Daniel Garber talks with Frankie Fenton and IIda Ruishalme about Atomic Hope at #Hotdocs22
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo by Jeff Harris.
Climate change is at a crisis point: enormous forest fires are breaking out around the world, catastrophic weather events are becoming the norm, polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, and sea levels are constantly rising. So any changes that slow down carbon emissions are welcomed by everyone, right? Not necessarily. Nuclear power plants are closing, and climate activists are cheering.
Is anyone supporting the “nuclear option” or is it considered too… radioactive?
A new documentary called Atomic Hope – Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement just had its world premier at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival. It follows members of the widely unpopular pro-nuclear movement as they challenge current beliefs and promote nuclear energy as a viable option to fossil fuels. The film is made by award-winning Irish Director/producer Frankie Fenton, and features nuclear advocates like Iida Ruishalme, a Zurich-based, Finnish biomedical researcher, science communicator, and fiction writer.
Atomic Hope had its world premiere at #Hotdocs22.
I spoke with Frankie and IIda on location at the Hotdocs Networking Lounge at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Daniel Garber talks with Ann Shin about her new documentary The Superfood Chain
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
What do walnuts, goji berries and garlic have in common? How about quinoa, teff, virgin coconut oil and wild salmon? They’re all “superfoods” full of vitamins and minerals, and great traits like anti-oxidents Omega-3, high protein, gluten-free, or high fibre. As soon as a newly-marketed food is dubbed a superfood, it flies off the shelves of our grocery stores. But what happens to the people who grow these superfoods and who consider them a
staple when the demand for a superfood skyrockets? What happens – good ot bad – to the people at the other end of the superfood foodchain?
The Superfood Chain is the title of a fascinating new documentary that follows four families whose local food has become an international commodity: teff growers in Ethiopia, coconut processors in the Philippines, quinoa farmers in Bolivia and salmon fishers in Haida Gwai. The film is directed and narrated by noted Toronto filmmaker Ann Shin, whose powerful documentaries like Escape from North Korea and My Enemy, My Brother use personal stories to tackle major issues.
I spoke with Ann Shin in Toronto by telephone at CIUT 89.5 FM.
The Superfood Chain premiers on TVO Docs on Monday, Oct 8 at 10 pm and is also playing at the upcoming Planet in Focus Film Festival.
Women, famous and infamous. Films reviewed: Lizzie, Anthropocene, Colette
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three movies about famous — and infamous — women. There’s a psychological thriller about an axe murderer; a biopic about a French novelist, and a documentary… about Mother Earth.
Dir: Craig William Macneill
It’s 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden (Chloë Sevigny) lives with her sister Emma, her stepmother Abby, and her rich and successful father (Jamey Sheridan). He’s a successful financier resented by the neighbouring farmers. Lizzie is a pale woman with curly red hair and an uptight manner. She whiles away her hours reading poetry and cooing with the pigeons she keeps in a wooden dovecote.
But trouble is brewing in this family. Father is outwardly kind but with evil intent. Cryptic notes show up at their home, promising blood and damnation. And then Lizzie has a tonic-clonic seizure at the opera house. Her father calls epilepsy “showing off”, but agrees to hire Bridget (Kristen Stewart) an irish maid as her caregiver. Meanwhile, feeling left out in a house of four women, he invites his brother John to stay with them. John is untrustworthy and might be embezzling money. And as the relationship between Lizzie and Bridget turns sexual, they try to rebuff the aggressive creepiness from the men in
the house. What will happen to this disfunctional family?
Well, it’s not a spoiler that the parents are going to die, as anyone who has heard of Lizzie Borden knows that her mother and father were brutally murdered. This is also made clear in the first scene of the film. But you don’t know who actually did it till a shocking scene near the end. Lizzie is a slow moving, slow-build psychological drama. Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart are both good in their roles, but a thriller it’s not. It’s just too slow.
Dir: Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky
Picture a mountain of garbage in Kenya as far as the eye can see. A marble quarry in Italy, carved out of a shear cliff. An open pit mine in Germany. A heavily polluted city in Siberia. Or the rising water gradually flooding the streets and piazzas of Venice. These are not what you normally think of as natural phenomena. Rather they’re part of a new phenomenon, a period some geologists are calling the Anthropocene Epoch, when nature is shaped by humans.
