Before saying goodbye to SXSW 2021, I'd like to shine a light on some of the documentaries presented at this online edition of the festival. As it happens, many of the most interesting films I saw from the selection were docs, specifically the sort of non-fiction cinema that functions as a portrait of the individual. At the very least, the sort that presents itself as such. From idiosyncratic political profiles to feats of music journalism, from straight biography to epistemological investigations, the filmmakers of SXSW showcased the possibilities of documentary portraiture…
To start things on a positive note, let's consider Keith Maitland's follow-up to the critically acclaimed Tower. Dear Mr. Brody tells of Michael Brody Jr., a 21-year-old millionaire who, in 1970, declared he was going to give away his inheritance to whoever needed money as a way to usher in a new era of generosity, of world peace. The ruckus such promises created was immense, the media making a circus out of the rich hippie's utopian reveries. However, everything died out in little more than a week, and no fortune was given to the needy of America. It all ended with the bitter taste of a scam, a game of fame gone wrong.
Eschewing a straight-forward examination of the news story, Maitland looks at letters as a way into Michael Brody Jr.'s outlandish life, his ideals, his folly. They were the thousands of letters sent to him and which remained unopened for decades. They were the writings of those who asked for money, some pleading for riches, other just for a little help. That's the fundamental misdirection of Maitland's doc. Instead of using the letters to merely illustrate Brody's impact, he uses the man as a way to explore the time he lived in, the America of 1970 as a tapestry of people in need.
It's not that Maitland isn't interested in Brody, but that he refuses to make his film into the story of just one man. There emerges a haunting image of the millionaire as someone whose worldview was irreparably warped by money, tormented by chronic lack of sleep, who wanted to help everyone but didn't know-how. Nonetheless, rather than being a cinematic hero or a villain, he comes off as just something more complicated. He appears as one more tragic figure in a tragic world, full of lost people trying their best to live their lives. Maitland's film increasingly becomes about those people and it's majestic to behold, full of rage and disillusion, a bit of hope too.
Some of the sadder passages of Dear Mr. Brody center the millionaire's family, mainly his son whose collection of unopened letters becomes of much interest to Maitland's camera. Another documentary portrait that finds an adult child grappling with a parent's complicated legacy is Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché. Directed by Paul Sng and Celeste Bell, the daughter of the titular figure. Born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, Poly Styrene was the lead singer of the British band X-Ray Spex.
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A punk and new wave icon, the musician's life story was marked by mental health issues, troubled motherhood, and radical rebelliousness. The film details this, basing itself on Bell's book Dayglo: The Poly Styrene Story to the big screen. Despite this origin, the flick in no way feels like an incomplete adaptation experience or a literary commercial. Part of it is how, like Maitland, they use their central subject as a way to analyze a time, a society, and how its people related to images and music, what their icons meant, and what they reflected.
Furthermore, the talking heads of so many similar docs are absent. While many interview excerpts are included, the voices are disembodied, even when the speaker is as or more famous than the singer. It's never about famous people reminiscing about a heyday of musical expression. It's not even about Poly Styrene, at the end of the day, but her effect and impact on the world, on the people she affected in some way, be it as a singer, an anti-establishment voice, a biracial celebrity that defied racial and sexist prejudices.
Only Bell gets to present herself as someone speaking directly to the audience, resulting in a fascinating reframing of the film, from a biographical study into her reckoning with the shadow of a mother who wasn't always a good parent. Despite this element of familial confessions, it's not a judgmental movie, nor one that insists on moralistic conclusions, preferring to remain a complex work of art, full of contradictions. Just like Poly Styrene, this documentary is not a cliché despite its affirmations to the contrary.
Part of the reason why Dear Mr. Brody and Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché are such thought-provoking exercises, is how they relate to other flicks with comparable aspirations. Gracie Otto's Under the Volcano is another music documentary and it too chooses to examine one person's legacy as a way to portray a kind of community growing around them. Instead of Poly Styrene, the focus here is producer George Martin who, between 1979 and 1989, had a recording studio between the Soufrière Hills of Montserrat, a Caribbean island blessed and victimized by an active volcano.
