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Documentaries offer students needed exhilaration
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“Let’s go to this movie.”
“No, I’ve seen that movie and it sucked.”
“That’s impossible. It just came out today.”
“You’ve seen one thriller with a cop, a killer, and a twist ending you’ve seen them all.”
If this conversation sounds vaguely familiar, then take note, because a cure for cinematic boredom is coming to town. It’s an event called “Life is Strange” being showcased at the Egyptian Theater the first weekend in November. Those interested should enroll now in Boise State communication professor’s Peter Lutze’s documentary cinema workshop.
“Documentary films often can show things that are more bizarre, more intense, more unusual than screenwriters can dream up for a fictional film,” said Lutze.
Lutze is heading the workshop that will focus on the documentary film festival, which is sponsored by the Idaho Film Foundation.
“Fictional films have become pretty predictable, not only in terms of plot, but also in terms of characterization and setting,” said Lutze.
He believes what is already common knowledge; the total number of commercial films is vastly growing. And what was once avant garde has become conventional, and what the public deems conventional, has become cliche, and what was once considered clich?, generally becomes a hit summer movie.
The number of creative ways to say, “masturbation is funny” or to kick somebody in the face is rapidly decreasing. So some filmgoers are beginning to shake their heads in disappointment and look for alternative cinema. Therein lies the problem, only one theater (The Flicks) in town shows independently produced films, so the options are a bit limited.
Perhaps a temporary answer can be found at this festival. Not only are these films independently produced and unconcerned with net gross, but they are non-fiction as well. Drama in real life. Concerned with actual happenings. They depict versions of life as it were at some place in time, during some event, or experienced by some individual. To some, this may sound like a big-screen History Channel.
“This workshop and festival were designed to find documentary films that are more engaging, more bizarre than any Hollywood movie. And what gives such films a particular punch is knowing that these are real people doing real things, not simply actors acting. A lot more is at stake here,” Lutze said.
Some of the films being shown, such as Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I, or Kate Davis’s Southern Comfort, were made in the last year or two. Others, such as Les Blank’s Always for Pleasure are older, but still contemporarily significant.
The claim that these films are “more bizarre than any Hollywood movie” isn’t stretching the truth, either. To give one example of both the careful planning of the Idaho Film Foundation and of the nature of these films, consider Errol Morris’s Gates of Heaven, about a neighborhood pet-cemetery. Errol Morris, who has since become one of America’s most popular and revered documentary filmmakers, had no money to make the film. A friend of his, fellow filmmaker Werner Herzog, told him to do it anyway and made a bet that if Morris completed it, he would eat his own shoe.
The film was completed, and Werner Herzog came to the premier with the shoes he was wearing at the time of the bet. Then, as the film was being prepared, he sat on stage and literally devoured one entire, cooked shoe. The short chronicle of this feast is also being shown at the festival, and is appropriately titled; Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
In addition to incorporating these four of the films at the festival, Lutze’s one-credit, three-day workshop will consist of lectures, discussions and include tickets for the film festival.
“Featured excerpts from a variety of poetic, political, and whimsical documentary films are showcased,” said Lutze.
All the documentaries will be shown in 35mm on the big-screen at the Egyptian Theater. Some of the films are available on video, but seeing them at this historic, newly refurbished venue allows the viewer to experience these films rather than simply watch them.
“People in Boise will have the rare opportunity to see documentaries on the big screen, to get perhaps even more emotionally involved and more visually stimulated than they would from a fictional film viewed under such conditions,” Lutze said.
For a refreshing change of cinematic pace, check out both Lutze’s documentary workshop and “Life is Strange.” The festival will span the course of three days, Nov. 2-4, and take place at the Egyptian Theater in downtown Boise.
Mark Hitz
