Compañeras

I really feel for U.S. documentary filmmakers. There is precious little funding available, broadcasters for the most part don't pre-license independent films, and filmmakers often spend far more time fundraising than making their films. I keep reading about people holding fundraisers for films, kind of like rent parties. In much of the rest of the developed world - i.e. Europe - that would be considered completely undignified. So I admire Americans for their dedication and perseverance. What I don't admire is that, too often, lack of budget is used as an excuse for bad filmmaking.

After suffering through yesterday's doc (which need not be mentioned again), I wanted to see something positive and inspiring. I also didn't have time to watch a feature-length film. So I turned once again to the PVR, and watched Compañeras, which was on PBS's Independent Lens last week. It's about Mariachi Reyna, "America's first all-female mariachi band." (For the filmmakers' sake, I hope there aren't any angry Mexican-American grandmas out there right now who had an all-girl mariachi band in the '30s.) Certainly, the topic alone was enough to get my attention.

Unfortunately, my attention starts to waver pretty quickly. It's clear from the first five minutes that a) the filmmakers didn't have much money - there is precious little good concert footage, and b) the film was shot by someone who could never make a living as a cinematographer. The making-of story is clear: another director forced to pick up the ol' DVX100 because there's no money to hire a real shooter.

And it gets worse. What is this film about? Is it a straight profile? If so, how are the filmmakers going to sustain that for 60 minutes? Will anything actually happen in the course of the film? It's certainly not clear from the first act that it's a film where anything is supposed to happen.

Well, it turns out that, actually, a lot happens. In the course of the hour, a new member wins a tough competition for a spot in the band, and the band leader, the only gringa and the most accomplished musician in the group, is forced out. But we learn about this almost entirely through interviews, and not through vérité scenes. Indeed, what actuality footage there is is painfully badly shot. There is no beginning, middle or end to any scene - just seemingly random shots. The fateful audition looks like it was shot by the band for its own records. There isn't a single scene that shows the women interacting and relating to each other. Structurally, there is no set-up to the story, no stakes set out at the start, no foreshadowing. No storytelling! The lack of scenes means the turning points in the story are entirely dependent on interview clips, and these interviews just don't carry the story. The filmmakers' decision to forego narration just makes things worse.

The filmmakers - co-director/shooter Matthew Buzzell and co-director/producer Elizabeth Massie - say on the Independent Lens website that they had next to no money for this film, had to shoot it between paying gigs, and thus couldn't shoot everything they wanted. OK. But is that an excuse for not having shot anything to build any actual scenes around the two central events of the film? I just don't get it.

The ladies of Mariachi Reyna deserved a better film than this. And clearly the opportunity is still out there for someone to make the great mariachi documentary.