UC Berkeley Documentary Professor Orlando Bagwell’s 10 Favorite Films

December 21, 2015

A respected and introspective filmmaker himself, Orlando Bagwell writes what made these pictures resonate: from life-affirming stories of race and justice, to art’s central role in society, to evocative treatments of love, redemption and often tragedy.

1. Searching for Sugarman is a great story of discovery and myth. This is a beautiful portrait of a humble, shy artist, whose voice had been lost. The film treatment never tries to advocate or convince; instead it uses an unfolding story of discovery and revelation as a way into a satisfying story of an artist who produced art, not for fame but for pleasure and meaning. Filmmaker Malik Benjelloul gave us a gentle, subtle example of humility and artistry, using a measured unfolding storytelling structure that constantly heightens our sense of discovery. It is a film that is dramatic and enormously satisfying. My only wish is that this beautiful filmmaker had lived to make many more stories.

å_2. Cutie and the Boxer is about the lives of two fascinating people who both live to be creative and make art. It is a story that affirms the urge to be life-long creative individuals as well as offering insight into the complicated nature of relationships and love. Filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling is stealthy in his ability to be a ‰”fly on the wall,” capturing two people who both suggest the most valued part of their lives is their privacy. Our access to these artists and their complicated lives as partners is a rare encounter with real life and aspirations. We love these people because we recognize their talent, but more importantly we love them because they help us recognize the complexity of love and genius.

3. Trouble the Water is an epic story of loss and redemption in a moment of our national history when a hurricane revealed our society’s complicated relationship with those in our country who are vulnerable and black. Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s film reports on a natural disaster and uses it to peel back the layers of race and inequality to force us to question whether ‰”all lives do matter” in America. ‰”Trouble the Water” allows us to recognize we do not respond to crisis because of what we have but because of who we are. This story is about love and responsibility, heroism and denial, but also about a lost city and its inability to embrace its lost people. It is a meditation on America when a natural disaster bares the open wounds of race, class and abandonment and asks us all, who matters? And whom would you save?

4. Born Into Brothels is a story of a world we rarely see. Armed with cameras, the prostitutes of Calcutta give us unbridled access to their lives. India is a land of contradictions–the beautiful colors of clothing and the exciting streets of it cities–the film lets us live in its beautiful chaos and energy. For many young women, although they dress in beautiful colors, poverty and economic inequality have long been a reality, and the world of the brothels is their only source of work and revenue. Giving cameras to these women enabled filmmaker Zana Briski to let us experience their lives in unexpected ways. The film is never judging, rather it allows realistic portrayals of lives we would normally never know, even if we’ve walked the streets of Calcutta and other cities. There is beauty in this film and dignity in its characters.

5. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is about the role of the artist in society. Alison Klayman”Ò producer, director, cinematographer–captures one our world’s most exciting and risk-prone artists. At a time when art and artists from China began to emerge on the international scene, the Chinese government still believed it could control its artists’ desire to be part of the international world of art and art criticism. Ai WeiWei confronts those who wish to control not only his voice but his ability to present his creative works around the world. His resistance to party leaders was met with a house arrest. Following this new dissident within the boundaries of his country, Alison captures Ai Weiwei facing imprisonment in his fight for free expression.

Although this is a story about China, it speaks to the never-ending debate about what’s appropriate and what is allowed as a work of art. Alison and her subject Ai WeiWei in the end make a film that reminds us that creative expression can often be confrontational and provocative. The film challenges us to consider the importance of the role of the artist in society. Should art challenge us consider its meaning and fight for our right to decide on our own its value? And most of all, it challenges our thoughts about ideas and about how art nourishes debate and discussion–and about the basic right to agree or disagree.

6. The Act of Killing “Ò Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer has created a meditation on imperialism and tragedy. What happens when international interests in other people’s lands become efforts to purge free expression and undermine security? In the mid-1960s in Indonesia the influence of outside nations encouraged a purge of oppositional political parties using violence and death as tools of control. The crimes were ignored by the rest of the world, and this film has now brought them to light and forced apologies from the countries that helped destabilize Indonesian society and cost the lives of close to a million people. The story focuses on one band of executioners, led by a man named Anwar Congo. The film is eerily beautiful but creates an uncomfortable awareness of the stories told by Anwar and his band of executioners as they re-enact their crimes and hide their guilt in drinking and their shared stories of national pride and service. It is a film that has an edge of uncomfortable acknowledgement that we are spending time with unrepentant murderers. Joshua allows us access to people whose stories we’d never have access to and uses his filmmaking skills to make a movie about genocide full of exotic scenes and unfiltered memories of a tragic moment when outside forces used people like Anwar to destabilize countries at the cost of human lives.

