About Face: The Story of Gwendellin Bradshaw **
Dir Mary Rosanne Katzky. 80 min. May 4, 7:30pm, The Royal; May 7, 2pm, Cumberland 3.
The emotional devastations in About Face only begin with its subject, Gwendellin Bradshaw, being thrown as a baby onto a campfire by her mother, who had post-partum psychosis. Severely deformed, Bradshaw’s life unfolds as an unjust series of tragedies. At one point, Bradshaw says “I want to live now. I’m tired of surviving.” The film provides a vivid, but cheesily manipulative, expression of how post-partum conditions impact the children of the women who suffer from them. KC
Best Worst Movie ***
Dir Michael Stephenson. 91 min; May 1, 9:45pm, Innis Town Hall; May 2, 11:45pm, Bloor Cinema; May 3, 2pm, ROM.
The most curious cine-phenomenon of recent years is the appreciation society that’s formed around a long-forgotten piece of dreck made in the early ’90s in Utah by some dangerously deluded Italians. But the admirers of Troll 2 (naturally, there was no Troll 1) are a passionate bunch, as is revealed by director Michael Stephenson, whose own acting career met a premature end thanks to his appearance as the film’s boy hero. Though it’s wearying to hear the chorus of hipster ironists trumpet the movie’s non-virtues, Stephenson’s doc — which includes shots of the raucous Troll 2 screening at the Bloor last summer — becomes more compelling when the cast and creators try to capitalize on their notoriety and get a sobering lesson in the limits of cult fandom. JA
Big River Man ****
Dir John Maringouin. 100 min. May 7, 7pm, Isabel Bader; May 9, 6:30pm, Bloor.
“He might be a little fat; he might be a little drunk... But he’s the
last super hero in the world.” Big River Man is an arresting portrait
of 53-year-old Slovenian endurance swimmer Martin Strel, as he trains
for and swims the length of the Amazon river. The doc is narrated by
the likeable Strel’s long-suffering son, and chronicles the swim’s
physical, psychological and familial stamina and strain. Strel and the
doc are frequently hilarious, often sad, and always engagingly weird. KC
Carmen Meets Borat ****
Dir Mercedes Stalenhoef (STC) 85 min. May 2, 6:30pm, Bloor Cinema; May 3, 4:30pm, ROM; May 10, 9:30pm, Cumberland 2.
Remember how Borat’s backwoods hometown in Kazakhstan was actually an impoverished Romanian village called Glod? Carmen Meets Borat follows the town’s leading businessman (whose father was depicted in the film as the arc-welding gynecologist) as he tries to sue Sacha Baron Cohen for money to help rebuild the town, while his 17-year-old daughter dreams only of leaving for Spain. The filmmakers undergo constant harassment from the understandably camera-shy locals in order to provide considerable insight into a peculiar and complex situation. CB
Clubland ***
Dir Eric Geringas. 44 mins. May 1, 10pm, Royal; May 10, 6:30pm, Bloor.
Local director Eric Geringas fills Clubland’s running time with enough footage of scantily clad hotties to make the Entertainment District seem alluring. Considering the busloads of fist-fighting jocks careening down a river of vomit on Richmond Street at 3am, that’s quite a feat. Interviews with the usual suspects (city councillor Adam Vaughan, CiRCA’s Peter Gatien) cover a lot of ground, but Clubland doesn’t shed much new light on the debate over where to put the GTA’s liquored-up neanderthal population, and the proposed solution of condo-led gentrification seems, in light of the recession, already dated. DM
Defamation ****
Dir Yoav Shamir. 93 min. May 2, 9pm, Bloor; May 3, 11am, Isabel Bader; May 4, 1:45pm, Cumberland.
Yoav
Shamir is, seemingly, a minority within a minority — an Israeli Jew
who’s never experienced anti-Semitism — a unique position that inspired
him to travel across Europe to America to feel the hate first-hand. In
his efforts to distinguish between hatred of Jews and critiques of
Israeli policy, he captures those with a vested interest in conflating
the two: the corner-office executives at the Anti-Defamation League,
the Israeli newspapers who increase readership through histrionic
headlines and the high-school tour companies leading thousands of
Jewish students each year through Auschwitz. Shamir’s jocular curiosity
— the sort Michael Moore brought to his early films — allows him to
coax candid, and increasingly outrageous, interviews out of ideologues ranging from ADL figurehead Abe Foxman to controversial anti-Zionist Jewish professor Norman Finkelstein.
