LAFF: Documentaries

A great documentary should take a subject and shatter what you know about it.  A great documentary should also illuminate you to a subject with which you are not familiar.  Three documentaries I had the pleasure of seeing at The Los Angeles International Film Festival:

Last Days in Vietnam is, yes, another look at the Vietnam War.  But where this one differs from all the rest is its incredible use of archival footage and, more importantly, it's focus. Rather than over involve itself with the messy politics of the war (though it's still discussed as it's impossible to shy away from) it focuses on those intense final days as the North Vietnamese take control, city-by-city, of the South and the eventual evacuation of Saigon. Through interviews from the people who were on the ground - Americans and the Vietnamese - mixed with visually stunning stock footage, the film tells an intensely detailed and riveting personal account of the fall of Saigon.  Wrought with  human drama, emotional insight, and rarely seen archival footage, Last Days in Vietnam should be required viewing of all history buffs. 

Stray Dog is the story of a Vietnam vet, haunted by his multiple tours both there and in Korea, who currently resides in a trailer park in rural Missouri. Stray Dog (née Ron Hall) lives with his second wife, a Mexican immigrant, and manages to get by in life through the mutual support of friends and family that surround him. Where most would perceive Stray Dog to fall under the stereotype of 'redneck biker,' this documentary is here to tell you the opposite. An eye opening film, it will show you just how badly we treat our veterans and how they stick together in hope, faith, and support. 

The Badjao Tribe is at the center of Walking Under Water, a film that beautifully captures a mostly unknown people in the South Asian Pacific.  Belonging to no country, and therefore having no legal status anywhere, the Badjao Tribe are a poor, uneducated people that largely cling to old tribal customs and ideas. Their way of life is simple, as it must be. The film follows an older man, Alexan, and his young nephew, Sari. Alexan is a compression diver, who takes his very small boat out to sea and dives for fish - their livelihood. He is teaching Sari as someday he'll have a family to care for. The film unobtrusively captures uncle and nephew as their life unfolds before us, successes and failures in plain view. A beautiful people who are being slowly pushed out of their islands by western tourists. With no place to legally go, their hope for a future is slowly dwindling.  And it's not a matter of if, but a matter of when.