Category: GFF strand – Stranger Than Fiction

Archival interviews, footage, and readings in their words of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams on their work, life and friendship. They met when Truman was 16 and Tennessee 28, and formed a lifelong bond that lasted until death. The film traces their youthful exuberance in their common sentimentalities, their drifting apart with time and consuming romances, their professional rivalry, their decline into alcohol and drug abuse, and the nadir of the relationship with broken confidences and scorning in public print. Ultimately though, despite its ups and downs, even at the end, their friendship endures, despite the vast distances between who they were and who they become.

Man, the knots people will tie themselves in coz they can’t hold two truths at the same time. What is so difficult about understanding that you might be being investigated for national security reasons and guilty of sex offences at the same time?

This film builds this story up like it’s a mystery, was Matt DeHart being persecuted by the federal authorities or was he a child predator? It’s not really a mystery though, since both things can obviously be happening, so it’s not really pulling the rug out from anyone when they switch from presenting the case for the former to presenting the case for the latter. It’s like the Julian Assange thing all over again, I don’t know why they think these things must be mutually exclusive.

Unfortunate to see the old Warcraft getting namechecked in all this.

That was fucking great!

Spying’s a bad job, isn’t it? You basically destroy the life you want, to live a life you don’t want, to do something nobody knows about, and in the end you will either end up shot in the head, be put behind bars, or live out your life in disgrace. Who applies for something like that?

These mad bastards apparently. Castro’s Spies is about the Cuban 5, a group of Cuban spies who spent years embedded in the militant anti-Cuban exile community in Miami and skulking around airforce bases, checking that a fleet wasn’t amassing for an invasion. This film does a really good job of boiling down a long history of conflict between the US and Cuba into the salient context for the work of these men. It talks about how, after the US failed in its direct action against Cuba in the Bay of Pigs, it trained and sponsored militias of Cuban exiles who subsequently carried out terrorist acts against Cuba. That’s not me saying that – they interview Jose Basulto, the founder of Brothers To The Rescue, who was like, yeah, I rocked up on a boat and fired a cannon indiscriminately into a beachfront hotel. You’ve got Orlando Bosch who the US themselves convicted for taking a fucking bazooka to foreign ships entering Cuba waters, and who all evidence shows was responsible for the bombing of Cuban flight 455 killing 73 civilians. The US was obviously meant to be arresting these fucknuts for acts of terrorism, but since it was against Cuba, they were a bit like, eh. So Cuba sent a group of agents to Miami to keep an eye on things.

The other good thing this documentary does well is allowing the space to acknowledge that you can be a hero who does shitty things and an asshole who does good things. And I’m not talking that bullshit balance of, maybe blowing up a plane full of innocent men, women and children is fine, I dunno, there’s two sides to every story. They talk about how the Brothers To The Rescue saved refugees from drowning in the Florida Strait as they made their way to the US on dingys. They talk about how the Cuban agents basically abandoned their wives to raise their kids alone, with the added stigma now that they were publicly seen as defectors to the US. There is an acknowledgement that the Cubans who fled the revolution into exile felt they had lost what little they had built up in the way of property and wealth, which would naturally make them oppose the new government, even if it improved the lives of the vast majority of the people. And that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s largest trading partner, Cuba’s economy was in the shitter, and a lot of people who this revolution was supposed to help found themselves in dire poverty. This documentary is good at presenting the complicated truth.

Ironically, the Cuban 5, despite being hailed as heroes at home, actually play a very mundane part in the drama of history. Mostly they counted planes, making sure there wasn’t a sudden build up of forces in the closest bases to Cuba. They reported back on the activities of the most active exile organisations, which wasn’t really a secret to anyone, Brothers To The Rescue tried to get as much tv coverage for their work as possible. The agents were all flat broke, one worked as a janitor, none of them were paid by the Cuban government. That was something I didn’t know, that Cuba doesn’t pay its spies, because if it’s about the money, the US will be able to outbid you every time. So Cuba just tells you, do your duty to your country, and off you go.

Despite these humble practices, they do manage to amass over time a great wealth of knowledge, and it’s more the anti-Cuban militias who play the dashing heroes of the piece. They are actively making plots, making plans. Jose Basulto decides to fly over Havana dropping leaflets telling the people to rise up against the communist government and be free. He characterises this as a ‘non-violent action’, which is big talk for the guy who shot up a hotel in that very city, now violating national airspace. I mean, sure, he knows it’s leaflets, but Cuba’s just supposed to take it on trust that this guy who likes to shoot at them is just gonna fly over a major city full of civilians and dump stuff out his plane onto them, but it’s ok, it’s just gonna be leaflets. Can you imagine if anyone pulled that shit on America? They’d have to identify you by your fucking teeth. Just imagine some al Qaida dude flying a plane over DC and being like, “Don’t worry, this time it’s only leaflets!” Fucking idiot.

