Latin America? Films reviewed: Autumn and the Black Jaguar, Satanic Hispanics PLUS #Hotdocs24!
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Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring is here, and so is Toronto’s Spring film festival season. And its crowning glory is Hot Docs the world’s biggest International Documentary Film Festival. It’s a month away — it runs from April 25 to May 5 — but now’s a good time to start booking tickets. As usual there are over 100 docs from more than 60 countries, with many international premieres. And, as always, students and seniors (over 60) can go to daytime screenings for free.
They just released the whole festival slate, so here are a few docs that I haven’t seen yet, but look interesting to me. Black Box Diaries is about a young Japanese journalist who was raped, and is taking her case to court in a demand for justice. Grand Theft Hamlet shows some UK actors attempting to mount a production of Shakespeare entirely within the notorious game Grand Theft Auto. Norwegian Democrazy is about extreme street level politics in that country, and Stray Bodies takes a similar look at how people handle bodily restrictions within their own countries can be resisted by crossing national borders within the EU. Pelikan Blue is an animated film about what young Hungarians did to leave the country when the Iron Curtain fell. There are also video diaries: The Here Now Project about how climate change effects people around the world; and XiXi, an intimate look at the innermost thoughts and beliefs of a Chinese improvisation artist living in Europe. Curl Power is a funny and tender examination of five teenage girls over three years on a curling team. And for those interested in musical celebs, there are features about Toronto’s own Peaches, called Teaches of Peaches, and Disco’s Revenge about the legendary musical producer Nile Rogers.
Like I said, Hotdocs is a full month away, but now’s the time to start thinking about it.
This week, though, I’m looking at two movies, one for children and one for definitely for grownups. There’s a girl looking for a wild beast in the jungle, and a man in an El Paso jail trying to explain why he’s the only one to survive a mass killing.
Autumn and the Black Jaguar
Dir: Gilles de Maistre
Autumn Edison (Lumi Pollack) is a young girl in middle school in New York City. She grew up in a rainforest somewhere in Latin America with her environmentalist parents. Her Dad is from the North, her Mom a member of the local indigenous nation. So Autumn treats the jungle as her backyard. As a small child she befriended a baby black jaguar who was left parentless when poachers shot the mother jaguar. So they grew up together. Developers and animal traffickers, led by the evil Poacher, Doria Dargan (Kelly Hope Taylor) wanted to evict her people from their land. They also hunted rare species to sell on the black market. But when Autumn’s mother is killed, her Dad takes her back to North America, where it’s safe. Seven years later, she’s almost a teen, but still hates it up there. No one seems to care about our animal friends or the environment. Especially her biology teacher Anja (Emily Bett Rickards). She wants the class to dissect frogs — can you believe it? — and Autumn refuses to participate in such cruelty. She stages a one-person protest. So she’s suspended from school, and not the first time. Stuck at home, she finds a letter from her uncle in the rain forest, a veritable cry for help. Our lives are teetering on the brink, he writes. They want to build a dam, flooding where we have lived for millennia. And they’re after Hope, the beloved black jaguar!
Autumn takes this as a beacon, calling her back to her ancestral home.
She lies to her father that everything’s fine, and secretly rushes off to the airport. What she doesn’t realize is her teacher — notable for her fear of germs, insecurity and agoraphobia — is somehow following her; she’s afraid Autumn is in danger, and wants to bring her back home. She’s risking her worst phobias to rescue the little girl. But they both end up in the rainforest, alone, with Autumn the one who is confident and at home. Will she find Hope the Jaguar? Will Hope still recognize her? And can they somehow stop the destruction of her culture, and the kidnapping of the last black jaguar?
Autumn and the Black Jaguar is a heart-warming kids’ movie. By kids, I mean little kids. As a grown-up, I found the dialogue klunky at best and cringy at worst, as if written by Chat GBT and edited by Google Translate. The teacher talks like a cartoon character. comically overreacting to everything she sees (as in most kids’ TV shows). But there are also some very cool adventures, like when they climb a tall tree and walk around on top of the forest’s canopy. I think little kids will really like this.
