Maybe in the same way that, in mainstream news, if it bleeds it leads, in documentaries, disaster plays better than solutions. So it can seem like there is a river of grim human suffering flowing through programs like the United Nations Association Monterey Bay 17th Annual International Documentary Film Festival.
But keep in mind that this is the United Nations Association, a chapter of the worldwide humanitarian organization that focuses on where suffering is happening in order to ameliorate it. And there are positive inroads that offer potentially liberating endings.
“For each film, there [is] advocacy and action people can take,” UNA Monterey Bay Vice President Lisa Wartinger says.
One focus this year, represented in the film The Crossing, directed by George Kurian, is on refugees going to Europe.
“That’s in conjunction with a national campaign by UNA called Adopt a Future, to support refugee children and get them what they need for school,” Wartinger says.
It’s not just a passive experience of emotion and angst. The awareness that documentaries spread is a light that shows us where to go and who needs help. This festival invites you to jump in by becoming participants. Many of the films instruct the audience at the end on how to get involved.
John Antonelli is the only filmmaker, as of last week, who was slated to come and speak. But he’s a key voice in the thick forest of advocacy documentaries. His film The New Environmentalists travels the world to show, like an instructional manual, how people are using innovative means to improve their communities.
To close the loop of a festival like the the UNA Film Fest requires action; telling others, giving money, protesting, writing a letter or making a phone call, volunteering for an organization.
Under the right circumstances, after reaching some critical mass, documentaries can begin affecting the issues they’re reflecting. Kmart stopped selling ammunition in the wake of Bowling for Columbine. After Blackfish, SeaWorld ceased its killer whale show in San Diego.
Some UNA Film Festival documentaries seem poised to cause similar ripples.
1000 Cuts by Jim Balog (Chasing Ice) is about natural gas extraction in Utah’s Greater Canyonlands, features shots of infrared images that seem to capture carbon emissions wafting into the air – a potent image reminiscent of the flammable water in Gasland.
Last Day of Freedom, an Oscar-nominated short documentary by Nomi Talisman and Dee Hibbert-Jones, animates live action footage in illustration. This compels the viewer to listen to the words and emotions of Bill as he talks about his brother Manny, a Vietnam war veteran who committed a crime that he attributed to mental disability and PTSD. Although it touches on two contemporary issues, it’s such a personal story that it doesn’t feel like an “issue” film.
The Crossing, Wartinger says, is created by the refugees themselves. “Leaving home, getting on a boat, traveling across the Mediterranean, getting out, resettling in Europe. It’s not somebody talking about it, analyzing it,” she says. “It’s their direct experience.”
One film has already had a big effect – A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness. For one thing, it won the Academy Award this year for short subject documentary.
A title screen tells us that 1,000 girls are killed in Pakistan in family-related honor killings, for having transgressed patriarchal rule in marriage or courtship. Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s film tells the story of one girl, 19-year-old Saba from Punjab Province, who seemed destined to join that tragic statistic.
Her crime was choosing to marry the man she loved instead of a man her uncle had convinced her father she should marry. Granting themselves religious and cultural license, Saba’s father and uncle took her to a river at night, shot her in the head, put her in a sack and threw her into the water.
She survived. Her uncle and father were arrested.
But another subversion comes from the Pakistani court system, which allows victims and their families to grant forgiveness to their attackers. Why would she do that? There lies the bitter injustice at the film’s core. But redemption comes later, in the real world, when Pakistan finally passed a law, last month, mandating 25 years in prison for those who commit honor killings.
These films will likely not fade into the ether of the memory like so much other disposable entertainment. They tend to resonate in the mind. That’s where they belong. That’s where they can do the most good.
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