7. When We Were Kings directed by Leon Gast, captures the amazing personality and showmanship of fighter Muhammad Ali. There are personalities that emerge on the scene at moments when the world needs not just heroes but bold voices. Muhammad Ali, boxer, performer, social critic and ‰”beautiful man,” was one of the giants of the 20th Century. In Gast’s film he allows Ali to be his most passionate and eloquent self as he prepares to fight in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the heavyweight championship. The film is less about the fight as it is the psychological mastery of Ali as a phenomenal fighter as well as an engaging personality. It is a rare insight into a complicated and gifted icon of a generation, a people’s champion who enjoyed his fans, and a fierce boxer who used his platform as champion to speak his mind at a time when black voice was not heard in assertive and challenging voices.

‰”When We Were Kings” is an exciting film as well as a rare portrait of one of most entertaining and thoughtful athletes of our time.

8. Last Train Home “Ò Directed by Lixin Fan, this film takes the audience into the often chaotic and compromised life of Chinese migrant workers. A family arduously trying to make its annual pilgrimage home for the New Year’s holiday, it tells an epic story of a country in 2009 that was in rapid transition. The film allows the audience to travel with one family together with 130 million migrant workers, who make one of the largest annual pilgrimages to villages and family far from the new cities of commerce and jobs they’ve now sought for new factory work.

This is a story of generations and rapid change, as the parents, along with their children, fight the crowds, pushing and shoving for space, to make the long journey back to their home villages for the holiday. For the parents it is a statement of respect and home for a life now lost in the crowded cities; for the children it is regular forced misery as they return to places they hardly know nor care to identify as home.

Lixin Fan, through this epic story of human movement, challenges his audience to confront the complicated idea of a country long isolated and resistant to change, suddenly awakening to become, in almost warp speed, a first-world nation. This story of a family trying to hold onto past relationships becomes a symbol of the pace of change and a rapid move toward modernity in an ancient nation struggling to be a superpower and an economic force.

9. Hoop Dreams “Ò Director Steve James and Kartemquin’s film follows the story of two young African-American high school basketball players and their desire to become professional players. The story is an allegory of the limited space for realistic dreams for so many young African-American boys in our inner cities. It is a story that forces a deeper consideration of how our society defines possibilities for success to young black youth and the unrealistic idea of success that often guides the aspirations of inner city black youth as athletes and commodities. In it’s subtle
but focused treatment of two boys each seeking college scholarships to play basketball the audience is confronted with their limited possibilities for success and the narrow space they’re afforded for meaningful lives. The operative word is dreams, since sports offers space for success far more rarefied than they might achieve through rigorous academics, if opportunities were more equitable. The film forced its audience, in 1994, to consider the realm of false hope and the chronic failures of our education system for those most in need.

10. The Square “Ò Filmmaker Jehanne Noujaim takes us on a rare journey inside a peaceful revolution to transform Egypt and its leadership. In Tahrir Square, in the
middle of Cairo, a revolution took place. It was a people’s revolution and it captured the imagination of the entire world. Distributing cameras to activists and observers, Jehanne and her team gave us an uncanny front-row seat to a popular movement that sought to confront and change Egypt’s government and its freedoms.

Rarely are we, through film, able to live within change. Rarely do we have a chance to experience the many perspectives and concerns impacting how change happens. In The Square, we the audience are with the activists in their conversations and present in their demonstrations. It is an exciting example of 21st century filmmaking, where cinematic technology and crowdsourcing come together to provide a wide view of change unfolding before one’s eyes from many different perspectives.

The Square marked a new era of journalism and filmmaking. Using small cameras, it maintained its immediate and inside space within the movement for change while also finding characters that could help us not just observe but consider the multiple ways the movement had meaning for the Egyptian people. Never trying to offer a filmmaker’s point of view, it instead let us just be within a moment that we knew represented change. Believing in the drama of an unfolding story captured from multiple perspectives, the film did not try to define the meaning or impact of the changes but instead allowed us to observe and to allow others to inform our thinking. It was a new kind of film experience, a new language and genre that suggest an observational approach while always conscious of the discussion space where, as viewers, we can decide based on multiple perspectives and varied interests. It captured, in an intentional way, how real dramatic change is and gave us enough angles to internally question what we felt based, on what we saw and heard. It broke new ground in
cinematic and documentary storytelling and redefined what some would call ‰”an experience film.” As Jehanne said, ‰”It redefined my understanding of what was possible”_.”

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