Watching the movie, I was impressed by the CGI version of a Jaguar playing with Autumn — it looked real. Could it be a CGI head superimposed on a friendly dog’s body? But after I did a bit of research, I found out the actress, Lumi Pollack, spent 10 months learning to bond with two actual jaguars. That wild cat is real! Impressive. Which moved it up quite a few notches on my mental score card.
Satanic Hispanics
Dir: Alejandro Brugués, Mike Mendez, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Eduardo Sánchez, Demián Rugna
It’s El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Juarez, Chihuahua. The police discover dozens of dead bodies in an old, abandoned building, with only one man still alive, unarmed, and handcuffed to a metal table. So they arrest him. He calls himself the Traveler (Efren Ramirez) and says he was born here — meaning in the US — and speaks at least 5 languages. But he’s undocumented, with no papers to prove his existence. Still, he pleads for the police to let him go. If they don’t, in 90 minutes they’ll all end up dead, just like the others they found. You see, he says he’s being followed by the Saint of Death, a terrifying, mystical being who wants to kill him. That’s why he’s the traveller: he always has to keep a step ahead of the Saint, to avoid massive bloodshed like this one.
But the cops don’t believe him — they accuse him of drug trafficking. They bring out his cache of strange paraphernalia and ask for an explanation. So, like Scheherazade, he embarks on a series of stories that tell where each item comes from. One of his strangest stories is called Tambien Lo Vi. It’s about a mathematical genius named Gustavo (Demián Salomón) a Rubik’s cube champ who somehow transfers his mental algorithms into light patterns projected on a wall using the light from his cel phone. He flaps his arms wildly flashing… that seems to bridge the gap between the living and the dead.
Other stories deal with a voracious vampire having a night on the town on Halloween — the only time of year when he can dress as a blood sucker in public — and a very bizarre take of a man fighting off a demon using a prodigious weapon known as the Hammer of 
Zanzibar that I cannot describe on daytime radio. But back to the main plot: can The Traveller finish his stories before the evil entity arrives to kill us all?
Satanic Hispanics is a compilation horror movie told by 5 directors and countless writers, producers, cast and crew. Each story is told as discrete, complete short film, within the whole movie, but with all sharing a similar look. The directors themselves are originally from Argentina, the US, Mexico and Cuba, with dialogue shifting from English to Spanish to pre-Columbian languages. Being a horror movie, there’s lots of gratuitous violence, blood and guts, some shocks and chills, and some horrible-looking evil entities.
Does it work? Oh yes! Not every segment is perfect, but altogether they tell us some very original and scary stories.
Autumn and the Black Jaguar opens this weekend in Toronto: check your local listings; Satanic Hispanics is currently streaming on Shudder.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Three Women. Films reviewed: Immaculate, Exhuma, The Queen of my Dreams
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies about three distinct women from three different religions. There’s a nun fighting for her life in Italy, a shaman fighting demons in Korea, and a Canadian woman fighting with her Mom in Karachi.
Immaculate
Dir: Michael Mohan
Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) is a novice at a convent in Italy. It’s an ancient edifice dating back hundreds of years, with an airy courtyard surrounded by lovely white pillars, and situated amongst Italy’s rolling hills. She has just arrived from Michigan, but is already taking her vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. She was invited to join the convent by Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) a former scientist who, like Cecilia, had a calling. Her job? To tend to the sick and dying, mainly older nuns who have lived their entire lives within their stone walls. There is little privacy there, especially for novices. Anyone can wander into their rooms, day or night.
But something strange is going on. When she touches a relic of the true cross, she faints. She wakes up days later with few memories of what happened. She goes to confession but her priest seems to fade away inside the booth. And one morning she throws up in the shared baths. Could that be morning sickness? Could she be pregnant? Bishops and doctors examine her closely: she is still a virgin. Which makes this an immaculate conception! It’s a miracle! It’s the second coming! Soon people are gazing at her in awe, reaching out to touch
her face. But this is not why Cecilia took her vows. She doesn’t trust the convent’s doctor — who just happens to be an obstetrician in a convent full of nuns. And then there are the frightening sisters who cover their faces in masques of red gauze to carry out enforcement. When her only friend, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) disappears, Cecilia realizes she has get out of this place — or this nun will be done. But how can she escape?
