The Annual Bolton Film Festival has turned this year to the medium of online broadcasting, which, for films, is an easy leap to make, and it also makes it easier for the viewer, who has access to the films for a 48 hour period. There are about 200 films being shown this year as well as talks and seminars running online too. The films are categorised and bungled into managable packages of viewing between 60 - 100 minutes each time, all the films in these bundles being of the same genre. Here I saw films from the International Documentary classification.
1. Voorspel / Foreplay - The Netherlands - Dir: Anna Von Campenhout.
Sex eductation in schools in The Netherlands is the topic of this docunentary which I have to say I found really quite shocking.
I am of the generation that went through school learning from older brothers about 'the birds and the bees' and finding a stash of porn magazines hidden under a bush in the woods. We managed fine, and we have grown up fine, and so why we need to even have such a lesson in schools is, for me, somewhat baffling.
In this documentary we learn that children as young as 11 are having sex education lessons - at this age they are shown sexual positions and given the facts with the teacher using Lego figures! However at 13 boys and girls learn about and see diagrams, pictures, and handle life-size models of vaginas, penises, clitorises, and we see a lesson where the class are putting condoms over wooden representations of an erect penis. Another lesson shows a heavily pregnant teacher showing them how to kiss and caress the genitals.
This documentary was filmed in three actual schools with the real teachers giving real lessons. Some of the young students are interviewed and it is abumdantly clear that they are simply far too immature for such lessons and they are either embarrassed or confused by what they learn. The teachers without exception deliver their lessons in a monotonous matter-of-fact tone with no emotion behind what they are saying - which might be part of the problem - if the children are learning about something which is, after all, perfectly natural and sensual, then the lack of emotion is confusing for them.
I was shocked at both the amount of information that these youngsters learn, and also how they learn it. For me the lessons are extraneous to a school setting, and the documentary was a real eye-opener.
2. Three Logical Exits - Denmark - Dir: Mahdi Fleifel.
Filmed in Lebanon, in the largest of these refugee camps, Ain El Hilweh, we follow Mahdi as he talks about life here and his plans of escape. Mixing archive footage with the contemporary, we learn that life in these camps is anything but easy. They live in constant fear and poverty. Bombs, mortars and gunfire are a constant, as well as having to cope with being classed as 'foreign workers' - a social stigma even below 'refugee'.
Thought-provoking and undoubtedly real, this film is far more than a sociological meditation. I am not sure what the three 'exits' might be, but a real and final exit to this situation should be found on basic humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 16/10/20
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