Hot Docs 2012 - Only the Young

Only the Young by Elizabeth Mims & Jason Tippet, 2011

Garrison, Kevin and Skye are three teenagers living in California. Simply put, this is the plot of Only the Young. Capturing moments of these characters' lives as they date, skateboard, and discuss the concerns in their lives (with various awkward, hilarious, and idiotic actions peppered in between), Mims and Tippet have made an extremely engaging and touching film. Beautifully shot over the course of two years, Only the Young is an impressive debut, showing us those relatable years in a very honest and poetic way.

4 1/2 out of 5

Hot Docs 2012 - Canned Dreams

Canned Dreams by Katja Gaurilof, 2012

How many countries, and how many residents of these countries, does it take to make a can of ravioli? Katja Gaurilof enlightens us with this question by visiting everyone from mine workers in Brazil to pig slaughterers in Romania, exploring the various journeys of all the ingredients needed to make this consumer-ready food item. Beautiful visuals accompany voiceovers provided by each of the interviewees who, instead of explaining aspects of their jobs, speak of everything from their dreams and hardships, to memories from childhood and their fantasies of revenge. I appreciated this structure of Canned Dreams and the way it diverted from my expectations. The simple stories and emotional confessions of these subjects made for a uniquely personal film about a globalized world.

 4 out of 5

Hot Docs Film Festival - 2012

It's been a few months since my last post. After moving to my own apartment in late 2011, attending my brother's wedding, and just taking some downtime (all excuses, I know), Toronto's Hot Docs Film Festival is already looming over my schedule. Opening last Thursday, April 26, my first of eight screenings is tonight, with the rest continuing throughout the week and ending on Sunday. I will be completing capsule reviews for each of the films I see. Below is my schedule:

April 30: Canned Dreams (2012) by Katja Gauriloff
May 1: Only the Young (2011) by Elizabeth Mims & Jason Tippet
May 1: Buzkashi! (2012) by Najeeb Mirza
May 2: Dreams of a Life (2012) by Carol Morley
May 3: Indie Game: The Movie (2011) by Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky
May 4: The Queen of Versailles (2012) by Lauren Greenfield
May 5: Vivan las Antipodas! (2011) by Victor Kossakovsky
May 6: Planet of the Snail (2011) by Yi Seung-jun

The Mill and the Cross

The Mill and the Cross
By Lech Majewski, 2011

If you have ever looked at paintings from centuries past and wondered what a particular scene would look like when brought to life, here is your chance. In Lech Majewski’s new film The Mill and the Cross, he attempts to understand and portray the meanings and decisions behind Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1564 painting The Way to Calvary. Why is there a tree there? What does the mill itself represent? As a filmic answer to these questions and more, The Mill and the Cross is quite the success.

The film opens on a Flemish landscape. The camera pans along the setting, and in it we see a crowd of people including soldiers, peasants and a woman crying in the foreground. The characters hold their stances as still as they can, with a horse or a child occasionally coming out of his or her freeze. Soon the artist Bruegel enters with a colleague to discuss the scene at hand, the scene that will become his painting.

The Way to Calvary is a work depicting Jesus being persecuted amongst the people of Flanders in the 16th century. Flemish people accused of heresy were regularly executed during this time by the Catholic Spaniards ruling the land. Bruegel created this work as an allegory for the inhumane crimes he witnessed, and now Majewski has painted a wonderful portrait himself, being ever so insightful of the painting with his film.





Besides laying out the scene in the painting (the scenery is beautifully composed using a wonderful green screen effect that allows the actors to appear alive on Bruegel’s painted background), Majewski uses elements from the painting to display historical details from the time period. When we cut away from the live-action painting at the beginning of the film, we are taken to the mill that stands in the artwork's top corner. A couple wakes up in the early morning, they put on their wooden clogs and begin the laborious process of starting up the windmill. A man asleep on the floor is also awoken; he walks the exaggerated distance (the mill in the painting is perched atop a steep mountain peak) to the mill’s terrace, where he releases the mill's sails to begin the grinding of grain. Soon after, we are shown a young Flemish couple take their calf to market, only for the man to be apprehended by Spanish soldiers, beaten, then tied to a wheel which is subsequently perched atop a tall stick of wood so his bloodied body can be feasted on by crows. In The Way to Calvary, these barbaric devices are seen planted throughout the landscape.

