DOUBLE HAPPINESS (Ella Raidel)
Hallstatt, a small picturesque village in Austria, has an almost exact replica in Luoyang, Boluo County in China, bankrolled by China Minmetals, a mining company. This curious development is the jumping off point from which Raidel's collage-like documentary essay Double Happiness explores China's culture of copying, and what this says about the ultimate end point of the country's rapid modernization, Westernization, and erasure of its own past. Raidel also goes beyond this to interrogate the very idea of originality itself, and whether this has any meaning in cultures (not just China's) where everything ultimately becomes a commodity to be exploited for profit.
The piece is aptly titled, since in Chinese calligraphy the "double happiness" character (囍, often used as a wedding symbol) is itself a mirror image. Along the way, various people comment on this phenomenon of copies of European cities and towns in China, which is by no means limited to Hallstatt - the film makes a brief stop at Beijing World Park, famously the setting of Jia Zhangke's The World.
A Hallstatt hotelier expresses her dismay upon discovering that a Chinese architect guest was there to survey the town, including her hotel, for the Hallstatt, China project. An urban planner in Shenzhen defends, indeed celebrates this, declaring, "To imitate is to create!" Other Chinese observers are far less sanguine: a talk show host feels that China's replicating foreign world landmarks has caused the whole country to be a kind of theme park, while a forward-thinking, non-imitative architect states that Chinese people should ask themselves "what the real China should be."
Stylistically, Double Happiness is constructed as an impressionistic collage, incorporating traditional talking-head interviews with stunningly shot imagery of both Hallstatts as well as other areas of China, and musical interludes that seem to wryly imitate karaoke videos. Raidel has created, a thoughtful, diverting work as playful as it is provocative.
(Oct. 23, 4:30pm; screens with China Remix)
CHINA REMIX (Melissa Lefkowitz and Dorian Carli-Jones)
Guangzhou, China, is home to the country's largest African immigrant community; the city is often nicknamed "Chocolate City" by locals. The majority of Africans living there are involved in trade and commerce, as Guangzhou is a major global hub for such activity.
The short (29 minute) documentary China Remix follows three men, originally from Nigeria and Uganda, who are there for different reasons: to make it in China as hip-hop artists and develop a burgeoning hip-hop and African-style club scene in Guangzhou. Flame Ramadan, newly arrived from Nigeria, has grand ambitions and a two-year plan to be a famous music artist in China, and is busy recording an album. Dibaocha, also from Nigeria, has been in China for much longer, and is a pioneer of the Guangzhou hip-hop music scene, working as a promoter. He considers China his home, and has a Chinese wife and two young sons. Ivan Manivoo, from Uganda, went to China to study computer science, and is a sort of jack-of-all-trades. He balances his life between school, sports, and rapping at gigs such as a Victoria's Secret fashion show that doubles as a luxury condo opening.
China Remix concisely sketches both the opportunities and limitations that characterize these men's lives. On the one hand, China affords more possibilities for earning money (and maybe some fame) than in their home country. But on the other hand, they must contend with stereotyping and misunderstanding by Chinese people, as well as the onerous bureaucracy involved in obtaining visas and residency papers - many Africans are there illegally, avoiding police and other authorities. The film is a fascinating view of China from the view of those who are simultaneously insiders and oustiders.
(Oct. 23, 4:30pm: screens with Double Happiness)
BANANA PANCAKES AND THE CHILDREN OF STICKY RICE (Daan Veldhuizen)
Hands down, the film with the best title in this year's festival. Fortunately, that's not all this expertly made and wonderfully nuanced work has going for it. Muang Ngoi, a remote village in northern Laos, opens up for tourists in their dry season, when it's free of monsoon weather. The film smartly delineates the contrast in daily life from when tourists are present and absent. The first part introduces us to Shai and Khao, two friends whose experiences constitute a major part of the lens through which the village as a whole is observed.
Shai has returned from the city, and is trying to make a go of it as an entrepreneur. He's having an identity crisis, and stings from his family's negative opinion of him; he's restless and is constantly looking beyond his present circumstances to imagined better days. Khao is much more settled, having been in the village his whole life; but he too has higher ambitions.
The tourism trade is the main basis of the village's economy during the dry season. Tourists, mostly European, descend upon the village, not in very large numbers since the destination is so remote. But as one remarks, its only a matter of time before it's included in a Lonely Planet guide and thus becomes not as special or exclusive to those backpackers in the know.
This is neither a lament of tourists spoiling pristine places, nor is it an occasion for exoticized rhapsodizing. Instead, it's a remarkably intricate study of the complex ways places change when people of different circumstances, income statuses, and cultural backgrounds meet, as well as the fascinating shifts of power between both sides of the cultural and ethnic divide. The porous boundaries between borders created by globalization technology deeply unsettle the definitions of "authenticity" and "native culture."
Veldhuizen admirably refuses to exempt himself from these considerations; he's not simply a fly on the wall, but an active (if unseen) participant. The villagers often talk to him and his crew, offering them drinks and food. This culminates in an unsettling sequence during whiich Shai becomes frustrated with the camera's constant presence, remarking that even if the director can't understand him in the moment, everything he says will be translated later. Later in the film, Shai defiantly snaps a picture at the camera lens, and presumably the man behind it. Moments such as these illustrate the visual and intellectual virtues of this remarkable film.
(Oct. 23, 5pm)
THE LAST REFUGE (Anne Laure-Poree and Guillaume Suon)
Rithy Panh, the great documentarian whose work (The Missing Picture, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine), are brilliant testimonies to the history and lasting legacy of Cambodia's genocidal 70's war, is also the founder of the Bophana Audiovisual Center. This Cambodian film center preserves the country's visual heritage, as well as trains new filmmakers.
One of the products of the center is The Last Refuge, a perceptive (if very despairing) look at the Bunong people of eastern Cambodia, whose land have been razed to make room for rubber plantations. These people are deeply connected to the forest, where they bury their ancestors and perform animistic rituals. The film documents another kind of genocide, which destroys a peoples' way of life, and indeed their very identity. By the conclusion, despite the resistance and protests, there seems to be no way out of their predicament. So if the story remains unfinished, the urgency of the issues involved are no less palpable.
(Oct. 25, 12pm)
SAILING A SINKING SEA (Olivia Wyatt)
This is a bracing, deeply immersive (literally) look at the Moken, a seafaring nomadic tribe who lives among the islands of Thailand and Myanmar. It's also a hybrid documentary/anthropological essay/experimental film, in some ways not dissimilar to work being done by the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab. The Moken themselves narrate here, relating their myths, customs, folktales, and singing songs that are often quite bawdy. They say they mostly survived the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami because it was predicted by their ancestors, and when the disaster occurred, they knew where to go for safety.
Visually, the film is a wild collage of often breathtaking underwater photography, grainy 8mm, pixilated video, and vivid HD. At the end, we learn that the tribe is literally dying away - with only about 3,000 left - because of tourist encroachment and government restrictions on their fishing. For a people whose entire existence centers on the sea, this is quite devastating. However, Wyatt has created a lively, and lovely, document that's celebratory rather than despairing.
(Oct. 23, 7pm)