Hot Docs 2005 - UPDATE #2

The Education of Shelby Knox
Directed by Rose Rosenblatt and Marion Lipschutz
USA/76 MINUTES

The Education of Shelby Knox is an eye-opening, occasionally infuriating documentary revolving around 15-year-old Shelby Knox, a Texas-based teenager who embarks on a mission to bring sex education to area high schools after learning that pregnancy and STD rates among her peers is at an all-time high (the school board's policy is to promote abstinence as the only form of safe sex). The Education of Shelby Knox follows the young woman through three years of her high school life, slowly revealing her to be one of the few rational people in this small town (even her parents are somewhat opposed to her mission). It's hard to know just how unbiased the film is, as it presents Lubbock as an extremely backward, small-minded community - a place where citizen's lives are completely dominated by religion. At any rate, The Education of Shelby Knox is engaging and intriguing, and Knox herself makes for a compelling heroine (she even manages to sum up the entire movie with an apt piece of voice-over towards the end; "some of these people never get their head out of the bible to see the real world.")

out of

---

Beneath the Stars
Directed by Titti Johnson and Helgi Felixson
SOUTH AFRICA/SWEDEN/105 MINUTES

Beneath the Stars is a pointless, irritating documentary detailing the rise and fall of South Africa's Popstars (an international variation on American Idol) winner, Frieda Darvel. We watch as Darvel - a young woman who has spent most of her life homeless and addicted to drugs - slips back into her less-than-savory routines, a process that's accelerated by a visit to her old haunts. Filmmakers Titti Johnson and Helgi Felixson imbue Beneath the Stars with a pretentious, overly showy sense of style, refusing to just step back and allow Darvel's story to unfold. This is exacerbated by the fact that Darvel just isn't interesting; it's hard to muster up a whole lot of sympathy for someone who receives the kind of opportunities that Darvel does and summarily allows them to fade away.