Palna is an orphanage in India where two girls, Devi and Stuti, were taken temporarily, before being adopted by a couple from Finland. We follow everyday life of Devi and her adoptive parents, as they gradually progress with Stuti’s adoption.

Devi is an intelligent, sprightly six year old who enjoys playing with her toys, such as a Krishna doll and characters from Winnie the Pooh. Her Finnish parents have encouraged this mingling of cultures and both Devi and her mother wear brightly-coloured saris. Devi tells us, matter-of-factly, that she is half Indian and half Finnish.

Although Devi is the focus of the film, her parents become a source of increasing admiration. They are completely honest with Devi about the reasons for her arrival in the orphanage. Devi herself gives a heartbreaking account of why she was adopted. Her mother, she says, was unwell and could no longer care for her. She left her at a train station, where she was found by a policeman and taken to the orphanage. Her adoptive mother later elaborates: Devi had tuberculosis and was starving when she came to the orphanage. Much of the early footage of Devi taken by her parents shows a very different child to the one we come to know. Solemn and withdrawn, she looks at the camera frowning. This was not the bright, happy child she became after the adoption.

We come to understand that much of the parents’ patience and compassion comes from a deep love for their children. Indeed much of Devi’s level-headedness appears to be the result of loving parents. The mother recalls how friends of theirs had given them useful advice on how to cope with a young child. However, ‘One night I woke up, looked at our daughter and realised my friends had not told me the best part of having a child: it’s the most beautiful love story in the world.’ When the father recounts the first meeting with Devi he can barely speak for his emotion.

The adoptive parents recall how when Devi was a baby she saw a picture of an Indian woman in a book and said ‘amma’ – this, the first word they heard her speak, means ‘mother’ in Tamil. When she learnt to talk they said that she wanted to talk about ‘amma’ all the time but unfortunately, these memories disappeared with time.

Devi’s ruminations on the role of family are simple but profound – to love, to comfort, for the older ones to help the younger ones, to look after their children and to ‘make sure they’re warm and everything is okay.’ This is a role she eventually fulfils at the end of the film. When the Father meets the children at the airport through tears of joy he observes how: ‘One big sister carries the little one.’

It is not surprising that Kiti Luostarinen’s moving Palna’s Daughters won the Risto Jarva prize at the Tampere Film Festival in 2008. Its touching subject matter is enhanced by luminous photography –  for instance the warm textured hues of the dreamlike opening sequence of the children playing at the orphanage, images that can be recollected at the end of the film. One hopes that Palna’s other sons and daughters are as lucky as Devi and Stuti. Luostarinen has directed several documentaries that explore family, children, memory and love and Palna’s Daughters is an affecting accumulation of these preoccupations. Although the film does not investigate the political or economic situation in India to account for the volume of children in orphanages like Palna, its exploration of individual lives is so poignant and genuine that it makes it a very effective tool for promoting change.

Dr Kelly Robinson
Film programmer (Birds Eye View, The White Bus) and Lecturer in Silent Film at the University of Southampton

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Keep Looking (Cherche toujours) opens with an intimate close-up of a face and voice-over narration recalling a dream. This is not a conventional documentary about the nature of scientific explorations, and the science the film itself explores is also not entirely typical. The study of singing dunes, crumpled paper and the shape of leaves are only some of the interests of the group of scientists whose work we follow in their somewhat claustrophobic and chaotic laboratory. The chaos around them however is not indicative of their minds, which in contrast demonstrate a precision and level-headedness to the world around them. ‘Mad scientists’ they are not. Their furrowed brows and head in hands in quiet unguarded moments reveal intensely contemplative minds.

A fervent discussion between the group contains scientific jargon that is completely out of the viewer’s grasp:

‘A pure exponential is a constant equal to 1.’
-‘Because flow=lambda B.’
‘Exactly. If the flow is a pure exponential, its lambda.’

Quite right. Their ruminations are not alienating and the viewer comes to understand the purpose behind their thoughts – their pursuits change how we perceive the world. However they’re not completely oblivious to more trivial distractions. One scientist even complains ‘I’ve got a Madonna song in my head.’

