Hot Docs - Inocente with The Quiet One

For Both Films: ****

Filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine do the incredible in Inocente, they made a bright and positive film out of the struggles of one young homeless girl’s quest to find something in this world to believe in. That’s not to say that Inocente doesn’t have its fair share of drama, but despite the titular subject’s circumstances – homelessness, being an illegal immigrant, personal struggles with her single mother – there’s always a bright side, and the world still manages to be a beautiful place at the end of the day.

Inocente and her family struggle. They are not truly homeless, as Inocente points out. Homelessness does not mean you are sleeping in an alley or a park, it might just mean that you don’t have a permanent home. Inocente’s family is continually on the move, mostly because they get evicted from the places they stay when Inocente’s mother, an illegal immigrant whose work options are limited, can’t make-up the rent. Living in San Diego, Inocente goes to school with some of the richest kids in the country, but despite all her troubles, Inocente keeps a positive outlook, and focuses on the thing that makes her happiest: her art.

I think rather easily Inocente could have become a dark and depressing effort, and it’s not that the issues that affect Inocente’s life aren’t serious, but I think the filmmakers were right in taking the lead from their subject and trying to stay on the sunny side. Inocente’s no naïve, pie-in-the-sky dreamer. She knows the odds are staked against her, she knows she’s going to have to work three times as hard to get half as far, but she’s bound and determined to make it, and make it through her art. You cheer for her successes and you feel for her disappointments. The documentary works exceptionally well telling its tale from Inocente’s point of view.

Inocente is a charming documentary that manages to prompt more than a few smiles, and given the tough issues involved that is a surprising approach to the story. Inocente herself, meanwhile, has a bright future ahead of her; the hero of her own story that breaks the bounds of what’s possible as much as any of the fantastic visions that come out of her paint brush. Inocente is a wonderful, life affirming story.

The Quiet One, the documentary that accompanies Inocente, is another immigrant story. This one is in Sweden and follows six-year-old Maryam, who’s come to the northern European country with her family of Iranian refuges. Maryam struggles to not just learn the language and culture of her new home, but to fit in with the class of native Swedish kids, who with their near universal blonde hair and fair complexions make Maryam stand out all the more.

But despite the educational and cultural differences, what struck me was that underneath it all, kids are all the same. The other kids in the class run hot and cold with Maryam, sometimes they’re all friends and sometimes they tease her. But after every fight, there’s a brief period of calm where the kids are all friends again, introducing Maryam to the strange new world of snow suits and tobogganing. After her first trip down the hill, Maryam lays in the snow and smiles; she’s proved her metal to her classmates, and maybe for the first time she feels more at home in this strange new land than ever. If only it were so easy for all of us…

Hot Docs - Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story

Rating: *****

In 1965, Frank De Felitta, a documentary filmmaker for NBC News, went to Greenwood Mississippi to take a look at the state, then embroiled in the burgeoning Civil rights movement, to try and make sense of this part of the United States that was the subject of so much conversation.

In his travels, Frank met a black man named Booker Wright. Booker was a waiter at a local, whites only, Greenwood restaurant called Lusco’s, and in the midst of reciting the restaurant’s menu by heart, which the restaurant was known for, Booker made some what were really rather benign observations about how whites treated black people in Mississippi at the time. But givern that time and that place, his comments were really quiet incendiary. Over 40 years later, Frank’s son Raymond decides to seek out Booker, and learn his fate after he appeared in his father’s documentary. But fate wasn’t kind to Booker, and as the De Felittas learned, Booker was killed not too long after the documentary aired in ’65.

But this isn’t a conspiracy thriller. The death of Booker isn’t the point of the film, but rather a galvanizing force to understand this man and his world. Raymond connects with Booker’s granddaughter Yvette, and for her this is a journey of discovery too. She had always thought that her grandfather was an “accidental activist,” as she says, that Frank De Felitta had caught Booker’s comments on the fly. Yvette had never seen the film until it was put online by Raymond, but as they both learn, Booker not only knew what he was doing, but he knew there would be implications. “You realize if this airs, they will kill you,” Frank remembers telling Booker at the time. And yes, he did realize it.

