Hot Docs – This Magazine

This Magazine picks five Canadian flicks to see before Hot Docs ends

This Magazine Staff — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:22:51 +0000

Brave New River

Saturday, May 4 at 3 p.m.

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WHAT: Director Nicolas Renaud takes us to James Bay, where hydroelectric development has been a controversial topic for decades—especially between the government and the Cree there who’ve called the area home for centuries.

WANT MORE? Check out our September 2011 story by Will Braun. In it, Braun tells us why Canada’s $50-billion hydro boom brings environmental perils, too.

When I Walk

Saturday, May 4 at 1:30 p.m.

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WHAT: Filmmaker Jason DaSilva hides nothing in his reflective and inspiring documentation of his seven-year struggle with multiple sclerosis, which he was diagnosed with at age 25.

WANT MORE? Check out our archive of frank, thoughtful, and often funny ThisAbility blogs by Aaron Broverman.

Buying Sex

Sunday, May 5 at 1:30 p.m.

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WHAT: This documentary puts one, big question to the viewer: Does decriminalizing prostitution make for a more just society, or a more unjust one?

WANT MORE? Check out our feature story “Lost girls” by Sinead Mulhern in This Magazine‘s May/June issue. The in-depth investigation into human trafficking along Hwy. 401 in Ontario is on newsstands soon!

NCR: Not Criminally Responsible

Sunday, May 5 at 1 p.m.

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WHAT: There are only rush tickets left for John Kastner’s masterful examination of NCR laws in Canada—through the story of one man who brutally attacked a woman in a shopping mall, the woman, and her family—but it’s worth trying your luck.

WANT MORE? Make sure to pick up the May/June issue of this for a discussion on proposed changes to Canada’s NCR laws. Also, check out our June 2010 story about how the NWT’s prison has become a de facto psychiatric hospital.

Chi

Saturday May 4 at 1 p.m.

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WHAT: West Coast actor Babz Chula convinces her friend and director Anne Wheeler to accompany her to India for Babz’s cancer treatments. When they return, they find that Babz’s cancer has spread throughout her body and she doesn’t have much longer to live.

WANT MORE? Look out for our July/August issue, which has a feature on cancer and industry—and explores why we need to change our whole economic structure if we ever want to beat the evil C.

Check out the full schedule for Hot Docs here.

Toronto Palestine Film Festival aims to look beyond the headlines

jasmine rezaee — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:30:36 +0000

Leila’s Birthday — playing as part of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival, Friday Oct. 2nd Bloor Cinema at 7:00 PM

While most Torontonians know about TIFF—the hugely publicized Toronto International Film Festival—very few have heard about TPFF, the Toronto Palestine Film Festival. Unlike TIFF, the TPFF isn’t attended by Hollywood stars, doesn’t receive much mainstream media coverage and has no paid staff.

Despite these challenges, TPFF is an ambitious film fest that features over 40 films and documentaries about Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora. By showcasing the diversity of Palestinian culture and people, the film fest attempts to dispel stereotypes of the victimized or violent Palestinian.

According to Dalia Majid, a TPFF spokesperson the aim of the festival is “to support Palestinian filmmakers and artists, because they often face major challenges in getting their films made and screened.” Another aim is to showcase “Palestinian culture, aspirations, humour, satire—the range of emotions all people feel, including Palestinians.”

Some festival highlights include the Canadian premiere of Amreeka, the North American premiere of To My Father (Tuesday, September 29, 7:00 PM), Checkpoint Rock: Songs of Palestine (Wednesday, September 30, 7:00 PM), and Laila’s Birthday (Friday, October 2, 7:00 PM), a film screened at last year’s TIFF. This year’s festival also includes an art exhibit, three discussion forums, a film and food brunch program, and will be attended by seven directors.

Majid says that the response so far “has been very positive. Last year people attended the film fest out of curiosity and left very impressed. We have big expectations for this year’s film fest.”

When asked whether the TPFF has an official position regarding the controversy that raged at TIFF this year, Majid explains that the TPFF has “welcomed the discussion that followed the petition and boycott” because “at the very least it got people talking,” which she said was better than silence and indifference.

The second annual TPFF started last Friday and ends this Friday, October 2. The programming guide is available at the fest’s website.

