Tales by Light

There's a small montage of photos of Orlando Bloom "UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador", hanging out with various press-worthy impoverished brown and black people. But the people are either obscured by Orlando's head or out of focus.

He spends the rest of his screen time tip-toeing around trash, trying to not get his boots muddy, complaining about the smell in front of the people that have to live there and looking utterly revolted at everyone and everything, all the time.

This episode/unicef advert, doesn't attempt to discuss the political/economic reasons behind why these people are so neglected or what can be done to raise them out of poverty and neither does Bloom (but I'm assuming it's donate to unicef).

Stunning images, great script and brilliant idea to educate people. Humans, this is not only about photography, this is real and this is NOW. The guy is just trying to help us to make a change, not only to rate his video on IMDb. It's more than a documentary, it's more than staying home and watch Netflix, it should be an eye opener for all of us that own a watching device. I told myself from begining of 2019, if I don't change anything, all these will be done for nothing. Respect!

A show that educates you about animals, culture, social issues, and travel through the lense of a camera. It's captivating.

Haven't seen the whole series, to be honest. But the "tribes" episode was quite disturbing at times. How I see it, there were some serious issues concerning the objectification of the indigenous people ("my subjects", as the photographer -Art Wolfe- calls them). Some scenes in particular (but certainly not solely) where Wolfe was setting the "stage" for his photograph, i.e. the indigenous people, asked to perform their tribalism in front of the western audiences ("my audience", as Wolfe describes). There's your scent of cultural imperialism (and of an overambitious western professional), or of the colonization of the Other, if you prefer, the Other who is, only when in contact with the western and only as the western wishes to see her.

This objectification, however, is well disguised by Wolfe's ambition to keep a record of vanishing cultures for mankind, there is even a manifestation, where the photographer realizes that (I quote): "the western civilization was gonna slam into their culture." Without realizing that his camera does exactly the same thing: there's your tribe, as colorful and as primitive as you expect it to be.

There are of course some really powerful pictures and a very professional approach through every segment of the film, I just wonder whether it is really necessary to make this kind of docs, if this quest for the "perfect" and "powerful" photograph is really worthy. To me it just brings afront the same old power relations between the West and its Others. I could (or rather, I'm trying to) live without them.

The concept itself sounds first pretty self indulging, but right after the first five minutes the sheer perfectness of the cinematography itself takes hold of you and you only beg for more!

The crisp, blade-sharp pictures, the always spot-on framing, perfect compisitions make this a visual orgasm.

And after the first episode I can not ever think of any documentary can ever again get away for not using drones for aerial footage. Drone birds-eye view is not just a gimmick, it is skillfully executed and adds great value to the spectacle.

I do NOT say it is the best of documentaries, but it IS the most visually spectacular yet.

Also, some of the photographers are bit pretentious and full of themselves but anyone is free to mute and put on some cinemix or any music of their liking, kick back and swim in the nicest piece of motion picture of this year.