Kept in the Dark

Pale and overwhelmed, my wife and I stumbled from the theatre after two full days and nights of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. This is not for sissies. I've seen a lot of good film making and some very stimulating subjects but for now I will just highlight a couple.

The very first film, called Into Eternity, left a real impression. It concerns the efforts of the Finns to bury their nuclear waste 500 meters deep in a bedrock cavern they are now blasting out. The cinematography is very Kubrick- SpaceOdyssey as is the ethical question at the heart: What marker do we leave behind for a civilization 10,000 years from now that comes across the tunnels? How do we say; do not explore as we did, the mess we left behind is incredibly dangerous?

As someone writing a novel partially about the Palestinian immigrant experience, I found Corner Store an interesting exploration of the hot topic of multi-culturalism. It also made me a little homesick for San Francisco!

The Sea is a Harsh Mistress is a good meditation on something that came up in the last thread, utopianism. It turns out Milton Freidman's grandson wants to build a sovereign nation in the middle of the ocean somewhere, a nation where a pure free market would create a pure freedom. Every libertarian-Communitarian of every stripe should watch it.

Then I watched To Catch a Dollar:Muhammad Yanus Banks on America, about the Grameen Bank's attempt to adapt it's program to conditions in the US of A. This is another well meaning utopian vision, using capitalism to lift it's victims out of poverty and dependence. The film follows the struggles of dedicated activists to transplant this movement, so fraught with contradictions,and does a good job complexifying the issue.

Of course the film Cultures of Resistance filled the theatre. Missoulians pride themselves on their concern for "social justice", but unfortunately it was a tourist-eyed view that left you just as confused about "What is to be done?" as when you walked in. Peace, Love, and Unity T shirts sold like hot cakes but the opening scene, where a group of indigenous from the Amazon attacked a Brazilian energy Minister with machetes at a meeting shook the audience a bit. ( he escaped in his limo with one deep cut and a new understanding)

The last film was Hey Boo: Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird which I highly recommend, both for content and excellent film making. If you are only going to write one book, make it a doozy.

It is back again tonight for winners of the Doc Challenge (make a film in six days!) and a film about Harold Louis "Doc" Humes made by his daughter. We are lucky to have this excellent Festival here in the Mountain West.