Immaculate is a thriller/horror about an innocent young woman trapped in an Italian house of by some religious fanatics. But for a movie about a nunnery there sure are a lot of breasts on display… draped in damp white diaphanous gowns in the baths or partly exposed late at night. That’s half of this exploitation movie: soft-core porn. The other half, though, is extreme, bloody violence and sadistic torture — what I call “gorno”: Disgusting, extended violence you’re forced to watch for its titillating effect. This leaves the movie both ridiculous and over the top, and more gross than scary, in the manner of an Italian Giallo movie from the 70s… but without any camp.
That said, I actually liked Sydney Sweeney as the innocent woman who fights back. And while this is clearly a B movie, it does end on a suitably shocking note.
Exhuma
Wri/Dir: Jang Jae-hyun
Hwarim (Kim Go-eun) is a young Korean woman on a Japanese flight to LA. She’s going there to investigate a client from a filthy-rich Korean family that suffers from strange dreams and illnesses. Not just the man himself, but his new born baby, and other relatives. She’s a shaman, travelling with her coworker Bong-Gil a heavily-tattooed, former baseball player (Lee Do-hyun) who can see visions and dreams. They determine evil forces are at work here, and call for an exhumation of a distant ancestor’s grave to rectify some unknown problem. The family agrees and pays them a hefty salary to make it work. Back in Korea, they turn to Kim a geomancer (Choi Min-sik) and his assistant. He knows about how Yin and Yang, Feng Shui and the Five Elements all must be correctly aligned to make for a peaceful grave. But the grave they find is anything but peaceful. The coffin is buried beneath an unmarked tombstone, on a distant hilltop near North Korea, reachable only through a chain-locked road where no one ever goes. It’s home to a skulk of foxes and a pit of snakes. And despite their lengthy shamanic 
rituals, somehow an ancient evil spirit escapes from the grave wreaking havoc on everyone nearby. It’s not just a ghost that says “boo”; it takes on a physical form, looking for humans as his slaves, to feed him sweet melons and mincemeat. And woe be to him or her who disobeys. Human livers taste just as good. Can these four brave souls defeat a dark evil from a rich family’s hidden past?
Exhuma is a supernatural horror/thriller about a fight against the deep, dark mysteries from Korea’s history (including references to their brutal occupation under Imperial Japan). The film is done in an interesting way, incorporating actual shamanic rituals into the story. In one scene, to the sound of pounding drums, Hwarim does an extended ecstatic dance around the bodies of four hogs impaled on skewers. Not the sort of thing you usually see in a horror movie.
Exhuma was a huge hit in Korea when it was released there a month ago, and I’m not at all surprised.
I like this one.
The Queen of My Dreams
Wri/Dir: Fawzia Mirza
It’s 1999 in Toronto. Azra (Amrit Kaur) is an aspiring actress with a steady girlfriend. She has been on bad terms with her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha: Polite Society) since she was caught playing spin the bottle with a girl at her teenage birthday party. But she still communicates with her friendly Dad (Hamza Haq: Transplant) a doctor. The one thing Azra has in common with her mother is their obsession with an old Bollywood movie starring Sharmila Tagore. But when her Dad suddenly dies on a visit to Karachi, Pakistan, Azra and her brother must fly there for the funeral. This sets off a series of revealing memories both from Azra and Mariam. Suddenly we’re 
transported back to 1969, when Mariam is a totally different person and Karachi a swinging city, filled with bars, discos, VW bugs and Beatlemania.
Mariam is a rebel who rejects her parents’ arranged marriages when she falls for her future husband. Then we’re in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1989. Young Azra (wonderfully played by Ayana Manji) joins her mom’s work as a Tupperware lady. These scenes are a coming of age replete with a moustache on her upper lip, her first dance with a boy, and being excused from class during Christian prayers. But can the 1999 mother and daughter reconcile with their pasts in 1989 Nova Scotia and 1969 Karachi and learn to love each other again?
