Even those visitors used to ignoring slogans had to admit that the motive of reconstruction did not remain a mere rhetoric gesture in Jihlava. The festival managed to evoke the "spirit of reconstruction," with reconstruction resounding in the main idea of the opening ceremony, swinging the rhythm of the festival jingle, being reflected by the complex visual concept of the festival, but primarily getting reincarnated in various Jihlava events and on the cinema screens.

Re, Re, Re, Re ...

It was not only about the "Re" labels on posters, T-shirts, stickers and other festival props, nor merely about the scaffolding at the side of Dům kultury and its little brothers and sisters close to the Dukla cinema. The festival production forced us to "reconstruct" our non-ecological habits, confronting the visitors with omnipresent colored assorted waste bins; the well-known movement of throwing away the sausage coaster became awkward, hands swerving in an attempt not to mix up the yellow, blue and green color unconsciously. Besides the ecologically-educational ideas, nostalgia-homecoming reconstruction ideas followed. By means of daily screenings in the households of Jihlava, the festival resuscitated the experience of meeting up in front of a single tv set available near and far to watch a few programmes awaited together by the community.

Besides the programme schedule, the reconstruction idea was also uniquely reflected in the unexpectedly great attendance of the presentation of documentary records of Jihlava in the protectorate period, accompanied by the words of local historian Jiří Vybíral, author of the book Jihlava under the Swastika. Because of the enormous interest of the audience crowding the small hall of the Dukla cinema, the presentation had to be repeated right after the first screening; on both occasions, a significant part of the spectators had to sit on the steps and on the ground and stand to watch the show, the second portion actually becoming the actors of a reconstruction of a reconstruction.

Among the less pleasant "Re" outside the programme were the frequent interruptions of screenings for technical reasons - these restarts and retardations impacted the screenings of older films such as Hooper and Farrebigue by Georges Rouquiere from the 1940s; also short Czech protectorate films suffered from failures. Further on, there were films lacking translation from a less known language (Dutch), without an "apologetic" repetition.

The reconstruction highlight was to be found in the shop-windows of the Jihlava bookstores and tobacco shops awakened by the festival bustle. Their new-time postcards depict the upper right corner of the square and church only, possibly also the town-hall, however, "leaving out" the view of the central "masterpiece", the ghastly normalization shopping mall; whereas historical postcards preferred the bird's eye view, taking in the plague column and the whole square.

The plentiful number of reconstructions in the 3D (festival) space corresponded to the no less frequent attempts at the reconstruction approach in the 2D (film) space - if understood by the viewer (in the space of his mind) as a reconstruction approach. More importantly, the common themes discussed by the film works not only within the individual programme blocks but also across sections proved relevant, regardless of officially winning and defeated films.

Re-capitalism One - Michael Moore

The Jihlava festival offered a whole range of films revealing the specific practices of the manipulative and corrupt environment of today, openly calling for change. Whether identifying with the notion that these films represent but a selection of the programmers, or believing that they represent a more general socially-critical and provocative tendency in contemporary documentary film, we can't resist the impression of a universal over-saturation with all those things they once call capitalism, once neo-liberalism, and once a world colonized by supranational corporations.

Among the most challenging attempts to deal with these themes, faultfinder and rubberneck Michael Moore recapitulates the predatory practices of American banking and insurance industries, calling such Capitalism a Love Story. In his brand new film, Moore does not avoid simplifications - as a good American, he considers the situation in the US to be unique, claiming that such things do not happen anywhere else. Making use of the wit functioning already in his previous films, in his Švejkian attempts he provokes direct action, a literal fulfilling of a given task. Thus if told to ask at Wall Street, he does set for the New York stock exchange, placing the camera in front of the revolving door. The fact that he does not succeed here nor in front of any other institution is not surprising, telling nothing about the institution or anything else. Thus in Moore's films, these childish intermezzos serve rather as divisions in the information flow, justifying the transition to a new sub-theme, although the preceding one was not finished in a satisfying way.

