MANIFF Friday: #TakeMeAnywhere and other short docs

Shia LaBeouf’s Take Me Anywhere kicked off Manchester Film Festival’s first documentary selection. A 45-minute short film which documents the journey of LaBeouf, along with his creative team Ronkko and Turner, around America and Canada – via over forty different members of the public, who found the artists based on co-ordinates posted on their Twitter feeds and drove them wherever they desired.

Take Me Anywhere is more an art piece than a documentary with an explicit narrative; it offers insight into human condition via scraps of dialogue, removed from their context and offered for interpretation. These scraps are placed over genuinely gorgeous handheld shot footage, some taken by the creative team, some shots taken by the drivers. There were no editors and no cinematographers. The final product was created on iMovie by Turner, with contributions from both LaBeouf and Ronkko, and the team of drivers, who continue to interact via Facebook.

Whilst LaBeouf, Ronkko and Turner’s previous works, including #IAMSORRY (where LaBeouf sat, bag over head, crying before the public for six days) and #ALLMYMOVIES (LaBeouf live-streaming himself…  watching all his movies) have at times seemed unsettling or purposefully brash, #TAKEMEANYWHERE is a touching, honest portrait. Before the film, LaBeouf told a packed-out crowd that “someone can love anybody given enough time.” Take Me Anywhere paints a world that agrees; open, human – flawed, but beautiful.

A Land was up next; a look into the colonisation of Paraguay; with interviews from historians and locals, A Land balances the conflict with a beautifully scenic backdrop. An expose exploring that the natives have lost 97% of their rightful land, A Land is presented in Italian and Spanish, and it is a treat to see the landscapes so often presented to Western audiences in Save the Children adverts as they should be seen, beautiful and vibrant.

Exodus Sounds of the Great Migration followed. Whilst the short, exploring how the Great Migration – in which many black people moved from the Southern parts of the United States into other regions of the country – gave birth to some of the greatest cultural movements of all time. Featuring rappers, tappers and all manner of other black talent, Exodus is a film that will leave all cinema goers leaving joyously.

Finally, we had My Writers, My Riders, an oddly pointed short-film/advert about the life of an Uber driver. With a logo that flashed up at the start, it’s just five minute run-time and slow motion shots of pretty people cordially enjoying a ride, My Writers, My Riders is one of the best shot adverts I’ve seen in some time. As a documentary, it’s content was interesting enough, but the niggle of how much might have been set up started at the first flash of the taxi company logo and continued throughout the film.