I found a new documentary on chess, the link to it on imdb is here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800266/?ref_=sr_1&licb=0.19220617203973234
You can find the trailer here:
I only watched it once and don’t intend to watch it again so its best that I keep this as brief as possible. Wiseman’s ‘High School’ ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064429/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 ) is the most accomplished documentary I know of that tackles school life. It exemplifies a level of control and finesse which is noticeably absent in Brooklyn Castle. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I found it’s modernity to be annoying throughout let alone the shoddy camera work. More importantly, I felt there were unresolved tensions from the pre-production phase, as the film-making is standoffish in places. Moreover, I couldn’t understand why there is little chess to watch, and why in places it is completely absent, forcing the viewer to become reliant upon descriptions of games rather being able to watch them unfold. This becomes particularly annoying when we have characters in the documentary breaking down into tears over what they did wrong. Couldn’t the reasons have been shown rather than told? I wondered if this was due to a lack of interest in the subject or perhaps an attempt to draw attention away from the quality of the chess played instead. As a viewer, I found myself guessing far too often as to what was really occurring over the board, and thought frequently that the over-reliance upon statistics to show how the tournaments unfolded was a cheap way out. Many parts of the doc feel rushed, poise plays truant in this production.
We do have balance though: this a documentary that gives equal consideration to the various aspects of the lives of its subjects, and in this respect it is to be commended. The biggest mistake documentary makers make when turning to chess is that they fail to remember that the subjects have lives outside of chess and show them as nothing more than chess players. Such a criticism cannot be applied to this doc.
Overall, my feeling was however, that it was a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained. Certainly nothing much learned… .
MJM
McCreadyandChess 
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