Hot Docs 2009 in Toronto

HOT DOCS runs from Apr 30 to May 10 offering nearly 170 films with various subjects ranging from Asian, films and filmmaking, gay and lesbian, Toronto stories to sex. 

The documentary Box Office is now open for in person, phone, and web ticket sales and pass redemptions.  Location is at 55 Avenue Road, Hazelton Lanes.

For complete schedule of films, ticket pricing and almost everything else on Hot Docs except film reviews, click on the hotdocs website link at:
http://www.hotdocs.ca
(Films are also listed under subject matter.)

For capsule reviews of film s I have previewed, read below:

ACT OF GOD (Canada 2009) **
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal

Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal’s (MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES) new documentary, ACT OF GOD – about being struck by lightning and giving meaning to fateful events – opens the 2009 Hot Docs festival in Toronto on April 30.  Her film interviews and deals with people struck by lightning, including U.S. author, Paul Auster who was struck as a teenager.  Naturally his work hinges on chance encounters.  While filming Auster and allowing him to talk charismatically about his experience, one soon notices that Baichawal’s film has hardly any worthwhile material.  Just like her overlong MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, Baichwal has the gift to stretch her material, making films that are interesting to many critics.  However, to this reviewer, Baichwal has not found enough solid material on the no-doubt intriguing topic.  On another note, I myself have come across someone – my friend’s sister – who has been struck twice by lightning and survived.  Other uninteresting people struck by lightning interviewed include guitar improviser Fred Firth and ex-farm teen James O’Reilly.

ACTION BOYS (South Korea 2008) ***
Directed by Jeong Byeong-gil

ACTION BOYS is a tribute to stuntmen, the unsung real action super heroes behind films.  Directed by Jeong Byeong-gil, himself a stuntman, ACTION BOYS follows the travails and dreams of the few that have graduated from the Seoul Action School.  Jeong interviews one subject himself, followed by his colleagues offering their views on him, the process repeated for other stuntmen, though in different fields (e.g. car stunts; horse stunts).  Though generally light and humorous in tone, the film gravitates towards seriousness at the end, culminating with the death of a respected stunt director.  The film oddly ends with most of the stuntmen pursuing different fields and chasing new dreams.  But ACTION BOYS turns out to be more moving and touching than expected.  Jeuong also loads his film with lots of stunt footage.

AMERIKA IDOL (Canada 2009) ***
Directed by Barry Avrich

AMERIKA IDOL plays like a spirited trailer.  After a rather hilarious introduction of the tiny unheard of Serbian village of Zitiste touting its misfortunes from flood, war and pillaging, the narrator proposes the villagers’ most astonishing solution – the erection of a gigantic sculpture of Rocky Balboa.  Unbelievable but true, Avrich’s simple doc is full of life, spirit and cheer just as the Rocky statue symbolises hope, courage and strength.  From interviews with the locals that include the mayor and Eastern Europe’s largest chicken factory’s owner to Sylvester Stallone himself, AMERIKA IDOL might most likely be the most fun doc of the festival.  The film also traces the steps behind the erection of the monument culminating in the grand unveiling celebration.

CARMEN MEETS BORAT (Netherlands 2008) ***
Directed by Mercedes Stalenhoef

What differentiates a documentary from a regular movie feature?  Stalenhoef’s documentary plays more like a standard feature as her film concerns the poor tiny Romanian village of Glod (literally meaning ‘mud’) that comes of age.  In her story, there is a romance, a villain (in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen a.k.a. BORAT), a journey, a re-awakening and a happy ending.  The only difference, besides the film being based on real characters is that Stalenhoef puts in as few interviews with characters talking direct to the camera.  The plot centres on 17-year old Carmen living her uneventful life in Glod working at her father’s bar till Cohen’s film crew arrives at the village to film BORAT.  The village is depicted as Kazakhstan in BORAT with the villagers depicted as rapists, abortionists, prostitutes or thieves.  A lawyer arrives and rounds up the people, headed by Carmen’s dad to file a $30 million lawsuit.  Stalenhoef has devised a most un-documentary type dark comedy that is entertaining as it is educational.  As much as I loved BORAT the film, Stalenhoef convinces her audience to have second thoughts on Cohen’s exploitative film.  It is easy to laugh at others as long as the ‘others’ do not include you.