Anthropocene throws a lot of new terms at you, words like anthroturbation – the scarring of the earth’s surface—and concepts like the stages of extinction, as more and more animals exist only in captivity. Visually it’s a treat, but there are so many scientific concepts bombarding the viewer that the message sometimes gets buried in the content. And some of the visual metaphors are too obscure to understand. Why is a bonfire first portrayed as a scary inferno
(suggesting forest fires caused by climate change), when it’s later revealed to be a “good thing” — saving elephants by burning their tusks? And what do a million churchgoers in Nigeria have to do with climate change or pit mining?
Still, this stunning documentary combines the photography of Burtynsky – known for his vast and brutal industrial landscapes — with the filmmaking of de Pencier and Baichwall. It’s like the worlds biggest coffeee table book projected onto a big screen. It’s gorgeous.
Anthropocene is definitely worth seeing, perhaps more as a work of art than as a documentary.
Dir: Wash Westmoreland
It’s the 1890s in Bordeaux, France. Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightly) is a headstrong young woman with long black braids who lives with her parents in a country home. She’s smart, pretty and creative. She’s also a country girl without a dowry. Enter Willy (Dominic West) a much older Parisian man, visiting her parents. Sparks fly, and soon they rendezvous in the barn for a roll in the hay. Literally. Willy sweeps her off her feet and presents his new wife to the consignienti of Paris; they are unimpressed. He’s a celebrity there, known as much for his flamboyant persona as for his writing (He’s actually a talentless hack who
employs a stable of ghost writers.) He encourages her to write too, and then publishes her semi-autobiographical stories about “Claudine” a country school girl.
It’s a smash hit, with Claudine lookalikes popping up all across Paris. And Gabrielle is famous now too… but for her looks, not her writing, since it was published under Willy’s name.
And they are still plagued with financial troubles. Where is all the money going? Mainly to pay for Willy’s mistresses, Willy’s prostitutes, Willy’s gambling debts. Willy can’t keep his willy out of trouble. But my dear, he tells Gabrielle, it’s just what men do.
Gabrielle is pissed that he’s wasting her money and playing with her emotions. So she embarks on her own adventures, a series of affairs: a sex triangle involving a rich woman from Louisiana, known for her auburn hair and come-hither glances. Later she falls for Missy (Denise Gough) an aristocrat who dresses only in men’s clothing and military garb. Is this true love? And will she ever find fame for her writing?
Colette is a fun, historical biopic about the writer who became known as Colette. It’s filled with campy scenes of fin-de-siècle Paris – from shirtless men carrying women on a palanquin, to secret lovers hiding behind velvet curtains. This film is more of a romp than a serious take. But it’s enjoyable nonetheless. And director Westmoreland takes pains to include queer politics in his look at early lesbian feminism, providing a multiracial cast and a proto-trans character (in the current, 21st century sense).
Lizzie, Anthropocene and Collette all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. And opening Thursday is Bad Banks — a gripping German TV drama about high finance in Frankfurt — showing on the big screen at the TIFF Bell Light Box. Don’t miss it!
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
TIFF18! Films reviewed: Consequences, Woman at War, Tito and the Birds
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
Tiff is here, now.
It began last night, and is filled with big-budget, glitzy premiers and movie stars from all over the world. You can go down to King st — between Spadina and University — starting today, to take it all in. And even if you don’t have tickets, with more than two hundred movies opening there, I promise, you can still get in.
But the Hollywood stuff is getting way too much coverage, so this week I’m talking about three, lesser-known movies playing at TIFF that I really like. There’s an eco-activist in Iceland, a bird talker in Brazil and a Slovenian in the slammer.
Wri/Dir Darko Stante
Andrej (Mate Zemlijk) is a teenager who has it made. He lives with his parents in a nice suburban home. He’s handsome, fit, with a beautiful girlfriend and a pet rat named FIFA. Fortified with bourbon he can pick up any girl in the room. But the sex he has is bad, his life is empty, and he takes out his frustrations on everyone around him.
This lands him in a reform school with strict rules. It’s run by adult men, but is actually governed by a gang of bullies, headed by Žele (Timon Sturbej) and his sidekick Niko. Žele is a tough skinhead who extorts money from the other boys by claiming they owe him. Niko is a deranged practical joker who eggs Žele on while brandishing a blowtorch. Andrej initially stands up for his pothead roommate Luka, but soon he is
invited into the gang and becomes their main enforcer. He accompanies them on their weekend outings in Ljubljana.
