Iraqi fame:
The documentary follows Muthana Mohmed an Iraqi man and his current job as a runner on the set of Doom to beginning at a film school in London. It's introduced at the beginning that Muthana's Baghdad school had been destroyed by U.S bomb even though he lives in America and works on American films. This documentary is filmed in a fairly naturlistic style as it also features stock footage showing news reports of the current situation in Iraq and certain points the camera is turned on the film maker Nina Davenport and towards the end of the film her involvement in his life and his demand for money become more interesting than the earlier struggle of Muthana hearing his visa will soon run out or his work at the film school. Though some of the film may seem stage, the phonecall from his girlfriend, most of the film is insightful and an interesting situation created from the eventually difficult main character.
Andy Wardle
Rich kid, poor kid:
This documentary follows a rich child and a poor child who leave at opposite ends of the same South Londonstreet but are seperated by the wealth gap. After being mugged twice outside her home the posh girl Alice has very strong views and opinions about 'chavs' and people who live in council houses, she belived all people on benefits are "lazy" and "could go die for all she cared" her views clearly come from ignorance. The poor girl Natalie didn't have as strong views. Obviously after meeting Alice's preconceptions change and she feels ashamed for what she said only a few days before. This is a very strong juxtapostion though it's nothing new it was interesting to hear what the girls talked about, how rich girls simply abort the child, and how the parents were with their childs new friend.
Andy Wardle
Renita Renita
This observational documentary follows a transexual prostitute who always wanted to be a doctor and a woman but as a child was forced to study at an Islamic school. The film is quite powerful as the film follows a general day to day life in her salon but with voiceover of an interview with her, rarely cutting back for shocking moments such as when she was sold by a older crazy transexual and when she was beaten and stabbed. The narration is auto-biographical as it follows her story. This is a powerful documentary about equality, human emotion and the unfairness of life.
Andy Wardle
Common Ground
Common Ground is a documentary made mostly of photographs apart from interviews. It follows the selling of a farm to the building and moving in of new families on this land. Split screen is used effectively to juxtapose the new and the old. Interviews are used as voices of the photographs, mostly in the photos of the farm as they discuss giving up their animals. The contrast of these images comes together in the end to draw similarities between the farm family and the new families.
Andy Wardle
UFO’s Undeniable evidence
This documentary supposedly showed the viewer undeniable evidence that the UFO phenomenon is 100% real by using a combination of ‘real’ footage of UFO’s, Photographs and eyewitness accounts by some fairly credible people including a Swiss airline pilot and some former members of the US military.
While the evidence shown was compelling and it would be hard in some cases to form rational explanations it was hardly undeniable as the filming of the supposed UFO’s poor quality and most of the things shown could be put down to shaky camera work of normal things in the sky such as stars. The documentary style was very dull and in my opinion failed to keep the viewer interested in the material that it was showing. The main problems that they had were the pointless reconstruction footage that led nowhere, and the monotonous voice of the narrator talking on and on, and screwing up the dialogue every so often either by mispronouncing words or not saying what was relevant to the images shown on screen. While the narrator was bad the editing failed equally to catch and rectify these mistakes making the documentary poor quality.
This documentary is the first of a four part series and if this part is anything to go by watching the rest of them would be a waste of 4 hours that you could be doing some proper research into the subject in.
Andy Ryder/Tim Ingram