GHOST BIRD (USA 2008) **1/2
Directed by Scott Crocker

Rather thorough coverage of the minor interesting subject of the discovery of the
ivory-billed woodpecker long considered extinct more than 60 years ago.  A town prepares for an influx of birdwatchers; ornithologists question the authenticity of the sighting; a debate goes on regarding the fragile balance of nature et al.  One can quickly judge people who seek to financially benefit from false or unverified truths.  But sad to say, the filmmakers of GHOST BIRD could fall into this category.  GHOST BIRD is as interesting as it could be – and that is not saying much.

GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR (Sweden/USA 2008) **
Directed by Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell

Under the Hot Docs subject heading of Sex and Sexuality arrives a film that delves into the taboo torture/pain porn website called insex.  Directors Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell interviews the creator of the site known only as PD and the models who endure the long (a filming session lasts some 6 hours or so) painful yet ecstatic pleasurable for fame and money.  Art or porn?  Lorentzon and Bell illustrates the art and precision involved in the gadgets and equipment specially designed, but their film soon runs out of steam.  Besides showing what aims to be shocking, unless one is directly fascinated or turned on by such practices, GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR eventually turns out to be a bit of a bore.  Strictly for those into this type of sexual fetish!

INVISIBLE CITY (Canada 2009) ****
Directed by Hubert Davis

What makes a child turn bad?  Director Davis’ film INVISIBLE CITY focuses on the lives of black boys Mikey and Kendall from Regent Park, one of Toronto’s oldest housing projects.  By the film’s mid-section both boys have had run in with gangs, the police, courts and hard drugs like crack cocaine.  Davis does not hide the fact that the boys are also partly to blame as it is society, the environment, their absent fathers as well as many other misunderstood factors.  This is a disturbing piece for the reason that it seems that there is no way out for kids like these living in the poor parts of the cities.  Salvation or help rather arrives in the form of do-gooders like an ex-teacher Ainsworth Morgan who is allowed his say in the documentary as well.  A remarkably moving and real documentary that poses more questions than solutions!  The dialogue with Mikey’s mother talking about her son is enough to move anyone to tears. 

NE ME LIBEREZ PAS, JE M’EN CHARGE (France 2008) ****
(MY GREATEST ESCAPE)
Directed by Fabienne Godet

The chief subject and interviewee in the life story of mobster Michel Vaujour Vaujour himself.  One wonders throughout the film - it is only revealed at the film’s end – when in period of time and where the main interview takes place.  Sentenced and having spent 27 years in various French prisons, Vaujour accomplished a total of 5 Hollywood style escapes, including one daring helicopter break-out with the chopper driven by his former wife.  Director Godet, her voice just barely audible over the interviews has weaved a most intriguing tale of a man who never gives up.  She goes inside this man and unveils the most curious aspects of the human being.  One may argue on the choice of her subject as Vaujour is clearly no angel, nor is he a person who respects the lives of others.  Yet, she manages to tell her story of how important freedom is to one man (and indeed to many others).  The film includes shots of Vaujour as a youth and has interviews with his siblings, friends and family.  Godet leaves an incredibly twist in the doc’s story towards the end.  Here, a social worker falls in love with Vaujour and plans his last escape.  This is stuff fiction films are made of.  Truly, MY GREATEST ESCAPE is my favourite doc of this year’s festival. 

OBJECTIFIED (USA 2009) ***
Directed by Gary Hustwit

This objective design film about design and designers tackles the why and how of different approaches.  Weighing between conflicting goals of sustainability, practicality and artistry, OBJECTIFIED opens the audience’s eyes to a world seldom seen before.  Director Hustwit covers fair ground with material from all over the world from Japan, the U.S. and Britain.  For this film critic who happens to have an engineering degree background, OBJECTIFIED brings back nostalgic memories of the time when I worked at Philips debating radio recorder designers the manufacturability of a new design.  The film ironically ends with a few really neat innovations on show.  OBJECTIFIED is really a film for all non-designers to view.

