A Letter to Elia (PG)

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Dirs: Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones

MARTIN Scorsese’s fascinating portrait of director Elia Kazan (inset below) was one of the many documentary highlights of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival.

While paying homage to Kazan’s work, with looks at A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, East of Eden, A Streetcar Named Desire, and On the Waterfront, Scorsese takes a roundabout route to answering what to many remains the central question about Kazan: why did he name names when called before the House Committee on Un-American activities?

While Scorsese doesn’t deliver clear answers on that front in this all-too-brief documentary – it comes in at just one hour long –he presents what amounts to a masterclass on Kazan’s films, the era in which he worked, and filmmaking in general. He also brings into the light again some extraordinary footage, including film of the 1999 Oscars when Kazan was controversially given an honorary Academy Award. This is cinema history delivered in electrifying style.

August 10, Cameo, Edinburgh, 8pm, and Belmont, 6.30pm

Dancing Dreams (PG)

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Dirs: Rainer Hoffmann, Anne Linsel

WIM Wenders’ stunning 3D documentary brought the life, work and times of the German choreographer Pina Bausch to a wider audience, which should lead to a bigger than expected audience for this piece. Directors Rainer Hoffman and Anne Linsel follow Bausch’s 2007 staging of her work Kontakthof, not with a group of dance professionals but a company of teenagers from Wuppertal, Germany. As they are taught to think and move in unfamiliar ways we see confidence blossom and not a few catch the modern dance bug and want to do more. At an hour and a half Dancing Dreams will likely have too much detail for some – if Pina was a degree in Bausch, this is a PhD – but it’s an engaging enough companion piece to Pina.

Tonight, Cameo, Edinburgh, 8.40pm.

Knuckle (15)

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Dir: Ian Palmer

DOCUMENTARY maker Ian Palmer spent an extraordinary 12 years charting the bare-knuckle fighting exploits of two warring travelling families in Ireland. It’s a world usually closed to outsiders, and as Palmer’s film shows, the people within it don’t let their guard down easily. Besides bizarre scenes of tubby men stripped to the waste and fighting in country lanes – think Fight Club meets Father Ted – he talks to those involved about why they do it. The answer, apart from the money (the cash prizes can be tens of thousands) seems to be because that’s what has always been done.

As we see in Palmer’s film, no sooner has peace been declared than the clans go to war again. Palmer’s film settles into a groove after a while, with one year blurring into the next, but he eventually points the story in the direction of a satisfying conclusion. Grimly fascinating, and you have to admire the determination of Palmer, who also narrates the tale with affecting honesty, to get his story.