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International Film Festival seen around town
Ghost Elephants (USA, 2025)
- Werner Herzog, director-scriptwriter
- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program
Some years ago, I was talking to a film programmer about what films are fine to be viewed on a small screen and what needs to be seen on a big one. At the time, I thought that documentaries and domestic dramas didn't lose as much when viewed on home video than blockbuster epics. He begged to differ, stating that all films have are best seen on a big screen since that's where they were made to be screened by filmmakers.
Over the years, I came to his way of thinking. And particularly appreciate it when I get to view a film on the truly big screen at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's 1,734-seater Grand Theatre -- as was the case with Werner Herzog's documentary about the epic journey undertaken in search of an elusive herd of elephants in Angola's hauntingly beautiful as well as ecologically very important Bié (aka Central) Plateau.
As is expected of a work by Herzog, Ghost Elephants is not a conventional documentary. (Though having said this, as a friend noted, it is one of the veteran German auteur's more conventional offerings.) This particularly so in his injecting and emphasising mystical elements -- by way of the San people (popularly referred to as "Bushmen") whose tracking skills can seem close to supernatural and also a local king's recounting of an ancestral legend involving an elephant that shed its skin -- to his documentation of what's effectively a scientific expedition led by zoologist-conservationist Dr Steve Boyes in search of what could well be currently the largest land animals on the planet and maybe even a previously undocumented elephant sub-species.
Something that can be endearing about Herzog is how so much seems to fascinate him. In Ghost Elephants, it's not just the titular subjects but those who go in search of it, and the peoples of the foreign land that he encounters along the way. And while the sight of the elephants are hard to ignore when they appear on screen, the Bié plateau along with other views of the African landscape are exquisitely filmed too, and come across as characters in their own right with parts to play in the story being told.
Speaking of story: along with the documentation of a magnificent scientific obsession (on the part of Steve Boyes) and the wonders of nature, Ghost Elephants also tell of humans' inhumanity in the treatment of Mother Nature; pointing out that casualties of Angola's so-called "civil war" included wildlife as well humans, and showing archival footage of a 1960s-era elephant hunt that involved shooting at them from a helicopter.
Which has me thinking it's a curious, and lamentable, omission on Herzog's part that he didn't mention in the documentary that the Bié plateau was, as per the Wikipedia entry on it, "deeply affected by slavery, with estimates of as much as
half the local population being enslaved in the mid-1800s". Perhaps it will be the subject of a follow-up work from the filmmaker? Though, to judge from what one sees in the film, the chances are higher that he will return to Africa to make a work focused on the San people, who he confessed out loud in Ghost Elephants to finding it hard to not over-romanticise!
My rating for the film: 7.0
Do You Love Me (Lebanon-France-Germany, 2025)
- Lana Daher, director and co-scriptwriter (along with Qutaiba Barhamji)
- Part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program
In the first few minutes of her documentary, Lebanese filmmaker Lana Daher explictly informs the audience of Do You Love Me that this work will not show events taking place in chronological order and that the effect may be disorientating -- but if so, it's on purpose. What she didn't state in the work itself -- but I think should be clear by way of a look at the offering's title -- is that this also is a film that works best if the viewer engages with it emotionally as well as intellectually.
Clearly a labour of love by someone who loves Lebanon, Do You Love Me presents a history of a nation with no national archive by selecting from, and splicing, images and sounds from more than 20,000 hours of audiovisual footage spanning some 70 years. Seven years in the making, this 75 minute work incorporates news and feature film clips, TV programmes, home videos, personal photographs in an initially dizzying and altogether ingenious way.
Through the eyes, ears and work of Lebanese people of various ethnicities, religions, ages and so on, we see the country's complexity, beauty, problems, horrors and humanity. Viewers are treated to scenes of everyday life, scenes of violence, and even scenes of violence that, tragically, have become everyday. (And yes, I am aware of what's happening to, and in, Lebanon currently. Which makes it all the more important that Do You Love Me was made, and bittersweet to view.)
Like it does in the country of some 5 million people, Beirut -- where approximately half of the people live -- looms large in the film. Director Daher does not hide that this city that's the 16th largest in the Arab world is socioculturally divided along religious lines but also shows both the Christian and Muslim sides, in joyous as well as unhappy scenes, and always with humanity.
Although it effectively begins with scenes of the sea, it's the sense of humanity that overwhelmingly courses through Do You Love Me. Mesmerising and increasingly hypnotic, the choices of visuals and music are masterful. And while I admittedly came away from this work still not knowing enough of Lebanon to love it, I must say that I do feel that I learnt enough to respect the people of Lebanon and feel that they deserve better, including more peaceful and good times than they are currently facing as well as have faced over the years and decades.
My rating for this film: 8.0.
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