Where do you start to give an opinion on a film that has taken more than half of my life to create? What filmmaker Richard Parry and his subject Robert King have offered the world is a rare glimpse into the minds and hearts of the people that bring us life altering wartime images and photographs we look at in the safety of our homes, on our computer, at the dining room table, and over coffee in the office.
The film begins with Robert King when he was 24 years old and Pulitzer hungry, bright eyed and ready to photograph ravaged Sarajevo. King shoots photographs, not digital images, at the beginning of the story, light, focus, steady, the real deal. King said he was very "anti-digital"at the outset of his career. Parry follows King for 15 years through Chechnya, his adventures in Moscow, and eventually closing with his embed in Iraq. Embed is a nice word for a journalist who is limited in the executions of his craft (i.e. staged photo-ops of soldiers handing out soccer balls).
King takes pictures of dead, dying, and maimed people. Parry films King capturing these actions and states. Working in journalism myself it is almost unfathomable the extent these two went to do what they do, it takes a special kind of person. Many of their colleagues were murdered during the making of this film. Blood Trail is humbly dedicated to those fallen individuals.
There was a scene in the film of a man who had his legs blown off and a fellow photojournalist bent down, torn on how to help him, and even if he could help him, this evoked a question later from an audience member of how do you deal with this separation from your subject and death. King's response was, "This is what I do. There is no real answer on what you can do in those situations ... those things are the kind of things that can fuck you up."
Blood trail is simply put the best true documentary I have witnessed in a long time, their is no agenda pushing, no infomercial like feel, and it is really unflattering at points, contrasted with moments of visceral human love.
I highly recommend everyone to see this film, and it being a work in progress, Parry and King following the festival are going to Ciudad Jaurez, Mexico to document the myriad of cartel related homicides, and the drug war that is omnipresent in that part of the world, adding to the saga which quite possibly could continue as long as their lives allow.
King stated at the beginning of the Q&A that when him and Parry met it was only supposed to be 8 minutes, that encounter is growing into a lifetime, frame by frame, and King said, "I hope we told a more fuller picture." Blood Trail definitely tells a robust tale.
My hat is off to all involved in the making of this intriguing, exciting, brave, and thought provoking piece of docujournalism.
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Sounds great, David. Can't wait to see it and glad to hear it is as good as it looks. Keep 'em comin!
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