Still talking HotDocs 2008

THE BLACK LIST interviews several prominent black Americans about being, well, black and American. Each of the people interviewed (ranging from comedians to politicians, authors to dancers) offers up a few minutes of wisdom or some anecdote or another in a straightforward to-the-camera chat. It's sometimes entertaining, often insightful but for all it offers I can't actually figure out why it was made or who it was aimed at.

AN ISLAND CALLING deals with colonialism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and family as a man goes to Fiji to find out about his family's history in the area and the murder of his brother, who had returned to live there. It's an engaging look at another culture and a fascinating story to boot.

In a break from new documentaries, I took some time out to attend a double bill in the retrospective honouring documentary pioneer Richard Leacock.

PRIMARY follows the battle between JFK and Hubert Humphrey on the election trail in the state of Wisconsin in 1960. Revolutionary in its nature, the film was only able to be made as a result of the invention of a new camera that was lightweight, quiet and recorded sound to a separate recorded that did not need to be connected to the camera. Disadvantages are apparent as the sound and picture quality are far from pristine, but the freedom it opened up for documentary filmmaking was incredible and the film is no less engrossing for the lack of technical perfection.

What a difference a few years makes though, as both sound and picture were vastly improved for the follow-up CRISIS: BEHIND A PRESIDENTIAL COMMITMENT, in which the filmmakers follow the story of the Kennedys having to make some important decisions when racist southern governor George Wallace attempted to prevent two black students enrolling at university in Alabama. It's another triumph of documentary film which leaves people of my age gobsmacked at some of the attitudes that seemed so commonplace.

ELEVEN MINUTES follows the attempts of Jay McCarroll to build on his success as winner of Project Runway to launch his own fashion label. If these words mean nothing to you then welcome to my world. Obviously spun off from some American reality TV show that I've never heard of and certainly would not have watched if I had, the film is nevertheless funny (thanks largely to McCarroll's larger than life personality) and a revealing look at some aspects of the fashion world. I only went to see it because I got free admission, in case you're wondering.

HER NAME IS SABINE sees French actress Sandrine Bonnaire step behind the camera to record a tribute to her younger autistic sister. Contrasting old home movie footage of Sabine with fly-on-the-wall footage of her now, the difference is stark, with five years of institutionalised care having left her a shell of her former self. It's not clear whether the institution was to blame or if her illness itself has caused the deterioration but it's still affecting regardless. While often touching, there are a few moments that to me felt a little too close to exploitation as Sabine seemed clearly uncomfortable and at the same time it's difficult to judge whether she had a complete picture of what was going on. It's certainly a very frank look at a serious mental health issue.

HotDocs round-up will be concluded soon.

3000 miles from Hot Docs

The Bloor Cinema

Well, closer to 3300 really.

Continuing my coverage of HotDocs 2008, despite the fact that I'm back home and the festival's finished, here's a few more I saw.

STRANDED, I'VE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED IN THE MOUNTAINS might be an ordeal as far as titles go, but it's not half as much of an ordeal as the events it portrays. You've probably heard of the famous story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed en route to a game in the mountains and how the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism to survive. It was made into a Hollywood movie which I've never bothered to watch.

I probably never will bother now either, as I'm not sure there's a need after seeing this stunning film. Gonzalo Arijon has gathered all the survivors who relate the full story of what happened and how they survived, including a trip to revisit the site and a touching finale in which they finally play the game they were going to play all those years ago. It's terrifying and yet inspiring, in a morbid kind of way, and cannot fail to affect you. And like so many good documentaries (or films in general) it will leave you to think. Just what would you be prepared to do to survive?

AT THE DEATH HOUSE DOOR tells of a death row chaplain who has no doubts about the job he is doing until the day he finally has to stand over the execution of a man he firmly believes to be innocent. That's the emotional side, with the more clinical aspect being provided by journalists investigating the potential miscarriage of justice.

