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

Hot Docs 2011 - Wisconsin Death Trip

Wisconsin Death Trip
By James Marsh, 1999

Part of the Ripping Reality series at this year’s Hot Docs Festival, which screens “looked-over” gems from the past ten or so years, Wisconsin Death Trip is Man on Wire director James Marsh’s look at the strange events that occurred in one small Wisconsin town between 1890 and 1900. Edited as almost a photo essay, the film uses articles from the town’s newspaper to list off what happened and incorporates wonderfully filmed reenactments to go along with the narration. Although the almost unbelievable occurrences make the film very engrossing, the ‘compilation’ feel of the editing (event after event after event) creates an expected tiresomeness.

3 1/2 out of 5

Hot Docs 2011

Tomorrow I start my annual venture into Toronto’s beloved annual Hot Docs Film Festival. I have 11 films I plan to see, so it’ll be another exhausting, but worthwhile run. I start with a late night screening of James Marsh’s Wisconsin Death Trip, a documentary from 1999 about one small town’s crazy occurrence of disasters in the 19th century.





My list of films to see also includes:

Maids and Bosses by Abner Benaim
The Hollywood Complex by Dan Sturman, Dylan Nelson
The Castle by Massimo D'Anolfi, Martina Parenti
Zelal by Marianne Khoury, Mustapha Hasnaoui
We Were Here by David Weissman
Living Skin by Fawzi Saleh – screening with Guanape Sur by János Richter
At The Edge of Russia by Michal Marczak
The Interrupters by Steve James
The Forgotten Space by Allan Sekula, Noël Burch
Buck by Cindy Meehl


I will be writing capsule reviews of these films as I did last year.

2000s: Deliver Us From Evil

Deliver Us From Evil by Amy Berg, 2006

With no real resolution, the case presented by Amy Berg in 2006's Deliver Us From Evil is one of the most difficult in recent times: the accusations of abuse by Catholic priests of children. Now I cannot act as an expert on this field, so I will try to keep discussion to the film at hand. As a sidenote, I will be viewing and discussing films, even if they are a few years old and do not seem relevant to today, as I am only coming to view them now.

The documentary Deliver Us From Evil primarily focuses on Father Oliver O'Grady who moved from Ireland to California in the 1970s to be the head of a parish in a small town. After accusations of abuse by parishioners, O'Grady was moved by heads of the church to various other towns in close proximity. Abuse in each location is eventually brought forth yet systematically covered up by higher powers. The film contains many instances in the trial of O'Grady and several abuse victims and their families speak of the horrible natures of their ordeals. We learn that the Catholic church itself continuously does its best to deny any knowledge of wrongdoings, particularly with O'Grady's case.



The film itself is impressive in its access to O'Grady himself. He talks freely with the filmmaker about his urges and his ideas on what should and should not have happened. At one point I found myself oddly respecting him because he was able to talk so openly about his feelings and the events that occurred. This respect changed by the end, when a glimmer in O'Grady's eyes showed something very disconnected with his past actions. A smile here and a wink there left me bewildered and disturbed. Berg's choice of interviewees is also to be commended as experts on the Catholic faith and officials of the law give very interesting commentaries on the nature of the church's actions and the possible reasoning behind so many priests' unlawful actions.

It's hard to argue about Deliver Us From Evil on an artistic level. The film is a talking-heads expose on the church and its crimes and its interviews are surprising and heart-wrenching. One may find it difficult to say certain artistic choices failed when the subject matter is really what is most important, yet I found the editing lacked a certain build-up. The story at times seemed a bit all over the place and I found it a bit difficult to understand the chronological order of events. The music choices also felt sometimes odd – as in when the abuse victims visit the Vatican, a Celtic-style soundtrack is used that hearkened too much towards O'Grady's cultural background and almost felt like an unneeded Irish celebration. I am sure this was unintended, but that was the vibe I felt.

Deliver Us From Evil is a film that really should be seen. It angers one to see how so much is being covered up by an institution that is to be revered for its morals. The director should be acknowledged greatly for her unearthing of facts and testimonies to tell a shocking tale of incredible deceit.

3 1/2 out of 5

The Arbor

The Arbor by Clio Barnard, 2010

At a very young age, Andrea Dunbar became a local sensation in her Yorkshire town. Having written a play called The Arbor, Andrea found her work commissioned for a theatre in London. She had a simple reason for its title: this is where the events in the play take place. This is where all of these events really happened.





Clio Barnard’s new film, also titled The Arbor, is a unique venture into filmmaking. What could be called a fiction/narrative-styled documentary, the film uses actors to lip sync to audio interviews Barnard recorded with her subjects – mainly Andrea Dunbar’s relatives and acquaintances. The style is often immediate and unsettling: you know the actors are not saying the words, but their interpretation of the subjects’ responses and gestures, along with their gazes aimed directly at the camera give the film a haunting importance. Although one may argue that the subjects themselves could have easily been filmed and presented in real form, I found the technique a mesmerizing and worthy choice.

Dunbar’s story is a tragic and often difficult one to hear. Her plays tell of struggles with pregnancy, racism and violence (scenes from the play The Arbor are performed throughout the film in the Brafferton Arbor where Dunbar grew up, with residents surrounding the actors as a real audience) and the interviews with Dunbar’s relatives and acquaintances speak of a harsh family life and subsequent hardships experienced after Andrea’s early death. The interviewees’ heavy accents are almost indecipherable at times, but the story is compelling and heartbreaking, and the performances are really top-notch. During a post-screening Q & A, an audience member asked if English subtitles were considered. Barnard’s answer was that reading words at the bottom of the screen would have viewers missing the actors’ subtle facial movements and expressions. And with a film as uniquely styled as The Arbor, one really does not want to miss anything.

4 1/2 out of 5