Hákon Gunnarsson's Blog

This week I watched Truth or Dairy: Who, What, Where, When, How and Why Vegan (1994) it is the second documentary that came out of The Vegan Society in the UK, the first being The Vegan Society: To a Brighter Future(1976) which was done as part of Open Door series on BBC. The difference between the two is stark, the first is quite serious, the second humorous. It is presented by the late Benjamin Zephaniah who does a great job here. He's funny, and relatable. It is a wonderful film that is like the one from 1976. a general vegan documentary film, so it makes the same case, only better.

And with that I think Wednesday Documentary Review is going back on hiatus. I'm working on a project that has to do with documentaries, so having something to write about isn't a problem, but the thing is it is on vegan documentary films so this might become quite monotonous. I think I'm going to blog every week, just about something different for the time being.

Anyway, if you're interested in veganism, and are looking for something about it, then Truth or Dairy is actually a nice place to start. For one thing, Benjamin Zephaniah makes the case so fun.

When I was a kid, I loved Charlie Chaplin's character, the Tramp. I think kids get him better than adults because he has very little power and still tries to be his own man. Maybe I'm wrong, but I really adored all the Chaplin films. They used to show them now and again on TV where I lived, and I recorded them on video and used to watch them quite often. So when I was channel surfing the other day and came across this film I had to watch it.

It is in many ways a typical celebrity biography where the viewer gets to watch the star from humble beginnings make its way onto the stage and become a star. As such, it is a very good one, well researched, with enough related footage, photos, newspaper clippings, and such to tell the story excellently. I've seen a bit of this before, but there was some stuff that I hadn't seen before. A really enjoyable film in many ways.

However, there is a bit of the story missing, for example, his complicated history with women or, in fact, girls. I know it was different times, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that even back then, this fascination with the young did cause some problems for him. There is no mention of this part of the story in this film. This is about the comic genius. It is a fairly uncomplicated film to celebrate that legacy.

I didn't know anything about this complicated side to Chaplin when I was watching the Tramp when I was a kid. I just thought he was great. He made me laugh and sometimes even think about the world. Now, the somewhat older me thinks you can't really get the full story without looking at all sides of the man. It's not always nice to look at someone you admire and see something that makes you uncomfortable, but that is part of the story. That should be here, just as much as the good stuff. Still, it was nice to watch this celebration of Charlie Chaplin despite it being flawed.

This week I watched two half-hour-long vegan documentaries, OpenDoor - The Vegan Society (1976) and Making the Connection (2010), directed by Ella Todd. They are 34 years apart, but essentially they tell the same story and would both fit into general vegan documentaries, meaning they don't focus narrowly on animal rights (such as Earthlings (2005) did), health (as What the Health (2017) did), or environment (like Eating Our Way to Extinction (2021) did), but take all these elements into one story.

Even though they are quite similar in many ways, there are also differences. The first one is rather quickly made, and it shows. Apart from what story it is telling, the film hasn't aged that well. It is very serious, while the second one has its humorous side. It is lighter in tone despite telling much the same story. Not only that, but it is also the way it is set up. The director takes the title, Making the Connection, very literally and builds up a film where everything is connected. A really well-made film. The first one is interesting for historical perspective; it is the first vegan documentary (or I think it is), but the second one is a film that I would say is a well-made film that does something with the form, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

This week I watched another documentary from Campfire Stories; this one is called Into the Soil and is directed by Mattias Olsson, like Once Upon a Forest, which I watched last week. This is a 31-minute-long film about Brigid LeFevre, a biodynamic farmer in Sweden. On YouTube it is described like this: "This is a story of circular economy, radical simplicity, and why real abundance begins underground," which I think is a pretty good way to put it.

It is an interesting film, and like Once Upon a Forest, it is beautifully shot. I've now seen two of the Campfire Stories films, and they really remind me of films from Happen Films. These two film companies are doing quite similar things in many ways; both do films about people and nature. About people that are working the land in a more holistic way than the usual monoculture farming. They don't go into that debate theoretically, but by talking to people that are living, working, and interacting with nature in that way. Fascinating stuff.

I can't say all their films are great, simply because I haven't seen all of them, but what I have seen are just so well made, interesting films. For those that want to find out more about them, they have these websites, and both have YouTube accounts where you can see a lot of their films.