The Northwest Passage has no more pomegranates

This Magazine Staff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:37:51 +0000

First off, apologies for the spell of darkness. I wasn’t trying to express certain silences of the documentary form with the silence of this blog. (Or was I?) No, a combo of slow internet, distractions, etc — these are to blame. There must always be something to blame. (Or must there?)
On Wednesday I watched Passage in a sold-out theatre. Passage is an attempt to rescue the reputation of John Rae, the man who discovered the true story of John Franklin’s death as he sought the Northwest Passage, from the dustbin of history. Much less successfully, experienced director John Walker tries to valorize the Inuit’s role in the whole affair.
The film is a po-mo tour-de-force, blending historical recreation, rehearsals of the historical recreation, debate about historical recreation, etc etc. And yet, it works! At least, insofar as the narrative is compelling and remarkably easy to follow. It’s also pretty heavy on self-congratulation. And with its lionization of Rae, Passage’s intended spotlight on the role of Inuit in Rae’s achievements is dimmed and at times forgotten.
Tehran Has No More Pomegranates is another po-mo tour-de-force. (Yes, from now on I will only be reviewing po-mo tour-de-forces.) I saw it yesterday in another packed house.
It’s director Massoud Bakhshi’s history of Tehran, mostly the past hundred years, organized loosely around the theme of the contradictions and idiocies of various attempts to modernize the city. Unlike Passage, a sincere and serious movie with a playful form, Tehran is an ironic, sarcastic, and funny treatment of Tehran — it’s almost documentary sketch comedy. Though in its last few scenes, Tehran’s loose structure begins to wear, on the whole it’s an entertaining and insightful and quite beautifully shot.

Obstructed View

This Magazine Staff — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:39:28 +0000

[Hot docs media downloads are down, at least here in the Reference Library. So no photo for you!]
Last night I watched another slow-paced doc about migrants — this time, asylum seekers — and I was lulled into such a deep ravine of slumbererous sludge I couldn’t even bring myself to get up and leave. I should have brought a pillow and caught up on my sleep.
Seaview sucked all the more poignantly because of its potential. Seaview is a former holiday resort built after World War II on Ireland’s coast where middle class English families could go for cheap vacations. 6000 people could live there at a time. Now Seaview has about 800 residents — asylum seekers who wait up to six or seven years to find out whether Ireland will grant them entry as refugees. Only one in ten is accepted, allowed to join the 5% of foreigners in Ireland who are also refugees.
The situation is melancholy. Extremely. So melancholy that for what seemed like two thirds of the film, directors Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley’s cameras trained principally, sentimentally, even obsessively on empty chairs, empty swimming pools, empty hallways. Yes, I got the point: this place is a horrible institution to live day in and day out. The problem was they put the baby in sulphuric, muddy bathwater (leaving only one option). They confused the institution being unbearable with the documentary being unbearable. Now even my review is belabouring the point!
Okay, all that said, there were several watchable bits: Images of a man on a hunger strike who refuses to speak; bright-eyed children only slowly discovering the miseries of institutional life; a little-too-crude selection of refugees saying how desperate they were to work and contribute taxes instead of burdening the Irish taxpayer.
Hoping for better fare today. Meanwhile, Seaview does play again, Thursday at 2 at Isabel Bader, in case you’re suffering from daytime insomnia.

Catch me, I'm falling

This Magazine Staff — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:12:16 +0000

Well, if you’re going to duck into a dark theatre at midday in the middle of a beautiful, sunny Saturday — Toronto spring’s first such Saturday — you’d better get to see some pretty stunning landscapes. 20 Seconds of Joy didn’t disappoint.
I should admit, I would never have gone to see 20 Seconds if it hadn’t been for the first five installments I’ve recently watched of BBC’s Planet Earth series. I thought I’d had my fill of wild and gorgeous nature docs. But I was wrong! Oh, so wrong. Anyway, this one, about BASE-Jumping, really reeled me in with its promises of beautiful nature.
But actually, if the shots of Karina Hollekin hurling herself off 290-metre cliffs (including wearing a wild, flying squirrel-esque suit) are the visual highlight, they’re actually just window-dressing for a more serious subject: death. Or the fear and/or courting of. As one of the other jumpers interviewed in the movie puts it, “You don’t really talk about it, but this sport will eventually kill you.” One wrong move and it’s over. In exchange for a tiny window of orgasmic joy. With the difference that in BASE-Jumping there appears to be little pleasure in repetition — to keep the high you have to keep doing ever more dangerous stuff.
It’s this vicious dynamic that provides the drama. And makes 20 seconds more than just another sports doc. Though not that much more. The director and central character have obviously bonded, leaving a lone on-camera psychologist (and former extreme sporter himself) providing just a few teasing ideas about megalomania. The rest of the critical thinking you’ll just have to do yourself. 20 Seconds plays again Tuesday at 1:30 at the Cumberland.

