Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – Filmmaker Discussion: History and Innovation

May 5, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

The Revival, Toronto|The more I listen to documentarians, the less I trust the documentary. The line that separates fact from fiction and reportage from drama is so fine that it frequently disappears altogether; even the best-intentioned filmmaker is under pressure to give shape to something that is essentially formless, and in so doing leaves out much essential information. The directors on today's panel, which deals with the vagaries of representing the past for the present, did their best to downplay the dangers of such a situation, but their words kept raising more questions than they answered, and I walked out of Revival even more leery of the form than I was going in.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – May 4

May 4, 2002Posted in1960s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

ABSOLUT WARHOLA (2001)
*½/****
directed by Stanislaw Mucha

There is, believe it or not, an Andy Warhol museum in the remote Slovenian town of Medzilaborce; sadly, director Stanislaw Mucha can't scare up much of a reason to know about it. Essentially a stomp-the-hicks number, his film takes great pains to mock the residents of Warhol's ancestral home, who, though not quite sure why these paintings are supposed to be important, are nevertheless pleased to have such a famous relative and native son. But as Absolut Warhola heavy-handedly contrasts the guileless and homey Warholas–who prattle on about everything from the television and the relative merits of Lenin and Stalin–with the ultra-urbane art objects enshrined in the leaky museum, the film backfires on itself: it makes Warhol seem less interesting by showing how little he matters to people who live outside an urban cultural elite.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – May 2

May 2, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

BLACK BOX GERMANY (2001)
Black Box BRD
***/****
directed by Andres Veiel

Dealing with the ultra-left terrorism that swept West Germany in the '70s and early '80s, Black Box Germany both examines and obscures the implications of its main subjects: Deutsche Bank executive Alfred Herrhausen, who was killed by a car bomb, and RAF member Wolfgang "Gaks" Gams, who died in mysterious circumstances while being pursued by police. The main event is the who-ya-gonna-believe question, pitting capitalist thug vs. terrorist hooligan; unfortunately, this blots out every political persuasion in-between (and beyond), with a maddening vagueness that keeps you from taking a position. One can't imagine either party being too thrilled with the film: the banker would be annoyed by the implied challenge to his authority and the radical would find its "ambiguity" and precious aestheticism irredeemably bourgeois.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – Filmmaker Discussion: Epic Adventures and Heroic Quests

May 2, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

The Revival, Toronto| Today's "Filmmaker's Discussion" was marked by its divergence from yesterday's ethical certitude. Where the earlier panel dealt with the responsibility of the filmmaker towards its subjects, the four panellists on hand today spoke of the Faustian bargain between making a stirring film and keeping conscientious. Despite the talk's grandiose title "Epic Adventures and Heroic Quests"–alluding to the probing nature and uncertain outcomes of the panellists' films–the matter at hand was the fine detailing that keeps a documentary interesting, which is not necessarily the same thing as keeping it truthful.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – Filmmaker Discussion: Working with Community

April 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

The Revival, Toronto|The thorny matter of working with alien communities was the issue at hand at today's Hot Docs filmmaker's panel. Directors Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground), Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Trembling Before G-d), Sherine Salama (A Wedding in Ramallah), and Susanna Helke (The Idle Ones) hashed out their views on the burning question: Does one protect the privacy of the subject or expose them in the name of the truth? The unanimous answer? The subject must not be exploited, even if that leads to some logistical nightmares.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – April 30

April 30, 2002Posted in1990s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

THE LAST JUST MAN
***½/****
directed by Steven Silver

The Last Just Man is a conventional but engrossing account of the appalling UN SNAFU in Rwanda, told from the point of view of the scapegoat who tried to stop it. Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire had little field experience when he headed into Rwanda–he likened it to sending a fireman in prevention to a four-alarm blaze–and discovered, when the country was on the verge of erupting, that his superiors would refuse to get involved. Smarting from the debacle in Somalia, they were skittish about sending troops in, but as the ruling Hutus take out their historical animus against the Tutsis (manufactured decades before by brutal Belgian colonists), their self-protection left Dallaire and the Tutsis at the centre of the apocalypse.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – April 29