The film has a lot to say about the death penalty and, while it does come down on one side of the argument, it's never less than fair. At the same time however it's also as much about the effect that execution has on everyone involved as it is about whether it's right or not. While not necessarily my number one film of the festival, it does have the feel of potential Oscar nomination material.

STALAGS: HOLOCAUST AND PORNOGRAPHY IN ISRAEL sounds a lot more exciting than it is. Back in the sixties, a range of sleazy exploitation books appeared in Israel that claimed to be written by American soldiers as accounts of their times in Nazi prison camps, and usually involved hideous torture, gruesome violence and beautiful female Nazis using the US soldiers to satisfy their needs. Think of them as a print predecessor of the seventies and eighties "nazisploitation" films like ILSA and so on.

Truthfully, it is actually interesting to start with, as it reveals that these works were the result of Jewish authors hiding behind pseudonyms, but as it starts to examine the effect of these books on our impression of the holocaust it totally loses its way.

It still never becomes as dull as the short film that was billed alongside it though. KREDENS follows a young man searching for a long-lost item of furniture that once belonged to his grandfather. It's dull, it feels staged and even at less than half an hour it outstays its welcome.

Hotdocs coverage will be continued shortly.

More from HotDocs 2008

Another quick round up of my viewings from this year's HotDocs festival in Toronto. I'm pushed for time for various reasons but would still rather post "live" than wait until I get home. So here are my next lot of films, very quickly summarised and completely free of any kind of spellcheck (sorry).

MAN ON WIRE is a definite highlight. James Marsh gave us the wonderful WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP and while the subject here is rather different, the style of the film is similar and as striking - the blend of archive footage, interviews, reconstructions and extremely well chosen classical music make it every bit as artistic as it is fascinating, and it scores highly on both of those counts.

The film concerns a crazy high-wire walker who, having already spanned a tightrope on Sydney Harbour Bridge and Notre Dame, went on a quest back in the 1970s to perform his act across the gap between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Seriously.

Steering clear of anything to do with the eventual fate of the towers, Marsh sticks to the audacity of the stunt, the incredible quest of one man and the effect it had on everyone involved. Marvellous.

LETTER TO ANNA: THE DEATH OF JOURNALIST POLITKOVSKAYA'S DEATH is a depressing documentary about the life and death of a courageous journalist who spoke out against the crimes allegedly committed by the Russian government and paid the ultimate price. The film is a tribute to her and also an investigation into why she was killed and by whom; it's all the more effective for containing interview footage shot with her before she was killed (the director had been intending to make a very different film with her). It's interesting certainly, but worrying too and a valiant attempt to get certain issues to a wider audience.

Man with mental issues draws a lot and records some out of tune music which achieves a cult following - sounds like THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSON to me, but no, it's WESLEY WILLIS'S JOYRIDE, a tribute to the underground musician and artist who died a few years ago. I'd never heard of him but aside from some of his drawings being very good and him being a reasonably charismatic individual (at times) I couldn't see the attraction. Plenty of others did however, so if you're a fan this is a film for you. If, like me, you'd never heard of him, you might wonder what it's all about.

DANCE WITH A SERIAL KILLER is a British film about a French serial killer. Rather than an in-depth look at the mind of the killer (which will remain a mystery) it concentrates partially on the effects of the investigation on the detective involved but mainly on the efforts he went to (over five years) to get a conviction. It is a portrait of obsession but equally of heroic determination to do good - not to mention an illustration of a detective mind at its best.

PASSAGE is a fantastic film by John Walker co-produced between Britain and Canada which looks at the historical records surrounding the discovery of the Northwest Passage. Challenging accepted history, mixing documentary with drama, and stirring up a real hornet's nest, this documentary is controversial, intelligent, entertaining, enlightening and a whole load of other things that a good documentary should be. It may well change your mind on things; it may not; but it will certainly give you food for thought and is another frontrunner for my personal highlight of the festival.

More from HotDocs soon.

