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Side by Side battles nostalgia and respect for film with a real curiosity for the possibility of the digital world.

Are we close to the mourning of film? If so, is it for better or for worse? This seems to be the question at the core of Side by Side. The documentary opens with a strong, bustling, contradictory series of statements on film and digital, coming from the most revered names in the film industry – among others, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, James Cameron, George Lucas, Christopher Nolan. Tracing the development of the digital in parallel to film and tackling the technical differences between the two media, Side by Side captures the exciting, controversial and fast-tracking change cinema technology is undergoing at the moment. Instead of focusing on the ‘visible’ effects of digital, Christopher Kenneally’s documentary focuses on the ‘invisible’ technical, artistic and almost political consequences of this change in medium. Keanu Reeves’s hosting is lively and intelligent, as he acts as the voice of nostalgia. Side by Side offers the viewer’s a peak behind the screen, into the battling ground of art and technology.

The strength of the documentary is in its in-depth, clear exposition of the technical characteristics of the digital medium. Kenneally is not afraid to dwell on the chemical processes of film or on the technical advances of digital cameras throughout recent years – and the audience can be grateful for that. This close-up on media and their possibilities evokes one of the major questions in art: do the medium’s limits provide an incentive to the artist’s creativity or do they act as a hindrance? Is the digital just another way of doing cinema, or will it ultimately change cinema and story-telling as we conceive them today?

If we cannot yet know whether digital will change cinema itself, certainly the medium is changing who does or rather who can do cinema. Democratisation is a strong argument on the side of digital. Costs are lower, equipment is more approachable and editing can be done on a laptop. On this regard, the Danish avant-garde group Dogme 95 is presented as the trigger for this democratisation of the medium. Yet one wonders if it tales only a cheap digital camera to become Lars von Trier.

What is most certain – and here the documentary is at its most ferocious in portraying an industry in upheaval – is that the digital is shifting, among other things, that subtle relation of power between Director and Director of Photography, and that the latter’s role is splitting into a series of post-production manipulations of the digital master image. Are DPs an endangered species? When light, colour and contrast will only be a matter of a click, will there be any value left in the understanding of light, lenses and shade of what is captured? And will this ultimately make the image lose all visual contact with ‘reality’?

As with any question entailing the idea of progress, there are those who enthusiastically embrace it to push it even further and those who are more cautious, maybe more nostalgic about the magic – and authority – of the past. In that way the documentary places ‘side by side’ not only film and digital, but also – and most of all – the people for and against one or the other medium. Perhaps the prosperity of cinema lies in this disagreement, more than in the mere technical possibilities of each media. In its deepest implications, Side by Side questions, almost in an ethical way, the essence of cinema. And the final message of the documentary is confident: what matters in cinema are the stories we are told, the how is just a mean to an end. 

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It has been said that a thunderbolt struck St. Peter just moments after the Pope’s resignation. But the real thunder to strike the Catholic Church these past weeks is probably Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.

It took four deaf men to break the silence surrounding clerical sex abuses. Mea Maxima Culpatells the inspiring story of Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Arthur Budzinksi and Bob Bolger as they set out to expose the sexual crimes of Father Lawrence Murphy, who repeatedly abused them and other 200 deaf children, in a school under his control. As the documentary progresses, the scope of the issue broadens and Alex Gibney ambitiously ventures into the secretive structure of the Vatican, uncovering its perverse mechanism of power, loyalty and omertà which obscures its responsibility vis-à-vis sexual crimes. The at-the-time-Cardinal Ratzinger appears as an ambivalent figure, informed and concerned about clerical sex abuses – in particular about the horrific actions of Marcial Maciel Degollado – but too loyal to the Vatican institution to take action.

Alex Gibney’s Mea Maxima Culpa strikes for its depth, rhythm and ambition. The documentary maintains throughout an incredible clarity of exposition and an objective journalistic approach to the issue, carefully selecting and effectively editing surprisingly varied sources of materials - news footage, photographs, a series of tremendous Super-8 videos, graphs, newspaper articles, archive documents and some recreated scenes. Amid the speeding rationality of the evidences, however, the strongest voice remains that of Terry, Gary, Arthur and Bob – their mute signing conveying anger, pain and emotions with overwhelming intensity.

Leaving religion and faith aside, Gibney’s approach to the issue is realistic and pragmatic. Clerical sexual abuse is a crime and should be handled as such, but because the Church encourages secrecy about these matters in order to protect its reputation, it has created the perfect environment for paedophilia to thrive unpunished. Gibney was subtle enough to leave the question of celibacy – and the much debated issue of clerical marriage – outside the picture. The Church’s omission of sexual abuses and its unwillingness to take action against priests who have been sexual offenders is the ‘lay’ problem – and civil crime – that Mea Maxima Culpa tackles. 

Ultimately, the question Mea Maxima Culpa poses is a question of justice, of responsibility: why is no punishment imposed and who is to blame? What appears through the series of scandals is a troubling image of the Vatican, whose belief in its own infallibility and righteousness ultimately becomes the justification to its own corruption. Society, by granting to the figure of the priests an innocence that needs no proof and a trust that needs not to be earned, has contributed to create this undisputed image of an infallible Church. By the same token, the documentary seems to argue, people have an incredible power: that of forsaking this misconception and that of demanding justice and punishment for clerical sexual abuses.

Mea Maxima Culpadoes not advocate a change in faith; it advocates a change in culture. And it seemed a telling - maybe inspiring? - coincidence that, as the documentary had its first screening, a Pope stepped down from its position. 

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