The Queen of my Dreams is a wonderful family drama that deftly weaves three eras and three generations across two continents. It deals with religion and sexuality, rules that are made to be broken and others that are upheld. I don’t know if this film is autobiographical or not, but it really rings true. Amrit Kaur plays both the adult Azra and a younger version of Mariam, while Hamza Haq plays the Dad both in youth and middle age. Not just that: Nimra Bucha (Mariam) and Kaur in their daydreams are both transformed into the main character in their favourite Bollywood film. Sounds really complicated, right? It’s not! It’s totally accessible and understandable with wonderful realistic characters, funny lines and deeply moving dialogue. The production design deserves a special mention. The ’60s scenes use traditional film to perfectly capture the look of Kodacolor movies from the period, through costumes, hair, locations, cars — and especially its cinematography. And on top of everything else, this is Fawzia Mirza first feature film.
I’ve seen The Queen of my Dreams twice now and I still love it.
Exhuma opens at the TIFF Lightnox; Immaculate, and The Queen of My Dreams also playing this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Pot o’ Gold. Films reviewed: French Girl, One Life, Love Lies Bleeding
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Tomorrow is St Paddy’s day so this week I’m looking at three new movies, from Canada, England and the US, about people looking for their own pot o’ gold. There’s a New Yorker in Quebec looking for love, an Englishman in wartime Prague searching for orphans to rescue, and a young woman in New Mexico looking to flee to Vegas with her bodybuilder girlfriend.
French Girl
Wri/Dir: James A. Woods, Nicolas Wright
Sophie and Gordon are an unmarried couple in New York in their late 30s. Gordon Kinski (Zach Braff) is an eighth grade English teacher in a public school in Brooklyn. He loves donning 16th century tunics to teach Shakespeare to 14 year olds. Sophie Tremblay (Evelyne Brochu) is a wizard in the kitchen — professional kitchens that is. She’s the chef at a popular restaurant. They’re getting ready for a long-planned vacation in upstate New York, far away from their jobs. But their plans are changed when a strange woman appears. Ruby (Vanessa Hudgens) is a celebrity chef with cooking shows and restaurants all around the world. She wants Sophie to audition for executive chef at her newest branch. The restaurant is in the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Sophie’s home town. For Gordon, who has rarely left NY City, Quebec is terra incognito. But he agrees to come with her, thinking it’s the perfect time to propose marriage. He also will offer moral support and meet her family. And what a family it is.
The Tremblays live on their sheep farm near Quebec City. There’s an angry Dad, a doting mom, a gossipy older sister, and Junior
(Antoine Olivier Pilon) an intimidating cage boxer who collects samurai swords. And then there’s their elderly grandma who has a tendency to pop up beside their bed when they’re having sex. Gordon, who speaks no French, feels very out of place, but still tries desperately to fit in. What he doesn’t know, but the 
family does, is that Ruby, Sophie’s potential future boss, is also her former lover. Will Sophie get the job? Will her family accept Gordon? And is the rich and glamorous Ruby competing with him for Sophie’s hand?
French Girl is a funny and cute romcom about a culture clash between an eccentric family and a fish out of water. It’s also bilingual — the Tremblays speak French while Gordon and Ruby speak English. While French Girl follows many of the cliches and conventions of a romantic comedy, it still seems sweet, fresh and delightful.
I liked it despite myself.
One Life
Dir: James Hawes
It’s the late 1980s in a small city in England. Nicky Winton (Anthony Hopkins) is a retired stockbroker who lives with his wife Greta (Lena Olin). They’re expecting a visit soon from their expecting daughter, so she tells him to throw out all his junk to make way for baby. He has tons of files and papers from the 1930s he hasn’t looked at in years. Plus a treasured leather briefcase with a photo album in it. Everything in the album happened in 1938. That was when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia to annex the “Sudetenland”, sending thousands of refugees — including Jews, intellectuals, leftists, Socialists, and Communists — to Prague to stay out of Nazi hands.
A much younger Nicky (Johnny Flynn) visits Prague and is overwhelmed by all the refugees, including countless children, many orphans, living in the streets. He wonders, how many children could he transport by train to England before Germany invades Prague? There were similar programs for kids in Austria and Germany, but not Czechoslovakia. His German-born mom (Helena Bonham-Carter) says she’ll do whatever she can to help. And a team in Prague is recording names of kids 
who can be saved. Can Nicky convince the British government to issue visas, raise the needed funds, and find foster parents to take care of them? Will he get them out before the Nazis march in? Or is it a fools game?
