Bod­ies in motion: a report from CPH:DOX 2024

Metaphor is a strange thing. Con­join­ing two realms of mean­ing in a sin­gle phrase holds a promise: through fig­u­ra­tive means, one can bet­ter under­stand the world. But what metaphor­ic expres­sions often do is obscure the pow­er rela­tions con­di­tion­ing that very same link, between the pub­lic and poet­ic spheres. 

CPH:DOX, one of the largest fes­ti­vals in Europe and the world with spe­cif­ic focus on doc­u­men­tary cin­e­ma, chose to inau­gu­rate its 21^st edi­tion with a potent metaphor: Body Pol­i­tics. Doc­u­men­tary prides itself on a more direct rela­tion­ship to the real world, a prox­im­i­ty which entails demands such as truth-telling, aware­ness-rais­ing, and activism. 

Know­ing this, CPH:DOX artis­tic direc­tor Niklas Engstrom found him­self in the metaphor­i­cal cross­fires for insist­ing on a divi­sion between polit­i­cal work and cul­tur­al events. To an arti­cle avail­able in Dan­ish where the direc­tor stat­ed that ​“we do not take a posi­tion in geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts in which we are not a par­ty,” Film Work­ers for Pales­tine addressed a lack of nuance in the festival’s offi­cial state­ments in an open let­ter post­ed on March 18^th. 

While sev­en films explored the his­tor­i­cal Israel-Pales­tine con­flict before it brewed into a full-scale inva­sion, the most deci­sive win at this year’s CPH:DOX was No Oth­er Land which received the Audience:Award. At the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, audi­ence reac­tions were com­posed into a long state­ment for why the film should win for telling ​“the most impor­tant sto­ry right now.” 

Con­trary to IDFA’s para­dox­i­cal stance regard­ing the inva­sion and sub­se­quent back­track­ing, CPH:DOX seemed deter­mined to grap­ple with brew­ing ten­sions, but ulti­mate­ly end­ed up advo­cat­ing for a wider dis­cus­sion by intro­duc­ing ​‘Con­flict­ed’, a theme tack­ling geopol­i­tics and ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­putes. One of the titles unit­ed under that label even won the big DOX:Award.

The Flats by Alessan­dra Cele­sia is a har­row­ing por­trait of trau­ma and the undy­ing hope to do bet­ter, in the con­text of the Trou­bles. Set in Belfast, the doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cles mem­o­ries of mur­ders and agony in the 1970s and ​’80s through sur­vival sto­ries, reen­act­ment, and psychotherapy.

Trau­ma was also the dor­mant pro­tag­o­nist in Stray Bod­ies, sea­soned fic­tion direc­tor Eli­na Psykou’s doc­u­men­tary debut. After a tur­bu­lent world pre­mière in Thes­sa­loni­ki, the film about Europe’s med­ical tourism for abor­tion, IVF, and euthana­sia stood strong as a nexus of polit­i­cal and bod­i­ly auton­o­my. What Psyk­ou high­lights — in either harsh or stylised man­ner — is the para­dox­i­cal idea of a Free Europe. 

Just as some bod­ies can afford to evade polit­i­cal vio­lence, only very few free­doms — to trav­el, con­sume, or work — are guar­an­teed. In a dis­tress­ing­ly upbeat sequence where one of the pro­tag­o­nists per­forms a cov­er of ​‘Papa Don’t Preach,’ Stray Bod­ies is ready to go all in: to riot, to scream, to fight tooth and nail.

Across the globe in Rio de Janeiro, film­mak­ers Juru and Vitã present ball cul­ture as a sanc­tu­ary for queer peo­ple who have mas­tered the art of shade. This is Ball­room does what Jen­ny Livingston’s Paris is Burn­ing nev­er man­aged to achieve: pre­sent­ing a throb­bing­ly real­is­tic depic­tion of House LaBeija’s lega­cy dur­ing an actu­al ball organ­ised specif­i­cal­ly for the film. 

Brazil’s safe har­bours are many and much need­ed. Rachel Daisy Ellis’s Eros takes Brazil­ian motel suites as the point of depar­ture to inves­ti­gate what inti­ma­cy is. In Brazil, motels are asso­ci­at­ed with infi­deli­ty and pros­ti­tu­tion, but actu­al­ly, the major­i­ty of peo­ple use them as a safe meet­ing point and often con­sum­mate their rela­tion­ship between those four walls for years. 

Ellis insist­ed on build­ing a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry rela­tion­ship with the cou­ples, whom she nev­er met in per­son. They could film them­selves with their own phones, which gave Eros its flu­id, some­times pre­car­i­ous aes­thet­ics. Accord­ing to the direc­tor, hav­ing that flux ​“affects the way we view images of inti­ma­cy and their trans­la­tion of it.” 

