SITGES 2020: Clapboard Jungle
sitges 2020The world of filmmaking has been documented over the years with critically acclaimed behind-the-scenes docs such as Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse and Tarkovsky’s Voyage in Time, as well as a focus on smaller, independent filmmakers trying to break out (American Movie springs to mind).
What Clapboard Jungle tries to do, in order to subvert something that has already been covered, is to explore the aspects of selling a movie. The focus is placed on financing along with the actual movie marketplaces which are rarely seen on camera. Clapboard Jungle’s biggest, and nearly only, success rests on that angle. Any aspiring filmmaker has surely imagined what it would be like to take their film to Cannes or to Berlinale to be sold and director, Justin McConnell does his best to capture what the feeling and process would be like. Beyond this, however, McConnell delivers a documentary that really isn’t that interesting and, for that matter, one that isn’t particularly even educating.
McConnell is actually the film’s biggest flaw, which is not great for him considering he spends 90% of the runtime in front of the camera. In a movie that is supposed to help young filmmakers grasp an idea of some of the challenges of making a film, McConnell instead casts himself as the star and we follow the events of trying to get a project funded through his own successes and failures. It’s a brave thing to do, on paper, sounds like it would probably work, but McConnell is so self-indulgent that he constantly misses the point of his own documentary. Staged shots of him pretending to be asleep on coaches whilst travelling to different film festivals seems like a cheap way of including more of himself on screen, whereas he could simply have just cut to the next festival.
What makes it even more ironic is that McConnell seems to be forgetting the advice he has gotten himself during several interviews. These interviews are spliced regularly throughout the film and there are some huge talents involved. He has managed to secure interviews with George A. Romero, Michael Biehn and Guillermo Del Toro, to name a few. Several of the interviewees remark on the importance of a tight edit, explaining that a streamlined eighty-minute film will always do better than a drawn out two-hour feature. These interviews unintentionally mock a number of shots McConnell has consciously, and rather egotistically, added to the film – shots of himself lifting weights and running on the treadmill, literally, for no reason.
What should be an insightful and well-intentioned documentary suffers from having director, Justin McConnell turning it into one big advertisement for himself by essentially promoting his entire filmography over the course of a hundred minutes.