The International Documentary Association threw a party for and tribute to the filmmakers nominated for Oscars for short and feature length non-fiction films last night, and most of the best jokes of the night had to do with Man on Wire’s star wirewalker Philippe Petit. Sort of. In introducing a clip from the film, host Lily Tomlin asked, “What does it take to be arrested for the crime of the century? Apparently more than a meltdown on the set of I Heart Huckabees.” Cue insidery guffaws.
Earlier in the evening, IDA’s Eddie Schmidt tossed off a Petit joke that was less funny ha-ha than funny remarkable as an answer to a thrown gauntlet. Without naming names, Schmidt responded to Alexandra Pelosi’s claim to the New York Times that “it’s like a dirty little secret” that documentaries “are boring.” In the same story, Pelosi also proudly declared that she won’t make films longer than standard broadcast length, and refuses to submit them to film festivals — thus marking her supposed populism in firm opposition to the entire cinematic ethos that IDA was celebrating. Schmidt offered a rousing rebuttal: “The only person who is allowed to say that anything is boring is Philippe Petit, because he has walked on a tightrope between two buildings.”
Since nominee Werner Herzog was absent, Petit (seen above, apparently praying for a miniature version of the man behind him) was the most charismatic character in the room, and even after a year on the festival circuit, he and director James Marsh inspired a standing ovation. But it was a clip from Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World — the scene where the demented penguin goes his own way towards certain death — that got the biggest laugh of the night. Herzog’s schtick may sometimes seem to be bordering on self-parody these days, but the material it produces doesn’t get old.
Meanwhile, chatter over wine and tomato soup before the tribute program kept circling back to the recent sudden changes at Sundance. More than one person I talked express some degree of bemusement over a non-sourced, sort-of charticle on The Wrap, pegging Sundance programmers John Cooper and Trevor Groth, former AFI programmer Shaz Bennett (whose name The Wrap misspelled) and sometime Sundance programmer and current Without a Box guy Christian Gaines as the top contenders for Geoff Gilmore’s abandoned post. Cooper and Groth were at the event last night, but if either knew the what the future holds for their festival, they weren’t saying. When the topic came up, Groth simply smiled and said, “We live in exciting times.”
My enthusiasm for Trouble the Water (trailer above) seems to wane in direct proportion to the critic adoration it attracts. As I noted in my Sundance review, I’m underwhelmed by the candid, in-the-shit footage shot by the film’s subject, aspiring rapper Kim Roberts, which has been the focus of many glowing reviews. The fact that the footage exists is a fascinating detail to Roberts’ character, and the film is strongest when directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin point to Roberts’ fierce drive (you could even call it an obsession) to turn her life into a narrative, and to transmit that narrative through popular art.
My frustration over Water stems less from the film itself, and more from the general media’s seeming consensus decision to declare it the Indie Katrina Film of Record (as opposed to Spike Lee’s When the Levee Breaks–the big-budget Hollywood version of the story). As Dennis Lim notes, “There is by now a rich, although unheralded subgenre of independent films — shorts and features, ranging from avant-garde tone poem to vérité docudrama — dealing with Katrina and its aftermath.” The sheer number of films on this subject––I’ve heard more than one person joke that in late September 2005, there were more independent filmmakers in New Orleans than residents left in their homes––is so overwhelming that it makes sense that one would need the backing of HBO or the credibility of a Sundance Grand Jury Prize to breakthrough.
Maybe I’m just annoyed because, within that subgenre, the films that I find the most creatively and emotionally satisfying––the Kamp Katrinas, the Low and Beholds––either have yet to be distributed, or have failed to make Water’s national splash. But I worry that Water’s critical success (whether or not it makes any noise commercially) is simultaneously an activist’s victory (anything that gets Katrina back in the news is some kind of victory) and potential roadblock for the existing and future films to come out of the crisis. If Trouble the Water does become the first theatrical katrina film to breakthrough, I hope it’s not the only one.
Kim Roberts happened to buy a $20 video camera just days before Hurricane Katrina hit her home city of New Orleans. The day before the storm hit, explaining why she was using the camera to record everything in sight, Kim was already talking apocalypse: “I’m showing the world that we still had a world, before the storm come,” she said, from behind the lens. “It’s like the Lord is upset, angry with New Orleans. And I don’t blame him.”
Roberts’ amateur video footage of her neighborhood shot before, during and after the storm is sprinkled throughout Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s documentary Trouble the Water, which just won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The footage itself has been billed as “harrowing,” but in practice most of it is too muddy and unfocused (literally on both counts) to make much of an impact. That said, the professionally shot material, of Roberts and her husband’s struggle to rebuild their lives after the storm, tells as powerful a story about the New Orleans diaspora as I’ve seen on film, from an angle unfamiliar. It plays out like a love story, with the Roberts’ turning their backs on their city in times of crisis, only to realize that their hearts are there after all.
Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s documentary Trouble the Water takes a uniquely first-hand look at Hurricane Katrina. Aspiring rap musician Kimberly Rivers Roberts used her newly purchased video camera to document the disaster as it unfolded. These tapes formed the foundation for Lessin and Deal’s exploration of this “unnatural disaster of governmental and journalistic neglect.” In this interview Tia Lessin talks about how individuals can tell a story more effectively than mainstream media, and how the film transcends the disaster.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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