Amsterdam Dispatch. 4.

The results are in for this year's IDFA. The big winner is Stranded, Gonzalo Arijon's epic saga about the crash in the Andes 35 years ago of a Uruguayan plane on its way to a rugby match in Chile. As everyone knows, and as films have already told us, the survivors kept themselves alive by eating the bodies of the dead. And it took more than two months before the stranded men were saved. Remember Alive?

Arijon has rounded up the alumni of that flight, now mostly men in their 60s, and gotten them to talk. There's no exploitation here, none of the National Enquirer hype about men who ate human flesh - just footage of the extremely remote site where the plane went down, pictures of the young men who were there, and some photographs taken with a camera that they salvaged from their luggage, when they found it. Stranded is more about determination: staying alive on a mountainside is a bit like climbing a mountain. The key is not to give up, but not all those who didn't give up survived. From the men who did, we learn that it took lots of luck, too.

And teamwork. Before they were saved, the survivors grouped together alongside the wreckage of the fuselage and posed for a photograph. At least a dozen of them were there, smiling. They looked just like a team that had completed a documentary, only happier. The prize from IDFA should give Stranded a boost for American distribution. It plays in the international documentary competition at Sundance in January.

Two more films worth mention.

Wild Blue Yonder is the debut film of Celia Maysles, daughter of the documentary pioneer David Maysles, who made classics like Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, Salesman and the endless series of Christo movies with his brother, Albert. David Maysles died in 1987, when Celia was 7. Her documentary in Amsterdam is the chronicle of trying to use her late father's footage in a film about getting to know him through his films.

The problem is that, according to her Uncle Albert, neither David nor anyone in his family owns those films, and Albert is hesitant about giving Celia any of that footage, or even allowing her to see it. The movie opens a window onto rifts in the family - an odd parallel to the family hell of Grey Gardens, which the Maysles observed with a certain bemusement. Closer to home, it's a little more uncomfortable. We're told that Albert and David made a deal that whichever brother survived would have the rights to the films that both brothers made. We're also told that Wild Blue Yonder, a film shot late in David's life, was essentially David's work. Yet Albert, on camera, is reluctant to share it with his niece, who breaks into tears.

Seen here, Albert looks like a cad who's standing between a young woman and the memory of her father. It's great for a young director's first film, to have the master exposed, even if he is your uncle. Are we getting the whole story? Should we be getting it, or should it be private? Albert Maysles did not show up in Amsterdam, even though his new films The Gates played. Will we ever see Wild Blue Yonder? Will Celia Maysles ever see it?

Carles Bosch from Barcelona made the documentary Balseros a few years ago, about boat people from Cuba who managed to enter the United States after being intercepted at sea. He shot in Cuba, in Guantanamo (where there were prison camps for "balseros" or boat people before prisoners from Afghanistan were sent there), and in the US, where life was not always sweet or free.

Bosch's new film is Septembers (Septiembres), about prisoners in Spain who participate in an annual singing contest. Winning doesn't get them out of jail free, but it does give them some dignity. Bosch shoots the competitions, but he also shoots the singers and their lives inside prison. Septembers is a welcome alternative to the endless sentimental parade of motivational films about spelling bees, jump-roping and ballroom dancing. Not that these prisoners don't have hope. They have real relationships behind bars, and we watch as the planned transfer of one prisoner threatens to separate her from her new Ecuadorian boyfriend, who's in for assault. The smiling man is the nicest guy who ever attacked someone. We even follow some of the prison singers as they leave the big house for life on the streets again. Many were drug addicts, and many sold drugs. One sweet man robbed banks. Another attacked the boyfriend of his ex and almost killed him. The music has surprisingly little pain in it, given who's singing. It would be a step up for PBS to show this one. HBO showed Balseros on cable televison in the US.

The film begs another question. If everyone whom we meet in Septembers is forthright and decent, where are the bad people in Spanish prisons?

- David D'Arcy

IndieWIRE's Brian Brooks has more on Stranded and Wild Blue Yonder; and AJ Schnack has more on this year's winners.

Posted by dwhudson at December 2, 2007 4:46 AM