Campfire Stories: https://www.campfire-stories.org/

Happen Films: https://www.happenfilms.com/

This week I watched another short, 18-minute-long documentary. This one is called Once Upon a Forest: A Twig Poet’s Rewilding Journey and is build up of interviews with the Swedish artist Maria Westerberg who writes poetry, builds twig sculptures, and works on rewilding a forest.


Her grandfather started to use his land to plant spruce trees for timber. Decades later a side effect of the climate crisis strikes her beloved forest in the form of bark beetles, who kill the spruce trees. The monoculture makes this kind of infestation so dangerous. A natural forest that has more than one species has much more resilience towards such infestations because a beetle like this doesn't attack all kinds of trees, so even if one species gets hit badly, there are others that will take over. She had been dealing with climate anxiety and started to plant leaf trees to replace the spruce, and by doing that, she helped herself come to terms with the ecological crisis and help the forest at the same time.

I had never heard of this artist before, but I'm really glad I came across this film because she is interesting, and the film, which is by Mattias Olsson of Campfire Stories, is beautiful. That is the best way I can describe it. It's beautifully shot and has a very good story to tell. It is about dealing with climate anxiety, it's about living on your own terms, and it is about nature, all in the short time of 18 minutes. And it is not just that. Maria has all these notebooks that are marked Facebook. When she is asked about this, she says Facebook is about diary entries, and photos, and that is what she has in her notebooks. Also, people kept asking her if she was on Facebook, and now she can say, Yes, I am, without having given her data to a big corporation. I liked that idea. In short, I liked this film and can recommend it.

It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ozG...

The Present is a short documentary, 18 minutes long, directed by Timothy Dhalleine who may be best known as an award-winning nature photographer. As far as I know, this is his first film. It is about, as it is described on youtube: "the story of Dimitri Poffé, a 34-year-old French traveler who left his native France to undertake a cycling trip from Mexico City to Ushuaia after he tested positive for Huntington's disease. Huntington's disease is a rare, neurodegenerative, hereditary, and incurable disease."

In part, this trip was taken to raise awareness and funds for Huntington's disease research. I've seen a few documentaries that deal with specific diseases. Most of them fall into a similar pattern of informing the viewer of the disease by talking to doctors and patients about it. This is different. This is for the most part an account of an adventure as Poffé rides his bike through this long trip. Images are accompanied by place names and distance travelled. It is done to such a point that one could almost ignore the main thread of the film, Huntington's disease.

This disease was made an issue in the Australian TV series Neighbours, where one got almost, but not quite, the same amount of information about the disease. Okay, I know I'm not being fair here. Poffé talks about his diagnosis and his family history with the disease and meets other people that have got it. It is in these scenes where the disease really comes into view. It really is one of those diseases that are not well known and terrible for those that get it. The viewer gets to know early on that Poffé is coming to the age where he may start to get symptoms. He has seen both his father get it and die from it, and his sister getting it and over time how she has been getting worse. Some people might break down at the prospect, but instead Poffé goes on an adventure, which one really has to admire him for it. Still, for those that really want to get an in depth discussion of Huntington's disease this documentary may not be the best place to start.

Even so it is an excellent film about an adventure. Dhalleine is an award-winning nature photographer, and it shows in the shooting of the film. It is beautiful. The composition of the shots, the lighting, just the way it is put together is just beautiful. Maybe it is because of how beautiful it is and how unlike most other documentary films I've seen about specific diseases that I got distracted from the main issue of it. But at the end of it, I think it is a good film that does what it sets out to do. What I think this film does so well is that it gives the viewer the sense that life is an adventure, even though one might have a disease like Huntington's. Everyone has got one life, so one might as well try to enjoy it, and Poffé is a good advocate for that as well as for more knowledge of Huntington's.

You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk7Xh...

You can get to know more about Dimitri Poffé's journey and support Huntington's Disease research here: https://exploreforhuntington.com/

On June 13, John Robbins died at the age of 77. For those that don't know who he was, he was, among other things, a writer, known for books such as Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth (1987), which advocates for a plant-based diet. In it he talks about the health benefits of a plant-based diet and the dangers of an animal-based diet. This he links to the impacts of factory farming on human health, animal welfare, and the environment. I had a lot of respect for John Robbins, and to honor his memory, I rewatched this documentary that Ed Schuman directed and was based on the above mentioned book.

