Hot Docs 2013 - Dragon Girls

Dragon Girls by Inigo Westmeier, 2012

Dragon Girls opens with an incredible shot of thousands of children running in perfect formation towards the camera, stopping precisely in perfect unison. The militaristic style of this movement is a perfect representation of the strict ideology the film is about. Dragon Girls follows the trials and triumphs of three Chinese girls studying Kung Fu at a school of over 35,000 in China's Shaolin Monastery. The documentary captures the incredible artistry and athleticism of these children, leaving the audience in awe at their accomplishments. Their regimen is incredibly disciplined, which doesn't leave much of a family or social life for any of them. Dragon Girls does a wonderful job displaying the struggles these girls go through during their studies, but it also lacks any sort of real drama. Talks of competitions and student run-aways lead up to moments that, in the end, don't add up to much. Yes these girls are amazing and you feel for them, but without much of a narrative arc, the emotional payoff is minimal.

3 out of 5 stars

Hot Docs 2013 - The Expedition to the End of the World

The Expedition to the End of the World by Daniel Dencik, 2013

Not to be confused with the fantastic Werner Herzog film Encounters at the End of the World, this Danish documentary follows a mix-mash group of voyagers setting off to North-Eastern Greenland for a once-a-year trip to explore temporarily accessible fjords before they freeze over. A selling-point for me to see this film happened to be Herzog's 2007 portrait of people in a similar landscape (in his case, Antarctica). There is a beauty in these desolate places; their starkness is otherworldly and the extreme lack of human life makes for a compelling look into isolation and solitude. Director Daniel Dencik provides nothing short of magnificent images for the entire 90 minute running time, and the cast of characters, whose backgrounds range from art to archeology to marine biology, provide insights and comedy along the way. The film falls a little short when certain narratives and sequences aren't fully explained, but for the most part, The Expedition to the End of the World is a great companion piece to its Antarctic predecessor.

4 out of 5 stars

Hot Docs 2012 - Planet of Snail

Planet of Snail by Yi Seung-jun, 2011

A touching love story, Planet of Snail documents the daily lives of Young-Chan and Soon-Ho. A young couple, they live their daily lives with extra concern and patience. Young-Chan is both deaf and blind, while his wife, Soon-Ho, has a spinal deformity that makes her stand at about the height of his elbow. Footage of the couple performing tasks such as changing a lightbulb and exercising is really quite lovely, showing the extra mile Young-Chan and Soon-Ho need to go in order to do something that is so easy for most other people. Yet there are distracting interludes edited between these real-life moments where Young-Chan recites an essay in voiceover with what feels like an inappropriate score of sad, electronic music. At 90 minutes long, the film also felt like it dragged, certain scenes going on much too long and others that might not have been needed altogether. As a portrait, Planet of Snail succeeds in showing us a humane, deeply felt love story, but it did not need the extra gimmicks.

3 out of 5

Hot Docs 2012 - Vivan las Antipodas!

Vivan las Antipodas! by Victor Kossakovsky, 2011

Antipodes are communities which have diametrically opposite communities on the other side of the Earth. These occurrences are very rare due to the amount of water on the Earth's surface. In Kossakovsky's documentary, he explores the sites of four pairs of these antipodal communities. Taking a more observational, direct cinema approach, Vivan las Antipodas! is visually stunning. Watching the sun set over rural Argentina, a butterfly skipper over rainwater in Spain and lava creep slowly in Hawaii, all make for beautiful scenes. But what the film achieves visually, it lacks cinematically. There are no real insights into the similarities and differences between the antipodes (other than the ones the audience may make themselves - which personally amounted to very little), and many of the visuals feel tedious and pointless. I am all for quiet, meditative films (The Robinsons of Mantsinsaari is one of my favourite documentaries), but when the idea amounts to more than the outcome, I feel let down.