Mexican standoff

This Magazine Staff — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:37:16 +0000

I learned a new word watching the Mexican doc The Demons of Eden: narcopederasty. But to be fair to the film’s scope, it should be expanded even further, maybe ending up with something like, “narcokleptocapitalopederasty”. And there you have your subject line.
If Demons of Eden cast a wide net, it must be admitted, it caught a lot of fish. But let’s leave that metaphor behind. The main storyline follows Lydia Cacho, a human rights writer whose initial plan was to become a cultural journalist and write poetry — “the beautiful things in life.” No such luck. After one scoop led to another, she ended up writing a book about a network of extremely wealthy pedophiles in Cancun, featuring two Lebanese-Mexican gangsters of obscene wealth and influence. Though initially the sidekick, “Denim King” Kamel Nacif Borge becomes the main villain, landing Cacho in jail and arranging her torture.
In the investigations that follow, all rocks are unturned. Some reveal spectacular grime. Taped conversations between Nacif and various figureheads of the establishment, including the governor of Puebla province, are explosive and disturbing. Others reveal distractions — a brief detour on the toxic blue water released by denim factories raises far more questions than it answers.
The movie’s style is as hectic as its substance. A cacophony of extravagant graphics is out of control, making the subtitles often very tricky to follow. But Lydia Cacho’s dignity and courage shine through, and if her story is rich in detail and digressions it’s strong enough to keep you gripped (if confused). Like Shock Waves, Demons of Eden suggests that its journalist protagonist is ultimately a great nationalist. Cacho speaks frequently about wanting to bring out the best in her fatherland. Good luck to her. The film plays again Monday at noon at the ROM.

Reporting the news, building the nation

This Magazine Staff — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 05:48:20 +0000

Before Shock Waves came a 30-minute short called Umiaq Skin Boat which followed a group of Inuit elders building the first Umiaq (a traditional skin boat) in the community in 50 years. Boat-building being only so riveting, we also get some tall tales of survival from the elders, reminding me of an incredible book, Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut. (For more arctic facts and some self promo, check The Walrus’s arctic issue’s special arctic facts gizmo.)
Shock Waves is a harrowing celebration of a network of radio stations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called Radio Okapi. Of course, the story’s heroes are the reporters themselves, followed around as they put themselves in ever more precarious situations (though we get to see them drink beer and debate governmental incompetence too). And yes, there is footage of a dangerous encounter at a riverside military checkpoint shot with a secret camera.
But it’s much harder to watch one of Okipa’s journalists interview a woman brave enough to recount being raped by a soldier. Five years after the official end of combat (in 2003), sexual violence continues to rage. The reporter asks her if she’s had an HIV test since the rape. She says no. He offers to help her procure one. For a long time she looks down silently as her baby nurses. But she won’t agree. She says she’s afraid. According to the doc, 25% of the women raped in the DRC contract HIV.
The station is actually Congo’s largest, with eight branches spread across the country and funding (now expired) from the UN and a Swiss journalism foundation called Hirondelle. The UN, which at its height had 17,000 peacekeepers in the country, also provide the reporters with much-needed security. Emerging from a massive civil war, journalism is the right profession if you’re looking for death threats. Or the chance to build a nation.

One reporter says, “We have a historical role to play, helping make sure that social change can happen.” Absurd as that would sound coming from Peter Mansbridge, in the DRC these reporters literally provide a voice for the voiceless. The doc also makes a lot of hay about the fact that in a country as vast as Western Europe but with little movement between regions (aside from the 1.5 million internally displaced), a truly national radio station is playing a huge part in the forging of national unity and identity. There’s a sense that Okipa is providing for the Congo what Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities, believed the newspapers did throughout much of the rest of the world–a common narrative digested at the same time of day, allowing people who have never met to feel almost as close as neighbours.
The two are playing again Sunday at noon at the ROM. After wiping away your tears of frustration as you try to make it through the Sunday Star without unlearning too much, this is where to go if you want to see journalists earning their liquor money.
Tomorrow I review The Demons of Eden. Stay tuned!