Gay, trans, and reli­gious cou­ples vis­it the same motel and the rooms become a stage for each of them, in a way. Sex work­ers, new lovers, and stood-up sin­gles film them­selves before, dur­ing, and after sex as their con­ver­sa­tions drift off into abstract realms, their bod­ies dis­en­twin­ing one limb at a time.

In her ​“unspec­tac­u­larised” look at sex and inti­ma­cy, Ellis locates ​“the need and desire [of these peo­ple] to be seen and heard, and also to say things that are polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant for them.” Tore Hallas’s short film You Are Clos­er to God When You Don’t Indulge pays close atten­tion to fat bod­ies in tableau-vivant ren­di­tions of sex­u­al acts, de-eroti­cis­ing the scene in one sense, and fur­ther affirm­ing queer sex­u­al­i­ty regard­less of shapes and sizes. A voiceover nar­rates aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal find­ings about fat­pho­bia and work­place bias­es, stern­ly and res­olute­ly over those breath­ing, entan­gled bod­ies immo­bile in their sex­u­al unity. 

How­ev­er, cin­e­ma does not nec­es­sar­i­ly require bod­ies to explore the mar­gins of nor­ma­tiv­i­ty. The exper­i­men­tal film My Want of You Par­takes of Me by Sasha Litv­int­se­va and Beny Wag­n­er (NEW:VISION spe­cial men­tion) abstracts the idea of shared author­ship through a metaphor that takes on a life of its own. By par­tic­i­pat­ing in med­ical research, the film­mak­ers gain access to what’s hid­den: their bod­i­ly inte­ri­ors. MRI scans of their two bod­ies expose what they arе made of, lit­er­al­ly mak­ing cin­e­ma out of the parts of them­selves that they nev­er get to see otherwise. 

The non­hu­man cam­era in anoth­er title, The Stim­ming Pool, co-cre­at­ed by the Neu­ro­cul­tures Col­lec­tive (a group of autis­tic direc­tors) and Steven East­wood, reimag­ines the film world as a neu­ro­di­verse space. A drift­ing, hybrid form cap­tured by an ​‘autis­tic’ cam­era dis­rupts the nor­ma­tive con­cept of life, expe­ri­enced by neu­rotyp­i­cals. Seek­ing respite from a hos­tile envi­ron­ment of stim­uli, The Stim­ming Pool fea­tures a cast of autis­tic actors and non-actors, and is shot cap­ti­vat­ing­ly on Super 16mm by Aftersun’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Greg Oke.

Test­ing the lim­its of bod­ies and their roles as pieces on a polit­i­cal chess­board is a fair ask of doc­u­men­tary and CPH:DOX shone a light on many con­tra­dic­tions that inform our being in the world. Its doc­u­men­taries — exper­i­men­tal, inves­tiga­tive, hybrid — inter­ro­gat­ed the many bias­es respon­si­ble for the idea of a ​‘nor­mal’ or ​‘ordi­nary’ body, against which the fes­ti­val selec­tion high­light­ed themes of auton­o­my (sought) and vio­la­tions (endured). While the films zoomed in the micro- and out to the macro-scale, CPH:DOX showed its com­mit­ment to real-world change by open­ing an equal access pop-up cin­e­ma for the dura­tion of the festival.

Between the self-fram­ing of the fes­ti­val as ​“a plat­form for depic­tions of real­i­ty rather than to solve con­flicts”, accord­ing to Engstrom’s speech dur­ing the award cer­e­mo­ny, the dai­ly vig­ils at Kun­sthal Char­lot­ten­borg, and the juries’ calls for imme­di­ate cease­fire, CPH:DOX played it safe. With its selec­tion, the fes­ti­val pro­motes demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues such as dia­logue and diver­si­ty, so its stance is not exact­ly neutral. 

But can the body ever be sole­ly a metaphor? Fem­i­nist and post­colo­nial thought posi­tion bod­ies and pol­i­tics of equal impor­tance, but there is some­thing deceit­ful­ly neat in the con­cept of ​‘body pol­i­tics’. Whose bod­ies? It is always the oppressed, mar­gin­alised, bod­ies deemed ​‘dis­pos­able’ enough to be a bat­tle­ground. As empow­er­ing as it may seem, politi­cis­ing the body in such metaphors can also have the oppo­site effect, to fur­ther com­pro­mise the bod­ies that are already under attack.

CPH:DOX 2024 ran from 13 to 24 March