It would be tempting to suspect, after Exit Through the Gift Shop and I’m Still Here, that the documentary genre was entering a particularly disingenuous phase. Thank goodness, then, for two new works screening in the London Film Festival which assuage any concerns that the form has been hijacked by smart-arses.
Surely you won’t need any encouragement to seek out Pink Saris, the new film from the brilliant Kim Longinotto (Divorce Iranian Style; Sisters in Law). Its subject is Sampat Pal, an indomitable crusader who fights the corner of abused and downtrodden women from northern India. Teenagers abandoned by the men who fathered their children, wives beaten by their in-laws, child brides — these are the sorts of cases that Sampat Pal takes on with an elemental fury that is nevertheless tempered by wisdom and tenderness.
She talks, quite wonderfully, in boasts and slogans: “There is no higher power than woman”; “Who cares what the world thinks? It’s never helped us!”; “I am the messiah for women.” Oh, and: “I beat up a cop once.” File her alongside Bette Davis.
The picture takes its title from the jubilantly bright dress code of the Gulabi Gang, which comprises members of the “untouchable” caste whose rights are defended by Sampat Pal. Seeing them all crowded together at a wedding resembles an explosion at a pick’n’mix counter. It is Sampat Pal’s gossamer scarf, though, that sees the most active duty, mopping up the tears of women and men alike (and, on occasion, her own tears, too). She’s not perfect, as the film reveals, but her shortcomings only deepen her struggle for justice, and our understanding of it.
Should you miss Pink Saris at its LFF screenings, it turns up again next month at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, where Longinotto will be presented with the Inspiration award, celebrating “a figure who has championed documentary and helped get great work into the public eye”.
I urge you also to catch The Peddler, an Argentinian documentary that is one of the most disarming and compassionate films you’ll see all year. The set-up is deceptively slight: Daniel Burmeister, a 67-year-old, white-bearded amateur film-maker, stops in the town of Benjamin Gould to encourage its citizens to participate in a movie he’s making called Let’s Kill Uncle.
This is how Burmeister spends his life — settling in towns and villages for a month or so at a time, casting the inhabitants in one of the five or six films that he has in his repertoire, shooting the picture, then screening it for the delighted cast before moving on to the next stop on his journey.
If you could feed Day for Night, Ed Wood and Be Kind Rewind into a documentary-making machine, it might come out looking something like The Peddler. From the glorious auditions (well, they’re not really auditions — everyone is guaranteed a part) to the can-do shoot, and on to Burmeister’s DIY publicity campaign and finally the triumphant premiere at the town hall, this is a glorious celebration of community, imagination and the transformative power of film-making.
Burmeister describes his work as “handcrafted”, and the same evocative tag could be attached to the documentary itself. There may turn out to be better films in the LFF, but I’ll be stunned if there is anything quite so soulful.
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