2015 nominated documentaries incl What Happened, Miss Simone?, Cartel Land, The Hunting Ground and the Shorts

The documentary, without a doubt or hesitation, is my favorite category. A good documentary can inform you and a great documentary can inform and motivate, inspire or piss you off. I can say my feelings ran the gamut for the films listed below.

1/25/16 What Happened, Miss Simone? nominated Best Documentary, 2015
I love music and I like to think I'm fairly educated about music history, but my curriculum did not include any Nina Simone, and I feel a little robbed. Granted her style was more in the jazz/blues genre which really isn't my thing, but listening to some of her music in the documentary was incredibly eye opening. The documentary shows Nina's early music education in the (still segregated) South by a white woman, playing for mostly white audiences; she was being groomed to be a classical pianist and went north to pursue that dream. She 'fell' into popular music because she was playing in clubs to make money and she was told she needed to sing; and that was all she wrote. The movie uses Nina Simone's own words from interviews and her journals as well as interviews with her daughter, husband and her longtime guitarist, among others. Concert performances are included throughout the movie and I was blown away. She was something else. Nina Simone found her activist voice in the 1960s, as did many performers, but it seems that her outspoken songs and protests had a more negative impact on her career and legacy than it did for others. On occasion I have heard Nina Simone's name as  an influence on other singers/songwriters, but not as often as I would have thought; or even more, her influence on pianists. The movie does not sugarcoat Simone's personal, internal struggles, her daughter's conflict with her mother and occasional tormentor. Simone definitely had demons, as so many artists do. It makes her human. It makes her songs more powerful and poignant. Even if What Happened, Miss Simone? does not win the Oscar, I hope it brings her music to a new and wider audience. I think she deserves that much.

1/26/16 Cartel Land, nominated Best Documentary, 2015

Cartel Land tells the story of citizens fed up with what they perceive as their governments' inability to protect them and their families from the Mexican drug cartels. What I think is really interesting about this is that most of the narrative is told from the south of the border by a group of Mexicans who organize and arm themselves against the drug gangs. The other side is a group of Americans who are similarly angry and fed up with the American government, the Arizona Border Recon. The movie goes back and forth, but the focus is on the Mexicans and the group 'Autodefensas' and their charismatic leader, Dr. Jose Mireles. Mireles develops a cult of personality, which almost too predictably collapses in on itself (human nature, regardless of language or country, is subject to hubris and the flying too close to the sun). The rise and fall of Mireles and the Autodefensas is like a Greek tragedy, except it's real and true and has pretty serious consequences. At first it seems like the Autodefensas is winning the battle against the cartels in different towns and villages, but the group faces a challenge from the government, and then Mireles is severely injured in a plane crash, and the usurpation begins. And in true Shakespearean fashion, he is betrayed by a man he considers his close friend, known as Papa Smurf. I first was impressed by Mireles, a doctor in his regular job, Wyatt Earp in his spare time, fearless in the face of the gangs, but then he seems to get a little drunk with power (this may have been editing) and then his dramatic fall. Regarding the Arizona Border Recon group, the leader, Tim Foley, justifies what he does and downplays any racist overtones in his actions. It's about protecting the US, Arizona and the American Way. They appear to work with the US Border Patrol and we don't see any overt abuse of power; there are occasional racist remarks from some of the 'team' members. Foley actually voices some support for the Autodefensas as they battle the cartel, but he foreshadows how everything will collapse. The way the movie ended just about put me through the roof I was so angry; not that I was so naive, but that it seems the corruption runs so deep and so unabated. I don't think it will win, but people should see it.

1/27/16 The Hunting Ground, nominated Best Original Song, 2015 

The Hunting Ground is not nominated for Best Documentary, but for Best Original Song, "Til it happens to you" by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga. The Hunting Ground was done by the same team, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering who did The Invisible War which was about sexual assault in the military and nominated for Best Documentary Feature. The Hunting Ground moves from military bases to college campuses and the stories are eerily similar: assault survivors being blamed, disbelieved, harassed, driven to self-harm or suicide while their attackers are protected, shielded and exonerated. The film focuses on Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, two students and rape survivors form the University of North Carolina, and their efforts to raise awareness of sexual assault on campus and the rights of the victims, and the network they build across the country of survivors. They are not widely thanked for their pains, they are threatened on social media on  campus, but they are not deterred. The movie looks at the institutionalized acceptance of the predatory behavior and how entrenched it is. There is an organization that was created to bring these crimes to the fore and shed light on the monsters under the bed; it's called See Act Stop. This and The Invisible War should be required viewing for all college students and their parents.  The song, performed by Lady Gaga, is haunting and powerful; this or "The Writing's on the Wall" from Spectre are currently my picks (still a few I haven't heard yet).

1/29/16 Documentary shorts, 2015

I love the shorts; I have said before that in some ways doing a short film is harder because you have 5 to 55 minutes to get your point across, no fluff, no extraneous story lines. Last year's selection of documentary shorts were disappointing, but this year's nominees had me captivated from beginning to end. My prediction (if I wait until the end of the review, I'll forget) is either Last Day of Freedom or Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah. Let's see why this may be too close to call.

