Explor­ing com­mu­ni­ty at True/​False Film Fest 2019

So much of True/​False​’s suc­cess lies in its abil­i­ty to engage the com­mu­ni­ty around it, offer­ing a new­found per­spec­tive on what a fes­ti­val can look like and what it means to exhib­it films beyond the realms of prizes, fast grabs by dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies and red car­pet premieres.

Locat­ed in Colum­bia, Mis­souri, True/​False is a place of com­mu­nion. The feel­ing of fel­low­ship always sweeps over me when catch­ing up with film­mak­ers and oth­er crit­ics in the Rag­tag Cin­e­ma, or hear­ing about the lit­tle towns that pop­u­late greater Mis­souri from which vol­un­teers have come to help make the most of your expe­ri­ence. Home, com­mu­ni­ty and place loomed large on my mind – pri­mar­i­ly because two of the best films that the fes­ti­val had to offer this year dealt with these ideas head on.

Chez Jolie Coif­fure by Rosine Mbakam begins with the film­mak­er being accost­ed for record­ing out­side of the hair braid­ing shop the film takes place in. She’s ush­ered back inside by Sabine, the sub­ject of the doc­u­men­tary. This sets the tone for the hos­til­i­ty aimed at Sabine and her patrons at the shop: a com­mu­ni­ty of African migrants in Bel­gium, all of whom are hus­tling to stay alive. Sabine is the matri­arch of the shop, giv­ing advice to the lovesick man who sells giz­zards and des­per­ate­ly wants his wife to come home.

Mbakam’s cam­era becomes a tool for Sabine to wield pow­er and own­er­ship over her work­place, which is a safe haven for her and so many. We often see white onlook­ers peer­ing into her shop, treat­ing Sabine and the oth­er peo­ple in ​“Lit­tle Africa” as if they were ani­mals in a zoo. Sabine tells Mbakam to turn the cam­era on them in the hope they’ll go away.

“White peo­ple aren’t your friends, mama,” says a woman in the shop, a mem­ber of the sou-sou Sabine both par­takes in and recruits peo­ple into. They’re dis­trust­ing of banks, a sym­bol of the insid­i­ous ways white suprema­cy has stripped them of access. They rely only on one anoth­er to cre­ate net­works of mon­ey and hous­ing. It’s a means to stay afloat beyond the hair braid­ing, sew-ins and wigs, which isn’t a guar­an­teed source of income when peo­ple are steal­ing your clients, or when the Bel­gian gov­ern­ment is deport­ing migrants back to the coun­tries from which they fled.

It’s a sto­ry that could eas­i­ly be told in reverse, cen­tring Bel­gium and white­ness and coloni­sa­tion. In not doing so, Mbakam pass­es the mic to a com­mu­ni­ty we’ve long read about in the news, slow­ly doing the work in real time to win the trust of her sub­ject as not to dilute their voice. She’s sim­ply there to doc­u­ment; they do the rest. Sabine recounts the sto­ry of her migra­tion twice. In the begin­ning, she does so in the third per­son, as if speak­ing of a dis­tant relative.

Towards the end of the film we realise the ​“she” in ques­tion is Sabine her­self, who endured hell and high­wa­ter to secure some sem­blance of a future in a coun­try that refus­es to grant her asy­lum, putting all she’s worked to build in jeop­ardy. Mbakam too becomes a char­ac­ter in her film, a sort of guardian angel who is able to doc­u­ment what is going on, and an advo­cate for Sabine long after she shuts her cam­era off.

Mid­night in Paris, direct­ed by Roni Moore and James Blag­den, is named for the theme of the 2012 prom at Flint North­ern High School. It begins rough­ly a week before the big occa­sion, as the high school seniors scram­ble to find dress­es and finalise dates. The first thing that is like­ly to come to mind about Flint is its water cri­sis, per­haps some­thing about crime rates. But this film is not about any of that. It doesn’t seek to pathol­o­gise or decon­struct what it means to be a black teen on the precipice of adult­hood. It shows kids being kids, which is refreshing.

One mem­o­rable scene fol­lows a girl on her way to the beau­ty sup­ply. She has her grad­u­a­tion cap on, and although she’s yet to walk the stage, there’s no doubts she’s going to. It’s a pride­ful dis­play of an accom­plish­ment she’s worked hard for and wants peo­ple to take notice. We see her pick out the hair she’s going to wear to prom and lat­er in the process of get­ting it done – going for a Kar­dashi­an-esque look. On its sur­face, it’s a sim­ple moment of prepa­ra­tion before the big night, but it sin­gle-hand­ed­ly embod­ies the bril­liance of the film.

Mid­night in Paris is not root­ed in the famil­iar, exploita­tive approach to non-fic­tion films about com­mu­ni­ties like Flint. When the direc­tor (off-cam­era) asks if the girl is going to be like, ​“Kim Kar­dashi­an with the yaki,” and she laughs, it exem­pli­fies an under­stand­ing that only two peo­ple from the same place could have. Hav­ing bought my own pack hair pre-prom in search for a deep mid­dle part Kar­dashi­an moment myself, it’s a moment I deeply appreciated.

This idea of entrench­ing your­self in one’s com­mu­nal sur­round­ings and telling a sto­ry with no heavy-hand­ed objec­tives per­me­at­ed the festival’s pro­gramme. Slice-of-life cin­e­ma made by a mem­ber of a spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, for that spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, will always be of more val­ue than the macro approach to issues of race, class and gen­der so typ­i­cal of doc­u­men­tary. We ben­e­fit more from authen­tic por­tray­als of peo­ple that aren’t defined by the cir­cum­stances they live with­in, who can just be regardless.

True/​False became a space for me to immerse myself in the work of inge­nious film­mak­ers cre­at­ed out­side the con­fines of the com­mon ethno­graph­ic gaze we so often see, seek­ing only to tell the truth.

For more info on True/​False vis­it true​false​.org