April 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover THE SETTLERS (2001)**½/****directed by Ruth Walk The strange case of a tiny Jewish settlement in Palestinian Hebron is given a superficial gloss in this video, which simply slaps its head and says, "Can you believe these people?" Admittedly, there is some fleeting interest in the stubbornness of the female interviewees, who remark about how beautiful the landscape is "despite all the Arabs," and a demonstration in a public square--featuring an eyebrow-raising pro-Israeli pop song--is perversely fascinating for the awesome density of its participants. But The Settlers is mostly a series of ironic gotchas in which the oblivious…

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – April 28

April 28, 2002Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

QUESTIONING FAITH
Questioning Faith: Confessions of a Seminarian
**½/****
directed by Macky Alston

On learning of his friend Alan Smith's death of AIDS-related complications, gay seminary student Macky Alston doubts the goodness and existence of God. In order to sort out his beliefs, he talks to a variety of friends and associates about their religious beliefs. I'd like to say that his search comes up with something to ponder, but this atheist was left largely unmoved by his unfocussed explorations, which have resulted in a documentary that should be longer and infinitely more articulate than it is. In all fairness, the gravity of the discussion keeps Questioning Faith moving as it goes from passionate affirmation to passionate denial: here the faith of Alan's mother and uncle, there the atheism of his partner's mother; here the belief of a hospital's Muslim chaplain in the face of a miscarriage, there the fervent Buddhism of a neighbour whose father has died.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – April 27

April 27, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Austria, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Czech Republic, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Hot Docs, Israel, Switzerland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

TREMBLING BEFORE G-D (2001)
****/****
directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski

One doesn't normally expect a film about religion and homosexuality to come down affirming both, but that's exactly what's happened in this elegant and powerful documentary about gays and Orthodox Judaism. Trembling Before G-d shows how, against tremendous resistance and incomprehension by the religious community, gay Jews insist on staying with God and try all manner of counter-measures to make their families and community understand their plight. One man confronts the rabbi who sent him into aversion therapy years ago, demanding a better answer; two women serve as a support centre for Hasidic lesbians; and many fight an uphill battle in re-connecting with the families that rejected them.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – April 26

April 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

BLUE VINYL
***/****
directed by Judith Helfland, Daniel B. Gold

Blue Vinyl is a good, Michael Moore-esque muckraker with a homespun tone. Co-director Judith Helfland, on a mission to discover the origins of her parents' new blue vinyl siding, uncovers some surprising information: not only is the material extremely dangerous when burned, as an MGM hotel fire made embarrassingly clear, but its industry conspires to conceal the dangers involved in its production, which has inflicted liver and larynx cancer on workers and may have adverse effects on the environment surrounding its factories. Careful to personalize the issues, she humorously attempts to shame her parents into discarding the vinyl and not so humorously refers it back to the medical disaster that gave her cervical cancer.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – The Opening Press Conference

April 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

The Revival, Toronto, April 8|The swellegant club/restaurant Revival, with its yellow-brick interiors and Japanese-paper chandeliers, was the appropriately modern setting for the unveiling of the 2002 Hot Docs festival line-up. As the press gallery filtered in (after a stop at the food table), the programmers gravitated towards the mic and announced program highlights culled from the 104 documentaries on offer in their expanded ten-day event, which runs from April 26th to May 5th.

DIFF ’01: The Long Goodbye (Wrap-Up)

November 2, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals

Difflogo2by Walter Chaw It's bittersweet: my first time covering the Denver International Film Festival (DIFF) in a press capacity and the world was falling down around my ears. Personal epiphanies and collective calamities. Miramax decided to pull Piñero from the Festival because they rescheduled its theatrical release for sometime next year; In The Bedroom, another Miramax property–and my favourite film of 2001, thus far–didn't make it, period. The "mini-major" bought In the Bedroom, I am told, to foster a closer relationship with Ang Lee's production company–there's a lot of behind the scenes politicking going on about which I knew nothing prior to getting the ear of insiders and access to the proverbial horses' mouths.

