Dream­catch­er

The time will arrive when doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing is con­sid­ered a legit­i­mate form of artis­tic endeav­our and not some two-bit fun­time annex which is easy because it doesn’t require any imag­i­na­tion. Then, the lol­ly-gag­ging cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers of the British film indus­try will dust the canapé scrap­ings from their flap­ping dick­ies and final­ly recog­nise the sub­lime achieve­ments of Kim Longinotto.

Here is a direc­tor who, for over 30 years, has remained dogged­ly focused on the top­ic of mod­ern fem­i­nism, its cul­tur­al vari­ants and the cal­lous strate­gies under­tak­en by (usu­al­ly) male oppres­sors to under­cut the sta­tus of women as equals. Her films don’t make mon­ey, they don’t pro­duce spin-offs, they don’t snag indus­try awards, but their val­ue tran­scends such sick­ly trifles.

To call Dream­catch­er one of her finest films would be a lie, as that would that it is supe­ri­or to great past works such as Divorce Iran­ian Style, Sis­ters in Law and Rough Aun­ties. It’s equal to those achieve­ments in terms of its nose for an issue or prob­lem rather than a con­trived ​“sto­ry”, its expert abil­i­ty to sin­gle-out ​“char­ac­ters” and the flu­id, com­pact nature of its structure.

The film doc­u­ments the grim tra­vails of one Bren­da Myers-Pow­ell as she scours the the Chica­go ghet­tos in her Dream­catch­er mobile, dis­pens­ing coun­sel, con­tra­cep­tion and a mod­icum of hope to the many pros­ti­tutes and abused women in the area. Once a sex work­er her­self, this, it turns out, is mere­ly one of a num­ber of pro-bono char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties she under­takes, real­is­ing that her coal­face Samar­i­tan work is only a short-term solu­tion. ​“We’re in the 21^st cen­tu­ry. We’ve real­ly got to move ahead now.”

Along­side head­ing-up con­fes­sion­al meet­ings at a women’s prison, Bren­da hosts after-school work­shops in which she attempts to com­mu­ni­cate to local teenagers – often through humour and song — what abuse is and how it tends to ruin lives. The heart­break­ing core of Dream­catch­er exam­ines the notion that, in these poor com­mu­ni­ties that have seem­ing­ly been left as self-gov­ern­ing barter towns by local author­i­ties, this top-down neglect has led to sex­u­al vio­lence becom­ing nat­u­ralised. The preva­lence of abuse is only part of the prob­lem — it’s the fact that young peo­ple have been con­di­tioned into think­ing that a rit­u­al­is­tic beat­ing or forced sex­u­al encounter is a rite of passage.

Longinotto’s rare skill is in that she makes advo­ca­cy doc­u­men­taries by stealth, espous­ing the work of cer­tain peo­ple and groups with­out ever hav­ing to explic­it­ly state the fact. She trusts her images and her sub­jects to speak for them­selves, and she also trusts the view­er to see what is in front of them and deduce accord­ing­ly. While she remains a silent cham­pi­on of altru­is­tic women, her films are about the gru­elling strug­gles of peo­ple who rail against a soci­ety in which their rights have needs are not under consideration.

There are extreme­ly haunt­ing moments in this film, and the extent of human suf­fer­ing depict­ed is at times almost unfath­omable. Yet as with Longinotto’s sim­ple, brac­ing­ly forth­right film­mak­ing mode, the solu­tion comes from rolling up your sleeves, pound­ing the pave­ments and tak­ing names.