Unlike anything I’ve seen before, The Mill and the Cross is quite special. It is part documentary, part drama, part history lesson and part art lesson, using a minimal amount of dialogue to share its knowledge. Maybe it isn’t for everyone, but if you are keen on learning and have patience for details, please seek this film out. Immediately after viewing the film I found myself hoping that the director would follow up with another investigation of a painting. I really hope so.

4 out of 5

Project Nim

Project Nim
By James Marsh, 2011

My friend and I have a running joke about all things primate: chimps, gorillas, apes, etc. There isn’t a specific joke we have going, but we both find them hilarious and terrifying. Chimps are scary. As cute and human-like as they might seem, they are unpredictable and incredibly strong. With the new Planet of the Apes reboot just released in theatres, my friend and I thought we were up for a special blend of fun and scares. But with quite good reviews, maybe we ought to take that film more seriously before venturing to the theatre. The other primate-focused film in theatres right now is Project Nim, and after listening to an NPR podcast about a similar scenario, I recently opted to choose reality over science-fiction.

Project Nim is James Marsh’s documentary on Nim Chimpsky, a chimp raised solely by humans in the 1970s. Nim was taken from his mother by psychologist Herbert S. Terrace soon after being born in order to see if he could be taught American Sign Language. The film follows Nim’s journey through several homes, including his initial homestead where he was treated more like a child in a family than an animal, and a research building in the country where the comings and goings of psychologists and students would cause the chimp to act out in anger and revolt.





The documentary is a well-executed, suspenseful piece of filmmaking. Marsh sets up the story with a cast of interesting characters that include the types of heroes and villains one would find in a fiction narrative. The central character is always Nim, but he is as complex as any human you will see in a documentary this year; he becomes a type of antihero that you pity but also fear. The story is constructed with the use of great historical footage, and the interviews are quite intimate and direct at times, reminding me of Errol Morris documentaries like The Thin Blue Line and Standard Operating Procedure.

Although a metaphorical motif of having characters literally ‘removed from the picture’ is a little forced, as are some of the reenactments, overall Project Nim is a very interesting film. It raises many questions about our relationship with animals and the underlying, mysterious feelings these captive primates have. And Marsh seems to revel in these types of fantastical stories in our history, as he did in Wisconsin Death Trip and Man on Wire. These stories aren’t widely known, so let’s hope he continues to unearth many more and bring them to life, so we as an audience can join in on the discovery.

4 out of 5

2000s: Billy the Kid

Billy the Kid
By Jennifer Venditti, 2007

I first saw Billy the Kid at one of my first Hot Docs Film Festival screenings. I was to finish my Film degree at York University the following year and excited to take part in what would become my favourite Toronto film festival. The film stuck with me over the years (Billy and director Jennifer Venditti are featured in the title bar of the site) and I was pleased to pick up a copy not too long ago. I rewatched the film last night.

Billy the Kid is a 2007 documentary about Billy Price, a sophomore high school student living in small-town Maine. Billy is intelligent, outspoken and loves karate, metal music and girls. He sounds like any other teenage boy, but in another way, Billy is quite different. He has an obvious social awkwardness to him; one which doctors said early on would mean he would need to be institutionalized. More testing revealed that Billy was perfectly fine to live at home with his family, which he does, and he attends a regular high school.



Venditti's film follows Billy's day to day activities, aided by a voiceover where Billy talks about his views on life, love and his personal mental health. He is mostly seen bouncing around the nearby woods or biking around the streets of his town, talking to local kids about his fascination with horror movies. A narrative takes shape when Billy meets a local girl working at a diner. With his heart aflutter, Billy woos the girl, and the magic of seeing someone with their first love is all caught on camera. All of this conjures up nostalgia for one’s own pining and high school crushes, but the film isn’t without its concerns.