Their day to day existence is rather unusual. One employee spends weeks in the park photographing plants. There’s much to admire in their striking intellect but also in their child-like awe of the world around them: ‘Two years ago, I was studying crumpled paper’, explains one scientist, ‘I’d crumple the paper, uncrumple it, and look at the shape.’

The film uses delightfully simple animation of the narrator’s dreams and poetic montages of photographs of patterns in nature; such appealing images of shapes and colours encourage an equally child-like awe of the world in the viewer. I was reminded of when on day trips at infant school our teacher would encourage us to pick up leaves from the ground to take back to class for a closer examination. The veins on the leaves and the different shapes and colours were a source of fascination for all of us children. It is this innocent, enquiring nature that sometimes we lose as we get older and that the film encourages us to retain. The recounting of dreams demonstrates also how one must never underestimate the unconscious as a source of inspiration. Where the documentary works best is perhaps in seeking to inspire in the viewer a Darwinian delight in the natural world to ‘keep looking’, as the title of the film tells us.

After recreating dunes in a lab the scientists finally get to make an expedition to see the real thing. There is no need for digital effects here as the breathtaking beauty of the natural world is revealed through a static camera. The scientists on their knees move their hands in the sand showing us that, as they had anticipated, dunes do sing, and how lovely it is indeed.

Dr Kelly Robinson
Film programmer (Birds Eye View, The White Bus) and Lecturer in Silent Film at the University of Southampton

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“How is Fidel?” asks the interviewer. Some say he’s well. Others, say he’s dying. After watching Alessandra Magnaghi and Ortensia Visconti’s Fidelity, we come to realise that no one really knows. Castro is like a mystical deity, a figurehead; asking ‘how is Fidel?’ is like asking ‘do you believe in God?’

This complex film shows us the various layers of modern-day Cuban society and how it was shaped, through the United States’ involvement (some might say, interference) and Fidel Castro’s lengthy communist dictatorship, which will no doubt soon come to an end.

We’re shown a beautiful Cuba, with stunningly gorgeous people, provocative and hypnotic dancing, an array of colours, sights and sounds that excite the senses. But there are also concrete, dilapidated buildings, impoverished people and a sense of indifference or complacency. Archive film footage from Castro’s early years floods the screen. We hear his voice, speaking good English, and he appears something of a hero to be admired; a revolutionary. We then hear about the great things Castro did for Cuba – free healthcare and education for all. A number of Cubans, those who lived in a pre and post-Castro Cuba are still passionately loyal to the dictator, grateful for the sanitised media of the country and happy not to be exposed to ‘American propaganda’. They are upset at the thought that Castro will soon die and Cuba will never be the same, it seems, as Cubans will no longer live happily with all their needs met.

It soon becomes apparent that this is not the experience of all Cubans. There are so many living in poverty, some turning to prostitution to make a living. Some want to leave Cuba; some have already left, risking illegal immigration into the nearby United States. We learn that the large Cuban community living in Florida is already in celebration mode, waiting with baited breath to rejoice at the death of Castro.

One of the most striking aspects of this film is the level to which propaganda has affected individuals’ views – so striking, in fact, that it is initially confusing. Is Castro really a good guy? Did he really manage to put Communism into practice successfully? Did he help make Cuba a better place? The difference of opinion is remarkable.

In general, the young people want change and are anti-Castro, but the old are still loyal and remember ‘the good old days’ with a tear or two. There are some who seem genuine believers in the dictatorship, but it is too easy to question their sincerity. One man seems battered, as though he’s had every ounce of any capacity to stand firm in his own belief knocked out of him over the years of living under a Communist regime. His eyes are wet, as though the emotion is trapped inside, waiting to pour out, and although he seems on Castro’s side, he declares that Capitalism is totally wrong and Socialism is only slightly better. Similarly, the actress Maria Antonia tells us how sad she is at the thought that Castro may soon die, and her eyes too are wet with tears. But there is something withheld about her, and we can’t be sure if she is genuine or whether the years of repressing her individuality have gotten the better of her. After all, she is also an actress…

With a great soundtrack, wonderful Cuban dancing, the full spectrum of emotion penetrates and permeates every single moment of this wonderful film. We finish watching on the edge of our seats: what will really happen when Castro is finally and officially dead?

Katharina Chase
London-based Australian writer, linguist and social historian

To read our interview with directors Alessandra Magnaghiand Ortensia Visconti, click here.

