Docs and Misc

I watched Ghosts of Cite Soleil (spelled incorrectly, but this is a quick post) yesterday and it made me think a lot about documentaries, of which I’ve seen quite a few at this point in my life (I gotta check out the True Films pdf to see how many I’ve seen from that fellow’s list). Inarguably, in my estimation, the best documentary filmmaker out there is Errol Morris, unlike say Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlok, you never see him, the only clues that the film is by Morris are a question fragment from him in the background, the Interrotron camera, and a score by Phillip Glass. You can pretty much guess a Morris film in about 10 seconds (or less) if flip past it on PBS or something. But they are effective and informative, always.

His films consist entirely of interviews, found footage and maybe a quick recreation or static shot to show visually what an interview subject is talking about.

That’s what frustrates me so much about Cite Soleil, the subjects are two gang-member brothers in the worst slum in Haiti during a revolution where their boss flees the country and the new regime wants to kill them, but yet instead of giving context outside of what the brothers are doing, giving any political weight to the argument, or interviewing anyone about what’s going on, we just see the world of the brothers, where they drive around and smoke and talk shit. The film almost feels old-fashioned in the absence of the filmmakers opinions. You don’t have to make moral judgements about the brothers, you can see that they (especially 2pac) actually seem to want to do right by their country, but in knowing the USA’s role in screwing up Haiti (and in the revolution shown in the film), you almost need to combine political commentary with what’s happening to these guys. You have the money footage, now where are the nails to drive the point home? Sticks in my craw, I guess. Errol Morris could have made a great doc with just one of the brothers who briefly fled the country, and without showing the extreme poverty and violence that was part of the area.

Also, a final thing that bugged me was that the doc was full of sort of fake news reports. It’s an irritant of mine when documantaries show footage and in lieau of a narrator have some fake news reported in the background as if you were watching an actual news report.

In other news, I’m feeling well again. Also, my glasses are coming in this week, I’m excited and terrified. I barely remember what kind of frames I got at this point.