Anyway the Cubans politely ask the US to make him stop, they do fuck all, and this guy comes over a bunch more times, each time somehow expecting to show how brutal this regime is, that they only tolerate foreign agents aerially bombarding anti-government propaganda on their capital city a bunch of times. Eventually he gets what he wants, Cuba retaliates, and shoots down 2 of the 3 planes. And it’s outrage over this that requires a response back in the US. Nobody really wants to go to war over this fucknuckle’s stunt, but Americans are dead and there needs to be a show of strength. So the FBI, who’ve known about the spies in Miami for long and weary, and never bothered to bust them because they were never up to much to be concerned about, offer them up as scapegoat. They had sent Cuba communications about the activity of the Brothers To The Rescue, so they were responsible for the murder of the shot-down pilots.

It’s weird because the action that unfolds around them gives grandeur and meaning to the work of these very low-level spies, whose lives otherwise would have seemed wasted on a very admin-y kind of espionage. As I say, it’s a weird job.

Fascinating documentary, well presented.

So I liked the story of Steelers more than I liked the presentation. The story of Steelers is about the first gay men’s rugby club, set up back in the 90s, now competing for the cup in the international gay rugby tournament. It has all the drama of a sports documentary, following the ups and downs of wins and losses, but also the personal stories of the coach, team captain and players, of discovering they were gay, coming out, and struggling to find a place where they could be their whole authentic selves.

Nic is the coach, pushing her team towards success, while being one of the only lesbian rugby coaches out there. Drew proves being a rugby captain is not incompatible with being a black fat drag queen. And Simon speaks very vulnerably about how, after experiencing rejection from friends after coming out, and descending into a deep depression, rugby has given him a lifeline, a home and community of support.

Now to the parts I don’t like. The director is a member of the Steelers, and should by rights be able to tell his story alongside his teammates. Yet by presenting his story in narration, and kinda interjecting his story in amongst the others, it kinda feels like its drawing the focus of documentary from its subject back to its filmmaker. Which is something that sets my teeth on edge. And it doesn’t help that it’s done in this really Tell rather than Show way. Like, some people’s stories he just relays in narration over footage of them playing, rather than interviewing that person and letting them speak for themselves. Also, in the opening scene, he tells us what the documentary is about, rather than let the documentary speak for itself, which it both ham-fistedly direct and mawkish, which actually detracts, rather than adds, to the emotion of the piece. In a lot of ways, I would have just have got rid of the narration all together.

The other thing I didn’t like was the musical score, which was overdone and melodramatic. However, conversely, that actual song picks for the soundtrack were really strong. So you could pivot from one scene that really worked to another that really didn’t. Never seen that kind on incongruence before.

All in all, a good film. A little rough in the execution, but compelling in the characters and story, heart-warming, with a good message.

My Favorite War is an animated memoir of the director’s childhood in Soviet Latvia in the 1970s and 80s. It traces her inner journey from dedicated Communist Party follower to skeptical and rebellious agitator for the truth and democracy. It is a coming-of-age story, steeped in political history.

The favourite war of the title is World War Two, as fascinating to Latvians as it is over here. She loved to hear stories from the older generation of the war, and watched the shows on tv of the noble soldiers fighting Nazis. One was called Four Tank-men and a Dog, which sounds great and I would watch the shit out of, and will be my next Netflix binge if I can find it.

Everything about life in Latvia seemed a consequence of the war, from Soviet rule to the constant preparations for invasion from the next enemy, America. Nazi being a shorthand for pure evil, nothing done to them or against them or because of them would ever be questioned. In the face of such horror, an enemy faceless and soulless, nothing would be too far a step. And no one would ever be seen to take their side by questioning the current power, the heroes who had defeated them.

Yet as the film goes on and the main character delves deeper and deeper into the stories of the people all around her, she realises most people were put to as much harm by the Soviets as by the Nazis. The Soviets saved them from the Nazi invasion just to commandeer their land for military bases. They saved the country from ruination only to have them remain struggling in poverty and goods shortages. And they saved them from Nazi atrocities only to deport them to Siberia and death. In becoming a dedicated soldier against this evil, the main character has become most like them, unquestioningly following orders of a callous and unjust regime.

At the end, she says for her, World War Two ended in 1995 when the last Soviet military base shut down in Latvia. The last invader expelled, the last authoritarian power defeated.

And so she hopes will the destiny of people everywhere, to reject in their hearts the narrative of division, of othering people as the enemy, of blind devotion to those who seek only to exploit you as a weapon, of making you forget your shared humanity.

It’s not often you see a documentary about emergent technology and come away feeling comforted.