But the most lasting conversations are those with Israeli teenagers
who, from birth, are ingrained with feelings of persecution they can’t
quite relate to, putting them in a perpetual state of high alert that
leads to self-inflicted segregation. SB
The Experimental Eskimo ***
Dir Barry Greenwald. (STC) 70 min. May 3, 9:15pm, Isabel Bader; May 10, 5pm, ROM.
In 1962, three Inuit boys were plucked from their culture by the Canadian government in order to receive the best possible education and eventually become leaders for their community. They do, but at significant personal and cultural cost, and facing discrimination from both the white world and their own people. Lots of archival footage and candid interviews help convey this important double-edged history lesson. CB
Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action ***
Dir Velcrow Ripper. May 8, 7:30pm, Royal; May 10, 4:15pm, Cumberland.
TV wags may have ridiculed Daryl Hannah for spending part of 2006
living in a tree but the latest by activist filmmaker Velcrow Ripper
reveals that she did it for all the right reasons. Indeed, the protest
to defend a farm in inner-city Los Angeles from destruction by
developers makes for the most compelling sequences in Fierce Light:
When Spirit Meets Action. Unfortunately, the other stops in this
globe-spanning agit-prop doc make less of an impression, Ripper having
overcrowded his film with Buddhist punks, Vietnamese monks and many
other people trying to make the world a better place. A surplus of
sound-bite sloganeering and slo-mo imagery also impairs Fierce Light’s
ability to inspire more Daryl Hannah–calibre acts of insurrection. JA
Graphic Sexual Horror ***
Dir Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell. May 5, 11:59pm, Bloor Cinema; May 8, 9:45pm, Innis Town Hall.
Even the most adventurous viewers may reach their limits with this all-too-aptly-titled doc about insex.com, a bondage and S/M site that was eventually harassed out of existence by the US government. Filmmakers Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell get both the men in charge and the women we see caned and restrained on screen to reflect on insex’s modus operandi. Matters involving art, porn, transcendence and torture all come to the fore, as well as the power dynamics that inevitably complicated the supposedly “safe” context for the sex play. You probably haven’t seen anything like what goes on here and may never want to again. JA
A Hard Name **
Dir Alan Zweig. 100 min. May 3, 6:45pm, The Royal; May 9, 7:30pm, ROM.
In disorientingly bleak interviews with ex-convicts, Alan Zweig makes familiar stories of poverty and violence rightfully shocking. The subjects’ narratives reveal the rawest and most repulsive depths of human existence, through childhood, crime, addiction, jail, and the struggle to survive back on the outside. The film is weakened only by Zweig’s tendency to mar the riveting interviews with his own interruptions and presumptions. KC
The Jazz Baroness ***
Dir Hannah Rothschild. 83 mins. May 5, 10pm, Royal; May 7, 1:45pm, Isabel Bader.
When digital butterflies float into the New York skyline like a screen saver gone mad, you know Hannah Rothschild’s portrait of her great aunt, Baroness Pannonica Rothschild, isn’t going to be a standard bio. The Jazz Baroness suffers from sub par camera work and cloying narration, but the insight into the Baroness’ intense yet platonic relationship with jazz great Thelonious Monk outweighs the technical flaws. Thoughtful interviews with Quincy Jones and others make this a must-see for fans of jazz, or those merely curious about a fascinating and eccentric woman. DM
Laughology ***
Dir Albert Nerenberg. 65 min. May 1, 7:30pm, Royal; May 10, 7:15pm, Isabel Bader.
Having “lost” his laugh after a death in his family, local filmmaker
Albert Nerenberg (Let’s All Hate Toronto) sets out to find it. The film
thoroughly investigates the history, science, and sociology of laughter
(which is, apparently, quite distinct from humour), and having
Nerenberg’s baby daughter act as the narrative buoy is inventive, but
Laughology’s self-conscious seriousness and general randomness stalls
what should be uplifting. KC
Objectified ***
Dir Gary Hustwit. May 3, 9:30pm, Bloor; May 4, 9:15pm, Bloor.
