Earlier today, I saw “Paris 1919″ as my final film at the Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto. I’ve been attending Hot Docs for several years now and always find it to be an interesting experience. This year, I saw films on everything from the real estate market of St. Petersburg, Russia (pereSTROIKA – reCONSTRUCTION of a flat – great music!) to South Korea’s struggle over free trade and farming (Farmer’s Song) to a biography of a charismatic UN leader (Sergio). In total, I saw nine films and one short. The films were a bit more spaced out this year, so I felt less culturally exhausted than previously.
I wanted to write about “Paris 1919″ for several reason here. First, it was a well executed film inspired by a book that I rather enjoyed reading a few years ago (Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan). Of the minor characters, my favourite was John Maynard Keynes, the noted British economist. I can’t comment on the Prime Minister of Italy – Vittorio Orlando – as I don’t know much about him, but the other major leaders – Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau – struck me as very well cast.
It is also of interest to me on a professional level. The film’s researchers have made very capable use of a wide variety of archival sources from around the world. That’s something I would like to see more of. It is very common to see documentaries credit commercial archives (especially for news reporting), but this film had credits from large public archives such as the US National Archives (“National Archives and Records Administration”). MacMillan, who attended the screening and took questions following the film, remarked that she was impressed with the combination of photos and film that were used in the film. Archivists (and librarians! and museum staff too) should think more about this interesting segment of users. Fees from supporting this kind of work could help support the costly preservation of film and related media. Beyond that, I think it would be stimulating work to assist in the research that goes into making a documentary.
If you’d like to see the trailer for the documentary, click on the image at the top of this entry and you’ll go straight to YouTube. Thanks are due to director Paul Cowan and everyone else who worked on this project.
No related posts.
