One of the hallmarks for this year’s film festival is the number of documentaries. BendFilm Festival doesn’t necessarily have a specific genre it presents; it’s a grab bag. But increasingly, documentaries seem to be its calling card. There are some really strong entries this year. A couple true crime ones: murder mystery Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere and Little Hope Was Arson, which is about trying to solve a spate of church burnings in Arkansas. There are also some slice-of-life ones, like Alpsummer, about generations of families living these low-tech lives in Switzerland. No, no Julie Andrews singing in that one, but still very elegant.
Return of the River is interesting because it is something so close—about the history of rivers in the Pacific Northwest and removal of dams.
This article appears in Oct 8-15, 2014.
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