With
Helvetica, director Gary Hustwit made a humble typeface the talk of Hot
Docs in 2007. He returns with another film about the reasons the world
looks the way it does. In Objectified, he assembles a primer on
industrial design, touching on everything from the aesthetics of Apple
and Braun to the more wayward activities of the British team of Dunne
& Raby. Insights abound, though the broadness of the subject matter
prevents Objectified from having the same elegance and succinctness as
its predecessor. JA
Over the Hills and Far Way ***
Dir Michel Orion Scott (STC) 94 min. May 2, 3:30pm, Bloor; May 4, 1:45pm, Isabel Bader.
A couple dragging their autistic child across the Mongolian outback in search of shamanistic treatment sounds about as cracked as Jenny McCarthy’s bullshit pseudo-science theories. But Over the Hills and Far Away is more about the strained family dynamic involved in raising a child with autism — especially when uprooting him from any sense of stability — than the disorder itself. The end result is more about coping and integrating than curing. CB
Paris 1919 **
Dir Paul Cowan. 90 min. May 1, 7pm & May 10, 11am, Isabel Bader Theatre.
Basically a walk-through of Margaret MacMillan’s acclaimed Treaty of Versailles history, this film sails on the production values and starchy re-enactments that are the basic properties of high-end TV infotainment. Though the machinations of the players and signatories at Versailles were complex, the thesis of this film isn’t: the manner in which they divided the spoils, and the maps, set up a century of global conflict that wears on today. Still, when one of film’s last shots is of a Nazi flag a-flying 70 years ago, Paris 1919 glazes over the Treaty’s present-day repercussions just a tad. KG
Poetry in Motion ****
Dir Ron Mann. 78 min. Screens w/ Mann’s Echoes Without Saying, May 10, 6:30pm, Royal.
Ron Mann’s look at the canon of poets unleashing their various confrontational reading styles in the early 1980s gets a long-overdue DVD release as well as a screening at Hot Docs. Punctuated by Charles Bukowski’s filthy screeds against capital “P” poetry, Poetry in Motion requires patience during some of the more stereotypical affectations — and Allen Ginsberg’s rockabilly/post-punk collaboration — but delivers the goods with performances by a waify Jim Carroll, a young Tom Waits, Michael Ondaatje and the ever-creaky William S. Burroughs. CB
Professor Norman Cornett: "Since When Do We Divorce the Right Answer From an Honest Answer?" **
Dir Alanis Obomsawin. 80 min. May 8, 9:30pm, Isabel Bader Theatre.
What begins as a thumbnail portrait of an unconventional university instructor turns into a scattershot polemic in this unsatisfying and style-less doc. Norman Cornett is a professor of religious studies at McGill, favouring guest speakers, student interaction and intensely reflective writing assignments over autopilot lecturing. He’s that rare and profound gift from the academic nebula: a good teacher. It’s no surprise the students are on his side when the school inexplicably sacks him. And this is where the film starts to meander. With no comment forthcoming from McGill, a handful of students are left to repeatedly mull over the injustice while we catch a second-act glimpse of the (very solid) man in his personal life. There are two stories here, and neither is explored deeply. KG
Rachel **
Dir Simone Bitton. 100 min. May 3, 6:30pm, Isabel Bader Theatre; May 6, 1pm, Cumberland 3. Co-presented with the Voices Forward Festival.
Israel-raised director Simone Bitton uses excerpts from Rachel Corrie’s letters to paint a sympathetic portrait of the 23-year-old American who was run over by a bulldozer in 2003 while protesting in Ramah. In interviews with Corrie’s fellow activists, grateful Palestinians and a handful of Israeli officials, Rachel suggests Israeli forces may have murdered Corrie and covered it up, but the filmmakers find no smoking guns or even a credible motive. Though Corrie’s life and the Palestinians’ plight are both tragic and compelling, the film’s demonization of the Israeli military damages its credibility. DM
Rembrandt’s J’accuse ****
Dir Peter Greenaway. 86 min. May 2, 10pm & May 4, 4:30pm, Isabel Bader.