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What kind of brand message do you associate with the clothing firm Benetton? Remember those distinctive brightly coloured adverts which feature people from different cultures and creeds? Remember the shock tactics of the controversial ‘United Colours’ campaign, which featured an Aids activist dying of Aids and pictures of inmates on death row? Is Benetton a company with a social conscience perhaps, with a progressive and uncompromising attitude? The filmmakers of Colours at the End of the World set out to understand how a clothing brand promoting cultural equality came into conflict with two Mapuches over the issue of land rights. Ale Corte’s film uncovers a ‘quality’ of the Italian company Luciano Benetton would have preferred concealed.

In 2002 in Patagonia, Argentina, two Mapuches (indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina) Rosa and Atilio were evicted from their home. After spending most of his life virtually in slave labour for several companies in the supposedly ‘modern’ world, Atilio became tired of being exploited. He had intended to return to Patagonia to live and work off the land as his forefathers had, but the land had been passed into Benetton’s hands to be used for livestock breeding. Benetton operates many ranches in Argentina, mostly in Patagonia, and the local people are prevented from accessing ‘his’ rivers, a resource integral to their livelihood.

With the assistance of human rights organisations and luminaries such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel supporting their campaign, Rosa and Atilio continue to fight in order to stay on the land. Research on the history of the land showed how systems of ownership were imposed on Mapuche culture and that the plot never actually belonged to the company. The documentary uncovers a nasty history of land grabs and government favouritism of wealthy multinationals, leading to indigenous people being deprived of their land.
A battle of wills commences and instead of giving the land back, Benetton offers to make a donation to the communities affected. But as Atlilio lucidly points out, ‘He talked about a donation, but he couldn’t do that, as it wasn’t his to give’.

Benetton also sets up the museum of Leleque to record local history, however as well as denying them their land he also denies the Mapuche tribe of their history. When Rosa asked why they are not mentioned in the history of the area she was told it was because their culture did not exist anymore. Ironically a company that supposedly champions multiculturalism at the same time denies the Mapuches of their own.
The filmmakers never lose sight of the bigger picture and the story of how Benetton managed to buy the land in the first place can be traced back to Britain. It was the British who apparently instigated the colonisation of Patagonia. They encouraged splitting the unfarmed land into small productive ranches and then importing people and livestock. The overarching message of the film is that the atrocities that have taken place in Patagonia are also being repeated across the world: Esquivel refers to this as the ‘silent genocide against the native communities’.

Luciano Benetton is not simply written off as an evil capitalist; rather a contradictory figure who, alongside being disinterested in Rosa and Atilio’s campaign until he’s backed into a corner, also runs community projects for young people and renovates local historical buildings in Treviso, Italy, where his headquarters are based. One cannot help but wonder how much of this ‘good will’ is encouraged by a genuine concern for people or for the company’s brand image. Benetton need to practise what they preach.

Dr Kelly Robinson
Film programmer (Birds Eye View, The White Bus) and Lecturer in Silent Film at the University of Southampton

To read our interview with the director Ale Corte, click here.

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It’s traditional to administer a spoonful of sugar with otherwise unpleasant medicine, and the saving grace of John Webster’s film Recipes for Disaster chronicling his family’s year-long “oil diet” is that while it trots out the usual, by now extremely familiar apocalyptic statistics about the long-term unsustainability of typical Western lifestyles, it’s often very funny indeed.

A major reason for this is Webster’s Finnish wife Anu, who gives the greatest deadpan performance I’ve seen since the last Aki Kaurismaki film.  When confronted with her husband’s latest hare-brained scheme for reducing oil consumption and CO2 emission, whether it’s refusing to buy anything plastic (or plastic-wrapped), ditching the car, concocting home-made toothpaste out of salt, baking soda and gelatine, rowing the family motorboat to their country retreat, or proposing a paper bag of organic carrots as a suitable birthday party treat, her reaction remains the same: a quizzical expression, a faux-innocent question, or a put-down so subtly sarcastic that it’s not immediately clear that that’s the intention.  And despite the film mostly being in Webster’s native English, Anu insists on speaking Finnish more or less throughout, albeit occasionally peppered with words like “wanker”.

