The industrial city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire was long famous for its steel production. For centuries, Sheffield Steel produced the raw material for the tanks and battleships of the British armed forces. Legendary was also the fine cutlery that was manufactured in Sheffield with perfect craftsmanship. In the 1980s, the city fell into a deep crisis when cheap steel imports put pressure on the market for steel from Sheffield. Margaret Thatcher's strategy of dismantling old industries and trade union power also contributed to driving Sheffield into ruin. The city experienced an unprecedented economic and social decline from which it has only slowly recovered. In recent decades, it has managed to reinvent itself and establish itself as a cultural and academic centre in the north of England.
This willingness to get back up after defeat can also be found in singer and entertainer Dene Michael, who was part of the successful pop duo ‘Black Lace’ in the 1980s, a proletarian counterpart to George Michael's ‘Wham’. His former partner has long since passed away, but Dene Michael still tours clubs and hotels in the north of England. The audience has grown significantly older, but still enjoys his party hit ‘Agadoo’, with which he used to fill the halls.
‘Still Pushing Pineapples’ by Kim Hopkins tells of past glory and the daily struggle for performances and recognition. The singer devotedly cares for his elderly mother, who wants to return to Benidorm, where her son used to perform in front of English holidaymakers. On the way, she has a breakdown and nearly dies. But she survives the exhausting journey in the motorhome and enjoys returning to her former holiday destination. ‘Still Pushing Pineapples’ (the title quotes the chorus of ‘Agadoo’) is a melancholic portrait of a survivor who tries to make a new start with a new girlfriend.
The film, which opened the festival, was enthusiastically received in Sheffield. The entertainer attended the premiere with his girlfriend and indestructible mother and had no trouble getting the audience in the mood at the after-party.
The establishment of Sheffield DocFest in 1994 was one of the city's cultural innovations. It has since become the largest documentary film festival in the United Kingdom, as well as a meeting place for producers and representatives of European TV stations. While public broadcasters focus on popular, target group-oriented programming, slots for documentaries are coming under increasing pressure or being cancelled altogether. This was also noticeable this year. At the same time, there is a reluctance to tackle sensitive topics such as Israel and the Gaza war, with direct implications for European broadcasters. At the BBC, a documentary about the Gaza war was taken off the schedule after accusations of bias. On the other hand, Ukrainian war documentaries are enjoying great popularity. This was already evident in Cannes, where there was a focus on Ukraine with three productions on the opening day.
The Ukrainian film Cuba and Alaska by director Yegor Troianovskyi premiered at the Sheffield competition. Two paramedics nicknamed Cuba and Alaska decide to leave their civilian lives behind and go to the front. The film captures the everyday reality of war up close and personal with mobile phone cameras and bodycams. Alaska is seriously injured by a Russian drone and undergoes six months of rehabilitation before returning to the front. Her friend Cuba had vowed to avoid any emotional attachment, but she falls in love with a fellow soldier. One month before their planned wedding, he is killed in combat.
Nevertheless, the fighting spirit and patriotic determination of the two medics remain unbroken. Everyone is convinced that the Ukrainian armed forces will prevail. There is no sign of war weariness. Problematic aspects such as raiding parties hunting for young men of military age or scandals involving corrupt recruitment agencies do not appear in the film.
The two protagonists appeared on stage in combat uniform for the premiere. (Later, at the Munich Film Festival, they were in civilian clothes.) Director Yegor Troyanovsky was expected to attend the second screening directly from the front line. It was an emphatically martial staging, unusual for a film festival. A few months ago in Cannes, Bernard Henry-Levy had a Ukrainian general (also in combat uniform) pin a medal on his chest in front of an audience for his support of the Ukrainian cause. In his fourth Ukraine film, ‘Notre guerre,’ we see him on the front lines in a tailor-made suit with leather shoes and his signature white shirt wide open. Meanwhile, the majority of Ukrainian documentaries produced with the help of Western European co-producers seem, in their victory-focused escalation, like a continuation of military support by cinematic means.
Norwegian Morten Traavik and American-Korean Sun Kim originally wanted to make a film about a dating agency in Seoul that specialises in matching North Korean women with South Korean men. But over the course of five years of filming, the story of Yujin Han, who founded the agency, increasingly took centre stage.
'North South Man Woman' reveals in a very personal way not only the differences in mentality between North and South Korea, but also the divides between men and women in the ultra-capitalist South Asian society. Yujin Han and her married friends do not let their husbands tell them what to do. In the North, they were slaves to their husbands, who believed that their ‘penises would fall off’ if they lifted a finger in the kitchen, as one of the women in the film says. In the South, they are in charge and tell their husbands what to do. The film gets very close to its protagonists. During a meal together, we learn what they went through during their attempts to escape and in prison. It is fascinating to see how confident and determined the women are, without a trace of submissiveness. The film captures this tension without sentimentality and with a great deal of humour.
Two American productions that seemed to capture the mood of the Trump era were also noteworthy. In ‘The Librarians,’ director Kim A. Snyder illustrates the struggle of librarians who fight back against censorship by local school boards. In October 2021, lawyer Matt Krause, an evangelical Republican member of the Texas State House of Representatives, sent a list of 850 books to local school boards. The books deal with topics such as sex and racism, and anything related to LGBTQ issues is considered particularly suspicious. The titles in question are to be removed from school libraries because of their allegedly pornographic content. Governor Gregg Abbott then demands ‘the immediate removal of this graphic, pornographic material.’
School librarians in Texas and Florida are pressured, some even fired, when they refuse to remove the banned books. In a politically driven culture war, civil liberties and educational content are being restricted and censored in favour of an ideological agenda. Particularly active in this regard is the group ‘Moms for Liberty,’ which was founded in Florida in 2020 and, according to its own statements, now has 120,000 members. The activists are closely associated with the Republican Party and see themselves as fighters for traditional family values. Their agitation aims to control curricula and school library selections. In ‘The Librarians,’ one can observe with horror how, even before his second term in office, the ideological groundwork was laid for Donald Trump's fight against the independence of American educational institutions.
In “Natchez”, director Suzannah Herbert gives a voice to the descendants of slave owners and plantation owners who open their perfectly preserved Greek Revival-style mansions to paying tourists. On the other hand, we see a black tour guide offering trips through the picturesque town and reminding us that Natchez, Mississippi, was home to the second-largest slave market in the Southern States. To this day, the city administration has not deemed this worthy of a memorial. The Memphis-born director herself comes from the South, which made it easier for her to gain access to the owners of the opulent mansions, who chat carefree in front of the camera and talk themselves into trouble with racist comments. ‘Natchez’ has already won several awards as best documentary at the Tribeca Festival in New York.
Once again, Sheffield DocFest proved to be an attentive seismograph of current trends and conflicts. In contrast to the events on screen, the atmosphere at the festival itself was one of generosity and openness. Perhaps this is also due to the character of Sheffield. The city and the people of northern England have a reputation for being more uncomplicated and friendly than their compatriots in the south.