One can’t help but wonder while watching Billy the Kid about exploitation in documentary. Billy’s social issues are confirmed in the DVD extras as Aspberger’s Syndrome. Venditti may not have been aware of this while filming, but she knew that something was amiss. So one has to question, is the director’s intentions sympathetic or exploitive? Billy obviously makes for a great character; his insights are profound, mature and hilarious. And Venditti’s commentary suggests that she had found someone whom we as an audience can all relate to, someone who displays all the awkwardness of coming of age as a teenager. But one can't help but wonder if she is also poking fun at Billy. There's a moment where we see Billy pick up his guitar, take his shirt off and rock out to a metal concert video on his TV. He is obviously hamming it up for the camera, but then the view is switched to outside of his window, and instead of hearing both the concert and Billy playing along, we hear just Billy. I was taken back by that small section when I rewatched the film, wondering if Venditti was intentionally teasing Billy behind his back. Or is she just showing an example of a memory we are all familiar with; one where we are back in our teenage bedrooms, doing things the rest of the world doesn't know we're doing? Whatever the reason, the film itself is a good conversation piece regarding the moral grounds of documentaries, and Venditti offers a lot of touching moments.

Billy the Kid is an enjoyable experience because we as an audience are tested by Billy's brazenness and are reminded of our own trials and triumphs when we were in high school. You can tell that Venditti does care for her subject and rewatching the film, I can tell why I was first so enamored with it when I first saw it. It's the tale of an outsider, being himself and finding his way through the ups and downs of life.

3 ½ out of 5

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog, 2010


The documentary subjects of Werner Herzog films are always unique. Whether it is the community of people living in Antarctica, a man obsessed with grizzly bears, or the flying of a one-of-a-kind vessel over Guyana, Herzog’s non-fiction subject matter seems specially associated to him; the focus is always Herzogian, if you will. Traveling to extremes, documenting curious individuals, and facing environments many have not encountered the likes of, the director’s latest adventure is no different.

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog and a small team of scientists and technicians explore the Chauvet Cave in France. The cave was discovered in the 1990s and found to contain perfectly preserved drawings from 30,000 years ago. Vivid and detailed drawings of horses, rhinoceroses, lions and others cover parts of the cave wall, looking like they could have been completed yesterday.

What is special about Cave of Forgotten Dreams, other than being able to see these drawings at all (Herzog was allowed incredible access to the cave. Most filming equipment could cause damage to the preservation of the drawings, so the documentary team had limited time and had to use special equipment to capture the imagery), is that it utilizes the currently popular 3D style. Personally, I find 3D films to be often quite distracting, headache-inducing, and diminishing in the overall colour of the picture. Yet the use of 3D in Cave of Forgotten Dreams is actually quite wonderful. It creates an impressive feeling of depth within the cave and aids in visualizing the contours of the walls the scenes are drawn on.



As with most Herzog documentaries, the filmmaker plays a role in the narrative. His distinct voiceover plays throughout, describing his thoughts on the drawings and the people who may have created them thousands of years ago. His philosophical ramblings are a signature of his films (again, Herzogian), but in his previous works I have felt more at home with them. I find he strives to say things here that are intriguing but also a bit silly. At one point he asks a technician what the dreams of the cave drawers may have been, which is valid but also comes off as “trying too hard”; In a sense, I feel he is trying too hard to make this a Herzogian film. The connection he makes to alligators living in a sanctuary near the cave to the future of the cave itself also seems a bit haphazard and thrown in.

As always, though, a new Werner Herzog film is something to behold and discover. I admire the man for his guts and bravado, taking on and fighting to film the subject matter that many may believe is unfilmable. He is prolific beyond words, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams is another piece in his canon that is truly an original work of wonder.

3 1/2 out of 5