#doclab

Maybe it is a mistake to venture into a festival as immense as IDFA without browsing the various selections in advance. At a certain point, information overload and work overload take their toll. Then again, for some festivals it is better to dive right in and throw yourself at the mercy of the curatorial gods. Though sprawling, IDFA is a festival with a clean and precise profile: competition for features, competition for mid-lengths, national competition, new media competition, festival favorites, masters, themed programs, et al.

A nd then there is Paradocs, the unsung section that captured my attention on my last visit to the festival two years ago, and which is closest to my sensibilities and areas of professional engagement. The first thing I did – after picking up my accreditation, after helping myself to the complimentary espresso machine in the guest lounge, and after helping myself to one more perfectly automated macchiato – was to look for the Paradocs listings as I quickly scanned the catalog. Most people look for coffee shops when they visit Amsterdam. I just look for the coffee.

Paradocs is the home for documentary work that sits on a number of borders, for example with fiction, or with the fine arts. In short, this is where one would look for more risky and creative works that flaunt classical codes and rules of documentary engagement. Unfortunately, it seemed that the section was more modest in scope than I remember two years ago. Or was it the coffee? Fourteen results show up on the festival search page – a relatively even mixture of lengths, with some titles cross-listed in one competition or another. If only Paradocs was afforded the care and expanse of the new-media-focused DocLab, with an exhibition, a conference, performances, and related endeavors. For now, that is just a somniloquy.

Still, I was happy to discover the film CANIBA (2017) on the Paradocs slate – even happier to see it was playing on my first day at IDFA. It became an immediate priority on my non-existent agenda. After premiering in Venice, making the rounds in Toronto and New York, CANIBA returned to the continent via Amsterdam. I have been following the work of the co-directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor with interest – beginning with LEVIATHAN (2012), which struck me as a solid film that was ultimately a bit overrated, and continuing with SOMNILOQUIES (2017), which was totally uninteresting. The artists’ affiliation with the famous Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University adds a certain promise to their work – not of an academic affair but of something interdisciplinary, of something experimental, something beyond the status quo of contemporary non-fiction.

CANIBA looks awfully close to a masterpiece. The tightly-framed and textured imagery developed in SOMNILOQUIES is here given an extra emotional charge and clarity by the weight of the subject matter: the notorious Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa and his brother Jun. The flirtation with death and a nightmarish existence that was explored in LEVIATHAN is made even more palpable here, through both cinematic means and also through the incomprehensible nature and activities of the subjects. The sensory part of the equation is on full display in CANIBA. It is an affective, tactile experience that reaches out from the screen and touches the viewer. I immediately knew that I would not see a better documentary during the rest of my time at the festival, and I was right.

We finally exit the confines of the two brothers’ home at the conclusion of the documentary. Thrust into the sunlight, pushed in a wheelchair, with the odd sounds of a rapturous ovation mixed with birds singing, Issei repeats the words “It’s a miracle” over and over again. The question of whether this deranged killer deserves one is another matter, but force majeure is indiscriminate. This joie de vivre that he feels, this horizon of possibilities, is a gift that is transferred to the audience. I can think of no better justification for the sensory impulse in ethnography, or for the laboratory that the Paradocs program could and possibly should be.