(Somewhat) Non-Fiction Films

The films we saw on April 2 were a lot easier for me to get in to in comparison to most of the previous films we've seen. I was interested in most of the issues they were talking about. I think a big part of my interest was the fact that these filmmakers were actually discussing issues more than anything else. I felt that these films had so much more to offer in my experience. I might have felt different perhaps had the topics been uninteresting to me, but luckily these were. All of the information was sort of thrown in our faces, whether it be bold words scrolling across the screen, or flashy images displayed. It was like an overload for my brain, but I liked it because I never really lost interest or felt like sleeping. The film by Frederic Moffet portraying Jean Genet in Chicago reminded me of a newspaper but with movable images. It was like a more entertaining and somewhat biased documentary. I loved how the heads on the talking figures remained as the same cut-out for each person. This helped me follow a some-what confusing story. While what was being talked about was hazy, I at least had Genet's cut-out head and voice to follow. "More than Meets the Eye: Remaking Jane Fonda," by Scott Stark had so many interesting quotes from Fonda, it was hard to follow. However, I thought it worked well how he displayed the quotes about her femininity and eating disorders scrolling horizontally on the bottom and her political views vertically from the top. Being a woman, I felt like I could relate to what she was saying about the pressures and hardships and I also agreed with a lot of what she was saying about the war, presidents, military, and politics in general. A lot of what she was saying then can be compared to how many feel about what is going on today, which also caught my attention. As for Stark working out in the back, at first it was funny, then it just got old. He looked ridiculous but maybe that's what he was going for. I'm not sure what else he could have done for a background. At least it wasn't dull. The last film we watched, "Stranger Comes to Town," by Jacqueline Goss was awesome. Everything was so out of the ordinary and each new character was more interesting and outrageous than the last. For me it was like I had been trying to get a sense of how these people feel when they come to America, and by animating themselves as video game characters, I finally understood...to a degree. Some of their stories were amazing, what each of them had to do and how they were interrogated was ridiculous. Goss's way of displaying these six people and their experiences in coming to the United States was a great way to help us get inside their heads. We got a chance to see how they feel like monsters or aliens when they've done nothing wrong.