The 5 Must-See Films of Documentary Fortnight 2017

Quiet discoveries illuminate the Museum of Modern Art’s annual nonfiction showcase.

The Museum of Modern Art’s annual nonfiction showcase, Documentary Fortnight, always feels like the opposite of a film festival. In one sense, that’s obvious from the surface. There’s no market, no red carpet, no frenzy of news and instant reactions. But it also has its own sort of anti-buzz, a mood that differentiates it even from other documentary events around New York City. There is a peculiar tranquillity that can occur in the basement cinemas of MoMA in the dead of winter, one that allows such languorous triumphs as Lav Diaz’s Storm Children, Vol. 1 or Vitaly Mansky’s Pipeline to really work their way into your soul.

Not every lineup is on the same level, of course. This year’s slate has fewer instantly recognizable names than previous editions, and it’s a bit more focused on local New York City filmmakers. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are many little revelations within, from the unexpected peace of a gay Burmese wedding to the hidden beauty of a flower in the Korean DMZ. Here are five recommendations, quiet films rich in breathtaking landscapes and digital experimentation.

Irrawaddy Mon Amour

Sae Ko sells watermelon on the banks of the Irrawaddy River in Northern Myanmar. He and his friends make up the small LGBT community of their small village, a place that feels somewhat apart from the explicit homophobia of its national government. This is not to say that it’s a paradise of liberty, of course. He is obligated to plan his wedding to Saing Ko, a mason from a nearby village, in secret.

But rather than cast their live in the dour light of oppression, directors Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani and Andrea Zambelli emphasize the peaceful moments. They follow Sae Ko and his friends, a teacher, a shaman and a beautician, as they participate in local society. The filmmakers feature their first activist efforts alongside their day-to-day pursuits, which include a variety of colorful religious ceremonies. Like the equally beautiful Born This Way, which followed a similar movement in Cameroon, Irrawaddy Mon Amour is a sensitive portrayal of life’s fullness.

Las Letras

In 2002, indigenous Mexican teacher Alberto Patishtán was sentenced to 60 years in prison. The case was denounced as a major civil rights violation, but he was not granted amnesty until 2013. His letters from confinement, from which Las Letras takes its title, testify not only to his own experience but also the wider struggle for justice in Mexico.

Pablo Chavarría Gutiérrez has not made a conventional documentary of Patishtán and his case. Rather, Las Letras is an experimental expurgation of a corrupt criminal justice system. Children silently wander the forests and fields of rural Mexico. A dancer writhes down the side of a hill. The camera silently passes over a group of dead policemen lay on the road. Drums, strings and shrieks contribute to an alarming soundtrack. Patishtán’s words cross the screen like premonitions of a national epitaph.

Ulysses in the Subway

The New York City subway is busy, colorful and a bit bizarre. As an artistic proof, avant-garde filmmakers Ken and Flo Jacobs have teamed up with digital artists Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie to make Ulysses in the Subway. They’ve used an algorithm to create a 3-D animation from a single ride through Midtown Manhattan. The resulting visual trip, occasionally interrupted by a 1905 Thomas Edison actuality, is both delightfully mundane and colorfully transcendent.

The sounds of the train rattling along the tracks are punctuated by steel drums, chatting passengers and the unique loudspeaker announcements of the Times Square Shuttle. The accompanying animation is like an ocean of frenzied sound waves, occasionally resembling the city lights as seen from an airplane. Other times it suggests a portal, a bright light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a film as busy and unpredictable as the city itself.

Wolf and Sheep

Technically speaking, Wolf and Sheep is a work of fiction. It is a loosely structured drama of rural Afghanistan, where children keep watch over flocks of sheep and goats. Director Sharhbanoo Sadat was even forced by political circumstance to shoot the film across the border in Tajikistan. Moments of folklore occasionally interrupt her cinema-verite style, including one especially beautiful shot of a nude green woman descending a hill.

Yet Wolf and Sheep is essentially an act of concentrated memory and reenactment, both of Sadat’s own teenage years in Afghanistan and of the daily lives amateur cast. It grows out of the innate honesty of children and the simple truth that rests in the dark eyes of livestock. Its truth is that of the land on which it is set, a representation of Afghanistan far removed from the bluntly stereotypical portrayals by so many international filmmakers.

Shorts Program

My last recommendation isn’t a feature, but rather a shorts program united by a particularly rewarding theme: the uncanny ability of digital trickery to subtly confuse and rearrange our perceptions of place.

State of Rest and Motion is made up of footage that filmmaker Edin Velez shot in subway stations across the city, but digitally altered in such a way that they resemble paintings. It’s a bit like Ulysses in the Subway, but in reverse. The effect approaches the unsettling style of animator David O’Reilly, the mood complicated further by the faces of passengers who are quite clearly miffed by Velez’s camera.

489, meanwhile, is not so much an alteration of reality as the conjuration of memory. Hayoun Kwon uses 3-D animation to recreate the lived experience of a South Korean soldier who served at the DMZ. Among the world’s most politically inaccessible places, this strip of land is paradoxically both left to nature and irrevocably altered by human involvement. Its wild animals have free reign to stumble across any of the countless landmines hidden in the forest. The animation underlines this uncanny reality, oscillating between realism and a truly bizarre realignment of physical space.

Finally, Amit Dutta has returned to Doc Fortnight with Chitrashala, a short investigation of Indian miniaturist painting. Filmed in a single art gallery, it begins with odd-angled close-ups, featuring only portions of the painted images. Dutta uses the architecture of the room to complicate the internal architecture of his subjects. Midway through, he makes a magical leap into the paintings themselves with the help of some graceful animation. It’s a quietly breathtaking approach to capturing the spirit of the fine arts.

Documentary Fortnight runs from February 16th through 26th at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.