With documentaries being at the forefront of independent film for almost a decade now, you would think that a city like London would have had a major festival dedicated to the documentary for decades. So I was surprised to discover that the London International Documentary Festival (LIDF) is only in its third year of existence. From a 12-film one-day event at the British Museum, the festival has grown to host some 90 films of all formats over a solid eight days of screenings.
My first impressions from the slightly foggy opening day: indie-spirited, engaging, and almost underground. London is nothing if not eclectic, and the LIDF boasts an impressive range of venues. My first screening last night took place at the historic Horse Hospital. Opened by a steed lover in 1797 to care for the city's then huge horse population. The cobblestone-floored venue now functions as a warehouse/exhibition space for vintage street wear, and selectively lends itself out to artsy events such as LIDF's John Samson Retrospective. Billed by the Times as the “Wizard of Weird”, Samson was a little-known Scottish filmmaker who died in 2004, nearly taking all his short film gems with him. Luckily, these have since been recovered and digitized by his son Robin, and this retrospective marks the first time many of them have been seen in 25 years.
With his tall boyish looks and a degree of stage shyness, Robin Samson set the tone for a friendly screening, quipping in his intro: "I promise you, I'm not nearly as disturbed as you might think."
With titles such as Tattoo, The Skin Horse and Dressing for Pleasure, these artfully crafted shorts explore UK subcultures from locomotive preservationists, to fetish-wearers, to the sexual needs of people with disabilities. The provoking exposure of these issues caused real cringing only once—with a close-up of large-gauge nipple ring and Prince Albert piercing—and mostly left the audience with a thoughtful insight into the humanity surrounding them.
At my next screening, on Tuesday evening, British director Richard Butchins seemed in a bullish mood, just back from the Boston Underground Film Festival with his self-funded first feature The Last American Freak Show, finally about to get some UK exposure. Apparently the film had been scheduled for screening by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and then canceled because the film “raised too many questions.” According to Butchins, freak shows are still illegal in a few US states, such Michigan, due to laws that are designed to protect audiences. It seems that some folks have attitudes that haven’t evolved that much since Tod Browning’s 1932 feature Freaks, although television shock docs of late have put a cozy distance between "us" and "them."
On Sunday afternoon, I caught the last available over-stuffed armchair, to the far left of the Roxy Bar & Screen’s sharp screen. Not the best position, but comfy enough for a four-hour screening of shorts from 12 filmmakers from many corners of the world. The first to really rouse me out of my haze was The Last Pig/Ultim Porc, from Cristina Popov, on the timeless Romanian tradition of slaughtering, gutting and blow-torching your backyard pig for Christmas dinner. While the main character swears this is the last year he does it, the local hard liquor tuica helps bring old feuding neighbors together to lend a helping hand, and the film's black-and-white video treatment helps to keep the gore factor to a palatable level.
This was neatly followed by a film that was equally stomach clenching, yet worlds apart, plunging the audience into the media-charged arena of post-9/11 New York Islamophobia. David Teague’s Intifada NYC pits a group called Stop the Madrassa along with some angry YouTubers against the principal, faculty and supporters of Kalil Gibran International Academy, the first Arabic-language public school in the US. Graphic novel style drawings allow us into the school and the district’s courtrooms, and the film left me like a Law & Order episode at a commercial break, dying to find out what happens next.
Along more intimate and experimental sight lines, Shooting Locations employs YouTube-sourced “found audio” as the premise to talk about war and gun culture. German director Thomas Kutschker happened upon an answering machine recording from an American soldier’s cell phone that had accidentally dialed his parents' number during an enemy attack in Afghanistan. Other soundtracks involve an Airsoft gun shootout and a young Hong Kong boy explaining in English about what it takes to make a good sniper. To these three soundtracks, Kutschker applies three fixed-camera shots of Western-world habitats—a country home, an office building and an apartment block—allowing each of the three images to search continually for focus, suggesting a sniper preparing for a shot.
By late afternoon, the screening audience was slouched deep in the Roxy’s curtained off lounge, but perked up for a portrayal of local subculture (obviously popular after Saturday night’s John Samson Retrospective), this time involving plane spotters. In Plane Days, director Benjamin Kracun leaves the low-flying beauty shots to the end, instead pointing his lens at radio tower report-monitoring clusters of quintessentially charming British quirky types who seem as happy to discuss the merits of a table wine as they are to jot down plane serial numbers. “Life on the edge,” declares one of them as a Boeing blows by.
After four hours of shorts, we were all in need of some London air, but with at least four films out of twelve that fully engaged me, I’d call it a worthwhile screening day.
If you want to dig into LIDF yourself, you can check it out here [1].