According to the title, Moore experiences a love story with capitalism; however, the tone of the film is nor romantic at all. Moore's struggle with the extortionate world of insurance agents and bank officers may end with hope in the form of a victorious strike of the employees of a Chicago window and door factory, or the promise of new Obamian tomorrows; yet instead of irony, the film is dominated by deep skepticism. Ironizing jokes from film archives interrupt the main plot line but several times, mostly in a Roman-American or Christian-American parallel, focusing rather on the main protagonists and their life-stories representing the essential failures of a would-be perfect system of American power. A family squatting in a house of their own; real estate agents taking advantage of the low prices of the apartments pledged by the state; children sentenced for petty crimes for the benefit of a private reform school; employers profiting from the life insurances of their employees after their death ...

Moore diagnoses the pungent problems of the society by means of real cases and one has to say that this time, his choice of respondents does not call for sympathy but an activating outrage. The protagonists themselves are cursing rather than whining, primarily acting on their own. This is not caused by Moore himself; his film is different for (perhaps, let's hope) the times have changed and so have the people. Moore cannot mock Bush any more, and as for Obama, he hasn't made up his mind yet. Thus he diagnoses several maladies of his society, yet without a greater ambition to search for their background. Because of effects, he does not see the causes and the complex tangle of personal and company bonds, simplifying the circumstances of backstage negotiations by means of humorous snapshots such as the shadow-play of Ronald Raegan.

Re-Capitalism Two - Who Is Encircled by Whom

On the other hand, in his three-hour opus called Encirclement - Neo-liberalism Ensnares Democracy, Canadian director Richard Brouillett penetrates the black holes of capitalism without any snapshots. Presented and well-received at this year's Berlinale, the film reveals and criticizes similar mechanisms of exploitation as Moore's film does, nevertheless, in a rather spectator-unfriendly format. In case of Encirclement loaded by information, the viewer does not have the sense of the director concealing important circumstances, as is frequently the case in Moore's films; however, here for a change one can get lost in the series of lectures by journalists, political scientists, sociologists and economists from the francophone field and American linguist Noam Chomsky.

The film gives the impression of having audiovisual form for the mere possibility of easier distribution around the world; its treatment of facts reminds rather of a book, or even a textbook. The black-and-white film is divided into chapters, the utterances of the individual thinkers being interspersed by text; in the form of postscripts written by "white chalk" on black background. Thus it might function rather as an educational tool, to be watched in a lecture room, with a notepad and the possibility to press the pause button now and then, as professor Omar Aktouf says firstly, secondly, thirdly ... , the director making sure to substantiate his explanation by a quote from a historical book to prove that many of these theories have their roots and analogies in the notions known in the times long past. Thus the theory of Lysander Spooner on the exploiting leaders gets interconnected with what Adam Smith says about the possibility of using human egoism for public benefit in his reflections on the free hand of the market; or, according to another talking head; with what the prerequisites of the good functioning of market economy are; and here comes a new chapter, a new, no less serious and intellectually demanding topic. The problem does not consist in the film using the less accessible language of political economy; what betrays it is rather its rigid approach, preventing the viewer from absorbing the information properly.

Re-Capitalism Three - Hello, Chicago!

Perhaps that is why Encirclement has not attracted as much attention as another revision of the capitalist ideology - the Shock Doctrine by directors Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross. Their documentary is made attractive already by its title and connection to the original book by famous activist journalist Naomi Klein.

According to the Shock Doctrine, notions that have been viewed with almost sacred awe as indisputable pillars of the functioning of modern democratic society are simply not what they seem to be. Deregulation, weaker state supervision, privatization of the public sector - suddenly these are no more the medicine but poison in the hands of intellectual elites of political economy lead by Milton Friedman and his Chicago school in cooperation with the greedy corporation, infecting the western society. The message of the "catastrophic capitalism" of the film is not diminished even by the fact that after the film was finished, Naomi Klein distanced herself from Winterbottom's and Whitecross's notion. However, she did not agree primarily with the structure of the film and the method of treating the theme; she herself meant to conceive the film in the spirit of investigative journalism of her own, as an amplification of the book, adding new information enabling to consider, process and revise the positions of the book.

Indeed, the film version of the Shock Doctrine is rather that of adaptation, making use of a considerable quantity of media archive sources. However, as for telling about how free market policy goes together with democracy, this film is still more interesting than Encirclement. Again the history of the second half of the 20th century, again enforcement of political ideologies by military power in the spirit of militant humanism; here, however, hand in hand with revealing the actual "culprits." The Shock Doctrine reveals the process of the rationalized distribution of the idea of market capitalism from American universities of the 1940s to Latin America, Soviet Union and Great Britain, pointing out the role of American government, the Nobel foundation and other significant participants. It also introduces the horrible effects of the market-economical practice in the form of declines of governments, larceny of public property, creating economics of fear and lat but not least, even city disturbances.

