A Night at the Garden is a movie that I heard mentioned during a snippet of the Oscars I saw. It was nominated in the Documentary Short Film category… and that it is.

The entire film runs 7 minutes and doesn’t take the traditional documentary approach. Instead of a narrator or subtitles describing what you are seeing, it is based entirely on archival football of a 1939 German-American Bund meeting.

I liked the fact that the director chose not to take a position or push an agenda blatantly. Instead, he let the power of the footage do the work. Each watcher can take away from it what he likes.

In terms of it being a great film, I cannot really put it in that category. Not because of the subject matter or anything so banal, but mainly because it is more of an editing job than the creation of a new film.

I did find it interesting and because it ended so abruptly and left me wanting to see more, I think it is worth watching. (That is not a trailer embedded here – it is the entire film.)

by Chris Doelle

Rating 8 of 10

 

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