Documentary Voices 2018

January 17–April 18, 2018

Our annual documentary series spotlights politically engaged works ranging from Colombia to Portugal to the Canadian North.

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Angry Inuk
Fish Tail
Under the Sun
Strong Island

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Past Films

In the Intense Now
- Wednesday, April 4 7 PM
- Friday, May 4 7 PM
João Moreira Salles
Brazil, 2017
Salles portrays the pivotal, tumultuous 1960s through archival footage and home movies from May ’68 Paris, Soviet-invaded Czechoslovakia, China during the Cultural Revolution, and Brazil under military rule. “It’s a documentary that’s really a meditation—history made poetic” (Variety).
Strong Island
- Wednesday, April 18 7 PM
Yance Ford
United States, Denmark, 2017
Free screening for BAMPFA members and UC Berkeley students only

The murder of the filmmaker’s brother forms the basis of this powerful, disturbing, and very personal documentary on one family’s suffering and an entire society’s injustice and institutional racism. “A masterpiece for difficult times” (Film Quarterly).

Les Blank Lecture by Yance Ford
Memory and Forgetting: Video Art in Latin America
- Wednesday, March 21 7 PM
A rare opportunity to see artistic reactions to colonial history, military dictatorships, and political violence by artists from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Uruguay.

Introduction by Elena Shtromberg; Oscar Muñoz in Person
Under the Sun
- Wednesday, March 14 7 PM
Vitaly Mansky
Russia, Latvia, Germany, Czech Republic, North Korea, 2015
Shot with the permission and supervision of North Korean authorities, Russian director Vitaly Mansky’s film turns a propaganda effort into a deep-cover documentary about life inside one of the world’s most repressive nations.
Maintenance
- Wednesday, March 7 7 PM
Adele Horne
United States, 2012
A portrait of homes and their owners’ attitudes toward cleaning them. “It’s like a James Benning remake of Jeanne Dielman” (Cinema Scope).

Adele Horne in Person
In the Year of the Pig
- Wednesday, February 28 7 PM
Emile de Antonio
United States, 1969
Restored 35mm Print

This Academy Award–nominated doc makes the case against US intervention in Vietnam using an incendiary montage style. “An explosive analysis of the American war machine” (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research).
Fish Tail
- Wednesday, February 21 7 PM
Joachim Pinto, Nuno Leonel
Portugal, 2015
The Portuguese filmmakers revisited decades-old footage of fishermen in the Azores for this beautiful essay film. “If Rossellini had ever made it to the Azores, he might have come up with something akin to Fish Tail” (Senses of Cinema).
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
- Sunday, February 4 3 PM
- Wednesday, February 14 7 PM
Frederick Wiseman
United States, 2017
Frederick Wiseman’s latest documentary provides welcome confirmation of the survival of intelligent life in discouraging times, following the work behind and beyond the books at the New York Public Library.
The Red Line
- Wednesday, February 7 7 PM
José Filipe Costa
Portugal, 2012
This 2012 work revisits Thomas Harlan’s 1975 documentary Torre Bela in order to investigate not only the Portuguese revolution, but the very idea of the political documentary.
Torre Bela
- Wednesday, January 31 7 PM
Thomas Harlan
France, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, 1975
This film created by a German leftist in Portugal documents efforts to return a large private estate to local workers. “One of the purest examples of militant documentary” (Harvard Film Archive).
Angry Inuk
- Wednesday, January 24 7 PM
Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
Canada, 2016
Inuit filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s passionate, mind-shifting film documents new strands of Inuit activism—“part exposé, part personal documentary, and part community portrait” (TIFF). With Jonathan Wright’s animated short The Bear Facts.
Short Films of Luis Ospina
- Wednesday, January 17 7 PM
One of Colombia’s most influential, prolific filmmakers presents three of his works, including the classic Vampires of Poverty, that incorporate political critique, an aesthetic sensibility, and, importantly, a sense of humor.

Luis Ospina in Person

Documentary Voices 2018

January 17–April 18, 2018

Our annual series of recent and historical documentary films begins with a visit from Luis Ospina, who will travel from Colombia to present a selection of his radical short works. Ospina was a founding member of the collective Grupo de Cali; “by negotiating the political while including questions of the popular, the group re-evaluated cinema’s role in society, and changed the face of Latin American filmmaking” (Samuel T. Adams, Brooklyn). Other politically charged films follow. An Angry Inuk, like Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North—often called the first documentary film—looks at the indigenous people of northern Canada. But while Flaherty’s film preserved ancient traditions from the viewpoint of an outsider, Angry Inuk was created by an Inuit to expose her community’s contemporary stance on seal hunting. Torre Bela documents a commune established as part of a land reform movement in Portugal, while The Red Line insightfully examines the making of that film. Fish Tail reuses footage originally shot for a TV film on fishing in the Azores that the filmmakers disavowed; in their reshaping of the material, “sheer depth of thought and rare sensitivity pulses through every frame” (Screen Daily). With In the Year of the Pig, a self-described “radical scavenger” takes on the Vietnam War. Also drawing on archival footage, In the Intense Now examines the upheavals of the late 1960s. Under the Sun reveals the official stage management behind the filmmaker’s access to North Korean “everyday life,” while Maintenance portrays the largely invisible routines of cleaning house. A selection of Latin American videos explores the theme of historical memory. The third annual Les Blank Lecture, in honor of the beloved Bay Area documentary filmmaker, will be given by Yance Ford; he will discuss his creative process followed by a screening of his Strong Island, which Film Quarterly declared “a masterpiece for difficult times.”

Kathy Geritz, Film Curator

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Presented in conjunction with Natalia Brizuela’s UC Berkeley course on documentary film. Two programs are part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA: Luis Ospina’s visit, made possible by the Los Angeles Filmforum series Ism Ism Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, supported by the Getty Foundation, the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and Memory and Forgetting: Video Art in Latin America, drawn from an exhibition organized by LAXART in conjunction with the Getty Research Institute, and made possible through support from the Getty Foundation and the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts program. Guest visits at BAMPFA are with the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Yance Ford’s visit is made possible by the Les Blank Fund.