One Life is an historical drama — based on a true story — about an unsung hero and what he accomplished in 1938. The story jumps back and forth between the 30s and the 80s, half about the daring mission of a young man, and half about the old Nicky telling his story. I wanted to see this film for two reasons: because of the story — who doesn’t want to see children rescued from the Nazis? — and because it’s directed by James Hawes, who brought us that excellent TV spy thriller series Slow Horses. Sadly, One Life couldn’t possibly be less thrilling. While there are a few touching moments near the end, most of this film is as slow as molasses. Hopkins sleepwalks through his part while the audience nods off.
Sad to say, One Life is a snooze fest.
Love Lies Bleeding
Co-Wri/Dir: Rose Glass
It’s 30 years ago in a small town in New Mexico. Lou (Kristen Stewart) works at her estranged father’s hardcore gym, a rusty warehouse filled with muscleheads spouting No Pain No Gain slogans. Most of her time is spent unclogging toilets with her bare hands or fending off the amorous advances of a crackhead named Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov). It’s a hell-hole. Until a breath of fresh air blows in through the door. Jackie (Katy O’Brian) is a competitive bodybuilder in pink and purple lycra with big hair and bigger muscles. She’s an Okie just passing though town on her way to a competition in Vegas. But when she decks two lugs who threaten Lou, it’s love at first punch. Soon they’re making passionate love in Lou’s lonely apartment. Soon enough, she’s supplying Jackie with steroids to reach body perfection before they head off to Vegas.
But all is not well in rural New Mexico. Lou’s brother in law, JJ (Dave Franco) is a mega-douche who works for her Dad, Lou Sr’s (Ed Harris). Lou Sr is a crime boss who runs the town from his gaudy mansion. When JJ’s not cheating on his wife (Lou’s sister), he’s beating her up. And he has hired Jackie to work at Lou Sr’s gun club, after she agreed to have sex with him. (She doesn’t yet know that Lou is related to all of them). But when the truth comes out, and Lou’s sister ends up in ER, Jackie is 
jacked. She slips into a manic ‘roid rage looking for revenge, while pulling Lou into a spiral of violence, death and retribution. Will Jackie make it to Vegas? Will someone pay for the murders? And where will the dead bodies go?
Love Lies Bleeding is a brilliantly dark film noir, about small-town crime in the southwest. It’s filled with distorted psychedelic fantasies within a tragic world. It’s also a love story filled with lots of hot lesbian sex. The production design is amazing. Most of the characters sport 80s mullets and the whole movie pulses with a driven soundtrack and neon colours. This is only Rose Glass’s second feature (after Saint Maud) but she once again incorporates real settings within a surreal plot. This one includes a behind-the-scenes look at professional bodybuilding, complete with spray-on suntans and their strangely contorted muscle-popping poses. But beware — the 
movie is filled with shocking, graphic violence. Dave Franco is great as a sleaze ball, a grizzled Ed Harris is suitably sinister as a crime boss with foot long greasy blond hair spouting beneath a completely bald tonsure. Anna Baryshnikov (the dancer’s daughter!) is perfect as a hippy girl long past her prime. And Kristen Stewart and newcomer Katy O’Brian absolutely sizzle together.
If you’re looking for a crime-thriller that’s gripping, shocking and aesthetically stunning, don’t miss Love Lies Bleeding.
One Life, French Girl, and Love Lies Bleeding all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Erin Goodpipe and Saxon de Cocq about Treaty Road
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s the 1870s in what is now Manitoba. Representatives of the British Crown, the Anishinaabe and the Muskegon Cree are negotiating the ownership and stewardship of the lands there. James McKay, a former fur-trader for the Hudsons Bay Company plays a crucial role in translating for both sides. Treaty 1, the first of a number of such treaties, set the stage for the expansion of European settlements in western Canada. But what did they mean for the indigenous peoples? Were these treaties honoured? And what role do they still play in 2024?
