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Directors: Michael Glawogger, Monika Willi, Watched on: MUBI and Filmatique, Rating: 5/5. Michael Glawogger once said that “imagery is the essence of the art of cinema–and language, sound and story are the legs on which this painting-in-motion is standing.” This statement can be used as a corrective to the tendency of documentary filmmakers these days–American documentary filmmakers especially–to turn Glawogger’s stool upside down; squashing imagery under the weight of conventional storytelling, endless talking heads, onscreen text, and wall-to-wall music. Pictures seem to matter less and less in docs, unless they’re shot by in-the-moment smartphones or staged and lighted by a Hollywood crew, and then they matter only in the sense that the vehicle of capture takes center stage, the iPhone7 or the 5K Red Scarlet or the whatever. Don’t get me wrong. The majority of doc films are beautifully, professionally shot, even if the shooter is working alone in a difficult situation. Skilled camerapeople are in high demand (one factor driving up documentary budgets) and you rarely encounter amateur work even in the smaller film festivals. But the images are nearly always merely functional. They please the eye but rarely move the heart. If the late Glawogger will be remembered for anything it will be the beating heart of his films. The glory of the images, the rapt sequences they contained, the sometimes jaw-dropping mysteries of the little-seen corners of the world they revealed. I’m thinking of the sulphur carriers and slaughterhouse hustlers in Workingman’s Death; the neon-bathed Mexican hookers in Whore’s Glory; the Liberian wrestlers, [...]