TIFF 2017 - The Docs
Sep. 21st, 2017 10:35 pmThe fest has been over for a few days, I saw 19 films, and I'm still feeling a bit on the loopy/exhausted side. But thought I'd put up short reviews of the two (excellent!) documentaries I saw, both by filmmakers in their 80s!
Ex Libris - The New York Public Library
Frederick Wiseman is one of the very best documentarians working today. For his films, he selects an organization or a place (the National Gallery, UC Berkeley and a boxing gym were some of his recent subjects), films in them for a few months and then spends a year editing his footage into a distillation of the organization and the people in it. And after so many years of doing this, he clearly knows what to look for when filming. This year his subject is the NYPL, and the result is utterly mesmerizing, really showing the breadth of what the library and all its branches does. There are budget and board meetings, readings/interviews by Elvis Costello and Ta-Nehisi Coates, parents discussing with librarians the need for books with accurate portrayal of African American history, NYPL staff answering client's questions, an ASL interpreter of Broadway plays explaining her working method, and so much else. The film is 3 1/2 hours long, but it's always fascinating.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
msmoat, I very much thought of you as I was watching.
Faces Places
Agnes Varda is just about the only woman director to come out of the French New Wave, and she alternates between fiction and documentary. For her latest doc, she teamed up with JR, a Bansky-like photographer who takes large-form photographs of people and pastes them onto buildings. The two of them set out on a road trip, taking pictures of people they find along the way and pasting them on buildings they find along the way. The premise sounds slight, and the tone is mostly playful, but it leads to some really lovely and profound moments. And the friendship that exists between the 80-something Varda and the 30-something JR is absolutely wonderful to watch in action. This film won the People's Choice documentary award at TIFF.
Ex Libris - The New York Public Library
Frederick Wiseman is one of the very best documentarians working today. For his films, he selects an organization or a place (the National Gallery, UC Berkeley and a boxing gym were some of his recent subjects), films in them for a few months and then spends a year editing his footage into a distillation of the organization and the people in it. And after so many years of doing this, he clearly knows what to look for when filming. This year his subject is the NYPL, and the result is utterly mesmerizing, really showing the breadth of what the library and all its branches does. There are budget and board meetings, readings/interviews by Elvis Costello and Ta-Nehisi Coates, parents discussing with librarians the need for books with accurate portrayal of African American history, NYPL staff answering client's questions, an ASL interpreter of Broadway plays explaining her working method, and so much else. The film is 3 1/2 hours long, but it's always fascinating.
msmoat, I very much thought of you as I was watching.Faces Places
Agnes Varda is just about the only woman director to come out of the French New Wave, and she alternates between fiction and documentary. For her latest doc, she teamed up with JR, a Bansky-like photographer who takes large-form photographs of people and pastes them onto buildings. The two of them set out on a road trip, taking pictures of people they find along the way and pasting them on buildings they find along the way. The premise sounds slight, and the tone is mostly playful, but it leads to some really lovely and profound moments. And the friendship that exists between the 80-something Varda and the 30-something JR is absolutely wonderful to watch in action. This film won the People's Choice documentary award at TIFF.
