In the past week, there has been speculation in the US media, as well as beyond, about the question: Who is going to make a documentary or a fantasy film about the Astroworld drama? Or better yet, who will be the first to sign up? After all, in this age of divided news channels and vod platforms, it’s not at all unusual to study a single topic or event through multiple lenses and wind up in multiple providers. So there’s a chance that thoughts about the tragedy in Houston that killed ten attendees at a rapper Travis Scott concert, will come out in various forms. Documentary filmmakers hover like vultures around drama.
Years ago at IDFA, the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival starting this week, I saw how many documentaries were partly filmed during protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2013 and 2014. They were all personal stories of people who lived there for various reasons. . A Chechen joined the uprising against President Yanukovych (who to some extent allied with the Russians by not signing an association agreement with the European Union); The eccentric Ukrainian who discovered an interesting plot wanted to express his displeasure on Independence Square.
The two men, from two different documentaries, never met each other. The cameras never crossed. Even though they ended up in the same places, it’s strange. However, some events have a magnetic effect on documentary filmmakers. For example, watch the films made around the Fyre Festival (a fancy festival in the Bahamas that turned out to be a muddy spoof): scam men (2019, Videoland) and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019, Netflix). Two different films essentially on the same topic with a great deal of overlap. The latter is inevitable. And there is no doubt that Netflix and Hulu (scam men Featured in the US on Hulu) They wanted their own view of the festival.
Another great example is Joe ‘Tiger King’ Exotic, who has been featured for years in documentaries about common people dealing with big cats. It’s interesting how the creators of Netflix arrived tiger king Picture him—as a brilliant but exhausted sympathizer—and how Louis Theroux portrayed him this spring: as a disabled person. It is clear that Theroux is not fond of excitement and excessive emotions. Theroux also hates bias and unfair suggestions. this is how it looks tiger king The Theroux documentary is completely different.
Fortunately, this plurality, as it is beautifully called, is still very much alive, and can be seen at festivals like IDFA. Indeed, it is not a bad development that tragedies are discussed from different points of view. Although Astroworld might also deserve the approach of Theroux, or Nick Broomfield, to name a few. A film by a documentary filmmaker that really tries to get to the bottom of the topic from a certain distance, rather than just looking for delicious and creamy tidbits. At a time when the line between documentaries and reality TV is becoming increasingly blurred, we desperately need people like these.
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