The summer of 2021 has seen an unusually high amount of festival activity across the continent. Primarily due to Spring postponements, June and July have seen rescheduled editions of Cannes, DocAviv, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, and many more. With so many events occurring, there are many films to choose from for this month’s Dok.cetera. As always, we present a couple of selections currently on the festival circuit, two more that are now streaming, and a hidden gem for you to discover. What have been some of your favorite documentaries from the past month?

On The Circuit

Magaluf Ghost Town (dir. Miguel Ángel Blanca) – Spain
Summer is in full swing, and though the world still deals with pandemic closures, the ever-important economic driver that is the international tourism industry seems in much better shape than one year ago. Some may argue that we, as a collective society still dealing with the rampant disease, over privilege tourism, allowing for unsafe conditions in exchange for the almighty seasonal profit. Yet, one can make the argument that vaccine rollouts have been effective enough to comfortably ease restrictions, at least in Europe and North America. However, if we are on track to return to normal, how have our behaviors changed due to 1+ years of isolation? As tourists, do we still so prominently seek the mindless escape of drugs, drinks, and disaster in the name of fun? In other words, good times at the expense of good behavior. The answer is yet to come, but one famous location that must be screaming NO is Magaluf.

Magaluf, the Mallorcan beach town famous for its annual influx of (mostly British) tourists, plays the central role in Magaluf Ghost Town. A Hot Docs world premiere and the winner of Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s Best International Documentary, Magaluf Ghost Town takes a peculiar look at this mecca of budget holidays. Essentially a purpose-built (that purpose: economic growth) holiday location offering cheap liquor and an increased likelihood of casual sex (due to this, the British have renamed it “Shagaluf”), Magaluf is also home to many actual residents who may have some thoughts on its international renown.

Director Miguel Ángel Blanca successfully juxtaposes the citizenry’s diversity (and quirks) alongside the nightmarish debauchery of its holidaymakers. Through his protagonists (Rubén, a young gay actor who refuses his father’s disco business, and Maria Teresa, an overweight widow bothered by a pesky poltergeist, among them) and the background processions of drunken young people dancing, vomiting, and fucking their way through the week, Magaluf is depicted as both a utopia and dystopia. Ángel Blanca himself acknowledges this in the end credits, calling it the “best and worst place on earth”. To an extent, he is right (although many places can hold such a title: Las Vegas, Tulum, Mykonos, and Mallorca’s Balearic brother, Ibiza, included), but regardless of what you may think, it is an undeniably dynamic locale; one where a quality cinematic eye can do much justice visualizing the extent of its contradictions. In Magaluf Ghost Town, Ángel Blanca blurs the lines between reality and fantasy (sometimes dark fantasy… Google “balconing” as an example) alongside the uncomfortable truths of neo-colonialism – that even on a budget, the needs of those spending money hold privilege over those who reside in any given place.

“Magaluf Ghost Town” next screens at Transilvania IFF (July 23 – August 1).

Echoes of the Invisible (dir. Steve Elkins) – Poland, USA
A cinematic mosaic equal parts spiritual, existential, and wondrous, Steve Elkin’s South by Southwest Special Jury Winner Echoes of the Invisible is a difficult documentary to pigeonhole. Essentially, it is a film that interweaves several profound human journeys to connect the world (and its people) through a shared experience outside of the noise, distortion, and division making up so much of modern human life.

The protagonists are some of the most interesting and ambitious personalities one could encounter, in cinema or otherwise. There is Paul, whose decade-long “Out Of Eden Walk” tracks the migratory patterns of the earliest Stone Age humans. There is Rachel, whose own decade-long “The Oldest Living Things In The World” tracks continually living organisms over 2,000 years old. Then there is Al, a blind man and the inspiration behind the imposing extreme ecosystem Badwater Ultramarathon; Anil, the extreme adventurer and MIT fellow; and Linda, a visual artist exploring the relationships between landscape and identity. Finally, there is a former personal assistant to the Dalai Lama, Losang Samten, a master at creating sand mandalas. Together, these individual stories ponder some of the biggest questions humanity has ever faced with the grandest of humanistic ambitions.

Echoes of the Invisible is a tapestry, each story revealing a new piece of fabric in our collective existence. Through its interviews, cinematic aesthetic, panoramic landscapes, and Eastern spirituality, the film unobtrusively shows how attention, courage, and the ability to avoid the noise of modern life ultimately open our eyes to the multi-layered interconnectedness of all life, memory, and experience on Earth. It is an exercise in presence, an idea at the core of Buddhist philosophy, where separation lays the roots of all suffering.

“Echoes of the Invisible” last screened this month at the 2021 Saudi Film Festival. It is also available in certain locations on Apple TV and Kanopy

Now Streaming

The New Corporation: An Unfortunately Necessary Sequel (dir. Joel Bakan, Jennifer Abbott) – Canada
The follow up to 2003’s The New Corporation and based on Joel Bakan’s book The New Corporation: How ‘Good’ Corporations Are Bad for Business is, as the title suggests, quite the necessary sequel.

