Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (2007)

Yesterday I also attended the screening of Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, another premier screening at the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, produced and directed by Kim Longinotto. This is another documentary featuring children as its central focus, but what a complete contrast to Los Herederos this film is.

To quote, in part, from the Festival notes:

“For the forty children who call it home, Mulberry Bush is their last chance. Excluded from school for extreme behaviour, and often having suffered severe emotional trauma, they are given three years at the Oxford boarding school to try to turn their lives around. The fragile young boys at the heart of her [Longinotto’s] film lash out in shockingly extreme ways -- hitting, swearing and spitting their way through the misery of their blighted childhoods.”

Forty children; 108 staff members; and days filled with tears of rage, and physical and verbal abuse from children as young as eight and nine years of age.

It is hard to believe what the teachers and staff at Mulberry Bush had to contend with. No-one could ever argue that the children attending this boarding school were over indulged or spoilt, but hasn't the school ever heard of 'time-out'. Don't they have a room where children can be left for ten minutes at a time to scream and rage on their own without putting other children and staff at risk? Wouldn't that be better than forcing staff to physically restrain errant children by virtually sitting on them?

And what staff! These people must have the patience of the biblical, Job. And just like Job, who took whatever his Lord was prepared to heap on him in an attempt to test his resolve - the staff of Mulberry Bush put up with whatever some of these children dish out to them.

Unfortunately, I couldn't help thinking that the boundaries weren't clear enough for the children, and that as long as they were (up to a point), able to get away with spitting on staff and kicking and punching them, their behaviour would take longer to control.

Of course, none of the above constitutes a review of the film, it is more a criticism of the how I felt the boarding school operated.

Again, like Los Herederos, Hold Me Tight... makes no use of voice overs or other on screen aids to try and explain what is unfolding before the viewers. Again, you are left to draw your own conclusions. Of the forty children one assumes are at the school at any one time, we are presented with just three or four - all males, although females students are clearly present.

Were the few children examined in the film the worst of forty students? The 'best' of the school? There are no clues, and no answers.

Maybe I was just emotionally wrung out from viewing Los Herederos but by the end of Hold Me Tight... my nerves were on edge, and I was happy to get outside into the sunshine and fresh air.

Three stars
Image courtesy of BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

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In Review: Los Herederos (2008)

Mexico has been on my wish list of go to places for some time, especially since I keep hearing so many good things about that country: its history and culture; its art, music and dance; and the remnants of ancient civilisations. On my next visit to North America I plan to travel through the southern states of the US, and since I will be in the area, I hope to include Mexico on my itinerary.

It’s safe to say, the Mexico most tourists and visitors experience is not the one depicted in Los Herederos (The Inheritors), a new documentary by Eugenio Polgovsky which screened yesterday as part of the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival. Ten years in the planning, Los Herederos follows children as they work alongside their parents and other adults in tasks as diverse as farming, brick making, weaving, the harvest of tomatoes, chili and maize, and numerous other labour intensive activities.

You will see no sun drenched beaches here; no Mariachi bands, and no luxurious hotels. Just everyday depictions of the hard daily grind of rural Mexican life.

Where the smiles are few and far between; where farming is often still done the old way – behind a wooden plough pulled behind a couple of oxen; where if you don’t work you don’t eat, and if you don’t eat you die; where this simple imperative forces even the most elderly and infirm to contribute something, no matter how little; where if you are ‘lucky’, you get to spend the day tending goats, instead of planting corn; where the ‘lucky’ girls get to spend their days weaving at the loom, instead of picking tomatoes or beans all day in open fields; where labour is always hard, back breaking and by hand; where any education or schooling is of the ‘hard knocks’ variety; and where finally, the concept of ‘doing your chores’ is meaningless, because in this world, you are born to work and contribute to the family table whether you want to or not.

How apt then, that in one scene we see a damaged alarm clock on which the thin hand ticking away the seconds is actually turning backwards!

“Rage and awe fuel my desire to pay homage to their abilities and their courage,” says writer, director, and producer, Eugenio Polgovsky.

There are few scenes of fun or rest and relaxation in this powerful documentary. Indeed, it was only the young boys herding goats who found the time to pause and look at a rainbows, or play by rolling down hills. Neither does the film show any sign of a formal education being directed towards the children in these communities.

There is very little dialogue in this film. It seemed to me that everyone was working so hard at their various tasks, they didn’t have the energy to waste on idle conversation. Neither is there any explanation in the form of a voice over or on screen text, to try and place the images we are viewing in some type of context. Polgovsky is content to let the images speak for themselves, and quite rightly so.

The scenes of children, some as young as five or six toiling for hours alongside their parents, picking beans, tomatoes and chillies, says more than mere words can ever hope to convey.

This is an eloquent portrait of the lives and daily struggle for survival of rural communities in today's Mexico. While the children may have inherited tools and techniques from their ancestors, they have also inherited their day to day hardship. Generations pass, but child workers remain captive in a seemingly endless cycle of inherited poverty.

Four stars
Image courtesy of BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

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