In Obama's "Hello, Chicago!", recalling his "reparatory" notion of change as a possible solution to the critical situation of today, the film Shock Doctrine plays into the hands of Moore. Thus the ambiguous Chicago greeting can be heard not only as words of welcome to the citizens but also as a good-bye to the practices of the Chicago school.

Corn Reclaim

The fact that we will probably go on living in the world portioned between several key corporations for some time, with or without Obama, is made evident in the film Food, Inc. Revealing the truths about the system faults of the food industry (and, in a more general sense, with respect to the films mentioned above, the system faults of the world colonized by corporations), the film does not tell us something new. In an attractive way and on the basis of interesting and rarely mentioned examples, it rather repeats why we, surrounded by inexhaustible quantities of products in food stores, should keep asking where the variety of sorts stops and where the unification of economical brains of their producers starts; why it is necessary after all to look rather suspiciously under the surface of attractive food packaging; why one should contemplate rather than rejoice at the sight of strawberries in the wintertime.

The film can afford such appeals primarily because of the fact that it ruins the "illusion of diversity" of food supplies by unambiguous arguments, tracing the strategies of the agricultural corporation Monsato (also active in the Czech Republic) specializing in the production of genetically modified products, and its interconnection with the political sector. On the basis of concrete cases, the documentary reveals the circumstances of introducing various laws and measures as to the consumer protection. The fact that 80 percent of the American food market is dominated by four companies, is illustrated by an animation showing the quartering of a cow; to imagine the number of products made from cheap corn, the corn-cob turns into ketchup or diapers in front of your eyes... The film Food, Inc. manages to present even serious matters so that the information is attractive for the viewer.

Looking at the logos of food companies with the figures of bold farmers, the film also challenges the role of traditional farmers. Those who let their cows feed on the grass around the farm according to good old methods, rather than stuffing them with the cheap and more substantial fodder corn, are paradoxically shown as rebels stubbornly undermining the system of which they have become a symbol.

Sad Fun in the End

The above mentioned documentary, asking fundamental questions such as why healthy food is more expensive than the unhealthy one and why imported food is cheaper than local one, found an interesting antipode in a film viewing the modern methods of the engineering of human stomachs from completely different positions. The film Food Design by Austrian director Michael Hablesreiter approaches the phenomenon of food and its consumption from the position of a scientist whose task is not to survey natural and considerate ways of cultivation and breeding but rather to modify raw material so that it satisfies people's notion of tasty, healthy and fresh food.

Food design is a film about the science employed by the modern society to cover so fundamental an activity and need of man like food. There have always been rituals connected with food, however, its market value has not been calculated to such a degree. Nowadays, psychologists in the service of industry explore our association of food with colors, forms and sounds, reshaping concrete products so that we feel like eating them. Cooks are changing their recipes according to these, making the food look and taste good. Moreover, food has to be "functional" as well, so that computer graphic designers analyze and change its structure, size and form: different kinds of pasta (such as farfalle and fusilli) must take up as much sauce as necessary; a cookie must have such contents and such qualities so it doesn't make a child dirty, otherwise mom won't buy it the next time.

Among the above mentioned accusations of modern time, Food Design is still but a great fun. For that matter, the film represents a popular-scientific description rather than a concrete attitude. However, it still presents the theme of science misused for the sake of manipulation, for the sake of analyzing the weaknesses of the masses to be controlled and misused for the benefit of others. Food Design, too, is penetrated by the "capitalist" theme of systematic upbringing of a half-educated society of obedient citizens who do not ask questions,being passive enough to let others drag them around. Those called "paralyzed bipeds" by the pedagogy theoretician Normand Baillargeon in Encirclement; those who finally stand up for themselves at the end of Moore's film, finding a voice of their own, finding courage to ask questions and resist. So is there a more general tendency after all? Resistance - (re)convalescence - reconditioning - reconstruction?

4.11.2009
URL| http://zpravy.idnes.cz/co-se-dalo-videt-na-jihlavskem-festivalu-dokumentu-treba-pokusy-o-rekonvalescenci-ochrnutych-dvounozcu-ihz-/kavarna.asp?c=A091104_120658_kavarna_bos