2 out of 5

Hot Docs 2012 - The Queen of Versailles (2012)

The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield, 2012

Jackie and David Siegel are building a house. The largest house in America, that is, and its design is based on the French palace of Versailles, yet being constructed in Florida. Lauren Greenfield's film is a portrait of excess and when that excess is at stake. The Siegels are wonderful subjects - interesting, hilarious and dramatic, they offer a hugely entertaining spectacle that you cannot keep your eyes off of. Jackie is Greenfield's main character and we learn much about her, from her humble past to her completely opposite lifestyle today, with Jackie offering up a wealth of access and allowance that is undeniably captivating. The Queen of Versailles is a fascinating, often jaw-dropping ride through the halls of the wealthy, with dramatic twists and turns that keep the story, and the Siegels themselves, evolving in front of your eyes.

4 out of 5

Hot Docs 2012 - Indie Game: The Movie

Indie Game: The Movie by Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky, 2011

In the Q & A after the film, directors Pajot and Swirsky said they wanted to turn the tables on the video game documentary. Stating that for such a hugely lucrative industry, there are surprisingly few documentaries about video games, and the ones that do exist are mostly about the gamer. With Indie Game: The Movie, they set out to learn more about the world behind the makers of video games, specifically the currently popular indie genre, where one or two people are often responsible for creating entire games. The film is hilarious and often fascinating, focusing on the creation of two highly-anticipated (and wonderful-looking) titles and all of the sweat, stress, and sleepless nights that go into making them. The subjects are highly engaging (the audience was lucky to also have one of the gamemakers present for questions after the screening), making Indie Game: The Movie a wonderful experience for any viewer, gamer or not. As an avid gamer myself, it made me want to take a shot at development as well.


5 out of 5

Hot Docs 2012 - Dreams of a Life

Dreams of a Life by Carol Morley, 2012

The skeleton of a woman is found in a London apartment, three years after she had died. Even though the television was still on, no one came looking. Dreams of a Life is a film looking for answers to this mystery. How did something as sad as this happen? Through testimony from her various acquaintances, we hear stories and speculations, with the unfortunate realization that there are no answers. As heartbreaking as the central story is, Morley's documentary is a slog to sit through. I saw various members of the audience rubbing their eyes, checking their watches and even walking out during the film. Dreams of a Life lacks a real dramatic hook, and a visual timeline organizing different events in her life is confusing and poorly realized. Various reenactments and artistic dramatizations are peppered around the interviews, but watching the actress sing to herself, look depressed and watch said interviews on a tv in her apartment on what is supposed to be the last day of her life, make for an absolute bore. Definitely a disappointment.

2 out of 5

Hot Docs 2012 - Buzkashi!

Buzkashi! by Najeeb Mirza, 2012

"I hope that one day buzkashi becomes an official Olympic sport," a player says in Mirza's intense film. After viewing the spectacular circumstances of the sport, one can't help but laugh at this notion. A game played for centuries in Central Asia where hundreds of men on horseback grasp for a dead goat in order to bring it across a goal line, buzkashi definitely does not seem like the type of sport to have national teams around the world. But the men vying for the win take the game very seriously, where winning means honour in society, and the danger and drama they put themselves through make for a thrilling spectacle. With rolling hills of grass in the background and a fury of men on horses, whipping their way to the centre of a crowd, Buzkashi is a film like nothing you've ever seen.

4 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

Hot Docs 2011 - Buck

Buck
By Cindy Meehl, 2011


My last screening of the festival was yesterday, Sunday, May 8. A Mother's Day afternoon showing of Buck, Cindy Meehl's tale of Buck Brannaman, a traveling horse whisperer and horse clinic organizer, proved to be a wonderful way to end my venture into Hot Docs 2011. Brannaman's story of personal growth after a childhood of pain and becoming an amazingly talented and patient presence around horses was a hit at Sundance earlier this year and (just announced) placed sixth in Hot Docs' Top Ten People's Choice standings. Brannaman is an amazing subject. Interesting, handsome and hilarious, his poise, wisdom and grace carry the film. The landscapes are beautiful and the scenes with untamed horses at the clinics are tense, frightening and exciting. Meehl has captured something special here, for horse lovers or not.

