HARD TRUTHS WITH A HUMAN TOUCH
With the Academy Awards documentary shortlist announcement coming Feb. 9, here’s a look at four top contenders among the 215 f ilms that have qualified so far for competition.
‘ CRIP CAMP’
JI ML E BRECHT had a different relationship to summer camp than most kids. He was born with spina bifida and uses a wheelchair. “Many of us had gone to camps where we really felt infantilized,” he said. But Camp Jened was something else. “It was a utopia. They said, ‘ Hey, you’re a teenager! Let’s have a really good summer.’ ”
LeBrecht celebrates those summers, and the revolution they inspired, in “Crip Camp,” the story of the Catskills haven for kids with disabilities that, in the 1960s and ’ 70s, thrived with a counterculture spirit. The sound designer co-directs the Net fl ix documentary with film maker Nicole Newnham — his longtime colleague — and also narrates and shares the screen with campmates who carried the camp’s legacy forward, spearheading the disability rights movement.
The f ilm, which won the U. S. documentary audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and was executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, tells much of its story through archival footage. As Newnham explained, it’s used in such a way that as a viewer, “you become almost a camper yourself.” LeBrecht’s connection to the subjects also helps to prompt a rich candor from his old friends, interviewed as adults.
“There’s a history of our story being told in a way that really blows it,” LeBrecht said, “and people not getting it. But we had an opportunity to tell it from within the community, in our own voice, and people were really willing to speak truth.”
ABRACING CHRONICLE of the first four months of the COVID- 19 crisis as it erupts in Wuhan, China ,“76 Days” offers a crucial first draft of history from viral ground zero.
Hao Wu, a Chinese American documentarian, worked with footage shot by two Chinese collaborators, Weixi Chen and a co- director who remains anonymous, cutting together stories he found across scenes filmed in four hospitals. As medical teams struggle against overwhelming demands, the cameras f ind a soulfulness amid the apocalyptic ruckus.
“They show so much compassion and sensitivity about the people they’ re filming ,” said Wu, who came up with a very practical approach to editing the footage. “I tried to follow their lead, to showcase the common humanity even in such dire situations: how people live through their early fear and panic, how people still have a desperate need to connect, how they help each other to survive this together.”
The film’ svérité approach contrast s with the investigative tone of another recent pandemic doc, “Totally Under Control,” directed by Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger. Wu looked instead to the example of documentary legend Frederick Wise man, whoseim me rs ive films anatomize institutions through keen observation and canny editing. “I had to trust my emotional gut,” Wu said. “Everybody has a very strong and different emotional beat. That’s why despite their PPEs, the audience can keep track of them.”