April: Docs in Focus II
April: Docs in Focus II, FLMTQ Releases 181-185
During the month of April Filmatique presents Docs in Focus II, a collection of works by directors working in the vanguard of documentary filmmaking.
Guido Santi & Tina Mascara's second documentary Monk With A Camera charts the unlikely transformation of Nicholas Vreeland from socialite to Buddhist monk, while Amos Gitaï's Rabin, the Last Day reckons with the seismic political repercussions of a fateful day in November 1995, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a far-right extremist in downtown Tel Aviv. Pieced together from archival footage discovered underneath a swimming pool in the Yukon, Bill Morrison's entrancing Dawson City: Frozen Time transports the spectator to a landscape where early cinema intersected with the peak of the Canadian Gold Rush. The first documentary to win Best Film at Venice, Gianfranco Rosi's labyrinthine Sacro GRA doubles as a cartography of Rome's ring road and its marginalized denizens, while Adina Pintilie's Golden Bear-winning Touch Me Not interrogates our notions of intimacy, and beauty, through a series of encounters with individuals who eschew touch.
Screening the works of emerging talents alongside contemporary masters—and orbiting issues ranging from religious transformation to extremism, early cinema to capitalism, marginalization to the embrace of intimacy—Docs in Focus II showcases some of the most innovative filmmakers working nonfiction today.
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Monk With A Camera, Guido Santi & Tina Mascara (2014)
Monk With A Camera, Guido Santi & Tina Mascara / France-India-Italy-USA, 2014
Nicholas Vreeland was born into a storied family—grandson of legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, he was raised in Switzerland before relocating to the United States, where his father was stationed as an ambassador to the United Nations. In boarding school he became interested in photography, interning for Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. Yet a fateful meeting with Khyongla Rato Rinpoche altered the course of Vreeland's life forever—he moved to India, giving up his earthly possessions to study Tibetan Buddhism. In 2012, the Dalai Lama appointed Vreeland the abbot of Rato Dratsang, the first Westerner in history to assume such a role. When his monastery required funds, however, Vreeland found himself once more immersed in photography.
Tracing the unlikely true story from privilege to asceticism, and back to artistry once more, Monk With A Camera captures the life of Nicholas Vreeland in fascinating detail. Guido Santi and Tina Mascara's second documentary film premiered at Ashland, Hot Docs, IDFA, and Palm Springs.
Dawson City: Frozen Time, Bill Morrison (2016)
Dawson City: Frozen Time, Bill Morrison / USA, 2016
In 1978, just south of the Arctic Circle, a man with a bulldozer hit proverbial gold: a long-lost collection of films from the turn of the century, thought to be lost forever. Situated on the Yukon River, Dawson City was a popular town during the Klondike Gold Rush, boasting a population of 100,000 prospectors at its peak—it also happened to be the end of the distribution line for many film prints and newsreels, a locale too remote to justify the expense of shipping them back. The highly flammable nitrate films caused Dawson City to burn down several times, or were simply sent downriver—entombed under the permafrost, however, these 533 rare prints survived the test of time, offering a unique history of the denizens of a bygone Canadian frontier town.
Prolific documentarian Bill Morrison assembles these long-forgotten films alongside archival footage, interviews, and historical photographs to evoke a bizarre, localized account of an early capitalist nation—with its attendant histories of racial, gender, and class exploitation—alongside a history of cinema itself. Set to an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers, Dawson City: Frozen Time premiered at Venice, Rotterdam, Doclisboa, and New York; Dublin, where it won a prize for Extraordinary Achievement; and Sitges, where it won the New Visions Plus Award. Dawson City: Frozen Time also won Best Documentary from the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, Best Editing from the IDA Documentary Awards and the International Documentary Association, and is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Rabin, the Last Day, Amos Gitaï (2015)
Rabin, the Last Day, Amos Gitaï / Israel-France, 2015
On November 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead in a public square. The culprit Yigal Amir opposed the Oslo Accords, which Rabin had painstakingly negotiated and for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat the year prior. Despite the ostensible simplicity of the crime, Yitzhak Rabin's political assassination and the subsequent trial elucidated deeper fissures in Israeli society—namely, the nefarious influence of radical rabbis and public figures of Israel's far-right—and their resounding effects, extinguishing a path to peace that remains elusive to this day.
Staging historical reenactments of the investigation alongside archival footage of the grim, gruesome event itself, Rabin, the Last Day offers a nuanced account of the unraveling of a modern democracy while gesturing to alternate histories—the peace that might have been. Amos Gitaï's documentary premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Human Rights Film Network Award; Toronto, Karlovy Vary, and Hong Kong; Munich, where it won a Special Mention, and Seville, where it won a Special Jury Award.
Sacro GRA, Gianfranco Rosi (2013)
Sacro GRA, Gianfranco Rosi / Italy, 2013
The Grande Raccordo Anulare is a 68-kilometer highway girdling the metropolis of Rome. Rarely given a passing glimpse by the majority of the city's inhabitants, Rome's ring road is also home to a rare collection of eccentrics—construction workers, prostitutes, emergency responders, an eel farmer, an entomologist. As these characters go about their days, socializing with grandmothers, clients, co-workers, and children—known to us but unknown to each other—a fascinating peri-urban topography comes into focus.
Suspended in intimate, quotidian moments, Gianfranco Rosi weaves a rich, observational tapestry of the lives dwelling at the edges of an ancient city. Sacro GRA premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it was the first documentary ever to win the Golden Lion for Best Film; Stockholm, Rotterdam, and Reykjavik; and Seville European Film Festival, where it won the Silver Giraldillo for Best Film.
Touch Me Not, Adina Pintille (2018)