5 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - The Forgotten Space

The Forgotten Space
By Allan Sekula and Noel Burch, 2011


After the high of seeing The Interrupters, I rushed to a cinema in the same complex to see The Forgotten Space by Allan Sekula and Noel Burch. I had to skip a Q&A with Interrupters' director Steve James in order to catch this film, but I was soon wishing I hadn't. Maybe it was because I had just seen a very engagingly emotional piece, but I never really found myself connecting to The Forgotten Space, a film about the the effects of globalization on the transport industry. The film seemed more suited for a television news program, but even then, with its cloying voiceover and unfocused editing and subject matter, I don't know who would have found it particularly enthralling. Maybe a second chance is needed, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

2 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - The Interrupters

The Interrupters
By Steve James, 2011


Hoop Dreams director Steve James came to the Hot Docs Film Festival this year with a documentary about the state of violence in Chicago. The Interrupters follows the workers of a group named CeaseFire, a committee dedicated to intervening in altercations and preventing violence in the harsh streets of their city. The film is a lengthy 142 minutes, but the screening felt steady and brisk. With this film, James has captured a city in turmoil with grace, humour and empathy, and he succeeds as well as he does because of the wonderful subjects he interviews and focuses on. CeaseFire's Ameena, Eddie and Cobe offer a world of history and wisdom not just to the many young Chicagoans they are helping, but to the audience as well. The film is edited in the default "seasons of the year" style, but it is such an emotional and powerful piece that tears were often running down my face throughout the screening. Another festival favourite.

5 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - At The Edge of Russia

At The Edge of Russia
By Michal Marczak, 2011


A young officer in the Russian military is sent to the country's northern border. Meeting his fellow patriots at their log cabin-like outpost, they are given the task of patrolling the snowy, barren land for invaders. Marczak has really captured something magical in At The Edge of Russia, as everything comes together wonderfully. The snowy landscape is beautiful and haunting, and the outpost itself becomes a secluded haven, a character itself. Speaking of characters, the director could not have found more interesting subjects. Without the use of interviews, we come to know the men, each with their own words of wisdom for the young recruit and each with their own characteristics and standings within the makeshift family. They pass their days with futile training activities, distracting themselves occasionally with games, songs and dances. The men's jobs may appear boring, watching the film is anything but. A real highlight from this year's festival.

5 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - Living Skin (with Guanape Sur)

Guanape Sur
By Janos Richter, 2011


Guanape is a short film that preceded the screening of Living Skin. Both films were a part of the Workers of the World series at this year's festival and both films came up slight for me as I had higher expectations. The short documentary is beautiful visually and the subject is highly promising: workers are sent to an island off the coast of Peru every eleven years to collect bird excrement that has hardened and turned into profitable fertilizer. Many risk injuring themselves due to infections, illnesses and the peril found on the steep landscape. When the film abruptly ended, I found myself wanting more. More scenes of the interesting landscape, more focus on how the fertilizer is collected and organized, and more intimacy with the workers. Sometimes Abrupt endings feel warranted.. Sometimes they just feel... abrupt.

3 out of 5



Living Skin
By Fawzi Saleh, 2011


In the bustling city of Cairo, child workers play a prominent role. Living Skin is a mid-length documentary following various young boys as they work in the city's tanneries, handling animal skins, treating them with dangerous chemicals and shipping them by horse and cart. The conditions these boys live and work in are shocking and Saleh does a wonderful job capturing their daily routines, but its chosen structure comes off as a bit too easy and sloppy. The film is edited into days of the week, but for no apparent reason, because after the title card with the date is shown, one day is undecipherable from the next. The film is also heavy with narration from the boys, which plays over scenes of them working. The narration is interesting at times, such as when the boys speak about their work, but there are also tangents from them about girls they love and other feelings that, although are cute, come off as unfocused and would have been better presented elsewhere.

