News

is not easy to describe because that would require an interpretation, which is just what the filmmakers are denouncing. With their film, they reveal how every image represents an outlook that is not the only possibility. "I invite you to examine the most important events that occurred today," the cable news newsreader announces in San Antonio, Chile. And that is all the viewer gets to see of the news broadcast. What we do get is a glimpse at how that news is made. We see a reporter and a cameraman at work, and the emphasis does not lie so much on what they are filming, but rather how they go about it. Subsequently, the documentary filmmakers sum up the current events in a manner all their own: with a great deal of feeling for composition, tight shots always filmed with a tripod and preferably in extreme close-up, and extremely wide shots, avoiding the cliché master shot wherever possible. They dish up the recently deceased, waiting patients, horny monkeys, discarded junk, blistering heat, gushing tears, gurgling bubbles of air in water, and lots of foot soles. One interpretation could be that is trying to sketch the fleeting beauty of existence, in both its crushing virility and its commonplace vulnerability.