There are generally two types of journalists who attend film festivals. Those who write about the films and those who write about the people behind the films. While there are those whose roles overlap, you can generally refer to them as the critics/reviewers and the reporters, respectively. How do you distinguish between the two? Well, the latter are usually the ones who look like they’ve had five double espressos as they rush from press conference room to press office to file their stories, while the former walk around in a daze – due to the number of films they watch a day. Can you imagine spending an entire day inside a cinema, watching four to six movies, going out only to grab a bite or go to the loo? Me neither. But some people do. They may not necessarily write about every single one the following day, but they’re bound to at some point. I’m no movie critic but I had thought I’d be up for a movie marathon. But I'm such a wimp. I realised my limit was three. My experience on Saturday watching the documentary Burma VJ, the Vietnamese drama Adrift and the Greek black comedy Dogtooth – at 30 minute intervals – was the equivalent of a three-punch combination. It’s not an ideal way to enjoy cinema. But one tries to articulate especially if they’re all very good. Vietnamese cinema may be synonymous to Tran Anh Hung, particularly for The Scent of Green Papaya. But Adrift will change people’s minds. Director Thac Chuyen Bui’s beautiful, moody tale of tangled relationships set in a rain-drenched Hanoi is about a young bride-cum-museum guide who quickly realizes her mommy’s boy of a taxi-driving husband isn’t for her. She finds herself attracted to her friend’s badboy “boyfriend”. Incidentally, both, yes, both have the hots for her. It’s a quietly compelling tale that brings up issues of betrayal, social convention, homosexuality in such a graceful manner – even as it’s surrounded by the buzz of chaotic Hanoi, which comes to life -- with its rundown shophouses and narrow, dirty alleyways --  as a city that’s as convoluted and entangled as its denizens. Burma VJ, meanwhile, is just so in-your-face and immediate that it refuses to let you see it as “mere” film or judge it on its merit as a piece of art. This documentary by Danish director Anders Hogsbro Ostergaard has been shown in Singapore before. And what it is is basically a reconstruction of the September 2007 protests in Myanmar by monks and students filtered through the eyes of underground VJs (that’s video journalist not video jocks) in Yangon. Burma VJ combines actual footage and reenactments into one riveting narrative that begins with the stirrings of dissent all the way to its full-blown explosion and the sad, tragic whimper when the Junta ruthlessly came down hard on the protesters. I’ve always liked documentaries, both TV and movies. But this one takes it to an entirely different level altogether, at least for me. It restored my faith in the idea of the recorded image as a receptacle of truth still. So often we’re jaded by what we see on TV. Footage or generically speaking, moving images, are often used to serve a certain purpose, such as to tug at your heartstrings. Essentially, commodified. While Burma VJ has its contrived moments, only someone with a heart of stone would let that get in the way of the movie. The amount of real footage – unedited and raw – is more than enough to knock the sceptic off his high horse. It also makes you realise the injustice commercial filmmakers do whenever they use those shaky camera techniques that we see in faux-documentaries like Cloverfield or Quarantine. There’s a lot of shaky camera work in Burma VJ, but it’s the aesthetics of necessity. It’s like that because they’re running away from a hail of bullets. As for Dogtooth, I’ll leave that for tomorrow.