Today sadly saw me suffering the after effects of staying out late the night before.

I hate to be negative, and it really is a very small point, but I think that 21:45 for the opening screening of a festival is a bit late for public viewers, many of whom have work the next morning.

I went straight home and to bed after, but was still stifling yawns this morning. I understand that with a high-profile gala event to set up and break down, the staff are under a lot of pressure, but even a half hour earlier would have made all the difference to grumpy old me.

As a result, I decided to take it easy this evening, and only see one movie, at the very reasonable time of 17:30. My boss very kindly let me out a couple of minutes early so I could dash across the road in time for Girl with Black Balloons, the documentary feature by Corinne van der Borch.

I’ll admit, I had heard very little about this film and didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it was a documentary. I also knew that it was set at the Chelsea Hotel, a space famed for opening its doors to a rake of artists (including Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and many others), but apart from that, I knew little, so in true festival spirit, I went in blind.

The film opens with Van der Borch meditating on the beauty of a stairwell in the legendary Chelsea Hotel. This surreal shot disjoints the viewer slightly from your traditional documentary mode and makes you think twice about what’s coming up in the next ninety minutes. It seemed odd then that the filmmaker chose to tell the story that followed in a straight, participatory style.

We are told, in a clipped Dutch-accented voiceover, of the story of Bettina Bashyi. She has been a resident at the Chelsea Hotel for over forty years, and is an artist. Her rooms are filled with junk and she sleeps in a deckchair with her feet propped up, because of her condition. We learn that she no longer makes art, as she has no room to do so, and to be honest, she doesn’t seem like she could manage it. She is clearly old and clings to Van der Borch, calling often, and at one point says:

‘If you feel sorry for me, that’s enough, At least I have one.’

It all seems a bit pitiful, really.

However, we soon learn that though she is old and mad, her art is good. From the clutter that is her world in the Chelsea, she starts to show Van der Borch examples of her work: photography, sculpture, design and short film. Bashyi has spent years working in a variety of media, and understands art.

At this point, the tone changes and we start to see things differently. The story continues; we hear about her life in the past, we learn that Bashyi’s upstairs neighbour is going to help sort through her work, but suddenly, Bashyi seems the one in control. Van der Borch may be using Bettina as a documentary subject, but Bettina seems to be using Van der Borch’s film as an outlet for her art. She is openly performative to the camera, she directs her director on several occasions (Van der Borch always complies) and talks about her age and frailty with humour.

By the film’s end, Bashyi is filming again, this time with a DV camera (which she masters easily), and Van der Borch’s commentary seems confused and overly reflective.

I have to say that I left the film undecided as to who stood out as the auteur of the piece. On one hand, it is a delicate portrait of what happens to artistic talent when it falls through the cracks, but on the other, it is far more complex. Though I have a tendency to be overly optimistic about film, I see Girl with Black Balloons as a complex re-imagining of the tradition of the victim in documentary cinema, the only problem is, I’m not sure who did the reimagining.