For this year’s World Cin­e­ma Show­case pre­view I start­ed with a list of all the films I want­ed to see and then realised that I had used up my entire world lim­it. So, for­give me if these briefs are brief but this year’s Show­case is as heavy­weight as it’s ever been (and runs for three days longer so every­thing can fit).

Bill Cunningham New York stillI’m not sure why one Fes­ti­val would need two films about New York street pho­tog­ra­phers but if you have to choose between them, skip Smash His Cam­era — about the paparazzi self-pub­li­cist Ron Gal­lela — and tune in to the delight­ful Bill Cun­ning­ham New York instead.

Waiting for Davis Guggenheim’s Wait­ing for “Super­man” is about as pow­er­ful and mov­ing as you’d expect from a naked­ly manip­u­la­tive exposé of the Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion sys­tem. It will make you mad but I hope it will also encour­age spir­it­ed debate and fur­ther read­ing. Waste Land starts off unpromis­ing­ly. It looks like a stan­dard “fol­low an artist around while he makes his work” sort of film but when affa­ble Brazil­ian Vik Muniz goes to the world’s largest land­fill to tell the sto­ries of the itin­er­ant “pick­ers” — who make a tiny liv­ing sort­ing the recy­clables from the garbage — it turns into some­thing else, some­thing gen­uine­ly uplift­ing.

Lemy stillI’m not quite sure how this has come about but five of my top ten doc­u­men­taries of recent years have been about heavy met­al. Lem­my, about the sur­pris­ing­ly kind­heart­ed elder states­man of rock Motörhead’s Lem­my Kilmis­ter, has gone into that top ten too. I didn’t want to give that one back when I’d fin­ished with it.

Restrepo stillThere are two Afghan War doc­u­men­taries too. I only got to see Restre­po, made for Nation­al Geo­graph­ic by brave/reckless jour­nal­ists Tim Het­her­ing­ton and Sebas­t­ian Junger. Fol­low­ing one com­pa­ny sit­ting in an exposed posi­tion in the most dan­ger­ous val­ley in Afghanistan (for 15 months!) it’s as if there had been cam­eras in Gal­lipoli — the crazy point­less­ness of the entire “War on Ter­ror” exer­cise is made total­ly clear by focus­ing on just one sto­ry: con­sum­mate doc­u­men­tary mak­ing.

White Meadows stillIn the fea­tures sec­tion there are at least two con­tenders for mas­ter­piece sta­tus: Of Gods and Men is going to get a lot of atten­tion — and deserved­ly so — but don’t over­look Moham­mad Rasoulof’s beau­ti­ful and hyp­not­ic White Mead­ows. In a remote part of Iran — where there seems to be no hori­zon — an inscrutable man rows the salty lake between the salty islands and the salty flats, har­vest­ing the salty tears of the super­sti­tious locals. Mes­mer­iz­ing.

There’s plen­ty more — the World Cin­e­ma Show­case runs from Thurs­day 18 April until Sat­ur­day 30 April at the Para­mount.

Print­ed in Welling­ton’s Cap­i­tal Times on Wednes­day 13 April, 2011.

Cross-post­ed to Funer­als & Snakes.