In this companion piece to his 2007 feature Nightwatching, Peter
Greenaway delves deep inside the frame of Rembrandt’s most famous
painting and believes he has discovered murder most foul. Indeed, the
British director argues that the painter used The Night Watch as an
opportunity to publicize the nefarious doings of the Amsterdam VIPs who
originally commissioned him. Viewers are invited to weigh the evidence
in this highly stimulating blend of art history and conspiracy theory,
which gains an additional level of brio thanks to Greenaway’s
well-established distaste for conventional cinematic forms. JA
Roadsworth ***
Dir Alan Kohl. 73 min. May 8, 9:30pm, Cumberland; May 10, 4:30pm, Innis Town Hall.
“I wasn’t real until I got arrested,” says Ron English in this stylish doc about Peter Gibson, a.k.a. Roadsworth, the Montreal street artist whose whimsical work in the early ’00s turned merging lane lines into parts of a zipper, and crosswalk bars into giant footprints. Following English, director Alan Kohl makes Gibson’s own arrest in 2004 into his film’s through-line, and it’s an engaging approach — more for its glimpse into Gibson’s maturing creative process than for its rote detours into the art-or-vandalism debate. DB
Shadow Billionaire ****
Dir Alexis Manya Spraic. 86 min. May 3, 9:15pm, Cumberland 3; May 5, 4pm, Cumberland 3.
Of all the strange-but-true tales on offer at Hot Docs, few can compete with the life, death and very messy legacy of Larry Hillblom. A gifted entrepreneur — he was the H in DHL, the pioneering courier company that he co-founded — Hillblom also fulfilled the role of Howard Hughes–like rich eccentric on the Micronesian island where he lived. After his death in a 1995 plane crash, the former business associates who hoped to control Hillblom’s wealth were none too pleased to hear about several potential heirs, the result of his enthusiasm for adolescent prostitutes. The material’s mix of sleaze and legalese makes for a remarkable true-life potboiler. JA
65_Red Roses ***
Dir Phil Lyall, Nimisha Mukerji. May 7, 7:30pm, Royal; May 9, 2pm, Royal; May 10, 9:15pm, Bloor.
A young Vancouverite’s battle with cystic fibrosis gets compelling treatment in this 70-minute doc by the team of Phil Lyall and Nimisha Mukerji. As emotional as these moments must have been, the filmmakers had the good fortune to be on hand for some crucial events as 23-year-old Eva Markvoort awaits the lung transplant that could save her life. By examining Markvoort’s relationships with two fellow CF sufferers who she met online (they can’t meet in person due to the fear of exchanging superbugs), Lyall and Mukerji also show how personal support systems may be more important than the medical kind when it comes to surviving a health crisis. JA
69 ****
Dir Nikolaj Viborg. 60 min. May 5, 7:15pm & May 8, 4:30pm, Innis Town Hall.
Nikolaj Viborg brings his cameras inside Ungdomshuset (Youth House), a community centre that was given to the youth of Copenhagen in 1982 by the then-socialist Danish government and became a hub for squatting, concerts and vegan dinners. With the current right-wing government now having sold the house to an evangelical church, its inhabitants prepare to defend it. Viborg’s familiarity with the protesters gives him access to extraordinary views from the centre of the riots and within the house during the final siege. As one organizer explains, “It’s going to be dangerous, but everyone’s welcome.” CL
The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy
Dir Peter Liechti. (STC) 88 min. May 2, 6:45pm, Cumberland 3; May 5, 11am, Isabel Bader.
This is an 88-minute journey inside the head of someone who is committing suicide by starvation — in case you ever felt the need to experience such an event. A voice-over reading of the deceased’s journals, set against nature imagery and impressionistic visuals, renders the nuanced suffering of a man who goes out into the woods, sets up a tent, stops eating and waits for over 60 days for death. Disturbingly, the film gets better as the man gets closer to the end and the reality of the situation and his lucid account of his own suffering drags the audience towards the inevitable. CB
The Tiger Next Door ***
Dir Camilla Calamandrei. 86 min. May 8, 10pm, The Royal; May 10, 1:30pm, Bloor Cinema.
