Sunday, October 12, 2014

Anne Forrester- Searching For Sugarman

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125608/

Searching for Sugarman is a 2012 documentary by the late swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul. The film one the academy award for best documentary feature in 2013 and rightly so because I personally think this is one of the best and most visually interesting documentaries I have ever seen. The film chronicles the history of a little known one time musician from Detroit named Sixto Rodriguez. Rodriguez had several albums that didn't sell in the US in the 70s. Unknown to him though, his music somehow found its way to south africa and became practically the anthem for the anti-aparteid movement and Rodriguez music was quite literally more famous than Elvis in South Africa. However, none of this fame was known to Rodriguez nor was his identity known to south africans until the late 90's. Over the course of the film we hear both sides of the story and until Rodriguez and his fan base are connected. The story of this film is almost too good to be real, which is part of the appeal, but the visuals used are to me whats so impressive. The film features these really clever uses of text to identify characters, hand drawn graphics and animations to illustrate past experiences. 

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