As race continues to be a great dividing line in the United States, I really couldn’t think of a better time for this movie. I might still consider Brooker Wright an “accidental activist” in that he didn’t seek out a stage, but he seized an opportunity when it came knocking. It’s a recurring theme in the history of activism that people rise to the occasion, and usually act out of the blue. The story of Booker Wright is the story of a man that saw an opportunity to speak a simple truth, which are quite often the most dangerous, and he took it.

Remembrances of Booker are recorded, and paradoxically, the old Booker’s Place, the restaurant/pub that Booker ran when he wasn’t working at Lusco’s, still stands vacant in Greenwood. It’s as if the building and the town were waiting for the day a camera crew would return to learn the fate of them and Booker. Raymond De Felitta really does bring history to life, and blends his father’s original footage with his own by shooting in black and white. The picture is beautiful and crisp, and all the more visceral and textual. The film is incredibly affecting, full of memory and sadness, but also a lot of hope.

Booker’s Place also raises a lot of interesting questions about the nature of documentary film, and whether you can capture a story without affecting it. But really, this is a human story of inspiration and tragedy. A silent (and not so silent) tribute to the people that change the world is small ways whether they realize it, like Booker. Or almost never realize it, like Frank De Felitta.

Hot Docs - In the Year in Hip Hop

Rating: ***1/2 

Many consider hip-hop a uniquely American musical style, a sound and attitude that came from the streets of the urban population of the U.S., who are also, predominantly, people of minority. And that is why a film called In the Year in Hip Hop was so weird because it focuses on hip-hop artists in the Eastern European country Slovenia, which is made up of 2.5 million, mostly, white people.

Director Boris Petkovic does an amazingly exhaustive job of tracing hip-hop’s influence on his country, from its novelty days in the 80s (“BAN-NAN-AS”) to its socially relevant place as the voice of a generation disappointed with their government and the powers that be in the present day. Along the way, Petkovic encounters all sorts of characters that are a part, or have been a part, of the Slovenia hip-hop scene: former Olympic calibre skiers, beat box guys and buskers that still keep the spirit of the 80s (or at least the accessories) alive.

Well-known and influential Slovenian hip-hop artists like 6 Pack Cukur, N’Toko, and Klemen Klemen are all interviewed. During the Q&A after the screening, Petkovic said that there was a protest at one of the screenings back home because of a perceived slight against artists not included in the film. Not that I know anything more about Slovenian hip-hop than I do about Japanese baseball leagues, but it seems to me that Petkovic did an exemplary job. So who did he leave out, the Slovenian Ice Cube or the Slovenian Kris Kross?

Petkovic puts together a heck of a “Behind the Music” special, but I wish there had been a wider context. The modern hip-hop artists of Slovenia are trying to say something important, but what’s driven the shift from the jolly hip-hop of the past to the social conscious current movement of the art form? It’s a question that never gets answered, and I kind of wish that it would have been. Laying that aside, I found In the Year of Hip Hop an engaging enough trip through another culture’s adaptation of hip-hop. I guess the message of the film is rap matters, and it matters all over.

Hot Docs - One Fine Day

 

Rating: ***

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, two African American athletes placed in the medal categories for the 200 meter dash. As the “Star-Spangled Banner” played, gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos raised their fists in the air. In the midst of the social upheaval of the 60s, 1968 being the pinnacle of it, Smith and Carlos couldn’t have made a gesture more incendiary than what became the “Black Power salute” heard ‘round the world.

Of course to Carlos, now a track coach at Palm Springs High School in California, it was more a symbol of solidarity, but that didn’t matter to the U.S. Olympic officials who recalled him and Smith to American soil immediately after the medal ceremony. It also didn’t matter to the people that hired Carlos years later and fired him when they found out he was that “John Carlos.” And apparently it still matters to those retractable few who still send Carlos hate mail more than 40 years after the Mexico City games.

Carlos is one of the six people profiled by Dutch director Klaas Bense in One Fine Day. Each of the people profiled, in one way, shape or form, have inspired change through simple acts of non-violence. There’s María Jesús Sanhueza, who led a student protest in Chile to get better and more affordable access to education; there’s Christian Führer, a Protestant pastor who opened his East Berlin church as a free speech zone, which played no small part in the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall; and Kovida, a Burmese monk who stood up to his country’s military might only to end up expelled from his home country.

