Photo by Skinny Bald Guy
It's not clear to me whether the programing for the 2011 Boulder International Film Festival skewed, on the whole, to films about political oppression and violence and the struggle of humanity in the unrelenting face of each of these, or if I just gravitate to depravity like a bad boyfriend.
Either way, I got an eyeful over the last three days. Now it's your turn.
The Green Wave
Because I followed it on the social networks and in the news, I thought I knew all there was to know about the 2009 uprising in Iran. I didn't.
Insert unspeakable atrocities and human rights abuses here.
The film was promoted as being strung together out of social, user-generated content. This isn't entirely true. While the Green Wave makes use of UGC -- chiefly low res video clips and a scattering of tweets (which the filmmakers refer to charmingly as "twitter messages" and omit the expected "@" attribution so we don't know who has said these things) -- the core of the film is constructed of old-school talking head interviews yoked together by the animated illustrations of Alireza Darvish.
Contains a harrowing prison scene, something that is always guaranteed to capture my attention, because I harbor an irrational fear of unjust imprisonment without hope of release.
The Woman with the Five Elephants
More war. More political imprisonment. More past events that percolate into the present, inescapable. Plus Dostoevsky.
My favorite film of the weekend because of its humanity, decency, intelligence -- and moral ambiguity.
Armadillo
More war. More moral ambiguity. Threat of prison. And bonus political insight/personal connection from Mikkel of Shady Acres fame »
Nostalgia de la Luz // Nostalgia for the Light
A remarkable meditation on place, politics, memory and the unknowable moment. Beautifully filmed, extraordinarily insightful, it leveled me like the films of Ron Fricke even though it bears no narrative resemblance (I'm thinking Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi, not Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith).
Prison bit: Concentration camp in the Atacama desert.
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