"Losers and Winners" Won Best International Feature Documentary Prize at Toronto's Hot Docs

According to the blogger at All These Wonderful Things, "Losers and Winners" won Best International Feature Documentary at Toronto's Hot Doc's festival. Cool.

I saw it Wednesday at SilverDocs and really liked it. The film is so understated in a way, almost in a haiku like way, though I guess the analogy is off since haiku is a japanese form. What I liked was the way the documentary doesn't advocate, it just observes. While the title is "Losers and Winners," the movie doesn't tell you what to think -- doesn't hit you over the head with a Germany is the Losers/China the Winners. Sure, at one level it is obvious that these are the roles, but at the same time, for example, the Chinese are working long hard hours far from family and home, so they are losing some things too.

I was surprised at how hung up the Chinese seemed on Maoist shibboleths. (Though again I mixing my metaphors cross culturally. Actually that may be okay, since the culture clash/culture mix is a theme of the film!)

The filmmaker at "Still in Motion", who is apparently attending the serious-business-part-of-the-SilverDocs-festival and caught the Wednesday night showing that I attended, called it "a wonderful film about one of the strangest culture clashes I’ve seen." Also seeing the movie on Wednesday was this reviewer at Knowledge Problem, who appreciated the understated nature of the documentary: "The beauty of the film was in this very lack of any overarching organizational principle other than the story." (Italics in original.)

Viewing the film at hot Docs, Bob Turnbull at "Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind" wrote:

Although I ended up missing the interactions between the two cultures as the focus stayed with the workers, it's a film that works on several levels at once and remains entertaining and informative.

The blog's subtitle gave me pause: "Random mostly film based scribblings - just like 20000 other people..." As of a few weeks ago, that number is 20001. Or, actually, given reports about how many blogs get started all of the time, 27598 blogs on film!

The movie was too understated for some. Moviepie Musings found it "mind-numbingly dull." I guess it is not for everyone.

"Losers and Winners" and other Economic Stories

From the June 8 Washington Post column by Steven Pearlstein:

Through the magic of "product placement," consumer- product companies have become adept at using movies to boost the recognition of their brands. But when it comes to how movies and television portray business generally, the corporate community has been a miserable failure. Invariably, business serves as the negative backdrop against which the central personal or political drama can unfold, while corporate managers serve as stick-figure foils for heroes and comic buffoons.

As is often the case, however, Hollywood's blind spot offers a target of opportunity for independent filmmakers. And, indeed, you'll find some wonderfully insightful views about business and work life at the Silverdocs, the documentary conference and film festival next week in Silver Spring put on by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel.

Among the documentaries mentioned are: "Losers and Winners," by Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken (a German coke plant is moved to China); Ben Niles's "Note by Note" (about the manufacture of a grand piano); Doug Pray's "Big Rig" (about trucking and truckers); "Calcutta Calling," by Andre Hoermann (about a call center worker from Calcutta); and, Rob VanAlkemade's documentary, "What Would Jesus Buy?," (based on the life and songs of Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir).