The Creator of the Jungle is one of those documentaries that sounds unbelievable at first. Garrell, a middle aged man with a massive childlike imagination, spent his childhood playing in a forest by his home. As Garrell got older, his playfulness never went away. He kept building in the forest, creating dams, tunnels, labyrinths, towers, caves and many other things on a massive scale. With the help of a teenager and his camcorder, Garrell began to direct home movies where he played Tarzan. As Garrell’s creations began to attract people, the real world began closing in on his fantasy, making Garrell literally set fire to his work before starting all over again.

Director Jordi Morató tells Garrell’s astounding story over a 2+ decade period. Using Garrell’s home movies, Morató combines the incredible found footage with his own narration explaining his subjects’ story. The results are terrific, making Creator of the Jungle one of Hot Docs 2014’s true gems. It’s likely that Morató’s film will go unseen by many, but those who have the opportunity to watch it will be in for something truly delightful.

In advance of the film’s North American premiere, director Jordi Morató sat down with us to go over his arduous editing process, the benefit of a small story, how his own work reflects Garrell’s, and much more. The Creator of the Jungle will screen at Hot Docs this Saturday, May 3. You can find out more information about the film, including where to buy tickets, here.

How did you come upon Garrell’s work?

I found the forest because of a friend of mine. One day he was driving on the highway and saw the towers. He stopped and checked it out, and he thought he was in the middle of the Ewok forest from Star Wars. He told me about it, and I went there a few days later. I was completely fascinated by it.

Was there a point when you realized you could turn this into a feature?

I didn’t have a concrete idea at the beginning because I was more fascinated by the place. I started to film the forest just the sake of filming it. At first I thought it would be a reflexive movie, more contemplative, like an essay. Then I got to know Garrell and interview him. His own story was more fascinating than the forest. He told me all these stories about his 45 years of building it, and one day he told me about the old footage. I had been shooting for 9 months when he told me. I didn’t believe him at first, but then I saw the footage and was fascinated. It’s a crazy story, one 14 year old child with a 60 year old man doing films about Tarzan. I saw the footage and it changed my point of view completely. I knew at that moment I needed to tell the full 45 year story.

Garrell is really fighting to preserve his sense of childlike playfulness throughout the documentary. He’s like a kid wanting to be left alone with his toys. He just wants to play.

I think it’s one of the most important points, that Garrell is a 76-year-old child [Laughs]. I was fascinated because that kind of freedom is a dream for me. I wish I could be as free as Garrell, because Garrell spent all his life doing what he wants to do. When he was a child he went there [to play], and he kept doing it for the rest of his life. When he grew up, the situation got out of his hands completely. It started to be like a magic world for him. I think that’s important because when we grow up we try to forget that. It’s a basic thing, to be happy or to be yourself.

Tell me about the process of working with the tapes.

There was a lot of footage. It was difficult because it was mixed with different tapes. I had to reconstruct all the films because there’s a part on one tape, another part on another tape, along with a lot of other material. I spent 18 months just on editing. It was really difficult work, but when I started to rebuild the films I realized something really important happened when Garrell had problems with other people in the forest. When people started to kill some of his animals and vandalize his work, Garrell started to do films where Tarzan runs away from civilization. For me it was the most important thing [in the footage], because I could start to tell about his life with this material. I think that’s a kind of artistic expression from him, because instead of facing these people he let out his frustrations through the movies.

At what point going through these tapes did you realize Garrell was using these movies as a response to his real-life problems?

I don’t know, it took me a long time to realize this. At the beginning I only saw an old man playing Tarzan and it was really funny, but to find something more pure from this footage was difficult. I had to rebuild all the films before I realized I could find an artistic representation of Garrell’s life.

Your documentary has a narrow focus. It’s entirely in Garrell’s playground. You don’t know who Garrell is outside of this context. What made you decide to keep the film within that one place?

From the beginning I had the idea that I want to focus just on Garrell’s life in this forest. I was not interested in anything political, like what’s happening in the town related to the forest. I don’t want to use interviews of people from the town, his wife, etc. because I really want to portray this like a magic history. Kind of like a Hans Christian Andersen story. I wanted to focus on his own world.

