In the course of the 62nd New York Film Festival this week, probably the most reviewed films that take the mantle of this long film in the tradition of the biographical genre: The Brutalist about Contemporary Architecture in a three-and-a-half-hour-long film by Brady Corbet. The longest documentaries running, however, are still normal at the festival. This is also not the first time that the Programming team of the New York Film Festival has in its new Films section Main Slate, Spotlight, Currents, and Revivals consisted of remade and or restored films from archives documentaries of over three hours demonstrated the New York Film Festival, directed by the Larry Kramers’ Who are the Gay and Sunburnt People and the Spanish ‘Letters against the dictatorship’ Wende, which marked the new film in the middle. Last year, we saw spring named ‘Youth’, a longer TV film with musical overtones, and striking subtitles ‘Forgive me’. Youth, directed by Wang Bing, lasts for 215 grams and speaks about youth in subtle terms. Last year there were also videos lasting more than three hours, including ‘Occupied City’, Steve McQueen’s wartime documentary directed by hr Chored Amsterdam during the World War, and a long exquisite thinly packaged video directed by Frederick Wiseman and shot over a three-star central France restaurant during a year.
Other newly included are City Hall by Wiseman (NYFF58, 272 minutes), College Behind Bars by Lynn Novack (NYFF57, 222 minutes), Watergate by Charles Ferguson (NYFF56, 260 minutes), and At Berkeley by Wiseman (NYFF51, 244 minutes). Well, they do like the conventional literary hifalutin style, but more importantly, they are lovers of the aged writer. But then, who would not?
This line-up, however, is reached by the people at one of the goals. I have been a witness to this festival since its fifth-year 55th edition in 2017 and there’s no way I would have expected the type of assortment of documentaries which was enjoyed by this year’s audiences. In terms of sheer running time, NYFF62’s protagonists’ featured documentaries don’t seem to have many equals. Considering the number of length projects you find in this grouping, you can only wonder if there’s been any historical context to offer whose references any of this grouping has to offer. From backroom filmmakers who have made it through the festival to two brand-new selections, the following five documentaries are not blank. But in case you have the strength and time to watch each different-sized humongous work, quite a few of the ranges might be predictable and the returns from the work would be quite interesting.
Because the entirety of the film is shot on Super 16mm and is composed of five long, vertically integrated shots, one over the other, DIRECT ACTION is more like physical training than voicing a documentary. In a certain way, it is credible in a sense as the 3 and a half hours of experience do not leave one unattended in silence, even when the film depicts ruinous actions but keeps in focus the enthusiastic main participants of the film. In an unusual way that is not very common with ordinary directors who usually try to make their viewers sink into the plot as fast as possible without any supporting transaction, Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau’s documentary invests into the specific community which it portrays and its practices. In the region of western France in a commune named Notre-Dame-des-Landes, DIRECT ACTION portrays a fight between a group of individuals shielding the ZAD (Zone to Defend) from the state and large companies ready to destroy such precious territories in search of new revenue sources for the state, as they explain quite simply. As the film slowly progresses, at some point we observe them in their daily routines, which include playing chess, feeding animals, and participating in planning the protests, among other events.
Were it not for its time sensitivity and realism, it would have been a ‘slice of life’ film because Russell and Cailleau do not require their characters to act in such a way that is violent to make something “more interesting”. DIRECT ACTION does not require any additional excitement than what it provides already, without exaggeration, any other strategy would likely be much weaker.
However, what can be claimed in turn is that Dimitris Athiridis’s 2017 edition of Documenta a documentary that depicts the infamous Documenta which will take place in Kassel Germany has a certain contradiction about it: it is a film whose main focus can be conclusively stated to be the art of a singular curator in particular Adam Szymczyk with his team. To be fair, it was everything like any other work their being looked at from two cities, namely Kassel and Athens, possibly gives it some direction. Surely there must have been other two places, simply the aesthetics were left untouched and perhaps occupied by Kasel and Athens? Spanning 14 hours and having taken so long precisely because of sponsoring numerous interpretations of not one but some people, this film is indeed exceptional. It’s like, well, a series of interviews with people who happen to be Szymczyk’s coworkers in different parts of the world.
It is appropriate to claim that exergue is similar to the emulsion layer as it upholds its responsibilities and targets its audiences, people, and artworks, while at the same time being a brilliant film. Last September, while previewing NYFF62 on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, Dennis Lim, the artistic director of the festival for many years, talked about one of the details of exergue’s running time and joked that the viewers of the film should try to do this even if other viewers find it difficult to sit through the film because its length is around fourteen hours. However, he has curbed this thought by emphasizing that he would not recommend it; I do not either. By and large, the exergue, without a shred of doubt, is heart-wrenching but in an endearing way. It is worth your time.
