on Tuesday and Thursday night and this weekend. For ticketing information please visit www.tribecafilmfestival.org

If you live in New York City, I’m sure you’ve seen them before. On the streets of Chinatown, on subway platforms—they’ve got a big sheet spread out or sometimes even a table, covered edge-to-edge with bootleg DVDs of blockbuster movies, many of which are still playing in theatres. Aside from the compromised production value (a friend of mine bought a bootleg of Star Wars: Episode 2 on the street and was disappointed to find he had purchased three hours of the back of somebody’s head), there are also some legal (if not, ethical) issues at play. As the Motion Picture Association of America is eager to tell us, piracy is illegal, and if you download that movie or buy that bootleg, you’re a criminal and, most-likely, a bad person.

Some folks throw caution to the wind and buy that ten dollar copy of Spiderman 3 before it even hits the multiplex. It’s simple economics—why fork over ten bucks for a one time experience, when you can enjoy Tobey Maguire in spandex from the comfort of your living room whenever you like? For others, it’s a political “damn the man” direct action. “Those Hollywood bigwigs are making more than enough. I’m going to buy this DVD and show them.” And some justify their purchase as a form of support for the poor immigrant entrepreneur who’s just trying to survive by selling their wares. What’s a little copyright infringement when there are hungry mouths to feed?

But what if that bootleg you’re buying is more call to action than action flick? I found myself asking this question the other day when I was waiting for the L train and discovered a white dude selling copies of some notable social-justice documentaries out of a cardboard box. The titles included An Inconvenient Truth, The Corporation, Who Killed the Electric Car? and Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War. He also had a flat screen TV strapped to his body, playing excerpts from the films, and some catchy signage encouraging people to question authority and “Ask Questions.” So I did.

First I asked him if he was an activist or a businessman. “Are you selling these because you care about the issues, or as a way to make some cash?” An unfair question I admit, but I could hear the faint sound of my L train coming, and I had to cut to the chase. I put on my best skeptical but open-minded face while he explained that he is an activist and he does care, but he is also trying to make a living. I can relate. I’ve spent the last four and a half years making a living through documentary film distribution. But here at Arts Engine, it’s all above board. “So, do you have permission to sell these films?” I asked, wondering smugly if anyone else had dared to ask him the same question. “Well, I contacted all the distributors but only the Inconvenient Truth people got back to me.”

That’s when the train came and my ladyfriend and I were on our way home to Bushwick (a.k.a. East East East Williamsburg). “Can you believe that guy?” I asked her. “I mean, it’s one thing to rip off Steven Spielberg, but bootleg documentaries? Really!” That’s when she reminded me about the “commons” and how it sucks that we have to pay for this kind of content in the first place and “isn’t it important that these films get out there and inspire people to take action?” All good points.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with Rachel Boynton a few months ago about her documentary Our Brand Is Crisis. An inside look at the hijacking of a Bolivian presidential election by American campaign strategists, Rachel explained that bootleg copies of the film were being sold on the streets of La Paz (Bolivia’s capital), and she didn’t mind. “I’m glad people are seeing the film. But would I be cool if copies were being sold in the US? No.” So I know at least one documentarian who’s not too keen on losing DVD sales to bootleggers.

Now I’m not too sure what some of the distributors of the documentaries being sold would say. If indeed the dude had contacted them and gotten no response, maybe their silence means they’re fine with him selling their films. At least two of the distributors, Brave New Films (Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War) and Evil Twin Booking (The Corporation), have made a name for themselves bringing high-impact docs to the masses via house parties, public screenings and web streaming. But I know that they also rely on DVD sales as a revenue stream to keep them afloat. Nothing’s black and white.

At the end of the day, I’m not sure if I’m mad at the dude for ripping off filmmakers whom I respect or if I’m jealous that I didn’t think of it first. More than anything, this incident offers yet another example of the moral ambiguity of mixing activism and commerce. As my colleague Rico pointed out, what would be ideal is if filmmakers got foundation or government grants to give away copies of their films. I agree that would be nice. What would be even better is if we lived in a socialist utopia where cultural products like documentary films flowed freely and widely. But until the revolution comes, I think I’ll just add these docs to my Netflix queue.

Last Wednesday I went to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York State’s maximum security prison for women. Susan Purdy, a professor in Bedford’s revived college program, had asked me to show our film Deadline and speak about my experience as a woman working in the field of social justice and film. It was amazing, as most prison visits are in my experience.

