by Stacey Osbeck

This year's DOC NYC festival streams online so you can binge-watch the newest, most insightful films from the comfort of your own couch. Usually, documentaries explore a niche area that most people don't know about and often delve far deeper than the average news source. So far in the fest, I’ve come up with these capsule write ups to convey a good sense of a flick without giving away the good stuff. I’ll be bringing a similar, follow-up piece for the remainder of the films I’ve seen. The 2020 DOC NYC festival runs from November 11-19. 

Lost in Face 

At my workplace, which encompasses a city block and ten floors, I need to remember an extraordinary number of faces. Of course, with those I see every day it’s a cakewalk. But now with everyone masked up, there are days I’m engaged in conversation that the person clearly knows who I am, but I’m pretending. Given this new normal, I was especially drawn to Valentin Riedl‘s feature documentary Lost in Face, about Carlotta, a German visual artist who can’t see or remember faces. 

Carlotta’s case of prosopagnosia, or face blindness, lies on the extreme end of the spectrum. As a child she would wait outside with the family dog while her mother did the shopping and unfortunately, often enough, followed the wrong lady home. Looking at old photographs, she can tell people apart because she remembers their clothing. However, when watching a movie, where she naturally doesn’t know the wardrobes of the characters, it becomes nearly impossible to follow the plot. When Carlotta wakes up and looks in the mirror, she sees a woman wearing her nightgown, standing in her home and reasons—it must be me. 

She gives insight into how one navigates a faceless world. For instance, everyone has their own soundscape, their breath, how they walk. The filmmaker comments when he thinks of someone, he thinks of their face. She admits she can’t imagine what that might be like. This documentary is a compelling look into Carlotta’s struggles with face blindness, the loneliness that stems from it as well as the art. 

Summerwar 

Director Moritz Schulz presents Summerwar , which follows Jastrip, a boy with an unstable home life, and Jasmin, who is clearly daddy’s girl, at a nationalist summer camp financed, in part, by the Ukrainian government. Some see this training as too far right and militarized. At first, I was like everyone needs to lighten up. This is fine. Sure it’s strict, but plenty of kids go to military school and this is camp, it’s still summer and they get to play outdoors. Sure they’re drilled in tactical training, but plenty of companies pay good money for the same type of stuff at team-building, paintball outings. The kids engage in good physical exercise, build comradery, I mean truly everyone there gets called ‘comrade’. 

The shift starts with the slow draining of camp style fun. While at the same time, what’s really going on incrementally unfolds. As they meticulously sift through the campers’ few possessions, a smuggled knife turns up. The physicality gets more and more intense. Their military sweeps include throwing fake grenades. Young children learn to assemble real machine guns. Punishment is a threat thrown around frequently. They swear to fight and die for Ukraine. 

More chilling still, are the brief slips late in the film. Two campers start singing a song in unison about burning Moscow to ruins and are shushed by a third who points out the camera. Another time, boys sign each other’s yellow tee shirts. One draws a symbol that another quickly covers with his hand and then flings the shirt behind the cameraman, instructing someone to get it out of there. Even with all we are privy to, there is still another layer the children have been instructed not to reveal in front of the cameras. Anyone who likes the insidious build of Black Mirror will take to this doc. Just keep in mind, unlike your favorite thriller, what happens in Summerwar is real. 

Smog Town 

Langfang, just outside of Beijing, has one of the worst air pollution problems in China. Director Meng Han’s Smog Town, follows the task force charged with quickly rectifying the situation. When I think of air pollution, I think of the atmosphere above, clouds, the horizon. Langfang is far past that. The worst days see roads almost undrivable with sooty hovering haze at ground level. Low hanging smog clouds visibility at a train station to the point where it becomes impossible to tell if anyone stands at the other end of the platform. It’s clear why ‘blue skies’ is a goal and a hope echoed throughout the film. 

They push behind sheet metal gates to small manufacturers, some with as few as ten employees, and close down operations using spray paint, glue or anything that emits toxic vapors. The head of the Langfang team saunters in each time relishing the task. However, many of these small factories are just trying to eke out a living in this new industrialized China, as are their employees. 

Coal is a huge contributor to pollution because common people can’t afford greener methods. One of the officials admits that he too uses coal due to the cost of gas. Fallow land, with loose dirt which can kick up into the air, continually gets wet down or the owner must pull green plastic netting over it. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’re already watering the earth or using manpower to lay plastic mesh couldn’t they just throw some grass seed out too? The grass would absorb carbon dioxide and the roots will hold the dirt down. Drone footage over miles of green netting exemplifies the main problem. There are no big picture plans, only the immediate. 

In the absence of financially viable alternatives, coal remains many people’s only option. Without government intervention for sustainable green businesses, practices won’t change. Often, when the task force shuts down an operation, two months later it’s popped up elsewhere. So they seem caught in an unending game of whac-a-mole with the losers being people’s health and the environment.

Check out these films at the NY Doc Fest - available to watch November 11 to 19 - more information here.