It's not the first vegan documentary. I may be wrong, but I think that was Open Door: The Vegan Society (1976) that was produced as part of the initiative by the BBC that gave people a platform to talk about their own issues and give their own views without editorial input. In this film, The Vegan Society introduces veganism. A few years later there was another British documentary, this time feature-length, The Animals Film (1981), which dealt with the use of animals by human beings, and was directed by Victor Schonfeld. But Diet for a New America is, as far as I know, the first vegan documentary made in the USA. It is a TV documentary that was aired in several US cities at the time.

Like Open Door: The Vegan Society, it is a general vegan documentary, not focusing exclusively on one subject like the later Earthlings (2005), which deals with animal rights; What the Health (2017), which deals with the health consequences of a non-vegan diet; or Eating Our Way to Extinction (2021), which goes for the environmental aspect of a non-vegan diet. Diet for a New America talks about all these issues and links them together in a very interesting way.

For the most part, this film still holds up 34 years later. There aren't any major issues that I have been able to see that make it outdated despite the time that has passed. Some of the environmental issues have gotten worse with time, and some of the animal rights issues seem to have gotten worse also. Which is really depressing in some sense, but it also shows how well this film was made to begin with. It still works. The central issues that it deals with are still talked about in vegan documentaries of the present day.

It is built up like a journey that John Robbins makes, intercut with a talk that Robbins made, and has him as a narrator as well. As he is the author of the book that this is made from, that makes sense, and it holds the film well together, but he isn't alone in it. A lot of interesting interviewees are in the film, including Dr. Michael Klaper, Professor T. Colin Campbell, and Dr. John A. McDougall, who all have since been popular interviewees for vegan documentaries. T. Colin Campbell, for example, would three years later be the center of a documentary film called Chinese Figures (1994) that dealt with the study that would later be published in the book The China Study (2005). It was a study into health consequences of diet in various Chinese provinces and was headed by T. Colin Campbell. Robbins wasn't a scientist himself, but he brought all this knowledge from scientists together in his works.

I have been following the career of John Robbins and his son, Ocean Robbins, for a while now. It is interesting to see John Robbins as a much younger man in this film. It makes you realize that he worked for this for such a long time, a big part of his life. Advocating for veganism or a plant-based diet wasn't a fad to jump on. It was his life's work to some extent at least, and this is a good film to remember him by. And not just for that. It was just a good vegan documentary that has aged nicely.

I'm reading the flash fiction collection The Tokyo–Montana Express (1980) by Richard Brautigan. I like his writing and this is one of the few that I still haven't read. Anyway, I wanted to watch a documentary about him, and I came across this 34 minutes short documentary by Scott Ballew. It was described on Letterboxd in this manner: "In the late 1960s, poets, writers and musicians descend upon Key West to pursue their love of literature and fishing (and cocaine and acid). Tom McGuane is soon joined by friends Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Russell Chatham and Jimmy Buffett. They create some of their generation's best art."

Unfortunately for me Brautigan is a very minor character in this film, partly because he had been dead for almost 40 years when it was made and it is built up on interviews with people that were there. Still, I thought it was an interesting film about this group of artists that came to Key West, became friends, made art, fished, did drugs, and so on. There is a part from a film called Tarpon used quite a bit, and the story around the way that one was made. It featured some of the artists, but eventually told the story of fishing more than the artists themselves. The footage from that film is interesting, but partly because of that All that is Sacred becomes a little aimless. Still, it is a nice film about art, friendship, and fishing.

I watched two documentaries on the British Post Office earlier this year, and this week I watched another two on the British Post Office. It's actually not that I'm fascinated by the post. I had just finished watching a limited series called Mr Bates vs. the Post Office (2024) on the British Post Office scandal. For those that don't know, it revolved around hundreds of subpostmasters that were wrongly prosecuted for theft, false accounting, or fraud. They had not actually done these crimes. The real villain of the piece was a faulty computer system called Horizon, or more to the point, people in high places at the Post Office that were trying to bury the fact that the system wasn't really working properly.

It is fascinating stuff in many ways. It is about a situation that can be summed up in the phrase "the computer says no." The subpostmasters had kept books from the beginning, but in the late 1990s (I think) the Post Office had got this computer system from an IT company called Fujitsu, probably to simplify the bookkeeping or make it more efficient, but when people had problems with it, the "help"line always said they were the only ones having problems. The problems would result in the books showing a shortfall, which because of the contract that the subpostmasters had signed, they were responsible for this. People ended up in jail over this; some committed suicide, went bankrupt, marriages broke up, people lost their health, and so on. It had a lot of bad consequences.

