Every year, filmmakers from around the world produce
documentaries that introduce us to worlds we may not encounter otherwise. These
films serve not only to inform or teach us but to move us and even lead us to
action.
I want to look at three recent documentary films now
available on DVD (or through streaming). Each of these films is shot with skill
and care, often on a meager budget.
Searching for Sugar Man (PG-13), which won this year’s Oscar
for best documentary, tells the bizarre story of Sixto Rodriguez, a Detroit
folksinger who had a short-lived recording career in the early 1970s with two
well-reviewed albums that didn’t sell. Unknown to him, he became a pop music icon and inspiration
for generations in South Africa.
The film interviews a music journalist who used hints from
song lyrics to track down where Rodriguez had lived. He was able to dispel
rumors that Rodriguez had committed suicide.
Eventually fans locate Rodriguez, who goes to South Africa
and plays to sellout crowds of thousands. But the film testifies to this
musician’s humility and concern for justice. He remains a simple laborer who
lives in the same house in Detroit for 40 years.
Detropia (NR, a combination of “Detroit” and “utopia”) looks
at the economic decline in Detroit due mostly to the long-term changes in the
automobile industry. Rather than offer narration, it primarily follows three
Detroit residents: a video blogger, a nightclub owner and a United Auto Workers
local president. All three are African Americans who articulate well both the
difficulties they face and the hope they carry that things will improve.
The film recounts the huge changes over the decades. For
example, in 1930, Detroit was the fastest-growing city in the country; in 2010,
it was the fastest-declining city. We learn of 100,000 houses being torn down.
We see up close the effects of this decline on these and
many other residents. The film shows their anger and their determination to
remain in their city and help it survive.
An artist couple represents the growing number of younger
people moving into the city’s center, buying up houses at vastly reduced
prices. And the Detroit Opera is part of the revitalization going on there.
5 Broken Cameras (NR), co-directed by Palestinian Emad
Burnat and Israeli Guy Davidi, is the remarkable first-hand account of protests
in Bil’in, a West Bank village affected by the Israeli West Bank barrier.
Burnat shot most of the footage on five different cameras,
and the film is divided into the periods of those cameras and recounts how each
was broken, either smashed or shot.
Burnat gets his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of
his youngest son, Gibreel. At the same time, a barrier is being built on
village land that will isolate the village from much of its farmland, which the
Israelis will then confiscate to build a settlement. The villagers begin to
resist this decision through nonviolent protests.
These protests continue through the next five years, and
Burnat records them, obtaining damning evidence of the shameful actions of
Israeli soldiers, including shooting to death several people, including an
11-year-old boy.
Burnat calls healing a challenge and says “it is a victim’s
obligation to heal. By healing you resist oppression,” he says. “Forgotten
wounds can’t be healed, so I film to heal.” These Palestinians’ courage and
ability to remain nonviolent stands out in this powerful film.
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