DIFF ’01: Amélie (2001)

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain
Amélie Poulain
***/****
starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Yolande Moreau
screenplay by Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

by Walter Chaw Caught between an iceberg of a father (Rufus) and a nervous wreck of a mother (Lorella Cravotta), the very peculiar Amélie (Audrey Tautou) develops in her youth an active imagination to combat emotional starvation. When she’s 22, on the night of Lady Di’s death by paparazzi, Amélie accidentally discovers a tin of toys and photographs, a child’s treasure cache hidden away in her apartment some forty years previous. Resolving to return the artifacts to their rightful owner, Amélie discovers that acts of altruism serve as voyeuristic surrogates to her life’s social desolation. Taking its cue from the bare structure of Jane Austen’s Emma and–ironically, considering the ultra-stylistic character of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s direction–the stark work of the Nouvelle Vague (Truffaut in particular), the strength of Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain) is in its imagery. Its weaknesses, alas, are a running time that is at least a half-hour too long and a resolution so predictable that the film’s problems of pacing and length meet in something resembling frustration.

DIFF ’01: Novocaine

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller

*/****
starring Steve Martin, Helena Bonham Carter, Laura Dern, Scott Caan
written and directed by David Atkins

Novocaineby Walter Chaw An ill-fated hybrid of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the dentist portions of Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, Novocaine lacks a cohesive tone. It vacillates from dark comedy to Forties-style melodrama, from light-hearted slapstick to medium-heavy gore and nudity, and in one particularly inexplicable sequence, Novocaine attempts to be a post-modernist Lacanian thing involving a character's heightened self-awareness as a fictional construct. It's neither funny nor the slightest bit suspenseful, too jumbled and arbitrary to ever sustain much in the way of tension or interest. Even its central conceit–a plot to steal pharmaceuticals and the resultant chaos when the victim catches on to the scheme–is so essentially flawed that the revelation of the guilty party, which occurs after we've spent two desperate hours suspending increasingly leaden disbelief, isn't so much a shocker as a "shrugger."

DIFF ’01: Haiku Tunnel

October 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals

**½/****
starring Josh Kornbluth, Amy Resnick, June Lomena, Helen Shumaker
screenplay by Jacob Kornbluth & John Belluci & Josh Kornbluth
directed by Jacob & Joshua Kornbluth

by Walter Chaw Featuring the kind of humour made popular by those irritating sports improvisation dinner-theatre troupes, Haiku Tunnel opens inauspiciously: Josh Kornbluth (who co-directed with his brother and plays himself) stands in front of a chalkboard introducing the film as a made-up work set in the fictional town of…erm…"San Franclisco." His over-emoting and burlesque eye-rolling soon betray the fact that Haiku Tunnel began life as a series of stand-up monologues Kornbluth performed to small but appreciative venues in San Francisco. (Urban legends abound of entire secretarial pools going to his shows en masse and adopting catchphrases for inspirational memos.) Clearly a creature of the stage, Kornbluth's mugging and brother Jacob and John Bellucci's aside-laden script translate uneasily to the screen, aspiring to a kind of Woody Allen-esque fourth-wall breaking but only succeeding in being mildly embarrassing. Still, Josh Kornbluth's engaging warmth and egoless sense of humour portends a destiny for Haiku Tunnel as a cult classic and good things for the future of the fraternal auteurs behind it.

Tunnel Vision: FFC Interviews Jacob & Josh Kornbluth

October 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

TunneltitleOctober 24, 2001|Stricken with free-floating worry beneath a glowering sky, I was about fifteen minutes early for my interview with brothers Jacob and Josh Kornbluth at the swank Hotel Monaco in suddenly hip downtown Denver. I had spent most of the morning pounding espresso and dodging screaming fire trucks and ambulances chasing one another in a climate that made every peal of every siren an unpleasant reminder and a cause for concern. Walking up 17th Avenue, I was skittish and disquieted–hardly the appropriate frame of mind for a conversation with the writing/directing team responsible for the feather-light Haiku Tunnel, their debut feature, which is based on the office inferno monologues of older brother Josh. As it turns out, Josh, such a charming nebbish as the star of his own film, appeared as nervous as I, experiencing the very human anxiety of putting his work up for public scrutiny on an exhausting festival press junket.