A fascinating, six-part documentary series called Treaty Road 
examines in depth the history of these treaties, as seen by the descendants of the original signers and their representatives. Namely, the show’s co-hosts, writer-director Saxon de Cocq of the Métis Nation of Alberta, and artist and educator Erin Goodpipe of the Anishnaabe Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation. Saxon is an accomplished filmmaker who brought us CBC’s The Invincible Sergeant Bill and CIFF’s Land Acknowledgement. Erin is known on stage and screen for productions like RezX, The Other Side, and Bathsheba: Search for Evil.
I spoke with Erin and Saxon via ZOOM.
You can watch Treaty Road on APTN.
Actors. Films reviewed: Look at Me, Hey Victor PLUS CFF
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring has not yet sprung, but it should kick in soon with the Canadian Film Fest on March 18-23rd, at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto. With features and shorts, including world premieres, there’s something for almost everybody. It opens with a film about a Trinidadian who comes to Toronto to sell doubles from a street stall to try to help his estranged, dying dad. It’s called Doubles. There’s a drama about Syrian refugees called Valley of Exile by Anna Fahr; a science fiction comedy called With Love and a Major Organ… that organ being a removable heart. (Directed by Kim Albright.) And the festival is closing with The Burning Season by Winnipegger Sean Garrity, starring his longtime collaborator Jonas Chernick. So if you’ve never been to the Canadian Film Fest, maybe you should give it a try this year — the movies are surprisingly good.
But this week I’m looking at two more Canadian movies, both about actors playing fictional versions of themselves. There’s an indigenous former child actor trying to rescue his career, and a needy actor who craves attention but hates his own looks.
Look at Me
Wri/Dir: Taylor Olson
Taylor (Taylor Olson) is a handsome, young actor in Halifax with a square jaw and strawberry blond hair. He loves attention (Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! is every actor’s driving force). He’s also an insecure, body-conscious guy, with an eating disorder. He binges, he purges, he vomits into the toilet. Sometimes he lifts weights to build up muscle, or fasts so his body will look more desirable — whether at an audition or on an online dating site. But when he gains weight he hates himself — he’s fat-phobic — and the cycle starts up again. He has casual sex with girls and guys he meets. He even forges a long-term relationship with a single mom he loves (Stephanie 
MacDonald)… but how long can it last?
Look at Me is a B&W, fictional autobiography on film, a scathing — and humorous — self-examination that exposes Taylor’s innermost thoughts and fears. His face and body morphs almost on camera, as his insecurities rise to the surface. Based on his play, this is Taylor’s funny and tragic cri de coeur, about vanity, fat phobia, and self-loathing.
An excellent performance.
Hey, Viktor
Wri/Dir: Cody Lightning
Cody (Cody Lightning) is an actor who has fallen on hard times. His most famous role was as a child actor in the film Smoke Signals, 25 years earlier. He played young Victor, Adam Beach’s character, as a child. But it’s been a downward spiral since then. Now he’s a sloppy, washed-out drunk, swigging from his mickey as he stumbles through his day.
Only Kate (Hannah Cheesman) a beanpole blond and his best 
friend and manager, still cares about him. She helps him him eke out work in his profession, if not exactly what he’s looking for. Like roles in gay-for-pay porn movies (ouch!) and teaching kids acting lessons. He and Kate have written dozens of scripts but none have taken off.
Thing is, Cody is dead-set on doing a sequel to Smoke Signals, possibly Hollywood’s first movie with an all-indigenous director, writer and cast, including Adam Beach, Gary Farmer, Irene Bedard, Simon Baker, and Cody himself. (Kate claims to have Cherokee blood, but no one takes it seriously.) But you can’t make a movie without money. As luck would have it, they meet a crazy, gun-toting German pawn broker (Phil Burke) who happens to be a huge fan of that film. He says he’ll put up all the money as long as the original cast are in the sequel. Can 
Cody pull himself together enough to make a movie? Can he find a full crew willing to work on it? And what about all those actors? And will he actually spend the money on the film or just dive headfirst into a bucket of cocaine?
Hey Viktor is a bawdy and raunchy comedy about an indigenous actor trying to rescue his career. It’s full of outrageous stunts, like attempting to throw a live baby out of a window. Aside from a few (very funny) side characters, almost everyone plays a fictionalized version of themselves, all using their real names. I thought it was pretty funny, varying wildly between tongue in cheek satire and in your face humour. But most of all this is a show piece of Cody Lightning himself, the writer, director and star. He strips down and exposes… well, everything, with the hope of baring his soul.
