Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier lead the hometown squad at Hot Docs. The list of other Toronto filmmakers includes Alan Zweig (A Hard Name), Larry Weinstein (Inside Hana’s Suitcase) and Sarah Goodman (When We Were Boys). Ron Mann is also feted with a career retrospective. And then there's these four highlights:
Fig Trees ****
May 1, 9:15pm, Bloor; May 9, 4:15pm, Isabel Bader Theatre.
Visually sumptuous and audacious in every regard, John Greyson’s celebration of the struggles and achievements of two AIDS activists in Toronto and South Africa takes the form of an alternately giddy and graceful surrealist fantasia. Did I mention it’s an opera, too? Paying homage to Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s similarly daffy Four Saints in Three Acts, Greyson and composer David Wall have fashioned a vivid, affecting and wholly unique piece of 21st-century agit-prop.
Invisible City ***
May 2, 9:45pm, The Royal; May 9, 3:30pm, Cumberland 3; May 10, 9:45pm, Isabel Bader Theatre.
Hubert Davis follows up his Oscar-nominated short Hardwood with a heart-rending portrait of two at-risk youths growing up in Regent Park as the community begins a dramatic transformation. Though Invisible City doesn’t delve as deeply into their lives as it might have and the later sequences lack the punch of the film’s best scenes, Davis relates the challenges and choices faced by his subjects and their families with great empathy and clarity.
Jackpot ****
May 1, 10pm, Royal; May 10, 6:30pm, Bloor.
The ink-stained regulars at Delta Bingo make an indelible impression in Alan Black’s 50-minute tour of the Toronto bingo mecca. Reminiscent of Errol Morris’ early studies of humans in their least natural habitats, Jackpot is rich in detail and feeling as it conveys the highs and (more so) lows in the lives of some very determined daubers. A marvelously odd score by the FemBots adds further splashes of colour.
Waterlife ***
May 2, 7pm, May 10, 4:15pm, Isabel Bader Theatre.
After a Hot Docs retro in 2007, Kevin McMahon returns with an ambitious detailing of the many hardships faced our embattled Great Lakes. With Gord Downie as semi-celebrity narrator, Waterlife offers plenty of sobering news about industrial toxins, invasive species and human waste in the world’s largest freshwater system. Too bad the film’s methods can be repetitive and heavy-handed, such that five lakes seem like two lakes too many.