DIFF ’01: Fat Girl

October 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy

À ma soeur!
***/****
starring Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo
written and directed by Catherine Breillat

by Walter Chaw

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
"Leda and the Swan" (1928)–William Butler Yeats

Yeats caused a minor stir in 1928 by suggesting that the rape of Leda was an empowerment for a sexually wise woman whose ultimate revenge against manhood was the spawning of Helen of Troy–who, of course, had a key role in the fall of an entire nation. The idea of ill-gotten knowledge as it's tied to a woman's evolving sexuality is not a new one–Biblical and older, in fact. Still, Catherine Breillat throws a new acerbic barb into the psychosexual brew by projecting Freud's classic developmental framework (anal, oral, genital) onto the progression of the uncomfortable seduction of the impossibly young Elena (Roxane Mesquida) by a smooth-talking Italian lothario (Libero de Rienzo). It is only one, though perhaps the most subtle, of Breillat's incendiary yawps against man's barbarism to woman. As Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), the titular fat girl, summarizes at one point: "All men are sick."

DIFF ’01: LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton

October 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals

***½/****
directed by Albert Maysles

by Walter Chaw Following four generations of women from LaLee Wallace's destitute family in the heart of the Mississippi delta's cotton country, legendary documentarian Albert Maysles's LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton is full of the quiet tragedy of being human. Poetic and demanding, it very subtly changes you as you watch it, shaming us for our petty concerns in the face of what LaLee bears on a daily basis. Entire African-American generations are ruined in the cotton country of the fertile Mississippi delta crescent–a cycle of illiteracy and poverty unexpectedly precipitated by the transition of the cotton industry from hand to machine. The documentary follows one of LaLee's grandchildren ("Granny") and one of her great-grandchildren ("Main") as they struggle to conjure up the pennies needed to purchase the paper and pencils that will gain them entrance into school. It simultaneously details the trials of that school as it tries to raise its Iowa Aptitude Exam Scores to a minimum standard, thus preventing the government from perhaps imposing a system that is unsympathetic to the plight of the locals.

DIFF ’01: Mortal Transfer

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Thriller

Mortel Transfert
***/****
starring Jean-Hugues Anglade, Helene de Forgerolles, Denis Podalydes
screenplay by Jean-Jacques Beineix, from the novel by Jean-Pierre Gattengo
directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix

by Walter Chaw Returning to the "nouvelle noir" grotesquery that marked his 1981 debut Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix's Mortal Transfer is wickedly funny, visually stunning, and perverse in a malevolent way that, along with Bernard Rapp's Une affaire de gout, appears to be a Gallic specialty this festival season. Its highlight is a ghoulish, hilarious scene having to do with a corpse, an icy road to be crossed, and a rather unorthodox means of delivery; and though the film never quite seems at ease with its own black heart, its game cast is more than up to the task of the earnest deadpan that Stygian farces require.

DIFF ’01: Mutant Aliens

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Sci-Fi

**/****
starring the voices of Dan McComas, Francine Lobis, Matthew Brown
written and directed by Bill Plympton

by Walter Chaw Oscar-winning animator Bill Plympton's full-length animated feature The Tune is among my all-time favourite films. It's perverse, hilarious–a whiff of brilliance, proving Einstein's contention that imagination is more powerful than science and the truism that the pen is sharper by far than the rapier wit. Detailing a jingle writer's search for the perfect commercial hymn, The Tune is 80 minutes of kinetic bliss sketched out in Plympton's distinctively rough style that nonetheless demonstrates the kind of pure artistry betrayed by, say, Bill Watterson. It is with great anticipation, then, that I entered Mr. Plympton's latest foray into squiggles for the cinema, Mutant Aliens–and it is with some disappointment that I left the auditorium 80-odd minutes later. Eighty very odd minutes, as it turns out, and more's to the benefit of the film and of no surprise to the illustrator's fans. What offsets Plympton's trademark lunacy this time around, however, is not a joy of creation, but rather a somewhat disturbing puerility that relies once too often on humping to further the plot or provide comic relief. Mutant Aliens plays a little like Harlan Ellison's short story "How's the Nightlife on Cissalda?": all xeno-erotica and bestiality. Except for a few moments involving how a man imagines his member (chainsaw, locomotive, erupting volcano, wild horses), the rampant sexuality of Mutant Aliens mostly falls embarrassingly flat.