One of my old uni lecturers said, “I’m not really worried about AI. Because all a computer can do is add 2 numbers, subtract 2 numbers, multiply and divide 2 numbers, and decide which one is larger or smaller.” That proves decidedly prescient given the subjects covered in Machine.

Machine is a sort of setting to rights by robotisicist and AI specialists on the capacity and limitations of AI. The good news about AI is, a lot of it’s shite, so we’re not all gonna be replaced by androids just yet. The bad news is our problem isn’t AI, it’s capitalism, the state, patriarchy and racism. So yeah, there’s that.

The kind of point of Machine is to say that the future of AI is not a technological problem, it’s a philosophical problem. And the problem with us getting good or bad results from AI, is down to the fact that we don’t really understand ourselves or know what we want. In fact, at basics, the trouble with replicating human thought, is we don’t really understand how humans think. It’s Dostoyevsky’s problem with creating a sane society for an insane species flung into a technological future.

In short, people say what they want, then don’t want it. Best example is the driverless car trolley problem. People say that a driverless car should swerve to avoid injuring a group of pedestrians, even at the sacrafice of the safety of the driver. When asked if they would drive such a car, they’re like, “Fuck no!” How can a technology be developed to serve such a contradictory customer base?

An interesting conversation starter. Give it a watch if it pops up on Netflix, which I suspect it will.

I knew very little about Oliver Sacks other than he was the doctor Robin Williams’s character in Awakenings is based on. I also knew a couple of his other books, like The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. So this was an enormous pleasure to watch and learn from.

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is a biographical documentary, following both his life and work. He’s a man of many contradictions, or perhaps contradictions to expectations. On one hand he’s this fastidious little Jewish doctor from the Golders Green area of London, with a suitable beard, spectacles and clipped accent. On the other hand, he arrives in the States in the 60s looking like a Tom of Finland pin-up, driving to work on his motorbike, chomping his cigar, and stuffing his hulking muscles under a white coat. He becomes a weight-lifting champion to overcome his crippling shyness, yet he is extraordinarily frank about intimate things at times. He’s funny and gentle and has this unique ability to gain insight and understanding with people whose conditions radically impede their ability to communicate, yet he’s unable to form adult romantic relationships, and spends 35 years celibate.

This is a lovely film that kind of talks about our exploration of what consciousness means, of our indebtness to those with neurological conditions for our understanding of the human condition, of an appeal to the value of all human beings and all ways of seeing and experiencing the world, which are all unique.

Because We Are Girls follows the story of three Punjabi-Canadian sisters as they try to prosecute their cousin for rape and sexual abuse committed against them at the ages of 10 and 11.

I did really well with this film, I felt the tears welling up at so many points in the film, and I thought I’d be able to hold it, but as 2 of the 3 sisters came out for the Q&A, I just lost it. I burst into tears. Because this should not happen to any child. And it happens constantly, everywhere, to so many people. And it is so hard to get justice.

The beating heart of this very raw film is the relationship between the sisters. Because no one believed them, except each other. Their parents slowly grew to accept it, but, both because of their ethnic culture and their generational culture, they didn’t want to encourage any attempts at public prosecution for fear of what it would do to the family name.

The treatment of their parents was very interesting. Because they are neither castigated with condemnation nor are they absolved. After all, as one of the sisters said in the Q&A, they were groomed too. They were groomed to believe that this person would never do such a thing, they were groomed to believe him and defend him. And yet, there is a confrontation in the family towards the end of the film, where the girls said to their father, you had suspicions about what he was doing, and you did nothing. You had a chance to change things for us, if you had stood up for us, but you didn’t keep us safe. It’s a hard but true fact. And the message going forward is that, to prevent this happening to other kids, we need to equip adults with the ability to have those conversations, take those stands.

This documentary is so intimate and traces the effects of trauma over generations. This act has impacted on these sisters, damaged their relationship with their parents, impacted on the way they care for their children. Hopefully the prosecution and the documentary changes that narrative, of not inheriting trauma, but being inspired by bravery. I certainly know that’s what I took away from it.

Santiago, Italia is a documentary on the Chilean diaspora in Italy and the work of the Italian embassy in Santiago to protect refugees. Hearing all the first person accounts from the refugees themselves was very moving.

An incredibly intimate and personal documentary about one man telling his family he was gang-raped at 17 in a homophobic attack.

The story is of such huge issues, yet it has such a small, domestic setting. You really feel you are taken into his family home. You hear their squabbles, their irritations, their personality clashes, and them telling each over and over, “I love you. We’re family.”

And you can see how he would struggle to bring such a big conversation into such an ordinary world. When finally tells his family, one of his brothers is still on the phone, one of them is still playing on the X-Box, his Mum is fussing with her knitting.

But this story is one of healing. That speaking out is freeing. And that you will find that so, so many people have been through what you’ve been through. And trusting people with the truth is the first step to getting the love and support you need. Lovely movie.