FEATURE


Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mekong Hotel challenges notions of what constitutes a documentary The magic of realism


On the day of the Cannes documentary brunch, which Screen is sponsoring, Colin Brown reports how film-makers are reinventing the idea of a non-fiction feature film and how distributors are helping them with these hybrids


embodied in a mother and daughter. If this sounds like a typical behind-the scenes documentary about the shenanigans of a schlocky genre flick, think again. The 61-minute film, which takes place in a small hotel along the Mekong River as it threatens to flood, is directed by Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It comes with the same signature surrealist touches that have won him three Cannes festival prizes, including the Palme d’Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives in 2010. Once again, our notion of what constitutes a docu- mentary film has been challenged. Even the run- ning time defies conventions by falling outside the accepted scheduling norms for both cinemas and television networks. Weerasethakul, whose films have always


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explored the shifting boundaries between docu- mentary and fiction, revels in taking creative licence with the observational storytelling form. “I don’t think reality exists in the movies,” he


says. “One is just trying to capture moments and reconstruct them to simulate your view, your


n 22 Screen International at Cannes May 22, 2012


ekong Hotel, part of this year’s official selec- tion, concerns the making of a film about ancient flesh-eating spirits who are


understanding. Mekong Hotel is conscious of these layers and levels of distortion. So I think that it can be called a ‘documentary’ in a classical sense. It is a contemplation on making a fiction film.” Mekong Hotel is not the first documentary to


‘The big difference is the audience sees documentaries as theatrical


films now’ Andy Whittaker, Dogwoof Films


blend in elements of magical realism. It is one of a growing wave of non-fiction films incorporating stylistic choices more typically associated with nar- rative movie-making than with the detachment of cinema vérité. Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, another Cannes selection four years ago, broke new ground by using animation to reconstruct recent history; other documentaries have gone on to use every audience engagement trick in the cin- ematic playbook, from 3D and gonzo film-making to the contrivances of mysteries and thrillers. “Interest in documentaries, and especially


hybrid documentaries, is growing rapidly,” notes Tine Fischer, director for Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX International Documentary Film Festival. Fischer singles out cause célèbres such as The


Ambassador, the latest stunt film by Danish satirist Mads Brügger in which he poses as a decadent white diplomat in Central Africa, as well as Wim Wenders’ 3D performance film Pina, Michelangelo


Frammartino’s poetic meditation Le Quattro Volte, and Bombay Beach, in which Israeli-born film- maker Alma Har’el choreographed dance-fantasy sequences and inserted them into her chronicle of a Californian town teetering on the brink. If documentary storytelling has mutated, so too


has the method for getting those documentaries seen by audiences. There are as many new hybrid forms of documentary distribution as there are new strains of non-fiction expression. Documentaries have been dressed up for public


consumption in everything from traditional window treatments to simultaneous video-on-demand and theatrical releases and myriad digital-only distribu- tion strategies. It is a mix-and-match business with few hard-and-fast rules except maybe one: theatrical exhibition still finds itself at the top of the pyramid. Look at Denmark where cinema-goers nation-


wide flock to watch a title handpicked by DOX:BIO, a documentary film club affiliated with CPH:DOX, on the first Wednesday of every other month. These are screened simultaneously across more than 50 cinemas, followed by a live Q&A streaming event. “The audience attendance for 2011 surpassed all »


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