Phil Grabsky's Blog - New York - The Boy Mir - Documentary Daze.

Documentary Daze. A day of endless documentary talking and watching. The first film I saw was Better this World - directed by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega. It was about an aborted attack on the Republican National Convention in 2008. Very strong film. Then I saw about half an hour of Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newson - about how mainstream media objectifies women. Not a fresh idea but that's probably the point! I guess you have to keep making such films until things change. I guess I have to side, at the end of the day, with the view that documentaries do, in some small way, have an influence. But it can feel like your canoeing up a waterfall. Then I went to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3d. Spectacular and the best use of 3d I've thus far seen - and clearly a small rig too. Everything was right - even the captions (which the Royal Opera House's Carmen got so wrong). Herzog is a must-watch director - always interesting though certainly at times a bit quirky. Those 30,000+ cave drawings though make the whole film wonderful. His choice of music wasn't perfect either. Indeed, wall to wall music seems to be the de facto way to make docs these days.



Then I saw Steve James' The Interrupters. A film about trying to reduce street-crime in Chicago. Again, strong. Good characters, good access. Film-makers sure do put themselves on the line for these films, I have to say. Too long again - the message began to repeat, and repeat. But still worth seeing. Then my own The Boy Mir premiere screening. Poorly attended but those who watched it very very enthusiastic and the Q&A afterwards went on towards 1am. I think that's going to be the struggle - if I can get folk to see it, they'll really like it. But are people tired of Afghanistan?