ALFRED AND JAKOBINE REVIEW

One documentary that I've always enjoyed watching is the winner of the London Independent Documentary Festival 2015. Alfred & Jakobine is a Feature Length Documentary which tells the story of Alfred and Jakobine, two people who fell in love and decided to travel around the world in an old London Taxi. However, as well as telling this old story of these two characters past, we also see Alfred at his current age (84) as he attempts to repair the old London taxi and then drives across America to see Jakobine one last time as we learn that he left her over 40 years ago.

Contributors
This documentary is all interview led, with the only 'Cast' member being Olivia Marei who is the voice over for Jakboine in the translation of her diary from her days traveling with Alfred. Throughout the documentary the story is being told by Alfred, Jakobine and their son, Niels. Later on in the documentary Jakobine's new husband _______ joins the story to explain how Jakobine was after Alfred left her. These are the only 4 characters that come into the story. It stays relevant to the story.

Story
The story of this documentary follows both a present and a past. All focusing on the two characters, Alfred and Jakobine. It starts by Niels introducing the characters and we learn how they met and they talk about how the two fell in love and decided to buy a London taxi for $80 and travel all around the world in it. With archive footage and photos of the original trip in the documentary as well (See trailer below for examples):

Later on though, we see Alfred and Jakobine in the modern day and Alfred explains that he's fixing up the taxi to drive across America to see Jakobine one last time. Throughout the story we learn that Alfred then walked out on Jakobine one day which broke her heart which adds to the emotion of Alfred rebuilding this taxi.



Visuals
This documentary is a goldmine for archive footage and photos. I was fortunate to meet with the Director, Jonathan Howells, and ask how he managed to get it all and he told me that Jakobine was a photography student and carried a camera and film camera on their travels and recorded everything.  This tells a huge part of the story and really makes the story amazing to watch. Without them this documentary just wouldn't work. This is also the best way to show the past as it's literally the two characters on the adventure (Screenshots below);

Mixed in with this is the interviews between the 4 contributors. Through the first half of the documentary we get a lot of the archive footage as the story is about Alfred and Jakobine's adventure together in the London Taxi. After this, we go into the story after the trip when they get married and then one day Alfred walks out on Jakobine. With this, we see a lot of cut aways during the interviews of Jakobine looking through photos or out the window. Alfred we get a lot of close ups and extreme close ups of his face. The DOP for this Documentary clearly got a lot of coverage as cut away footage which mixes in with the interviews when they don't have footage or archive to cut to. Below are screen shots from the interviews:


Alfred's interviews have a lot of him with the taxi in his garden as it's been there just rotting away for so long. But not only this, with the photo on the bottom left, this is Alfred being interviewed in the garage while the taxi is being fixed up. This happens a lot when the taxi is being repaired, actuality interviews at the location. This really brings the observational side of the documentary and really pulls the audience in. While there's also plenty of footage of the actual taxi being fixed it's edited over with Alfred's interviews here. Niels has his standard interview which is similar to Alfred and Jakobines with the background blurred out. This is very present during important parts of the story such as when Alfred and Niels is talking about how happy Jakobine was when traveling. During very emotional moments such as when Jakobine talks about Alfred walking out. It gives 100% of the focus on the characters at that moment and a very classic interview style,  especially if the location isn't relevant/visually pleasing. This wasn't the case here though as the locations are the contributors houses and are relevant to the story.

What I've taken from this Documentary is the style of actuality footage with interviews. The interviews with the taxi being rebuilt works a lot better as it works better than having an interview afterwards as we're getting the emotion out of Alfred and seeing his reactions. Such as when the taxi starts up again and he almost gets lost by it and shouts "Hey Jakobine where are ya?!". As well as this, the use of archive footage as made me consider if I could work that into my documentary. Although the story of our documentary isn't set in the past, we could show the progression of our contributors Drag act/evolution perhaps?