These are all incredible stories, and I admire the very steady and hands off way that Bense collects their stories and gets their insights. But there’s no real context and I’m not sure why these people were singled out. Bense’ definition of achievement too seems rather all over the map; Sanhueza changed the way Chile’s educational system works, but Carlos fist seems to have just gotten him into one instance of hot water after another for life. I think the message is very, very good, the idea that one person can make a world of difference is as apropos now as it’s ever been, but I am still stuck as to the more specific idea that connects them. But I suppose as a source of inspiration, One Fine Day is fine enough.

Hot Docs - The Field of Magic with Home Turf

 

Both Films: ***1/2

In the film, The Field of Magic, a group of people eek out a living for themselves on the literal margins of society. Forging for food in the Buda Forest of Lithuania and collecting scrap metal for money from a nearby dump, they return to their self-built shacks at the end of the day, and celebrate the small things in life. It may not be how you’d want to live your life, but you’ll be darned if they don’t live their lives with dignity and resolve. It’s an oddly empowering film to say the least.

Director Mindaugas Survila spent four years visiting these people, collecting their stories, chronicling their lives and seeing how they lived. Survila’s style is kind of a fly on the wall, and with a couple of exceptions he just records things as they happen. He also lets the people go about their lives, never probing them about how they ended up here, and why they stay. The lack of the why actually doesn’t bother you; filming somebody going about their life in Toronto, you may not necessarily ask why they’re there after all…

The Field of Magic shirks a very crisp and digital look for something more akin to a grittier video feel. That may come from the technical demands of where Survila was shooting, but at the same time it suits the film. It’s like a time capsule of a bygone age, a lifestyle long gone. Sadly, that’s not too far from the truth, but watching The Field of Magic you at least get to see, feel and understand a piece of an unusual world that may not appeal to many, but you’ll be darned if these people don’t live with some kind of grace.

Speaking of days gone by, Home Turf takes us to County Kerry, Ireland and the tradition of turf cutting. The cutting and drying of turf provides fuel for the fire, literally, in the Irish winter, and it’s been done in County Kerry for over 100 year, but as these things go, it’s a dying tradition. In just 14 minutes, Ross Whitaker expertly takes us through the turf season, and shows us the hard work and rewards for these men keeping an old way of life alive in spite of the odds.

Hot Docs - Shadows of Liberty

Rating: ***

So it turns out that corporate media is bad. That’s the surprisingly unsurprising message of Shadows of Liberty, a documentary about how the monopolizing of media – newspapers, radio and TV stations – under the umbrella of a handful of giant media conglomerates has made news consumers and the general public less informed if not downright ignorant. As the world burns, they say, and people of impure motives work their evil deeds, we the viewer, or listener, or reader, thrill to the tabloid exploits of celebrities who are making sex tapes, dying young, or going to jail…

And you know what? …They’re not wrong.

Director Jean-Philippe Tremblay is meticulous and cutting in his analysis. He puts together a tremendous cast of commentators to illustrate the problem – among them Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, former CBS anchor Dan Rather and Danny Glover (?) – to provide context. His case studies are well chosen; a CBS expose on Nike sweatshops is killed after CBS Sports reaches a sponsorship deal with the company for the ’98 Winter Olympics, another CBS reporter is fired after openly questioning the FBI’s official explanation for the crash of TWA 800, and the grand-daddy of media missed opportunities, the case against Iraq.

Again, nothing in that is at all surprising.

