Images and issues of the present
THESSALONIKI – Like any film festival worth its salt, the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, now in its ninth year, offers an almost bewildering array of things to see and do. The only solution is to jump in and succumb to the pleasure of watching films non-stop. That is, when you’re not meeting directors, attending master classes, or keeping up with the parallel discussions, concerts and conversations. Attention-getters With 140 foreign and 96 Greek films being screened, there’s always some unexpected thread to follow, some subject that leaps out and grabs you by the throat. One of this year’s attention-getters was gender – such a core part of our identity that any uncertainty about it can be profoundly unsettling. Two films addressed the subject intimately, employing distinctly different documentary approaches. «Red Without Blue» (USA, 2006), by Benita Sills, Todd Sills and Brooke Sebold, portrays two young people with a troubled past who are exploring and making courageous choices about their gender, sexuality and identity. The directors keep themselves well out of the frame, as twin brothers – Mark, who is gay, and Alex, who has chosen to live as a woman – and their parents all face the camera and freely share their vastly divergent thoughts and feelings. The film peels back layers of hurt and longing as it reveals the extraordinary complexity of attachment, family and growth. By contrast, Elisabeth Scharang, director of «Octopusalarm» (Austria, 2006), takes an active, almost overly intrusive, part in her film about Alex Juergen, who was born a hermaphrodite, an intersexual. Such is the power of her subject, however, that the film still resonates. As a child Alex was subjected to a series of operations when doctors decided he should be a girl, a decision his parents never talked to him about. His loneliness, his struggle to construct an identity when he so completely fails to tick either of society’s gender boxes, his eventual meeting with other intersexuals who understand how he feels, and his decision in his late 20s to live as a man make a compelling story. Full houses Films at the six theaters have been well attended, often by the young people that other event organizers pursue in vain. It’s the films, of course, a vast range of interesting work and engaging sidebar events, but it’s also the well-deserved reputation for careful planning, good communication and smooth organization that keeps the customers happy. There’s still plenty to catch up with at the festival, which runs till Sunday, including the tribute to director John Alpert, while the awards ceremony has been brought forward to Saturday because of the holiday on March 25.
