UNAFF. Preview.

Our world is run by organizations, from nefarious behemoth multinational corporations and nefarious national governments right down to tribal committees meeting out in grass fields. Each time we work with others, a new group of personal rules is improvised, established and rapidly institutionalized. Beneath the overt themes covered by the United Nations Association Film Festival, such as women's rights and the war in Iraq, lurks an engaging subtextual inquiry. How exactly do organizations of various sizes work? The power of these documentaries is that they emphasize the individual personalities working within the rules and conditions of these organizations.

The UNAFF has no direct relationship with the United Nations other than that they have decided to bring the philosophical concepts of the UN to a local level and operate internationally through chapters. But the festival, featuring 31 documentary films of vastly varying lengths dealing with issues from all around the world, almost seems as if it were the result of some UN mandate. A sampling of a handful of films suggests an exceptionally well-curated group. It is also refreshing to see that the UNAFF has happily decided to make no programming distinction between a film that is eight minutes long (Beyond Iraq, Tom Eldridge and Annalia Hodgkins) and one that is 100 minutes long (Thin, Lauren Greenfield, RJ Cutler, Amanda Micheli, Ted Stillman). Films also play in programmed groups, rather than in the usual short-then-feature or featurette-featurette festival formula.

One of the longest entries is The Peacekeepers, a glacial but important Canadian examination of the UN's mission (MONUC) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Peacekeepers focuses on the UN's efforts to secure the eastern, mineral-rich Ituri region which remains unstable thanks to the ceaseless efforts of regional war lords and an illicit arms trade with neighboring Uganda. When crises arise like the war in the Congo (the bloodiest since World War II), we often wonder, "Where is the UN? Isn't this what the UN is for?" Such questions were also at the crux of 2005's under-distributed Canadian film, Shake Hands with the Devil. As in Rwanda, the DRC's troubles have some basis in the tribal class system institutionalized by Belgian rule, and in the DRC this has mutated into an incredibly complex struggle for precious mineral resources. Shake Hands with the Devil traced the consequences of the UN's inaction in Rwanda and also in the psyche of that mission's leader, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dalliare. The Peacekeepers approaches its subject from the other end: the offices of the UN and their struggle for financial support from unwilling member states. Beyond this, the only real understanding the film offers of the conflict is that, like the bureaucracy of the UN itself, the problem too big and messy to for one film to take in. But what is essential, beyond bringing the mechanics of the UN to light, is the portrayal of the people within the bureaucracy who continue to hold true to their moral compass within the stifling flood of indifference that surrounds them.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, bringing aid relief down to a manageable, tangible level is what the subjects of Beyond the Call are all about. In 1995, Ed Artis, Jim Laws and Walt Ratterman formed Knightsbridge International, whose mission is to bring aid directly to manageable groups in dangerous areas, often where other aid organizations fear to tread. When clipboard-wielding people harass you on the street and ask you to give money to some organization you haven't had the chance to research, take this documentary as an antidote. Just watching it will make you want to give to Knightsbridge. The founders do not take salaries and give all they can to the projects they fund, delivering the goods personally. They are self-admitted eccentrics in America's best tradition of kooky well-meaning compassionate entrepreneurs. Ex-army, isolationist, they are what you think of when you think of what the liberal elite is not. But this is a life-affirming documentary in the least saccharine sense. While the subjects of Beyond the Call are no doubt in search of adventure and some sense of emotional gratification, they are good in the way that we often dream all regular Americans could be, with no sights set on glory or riches - just on helping others.

Another portrait of "good" Americans can be seen in Baghdad ER, an absolutely essential film to which everyone should bring at least one handkerchief. Filmmakers Jon Alpert (laden with Emmys) and Matthew O'Neill were given unlimited access to the 86th Combat Support Hospital for two months in 2005 and pretty much recorded exactly what they saw before coming back to do a reverent and tasteful edit. The cases they focus on are largely the result of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), a reflection of the war itself, and are at times gruesome, giving the audience little time to look away. But there is no sensationalism in these operating room scenes, just the genuine desire to create a portrait of a place and the good people working within it. Wounded troops in Iraq have a 90 percent chance of survival, the highest rate in US history. If the US is going to fight an insane war, at the very least the soldiers should be able to trust in and respect the people they will be delivered to if the worst happens.

A country that never had that chance is Rwanda, where neighbor hacked neighbor to death in a three-month-long genocide that killed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans, largely Tutsis, the previous "upper class." In some cases these neighbors still live next door to each other and it is this seemingly impossible reconciliation that is the subject of In the Tall Grass. The title is a reference to the informal community courts, gacaca, that have developed in Rwanda. Roughly translated, gacaca means "justice on the grass." These outdoor courts are based on traditional tribal methods of law enforcement and aim not only at weeding out which genocide cases should be passed along to regular criminal courts, but also at uncovering the truth of what really happened within villages so that perpetrators and victims who continue to live together can be reconciled and witnesses may come forward before their friends and neighbors. In the Tall Grass focuses on one particular case where a survivor, Joanita Mukarusanga, has accused her neighbor of killing her husband and four children. Joanita's husband was hacked to death with a machete in front of her and her children were beaten with nail-studded clubs and buried alive. Like many other survivors, Joanita wants to be able to find and bury her dead children just as much as see the confession of their killer. Unfortunately, In the Tall Grass lets itself down with an obnoxious narration, which could easily have been replaced with interview footage from officials and the other articulate English-speaking witnesses that already pepper the film with relevant commentary.

Throughout all these films, organizations - and particularly the good individuals within them - strive to do their best in tenuous, war-ravaged circumstances. What they make clear is that humanity houses people capable of both outrageous horrors and certain moral fortitude.

There will be screenings in San Francisco starting today at the Delancey Screening Room and on Sunday, October 22 at the Roxie. The UNAFF officially runs from October 25 to 29 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, with films grouped in the themes "Women's Issues," "War and Peace," "Health and Environmental Issues," and "Securities and Liberties."

Many filmmakers will be in attendance, including the directors of The Peacekeepers, Beyond the Call (by local director Adrian Belic whose Genghis Blues won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award) and Baghdad ER.

Posted by dwhudson at October 18, 2006 2:10 AM