Explore life in the mar­gins at the 18^th Doc­u­ment Film Festival

The Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val may have once been the fore­most event on the Scot­tish film cal­en­dar, but it has had strong com­pe­ti­tion in recent years. Depend­ing on the form and shape you pre­fer your mov­ing images to take, Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val, Glas­gow Short Film Fes­ti­val, Africa in Motion, Scot­tish Queer Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and Alche­my Film & Arts all have plen­ty to offer. Not to be over­looked is Doc­u­ment Film Fes­ti­val, an inde­pen­dent fes­ti­val which has offered a qui­et­ly impres­sive pro­gramme since its incep­tion in 2003.

Described by pro­gramme pro­duc­er Sam Keny­on as a fes­ti­val sit­u­at­ed at the ​“inter­sec­tions of pol­i­tics, cin­e­ma and human rights,” Document’s remit is ​“to explore how film and media shape our under­stand­ing of the world.” Estab­lished in part to ​“coun­ter­act the neg­a­tive and unbal­anced cov­er­age of migrant and Roma com­mu­ni­ties [in Glas­gow],” the fes­ti­val has always looked to draw con­nec­tions between human rights issues and mov­ing image cul­tures, plat­form­ing ​“peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions involved in vital human rights work” while still ​“encour­ag­ing crit­i­cal engage­ment with visu­al media.”

One of the main ways they do this is through an events pro­gramme cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with local arts and activist organ­i­sa­tions. These events ​“con­tex­tu­alise the themes run­ning through the film pro­gramme,” explains Keny­on, offer­ing ​“a chance for audi­ences to be involved in a more sus­tained and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry way.” This year, the festival’s reach is a lit­tle wider than usu­al. As well as a mas­ter­class with Ukrain­ian direc­tor Iry­na Tsi­lyk, they have per­for­mance based events with So May­er and Kevin B Lee, nei­ther of whom are local. A crit­i­cal forum will also link them up with oth­er human rights ori­en­tat­ed film fes­ti­vals world­wide, whilst a screen­ing and sem­i­nar led by film­mak­er-researcher Ed Webb-Ingall focus­ing on the use of video in response to the hous­ing cri­sis will bring mat­ters back to Glasgow.

The films select­ed also try to bring var­i­ous things into col­li­sion, draw­ing upon issues occur­ring around the world rather than just in Scot­land. ​“We like to view the medi­um of art or infor­ma­tion as a real­ly impor­tant aspect of how we under­stand mate­r­i­al issues,” Keny­on says. ​“So we’re par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in films that bridge these two con­cerns, shin­ing a light on impor­tant issues whilst explor­ing or acknowl­edg­ing the pow­er dynam­ics, ethics, and aes­thet­ics of storytelling.”

The films select­ed for their 2021 pro­gramme fit this aim, favour­ing com­plex polit­i­cal or for­mal con­cerns over the sim­ple pro­vi­sion of infor­ma­tion. Films like Amel Alza­k­out and Khaled Abdulwahed’s Pur­ple Sea, Emi­ly Jacir’s Let­ter to a Friend, Chloé Gal­ib­ert-Laîné and Kevin B Lee’s Bot­tled Songs project, for instance, all sub­vert the straight epis­to­lary for­mat, speak­ing about its spe­cif­ic issue (migra­tion, the Israel-Pales­tine con­flict, and online extrem­ist media, respec­tive­ly) using dif­fer­ing video let­ter based for­mal devices.

Anoth­er high­light, Kod­wo Eshun and Anja­li­ka Sagar’s essay film INFIN­I­TY Minus Infin­i­ty mix­es dance, per­for­mance, music, recital, and dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion to con­vey its mes­sage, which expres­sive­ly details the entan­gle­ment of racial cap­i­tal­ism and the con­tem­po­rary cli­mate crisis.

The pro­gramme is also, as Keny­on notes, decid­ed­ly small scale, fore­ground­ing ​“inti­mate and every­day expe­ri­ences” and per­son­al nar­ra­tives instead of films made to trail news sto­ries. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of Miko Revereza’s No Data Plan, in which the film­mak­er mus­es, whilst trav­el­ling by train, on what it means to move through space when every move­ment made pos­es a con­sid­er­able risk. Sim­i­lar­ly, Truong Minh Quý’s sci-fi inflect­ed non-fic­tion film The Tree House expands beyond its small scope, qui­et­ly and cre­ative­ly detail­ing the mem­o­ries and lives of a num­ber of peo­ple in Viet­nam by adopt­ing the per­spec­tive of an alien vis­i­tor look­ing in on these mar­gin­alised communities.

Small­er pro­grammes like this offer a chance to put togeth­er some­thing cohe­sive, with a selec­tion of films that speak to each oth­er. One of the key threads run­ning through Document’s 2021 pro­gramme, ​“is to do with how film and media medi­ate per­cep­tion at moments of rup­ture or emer­gency,” Keny­on says, describ­ing how this year’s films fit togeth­er. ​“We want­ed to put togeth­er a pro­gramme that speaks, at least indi­rect­ly, to this crazy moment we’re liv­ing through and to look at ways in which film and media can be a tool for dis­rupt­ing the dom­i­nant infor­ma­tion flows that often silence or erase people’s lives and expe­ri­ences in the wake of crisis.”

They do this through a selec­tion of films that offer unortho­dox angles into their sub­ject of choice, often favour­ing a mar­gin­al voice over the one that would usu­al­ly be made cen­tral. ​“I think a typ­i­cal Doc­u­ment film asks the audi­ence to par­tic­i­pate quite active­ly in the process of mak­ing mean­ing, rather than being pure­ly infor­ma­tion­al,” Keny­on says. ​“Every now and then we toy with the idea of not real­ly using the word ​‘doc­u­men­tary’ because it’s maybe too much of a short­hand for objec­tiv­i­ty, where­as we want to show films that real­ly explode that idea and take us some­where real­ly inter­est­ing in terms of dis­cussing truth, real­i­ty and storytelling.”

The 18^th Doc­u­ment Film Fes­ti­val runs 25 – 31 Jan­u­ary. For more info vis­it doc​u​ment​film​fes​ti​val​.org