The tricky balancing act, which the film largely pulls off, is to present Webster as a possibly deranged messianic visionary (there’s more than a touch of The Mosquito Coast’s Allie Fox about him), while at the same time convincing the viewer that what he’s doing is not only worthwhile but even potentially fun.  He’s honest about family tensions (to say his sons Samuel and Benjy don’t take kindly to the new toothpaste or the lack of plastic toys for Christmas is an understatement), but at the same time he vividly shows the upsides: they spend more time together, and talk about important things (like saving the planet) instead of sprawling in front of the television – at least until the solar-powered generator gets installed.

Webster also implicitly acknowledges the problems inherent in living a self-consciously eco-friendly lifestyle.  Although he allows for some wiggle room (no new plastic may be purchased, but existing plastic items can stay), some of his sacrifices seem more exhibitionistically masochistic than productive.  Tellingly, though he reduces his personal carbon footprint by just over half, his final figure is still over three times what the global average should be – and half as much again as that produced by the average Swede.   To cut his final figure to the levels he’s targeting, he will have to make far more severe and permanent alterations to what is still, for all the tinkering, an extremely cushy existence.   Webster has a lot to say about psychological denial, the way those closest to a problem are the least likely to attempt a solution, because it would involve admitting to themselves just how serious the situation is, but he himself leaves some very prominent nettles ungrasped.   

But it’s likely Webster would be the first to admit this.  One of his film’s most disarming traits is its honesty about the amount of willpower necessary to make even relatively modest lifestyle changes.  His research has also led him to ask some fundamental questions about how we live our lives – for instance, why is toilet paper a “better” method than the Indian hand-and-water one, when we wouldn’t dream cleaning dirt off almost any other part of our body using just dry paper?  But the fact that he still favours the Western method after finding a bulk supplier who doesn’t wrap it in plastic speaks volumes in itself: there are some (in this case literally) fundamental changes that we just don’t want to think about.  

Michael Brooke
Curator (Screenonline) at the BFI National Archive and a regular contributor to Sight & Sound

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The United Colours of Benetton – anyone growing up in the 80s would remember the advertisements for this clothing brand: images of people of all colours, nationalities, races interacting on an equal footing, enjoying a harmonious existence and joyfully pushing societal boundaries. We were impressed by Benetton – clearly he was using his clothes to send out a great message about equality and freedom. Ale Corte’s Colours at the End of the World shows us that this was merely a very cleverly crafted marketing campaign, with one aim: to make money.

That money has spurned an empire for Benetton, with the acquisition of huge tracts of land in Patagonia, Argentina. Land that, we now discover, was illegally acquired. This film tells the story, not only of the underhanded, immoral and unethical actions of a multinational company, but it also comments on the broader issue of indigenous land rights, an issue which dominates the world over but receives minimal attention because it is not about money.

Meet Rosa and Atilio, two members of an ancient tribe of Mapuche people, caught up in a battle for the land taken from them, the indigenous people of the area by the British government during colonial times. This land was sold by the Argentine government to a British company – the Southern Argentine Land Company – who consequently sold it on to various other companies, one of which is Benetton. The families of Rosa and Atilio were falsely evicted from their land by the government authorities when Benetton successfully won court claim to the land.

‘Mapu’ means ‘land’ and ‘Che’ means ‘people’, explains Atilio, so the Mapuche, even by their very name, are people of the land. Not just in the sense that they reside on that land and have done, probably for millennia; in the sense that they are in fact part of that land, physically, mentally, emotionally and culturally. Their connection to the land means that, without it, they lose their culture and therefore their reason for being, and we have already seen the result of this demonstrated to a lesser or greater extent in other cultures around the world, from the Native Americans to the Australian Aboriginals.

‘This is silent extermination,’ says Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel. He accompanied Rosa and Atilio to Rome to speak to Mr Benetton himself about the problem. When confronted, however, Benetton said he didn’t know the land they were referring to. Apparently the man himself has only visited Argentina once. He has since donated money in order to improve the lives of some of the homeless people in the area. But Rosa and Atilio are still not recognised as legal occupiers of their own land.

