While all of you were sunbathing or getting married or editing your docs (yeah, right), I was stuck in San Antonio watching documentaries on a laptop. Now, please, I don't need your pity. I know it sounds awful, but don't cry for me - I'm not worth your tears.
The first film I watched featured our own Sandy Stone from the RTF department in an era when her hair looked a little bit better but she was still just as sassy and verbose. Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities, directed by Monika Treut, a German native whose work has spanned across the narrative-documentary spectrum, presents a spectrum of its own. Featuring half a dozen or so characters in fairly standard talking-head interviews, Gendernauts presents gender identities and theories about gender and sexuality that are changing the way the world thinks about "men" and "women."
Sandy Stone's theoretical vociferations bookend these interviews, and she is presented as a sort of fairy godexpert, omniscient and omnipresent, able to talk about everything from MTFs, FTMS, boyz, butch dykes and everything in between. Some of the major characters in the piece include Texas Tomboy (pictured on the cover above), Annie Sprinkle (celebrated sex artist), Jordy Jones, Max Valerio and other gender-benders from the San Francisco Bay Area. Now, if you're looking for "interesting interview techniques," as our instructor has challenged us to do, this may not be the right movie, but if you just want to expand your understanding of gender and its infinite possibilities, Gendernauts might be the film for you. The incredibly provocative and inspiring characters make the otherwise by-the-book interviews exciting. This film is completely worth it just for the subjects and what they have to say. I guess that's the whole point of a good documentary, anyway. Right?
I too during spring break watch a documentary called, "Born Into Brothels" Honestly, I have to say that the story/subjects are very interesting. Which I strongly believe captured my attention to the point where I actually went into the extra features at the end of it. The story of the children are really touching and just seeing the kind of life style that they have, and how they struggling through everything bring anyone to tears.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I really like, is seeing that even though a lot of people could say, "with a little help this children can have a better feature" The documentary shows that there are a lot of obstacles that not only do they include laws, but also cultural bars, and on top of that, you have family problems. So all of this even gets narrow to the point of choice. As we see in the documentaries, most of the children decided to attend a boarding school but some stay at home, still they do not stop from dreaming of one day being something more than what they see in their everyday lives.
As far as cinematography, I have to say it has some really interesting shots. Something that sometimes I thought it was too much was the number of still shots, but then again, part of the documentary is about photography, so of course there has to be a lot of that. All I wish for would be for just a little bit less of it. They weren't too many talking heads which that is a plus. Overall, I will give it 4 out of 5 stars. Definitely keep it as a good reference.
http://enlightenblogs.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/born_into_brothels_lrg.jpg
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