During World War II, Darrel was stationed in Europe and Andrew was fought in the Philippines. In the chaos of combat, each stole a valuable treasure and buried it overseas before returning to civilian life in the United State. Sixty years later, neither man seems remorseful about his crime; both wish to recover the hidden valuables they perceive as their own.
Loot is a feature-length documentary that follows the two veterans and their guide across the globe in search of their buried wartime treasures. Neither knows the other, but both happen to know Lance, an inventor, used-car salesman, and amateur treasure-hunter, who, against his better judgment, agrees to help them find their lost loot.
Loot was filmed on three continents over two and a half years. It is a story about fathers and sons, war, and how the secrets of history bleed into the present as three people arrive unwittingly at a place where they must choose either to face a truth or bury it forever. Q&A with director Darius Marder and Deirdre Boyle, Associate Professor in the Graduate Media Studies Program, follows the screening.
Sponsored by the Department of Media Studies and Film in association with the Institute for Retired Professionals.
Bio
Deirdre Boyle
Deirdre Boyle is an associate professor and Director of Graduate Certificate in Documentary Studies at The New School. She is a media historian, critic, curator, and psychotherapist. Research and teaching focuses on the history and theory of documentary film and video; critical writing about film and media; death-denial in a death-centric, mediated world; trauma, collective memory, and history; and media consumption and the body. She has published eight books including a history of '70s video documentaries and is currently writing on the films of Errol Morris. She has also taught at New York University, City College/CUNY, Fordham University, Rutgers University, and Moscow State University; been guest curator for the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Brussels Video Festival, and The Museum of Modern Art, among others; and programmed independent film and video series for public and cable television.
Darius Marder
Darius is a director and editor, working and living in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and two children. While editing Loot he worked as an editor on the Oscar winning documentary Freeheld, which also won the Special Jury prize at Sundance. Over the past ten years he worked as a cinematographer, chef, food stylist, and singing cowboy, before finally quitting everything to be a director.
Fact-based film that depicts actual events and persons. Documentaries can deal with scientific or educational topics, can be a form of journalism or social commentary, or can be a conduit for propaganda or personal expression. The term was first coined by Scottish-born filmmaker John Grierson to describe fact-based features such as Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922). Grierson's Drifters (1929) and Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) influenced documentary filmmaking in the 1930s. During the World War II era documentary filmmaking was a valuable propaganda tool used by all sides. Leni Riefenstahl contributed to the Nazi propaganda efforts in the 1930s; the U.S. made films such as Frank Capra's series Why We Fight (194245); and Britain released London Can Take It (1940). Cinéma vérité documentaries, which gained notoriety in the 1960s, emphasized a more informal and intimate relationship between camera and subject. Television became an important medium for documentary films with goals that were more journalistic (such as CBS's Harvest of Shame [1960]) and educational (such as Ken Burns's Civil War [1990]).