and what we found there... Through the looking-glass

The current trend in documentary is for kaleidoscopic narratives : reality seems to be divided into fractions that directors show one by one for a better, more complete comprehension of the world. With regards to fiction, the choral film itself is currently a somewhat over-used format ; it consists of telling several stories in parallel, before making them meet (or not). DocPoint is offering us a certain number of documentary examples also built on parallelisms : Import/export by Ulrich Seidl, The Big Sellout by Florian Opitz, and Manufactured landscapes by Jennifer Baichwal use the same process of multiplying testimonies, images and spaces in order to establish a general report of world-wide crises. The methods and the effect they have on the spectator are however very different.

Firstly, it’s undoubtedly this idea of a mixture between personal problems and global issues which can be disconcerting : how to analyse with precision a fact as complex as privatisation in little more than an hour ? The method of Florian Opitz was simple : he collected negative testimonies about privatisations launched by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) across four continents. Here the human side is always chosen over intellectual analysis. The various facets of one topic are not even always connected to one another : the only common point between an English railwayman and a Philippine mother is thus their suffering because of privatisation. Moreover, the choral documentary is supported only by these testimonies. The emotional dimension is present everywhere in Opitz’s film ; the director has often used the processes of fiction films in order to convince audiences : the editing into multiple sequences gives a rhythm (a factitious one ?) almost like that of a detective movie. One waits for the end, avid to know if the mother will be able to save her child.

Manufactured Landscapes develops according to the same criteria : constant cutting between China and the conferences of photographer Burtynsky. To demonstrate the uniformity of social problems in the world and of the industrial landscapes, Baichwal, as Opitz, plays the card of diversity, or a multiplication of examples supposed to confirm a thesis. The possible problem of this constant attention to an anecdotal vision is to make real analysis very difficult.

On the contrary and undoubtedly in a more subversive way, Ulrich Seidl builds parallelisms not primarily with the purpose to move, but to create a reflection : in Import Export, Seidl follows the fates of a young Austrian in the Ukraine and a young Ukrainian living in Austria. Without hesitating to lengthen a fixed plan which seems to define the contemporary representation of incommunicability, the Austrian director works on repetition and the non-sensational. What seems commonplace then becomes more and more shocking.

Without a gripping rhythm or emotional suspense, Seidl succeeds in describing, with terrifying realism, a compartmentalised life between two nervous breakdowns and despairs. One central idea that is shared with Manufactured Landscapes is to show the industrialisation of our ways of life. Unlike the two other aforementioned directors, Seidl - although he is the only one making pure fiction - is marked by a strong and impressive form of realism. He never hides a pessimistic speech for the sake of a beautiful shot - which does not mean that he is a bad director. He succeeds in capturing reality in an atmosphere, in the movement of a body, the empty glance of a girl.

All of these documentaries, or ‘realistic fictions’, have undoubtedly flowered because of the lack of accurate television reports on these subjects. Cinema thus took over from TV and became a special mirror of reality - sometimes a deforming one.

Ariane Beauvillard