Indeed, Tremblay’s moral and historical autopsy on mainstream media is impressive, and exhaustive, but what I think was missing was some semblance of balance. I don’t mean the defense of companies like News Corp, Disney and Viacom, but I mean signs of hope; the people working independently, on the outside of the system. He had Julian Asange there, but didn’t talk about how his upstart Wikileaks ended up feeding the New York Times as a source. It also would have been nice to get a rebuttal from the people Tremblay was lambasting. I don’t think Bill O’Reilly would have sat down with him, but Anderson Cooper maybe. Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell possibly…

But the film is really well made, beautifully filmed and fulfilled, and in the end, Tremblay makes his case very, very well. But here’s the rub: I think he’s preaching to the choir. This was an extremely hot ticket Friday at Hot Docs, and I doubt it was just because it was the one of the first screenings of the fest. To this crowd, they know the media is not all it should be, and they know the reasons why that is, but the question is how do we change that culture, and how to we convert the non-members of the choir to that tune. Maybe we’ll save that for the sequel.

Hot Docs - The Invisible War

Rating: ****

The women featured in The Invisible War are everything one would expect from modern U.S. military officers: they’re driven, ambitious, skilled, accomplished, and selfless. True leaders in every sense of the word; women dedicated to serving their country and answering the call to be a part of something bigger than themselves. For all these reasons, it’s all the more unfortunate, one way or the other, that they were forced to give up their commissions after being sexually assaulted by their fellow soldiers or superiors.

The Invisible War explored by Kirby Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated) in this film is the struggle of literally thousands of women who have served in uniform, were sexually assaulted and forced to cope in a system hopelessly stacked in favour of their attackers, a small fraction of whom ever see a court room, and an even small fraction of those receive severe consequences. Dick and his crew chronicle the daily struggles of the brave women who came forward for the film, while at the same time trying to get to the bottom of why, despite the government’s own statistics and the accusations of its female officers, the military is left to police its own in the case of rape on armed forces personnel.

The statistics are staggering, as is the seeming indifference of military leadership and representatives in the U.S. Department of Defense. Even women in the system, who you would think would be more sympathetic, show tremendous callousness and ignorance for the issue. Dr. Kaye Whitley, the former head of the military’s program to combat rape in the ranks, SAPRO (Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office), advocates for female service members to use the “buddy system” as an acceptable strategy to combat rape. In another segment, a former officer in the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) explains that cases of rape reported are always given to male agents, since the perception is that female agents are “too sympathetic” and can’t be “impartial.”

Meanwhile, former Coast Guard Seaman Kori Cioca tells a waitress she meets to reconsider a career in the navy because chances are she’ll one day be raped and her superiors will do nothing. And while politicians in Washington agree there’s a problem, with nothing ever seeming to be done about it, female veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) are more likely to be suffering not because of combat trauma, but because they were raped.

It’s a startling tale, but it does not enshrine victimhood. There’s tremendous sympathy for these women, but there’s also anger for what’s been done to them, and for what’s not being done for them. Hearing Dr. Whitley hem and haw through her interview with Dick would be funny if it weren’t so shocking, but it’s part of an astonishing system of ostriches all sticking their heads in the sand together. A glass-shattering story, and a wake-up call to anyone that still wants to believe that you – male or female – can be all you can be in the U.S. armed forces.

Hot Docs - Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

 

Rating: ****

Ai Weiwei is a giant in Chinese arts scene, a giant in the international arts community, and a giant pain in the butt for the Chinese government. Despite China’s reputation as a place that clamps down hard on any and all criticism, Ai Weiwei stood boldly in contrast, poking and prodding the state, practically daring them to “black bag” him. For a minute there last year, it seemed that Ai Weiwei had finally been silenced, but international response was resounding, and after 81 days he was released from custody.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry offers incredible access into the artist and his world, but it’s also a serendipitous chronicle of the weeks leading up to Ai Weiwei’s arrest and the events that may have been the last draw for the Chinese government. In stark contrast to his homeland, Ai Weiwei is open and engaged, willing to be questioned and challenged in conversation. He really is the perfect subject matter for a documentary, and is a thoroughly captivating character.

But beyond the hindsight build up to Ai Weiwei’s arrest, director Alison Klayman plays with a number of themes: the fine line between art and activism, working within and without strict state-run censorship, and trying to promote change from the outside while still working from the inside. It’s heady stuff, but Ai Weiwei is such a relatable figure. Quite often the arts seem impenetrable to the layman, and the discussion of it requires a language most people don’t understand. But Ai Weiwei and his work flies in the face of that.