Body Team 12 - We heard about Ebola over here; we saw news stories from Liberia; we heard how horrible it was. Body Team 12 lived it. Body Team 12 is a group of Liberians who are responsible for removing the dead bodies from homes and villages and disposing of them safely. Their story is told by Garmai, a female worker who is fearless and has so much compassion for the families, even when they get angry with the team. I was moved by Garmai's actions, but also her eloquence in speaking about her job and why it was important. Many people talk about 'doing things' in the name of their country, but the people on Body Team 12 talked about doing this job, taking this risk for Liberia, to save their country. These weren't empty words.

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness is about honor killings in Pakistan, and one young woman who survived the attempted murder by her father and uncle. Saba (I apologize I cannot confirm her name and I thought I would remember from the film) had the gall to fall in love with a young man and married him against the wishes of her family. As punishment for disrespecting him, her father decided he should be the one to kill her. Somehow she survived and the rest of the film is about her desire NOT to forgive her father and uncle, and the societal pressures to forgive them. This isn't just semantics; custom dictates that if the perpetrators are forgiven, all criminal proceedings cease and the matter is over. Saba is initially represented and counseled by a lawyer not to forgive them because her case would disappear into the ether. The town elders substitute counsel and he contends, ON CAMERA, that Saba agreed to forgive her family. Ultimately, her eldest brother-in-law decided it was best for everyone to forgive because they had to live in the village and would likely be ostracized if they did not. Saba has to consent, she is now living with her husband's family and is fairly powerless. Yet, for all that she has been through, you would expect bitterness, but it's not there. She is angry, but she trusts in God and that the Koran will protect her and she hopes that her baby is a girl and that her daughter will be educated and do great things. You cannot help but like this young woman and hope she finds happiness with her husband and her new baby. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy directed this and also directed Saving Face which was about women who had been attacked with acid by their husbands or other male family members in Pakistan.

Last Day of Freedom is an animated documentary. Bill Babbitt begins telling his story, actually the story of his younger brother, Manny. Manny struggled in school, joined the Marines and served two tours of duty in Vietnam, returned to the United States and struggled with what we know today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Manny eventually moves out to California to live with Bill and his family. Manny seems to come into money around the same time that an elderly woman is murdered in her home. Bill does some investigating and believes that it was his brother who committed the murder, but nobody else has yet put the pieces together. It's conceivable that Bill could have said nothing and the murder would have stayed unsolved, but he didn't think that was the right thing to do. He also believed that his brother would get able representation and the help he clearly needed. The decked seemed stacked against Manny from beginning to end: inept counsel, an all-white jury (Babbitt was black), no serious inclusion of Babbitt's military service, PTSD or additional mental health history. He was sentenced to death. We are told all of this by Bill Babbitt; his is the only voice and we only see him through the sketched animation, but it kind of makes you focus on his voice and his anguish. At first I was distracted by the animation, but it works. This is one that I think may win. My reasoning is this: the death penalty and mental health stirs debate; the all-white jury and incompetent attorney; and the lack of diversity in all of the major categories may give the smaller categories an opportunity via guilt. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good and powerful film, some people may assuage their guilt over the nominations with picking this as a winner. Quite honestly, I couldn't pick a clear winner.

Chau, Beyond the Lines - Sometimes people complain about things that they could easily change or fix, but choose not to, and then other people don't make a sound about things that cannot be changed no matter what, and they accomplish things that seem impossible. Chau is a young man in Viet Nam whose mother drank water contaminated by Agent Orange during the Viet Nam War. Chau's legs are severely deformed so much that he cannot walk, and his arms are also malformed, but he can draw. Chau has spent over fifteen years in a care center that seems just this side of Dickens. He eventually goes back home to live with his parents because the nurses did not support his dream of drawing and being an artist. Living with his parents is less than ideal so he moves to the city and tries to live independently. In the process he improves his drawing and painting and develops a painting style using his mouth. He wants to be independent and part of society and do something he loves. In so many ways, he's not that different from most teenagers, except he gets around a little differently than most of us. I was impressed with his art, his use of color and the detail he is able to achieve just using his mouth. The movie is about Chau and his desire to paint and pursue his dream, but the shadow of the war and the United States' use of Agent Orange are not far from the surface.

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah is a recounting of how Claude Lanzmann made the 1985 epic documentary Shoah. Shoah was a documentary about the Holocaust with interviews of survivors, witnesses and German/Nazi participants; many interviews were secretly recorded. It took Lanzmann 12 years to make the 9 1/2 hour documentary, and this film looks at the emotional cost of making the film and how Lanzmann was determined to make the best film and tell the story of those who perished. It took such a toll on him that at one point he tried to commit suicide. I remember watching Shoah and reading the companion book. I also remember a scene, filmed in Poland, and the townspeople near Auschwitz (I think it was) said they had no idea what was going on and didn't really believe that it was happening. I was so angry. This is my other pick for a winner. The Holocaust still resonates in Hollywood, and I think Hollywood likes movies about the movies and the people that make them.

More nominees to follow.