Benetton apparently owns over a million hectares of land in the region, yet the 350 hectares that Atilio and Rosa ask for is denied them. Instead, the company has built huge farms for sheep and cattle there, and various other conveniences such as a police station and shops. Benetton has also constructed the Leleque museum, dedicated to the Tehuelches and proclaiming them to be the only original inhabitants of the area, which is only slightly removed from the truth. To her astonishment, Rosa discovered photographs of her grandparents and great grandparents on display in the museum as testament to the people who ‘used to’ live in the area. Not only do those people still remain in the area, the photographs are not of the people they claim them to be. Rosa and Atilio, understandably, consider the museum a joke. The very thought of walking into a museum to find images of your family displayed alongside false information is, at best, amusing.

Colours is not just about Benetton’s misdoings, it makes a broader statement about globalisation and the damage wealth and power can do. It also paints a picture of yet another culture ripped apart by British colonisation. If we see beyond this, however, we may ask ourselves just how deep rooted this issue of one nation taking over another is. Hasn’t it happened before? For as long as human history has been documented… But just because something has happened in the past doesn’t mean it should happen again. Whose mistakes are we learning from?

Corte has exposed a mammoth issue with Colours, and one that desperately needed a voice. A passionate and complex film, throwing forward a whole series of important issues that we as human beings should understand, Colours is an exceptional piece, not to be missed.

Katharina Chase
London-based Australian writer, linguist and social historian

To read our interview with director Ale Corte, click here.

To read more reviews of the film, click here.

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Voices Across the Wall is unlike anything you’ll ever see. More revealing than any BBC political commentary, this stunning piece gives a balanced and evocative picture of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli struggle.  The haunting piano soundtrack will reverberate the thoughts and images depicted in the film through you long after its end. It feels like we are there with the director…

Ever since the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israelis in 1967, the media has bombarded us with images of the horrible and bloodthirsty battle. Knowing that no cameras are permitted there, one wonders whether the picture presented to us through the media is the truth. Is there even any truth, and if so, whose is it? It’s not as though we really have much of a choice. Until now.

Using footage shot secretly on location, one-on-one interviews, still photography and scenes from family homes, Sam Liebmann presents us with the opportunity to make up our own minds about the conflict. Occasionally we see the interviewer’s hands, as he shows his passport to various border guards. But his voice is what dominates. He is asking simple questions, seeking an explanation about a sticker on the window of a house that proclaims: ‘No Arabs, no terror’.

At the beginning of the film we are on firm ground: we are taken to Hebron and ‘introduced’ to the leader of the Jewish National Front – a well-educated man, he calmly explains that he believes all Palestinians should be removed to places where Arabs belong. He tells us that the former Palestine is land bestowed upon the Israeli Jews by God, that they have a right to it, and their actions are completely justified in trying to take it back from the Palestinians. A local tour guide agrees, saying the Palestinians have an array of different Muslim countries to go to, but the Israeli Jews have only one, therefore they should own that land. For most of us, this talk provokes anger and frustration, especially when hearing news reports about how many hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israelis sitting comfortably on the other side. It seems a simple case of ‘goodies versus baddies’. As Voices soon shows us, it’s not that straightforward.

A group of Israelis are helping build a fence at the house of a Palestinian, to add protection against nearby Israeli settlers. According to one of the Israeli helpers, these people are ‘fundamentalists’, interpreting the bible literally, believing they are ‘the true children of Abraham’, who settled in the area, according to the Bible. Muslims apparently also regard themselves children of Israel. An Israeli woman, who lives close to the Lebanese border, tells us a story about her mother, the sole family survivor, escaping the gas chambers. The woman herself lost her husband and children to a gun attack by the Lebanese group in the late 70s. Her husband’s dream of creating a village where Jews and Arabs lived together in harmony was never realised.

More members of the Palestinian contingent are introduced, and we meet a man whose son was shot when he threw stones at a passing Israeli jeep. This father is clearly an intelligent man, yet he declares his son a martyr; it seems this helps him deal with his grief. Another man, whose son was a suicide bomber, killing himself and three others, says that his son wanted to take revenge on the Israelis for killing his friends. To these people, in this most desperate situation, self-sacrifice is worth killing a few of the enemy. This man tells us that, when Israeli soldiers were gunning down Palestinians without any explanation, everyone, old and young, was willing to fight in any way necessary, and suicide was not ruled out.

