Sunday, May 7, 2006

In a Soldier’s Footsteps

by James McNally on May 7, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

In a Soldier's Footsteps

In a Soldier’s Footsteps (Denmark, 2005, Director: Mette Zeruneith, 89 minutes): Truth really is stranger than fic­tion. When we first meet Steven Ndugga in 1999, he’s a per­son­able and artic­u­late refugee living in Denmark who approaches the film­makers wanting to have his story told. A former child sol­dier, he escaped Uganda with his life, but lost his wife and son. Years later, during the filming of this doc­u­mentary, he receives inform­a­tion that his son is still alive, and is in fact now a child sol­dier him­self. After Steven returns to Uganda to find his son, he dis­ap­pears. Over the next five years, he reappears and then dis­ap­pears again, and the story just keeps get­ting stranger. Like a Graham Greene novel, the film finds the truth elu­sive, but it makes a fas­cin­ating tale.

Article about the film on the Danish Film Institute web site

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, denmark, Documentaries, Hot Docs, uganda

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Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

by James McNally on May 7, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (USA/UK, 2006, Director: Paul Crowder and John Downer, 97 minutes): The North American Soccer League was strug­gling along through the 1970s until the New York Cosmos, owned by Warner Communications head Steve Ross, decided to bring super­star Pele to the Big Apple. Suddenly, attend­ance was up, and the Cosmos started win­ning. Continuing the for­mula by bringing some European stars over, the Cosmos won sev­eral league titles over the next few years. In the pro­cess, the once-moribund NASL expanded quickly to 24 teams. Unfortunately, the res­ulting dilu­tion of talent, and the inab­ility of smaller-market clubs to pay the huge salaries demanded by European or Latin American stars, meant that the league soon imploded.

The film tells the story with humour and verve, and it’s hard not to be a little bit nos­talgic for the days when 70,000 people would crowd into Giants sta­dium to watch “the other foot­ball.” But ulti­mately, the Cosmos’ strategy was short-sighted. Building an audi­ence for soccer in North America was going to take time, and the free-spending style of Ross and the Cosmos attracted only fair­weather fans, who would melt away as soon as the team stopped win­ning. Other fran­chises couldn’t attract enough fans in the first place, and the league suffered as a result.

It was inter­esting that the dir­ector admitted after­wards that he is a huge fan of Chelsea Football Club in the English Premiership. Chelsea are fol­lowing a sim­ilar strategy at the moment, with the seem­ingly end­less bil­lions of owner Roman Abramovich funding the con­struc­tion of another super­team. So far, they’ve won back to back titles in England, but to the det­ri­ment of the league, according to many observers. Without a salary cap, the English Premier League drains talent away from the rest of the world, and Chelsea are the richest club of all. This con­cen­tra­tion of talent makes the game less com­pet­itive in the long term, and while it may attract a few new fans, they’re not the sort of fans who will stick around if and when the team starts losing.

Many of the American innov­a­tions brought to the game by the NASL have made it into the game in the rest of the world. For example, pen­alty shootouts to decide games tied after reg­u­la­tion time. This will always be unpop­ular with foot­ball pur­ists, but for the casual fan, it cer­tainly adds excite­ment to the game. Other gim­micks weren’t so suc­cessful, thank­fully. Who wants to see cheer­leaders at a foot­ball match?

The only flaw in the film was the absence of any present-day inter­views with Pele or Johan Cruyff (who played for the Los Angeles Aztecs and Washington Diplomats fran­chises), though I believe numerous attempts were made to obtain their par­ti­cip­a­tion. The dir­ector Paul Crowder prom­ised lots of fun stuff in the DVD extras, including their attempts to get Pele on board.

An inter­esting art­icle on the editing of the film

Official site of the New York Cosmos

Wikipedia entry on the New York Cosmos

Information on the NASL from the National Soccer Hall of Fame

The American Soccer History Archives

The NASL Alumni Association arranged a reunion for more than 60 former players in September 2005.

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, Documentaries, football, Hot Docs, newyork, pele, soccer, sports

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