- Culture
- 08 Nov 02
Ten must-sees from the stranger than fiction documentary festival & market
THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES Their achievements loom large in the more romantic annals of World Cup history. In 1966, Pak Doo Ik and his North Korean side knocked out the mighty Italy before taking a 3-0 lead against Portugal before Eusebio’s men bounced back to win 5-3. As the first Western documentary maker allowed to work in everybody’s favourite Stalinist paradise, Dan Gordon achieves the remarkable when he re-unites the surviving squad and brings them back to Ayresome Park, the scene of their triumphs. A bona fide must-see movie.
FELLINI: I’M A BORN LIAR Yeah, like we’d never have guessed from watching the likes of Amarcord. Damien Pettigrew’s unmissable exemplary study of the late director boasts a lengthy interview with Federico the Great and assorted entertaining cronies.
HOOVER STREET REVIVAL Director Sophie Fiennes’ film focuses on the Greater Bethany Community Church in South Central Los Angeles in order to explore the diversity of local life with intricate yet unobtrusive results.
GIMME SHELTER Widely regarded as the film which captures the ‘end of the ’60s’, David and Albert Maysles’ landmark documentary about the ill-starred Rolling Stones gig at Altamont Speedway on December 6th, 1969 which saw Hell’s Angels running amok with pool cues and one man stabbed to death.
THE SORROW AND THE PITY A rare screening of Orphuls’ magnificent epic which blew apart the myth of a universally resistant France under the Vichy government. Essential viewing.
IRELAND’S OWN Tucked away in a fusty corner of Independent Newspapers’ empire lives an unusual weekly journal. This 100 year old magazine, which avoids celebrity and contention is a publishing conundrum. Gerry Nelson’s affectionate film has such a brilliantly quirky subject matter in Ireland’s foremost ‘olde-worlde’ publication that you wonder why no-one’s thought of doing it before.
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BROADWAY, BLACK SEA The seaside resort of Broadway was once a bustling location in the days when the Soviet government sent the proletariat there for summer holidays. And it still remains a popular summer destination as Vitalij Manskij’s pulsating film illustrates.
MURDER ON A SUNDAY MORNING Centring on a trial that hinged on racial profiling and mistaken identity, Jean Xavier de Lestrade’s Oscar-winning film is a tense affair involving last minute courtroom confessions, as a family from the none-too-enlightened town of Jacksonville, Florida find themselves up against the effects of racism and ambition in local law enforcement
DAUGHTER FROM DANANG Fearful that her child by an American soldier would suffer in her native Vietnam, one mother in 1975 gave her offspring up to the Ford Administration’s Operation Babylift. The baby, Mai thi Hiep, promptly became Heidi Bub of Pulaski, Tenessee. Gail Dolgan and Vicente Fracos’ moving film – the Grand Prize Winner at the Sundance Festival – charts Heidi’s search for her biological family.
ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennbaker’s film is a showcase for performers of r‘n’b and soul from the 1950s to 1970s and sees how they all fared when disco hit.