My first viewings of HotDocs 2008

Okay, after a brief burst of activity it's all gone a bit quiet again. I am now in Toronto however for HotDocs 2008 (North America's largest documentary film festival) and you may remember that last year I managed some blog entries while there. No difference this year, as it gives me a chance to shelter from the sweltering heat outside.

After a combination of late-night arrival, tiredness and a sun-burn inducing baseball match I've only seen two films so far - MEMORY BOOKS and SEAVIEW.

MEMORY BOOKS is a German film following families whose lives have been affected by the AIDS crisis in Uganda. It's not the first film to look at the problem, but alas it's a tragic measure of the scale of the problem that people can still find ways to document the problem without going over old ground.

In this case, the books of the title refer to albums put together by families (primarily mothers) with the aim of letting their children remember their parents and giving them somewhere to turn when they want to remember them - since, unfortunately, they know that the parents are not likely to live to see their kids grow up.

It's beautifully shot, finds some positive activity amongst all the gloom and is deeply touching. It's not perhaps as uplifting as WAR/DANCE or WE ARE TOGETHER but it should find widespread distribution among art house cinemas all the same.

SEAVIEW is a haunting documentary about a grave situation in Ireland where asylum seekers are being held - in many cases for years - in a former Butlins holiday camp while awaiting a decision on their fate. The contrast of their life in the camp compared with the camp's holiday-maker glory days is a stark but effective one, and the ghostly, poetic shooting style makes it all the more affecting. If all this sounds familiar to you, it's because I already saw it and reported on it when it received its Irish premiere at Stranger Than Fiction last year. It was just so good I had to see it again.

(Last year it was called MOSNEY - I spoke to one of the directors last night briefly who explained why, for reasons I won't go into here, they changed the name. But whatever it's called, it's worth seeing - as both an artistic piece of cinema and an important insight into a major human rights issue.)

More from HotDocs soon.

BENEATH (2007)

Why on Earth would I watch a film that is graced by the phrase "produced by MTV films"? I have no idea, but found myself wondering that before long when I sat down to watch BENEATH.

This horror film aimed, funnily enough, at the MTV-watching youth demographic stars Nora Zehetner. You might remember her as the femme fatale in teen noir BRICK. Or perhaps you saw her playing Eden in the TV show HEROES. At a stretch, you might even recall that she's listed in the cast of AMERICAN PIE 2 as "Girl at Party" - but probably not. I mention this only because this is as close as the film has to a star. The rest of the cast seems to have been populated entirely by charisma-free nobodies on the run from made-for-TV and straight-to-DVD movies.

Of course, that doesn't mean anything in itself. Maybe they'd win me over when I saw them in this... oh, it's no use.

Zehetner is Christy, a young girl who was responsible for her sister's crippling injuries (later resulting in death) in a car crash. This is due largely to that annoying habit that American teen movies have of letting people who are clearly far too young to drive get behind the wheel of a car. I don't know what the law about legal driving age in the USA is, but if the movies are anything to go by it needs changed.

Anyway, Christy returns to her home town, where nobody likes her and they all remember her going mental at her sister's funeral because she didn't think that her sister was dead. How did she know this? Her premonition powers! Where did these powers come from? No idea.

And that sums up most of this film. Stuff happens because the story needs it to happen, not because it makes any sense. People die, weird things happen, the girl keeps having premonitions, blah blah blah whatever.

Look, I can't even be bothered anymore. I've made it this far and now I can't even motivate myself to write any insightful remarks about the movie. It's a mess of horror cliches, stupid characters and unbelievably contrived happenings and unless you're about twelve you'll recognise it for the crap that it is.

Unless of course you're sensible and see the words "produced by MTV films" and switch your TV off.

Like I wish I'd done.

THE NAKED PREY (1966)

Cornel Wilde's always been a bit of an interesting guy - of his previous work, I loved him as an actor in classic noir THE BIG COMBO and as a director on the grim post-apocalyptic drama NO BLADE OF GRASS (a DVD release would be nice, please). Add to that a passing interest in the history of colonial Africa and I became curious when reading about this Wilde vehicle in forums when it was first announced.

