Encounter a wealth of documentaries
Two of the world’s top documentary filmmakers — Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame) and the 2016 Guggenheim Honouree Werner Herzog — will show their latest work at the 18th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival.
More than 50 local and international feature-length and short documentaries by some of the world’s best will be shown from June 2 to 12 in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
In Where to Invade Next, Moore imagines himself as a one-man invasion force, travelling the world to find the best social systems and appropriating them to be the new American ideal. The film is described as “part travelogue, part idealist treatise” and, with Moore’s tongue-incheek documentary style, it is a provocative exploration of how to make “America great again”.
Herzog’s’s Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, which has just been premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, unpacks the billions of connections between people and machines around the world. With our lives so intricately connected to the digital world, Herzog’s exploration of these relationships creates an insightful history of connectivity.
Closer to home, this year’s festival features South African content from young documentary filmmakers making their Encounters debut with politically poignant work.
Opening the festival is Soweto, Time of Wrath, by six young Soweto filmmakers. Its snapshots from the streets of South Africa show a country worn down by corruption, which has left its people exhausted and angry.
But there are still those who believe that a better life is possible in spite of the problems they are facing.
The must-see of the festival is Cape Town director Nadine Cloete’s debut feature documentary on Ashl e y Kr i e l , Action Kommandant. Through intimate testimonies from his family, mentors, friends and the men and women who fought alongside the anti-apartheid activist and Umkhonto weSizwe soldier, Cloete explores Kriel’s life and his murder at the hands of the police in 1987.
Kriel’s story, which was cut short when he was killed at the age of 20, is a part of Cape Town’s struggle history.
Encounters also features new experiences such as Virtual Encounters and African Space — The Live Documentary.
In Virtual Encounters, Ingrid Kopp curates award-winning virtual reality, interactive and documentary video games. The exhibition includes a masterclass with Arnaud Colinart, the producer of Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness, which will be screened.
Africa Space — The Live Documentary is a collaboration between Encounters and Sound Africa. The performance is a form of live documentary based on audio recordings and original interviews with renowned astronomers and townspeople of the Karoo.
Mixed with live music and original poetry in a stage performance, the story about the construction of the giant Square Kilometre Array telescope is told in a new and original live documentary-style production.