Doc Corner: 'Blue Island'

By Glenn Dunks

Chan Tze Woon’s second feature is also his second about Hong Kong’s fight for independence. It follows Yellowing in 2016. Like many filmmakers working in non-fiction today, Chan incorporates actors and the process of moviemaking into Blue Island. This is a documentary that makes heavy use of recreations and performance, yet these are elements that are frequently weaved throughout rather seamlessly. It doesn’t always work, with some of Chan’s conceits coming and going at whim, but it becomes a smart choice.

For the story he’s trying to tell is one explicitly built around Hong Kong as an epicenter of street activism where one generation’s fighters have much to learn from those who came before. Where history becomes the present with far too much familiarity.

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Doc Corner: 'We Met in Virtual Reality' on HBO Max

By Glenn Dunks

I recently rewatched Steven Spielberg’s largely unsuccessful Ready Player One, a movie with many faults that are not relevant right now. But key to its failings is how completely uninterested in virtual reality it actually is. For all of its effort in setting up its admittedly rather awe-inspiring virtual world, it completely misunderstands (or, more likely, is just uninterested in exploring) why people would turn to such a space in the first place.

I thought of Ready Player One a lot as I watched Joe Huntings’ We Met in Virtual Reality, which is shot entirely in a VR landscape with all the boxy, hyper-coloured, anime-infused glory. This isn’t an action movie though. Rather, it’s a sweetly affecting documentary about online connections and the way some people feel more at home with a dragon tail and hooves than they do in the real world.

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Doc Corner: Sundance Winner 'Fire of Love'

By Glenn Dunks

There are three big reasons to see Fire of Love, preferably on the big screen if possible. The third I will get to later, but the first is the story. That of a couple who found themselves through the admittedly rather niche field of volcanology. There’s is one of mutual respect and adoration that I admired also for how much faith they granted the public to understand their world. You certainly don’t see that every day.

The second is the archive footage that makes up the entirety of its runtime. It’s a beauty and a truly wonderous, jaw-dropping visual spectacle.

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Doc Corner: Rebecca Huntt’s 'Beba'

By Glenn Dunks

That Beba is the work of a first-time filmmaker is both immediately impressive and also quickly apparent. There’s a maturity here that belies Rebecca Huntt’s autobiographical documentary portrait. It’s something that leaps out from its opening moments as flickering 16mm photography plays over poignant narration. “Violence is in my D.N.A.”, she says. “I carry an ancient pain that I struggle to understand.” It’s powerful stuff, but as it progresses, Huntt’s film finds itself swaying in the wind despite the really great stuff at its core.

That maturity is often balanced by selfishness that renders itself with a film that is unfocused almost as if by design. Huntt is a messy, complicated person; something that this movie impresses upon the viewer frequently. Whether it’s as a result of her family or society—most likely a strong dash of both—is something that the movie attempts to grapple with.

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Doc Corner: 'The Territory' at EarthX Festival in Dallas

By Glenn Dunks

The 2022 EarthX Film Festival is four days of film, music and interactive environmental programs and events set in the heart of Dallas Arts District, May 12-15. We were able to watch a couple of the titles including big ticket Sundance winner The Territory as well as Tigre Gente.

The first thing to notice in The Territory (tickets here) is its beauty. Filming within the Amazon rainforest will do that, of course. As will having a cinematographer for a director. But Alex Pritz’s first feature documentary as a director very quickly transcends whatever lush imagery is immediately front and center, bursting quite early with rage at the situation its Indigenous subjects are being forced to endure. New images emerge, those of burning and destruction and greed as those who live independently defiantly take protection of their block of land into their own hands.

This is an environmental film set within an increasingly small patch that—as the film begins—is the land of the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, provided under rights agreements with the Brazilian government. But the impending election threatens this life of serenity when anti-environmental rhetoric from Jair Bolsonaro threatens to bring chainsaws, bulldozers and forest burning to this idyllic slice of paradise.

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