Herzog, Apted, & Others in the Realms of Fiction

0 Comments POSTED: August 27, 2006 11:57 | By: Thom Powers
RESCUE-DAWN.jpgWerner Herzog is coming back to Toronto, following the major retrospective of his documentaries this spring at Hot Docs. His new film Rescue Dawn (left), showing in TIFF's Masters section, stars Christian Bale and is adapted from the directors?s 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. But do distinctions between documentary and fiction even matter to Herzog? In 1999 he delivered his barbed and witty ?Minnesota Declaration,? challenging the term ?cinema verite.? Among the points of this manifesto, he stated, ?There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.?

Besides Rescue Dawn, TIFF is playing several other fiction films by directors who have notable backgrounds in documentary. TIFF programmer Cameron Bailey has selected works by three such directors for the Special Presentation category.

The Last King of Scotland, based on Giles Foden?s novel, follows a Scottish doctor who enters the inner circle of the ruthless Ugandan leader Idi Amin (played by Forrest Whitaker). The director Kevin MacDonald is best known for his stylish and gripping docs Touching the Void and One Day in September (which won the Academy Award in 2000).

Indian filmmaker Kabir Khan has made award-winning docs in Burma and Afghanistan. Now he brings us the fiction feature Kabul Express, about two journalists going into Afghanistan following September 11, 2001. Bailey describes it as ?a film pitched somewhere between a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby classic and Three Kings.?

The Namesake is Mira Nair?s highly anticipated adaptation of the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri. Nair started her career making documentaries before transitioning to fiction with the hybrid Salaam Bombay! (88) which won the Camera d?Or at Cannes.

Turning to the Contemporary World Cinema category, filmmaker Michael Glawogger directs the fictional Slumming about two thrill seekers in Vienna whose transgressive behavior gets out of hand. Last year, Glawogger was in Real to Reel with his bracing documentary Workingman?s Death.

And on Closing Night, Michael Apted brings us Amazing Grace, a historical drama about the impassioned British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce, who led abolitionists in their crusade to end the slave trade. Apted?s prodigious career has routinely been seasoned with documentary projects, most famously his 7 Up series that has been revisiting the same subjects every seven years. The latest installment 49 Up will play this fall at the New York Film Festival.

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