I had shot some material outside the place. I have a lot of interviews of Garrell and other people, but I didn’t want to use that in the film. I think with a smaller story you can do the biggest things. I think I can tell everything with just his story. That’s a kind of stylistic choice, a more radical option.

The opening aerial shot over the forest is stunning. How did you do that?

It’s a crazy story. My brother and I went on a hot air balloon trip. The trip started in a city about 20 kilometres away from the city where Garrell’s forest is. The balloon just goes where the wind goes, you can’t choose the direction, and we ended up passing over the forest. It was a crazy coincidence, and I said that from this day I believe in God [Laughs]. The balloon is the best way to do a shot in the air because it’s so soft and peaceful.

Did you meet Aleix in the process? Did you consider involving him?

I used to talk to him a lot. I needed him to reconstruct all of the tapes. I only got the information from him. Garrell had the tapes.

How long did you spend filming?

I started four years ago, I was shooting for 2 years. It’s a good thing because in four years a lot can happen, so I had the opportunity to shoot everything. For this project it was very important to dedicate a lot of time to shooting and getting lots of material.

Did you have any filmmaking influences on this project?

I studied cinema for 7 years in Barcelona. The biggest influences are Werner Herzog and Johan van der Keuken. I like the kind of films where you can feel the director behind the camera. For me it’s very important to feel like you’re with the story.

Is that generally what you prefer? You want people to feel your presence behind the camera?

It depends on the project, maybe, but yeah. During the editing process I went crazy. I reached the point where I had three different ways to tell the story. I made three films and destroyed them, the same way Garrell did with his work. Eventually I thought “No, no, I have to tell Garrell’s story.” I think it’s impossible to tell this story without including [my own] point of view.

One of my favourite moments is when, after narrating over Garrell’s films for so long, you simply let one of his Tarzan movies play out uninterrupted.

I used Garrell’s footage to tell his story over 45 years, but at the same time I want people to enjoy the way Garrell made films. That’s why I decided to give the audience the opportunity to watch, because he was the director. He chose the locations, the shots, and gave instructions to Aleix. It was fantastic because they have knowledge about continuity, editing and using music. For me that’s real cinema. They don’t have any pretension to make big films, they’re just playing. That’s the essential thing about this footage. Only a child can help make these movies because [only] a child can play with Garrell.

Now that I’ve seen over a dozen of Hot Docs’ selections so far, I can see patterns begin to emerge between films. The three films profiled in today’s piece, all of which are the best documentaries I’ve seen so far at the festival, share a common narrative. The subjects in The Overnighters, Watchers of the Sky and The Creator of the Jungle are all people wanting to do what’s right for them or others, and despite constant resistance from everyone else they never stop fighting. These narratives form in different ways; a pastor tries to “love thy neighbour,” even if it destroys his life; a group of people try to prevent genocide, and bring those responsible to justice; and one man refuses to give up his childlike sense of imagination and creativity even as outside forces give him no choice.

Three different stories, all of them containing a fundamentally strong narrative. These are the kinds of films deserving a bigger audience, and the reason why festivals like Hot Docs exist. To learn more about the three films, including how to get tickets, go to www.hotdocs.ca.

The Overnighters

“I don’t say ‘no’ very well…so it’s easier to say ‘yes’ and live with the consequences.”

Virtue is a burden in Jesse Moss’ The Overnighters. Taking place in Williston, North Dakota, Moss begins his film by exploring the town’s increase in popularity as oil companies in the area hand out high-paying jobs to anyone willing to work. This leads to an influx of people from all over America, arriving with the hope of getting a job. Pastor Jay Reinke starts allowing dozens of new arrivals to sleep in his church (or in their cars in the church’s parking lot) until they can get back on their feet. Moss then shifts the focus of his film to Reinke’s battle with the town, as their hostility to the out-of-towners (fueled in part by the murder of a local teacher) begins a campaign to shut down Reinke’s program.

Moss clearly has one hell of a story to tell, and watching Reinke’s world fall apart as he stubbornly continues to help new arrivals is riveting. Sometimes The Overnighters feels like Moss is forcing what he has into fitting the narrative he wants to tell (some moments feel rehearsed or set-up, giving a reality TV vibe), but for the most part Moss does an excellent job weaving his footage into a gripping drama. And if the insanity Moss captures from Reinke’s battle with his town isn’t enough, a devastating last-minute revelation ends up redefining everything that came before it. The Overnighters is a roller coaster, and will most likely end up being one of the best documentaries this year.