However, unlike I Am a Cliché, Under the Volcano, is obsessed with the glitz of celebrity. Its meditations are often sidetracked by the need to showcase all the stars of the story – Sting, Elton John, Duran Duran, etc. - whilst leaving crucial aspects unexamined. There's a colonial component of Martin's activity that's only vaguely insinuated, the political and cultural ramifications of the studios within Montserrat existing only at the margins of the documentary. It's beautiful, though, shrouded in the melancholy of loss, with a soundtrack full of iconic tunes from the 80s.
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes takes the matter of documentary portraiture into a different realm altogether. Director Caroline Cruz expands her previous short, about the electronic sound engineer behind the iconic Doctor Who, into a feature that intercuts traditional doc technique with dramatic re-enactments and a trippy aesthetic. Starring as Derbyshire, Catz conjures an intoxicating mood while shining a light on a music pioneer whose importance shouldn't be overlooked or forgotten.
I struggled with its inclusions of narrative elements, playacting, and workplace drama, thinking such passages constituted a crutch more than an interesting experiment. Still, certain facets shine bright with the same kind of creative ingenuity that marked Derbyshire's career. Recounting the story of the "unsung heroine of British electronic music", the filmmakers create an immersive soundscape in constant mutation, a look of tremulous period detail philtered through a psychedelic lens. While The Myths and the Legendary Tapes may not be a triumph, its approach to documentary portraiture still elicits curiosity when seen within the context of other SXSW titles.
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Kid Candidate shifts from the world of music to politics. Jasmine Stodel's feature follows Hayden Pedigo, an experimental musician from Amarillo Texas who made a Harmony Korine-inspired spoof about his local elections. The popularity of the video made him consider running for office on a platform defined by his youth and genuine concern for the community he calls home. There's great intimacy in Stodel's work, a clear proximity to her subject of study that doesn't necessarily benefit the documentary.
Sometimes, one feels as if the director should push further. At 67 minutes, the doc is too short for its themes, often calling attention to worthwhile avenues of discussion that it never pursues. There's a brilliant portrait of Amarillo happening on the periphery of Pedigo's electoral bid, a more collective-minded film than this one whose laser-focus on the titular Kid Candidate limits the scope considerably. One wonders what Wiseman could do with this same roster of real-life characters, this dissatisfied community, the supporters of this artist whose run for council is defined by a considerable degree of apolitical apathy.
Finally, there's another political doc whose makers could have gone further in their questioning, their examining of particular figures and the systems that mold their lives. Centering on Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who became a whistleblower calling attention to Russia's involvement in the 2016 US Presidential Election, the film is built around a conspicuous void. Still in prison, Reality Winner appears on screen as a Beckettian non-entity, someone everyone talks about but whose voice, whose physical presence, is pointedly absent from her own story.
There's a stark power to this cinema of absence that director Sonia Kennebeck seems unsure about. With plenty of talking heads, including Edward Snowden, as well as a vast collection of news footage, United States vs. Reality Winner often appears to be trying to avoid uncomfortable silences, complicated ambiguities, conflicting ideals. It resists and avoids these things in favor of a family's suffering in the aftermath of governmental wrath, an expected emotional note that nonetheless disappoints. For such a political story, it often reveals an unwillingness to confront politics.
Whether triumphant or miscalculated, all these documentaries are worthy of attention, all of them creating distinct strategies to the matter of portraying someone real on film. A tapestry of America, a matriarch's ghost, a compilation album, a conventional narrative, a political performance, an unavoidable absence – a sextet of documentary filmmaking that makes one reflect on the wonders, limitations, the present panorama of non-fiction cinema. Even if I had seen nothing else from the festival, such an offering would have made SXSW 2021 an event to remember.