3 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - We Were Here

We Were Here
By David Weissman, 2011


Weissman’s feature documents the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco from its uncovering in the late 1970s and early 1980s to its slowdown, yet still much alive state, today. We Were Here is a “talking heads” documentary, which can leave the viewer, such as myself, hungry for more visual and creative flair. But the interviews presented here are just so heartbreaking and involving, really making this film something to cherish. Interviewing various subjects who lived through the era: a florist, a nurse, a hospital volunteer, Weissman intercuts their words with haunting visuals of lives lost and of citizens in political and social unrest. Without said visual flair and a concrete ending (but could there really be an ending with such a subject?), the film risks alienating audiences, but the director has compiled such fantastic interviewees that I wonder if there was a dry eye in the entire theatre last night. A wonderful film and a great history lesson.

4 ½ out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - Zelal

Zelal
By Marianne Khoury & Mustapha Hasnaoui, 2011

Directors Khoury and Hasnaouri confine themselves inside the walls of a Cairo mental institution in their film Zelal, their camera rarely leaving the hard and worn faces of the resident patients. It can be a difficult film to watch as we learn many patients (I want to write inmates) have been abandoned by their spouses and families, with some showing signs of possible sanity but no freedom of choice. The direct cinema style displays haunting portraits of people forgotten by the outside world, but also creates a sort of redundant showcase: the ramblings of the insane become almost synonymous. The film should be seen for its unnerving view inside a world that is rarely observed, a world that should be opened up and renovated in its infrastructure and healthcare. But be prepared for possible boredom.

3 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - The Casle

The Castle
By Massimo D’Anolfi & Martina Parenti, 2011


The Castle is a cinema verite-style documentary focusing on various characters working, arriving, departing and living in the Malpensa Airport in Milan. Whether it’s a young man being questioned for smuggling drugs, people’s bags and phones being extensively searched or a hilarious bomb specialist investigating an abandoned suitcase, D’Anolfi and Parenti are allowed incredible access. The film asks no questions, but just observes with a wonderfully steady (although sometimes too steady) hand. A great piece of direct cinema.

4 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - The Hollywood Complex

The Hollywood Complex
By Dan Sturman and Dylan Nelson, 2011




Set in the Oakwood Hotel in Los Angeles, California, The Hollywood Complex focuses on the families of child actors who stay there during the annual Hollywood television pilot season. While some families leave after the season is over, many stay year after year, their children taking classes and going to auditions. The film is pretty wonderful overall, displaying shocking and hilarious portraits of money-hungry parents and agents, and children wanting fame before anything else. The subject is one that needs to be uncovered and presented to the public, as much of the casting process for these children is startling. But as one of the directors stated during the Q&A, many classic films could not have been made without children, so there is a troubling conflict of sorts. If I have one complaint, it is with the same director trying to cover up his tracks during the Q&A by saying that he was worried by some of the audience’s laughter during scenes and that he hoped they presented not only the bad and the ugly, but also the good. I believe that much of the reaction to the film, with such subject matter, is unavoidable, and that the “good” really wasn’t much on display here. It did come off as an indictment of an institution, which is nothing to be ashamed of. And as a personal conflict: as much as I enjoyed the documentary and participated in the laughter, I just hope the film’s children never see it.

4 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011 - Maids and Bosses (with Three Walls)

Three Walls
By Zaheed Mawani, 2011

Screening before the mid-length feature Maids and Bosses, Three Walls is a terrific short about the history, design and society’s current feelings towards the modern-day cubicle. Director Mawani intercuts wonderful shots of factory workers building cubicle walls with the testimonies of several office workers and architectural designers. The film is a hilarious and poignant look at not just the physical structure, but office life in general.
4 1/2 out of 5



Maids and Bosses
By Abner Benaim, 2011




This year Hot Docs has a series entitled Workers of the World, a category that holds three of the films I will be seeing during the festival. Maids and Bosses is one of these films, which presents the dichotomy of servant and master in modern-day Panama. The film showcases both maid and house-owner, allowing each to tell their stories of either strife or success, with most of the sentiment belying the maids who have to undergo less than desirable treatment from their bosses. Many of these maids tell compellingly startling stories of absurd treatment, yet the film trivializes them with sometimes-unfitting music and strange and long cinematic diversions, such as a child making a mess in a toy room in slow-motion. I feel if the film followed two or three maids’ stories and used a more cinema verite approach, the film could have been more successful.
3 out of 5