Monday, April 21, 2008

Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived

by James McNally on April 21, 2008

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived

Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived (2008, Director: Koji Masutani): This film is some­what awkardly titled. It’s not a re-creation of an alternate timeline where JFK sur­vives. Rather, it’s a carefully-argued essay whose thesis is that, based on the way John F. Kennedy dealt with sev­eral mil­itary crises early in his pres­id­ency, he would not have escal­ated the war in Vietnam and that per­haps the tragedy of almost 60,000 American dead (not to men­tion 2,000,000 Vietnamese) could have been averted.

Narrated and written by Professor James Blight of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, who was Errol Morris’ advisor on The Fog of War, Virtual JFK exam­ines six dif­ferent crises faced by the young pres­ident in his abbre­vi­ated time in office. Two involved Cuba (the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and the Cuban mis­sile crisis in 1962), one was European (the con­struc­tion of the Berlin wall in 1961), and the other three involved Southeast Asia (two con­front­a­tions over Vietnam, one over Laos). In every case, Kennedy stared down the hawks in his admin­is­tra­tion and the mil­itary com­manders who were advoc­ating war. In every case, his cau­tion avoided cata­strophe, most not­ably in the Cuban mis­sile crisis, which many his­tor­ians believe was the closest the world ever came to nuc­lear war. Blight has every reason to believe that Kennedy would have pre­vailed on the sub­ject of Vietnam as well. What he doesn’t dis­cuss is the pos­sib­ility that this had any­thing to do with JFK’s assas­sin­a­tion, although that hypo­thesis has been cir­cu­lated by more than a few people.

Overall, this was enjoy­able and well-argued, but not excep­tional. On a per­sonal level, I enjoyed seeing so much footage of Kennedy’s press con­fer­ences. His cha­risma is clearly evident in his good-natured exchanges with journ­al­ists, even when he was under con­sid­er­able stress. It also sur­prised me how much Kennedy had to deal with in such a short time. The world was going through some major upheavals, and we’re for­tu­nate that Kennedy was guiding a rest­less America with such a steady hand. This film shows us how much more tragic his death was than we may have believed. Apart from all the usual sen­ti­mental stuff about Camelot and the loss of hope, America lost a man of cau­tion who had been a war­rior of peace.

Incidentally, some reviewers have com­plained that the film makes a blunt par­allel with George W. Bush and his hand­ling of the Iraq war, but the con­nec­tion is never made overtly. In the times we’re living in, how­ever, it’s hard not to find a cri­tique almost every­where we look.

Official site of the film
Watson Institute for International Studies page on the film
Trailer

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs08, history, jfk, vietnam, war

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Shadow of the Holy Book (Pyhän kirjan varjo)

by James McNally on April 21, 2008

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Shadow of the Holy Book (Pyhän kirjan varjo)

Shadow of the Holy Book (Pyhän kirjan varjo) (2007, Director: Arto Halonen): I read about this film when it played at IDFA in Amsterdam and was so intrigued by the premise, I emailed Hot Docs pro­grammer Sean Farnel imme­di­ately to ask him to bring it to Hot Docs. He emailed me back to say that he and the dir­ector had been drinking vodka the night before and that it would likely be screening here. What had me so excited? Here’s the premise: Turkmenistan is a central Asian country with huge reserves of oil and nat­ural gas. It’s also one of the most repressive dic­tat­or­ships in the world. After ruling since 1985, dic­tator Saparmurat Niyazov declared him­self “President for Life” in 1999 and pub­lished a book called the Ruhnama in 2001. Turkmens are over­whelm­ingly Muslim, but Niyazov placed the Ruhnama above the Koran as a holy book and required all cit­izens to study it. So far, so bizarre, right? But the really inter­esting thing is that the film­maker found that for­eign cor­por­a­tions doing busi­ness in Turkmenistan had gained favour by “spon­soring” trans­la­tions of the book into their own lan­guages and by oth­er­wise pro­moting Niyazov’s strange cult of per­son­ality. At least, that’s how they por­trayed them­selves to Niyazov. In reality, the com­panies kept all of this quiet in their own coun­tries, not wanting to be seen as bribing a dic­tator just to gain luc­rative contracts.

