Rotterdam Film Festival: Day Two

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For the first screening of the day I headed to The Venster cinema for
the premiere of Separations, a documentary recounting the history of
filmmaker Andrea Silva's family through interviews, photographs, and
home videos.  The source of Silva's interest lies in the rootlessness
of her family history, her mother fleeing Nazi Germany with her
parents at the age of three and subsequently raising five children in
Sao Paolo, three of whom now live in Europe (including Andrea).
Bringing her siblings back to Brazil to their parent's home, they
touch on the issues of identity and displacement that have recurred
through each generation.  Andrea's mother was previously a
psychiatrist (who herself suffered an episode of psychosis five years
ago) and she's plainly the most fascinating family member of the
group, threatening to assert control over her daughter, most notably
in a sublime moment where she demands Andrea come from behind the
camera and allow herself to be filmed as they talk.  'Separations' is
an intensely personal home movie that's clearly been made as an
attempt to resolve the private family traumas that departures entail,
yet it also offers the viewer ample space to reflect on the wider
political and social histories that their story represents.

Later on I saw John Gianvito's 'Vapor Trail (Clark)', an encyclopaedic
history of Clark Air Base, a former U.S. military base in the
Philippines that turned large areas of Luzon into an ecological
disaster area.  Gianvito interviews numerous civilians who were moved
to Clark after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, relatives of
the dead and the living victims of the disease and toxic contamination
that the base wrought.  Long stretches are spent following Myrna and
Boojie, two members of the People's Task Force, a campaign group set
up to force the U.S. government to recognise their responsibilities in
the clean up of the bases, as well as to force the Philippine
government to properly represent their people.  Gianvito uncovers the
mass ignorance of the Filipino-American War in the people he
interviews, which presumably led him to include the narration, quotes
and photographs interspersed throughout that relate the war's history.
 By juxtaposing past and present, 'Vapor Trail (Clark)' decisively
demonstrates how American imperialism in the 19th century has direct
links to the tragedies now unfolding, both causing a long trail of
death and destruction, with history disappearing into air.  This is a
fearless masterpiece that howls to the viewer.  Neglecting blunt
rhetoric, it's power erupts from the restrained passion of the
campaigners, from the devastating testimonies, from the endless shots
of children's gravestones, from the whispering of the wind.