A new film fes­ti­val is putting mar­gin­alised peo­ple at the cen­tre of the conversation

Through­out the 21^st cen­tu­ry cities have been the epi­cen­tre of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion. Not only are they the places where cul­ture is being sold and con­sumed, but also where it orig­i­nates from. Urban moder­ni­ty has long func­tioned as a muse even for those artists who revolt against it. But with gen­tri­fi­ca­tion turn­ing West­ern cap­i­tals into unaf­ford­able theme parks for the afflu­ent few, will cities con­tin­ue to be the nat­ur­al habi­tat for filmmakers?

This com­plex ques­tion is raised by ​‘Frames of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion’, a new doc­u­men­tary film fes­ti­val com­ing to the ICA 20 – 27 April. As well as recog­nis­ing the ongo­ing evo­lu­tion of doc­u­men­tary as an art form, the cura­tors’ stat­ed aim is to ​“focus on the idea of the ​‘New Periph­ery’, and cinema’s role in bring­ing the exclud­ed and the else­where to the cen­tre of con­ver­sa­tion.” Of the select­ed doc­u­men­taries, not a sin­gle one is set in a met­ro­pol­i­tan area and the only city we get to see is a brand-new, unin­hab­it­ed one. Yet rather than a ​“new periph­ery,” these films evoke new cen­tres of con­tem­po­rary liv­ing, places where the most press­ing social changes are vis­i­ble. The quin­tes­sen­tial sci­ence fic­tion trope of an idyl­lic for­ti­fied city iso­lat­ed from its aban­doned sub­urbs is start­ing to become reality.

Com­mu­nal vio­lence, urban abjec­tion, aban­don­ment and iso­la­tion, as well as resis­tance – though not strict­ly vir­tu­ous – are some of the themes the fes­ti­val will explore. Trib­al­ism, war and its dev­as­tat­ing effects on the social body of com­mu­ni­ties and the minds of indi­vid­u­als is the bru­tal pro­tag­o­nist of both Rober­to Minervini’s The Oth­er Side and Fed­eri­co Lodoli and Car­lo Gabriele Tribbioli’s Frag­ment 53. While the for­mer fol­lows an ultra-lib­er­tar­i­an mili­tia in Louisiana get­ting ready to fight the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, which they are con­vinced is about to crack down on them, the lat­ter is set in Liberia in the lunar after­math of mul­ti­ple trib­al con­flicts. Both films clear­ly depict the total col­lapse of social struc­tures, which these wars by turns aggra­vate and thrive on.

To those who fight in them, wars pro­vide a fleet­ing sense of pur­pose and a per­ma­nent scar on their psy­che. In The Oth­er Side we meet a cast of trau­ma­tised vet­er­ans, social mis­fits who feel threat­ened by their own nation. The armed mili­tia offers a sense of belong­ing which the state sim­ply does not pro­vide. (After the recent Ore­gon stand-off the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an armed con­fronta­tion between the US gov­ern­ment and pri­vate mili­tias doesn’t seem far-fetched at all).

Frag­ment 53 pro­vides a sober­ing coun­ter­point to the fanat­i­cal enthu­si­asm of the mili­ti­a­men fea­tured in The Oth­er Side, which the direc­tor doesn’t embrace but frames instead with crit­i­cal if emphat­ic detach­ment. Com­posed entire­ly of inter­views with for­mer sol­diers, and pref­aced by an anni­hi­lat­ing home (war) movie, Trib­bi­oli and Lodoli’s film probes the eth­i­cal black hole that came as a result of the trib­al wars which shook Liberia. These fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ters from a real-life snuff movie dis­play a com­plete­ly warped moral frame­work, one they’ve had to adopt in order to make sense of a sense­less­ness war. Their blank, unset­tling stares pierce the lens. What we wit­ness here are the casu­al­ties and symp­toms of war, not the causes.

The human desert that war leaves behind is com­ple­ment­ed by the desert­ed towns in Zhao Liang’s Behe­moth and Bet­z­abé Garcìa’s Kings of Nowhere. The lat­ter shows the spec­tral land­scape of a town sub­merged by water and pop­u­lat­ed by ghosts, while the for­mer ends up in a pris­tine, unin­hab­it­ed city. Sit­ting at the oppo­site ends of con­tem­po­rary (under)development, these two films cap­ture the absur­di­ty of what we insist on call­ing ​“progress”. In Kings of Nowhere we glide over the ris­ing tide of cli­mate change, which has par­tial­ly drowned the vil­lage of San Mar­cos in North­west­ern Mex­i­co, and get to know the three remain­ing fam­i­lies who are refus­ing to dis­ap­pear along with their for­sak­en hometown.

Behe­moth looks at the destruc­tive might of the min­ing indus­try, which is com­pared to a bib­li­cal mon­ster devour­ing the Mon­go­lian prairies. As the moun­tains gush out iron and coal, suf­fo­cat­ing the work­ers that extract them, a hell­ish land­scape mate­ri­alis­es in front of us, shaped by the inhu­man inter­ests of tur­bo-cap­i­tal­ism. That this man-made dev­as­ta­tion amounts to a desert­ed new city only adds to the mad­ness of the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of our economies: growth at any cost.

The first edi­tion of Frames of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion film fes­ti­val runs 20 – 27 April at London’s ICA. For more info vis­it ica​.org​.uk. Read more of Gio­van­ni​’s writ­ing at cel​lu​loidlib​er​a​tionfront​.blogspot​.co​.uk and fol­low him @CLF_Project