MIFF- Watergate and What You Gonna Do When The World Is On Fire?

The latest two films I saw at MIFF were both American documentaries. On Sunday afternoon Sally and I met up at the newly renovated, beautiful art deco Capitol Theatre on Swanston Street for the *four and a half hour* documentary Watergate - Or: How We Learned To Stop An Out Of Control President by Charles Ferguson. The films used a mix of archival footage from the news and Congressional hearings, interviews with many of the key players, and re-enactments of the Nixon tapes with actors to tell the story of Watergate and how it all unfolded. Despite the length it was quite engrossing, and of course there are many parallels to what we are currently living through with the Trump administration.

This evening Megan and I went to the Forum Theatre to see Roberto Minervini's documentary What You Gonna Do When The World Is On Fire? about New Orleans. Shot in high contrast black and white, the film follows four different members of the black community in the city over a summer. There's Judy who owns a local bar, brothers Ronaldo and Titus, Mardi Gras chief Kevin, and members of the New Black Panther Party who are fighting for social justice. The film cuts back and forth between the different people, and there isn't much of a cohesive narrative to bring all the different threads together. The highlight of the film for me was the lovely relationship between the brothers as Ronaldo looked after and taught his younger brother Titus about the realities of life they face.