Having caught my eye, the DVD release then popped up again in the pages of Sight & Sound magazine, where Tim Lucas's review made it sound just too fascinating not to see, so I added it to one of my recent transatlantic DVD orders despite never having heard of it until now.

How can I never have heard of this magnificent film? I am astounded.

The plot, in brief: Wilde is part of an expedition in 19th-century Africa which upsets a tribe. The tribe take gruesome revenge on everyone else in the party except for the sympathetic Wilde, who is instead stripped naked, released into the wild and then hunted by the rest of the tribe. An anti-TARZAN? Colonial variation on PREDATOR? JUNGLE HOLOCAUST by way of the arthouse cinema? I could try and come up with all manner of snappy summaries of this movie but none of them would do it justice and all of them would fail to account for what an immaculately made piece of cinema it is.

A few minor details may have dated - the hero of the movie decides that killing for sport is wrong, but for ivory is okay; the bright red blood that lights up some otherwise sickening violence; the occasional moment of sped-up film - but there are some things that will never age. A stripped-down but gripping story; nail-biting tension; an incredibly effective score built around indigenous African sounds and instruments; a powerful performance by Wilde in a film almost devoid of dialogue; the brutal savagery of not just the human characters but of the animals too.

That latter detail may make it difficult for some to watch, with animals popping up to kill each other with alarming regularity. However, it's this violence that forms part of an integral theme that runs through the film - man is just another animal. There are parallels between both beast and man, but furthermore Wilde continues to draw parallels between the so called civilised man and the alleged primitives. Just as Wilde descends into savagery to survive, so too do we see the tribesmen become far more recognisably "human" (there are a couple of terrific scenes where, despite not understanding what they are saying, we can still recognise ourselves in their slowly-disappearing patience and petty bickering as Wilde continues to evade them). It's one of the more sympathetic portrayals of African tribes I've seen, particularly given that the film is not exactly recent.

Few films have captured Africa in all its simultaneous beauty and savagery and that is helped no end by the other gobsmacking aspect of the film that I've not mentioned yet, which is the jaw-droppingly gorgeous widescreen location photography. There are few instances I can recall of natural environments being so impressive on film outside of nature documentaries and a handful of westerns.

On that front, Criterion have done a bang-up job of the film. It's an amazing transfer of an amazing film. If there is any disadvantage, it's that a few minor flaws are perhaps more apparent, such as the naked Wilde clearly not being naked and a fight between two animals clearly showing another person running around in the background (these are the two I spotted, but you can find more on the IMDb). Such trivial detail however is a small price to pay for such a stunning release of an incredible film.

Okay, sorry, I've rambled on for a bit longer than anticipated and there are plenty of better writers than me who will do justice to the film in half as many words and be twice as eloquent. But if I didn't have at least one outpouring of my thoughts on this masterpiece I might just burst. Perhaps I'm in a minority and you're all sitting there thinking "God, has he only just heard of that film now?" but if there are any other people out there who, like me, were totally unaware of this gem, do yourself a favour and buy it right now.

Incredible movie, incredible experience.

THE CHUMSCRUBBER (2005)

Here's one I wrote ages ago and just found it on my hard drive just now, apparently having never got round to posting it.

This one seemed to pass a lot of cinema audiences by and I'm not that surprised. Having just watched it myself, I'm not entirely sure what audience it's aimed at.

It's another entry in the recent "quirky teenagers"/"isn't suburbia weird" genre (see DONNIE DARKO, THUMBSUCKER, etc.) where previously popular types of humour (slapstick, satire, clever jokes) are replaced by weird people doing eccentric things at inappropriate times. And it's not that funny. This is a problem since many of the events in the film are so ludicrous that one can only assume it's supposed to be a comedy. And yet, it seems to be aiming for some kind of satire/drama affair that never quite materialises, being swamped instead by the self-indulgent strangeness that dominates proceedings.