The first documentary, Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office: The Real Story, really tells the same story as the TV miniseries. It shows that the makers of the series tried for accuracy. There are some minor things that the TV series seems to show differently than the documentary, some minor artistic license, but the story remains the same, and one can even see that the cast has been well-chosen to represent the real people. It shows that a lot of thought has gone into it. One can watch this movie, (which is less than an hour while the TV series is close to four hours long), and get more or less the same story as in the TV series. Still, I have to add that I liked the series so much that I would urge people to watch it. Great performances, and good buildup. Wonderfully done. And I liked to see the real people that had gone through this.

The second documentary, Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office: The Impact, on the other hand, adds something to the story as it is what happens after the TV series aired. A lot of the same people are featured in both documentaries, but not completely. There is even a mention of another earlier scandal that involved a lot fewer people but seemed to have been similar in some sense. It gives the viewer the feeling that this really had been a long-time corporate culture within the Post Office. That may not be that much of a surprise, as one has seen this so many times before. It seems that large organizations almost always go on the offense every time to save "face" rather than to actually accept something was wrong. And the conclusion seems to be that after all the time since the scandal first started to come to light, it is still not finished.

I can recommend both documentaries and the TV miniseries as well. All of them are interesting and well-made, and I really hope the subpostmasters will eventually get what they want from the Post Office.

When I was 15 in 1985, I became fascinated by photography, and for the next decade and a few years beyond that, photos were my main artistic expression. I exhibited photos, took part in photography competitions, and published postcards. It was going to be my career. That was the way I thought of it. And I got deeply into reading about the craft, looking at photos, photographing, printing, and so on. It really took up a lot of my time. Photographing nature was my thing. Ansel Adams, even though he had died in 1984, a year or so before I got into photography, was one of my inspirations because he had been doing black and white nature photos, which was where my fascination lay. Then I wandered into university to study comparative literature, got into writing, and that was that. Occasionally I have to re-visit photography. That's why this week I watched a documentary about Ansel Adams.

Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film was directed by the documentary filmmaker Ric Burns who has been active since the 1990s in the genre. It is 100 minutes and, in many ways, a typical biographical documentary. It is built up of interviews with family members, people who knew him, scholars of the craft, historians, and a narrator. Of course, one can see quite a few of his photos, archival footage, and then there is footage of the sites he got famous for photographing. Everything is edited together to build up a coherent story of Ansel Adams's life, both his work, and private life. It is very well done—perhaps not very original in any way, but effectively—and gave me a fresh view into his life.

For example, I didn't know Ansel Adams had studied to play the piano before becoming a photographer. Originally, photography had only been a hobby, which then took over. Perhaps Ansel Adams might have become a pianist in a different life. Just like my passion had in the early part of my life been photography, but then turned to writing. Not that I'm trying to put myself in his shoes. He was a great artist, and I'm not, but it is still interesting to see what it took for him to get there and become this great artist. The film even quotes the letter Ansel Adams wrote to his then soon-to-be wife, where he is turning away from music and towards photography, so one sees it wasn't a simple decision for him.

One gets to hear stories behind the scenes. For example, there is a story about how he shot one of his iconic photos, one that shows the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, which he took in 1927. You can look it up if you want to, but I'll try to describe it slightly. The photo is taken during the day, but the sky is almost completely black. It is a dramatic photo. I've known how to do this since I was 16. If you are shooting a scene that has a blue sky with black and white film, you put a red filter on the lens, and the blue that would have turned out as a shade of gray without the filter, turns black. I've done that myself, but I hadn't heard the story about how this photo came about—how he had only one glass plate left when he got this idea, so he only had this one chance to try this idea out on this journey. This turned out to be a turning point in his career because after this he wasn't just trying to take good photos; he started to visualize the image before he shot the photo. He turned away from recording the landscape, using it in an artistic, poetic way. He was on the way of becoming the artist. Like a lot of artists, it was the dedication that was the key to his success; he was always working, but there was a price to pay.

He was a great artist, and someone I admire deeply. It can be quite problematic to learn too much about artists that one admires. To get the view from behind the scenes like this film does, but it does it gently. It doesn't really put him on a pedestal, but it definitely doesn't rip into him either. I think it does him justice. I enjoyed watching this very much, and it really doesn't lessen my admiration of Ansel Adams's work. It makes it more, if anything. It is a beautiful example of the biographical documentary.