The report of the Dirk
Vandersypen Award jury 2006
by Frans Lefever
I have had the pleasure of being present at the five
presentations of the Dirk Vandersypen Award and being a
member of the jury for the last three years. It is
encouraging to observe that the number of contributions and
the quality of the productions have risen year after year.
It is noteworthy that again this year the majority of the
32 contributions were by film-makers from Europe, Canada
and the United States. This of course demonstrates the
continued interest and engagement people have here for
Latin America. Another important factor is that we here
benefit from a good financial and production
infrastructure. In Latin America audiovisual artists often
lack even the most elementary form of organisation. They
are therefore less present and visible in the international
circuit. The Dirk Vandersypen Award therefore itself goes
to great lengths to try to locate these documentary makers.
This is no easy task.
In all these years the Dirk Vandersypen Award has not
changed much with respect to content; the dominant themes
are still injustice, poverty and repression, and the
reaction to these issues ranging from resignation to
resistance. Immigration is also a theme that we are seeing
more and more often in many of the entries.
But more than before, hope and optimism are present. The
documentaries also now tend to often have a more or less
‘happy ending’.
The jury did not take the means that were available for the
productions into account; some documentaries are
large-scale productions, others are low-budget. But this is
not considered to be relevant in the actual selection. What
is relevant is whether the productions were original or
innovative, or whether they evoked strong emotions or gave
us food for thought - but we always considered the entries
against the backdrop of how Dirk himself had approached the
poignant issues: the fate of the individual, a portrait of
the man or woman of the street in a broader political,
socio-economic context.
Also noteworthy is how new technologies and the development
of modern lightweight cameras have changed how documentary
makers go about their work: more and more you see
filmmakers doing their own camera work, and they do the
sound themselves as well. This increases their engagement
and intense involvement with the subject matter.
The three contributions that were finally nominated all
demonstrate different subject matter and styles, and they
are situated in three different Latin American countries.
This alone illustrates the richness of the selection this
year.
The second runner-up is THE DEVIL’S MINER, by
the American Kief Davidson and the Austrian Richard
Ladkani. They went to Potosi in Bolivia to show
how children risk their lives every day in the silver mines
of Cerro Rico.
This is not the first documentary that has been made of the
mines of Cerro Rico – which have been exploited - and
exploiting if you will - for all of 450 years, and which
have cost the lives of 80 million people. But there is
something very exceptional about this film. It
distinguishes itself by its focus on a religious theme; the
mine workers are entangled in a bizarre religious conflict:
above ground they revere God, underground the Devil.
Another paradox of this film is the harrowing life in the
mines compared to the positive hope of a future.
The runner-up ROMANTICO by the American Mark
Becker is a different kind of production entirely.
It is a story about illegal immigration. The film is
divided into two parts; first we follow the lives of
Carmelo and his friend Arturo who eke out a survival as
mariachi street musicians in San Francisco. They
barely make ends meet, especially since most of their
hard-earned money has to be sent back to their family in
Mexico.
The whole film focuses on Carmelo, a charming and
captivating character –though perhaps a bit naīve
– who leads an average, mediocre life. But this film
is anything but mediocre. This is especially apparent in
the second part of the film: Carmelo has gone back to
Mexico – homesickness for his family and country had
drawn him away from the United States. In the fragment in
question Carmelo tells how everything began to go wrong in
the States. The way that this is filmed and mixed, together
with the atmosphere painted of the provincial Mexican city
where Carmelo lives, is pure magic realism.
This story also has an optimistic undertone. Although
Carmelo earns less with his music in Mexico, he is –
being closer to his family – a happier man.
The winner is JUSTICA by the Brazilian-Dutch
filmmaker Maria Ramos.
The jury’s decision was unanimous and full of praise
for the prize-winning documentary. The film dates to 2004
and everywhere it has been viewed, it has met with
enthusiastic response. Now the film is getting the
recognition here too that it so rightly deserves.
In Justica everything revolves around observation and
registration, there are no interviews. The filmmaker
follows the three most important people involved in a
criminal trial in a court of Rio de Janeiro: a judge, a pro
bono lawyer and a young defendant. They are all, each in
their own way, prisoners of the bureaucratic Brazilian
legal system.
The jury praises the intense, oppressive atmosphere that
Ramos was able to create of the hearings in the courtroom
and the degrading conditions of the remand custody.
The style is strong; the images are carefully chosen and
clearly framed with a sharp eye for detail – often
sombre: the chilliness of the buildings, the telling body
language of the judges (are they listening at all?), life
in the prison.
But the film also has great societal relevance; this
portrait of young criminals of petty crime and how the
Brazilian legal system deals with them says much about
elements which dominate Brazilian society: the social
inequality, the two-tiered society and the total lack of
perspective for many youngsters. It’s food for
thought about our own situation.
