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You are often confronted when watching documentaries with the role of the camera and the person behind the camera because their presence impacts the subjects. Most people have a natural inclination to perform to the camera. And watching Obscure Night – Goodbye Here, Anywhere, I often found myself wondering if the subjects, who are predominantly boys, were performing to the camera. Obscure Night – Goodbye Here, Anywhere is a three-hour documentary from Sylvain George about migrants in Melilla, Morocco (mostly young boys) trying to get to Europe. These boys would always have tried to find a way across but as you watched them climb over barbed wire and hang off of cruise ships or back of trucks, you couldn’t help but wonder if some of the things they were doing were because a camera was watching and they wanted to perform, show off for the camera.
Sylvain George clearly cared for these boys, and they granted him a lot of access, allowing him to follow them the way they did and to see and film things of value to them and their survival. That relationship of trust between the subjects and the filmmaker is established early on when we see some of the boys going around and pulling out their hidden overnight items from storm drain holes in the sidewalk. He made this film because he cares about the experience they have trying to get to Europe, the struggle, and wants more people to know about the lives they live as they try to migrate to Europe. So, when I speak about the role of the camera, I don’t think he intended to exploit these boys or have them perform, but I think that’s just the nature of putting a camera in front of people, especially young people. It encourages people to egg each other on because there will be proof if one of them does or doesn’t do something.
While the film, for the most part, tries to play like the documentarian isn’t there, aka lack of talking head interviews, George’s presence bleeds in. At one point, I think you even hear him talking about his location as a good place to observe the action and then also yelling “run” to the boys as security pursues them.
I already mentioned it was three hours, and at least an hour could’ve been trimmed because we see a lot of the same actions repeated multiple times, be it climbing over fences, hanging off of trucks, or even using the storm drains for storage. This is a film that wants to reach audiences and get them talking about what is happening with these boys, and unfortunately, with a three-hour running time, I don’t know how many places will screen this. It’s hard to get people to commit to a three-hour movie. They are also just harder to program as they can’t screen as many times in a day.
The film is shot in black and white, and I do like black and white films because I like the rich contrast. It was especially apparent in the few scenes in the film that broke away from the norm, like when it shot the hologram (?) from a historic site presentation.
Finally, there was a poem performed by one of the boys (Malik). Both the selected poem, the performance, and the filming really tied the whole documentary together, so is something to keep your eyes out for.
Obscure Night – Goodbye Here, Anywhere had its World Premiere at Locarno 76 in their Concorso internazionale section.
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