Screening Reaction: '10 Under 10'

What better way to celebrate being done with your own student doc than a night of watching student docs? This year’s 10 Under 10 featured two experimental shorts and eight documentaries. The evening started out strong with Patrick William Smith’s Shades of the Border, a documentary about the discrimination faced by Haitians immigrating to the Dominican Republic. This had the best photography of all the docs. Smith does a terrific job using the frame to tell his story; there is a great scene where two young Dominicans talk about how much they hate Haitians, the camera then pans to reveal their glum Haitian friend. I was amazed at some of the footage Smith got, especially a scene where Dominican police assault a Haitian man. Smith very efficiently and effectively creates a sense of the foreign environment, which is essential, since he is dealing with broad, national issues, rather than focusing on specific characters. He also does a great job of quickly getting across a lot of information about a little known issue, and making a convincing case why it is a matter of real concern.

The program then took a sharp mood turn with John Moore’s Refurbished, a very fun and playful doc about artists repurposing Furbies. This was the only doc of the evening that did not feature formal sit down interviews with people. There were voiceovers, but we were never introduced to the people behind the voices. The Furbies were the ones who got the traditional interview set up – the close ups in a non-descript location. It makes sense; after all, they are the ones who undergo change. One of the cleverest touches was Moore’s use of the Cathedral of Junk as a location. It perfectly compliments his story about people turning trash into art.

Next came two well made, earnest, but rather forgettable docs. A Job (dir. Chithra Jeyaram, Kendra Krieder, James Tanner, and Danielle Garrett) focuses on abortion clinic nurses; Under the Hood (dir. Sarah Garrahan & Lauren Sanders) is about a coffee shop near Fort Hood that serves as a gathering spot for soldiers, and their families, who are opposed to the War. Neither was bad by any stretch of the imagination, they were just overshadowed in my memory by some of the other pieces.

A Job is fairly traditional in its structure and format. It is mostly sit down interviews, broken up by B-roll of empty waiting and operating rooms. There is some footage of the nurses doing their job, but it felt like it could have used more of that. Of course, given the nature of the work, there is a lot you cannot show. Still, the film is a bit too sterile to give a sense of the stressful and hectic nature of their work – dealing with long hours, emotional situations, and aggressive anti-abortion sentiment.

Under the Hood has sit down interviews, but a lot of it is fly on the wall footage of the soldiers sitting in the shop, talking. By simply observing these conversations, the filmmakers get some really amazing and powerful stories out of these individuals. They also give a pretty satisfying structure and arc to a story that did not have an obvious end. Both A Job and Under the Hood are one-sided takes on very polarizing issues, but they deal with their subject intelligently and sensitively. It probably helped that I agreed with both of their stances!

The next two were my least favorite of the bunch. Gaia Bonsignore’s Live Your Cinema! The Austin Media Arts was interesting, but it lacked impact. Part of that is due to the story being told all in retrospective, so it does not have a sense of something at stake. The organization was a cool project, but the film does not give a sense of what the broader impact of it was, and how it might have helped shape the larger Austin film community. It also felt like it lacked some momentum, as it kept reiterating a point that was essentially, “You kids today with your Netflix and your roller skates! Why in my day you had to walk 15 miles to the nearest Ozu screening!”

Next came Hearts & Hooves (dir. Amanda Glaeser & Marisol Medrano), which is about… well that was part of the problem. It involved mini-horses being used in therapy for the disabled and dying, but I never got a clear sense of the program. This made it difficult for me to feel invested, even while the program’s head, Veronique Matthews, was getting very emotional. Instead of seeing specific instances of the stuff Matthews discusses, we see mini-horses running about. It is cute, but not very illuminating. It did not help that the tone of Matthews’ interview was a bit too hippy-dippy for me. When she was talking about the communication with the horses, which is key to understanding why this is a valuable service, I either did not get, or did not buy, a lot of what she was saying.

After that was What’s In a Name, directed by Caitlin Lundin and our very own Ben Kullerd! In the interest of full disclosure, Ben and Caitlin are friends, but even if I hated their guts I would have to admit this was one of the strongest docs in the program. It is a series of interviews with four transgender people, discussing the logic behind their name changes. It is a deceptively simple topic and a clever way of getting at the larger issue of being transgender. As one of their subjects, Phoenix, eloquently puts it, it is all a part of their rebirth as a different person. The film is quite bold in its decision to be comprised almost entirely of interviews. I asked Ben and Caitlin if they had planned to do this from the start, and apparently the decision not to cut away came later. It absolutely works; the subjects are strong storytellers and the heavy use of interviews quickly and effectively creates an intimate relationship with the subjects. Also, like Refurbished, the film makes clever use of location. All the interviews are shot in UT’s empty film studios – spaces just waiting to be reconfigured as part of something special.

The night ended with my personal favorite of the docs – Ivete Lucas’ Mexican Fried Chicken. The film does a wonderful job of creating a very intimate profile of a young Mexican teenager and his family. Lucas strikes the perfect balance between warmth and love, conflict and sadness, while portraying the family. It is mostly a lighthearted portrait, but it is not a white washed depiction. We get to see our main character at his most confident, posturing for the camera, and also at his most vulnerable and honest. This great range in the depiction creates a very rich and real sense of these people. In the Q & A afterwards, Lucas mentioned how the key to this was her genuine friendship and connection to her subject; she always had the camera, and so when they talked in the casual and honest way friends do, the boy simply talked to the camera, the extension of her. I really cannot overstate what a charming and winning film this was. It was a great way to end a strong evening!