IDFA 2010 - The documentary Utopia in Four Movements as a live experience

The latest in documentary screening has nothing to do with websites or other new media. On the contrary, the presentation of the 'live documentary' Utopia in Four Movements, which IDFA had the European premiere of, actually harks back to the primal form of cinema, when films were shown with live music and a so-called explicateur.

That explicator, or narrator, in this case is Sam Green, the filmmaker who also made the Oscar-nominated documentary The Weather Underground to his credit. He has become fascinated by utopian ideals and their tragic demise in the 20th century. His story begins with the Esperantists who hoped to bring world peace with their new language and ends with the wry legacy of wars and derailed revolutions. In doing so, Green does not lose sight of irony. The inventor of the indoor mall, now the capitalist symbol par excellence, was a socialist.
At the screening of Utopia in Four Movements, last night at De Brakke grond, Green himself was on stage to tell the story to his film, a text that is often added as a voice-over in normal documentaries. He was assisted by The Quavers, a three-man band from Brooklyn who provided the music, also live in other words, while Green's associate Dave Cerf mixed the sound at the back of the room. Because the images are on his laptop as separate scenes (you don't notice this as a viewer, by the way), Green can easily make changes per performance. In this case, he had added footage of Dutch protesters.
Is this glorified lecture with light images really that much different from the screening of a regular film with the music as the soundtrack and the commentary as the voice-over? Still. One would normally perceive such an interminable narrative voiceover as terribly boring and monotonous. It is suddenly very different when Green - an entertaining narrator with a sense of humour - is in front of the audience in person. Then a relationship with the audience develops and the film screening turns into something more like theatre.
This rather exclusive way of showing entails that Utopia in Four Movements not available for downloading or DVD for the time being. Because Green himself likes to see the film as an expression of a modest utopian idea: namely that you should experience films together in a cinema hall, and not on your own behind your laptop.
Utopia in Four Movements can still be seen at De Brakke Grond on Monday 22 November.