Finally, we meet Shamekh, a young son of a Muslim Palestinian refugee family from Jerusalem, university music graduate and volunteer ambulance driver. This exceptional young man is without question a diamond in the rough, and the last piece of the film’s puzzle. He is taken aback when asked whether he’d get involved with the war, using guns and blowing people up. ‘Why would I do that?’ he asks, astonished. He knows there is a better way, and as we sit, waiting to hear the next articulate sentence fall from his lips, he blushes and announces that he feels ashamed. Outside, a celebration is taking place, to remember a number of recently killed young martyrs. Guns are being shot into the air, drowning out his words, and he smiles and waits patiently for them to stop, explaining what is going on. Shamekh tells us that the war is not just with the Israelis, there are fights going on between Palestinians all the time. When asked about his plans for the future, he laughs. “What plans?” he scoffs. “Our dreams are like smoke blowing in the wind.”

If you only see one documentary on the subject at this year’s Festival, this brilliant offering is the one to see. Liebmann’s documentary is a thought-provoking piece, which presents us with an array of different views on the conflict, first hand experiences from those in the thick of it, and the rare footage used gives a great insight into just how things are in this ancient, war-ravaged, non-country.

Katharina Chase
London-based Australian writer, linguist and social historian

To read our interview with director Sam Liebmann, click here.

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“I filmed the elephant man, the dwarf, a giant, a pair of lobster people, the half woman, a clown and a jumble of jug band musicians. On tour in a 20-year old school bus, travelling 2500 miles across America, the ‘freaks’ worked their way through the wild west. Laughing, crying and drinking – a carnival of the damned – searching for a home…” wrote Richard Butchins, the disabled director himself.

The Last American Freak Show attempts a resurrection of the freak show in order to re-appropriate and reclaim the word ‘freak’ as a positive rather than pejorative term.

The documentary can be seen as a road-movie, during which we get to know each one of the so-called (by themselves) freaks: their past and present, their needs, wishes, desires and aspirations. What brings them together is their difference, their deviation from the norm of the able body. By performing this difference they attempt to produce a certain kind of awareness around their own normality.

The documentary thus aims at making the spectator question his/her perceptions of disability and normality, as well as at re-opening the discussion about the ethics of a freakish spectacle. Going against the tradition which wants freaks to be the object of exploitation and manipulation for the sake of profit, the performances in The last American Freak Show become the motor of empowerment, transforming the freaks from objects to subjects, from means to goals by and for themselves, thus attributing to them agency, a voice of speech on their own.

By bringing deformity to the forefront, on the stage itself, the documentary obliges the spectator to see what is usually invisible to everyday perception thus at times creating a feeling of discomfort. It also forces the viewer to hear the freaks’ testimonies, which go against our ‘morality’ and what is considered as politically correct: that flaunting a deformed body might be as legitimate and correct as flaunting a beautiful body; even more it might be pleasurable and enjoyable for both the performer and the audience.

The Last American Freak Show is not about representation or depiction of the freaks or of disability but about mobilising the power of magic and imagination. Its dynamic composition (consisting of animation, black-and-white night shots, as well as colour images), and the intimate ‘look’ of the camera produce a different image – an extra-ordinary perception that can claim confidently: freaks are amazing!

The Last American Freak Show is an evocative, compelling, often funny and personal documentary that invites the viewer to look beyond the bodies of people living in them; it is with this shift in perception that a whole new world appears, a world we never knew it existed before.

Dr Chrysanthi Nigianni
Visiting Lecturer in Sociology, University of East London

To read our interview with director Richard Butchins, click here.

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Few would argue that the Italians are passionate people, rarely hesitant to express themselves in whatever way they deem fit. Alfredo de Guiseppe’s Hidden Art lays out a platform for four such exuberant souls, lovers of life who escape their humdrum realities with fervent outpourings of their creative essence. We have the horticulturalist cum folk poet, the plasterer who compulsively models strange miniature enclaves, the level crossing signalman who not only paints à la Pollock but also composes verse in praise of his creator (who also, troublingly, appears to refer to himself in the third person) and finally, the hospital orderly who has discovered her talent for the stage, craving challenging roles and risking her reputation by taking on the role of (gasp) a lesbian detective.

