96: Fakery (and Truth)

I'm back from True/False! I'm still writing about True/False! More to come about True/False over at Bright Wall/Dark Room later this month! I'm full of zest for life and nonfiction film, so you get no apology from me about the number of slashes and exclamation points you just had to read!

What I wrote about:

For Seeing & Believing, I wrote about Problemista. (I have problems with the movie.)

What I'm watching:

I did a little movie homework this weekend and caught up with Orson Welles's F for Fake, a pseudo-documentary from 1973 whose DNA is part of at least three of the movies I saw at True/False last weekend. Welles was a raconteur of the highest caliber, and he understood that the fun of storytelling is the telling. He's upfront about taking the audience for a ride, and downright gleeful about being able to expose his characters in some untruth simply by freezing the frame, as though he's telling a story around a dinner table and stretching out some detail to make it last a little longer. I was already on board with the approach, and then he revealed the real point of the film as being a sincere exploration of the arts, and why we make up stories and tell them. “Our songs will all be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing," he says, framed by mist near Chartres Cathedral. The names of the builders and the artisans have all been forgotten, but their work was made worthwhile in the making.