Danger is somebody's middle name

This Magazine Staff — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:55:11 +0000

Blogging a Toronto film festival may not be literally dangerous (despite being an act of aggression against actual literature), but real journalism often is. This evening, I’m hoping to explore the theme twice. Apparently, neither film is a “hot pick“. Then again, the margins are where the action is; as a German Jew might have once said, “The decisive blow is always struck left-handed.”
First up, at 6:45 at Al Green, is Shock Waves, a look at a daring Congolese community radio station, Radio Okapi, by a Quebecois documentary team.
Next, at 9:00 and also at Al Green, I’ll try The Demons of Eden, the story of a Mexican human rights journalist with powerful enemies who’s investigating violence against and women and children.
There’s probably a pun to be made contrasting the grimness of the themes with the fact they’re in romance languages. But I won’t go there.

Heavy hammer, bright sparks

This Magazine Staff — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:37:58 +0000

Anvil is ostensibly a movie about a metal band, but like any classic narrative, it’s really about something more elemental–a self struggling against a context. Or in this case, two selves, Lipps (lead guitarist Steve Ludlow) and Robb (drummer Robb Reiner), who in the 1980s influenced and played with David Bowie and various metal luminaries before descending into obscurity. Now, the band’s leads are in their early fifties and trying to make a final stand. As Lipps notes wryly — yet optimistically — early in the film, “It could never get worse than it already is.”
Sound familiar? Of course, nothing about this movie was remotely familiar. Nearly everything was weirdly, becomingly strange. For me, the most outrageous act on camera happens when one of Anvil’s fans, at an Etobicoke night club, chugs a beer through his nostril. But when fifty-something metal rockers weep as they make up after a terrible fight; when a 10,000-person venue attracts under 200 fans (in Romania); when a painful meeting with a record label executive reaches its painful conclusion; you feel for these guys.
I may have even felt it a little extra when we learned, about halfway through, that Lipps and Robb are Jews. Myself, I’m only half Jewish. But I suddenly felt even closer to these misfits tragically torn between two communities–one they were leaving behind and one they sought to join. Heavy metal has to be one of the great goyim scenes. That’s not what Anvil was after–and yet, wasn’t it?

I won’t ruin the ending beyond saying the film was as deeply moving in its conclusion as promised in its middle acts. If you have the chance to see it and are looking for something outside the realm of social justice cinema, check it out. It’s playing this Sunday (sold out, I think) but also next Sunday.
Still, there was something strange about the post-movie Q&A featuring director Sacha Gervasi (screenwriter of the Steven Spielberg flick The Terminal). Ultimately, you’ve got a highly successful Hollywood operator who, yes, was an Anvil roadie in his late teens, but is now using their failure as the narrative matériel of his latest success. Nothing wrong with that of course. But to see it all on stage brought it a little closer to home. At least, I thought so.
Afterward, I went to the Hot Docs opening party in the atrium of the MaRS building–a center for various forms of innovation, or so the government tells me. The risotto and pad thai were tasty, the wine drinkable, the Stella comfortably snobby (while tasting faintly like fancy, well-treated Belgian sewage), the guests charming enough. I should write something nasty or insightful. But that will have to wait.
Tomorrow’s a big day. So off to sleep. See you soon.

Documenting the documentaries

This Magazine Staff — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:06:01 +0000

DOWNTOWN TORONTO–Today begins the 15th Hot Docs, “Canada’s international documentary festival”. This is my first time blogging a festival–I’m excited. First off, as I’m not a documentary “expert”, I’ll spare you a long introductory rumination on the documentary form. For the moment.
But I am a narcissist. So I’ll kick things off with a quick introduction to my toolkit. But first, tonight is the special opening screening of Anvil, a look at some pretty old, very loud people. More sophisticated analysis to come. Also tonight, the opening night reception.
More serious fare starts tomorrow. I’m especially looking forward to The Demons of Eden.
The Toolkit:
(1) My laptop. Without it, I cannot blog. (2) A glass of water. (3) My press pass. My authenticity. (4) The competition. They have more resources but less spunk. (5) A pen and notebook. Almost as important as the press pass for looking authentic. (6) A list of Hot Docs parties and receptions. (7) My cell phone and mobile office. (8) A voice recorder. Almost as important as the notebook for looking authentic. (9) Some light reading to pass the time between screenings.