The title of The Tiger Next Door sounds like a Neko Case B-side, and its contents recall the singer’s recent comments to Eye Weekly: “somebody’s been mauled by a tiger and everyone’s so shocked… It’s a tiger!… what the fuck do you want it to do?” Camilla Calamandrei’s doc — about an Indiana ex-con who raises tigers in his backyard much to the chagrin of his neighbours and a growing chorus of animal-rights activists — functions at once as an affectionate profile, a damning exposé, and an urgent missive about the dire status of the magnificent animals stalking the edges of the frame. AN
Tyson ***
Dir James Toback. 90 min. May 5, 9:15pm, Isabel Bader.
Director James Toback’s apologia for the man who made a meal of Evander Holyfield’s ear is both highly compelling and highly problematic. Seeing as Tyson is Toback’s only interview subject (the rest of his story is told via archival material), it’s no surprise that the movie is so one-sided in its treatment of the disgraced ex-brawler. Details of his worst offences (including his rape conviction) also get less prominence than his poetry recitations. Yet the man emerges as a complex and deeply self-aware figure who deserves to be regarded as something other than the media’s preferred roles for him: first as boogeyman, then as tattooed buffoon. JA
We Live in Public ***
Dir Ondi Timoner. May 6, 6:30pm, Bloor Cinema; May 7, 11am, Isabel Bader Theatre.
Ondi Timoner’s follow-up to the well-loved Dig! rescues the story of a tech pioneer from undeserved, Brian Jonestown Massacre-like obscurity. At the turn of the last decade, Josh Harris cast himself as a dark prophet of the internet age with two strange and prescient experiments. In the first, he filled a bunker with food, drugs, people, cameras and monitors for a month, creating a bizarre combo of hipster commune and totalitarian state. In the next, he turned the cameras on himself and his girlfriend and discovered the toll of trying to live in public. Slightly too hectic but still plenty bracing, Timoner’s film presents Harris’ trajectory as a cautionary tale about our ever-growing propensity for online exhibitionism. JA
When We Were Boys ***
Dir Sarah Goodman. 81 min. May 1, 9pm, Cumberland 3; May 10, 4pm, Bloor.
Here’s a challenge: follow society’s most stereotypically inarticulate rabble — pubescent boys — for two years in order to capture the emotional discord stemmed in part by that very difficulty with expression. The results are impressionistic at best, then, as director Sarah Goodman looks in on the dissolution of a friendship between two grade 8 students at an affluent Toronto private school. Life under Goodman’s microscope seems remarkably natural, though her camera gravitates — with Jim Guthrie’s music tagging along — reflexively toward the more sensitive and engaging of the two lads. There’s no narration and little adult meddling (teachers are more like elements than characters; parents are almost entirely unseen). And if the story of the boys’ quiet rift feels barren and unresolved, the film makes an affecting portrait of the ways kids get lost even with the best bearings and encouragement money can buy. KG
Yes Men Fix the World ***
Dir Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno, Kurt Engfehr. 90 min. May 5, 9:15pm, Cumberland; May 7, 4:45pm, ROM; May 8, 11:45pm, Bloor.
Fresh off its premiere at Sundance, The Yes Men Fix the World chronicles the continuing adventures of activist-performance-artists/masters of corporate disguise Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. Their hijinks are a means of preaching to the converted: those not sympathetic to the pair’s politics will likely be alienated rather than persuaded by their Jackass-or-grownups act. Even so, it’s hard to deny the skill and cunning with which these guys mount their hoaxes. AN
Zombie Girl: The Movie **
91 min; May 1, 6:30pm, Bloor; May 3, 4pm, Royal.
A preteen patron of famed Austin cinema/film-geek mecca the Alamo Drafthouse, Emily Hagins caught the attention of the Austinites when she set out to make a zombie flick of her own. Of course, the production process itself became the subject of a film, though the results are rarely dramatic enough to justify the attention. Hagins’ squabbles with her mother (and FX technician) fail to prompt a Coppola-calibre meltdown and it doesn’t help that the director is so inarticulate. To be fair, she is 12, but the trio of older filmmakers documenting Hagins’ story mistakenly believe that her age automatically makes her travails more interesting than the sufferings of umpteen other directors whose ambitions far exceed their abilities. JA