A documentary about everything**

How much information about everything can you squeeze into 90 minutes? Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, being the economists they are, were just as economic with their time in managing to cover parenting, corruption, cause & effect, incentives and crime in this limited amount of time in what they call Freakonomics. 

Keeping to the theme of being unconventional and attempting to reveal the other side of the norm as we know it, the credits are rolled at the beginning (and of course, more detailed at the end again). The documentary begins with Dubner and Levitt giving a real estate scenario that reveals the hidden agendas, incentives and facade of mutual benefit in the real estate industry. Essentially, the point of this is to get the viewer to ponder on something they may have never thought of before. this style is carried throughout the documentary; the authors discuss a topic, give a brief scenario introducing the next theme and a linking documentary is played. What makes Freakonimcs different is that it is a documentary made up of an amalgamation of other shorter documentaries that the authors basically give educated opinions on. 

The first featured documentary is about how names supposedly shape the way a child's life is going to turn out. This documentary is an entire exaggerated re-enactment also making use of vox pops of the ordinary woman or man on the street, where they have casted actors/actresses in order to protect the identities of those with the said "unfortunate" names. This is an ethical method often adopted in documentary film making in order to protect the dignity of those the topic pertains to. The narration of this piece (A Roshanda by any Other Name) is even scripted from a humorous point of view, as this is after all, a light-hearted topic. Straight after this, we are taken back to our two authors, so it feels like the authors were also watching with us at the same time (in a spatiotemporal sense) and we therefore feel included in the discussion that follows.

Given that this is a documentary based on a book by economists, one is bombarded with a lot of data and infographics - something that can make a few less mathematically inclined individuals switch off and lose the hidden truth of some pieces in the attempting to decipher some of the data. such an example is that of the It's not always a wonderful life piece featured here that also failed to make use of any direct interview shots with experts, relying only on monotonous narration albeit its actually gripping content.

Because this features four chapters within the one bigger picture, we experience different methods of storytelling and one ends up comparing these different techniques as they are watching. For example, I noticed that in Pure Corruption, Alex Gibney uses music to sort of arouse different emotions and reactions as well as using the same track he opened with at the end to give some continuity. There is also a heavy reliance on lighting to capture different emotions here.

Not a documentary about Banksy**

I have always been a keen appreciator of Banksy's satirical art and social commentary, so you can imagine my excitement when I finally got the chance to watch Exit Through the Gift Shop...only to find that it was about a lot more than just Banksy. This documentary follows a French amateur filmmaker on his journey to finding Banksy and hopefully making a film about him. Along this journey, he encounters other grafitti artists such as Shephard Fairey of OBEY fame and Invader and along this journey, finds himself on the other side of the lens. 

This documentary film begins with a satirical logo of Paramount Pictures as "Paranoid pictures" , as one would expect from a supposed film about Banksy, followed by an extremely visually appealing montage of the process of making graffiti art. Our first introduction to Banksy still maintains a mystery about him, as he is silhouetted over and above the fact that he is wearing a black hoody and his voice is somewhat muffled. Our introduction is Bansky is actually an introduction to Thierry Guetta, an aspiring filmmaker. We then see a fair amount of Guetta's footage, almost as if to say, "judge for yourself how good or bad a filmmaker Thierry is." Moreover, using his real footage maintains the authenticity of what the film is now about. 

I commend the fact that more than half of the footage of graffiti artists at work in the early hours of he morning is either silhouetted or shot from behind he artist for the purposes of anonymity, as this is deemed an illegal practice in a lot of states. Even with some of the anonymity, the true sense of the story is not lost. The use of time lapses also reveals to us how the creative process of making graffiti is a time consuming one, as we see Guetta going to film at midnight and we witness the sunrise with him and this is the nature of graffiti - you wake up the next day and suddenly it's there. 

There is a great sense of progression throughout this film, as the narrative takes us from when Thierry Guetta was running a clothing warehouse to the day he bought his camera to the day he met his first graffiti artist subject and eventually to when he becomes the big deal, so essentially we start feeling like we have known him for years as we watch his character develop into the world phenomenon known as Mr Brainwash. We only get little peeks into the actual lives of the artists even though it s their art that is largely featured.

This is a film that relies largely on visual appeal and as such, there are a lot of beautiful shots of the art - captured from rooftops, in moving vehicles, from below and the closeups that make you fee like you can almost smell the spray paint used. 

Concerning Thierry "Mr Brainwash" Guetta, Some have speculated that is a completely satirical piece - a mockumentary, but even so, one can't help, but commend the visual aspect of this film and that ultimately, the grand narrative is that of the anonymous nature of graffiti artists such as Invader and Banksy, but their work is globally appreciated, thus showing that you do not need to know (or have seen) someone's face to appreciate their work. We know this all too well with Sia. 

Interrogating whiteness - a review**

Rehad Desai’s The Heart of Whiteness is a documentary with a grand narrative that aims to interrogate the racist mindsets of a few small white/Afrikaner communities in a post-apartheid South Africa. We journey with Desai from a gated community in Johannesburg to Standerton and finally to Orania. The recurring question throughout the documentary is, “who is allowed in?” This brings to the surface the theme of racial exclusion and we get this from the response of an Afrikaner interviewee who alludes to how the presence of black people in their community would only be accepted on the grounds of white employer – black employee.

South Africa is largely characterised by its racially unjust history and Desai incorporates elements that remind us of this in this documentary. The way in which he does this is by first creating a setting where there is a conversation about race in certain South African spaces and then by making use of archive footage from 1960, 1970, 1990 of past events around this issue that made news. This archive footage is strategically placed throughout the 48 minute duration of the documentary – it is used to introduce either a new geographical location or a new angle to the story.

As one would expect, Rehad Desai does not always have pleasant encounters with the people he interviews (all white). He has a very direct way of asking questions and we see an unsavoury reaction to one of these questions during his time in Standerton, where he mentions how he felt it may have been necessary to stop filming at that moment. This brings to light the question of ethics – how appropriate and ethical is it to film certain environments that are not generally welcoming of media as well as what is the next step for a journalist or any other media personnel when potential subjects suddenly feel offended or threatened by the questions posed? Desai stopped filming in that moment of the furore, but still used the footage in his final documentary edit. This is often the case when faced with these kinds of catch-22s – filming will be stopped in the heat of the heat of the moment, but the footage is usually kept and used. He also mentions once or twice that he has been let into white spaces even though he is a man of colour, but one can’t help but think that the only reason this is so is that he is firstly, entering these spaces with a camera crew and secondly, the fact that Indian and coloured South Africans don’t bare the brunt of racism as harshly as black South Africans – something that could have also been addressed in the documentary (even briefly so). It really is an ethically ambiguous situation, but given the nature of the documentary, a somewhat expected ethical dilemma.

Rehad Desai made a good choice of establishing shots, giving the viewer a sense of place every time he travels to a different place as well as the time lapses and long shots of the road ahead that also give us a sense of travel. There is an especially impressive establishing shot of the lit up churches and their crucifixes as he arrives in Standerton, indicating to us that a lot of the population’s beliefs are rooted in religious dogma. These are the uncensored, jarring beliefs and racist opinions that Desai decided to keep for the final edit to probably create more pressing conversations about the matter. I’d say the only lacking things in this documentary are the opinions of black South Africans just to give us a peek into how those who are prejudiced against retort.