Despite the fas­cin­ating concept of exposing cor­porate mis­chief in a strange and repressive country, the film frus­trated me at every turn. Finnish dir­ector Halonen enlists the help of American journ­alist Kevin Frazier and the two make an odd couple. The dour Finn and the nebbishy American with the slight lisp set out to con­tact many of the cor­porate vil­lains but are hope­lessly inept. Much of the film’s run­ning time is footage of the two of them in hotel rooms in various cities failing to get through to the right cor­porate con­tacts. As well, the use of sev­eral tacky sound effects (a cash register “cha-ching” each time a corporation’s profits are men­tioned, a type­writer intro­du­cing every on-screen title) drove me to dis­trac­tion very quickly. By the time the film­makers arrive in America to track down exec­ut­ives from Caterpillar and John Deere, the film enters Michael Moore ter­ritory, except without any of Moore’s (debat­able) cha­risma. One baff­ling Moore-like stunt has Frazier reading Ruhnama excerpts on the New York City subway, after refer­ring to America’s con­sti­tu­tional right to freedom of speech.

Overall, the travelogue approach wears thin pretty early. More prom­ising were inter­views with some Turkmen human-rights act­iv­ists and polit­ical dis­sid­ents. Unfortunately, though, far too much use is made of some crude Flash anim­a­tions cre­ated by the son of one of the act­iv­ists. By the end of the film, we realize that the pair have not been able to put together a single sub­stan­tial inter­view. Though they do get to travel to Turkmenistan on two occa­sions, they have to film clandes­tinely and are really only able to show us some of the massive con­struc­tion pro­jects awarded to the for­eign firms. We learn later that the numerous English-language Turkmen “news­casts” and Ruhnama “reading circles” were re-creations.

There were some important alleg­a­tions uncovered by the film, and some brave and dan­gerous under­cover work was per­formed by a Finnish dip­lomat. Hopefully, some of the material uncovered in the film will lead to changes in cor­porate beha­viour. But as a doc­u­mentary film, I think Shadow of the Holy Book is a bit of a missed opportunity.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Arto Halonen and writer Kevin Frazier from after the screening:

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Duration: 16:36

Official site for the film
Trailer
Freedom for Sale, estab­lished by the dir­ectors to focus atten­tion on human rights and free speech issues in dif­ferent coun­tries, starting with Turkmenistan.

6/10(6/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs08, corporations, humanrights, turkmenistan

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Steypa

by Brooke Smith on April 21, 2008

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Steypa

Steypa (2007, Directors: Markús Thór Andrésson and Ragnheidur Gestsdóttir): I’m not a con­tem­porary art con­nois­seur by any means, but my reason for choosing Steypa was simple. It’s about Iceland. My hus­band and I are trav­el­ling to the island country in September this year for the Reykjavik International Film Festival, so any chance I get to see the Icelandic cul­ture and envir­on­ment, I jump.

Steypa is an enjoy­able film. The film’s title has two mean­ings. Steypa is the word for con­crete, as in the material used in con­struc­tion. It also can be used to refer to some­thing that is weird, dif­ferent or unusual. And looking at the con­tem­porary art scene in Iceland, weird, dif­ferent or unusual is cer­tainly fit­ting. The dir­ectors focus on seven artists, fol­lowing them as they choose their mater­ials, dis­play their art in gal­leries and work on their cre­ations. Amid the quirky pieces of art, how­ever, I found myself more amused and charmed by the artists them­selves. Or rather, at their Icelandic sense of humour (if you’ve seen films by Icelander Robert Douglas, you’ll know what I mean). One artist fills Fanta bottles with Pepsi, but admits that he is actu­ally using Coke. “It’s cheaper,” he says. Another steals plant clip­pings from a seniors’ apart­ment, noting that no one will really notice if they’re missing.

Even though I would not actu­ally hang any of the artists’ work in my apart­ment, I appre­ciate their focus and integ­rity to their art. There is no limit to their resource­ful­ness and creativity.

The one cri­ti­cism I have is that even though each artist is always titled (through a rather snazzy bit of rainbow-coloured anim­a­tion), I found it rather con­fusing to remember which artist was which. Barring that, Steypa really is true to a North American meaning of con­crete: solid, but with a little weird thrown in.

Trailer

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs08, art, iceland

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