And it works.
Hey, Viktor opens next week in Toronto; check your local listings. Look at Me premieres at the Canadian Film Festival on March 19th.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
International Women’s Day! Film reviewed: Analogue Revolution
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Wednesday is International Women’s Day, a national holiday in many countries though not in North America. And changes have been slow coming in the film industry, but they are happening. Since the first academy awards, more than a century ago, less than two dozen films directed by women have ever been nominated for best picture. This year, there are three… and these numbers are steadily growing.
So if you want to celebrate movies at home, CBC Gem is featuring movies about women this month, including 20th Century Women a coming of age drama set in the 1980s starring Greta Gerwig, Annette Benning and Elle Fanning. MUBI is featuring films with female cinematographers, including Saint Omer, the compelling French courtroom drama, and The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão, the mysterious drama about two sisters in Rio de Janeiro, separated against their will. And NFB has an International Women’s Day Playlist available for free on their website, including Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again; Margaret Atwood – A Word after a Word after a Word is Power; and The Boxing Girls of Kabul. Lots to watch at home.
So this week, also in honour of International Women’s Day, I’m looking at one new documentary about the history of modern feminism in Canada as seen through its media.
Analogue Revolution
Wri/Dir: Marusya Bociurkiw
It’s 1967, and Canada is celebrating 100 years since Confederation. There’s a burst of national pride and an explosion of tiny, independent publishing houses producing CanCon (Canadian Content) throughout the country. This was also the time when feminism gained support, and women were in the spotlight, fighting the system, en masse. They expressed themselves in books, magazines, literary journals and newspapersl. Press Gang in Vancouver and Broadside magazine in Toronto were seminal to the movement.
Women’s own bodies were a central topic, as doctors, at the time, required a husband or father’s consent for a woman to request an operation like a tubal ligation. So in the late 1968, The Montreal Health Press published a birth control guide book for women that — in contemporary parlance — went viral. One American clinic ordered
50 thousand copies right after it was published, and students on campuses across the continent were snapping it up. It was sold at cost. Writing about IUDs, diaphragms and abortion was still illegal at the time, so this book played a crucial role in the women’s movement.
Radio, too was a major force, including shows Dykes on Mykes the longest running lesbian radio show in the world on CKUT-FM in Montreal. Travelling women’s film festivals carried their movies across the country showing the movies in small town church basements on the way.
In the 1970s, the National Film Board opened a new section known simply as Studio D, a bare-bones area where women workshopped and made documentaries. The filmmaker interviews filmmakers like Bonny Sher Klein whose Not a Love Story: A Film About 
Pornography was both controversial and widely watched. Janis Cole and Holly Dale’s crucial documentaries P4W Prison for Women and Hookers on Davie also came out of Studio D.
This momentum continued producing hundreds of publications across the country. Tens of thousands of people marched through city streets on International Women’s Day while others reclaimed the streets at night to stop violence against women. And the movement shifted from one centred on civil rights, women’s bodies, and pay equity, to one stressing individual rights, racial inequity and gender theory. But successive austerity governments in the 1990s effectively destroyed all but a few small publications that relied on government grants to stay afloat.
Analogue Revolution is a comprehensive look at the feminist movement in Canada from the 1960s through the 90s and beyond. It covers massive territory — from a high school filmmaker in Saskatoon, to a Ukrainian Feminist women’s group out of Edmonton to publications in Halifax. There are extensive interviews with Quebecoise activists and writers, people of colour, radical feminists, nudists, and indigenous activists, as the movement changed decade by decade. It features new and vintage footage of Susan Cole, Audre Lorde, Judy Rebick, and many others. The Toronto Women’s Bookstore — the country’s biggest feminist bookstore, which was also firebombed by American anti-abortion militants — is notable by it’s absence… but you can’t include everything.
Analogue Revolution is an important and fascinating history of a movement.
Analogue Revolution is playing tonight at 630 and tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 at the Hot Docs cinema on Bloor st in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
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