The festival reached its final day today, adding another year of strong programming to its 17-year history. Today’s selections also included a block of shorts. This particular block leaned farther into the experimental realms than usual. Neither these nor the shorts attached to features throughout the weekend inspire much in the memory. It’s disappointing to whiff on the best of the shorts – there were three other blocks and I doubt that none of them would have spoken to me – but there’s only so much time to watch and only so many synapses before the brain turns to jelly.
It’s this second phenomenon of “festival brain” that may have tempered my response to Crip Camp. The second film executive produced by the Obamas for Netflix, (after last year’s Oscar winner American Factory), Camp tells of a hippie-run camp for the disabled in the early 1970s and charts the campers’ eventual contributions in protest movements that brought about the nationwide handicap access improvements that we take for granted today. The gregarious heroes recall their teen camping days, backed up by an impressive amount of early video footage shot during that summer. Added to the available footage of the later street and live-in protests, the film never lacks for visual content. It’s all delivered mixed with present-day interviews in a pleasing package that teaches and touches the nostalgia button.
This nostalgia and its soundtrack of hits that may recall the 70s itself but definitely resembles the regurgitated nostalgia of many other films, puts a pre-fab wrapping on its unique subjects. But the accomplishments and charm of these interviewees is undeniable. Since Netflix has simultaneously backed the much bolder and stranger (though no less accessible) Dick Johnson is Dead, they can be cut some slack for taking the road more traveled this time.
In The Mole Agent, an octogenarian widower takes a part-time job infiltrating a nursing home for a private eye whose client suspect their elderly mother is being taken advantage of. The film playfully adds detective story cues – lots of slanted light through blinds and stealthy jazz flute – and at first the humorous conceits threaten to smother story. Our agent’s secret cameras are redundant when the filmmakers have been afforded the same access by the home (albeit without knowledge of the real story). The fingerprints left behind by the filmmakers become distracting. But Sergio, the would-be spy at the center, has an effortless charm and personifies the film’s authentic heart. A funny and touching film worth seeking out.
