Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Eddie on "MARWENCOL"

I’ll put it out there,. “ I Love Documentaries”. Now I must say I am a bit of a snob when it comes to them though, Some are real low budget, but that is not a bad thing. The ones that “Irk” me are the one that are not complete or they don’t grow in the long run. Some docs are big budget, look at me, types of films, that in the end are a waste of time. If I don’t feel an emotional grip to the subject in the first 10 minutes, BAM, I turn it off.

So now I must review an amazing Doc called “MARWENCOL”. I rented this film from Netflix, but it will be available soon as a streaming video. Here’s a little website that lets you know what’s coming soon, www.streamingsoon.net. You can check out all the films being available by a date. Enough said about that.

MARWENCOL is the story of Mark Hogencamp from Kingston, N.Y. Mark was severely beaten in a bar parking lot and left in a coma. When he awoke, all his past memories were erased forever, and he had to learn everything all over again. And after many months of therapy, the Medicare stopped , so he had to create his own therapy.

Mark wanted to know one thing “Who am I?”. The only way he could do this was to create his own world and stories, through dolls. The setting of these stories is a fictitious town called Marwencol, during World War II. This town and it’s characters that he created, are so richly detailed you can actually see the emotion in the photographs he takes, I shit you not. These creation live and breath through Mark, and he cherishes every one of them.

Director: Jeff Malmberg was able to capture the honesty of Mark and the fears that he feels about not knowing why the attack happened in the first place. As the film progresses you begin to learn more about Mark past, and the person he was before the brutal attack. Big kudos for Mr. Malmberg !!!

Everything begins to change for Mark when a Art Gallery in N.Y.C. finds out about his secret little world.

This is an amazing doc that left me in awe of Mark’s realization of who he was and who he now wants to be. The twists hit me hard, not in a bad way, but in the “This guy has balls” way. The photos alone are chilling, but his heart felt honesty is what drives it home.

I put the trailer up once before, but here it is once again, behold the world of "MARWENCOL".

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