Hidden Art celebrates this world of the Sunday painter and the outsider poet. There is little in the way of sniggering cynicism, or knowing irony (that said, our orderly’s final performance in the play “Spoon River”, is unlikely meant to be taken with a straight face). This is film about people who give little thought to the fickle opinions and fads of mainstream society, who create out of love and nothing else. As a document of people refusing to conform to homogenised standards, Hidden Art could be seen as a companion to Raymond Depardon Modern Life, which lovingly documented the idiosyncrasies of the French farming community. Like Depardon, de Guiseppe allows his subjects the time and space to open up and indulge their whimsies. Perhaps another fitting precedent would be the great British chronicler Humphrey Jennings’ Spare Time, a film that artfully represented the non-work lives of a generation long ago. Following Jennings, de Guiseppe revels in the surreal details of the lives of the ‘ordinary folk’, and lovingly preserves them on film.

Away from their prosaic existences in the day-to-day grind, these big hearted characters can truly be themselves. It may not be masterpieces they are creating, but, frankly, who cares…

Rob Dennis
London-based film writer

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Eva Weber’s The Solitary Life of Cranes is a thought-provoking journey above London and its surrounds, as seen from the perspective of crane drivers. Living in this crazy, frenetic, whirlwind of a city, we see cranes all the time, their seemingly static, spindly arms breaking up the regular flow of the city’s skyline. Rarely would we think about the perspective of the man at the other end, the operator of this city fixture. Never would we dream that he may already know all about us!

We learn early on in this film that crane drivers are, due to the nature of their work, anonymous. They climb the tower and sit in their glass boxes from sunrise to sunset, sometimes hours either side. Occasionally someone may become conscious of their existence, but all they see at best is a pair of feet, not personified. Narrating the story, their observations, are the voices of these men who spend their working days hundreds of feet above the city, but we never see their faces; by the end of the film, there is a curiosity, almost a frustration, at not having seen them. But this is in keeping with the theme; we would never even hear their voices if it weren’t for this film.

The film takes us from the beginning of a day, the sunrise, with the drivers describing the beauty of those first rays emerging from below the city’s edge, then the whole sky filling with light. Immediately we get a sense of the personalities of these men, as they begin to describe their experiences in the cranes, the procession of thoughts, impulses, ideas that wade through their minds as they see the city heave and shift relentlessly through its day and night cycle. They describe their impressions, the city’s pace speeding and slowing depending on the time of day or night, the people like ants scurrying urgently in all directions, the ebb and flow of the city’s energy, like a giant, living, breathing creature. One driver expresses his desire to interfere, to change the path of an office worker who takes the same route at the same time every day; it’s as though he feels like he might interfere with ‘the way of all things’, put a spanner in the works and provide that person with a fresh perspective. But he can’t, as he is hundreds of metres in the air, merely an observer. “I’m a part of your life but you don’t know it,” remarks one man, speaking about how it feels to pass someone on the street that he’d seen every day for weeks on end.

The ascent into the crane is portrayed almost like stepping through a portal in another world, which, for the drivers, it is. One man remarks that before he was a driver, he couldn’t believe that people would happily isolate themselves for hours at a time like this, and he wondered how they didn’t feel lonely. Far from lonely, the crane is revealed as the best place from which to perform a study of social interaction, a study of people, and from what we can gather in this film, it is fascinating.

Enter the world of the crane driver, his own master, taking direction from the ground below via a radio, but otherwise free to experience the world from on high. An elderly woman hovering her floor naked at 3am; a couple cleaning their balcony in the afternoon sun; a child in a buggy waving up at the driver, the only one to notice him; a young girl and boy in a playground. All these snippets of people’s lives are revealed to the driver as he sits in his crow’s nest. There is clearly so much to learn from people’s interactions, and these men see the same people, day in and day out, walking the same routes, sometimes getting wet in the rain, smoking their cigarettes, having their conversations, living their lives. And none of them, except for a few children who are not yet possessed by the rush and stress of the city and adult life, notice the solitary crane above. No one thinks that there might be a man inside, someone with a personality, with thoughts and feelings, doing his job, and learning about people.

Weber’s finely produced, superbly edited film is a unique and striking insight into a world of which most of us would be totally unaware.

Katharina Chase
London-based Australian writer, linguist and social historian

To read our interview with director Eva Weber, click here.

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