The first film looked at the justification behind why (in the Western world, at least) corporations are granted the same legal advantages as an individual (read: human being). Now, this new film takes a deep dive into how this cast of global villains attempts to reinvent themselves as planetary saviors through corporate philanthropy, activism, or general public relations bullshit. Such omnipotent corporate control tools used to be blatant and relatively easy to identify – the overt privileging of profit and the general villainy that entails. Now, however, in our era of “woke” superficial slacktivism and cancel culture, these same entities turn to seductiveness, charm, and glibness (and, sometimes, the awe of space travel) to ultimately achieve these ends. And, this toolbox encompasses all business, industry, and their leaders, from JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon (a staple of US President Joe Biden’s economic advisor shortlist) and BPs Lord John Browne to the titans of global inequality like Bill Gates and the rest of those financial/tech plutocrats. These figures expound on “corporate responsibility” and how they have adopted it as a central aspect of their personal and wider business identities. Yet, they remain consistently responsible (as Capitalism tends to be) for all of life’s ills, from oppression to climate change, the perpetuation of systemic racism to poverty.

As the film runs, Bakan and co-director Jennifer Abbott identify a “New Corporate Playbook”. This 21st-century approach to business and entrepreneurship includes such certifiable truths as “break laws that get in your way” and “win at all costs”. They are admittedly obvious but nonetheless powerful when set into the context of modern life. From macro ills like the coronavirus to micro tragedies likes London’s Grenfell Tower collapse, The New Corporation: An Unfortunately Necessary Sequel shows how virtually every recent disaster of any scale can find its roots in corporate greed and the personnel who promote it.

“The New Corporation: An Unfortunately Necessary Sequel” is now streaming on Crave. It is currently available in Canada.

Four Roads (dir. Alice Rohrwacher) – Italy
Alice Rohrwacher’s (Corpo Celeste, Happy as Lazzaro) 8-minute short film may very well be the most personal, intimate pandemic documentary made yet. Over the past 16 months, many documentaries have used the pandemic as their foundation. These films mainly cover its linear timeline with few touching upon the humanist adjustments forced upon our collective interactions.

We’ve written about pandemic documentaries before, like the meditative look at its city of origin, Wuhan, in A River, Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces. That city is also the focal point of Yung Chan’s Wuhan Wuhan, about its initial medical response. Then, even more healthcare worker-related films came like Michele Aiello’s Io Resto, Marie-Eve Hildbrand’s Healers, and Cedric Louis’ The Virus Hunters. All of these films made respective splashes at prestigious film festivals around the world.

Four Roads, on the other hand, has gone straight to Mubi. It is not a 90 minute+ deconstruction of ideology, politics, or response critique. Instead, it is a snapshot in time of a Tuscan summer shot through Rohrwacher’s analog camera (and expired Super 8 film). In it, the faces and actions of four neighbors juxtapose with her soft voice-over, documenting a change in routine with a genuine feeling of connection. This connection, though detached, thrives through the camera, providing a sense of distance without compromising the importance of tangible human connections. It is a meditation on comfort as much as our place in the world and the things we take for granted – how colors seem more vibrant when there are less of us about, for example. Ultimately, in the throes of global lockdown, nature became less cluttered and order more pronounced. Four Roads shows how the pandemic made us both healthier and unhealthier. It is a film that shuns the increased digitization forced upon us over the past year, doing so through analog refuge.

“Four Roads” is now streaming via MUBI.

A Hidden Gem

Searching Eva (dir. Pia Hellenthal) – Germany
From 2019 and available via upstart streaming service eyelet, Pia Hellenthal’s observation Searching Eva is as much exploration of the roles, definitions, and consequences of traditionalism and patriarchy as it is a traditional observational biography. A Vice production anchored in the unmistakable aesthetics and narrative devices used by that publication (for better or worse), Searching Eva’s sex worker protagonist Eva Collé acts as a conduit between linear past and fluid future, navigating that delicate (and all-too-often dangerous) space between the societal necessity of labor and its contradictions toward the importance of self-love. Eva is a model, blogger, and “influencer”. She is also self-described as “non-binary, bisexual, autistic, anarchist, feminist, and a drug addict”. Her identity is as elusive as her physical presence in the traditional sense, a constant influx dynamic – volatile and ever-undefined.

Despite this elusiveness, Eva is a Gen Z archetype, using social media and its spectacle to wander through her coming of age. In doing so, her experience opens up to those who may also struggle with their own identities and may not have the social infrastructure or general know-how for effective coping mechanisms. The soft touch of Hellenthal’s direction guides delicately throughout, even the moments where those outside the social media generation may eye roll at the seeming self-importance of its “stars”. There is narcissism on display (and a lot of it) as are the conservative triggering activities of sex for money, intravenous drug use, and gender fluidity. But this equally alluring and perplexing film is all about a modern world of shifting expectations and identities, most not chiseled into stone-like previous generations would have us believe.

“Searching Eva” is now streaming via eyelet.

Steve Rickinson

"Came to Bucharest after living in Amsterdam & Brooklyn, among others, Steve is the industry editor for Modern Times Review documentary magazine.