Shot in Bombay
Director: Liz Mermin
Documentary
out of 5 stars

They Killed Sister Dorothy
Director: David Junge
Documentary
out of 5 stars

SXSW has so far scored on the documentary front. The two I’ve caught so far will be among the year’s more memorable independent film offerings, I’m sure. “Shot in Bombay” is a delicious documentary about the egos, madness, dangers, and delights of Bollwood moviemaking. Director Liz Mermin kept me hooked throughout her chronicling of the making of “Shootout at Lokhandwala,” a “based-on-fact” gangster movie. Mermin vivdly brings to life the culture of Bollywood moviemaking behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with superstars like Vivek Oberoi and Sanjay Dutt, who’s mired in a court-case controversy throughout the making of the film.

A lucky p.r. strike for Dutt is that the “Shootout” concerns events and persons closely related to the matters of his own court case, i.e. his stashing of weapons given to him by Bombay’s shady underworld figures. What I really loved was Mermin’s nose-to-the-grindstone approach to getting at the realities of Bombay moviemaking where there’s royal deference handed out to megastars like Dutt — who leaves and arrives according to his own personal schedule, leaving everyone on the set flabbergasted. The on-set frustration and the court-case scenario can feel repetitive after a while (and Mermin admitted in the post-screening Q & A that the film needs a bit of trimming), but, all in all, she’s come up with a rare and illuminating look at life on a Bollywood movie set that I think (hope) will be the first of a more incisive, intelligent, non-patronizing approach by Western filmmakers towards the realities of Indian moviemaking.

The other equally briilliant doc that we caught was “They Killed Sister Dorothy” by Daniel Junge. It’s really a courtroom drama involving the conspiracy behind the murder of a 72-year-old nun, Sister Dorothy, in the Brazilian Amazon. Her murder had everything to do with land-grabbing, the greed of ranchers and loggers, and the deforestation of the rainforest which Sister Dorothy was crusading against. With funds from the Brazilian government, Dorothy and her mission started the PDS — a program to allocate land to local farmers with the understanding that they will farm only a portion and preserve the rest in an effort at sustainable development. The issue in question is whether Sister Dorothy’s murder was a pre-meditated act by ranchers, anxious to expand their cattle-raising land, or if it was a impulsive act by a young man with a gun. It all boils down to a battle between the ranchers’ big-shot, sleazy lawyers and the state prosecutors, backed by Dorothy’s supporters (fellow missionaries, farmers, her younger brother) hoping to see justice served. What hit me right away about “Sister Dorothy” was Junge’s cinematography and editing. His doc is beautifully shot, and shrewdly edited for maximum emotional impact. Sure, maybe the defendants are sketched too broadly as “bad guys” but, in Junge’s defense, you can’t fabricate villains as colorful as these guys — they’re the picture of flamboyant, amoral evil just as the prosecutors are men and women of integrity and humility. You just can’t make this up, and the fact that these people and these battles are fought in the real world are proof of how documentaries can be just as riveting as the best made-up dramas out there.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 10:36 am and is filed under SXSW, Reviews, Festivals, Bloggers, Look! New!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.