Doc Corner: The best of this year's virtual documentary festivals

By Glenn Dunks

Despite what may be happening across the rest of film distribution, the documentary realm has barely had a chance to breathe. Just as there ever was, there are so many titles coming out each and every week that it is impossible to keep up with in a weekly column. This includes not just new releases to streaming, VOD and virtual cinemas (and now, as lockdowns cease around the globe, theatrical), but also festivals.

In fact, I’ve been able to attend more than any before. Whereas I wouldn’t have had the time nor the access to ‘attend’ England’s Sheffield Doc/Fest or the United States’ AFI Docs or Canada’s Hot Docs, I was able to finish my day job in the afternoon and take a quick world tour of some of the finest documentary and non-fiction festivals around. And there’s still more of them to come (like DocNYC) because, folks? There’s just so.many.movies. 

I wanted to highlight the best that I saw across each of the three festivals and give a spotlight to movies that took me to a poisoned Martinique, the frontlines of the women’s liberation movement, and the underground dance scene of Baltimore...

SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST: You Think the Earth is a Dead Thing (Tu crois que la terre est chose morte)

This one is a real creeper. A thorny work of documentary by French filmmaker Florence Lazar who examines Martinique’s colonial history of enslavement through a very contemporary problem facing the people of this Caribbean nation. Their homeland has been ravaged by pesticides where rivers run deep with toxicity and at least a full quarter of the countryside are inhospitable to growth. The people, too, are riddled with the poison, chlordecone, used across the country’s once bountiful banana plantations.

But the locals are now using their history of the island’s endemic herbs and plants to not only to kickstart a different way of life, but also to treat the recurring and persistent health problems derived from this ecological disaster. Lazar has a history in photography so it’s no wonder her film is so beautifully composed, making most of her subjects in the beautiful lush surrounds of the country, juxtaposed elegantly against the stripped hillsides and banana crops draped in plastic. She quietly observes as they scour stuffed greenhouses and the tangled webs of the jungle for leaves, fruits, flowers and roots or cultivate endemic vegetables of untainted land using traditional farming methods before then later as they take to the streets through affluent suburbs to protest the desecration of their lands.

You Think the Earth is a Dead Thing is a quiet wonder that finds many innovative and nuanced ways to discuss very topical themes of race and the effects of colonialization, as well as the environment and the preservation of biodiversity.

And just one more: Lech Kowalski’s Blow It To Bits (On va tour peter) is a captivating French union doc that recalls the greats like Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County U.S.A. As residents of a small village are threatened by the closure of the car factory, capitalist intervention from businessmen and politicians alike are met with scepticism and outrage.

AFI DOCS: 9to5: The Story of a Movement

For whatever reason, the women’s liberation movement is having a moment right now in both fiction (Mrs America, I Am Woman) and documentary (this, Brazen Hussies, Women of Steel and more). This addition is directed by American Factory, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar. Stylistically, this one is more akin to Reichert’s earlier works like Seeing Red and Union Maids than that observational Oscar winner. It’s modest and classically composed, building naturally through talking head interviews and archival footage to the release of 9 to 5 and the issue’s national prominence thanks to Jane Fonda and co. You can watch the festival’s post-film Q&A on YouTube.

And just one more: I have already written about A Thousand Cuts and Boys State, but I want to shout out to Freedia Got a Gun. Big Freedia is already somebody who is no stranger to being on camera, but here uses their platform to raise awareness of gun violence, allowing that oversized personality to cut through the crap with street kids and prisoners alike.

HOT DOCS: Dark City Beneath the Beat

One of the stranger media mailing lists I am on is the Baltimore tourism board. Don’t ask me why or how, I just am. I might have to start opening them if this doc from club rapper TT The Artist is anything to go by. Her film is a 65-minute descent through the city’s underground music scene that is thumping with house, EDM, hip-hop, trap and bounce music as dancers thrust and grind and shake.

TT The Artist, also a subject, hops from club to street party to choreographed dance routines and stylist music videos while also confronting the realities of living in Baltimore as a black individual. It's a big, gigantic swing for a first time filmmaker and it all makes for truly one of the most enthralling docs of the year. Play it as loud as humanly possible

And just one more: 9/11 Kids visits the children who were in the classroom of Sarasota, Florida, when President Bush learnt of the attacks in New York City. It proves a novel way of dissecting the various ways class and race play into the way lives develop, splinter and evolve.

Comments

[Nick T]

All of these sound super interesting!!! Especially The Earth is a Dead Thing. Haven’t seen enough docs this year, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for all of these.

[Zee]

I always seem eternally behind in documentary viewing but I’ll keep an eye out for 9to5: The Story of a Movement, especially with all the fictional/based on true story projects of late. (Fingers crossed I don’t get censored/silenced on one of Nathaniel’s capricious whims)

[jules]

Really excited for 9to5: The Story of a Movement. Julia Reichert's first film, Growing Up Female, is streaming on Criterion now, and it's a fascinating portrait of women's socialization during the early 1970s. If you are interested in the women's movement, I definitely recommend it.