Julia Loktev’s masterwork My Undesirable Friends: Part I Last Air in Moscow is filled with interesting characters, each with their eccentric philosophy, like someone demonstrating that ‘No time in life is ever wasted. You have done it and in the process, you have acquired [and] the exposure’. An example there is the backbite, which is not new to the audience, but whose voice has not yet caused much commotion. Yet this goes to the very heart of Loktev’s narrative arch, which is in and of itself a travel guide of sorts, of how young Russian journalists actively resist the persecution of the regime. What many Russian citizens, and one would argue most people in general, have been forced to endure over the past decade is a never-ending barrage of disrespect directed at their intelligence. More often than not, such insults came wrapped in a sense of sophistication for, as we have confirmed during the last decade, most if not all major decision makers in Moscow have little use for eloquence, a skill, even if mastery is completely absent.
Lokoev’s film is not the type that utilizes most of its running time postulating how vicious Vladimir Putin is as a totalitarian dictator. There would be room for a longer history, but such a follow-along doc would not be so interesting, one that travels through the life of the media and digital agencies’ overseas workers who apply to appeal the situation but don’t want to deal with Russian bloomers hoping to punish them for their negative depiction of Putin. In October 2021, when the story of the film takes place, some level of compromise on this matter still prevailed, four months later when Russia engaged with Ukraine, no wrong move could be tolerated.
My Undesirable Friends, directed mostly by Loktev using his iPhone, seems relatively self-explanatory. The lifeworld of the work is, on the one hand, a given character to the director and the characters on the other who she calls in this manner as they are the focuses of the work and that is what it has seemed to be relatively strong remains in the fact that there were many of them it appeared that there were perceived weak bonds between them after months of being almost deployed to that the same space As with other works, its unique self is constructed by one such ability of Loktev to depict such unyielding works against the backdrop of an invincible system that these journalists are trying to combat. Analogously, I consider this work the first part in what I consider a three-part narrative, and I parallel it to this other film: No Other Land, these strands also run through the NYFF’s selection this year. I consider this project a work in progress, “Exile”. It would, for the most part, convey its message many years from now, when it is so pathetic that it would be needed by the very people who are now in turn experiencing these events, so real are their struggles. Anna Nemzer, the film’s main character, does not see herself as passive due to these factors and intends to still maintain hope in the fourth chapter.
In the beginning of August when the main program of the festival was announced, there were lots of jokes concerning some familiar faces returning and ‘visiting’ NYFF. It was the third year in a row that Hansung So onscreen in A Traveller’s Needs and By the Stream had to return to Lincoln Centre only once in 2020, where he made only one film. He should do well because he is quite remarkable already. He has overthrown Jean-Luc Godard, who held the record for most appearances at the same film festival. Well, the French master is deceased, therefore he cannot attend the film festival, which is pretty much rented, but still somehow his film is played. What a triumph!
If, on the other hand, Wang Bing works at this rate, there might be some hope to have him screened in the summer in the company of some other filmmakers. He had barely stepped back after showcasing the movie Youth (Spring) at the New York Film Festival when he went back to close the trilogy with the last two movies, Hard Times and Homecoming.
The film Spring portrays a group of migrant textile workers and their focus on the future and stresses around them, yet it is set around a village located not very far from Shanghai. There are times when it is challenging, arguably, to view the film ‘Hard Times’ for it involves dealing with worn-out people working long hours under little remuneration. Homecoming together with other festivities provides a break for the workers who spend time with their families and some marry. Engagement in the last two parts of the sequence will deprive the viewer of six to seven hours which biologically is considered some of the best hours in a person’s day. In so many ways, it will be worthwhile.
I must be honest and say it like this, the experience is fantastic, to say the least, but also a little boring. Bing has a take-no-prisoners approach. The filmmaker simply does not begin to work with uplifting and heartbreaking biographies accompanied by a clap of thunder and a soundtrack stinging to the heart. We’re just plopped back in the middle of the lives of Bing’s subjects and I hope there is no need to be something so extreme as a stretch, if you like this kind of thing, you might want to see Spring before the last two episodes, and it is good for the films. The tension that Ding harvests from every petty tension in the film Hard Times leads to far deeper issues of police brutality and many others that are likely to connect to people of diverse races. To sum up, Homecoming is a payoff to a part in the viewer’s mind that nothing could be better than the earlier parts as it is much thinner and softer when compared to its predecessors.
This still maintains the basic structure of the trilogy’s format this one is also long and deals with the other and not the self yet, as a coda, it does rather nicely summarise Youth: The new people who are presented to us ten hours ago will go on, but the last scene of Homecoming makes it look as if they have undergone more changes and growth than they had at the starting point of the story.
To Watch More Movies Like My Undesirable Friends: Part I Visit Soap2day.
