Interview. Jason Kohn.

"Every single documentary offers its own perspective on the truth. That's what makes cinema cinema. Right? If you're just looking to document completely dispassionately the evidence, cinema, movies - even documentaries - probably should not be where you're looking to work."

That's Jason Kohn, talking to David D'Arcy about his Grand Jury Prize-winner at Sundance, the viscerally visual essay on contemporary Brazil, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet). Questions of style aside, Kohn also tells him, "Corruption is actually one of the most violent crimes in the entire world, especially when the victims of this theft are amongst the poorest and most impoverished people in the world. You can't steal $2 billion from people who are hungry and don't have enough food to eat without there being unbelievably horrible repercussions. It's akin to war crimes, just in its scope and in its scale. To re-associate what corruption means, whether it's in Brazil, the United States, wherever, especially in the developing world - that ended up being the real point of the movie."

Updated through 8/24.

Earlier: "Manda Bala."

Update, 8/24: "Even with its occasional faults, Manda Bala does what documentaries do best - illuminate a intellectual or social situation that our otherwise narrow Western viewpoint would never even consider," writes Bill Gibron at PopMatters. "The visual beauty in the film - Brazil is one of the most inviting looking regions in the entire world - contrasted with the cynical, almost comic approach to the problems, lends to moments of well earned epiphany, as well as frequently flops back into directorial self-indulgence."

Posted by dwhudson at August 22, 2007 3:43 PM