RACHEL (France 2008) ****
Directed by Simone Bitton

Rachel Corrie is an American political peace activist who met an untimely death while standing in the way of a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip.  Her stand is to protect the Palestinian homes destroyed in the name of security.  Director Bitton has crafted an exhaustive and extremely moving documentary that ultimately forces human beings to question their true nature.  In the words written in the diaries of RACHEL, she discovers the evil inherent in men but with that comes a strange strength followed by what is she finally discovers as dignity.  Using interviews from her co-peace workers in the ISM (International Solidarity Movement), the chief, Israeli M.P. investigator, Palestinian witnesses and other dignitaries, director Bitton leaves the question of whether the death of Rachel was an accident or a deliberate act.  But her death will at least be forever remembered on film by not only Israelis or Palestinians, but for the whole world to witness as the folly of war. 

SOUL WAX: PART OF THE WEEKEND NEVER DIES (UK 2008) **
Directed by Soam Farahmand

SOUL WAX is made up of two brothers.  But what is SOUL WAX?  - as the titles at the beginning of the film titillate but eventually bores, SOUL WAX made up primarily of two brothers Steph and Dave (and then two others) is four part - a rock band; a remixing band Nite Versions; a DJ duo 2ManyDJs and a live show Radio Soulwax.  Director Farahmand takes one camera (not two, not three as again the starting titles insist) and follows SOUL WAX as they perform throughout the globe including Toronto’s own Mod Club and Opera House).  But this doc is too disjointed, hastily put together and serves no meaning except to flash and hopefully fascinate.  Not much background is given to the boys’ talent or jigs. The warning at the beginning of the film of glaring strobe lights is not to be taken lightly.  One thing going for this doc is its relentless energy that is fortunately catching.

TYSON (USA 2008) ****
Directed by James Toback

Director James Toback’s (FINGERS, EXPOSED) arguable most definitive film about the rise and fall to rise and fall again of the youngest world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.  Obviously coaxed by Toback as a talking head throughout, TYSON the film nevertheless is both moving, historical and sad thanks in part to an exhaustive collection of footage and elaborate organization of the fighter’s material.  Toback’s technique of multiple superimposed soundtrack and images of Tyson speaking serves to emphasize the man’s ambiguity, confusion and multiple personalities.  With Tyson at the forefront of the doc, his life and deeds, though seen mostly from his side is given the fighter’s point of view – especially the world famous incident of his biting off of the opponent Holyfield’s ear.  Most hilarious too is Tyson’s switching, just as he can switch personalities and financial situation from poetry to vulgarity.  The film’s best moment has his cursing and calling his once best friend a slimey, reptilian motherf***er.  This is Toback’s best film to date.

WATERLIFE (Canada 2009) ***
Directed by Kevin McMahon

Everyone knows by now that over 80% of the earth is covered by water and the most part of the bodies of human beings is made up of water.  So, it is about time a documentary be made to educate audiences on the importance of this natural resource.  The subject of WATERLIFE is the great lakes that provide 35 million people their drinking water.  Director McMahon blends in a variety of music from classical (when showing minute organisms in the water) to pop to alternative.  Most of his material (like the pollution and its effects of cancer, birth defects etc.) are well known but there are unfamiliar intriguing facts (the parasite fish; the inedible Asian carp) included as well.  Amusing is the native Indian who takes it upon herself to walk the perimeter of the lakes to create awareness of the water problem.  McMahon has made an exhaustive well intentioned documentary.

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC (USA 2008) ***
Directed by Ondi Timoner

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC treads similar territory as the other documentary made some 10 years ago entitled START.COM which dealt with the fall of the .com companies.  Winner of the Sundance 2009 award, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC takes the subject one step further by concentrating on one protagonist and his exploits.  Josh Harris is arguable the greatest internet pioneer in history and has made and lost millions in fortune.  The most interesting segments of Timor’s film is the video account of two of Harris’ weird experiments – one involving 100 people living for a month in an underground bunker, and the other a live feed of recordings of the daily living of himself and his spouse.  All this is weird stuff and Timoner treats his subject with respect and without judgment.  The result is a rather strange story about strange people and their strange lives.