Body

Film

TRUTH BE TOLD

DENNIS LIM

06/08/1999

The Village Voice

'docfest'

At the DGA Theater

Through June 6

There's a horrible timeliness to the two most striking works at this

year's 'docfest': The Valley, which unblinkingly chronicles a gory

Albanian-Serb face-off in Kosovo's Drenica Valley, and Hitman Hart:

Wrestling With Shadows, an improbably enthralling portrait of Bret

"Hitman" Hart, the most famous member of the all-wrestling

Canadian Hart clan, the youngest of whom, Owen Hart, was killed in

a freak accident on live TV less than two weeks ago.

British documentarian Dan Reed and his crew spent last summer in

war-torn central Kosovo with both Albanian and Serb factions,

crossing front lines at great personal risk. Told almost exclusively in

the words of the parties involved (often accompanied by sickening

images of burned-out villages and charred bodies), The Valley is an

admirably even-handed document, tunneling straight to the heart of

the intractable beliefs that have since festered into murderous

righteousness. Without ever attempting to make the conflict any less

complicated than it is, the film is more incisive and meticulous than

any written commentary or TV news report could hope to be.

Wrestling With Shadows, arguably the most deftly constructed work

here, follows one painful year in the life of Hitman Hart--a year in

which the superstar wrestler grapples with the waning popularity of his

good-guy persona, butts heads with creepy World Wrestling

Federation honcho Vince McMahon, and ultimately, in his final WWF

match, is thwarted by a dramatic double-cross. It's a morality tale that

would be too pat were it scripted (indeed, the Hart family itself--gruff,

seemingly sadistic patriarch, resigned mother, eight pro-wrestling

sons, and four daughters married to wrestlers--is a phenomenon

beyond fiction). Director Paul Jay alternately underplays the Hitman's

borderline-surreal dilemmas and exploits them for maximum drama.

The result is fascinating, affording access to an existence so fake it's

real.

Opening and closing night offerings are somewhat lighter. The

festival kicks off tonight at the BAM Rose Cinemas with Roko and

Adrian Belic's Genghis Blues, which follows blind San

Francisco--based blues musician--self-taught throat-singer Paul Pena

on a trip to the central Asian nation of Tuva, where he takes part in an

interna-tional throat-singing competition. Overnarrated and

amateurish in spots, the film gets by on the sheer charisma of its

subject. (As with Hitman, there's a sad footnote--Pena was recently

diagnosed with cancer.)

Sunday's closing night film, Jesper Jergil's The Humiliated--a

behind-the-scenes look at The Idiots, Lars von Trier's film

(supposedly the first shot under Dogma rules) about a group of

young people who engage in "spassing" (pretending to be

retarded)--does little to suggest that the manifesto is much more than

an elaborate prank. In any case, the documentary's most valuable

insights are less concerned with the experimental filmmaking process

than with the director's enormously self-absorbed insecurity (which

may be affected or real, but is revealing either way). Von Trier seems

even more pathological than his press suggests--neurotic,

egomaniacal, temperamental, hypochondriacal (his chronic fear is

"cancer of the balls"), and tormented by his problematic relationship

with his actresses, defined mainly by sexual tension and head games.

Among other highlights, Nick Kurzon's Super Chief is a bracing

account of an Indian-reservation election in which the incumbent is

corrupt and apparently invincible. Jessica Yu's The Living Museum,

about the artist community at a Queens psychiatric center, is

conventionally put together but often affecting. There are also two

skillful rock docs. Jem Cohen's Instrument splices 10 years worth of

Fugazi footage into a vivid (if noticeably overlong) collage. Grant

Gee's Meeting People Is Easy sets out to depict Radiohead as

Alienated Rock Stars, and succeeds well enough despite relying

predictably on the designer ennui and paranoia that clogged the

band's much-loved OK Computer.

Credit:docfest

Photo: Kin flick: Wrestling With Shadows's Bret, Stu, and Owen Hart