A work and war in progress

Sagrada No Fire Zone

Creation and destruction both get their due at the Bloor Hot docs cinema in Toronto. As you might expect, the former is easier on the eyes, but the latter strives for importance.

We’ ll start with the easy one. Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation details the ongoing construction of one of the longest-running building projects in history; the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona. Writer/director Stefan Haupt explains that the foundation stone was laid on March 19, 1882, with an expected completion date of 1900.

However, lack of funding, two world wars and decades of despotism flung the finish ever further into futurity. Architects and planners now toss around dates in the late 2020s, but they sound hopeful rather than committed.

even partially complete, the cathedral is a masterpiece. Its dark, perforated spires tower above the low-rise neighbourhood that surrounds it. Originally conceived by a Catalan bookseller, it became, a year into its construction, the life’s work of famed architect Antoni Gaudi, who lived in it during his last year of life, and remains the only occupant of its crypt.

Following in Gaudi’s footsteps isn’t easy. One sculptor did so fervently, reading everything he could find on the man, and eventually going so far as to convert to Catholicism. Another admits his style is nothing like Gaudi’s, but hopes it will complement the existing aspects of the cathedral.

Haupt never answers the “why now?” question of this documentary about a work in progress. (The cathedral should have been called Our Lady of Perpetual Construction.) We learn that Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the building in 2010, and that more recently its proponents are concerned that an underground highspeed rail link will disturb its 19th-century foundations.

And on that note, destruction. No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka discusses human rights abuses of ethnic Tamils by the government of the South Asian island nation during the last days of the country’s civil war in 2009.

It’s a remarkably one-sided story, given that the armed Tamil Tiger group were hardly lily-white participants in the conflict. A Human rights Watch report from 2009 denounces their use of civilians as human shields, and demands they cease killing those who try to flee from Tamil-held areas.

But the Sri Lankan government clearly has to shoulder some blame for creating a “no fire zone” and then shelling those within it. director Callum Macrae even presents evidence that the government used the GPS location of a hospital — given out so belligerents would know where not to shoot — to wipe out already-- wounded civilian refugees.

This is not an easy film to watch. Macrae has sifted through hours of amateur video to present chilling images of the fleeing, the wounded and the dead. Some of this is channelled through the recollections of Vany Kumar, a Tamil Sri Lankan native who left the country for england at age 9 but returned, unfortunately, just as the war exploded.

No Fire Zone is an important document, but its refusal to paint the Tamils as anything other than victims weakens what should be a powerful and damning argument. To prove one side in a conflict guilty of war crimes, it isn’t necessary that the other be wholly innocent. There can be gradations of guilt, and Macrae would do well to acknowledge this messy facet of war.