Every year IDA (International Documentary Association),  puts on DocuDays in LA, screening all nominees for documentary features and shorts. IDA times this event to the weekend of the Oscars so that all the filmmakers and their amazing subjects are in town. It’s worth a visit to LA! This year I saw two features and two shorts and was enthralled by all of them. Each is powerful in its own way and highly recommended.

Shorts

Rabbit à la Berlin, made by a band of Polish filmmakers, gives a rabbit’s eye view of the Berlin wall. The analogies between humans and hares are left for the audience to make in this grounded, pensive doc. The movie’s schnitt (German for editor) was on the panel following the film and its editing was a major subject of the discussion.  Turns out there was very little archival footage so shots of rabbit from many different countries were gathered and stitched together (with a lot of color correction) I’m sure. The producer quipped, “It was an international cast of rabbits.”

The director remarked that it was necessary to gather a lot of rabbit close-ups and reactions to tell the tale. My conclusion:  This story, as so often occurs with a documentary, came together in editing. How else to consistently put across a bunny’s POV of the decades preceding and following the wall? To get a view of the doc, here’s the trailer:

The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
This movie is about the decline of the genial, always in control, well liked ex-governor of Washington and his drive to pass an initiative granting terminal patients the right to elect doctor-assisted death. It made me cry. It also made me believe in politicians once again and the ability of filmmakers on one side of an issue to fairly present both sides.
During the panel discussion the director stated that the “Film’s intent was to open up dialogue on end-of-life issues, not to be an advocacy film.” But seeing a powerful man fight his deterioration due to Parkinson’s disease with every brain cell and muscle, humanized the issue. When Gardner was wheeled on to the stage by his daughter after the movie, he received a standing ovation. Here’s a sampling from the beginning of the film:

Oscar winner for best documentary short: Music by Prudence

Features

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
This stellar doc reflects on the war in Vietnam and the downfall of President Nixon from the angle of the act of Daniel Ellsberg and his assistant Anthony Russo. The pair worked for Rand Corporation to support the war and then turned over 7000 pages of evidence to show that each successive administration disregarded the facts, lied to the American people, and escalated the war.

Afterwards, it was touching to see septuagenarian Ellsberg, who also got a standing ovation, and his wife -- a dove on the war from the start -- holding hands and intelligently and passionately laying out the facts about the wars we’re embroiled in today. Get an idea of the movie from the trailer:

The Cove

I had already seen stills of the gruesome, bloody footage of this film about the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan on Facebook. Still, I ducked my head to avoid watching at times, but did not duck its truths about mercury build-up in dolphins and other fish which gets passed on to humans and the intelligence of these creatures.

This film, like Rabbit à la Berlin, gave voice to creatures and clearly depended on VO and editing to make it work. In the post-screening panel the director talked about the challenges of making this film which included death threats, risking arrest, going without a salary for 18 months, and not knowing if there was a film in what they were shooting.

This movie is a “must see” because it proves that docs can be entertaining and change the world and all the effort and sacrifice are worth it. Get a glimpse of it below:

Food, Inc.

This high budget doc about how our food is produced by a handful of companies who mistreat animals and humans alike to put unhealthy foods in our supermarkets is also a game change changer and a “must see.” Again, IDA put the director and producer on stage as well as Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and an expert seen in the film. Here’s the trailer to get you started:

Oscar winner for best documentary feature: The Cove. Like Man on Wire, which won in 2009, The Cove can be seen as a caper film with much reconnaissance and stealthy nighttime set up leading to daytime coup.

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