OUR FIRST FULL DAY: BLAST OFF!!!
WOW! Our first full day of Docs Ireland is over, and it couldn't have gone better.
Yesterday saw Best Boy running all over town, trying to catch as many films and events as possible to broaden the Best Boy Hive Mind, and broadened it was...
We started our day at the venerable Crescent Art Centre, experiencing a whole new medium: LIVE DOCUMENTARY. For any repeat Docs Ireland heads, Alessandra Celesia is no stranger. Director of last year’s astonishing opening film, The Flats, returned to the festival this year, this time, with her daughter with her.
FROM MORELLI’S TO MARS AND OUT OF THIS WORLD: Aliens / The Work in Progress, was a fantastic preview to a cinematic documentary theatre hybrid with a breathtaking electronic soundtrack, that we simple film buffs here at Best Boy Magazine had ne’er seen the likes of before.
This innovative piece, preformed by mother and daughter duo Alessandra Celesia and Marta McIlduff first appeared as a history lesson into a subject that is little known in Northern Ireland, retracting the journey of Italian immigrants arriving the Belfast in the early part of the 20th century. It started with the filmed documentary section on screen but then it expanded on to the stage and the Performance and filmed footage being to intermingle and dance with each other Alessandra and Marta’s film doubles mirror their stage performances, and their stage Performances react to their film doubles and it unfolds into a vital, deeply raw and honest exploration of self, place and borders and family. What borders exist between mother and daughter? Art and Artist? Home and place? Screen and stage?
It achieved both feeling important and funny, a hard line to toe, and had a feeling of Agnes Varda mixed with (?? we don’t actually know any plays sorry) to it, that we hear at Best Boy LOVED. And we can’t wait to see the show in full wherever it may pop up next...
After that enlightening event, we blasted off in our rocket ship to the Queen’s Film Theatre, where we spent the rest of our day watching banger after banger.
The first banger? Move Ya Body: The Birth Of House Music. The first in the lineup of the festival’s focus on “shellshock” music films (if that sounds up your lane, check out the full programme, as there’s much more to follow!!!), and a perfect watch for anyone interested in music as a whole. The film does what it says on the tin, it explains the birth of house music, a widely loved, yet widely misunderstood genre. Focused on Chicago throughout the 70s, we saw how when disco was murdered by the “Disco Sucks” movement, it gave birth to house music.
Mixing incredible interviews with incredible people with archive footage and fleeting recreations, the film expertly tells the story in a captivating way, shining light on those who deserve it: the pioneers of the movement. An essential watch for not just any fan of electronic music, but for everyone.
After dancing through Move Ya Body: The Birth Of House Music, it was time to descend the rabbithole and learn. Learn about what you ask? Ghouls... Ghosts... Psyops?
Within Ken McMullen's film, Ghost Dance, Jaques Derrida says, “Cinema is the art of ghosts, a battle of phantoms. It's the art of allowing ghosts to come back.” If this is true then Simon Aeppli’s, Operation Bogeyman, is a seance.
Readers with good memories may recall last year at Docs Ireland, Aeppli gave a film-lecture hybrid of the same title to his film. He detailed at this event that he had hoped to make this film, but that when traditional routes dried up, he undertook a Phd, in order to make it. It was a sort of work in progress event and we were left truly excited to see what the final film would look like. Thus, we were enthused to see it on this years docs Ireland Programme.
Operation Bogeyman is a truly fascinating documentary, that follows the story of a clandestine British intelligence department in charge of Black propaganda and Psyops in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, led by Colin Wallace. For example, they would claim the IRA had stolen £10,000 from a bank when in fact they had taken £5000, with the purpose of creating infighting and distrust within the ranks of the IRA. It was the original fake news disinformation campaign. Colin Wallace however had grander ideas, and embarked to create fake black magic rituals across Mid-East Antrim with the ultimate goal of associating the IRA with Satanism and thus disconnecting the Catholic community from the IRA. It would also ward children off entering derelict houses where British soldiers may be encamped, keeping watch over communities. The sensationalist story of ‘Divilry’ as yer granny might say, swept newspapers and created a sort of satanic-panic in Northern Ireland.
We ended our day in QFT’s screen two, with From Ground Zero, an anthology film put together by FilmLab Palestine. The film is made up of shorts, directed by twenty-two different Palestinian directors, living in Gaza through the ongoing genocide. The idea was launched by Rashid Masharawi, a Palestinian filmmaker, and it has given a voice to the people of Gaza, allowing them an opportunity to express themself in a way that will be seen worldwide. Each short offers a new perspective, with entirely different people, from young children to musicians to professors to mothers and fathers, the people of Gaza are all connected by one thing in this film: resilience, no matter what.
It’s more important than ever to focus our attention on Palestine, and engaging with Palestinian art has been made so easily accessible by Docs Ireland. This film is a heart-shattering look at individuals in Gaza, a reminder that the people are no different from us, I would implore anyone with the opportunity to see this film to see it immediately.
Docs Ireland’s focus on Palestine continues tomorrow with A State Of Passion.
WELL FOLKS! That rounds up yesterday at the festival, and all we can do is look forward to the next. Big things are coming...