Watchers of the Sky

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer who spent his life trying to make the crime of genocide punishable by law. Lemkin actually coined the term genocide, and his own experiences (deportation in WWI, losing his entire family to the Nazis in WWII) fueled his desire to see that people responsible for mass killings would face justice for their actions.

Director Edet Belzberg uses Lemkin’s story to examine how society still remains apathetic to acts of genocide occurring around the world, using a narrow focus to address a topic of such a large scale. US Ambassador Samantha Power (whose book inspired the doc) tells Lemkin’s life story while detailing recent examples of atrocities; Rwandan Emmanuel Uwurukundo tries to help refugees in the current genocide occurring in Darfur; Ben Ferencz tries to continue Lemkin’s legacy, lobbying the UN to consider war-making a crime against humanity; and Luis Moreno Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Belzberg uses her four subjects well, with Power covering history/context and the other three showing their difficult battles to continue in Lemkin’s footsteps. The result is a beautiful tale of people fighting valiantly for what they know is right, even if they might never live to see any results. The film’s moving ending (and one of my favourite moments of the year), where Fenecz explains the title’s meaning, is a perfect summation of the grueling hopefulness these four people put themselves through. All these people can do is hope that, if they don’t succeed, their work will make it easier for the person who does.

The Creator of the Jungle

The Creator of the Jungle is the kind of story that needs to be seen. Garrell has spent 45 years of his life building his own world in a forest near his house, only to see it repeatedly attacked by others. The documentary chronicles over 2 decades of Garrell’s life, as he continues destroying and rebuilding his creations just so he can keep playing on his own. It’s a can’t miss title at Hot Docs, and one of the more delightful films of the year so far.

Read our full-length review of The Creator of the Jungle HERE and stay tuned for an interview with director Jordi Morató.

The Creator of the Jungle tells the story of Garrell, a man who has spent 45 years building a giant playground in a forest. He started as a child, and with age the scale of his work increased dramatically. He first manipulated the stream running through the forest, making dams and ponds as he saw fit. He soon brought animals into the forest, building increasingly large structures out of whatever he could grab in the forest. Over time, Garrell’s playfulness turned his forest into a bizarre ghost town of sorts.

Through camcorder footage taken in the 90s by Aleix, an unseen teenage boy who admired Garrell’s work, director Jordi Morató unveils one piece of incredible footage after another to tell his subject’s story. Aleix and Garrell spent their days making Tarzan movies in his forest, and even through the grainy VHS images the scale of Garrell’s work is jaw dropping. Problems start for Garrell once his creations, including a kilometre long labyrinth made entirely from tree branches, attract the attention of local vandals.

Morató narrates over Aleix’s footage, filling in details about Garrell’s life. He used Aleix’s camera to direct and star in Tarzan movies, using the forest as a set for Tarzan’s jungle. These short films, containing an infectious lo-fi DIY charm to them, were a way for Garrell to vent his frustrations about his work being destroyed. Each Tarzan movie would involve the “civilized man” trying to invade the jungle and ruin his home. Garrell is, essentially, a kid at heart just wanting to play on his own, and his dogged enthusiasm to expanding his ‘world’ makes it hard to not admire him.

And as time goes on, watching Garrell’s resilience turns those feelings of admiration into amazement. At one point Morató stops narrating over Aleix’s tapes, letting the last Tarzan movie (titled “The Last Two of the Tribe”) play out uninterrupted. It’s the high point of the doc, showing how good Garrell is when it comes to expressing his visions. Even more amazing is what happens afterward; after being attacked by vandals, Garrell simply destroys everything and rebuilds from scratch, and ends up making everything bigger and better than it was before. As the years begin to pass, and Morató starts filming Garrell’s playground, the sights are even more impressive through the HD photography.

Morató’s focus on Garrell’s work does leave a little to be desired over its scant 75 minute length, but the basic approach and terrific subject are enough to make for a seriously impressive documentary. At its core, The Creator of the Jungle is about one man’s decades-long battle to preserve his sense of playfulness from the world around him. It’s captivating, delightful, tragic at times and ultimately a story one needs to see to believe.