It felt to me like the people responsible for this film had a few ideas they found interesting, couldn't really think of a good enough film to encompass them all and decided to paper over the cracks with the aforementioned quirkiness. On top of this, the villain of the film (whose name I have already forgotten) was, even for a teenager, the least threatening villain I've ever seen and the relevance of the computer game that features in the film (and gives the movie its title) is entirely lost on me.

Ever had a conversation or heard a joke, and felt like you were the only guy in the room who wasn't in on it? That's pretty much how I felt while watching this waste of time. It's a film that feels like it was designed to be a cult movie, and it will probably fail miserably.

(I saw this as the first half of a double bill - the second half was DONNIE DARKO. That only emphasised the weaknesses of the first film to me, but you may compare as you see fit...)

Current release: THE CONFORMIST

Not a new film, but qualifies as a current release since a brand new print is doing the rounds at the moment courtesy of the British Film Institute. Well, either a new print or a new digital projection, depending on where you view it.

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, IL CONFORMISTA is obviously a rather personal film. Unfortunately it's also a bit of a muddle. Granted, I'm clearly in a minority judging by the praise bestowed upon it by critics, but it just seems to me like it can never make up its mind what it's supposed to be about.

Fascism? Love? Sexual repression? The story bounces about all over the place and ends up being a bunch of admittedly impressive set pieces linked together by a fairly dull story.

The film's star Jean Louis Trintignant is always watchable though, the score by Georges Delerue is terrific and this new presentation does full justice to the visuals. It leaves me cold though.

Current release: JESUS CAMP

Okay, this might not quite be a current release, but it only just turned up for a few days at one of my local haunts.

It's a documentary about a bunch of born-again kids who spend their summer at a camp where they're taught how to evangelise.

I want to make it clear that I am not bashing religion. I see no reason why people of differing beliefs or non-religious backgrounds can't learn to tolerate and respect each other's beliefs, but obviously that's not going to happen. It doesn't stop me doing it though.

With that said, I have to say that this film is scary stuff. Some of the children seem genuinely religious and fair play to them; unfortunately they seem to be in a minority. What this film shows is how the ever-increasing Christian fundamentalists are slowly grabbing hold of power in America (with that idiot of a president being one of their heroes) - while I have respect for religion, I don't believe it has a place in politics - and how these same people are using camps like this to indoctrinate their children to their belief system. The thinking seems to be that Muslims are enemies and they are brainwashing their children, so us Christians better do the same because our God's better than theirs. This is a programme for breeding religious footsoldiers.

The documentary's a fascinating one, but it makes me fear for the future of the world.

Current release: THE ORPHANAGE

This Spanish horror comes to your nearest arthouse cinema plastered with the banner "Produced by Guillermo Del Toro" or something like that. I'm usually cynical about anything that emphasises producer over director, writer or even star but in this case you can definitely feel the guiding hand of the PAN'S LABYRINTH director.

In terms of Del Toro's output, the film's closest cousin is probably THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE but it is also haunted by the ghost of other classic haunted house affairs such as the terrific British classic starring Deborah Kerr, THE INNOCENTS.

The story in brief: a woman and her husband, along with their adopted child, return to the old foreboding mansion (yeah!) where she grew up, with the intention of returning it to use as an orphanage. The young boy is ill and spends a little too much time with imaginary friends - except they might not be imaginary. And then he disappears.

To say much more than this is to risk spoiling your enjoyment. There are plenty of frights, both of the currently trendy "quiet... quiet... quiet... LOUD NOISE!" variety and also the more subtle moments of terror that you used to find in films like the aforementioned THE INNOCENTS. It's also dripping with atmosphere, well acted, beautifully shot and has a story that begins as a slowburner but builds to an extremely satisfying conclusion.

A refreshing change from a lot of the horror-by-numbers pap that is produced in Hollywood, EL ORFANATO is an intelligent and rewarding chiller that takes us back to the good old days and is already a frontrunner for one of my favourite films of 2008.