Cinevegas day three: the emotional truth

New this year in the neon desert is the Pioneer Documentary section of the festival. At the top of the festival was LAST CUP a fun doc about the world series of Beer Pong. This was a smart programming move for Cinevegas as the premiere screening was filled with a boisterous crowd freshly lubricated form the adjacent casino floor. Even more synergistic was the post-film-Beer-Pong-challenge in the Festival Headquarters. Tables were set up offering festival attendees a chance to challenge the World Series finalists and, of course, drink lots of Busch Light.True athletes.



Another big documentary here was THE END. This is a fantastic documentary about East End London Gangsters, made by the daughter of one of these terrifying men. It’s a quite beautiful (all B&W) and articulate examination of these violent lives and (of course) the cyclical vortex they come from. There are fascinating and entertaining stories, of young bullied childhoods, and of social groups below struggling to reach out of the gutters. The men also speak articulately and well about the changing nature of the East End neighborhood. Also they speak of horrifying violent acts inflicted by them and their mates. The lingo and slang is one of the best things about this film and many of the subjects have subtitles helping to translate their English to English. The filmmaker gets incredible access and insight from her subjects, possibly as a result of her being the female child of their mate. However the probing nature of the film and its smart aesthetic choices make me feel confident that this director has many other successful projects ahead of her as well

The docs here in Vegas have been fantastic, but one of the best documentaries isn’t really a doc. SHE UNFOLDS BY DAY uses a hybrid form of filmmaking. Director Rolf Belgium cast his own mother as an elderly mother who is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s. The narrative is laid out in a loping, recursive style and the filmmaker keeps returning to shots of nature, spiders and bugs and particularly wolves. The wild nature surrounding us is then contrasted with the presence of the most appealing character in the film, a fox terrier named Jacques. This is a beautifully meditative story that reflects the emotional and deeply personal experience of living with a family member who is slipping through your fingers. While some scenes in the film are obviously staged and written, the film has more of a documentary core than a fiction one.

In all forms of storytelling, it is always more important to capture the emotional truth, even if that comes at the expense of some factual details. The docs in Vegas so far have this emotional truth in spades.