On Documentaries

We had some technical difficulties today, a projector went down and had to be replaced temporarily with an older one until we can get a replacement tomorrow. In the midst of all this I sat down in theater 1 and caught the end of Warrior Champions... and forgot all my troubles.

I was reminded that while we strive for better and better quality projection, you could project a great documentary from a crappy old VHS tape onto a cardboard box and still sit there with tears running down your face watching it.

At the very first festival I remember showing up at a screening amid some kind of flurry of activity and discussion up in the projection area. The film was a 16mm print, a French film about the men who climb rickety bamboo lashed together, hundreds of feet in the air into enormous caves opening to the ocean in China, to gather birds' nests for soup.

The problem? A 25fps print, the european standard, threaded onto a 24fps projector, the US standard. It will load and run just fine, but the frames don't line up and it looks all streaky because the film is pulled down into the gate at the wrong time. In the US, even then, a 25fps 16mm projector was extremely rare. So the decision was made to just go ahead and screen it anyway.

Even with the viewing challenges, the film was absolutely stunning, and I was hooked on documentaries. I left with a strange feeling, as if my life had gotten brighter, fuller.

Today, all these years later, as I watched and listened to the Renaud brothers taking questions after the screening of Warrior Champions, I wondered who might be there in the Malco for their first time, transfixed by this wonderful experience and feeling their heart expand in their chest and their head reeling with thoughts and emotions. Brighter. Fuller.

Welcome. You are one of us now. See you at the festival.