The last time I was at Bedford Hills was in 1997, when there were no college credit classes available. Now, I was in a makeshift prison classroom with 12 students in green uniforms who were accumulating credits that would apply towards a bachelor’s. Many of them are serving life sentences and may never be released from prison, but that hasn’t stopped them from seeking a degree.

Susan and I had to enter the prison before the 5 p.m. “count” and then wait 90 minutes for the count to end and the women to be released from their cells and led to another building for class. They carried bookbags made out of clear plastic and several of them were young: the age of college students outside. One of them was wearing a raincoat which she joked was “contraband” — she was supposed to return it before count but hadn’t had a chance to before class.

I hadn’t seen Deadline in a long time — we completed this film over 3 years ago — and it was fascinating to sit at a school desk in a prison at sunset watching the reactions of the women in the room. You couldn’t have asked for a more attentive audience. They were completely engrossed — took lots of notes during the screening, and said “wow” or “uh-huh” out loud whenever something hit home for them, which was frequently.

After the screening they were clamoring to ask questions: what exactly does commutation mean? What was the exact wording of the Abraham Lincoln quote that Governor Ryan ended his speech with? Two of them had also recently taken a film class, so they asked me questions about who had conducted the interviews and who had done the camerawork. One woman, Roz, was eloquent in her appreciation of the film — she introduced herself by saying that she had been in prison for 27 years, since she was 17 — and had already gotten a college degree inside, but she was auditing Susan’s class and doing all the class work. She offered that she was not innocent of her crime — “I did it” — but that she had met a lot of people who were innocent and it was terrible to know that so many were in prison who hadn’t committed crimes.

Another young woman raised her hand to say that at one point in the film, when we end our interview with inmate Gabriel Solache with shots of the prison exterior, she glanced out the window of the “classroom” to see the spring green and the barbed wire fence outside and she said “I suddenly got a chill.” While women in prison were never the so-called target audience for Deadline it was great to see them enjoying it as a movie that spoke to something they all cared deeply about.

Every once in a while I will see a documentary that will totally yank my mind out of my “American doc headspace.” I’m about to make a gross generalization, but here goes. The majority of American docs pay relatively little attention to form, beauty, lyricism, and cinematic structure. Most focus on the information, the content, the message, the story, the characters, the narrative, etc. All of these things are important. And I have seen amazing and wonderful docs that master all of the above and leave me thinking “what an amazing film.” But when I see a film such as Heddy Honigmann’s Forever, as I did Friday night at Hot Docs International Docmentary Festival in Toronto, I am pulled back into a world in which documentaries can be every bit as mysterious and emotionally nuanced as a fiction film, a great piece of music, or a painting.

In Forever, Honigmann visits the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, resting place to Proust, Chopin, and Jim Morrison among others. She explores the cemetery through conversations with its living visitors: a Spanish woman who fled Franco’s Spain 50 years ago and now visits her husband’s grave daily, a South Korean student who has traveled to Paris just to visit Proust and present him with cookies, and an embalmer who prepares the faces of the dead for their last encounters with the living. Honigmann, a Dutchwoman who won a lifetime achievement award at Hot Docs this year, moves through these encounters with gentle questions, a patient camera, and a musical pacing that gives the viewer time to ponder the questions she puts forth.

She includes her own questions in the film and makes no attempt at invisibility. Nor should she; her respect for and curiosity about her characters add another layer of depth to the way the viewer experiences each of them. There were a few particularly striking moments. She asks the embalmer what the hardest part of his job is. He struggles silently for about 10 seconds to come up with the right words. The pause is pregnant and loving. So few filmmakers would allow a character so much time to answer, but would rather step in and prod. The hardest part, he says, is wanting to give the families of the deceased what they want, but knowing that he can never give them what they really want, which is to bring their loved one back to life.

At the film’s closing, a young pianist who has visited Chopin’s grave is seen giving a recital. As she plays a Chopin piece, the camera stays in a close up of her face the whole time, with only a brief cutaway to her fingers on the keys of the piano. We spend the final five minutes of the film watching the face of this girl, who is obsessed with Chopin because her father, who died of “overwork,” loved his music. It is an unexpected and welcome opportunity to linger in an observational state and let the images wash over you. Honigmann’s eye for the world around her is curious, lingering and drunk with a desire to watch and listen. Going along for the ride with her pulls the viewer into a dreamlike conversation about death, art and love. And into a world in which documentaries exist right alongside a Proust novel or a Chopin sonata.