The use of found footage has been an important part of the world of documentary and Avant Garde film pretty much since the beginning. It makes sense, since it's cost-effective, and it carries with it a weight of history. That's something that is almost impossible to divorce from found footage; there is an inherent weight of time captured. That is a significant part of what makes Double Exposed so powerful. 

Director Julie Buck takes footage from 1960 shot by her grandfather to explore her family's history, and the footage is double exposed, we're told that only happened with this one reel of 8mm film, and it's a haunting combination of images, with the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley mixed with summer family imagery. Buck does voice over, talking a bit about the philosophy of film and its role within familial, and community, memory. Buck's voice-over flows with a natural cadence that never feels forced, as if she is simply talking to the viewer as they sit in an editing bay, reviewing the films of her grandfather. The speech never weighs down, even as the topic turns dark, heavy. We're given information that makes us confront a dark presence, we are forced to fit that into what we've already heard, what we are witnessing on the screen. 

This is what being in a family with a secret is like. 

Everyone knows one aspect, but you and those that are closest, know another. And often, the aspect you know is not continual, but a piece, usually folded up, hidden within for that moment when it unfurls and blistering applies itself to the situation. To the target. To you. It's this question of what is the reality of that person that hit me again and again as I re-watched Double Exposed so often. We see one thing, but we are told another that hits true and without question. The one thing we see, in the wider scene, is inconsequential in the light of what we are told, of what is recalled, and in that we are forced to question how we can take in what is shown the same way. The use of the footage, the gloriously imperfect double exposed footage, only raises a question, as Buck's narration does so well; is the experience of the footage negating the facts about the man who shot it?

The timing and pacing of Double Exposed is pitch perfect, because if it had been any other way, if the presentation had happened in any other order, it would have lost a question; how can this person give us that? And answering that question is what you'll be trying to do the moment the last frame fades. 

You can see Double Exposed as a part of DocuNation at Cinequest - http://klausatgunpoint.weebly.com/klaus-at-gunpoint---the-blog/cinequest-2019-double-exposed 

I was watching old Lumiere Brothers films a decade or so ago, and marveling at how powerful those little actualities were. There was one, a child walking on a path in a garden, that had me deeply hooked. There was a step, you see, and the baby was toddling towards it. You knew, at some point, it was going to get there, and that the baby would fall, would start crying, and you were waiting the entire time for one of the adults to go and grab it. 

Spoiler - it fell down the step. 

This is the essence of horror filmmaking. It is the inevitable, the unstoppable, coming ever closer, ever closer, ever closer. Whether it is a child going towards the step, a monster hiding in a shadow, seen only by the audience, Michael Myers taking bullet after bullet but still standing and pressing ever forward. That is horror in its easiest form, but there is a more abstract form, and the short film Loa's Promise deals with it most beautifully. 

The concept is rather simple: it is a film poem, of sorts. There is a letter being read, and we are shown images of Chile's Atacama desert, full of ghost towns, abandoned to time, but standing as if in protest to the progression of time. Among these images, we are shown what the future holds for the Atacama, power generation and other technologies that are laid into the scenery, sticking out as much as a Rembrandt would in a contemporary art gallery. It is a series of shots that establish what would happen in a future that has thrown water rights out, and turned the desert into a pure wasteland. The images are too honestly portrayed, an absolute eye towards faithfulness to what the reality will most-likely be to be called science fiction. It is speculative in its very nature, and feels as if it is not a prediction, but a pitch. This is what it could be; this is what it will be. 

And in that, it is a horror film. 

This is the inevitability. There is nothing we can do to keep that baby from walking towards that step, just like there is nothing we can do to prevent the Atacama being wired, technology creeping its way into the desert, laying roots across the baked Earth in the name of a progress that seems to make no sense from where we stand. The horror is not in the telling of a story, but in the presentation of a view as honest as if it had been sent back in a time machine. We are moving towards this. Look upon our works, ye Mighty, and despair. This horror short is subtle, abstract, but in reflection, so thoroughly in-line with historic paths. 

I love every second of Loa's Promise. The future, at least in the Atacama, is not looming megalopolises rising above the rain-less plains, but of a slow, but relentless creep, devouring as the wires slither. 

You can see Loa's Promise as a part of the Mindbenders program at Cinequest - https://payments.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=84964~78899376-35a9-4153-8303-e1557be2dc32&#.XEtb_VVKhdg
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What is a Promised Land, if it fails to deliver on its promise?
         That is pretty much the idea behind the finest documentary I’ve seen in years, The Passengers. The documentary takes a look at two young men, Gezi aned Demoz. They are closer than brothers, both Jewish men from Ethiopia. Both were among the 9,000 Ethiopian jews not already brought to Israel to join the population of 120,000 Jewish Ethiopians who have settled there. The Law of Return gives the right of all Jewish people to make Aliyah, to immigrate to Israel, but in recent years, the immigration of Ethiopian Jews has stalled out. Gezi and Demoz come to the United States to bring attention to the struggle of the Ethiopian Jews who have not yet been returned to Israel, and the difficulties they face.
          This is, on one level, an issue doc. We all know them, but The Passengers goes so far beyond that. For starters, the cinematography is amazing. It’s precise without the sort of journalism-on-film feel that too many docs end up pushing through to screen. It’s beautifully shot, with a dynamic camera that feels alive, even with simple interview set-ups. The editing is crisp, and it knows exactly when a moment needs to linger, when shift will bring the depth of a moment into full view. It’s incredibly easy to watch, and the way it is constructed kept me through every single frame of the film.
          I can’t recommend The Passengers enough. I was lucky enough to get to write it up for the program guide, and watching it one freezing December morning I was incredibly moved. So much so, I wrote a letter. I don’t write letters. I just don’t. That’s how powerful, and important, I think The Passengers is.
        You can see The Passengers  at Cinequest - https://payments.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=85234~78899376-35a9-4153-8303-e1557be2dc32&epguid=d52499c1-3164-429f-b057-384dd7ec4b23&#.XEpNDFVKhdg

​A look at one of the finest films of the last twenty years. From acting to script to direction to impact, Brokeback is a film that 100% belongs on the Registry.