SOMETIMES CITY / BEATING TIME /
A FUTURE WITHOUT OIL /
THE TILLMAN STORY
On Wednesday, March 16, 2011, as part of the 13th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, a press conference was given with the directors Tom Jarmusch (Sometimes City), Odette Orr (Beating Time), Laetitia Moreau (A Future without Oil) and Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story).
In Sometimes City, Tom Jarmusch presents a portrait of Cleveland, Ohio, the town in which he grew up. The film looks at the people, the scenery and the decay of the city, combining documentary with fictional elements and amateur video. “Through this film I learned many things about my city. I got to know people whose faces I knew, but whom I had never spoken to before, I went to places where perhaps I shouldn’t have gone to, I made new friends. So many that I don’t want to go back to New York”, said the director. Jarmusch wanted to give his film an amateurish look. “When I was younger I used to go to stores with used goods and discover super8 cameras, even in bad condition. I decided to do the same thing with the film. Many images are out of focus, but I decided to include scenes that were not technically perfect, because they expressed what I wanted to show”, the director said.
Israeli director Odette Orr spoke about her film, Beating Time, and her meeting three people who suffered from ALS. Avi, Nir and Dov struggled and managed to collect millions of dollars, and revolutionize research to combat the disease, even though their muscle paralysis increased. “I didn’t begin to make a film on people who were dying. The illness was not the focus, but human strength, the optimistic side of the issue. The documentary is about a spiritual approach to life”, the director said. “Avi, a post-graduate student at Harvard University prepared an action plan that began with the search for financing. The struggle was difficult and painful. Throughout the film, the question is: will they manage to beat time and be there for the first medicine? We didn’t expect to end all this important effort with a death. We had believed that the three of them would win this race. Unfortunately, one of the three died before we finished the film and I’m sorry I couldn’t show him what we show people today”, Ms Orr said.
In Laetitia Moreau’s A Future without Oil, we see the struggle of an Ecuador science team against oil interests. In 2007, President Rafael Korea announced that he would not exploit oil reserves in the Amazon for financial gain, as part of his country’s contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions. His decision marked the beginning of a struggle to sensitize people about the protection of the environment from drilling for oil. “We are talking about an area with the richest biodiversity on the planet. Scientists are trying to sell the idea internationally so that this source of oxygen can be protected. 20% of the country’s oil reserves are in the specific area and it is logical to consider it a great source of oil production”, Ms Moreau explained. The country’s president agreed to appear on camera, much to the director’s surprise. “Ecuador is a small and unstable country, so it is difficult for the international community to accept such a plan. Of course, a number of countries have been involved in the project to date. The Germans are enthusiastic supporters, while news is encouraging from Spain, Belgium and Norway”, the director noted.
Amir Bar-Lev, director of The Tillman Story, spoke last. His documentary presents the story of Pat Tillman, an American, who abandoned his career in American professional football in order to sign up in the Special Forces. When Tillman died in Afghanistan, the government tried to use his death as propaganda in favor of war, turning him into a symbol of patriotism and unshakable sense of duty. Bar-Lev’s documentary tries to shed light on the real events, as Tillman’s family speaks of them. “After September 11, there was much talk about a sense of duty. So this man had an absolute sense of duty, he was an emblem. When he died, many said that he was shot during an exchange of gunfire, they didn’t say his death was an accident, and so a distorted image was created and Tillman was turned into a caricature”, the director noted. It was hard for him to win the family’s trust at first. As he said, it took months to win them over and convince them to tell their own truth. “I didn’t want to make a film only on the life of this man. I see it as an intense anti-war film. The right has made these people into heroes, trying to cover up the violence of war. So my documentary is an anti-myth about war, an answer to those who glorify war”, the director concluded.
