Full Frame 2021: Day 5
After seeing so many quiet, meditative pieces about extremely difficult subject matter, there’s something especially refreshing about taking in a fast-paced and personally identifiable film like Debbie Lum’s Try Harder! The documentary sheds light on the plights of incredibly smart and hardworking students who put their all into being accepted by the prestigious college of their dreams. Set in a San Francisco high school with a primarily Asian-American student body, these teens’ hard work is simultaneously inspiring and saddening as you see just how tough they are on themselves and their peers. This is by no means a game-changing doc, and it’s a story you’ve heard plenty of times before, but the subject remains relevant and the youths are a joy to spend 80 minutes with. Grade: B —Josh McCormack
Scenes from the Glittering World is a coming-of-age film of sorts, focusing on the lives of three Indigenous youth who live in the most remote school in the U.S. More accurately, it uses them to show the struggles of the barely populated school, their families, and the isolated Navajo community that’s in danger of losing its traditions in a colonized society. The sit-down interviews with students are distractingly chaotic at times with people and animals entering the frame when they’re trying to speak, making it hard to focus on their answers. The highlights of the film are two young men — one dealing with the loss of his younger brother and one with an alcoholic father who works as a janitor at their school — and whenever the focus is on them, the movie shows its potential. Unfortunately, the otherwise sporadic nature and macro storytelling often get in the way of the characters, never giving them the space to shine. Grade: D-plus —Cisco Scartozzi
Fruits of Labor follows Ashley, a Mexican-American high school senior in danger of not graduating due to the mounting responsibilities she has at home. Between spending most of her day working in strawberry fields and at a factory, preparing for the threat of ICE officers, supporting her younger brother — who’s about to become a father — and worrying about her own romantic relationship and future, how does she have the time to pick out a prom dress?
Director Emily Cohen Ibañez intercuts verité footage of Ashley’s daily life with more abstract closeups of strawberries and animals in front of a black background to let their colors pop. My favorite of these setups is a turtle retreating into its shell when our protagonist admits that that’s how she sometimes feels, but the tragedy written on her face tells us that she has too much on her plate and too much love for her family to ever leave them.
While Fruits of Labor is hampered by such artificial moments as Ashley randomly bringing up an existential question to her boyfriend, watching her maturity and determination in the face of mounting hardships is equal parts devastating and inspiring. While it’s not always the most engaging or informative documentary about immigration and labor, the film is nevertheless a decent character study about the Mexican American experience from the eyes of an impressive young woman. Grade: C-plus —CS
The gorgeous B&W images of Black people simply living their lives in Logan L. Burroughs’ impressionistic short Spirit never dies, only transitions. play as poetic interludes from an unseen feature-length film. But on their own, accompanied by narration from an invisible source, they add up to little beyond a series of potential still images to frame and display in a gallery. Grade: C —Edwin Arnaudin
Using mostly vertical video chat and archival news footage, The Facility tells the story of multiple immigrants detained at Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia and the poor conditions they endured before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews with detainees Nilson Barahona and Andrea Manrique show us the inhumane treatment of immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S., and who quickly become prisoners serving long sentences they were never charged for. The computer-screen style of the short film puts viewers in the dire position of Nilson and Andrea as a 10-second counter will randomly appear in the top right of the screen, letting you know that their limited human interaction is always on the clock.
The treatment of the immigrants only worsens when COVID-19 hits, and we, the audience, are shown that masks and social distancing are not a priority for the guards. Some of the detainees go on a hunger strike — a risky proposition for the diabetic Nilson — but they all work together, intending to show the media how inhumane they’re being treated. The most compelling scenes involve Nilson shuddering at the thought of losing a loving bond with his son after spending so much time away from home, and the mental and physical transformation Andrea goes through as her case drags on for over a year is likewise impactful. The Facility does more in its 26-minute runtime than most full-length documentaries do, and much like Time (my favorite film of 2020), it shows a broken immigration system that hurts ordinary people looking to live a fulfilled life with their families. The American dream, right? Grade: B-plus —CS
The “slow cinema” movement infiltrates documentaries with Faya Dayi, Jessica Beshir’s visually enthralling but turgidly paced look at the rural Ethiopian khat trade. Similar to the work of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Béla Tarr, the director’s technical skills are sharp — and arguably more befitting of a narrative film — but the patience required to experience her feature’s minimal payoffs is likely to keep all but the most cinema-hungry viewers at a distance. Naturally, it won multiple awards from the Full Frame judges, including the grand jury prize. Grade: C —EA
Editor’s note: Access was not provided to All-In and A View from Above.
(Photos: Courtesy of Full Frame)