What’s weird is that in the midst of being surveilled and continually, sometimes literally, sticking his middle finger out to the Chinese government, you’re never concerned for Ai Weiwei, even if you have some idea what’s coming. He’s a rebel with a cause, and a glass half-full disposition. The film too is an extension of the artist’s spirit, not preaching, not condemning, and not afraid. The dividing line between art and politics falls away, and for Ai Weiwei, his politics become his art. Or vice versa.

Klayman effortlessly balances a lot of balls in the air and manages to tell a story that’s biographical, political, cultural and human. It’s all of those things and none of them. At least all that once. It’s a fascinating trip inside the mind of a man that shares his uniqueness without having to deconstruct the magic out of it.

The Cabin in the Woods

Rating: ****

The set-up is simple: five friends go out to a remote cabin to enjoy some drinking, debauchery and other wholesome activities. It’s the conceit that’s launched a million horror movies, and director Drew Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon know it. Five friends go out into the woods, but not all of them are coming home, the question is who dies first and how?

But wait, obviously it’s more complicated than that. The key to The Cabin in the Woods is to go in as pure as possible. After seeing the press screening, I watched the ads on TV and have been kind of surprised by how much is hinted at, or outright given away. Needless to say, there’s something more afoot to the story then friends in the woods being pestered by some demonic undead redneck family. So what’s going on? Let’s just say that there’s some people highly invested in watching these young folks die.

In the opening scenes, we meet our motley crew. There’s alpha jock Curt (Chris Hemsworth), his girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), the slightly nerdish but still kind of hunky Holden (Jesse Williams), the shy but pretty Dana (Kristen Connolly), and resident stoner Marty (Fran Kranz). They load into a Winnebago and head for a road so far off the map it’s not worthy of global positioning. When they get to the “rustic” cabin, they notice a few oddities, like paintings of human sacrifice and how two of the bedrooms are connected with one-way glass, but the latter discovery of a basement filled with potential horrors and sideshow oddities seals their doom, whatever doom they might choose.

Like Scream or New Nightmare before it, The Cabin in the Woods seeks to turn the genre on its head. Although that comparison leans more to the later than the former, as Scream had fun turning the conventions on their head, while Cabin, like Nightmare, dares to ponder where are horrors come from, and how we can beat them. It’s not so much about young people dying in horrible ways, but the implications there-in. The grander meaning. What is the communal experience of seeing a horror movie all about? Is it about engaging our more primal instincts, and to what degree?

Make no mistake, this is a horror movie for horror movie fans, by horror movie fans, and because of that I’m not sure how “commercial” Cabin will be. But having said that, this is a highly impressive debut for Goddard, who’s cut his teeth as a writer studying under two of the best mass-appeal nerdy filmmakers in the business: Whedon and J.J. Abrams. As a script, this is right in Whedon’s ball park with lots of scares and humour and Whedon-speak. Regular Whedon players like Kranz (Dollhouse), Amy Acker (Angel) and Tom Lenk (Buffy) also have roles.

Most importantly though, the characters feel very fleshed out. They’re living, breathing people, and that’s despite the fact that they are built in archetypes filling a specific purpose in the script. Some of that is owned by the actors. Pre-Thor Hemsworth shows off a more laidback vibe complete with letterman’s jacket, and it suits him, Kranz does stoner right and becomes the unlikely hero when another medical benefit of pot is demonstrated, and the rest of the young cast, who are unknowns for the most part, are likeable and engaging. But the real stars of this film are Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins. Unlikely as it may be that two guys over the age of 50 are the central figures in a youth-oriented horror movie, they just may be the heart and soul of the story; a kind of Statler and Waldorf offering commentary and context through the main story.

But if for no other reason, The Cabin in the Woods is worth seeing because it provides a nice break from current trends in horror cinema: it’s not a remake, it’s not a splatter-filled torture porn, and there’s not a single instance of “found footage.” It’s solid filmmaking. The cinematography is great, dark and moody when it needs to be, but it can also be warm and fun. (Thankfully, someone smart along the way decided that 3-D was not an option.) The creature effects are fantastic, the script is great, and the cast is phenomenal. It’s a rewarding film, but again, I think only a few will reap it to maximum effect.