And as he is pulled away from the rules of his home and the reform centre he feels increasingly isolated, spending the night in a kindergarten playhouse he remembers from his childhood. Meanwhile the crime level continues to rise, as Žele grooms Andrej for shakedowns, car theft, drug trade and smuggling. But Andrej’s not in it for the money. He likes the bully – likes, as in sexually – and thinks he sees a mutual attraction. Will Zele be his rival, his friend… or his lover?
Consequences is a dark, coming of age drama set in present-day Slovenia. It probes alienated youth, crime, drugs, sexual fluidity, and relationships. This film uses unknown actors to great effect and the interplay between Zemlijk and Sturbej is compelling. Darko Stante’s Consequences is part of TIFF’s Discovery series and it’s having to world premier tonight. Catch it if you can.
Dir: Benedikt Erlingsson
Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) is a single, middle-aged Icelandic woman with a secret. It’s not that she’s a well-liked choir head. Or that she has an identical twin named Asa. Or even that she’s been approved to adopt a Ukrainian orphan girl. Her big secret is she’s the eco activist the government has been searching for. She’s the one who takes down hydro cables, shutting down the foreign-owned smelting plants endangering Iceland’s once pristine environment.
Using a simple bow and arrow, along with some metal wire, she manages to bring down a high tension wire. Her secret is known only to one person in the government – her friend and government mole Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson) who is sickened by their environmental policies. The government repeatedly arrests a latino hiker in a Che Guevara T-shirt, while Halla escapes unknown.
Halla is one with nature. She knows every nook and cranny, every mound and cliff, and manages to avoid drones, helicopters and security experts. But when they close down all the roads just to catch her she seeks refuge with a sympathetic farmer, possibly a distant cousin. But with the government closing in, can she continue her one-woman fight for the environment? Or will it ruin her long awaited chance to adopt a child?
Woman at War is a brilliant satirical comedy drama about Iceland, its clans, government corruption, the environment, and its women. Geirharðsdóttir is marvellous as the twin sisters, totally believable as an underground superhero who can communicate with the environment by covering her face in lichen.
Another great movie at TIFF.
Dir: Gabriel Bitar, André Catoto, Gustavo Steinberg
Tito is a schoolboy in a big Brazilian city like São Paulo. His dad is an inventor, specializing in steampunk contraptions filled with misshapen, pipes, dials and gewgaws sticking out at weird angles. He thinks his machine will let people talk with birds. But when it explodes, and Tito ends up in hospital, dad leaves his family for good. A few years later Tito takes up his dad’s role and enters his own invention into the school science fair. His main rival is a rich kid named Teo. But Tito’s machine, like his dad’s, blows up, sending the audience running.
Meanwhile a strange disease has gone viral infecting more and more people in the city. It feeds on fear – fear of crime, fear of disease, fear of poor people – even though there is nothing to fear but fear itself. This fear is encouraged by a real estate developer, trying to move people out of the cities into gated communities under glass domes. Scary men in Hazmat suits have taken over spraying everyone with chemicals, but it doesn’t seem to work. So Tito and his best friends – the brave Sarah and the silent Buiu – join forces to defy fear and thus defeat this terrible disease. They are sure the city’s pigeons hold the secret. And they invite rich rival Teo – the son of the real estate mogul – to
help them too. Can they save the city with birds and science? Or will fear overcome logic?
Tito and the Birds is an animated film from Brazil that looks at poverty and class difference as seen through the eyes of children. It’s a kids’ movie, for sure, but I loved it, especially the colours splashed across the big screen. Vibrant swathes of glowing green, hot pink, warm yellow, and black are everywhere, giving it an unforgettable look.
Consequences, Tito and the Birds, and Woman at War are all premiering at TIFF. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Alanis Obomsawin about Our People will be Healed
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris
Above the northernmost tip of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House is a Cree First Nation community that works. It has a wonderful school system, local radio station, police, cultural groups, a language renewal program, music, dance and more. Traditional rituals are preserved, and young people are mentored by elders about their relationship with the land and their history. But — after 150 years under the Indian Act, with broken treaties, disease, death, and poverty; forced assimilation, mass incarceration, cultural genocide, residential schools, widespread discrimination, racism, rape and murder – this is a people that needs to be healed.
Our People Will Be Healed is the name of a new documentary that premiered at TIFF and is now showing at ImagineNative, Toronto’s Indigenous film festival. It is the work of master director Alanis Obomsawin, Canada’s doyenne of documentary filmmaking, who has recorded the lives and issues of First Nations in fifty films over fifty years.
I talked with Alanis on location at the National Film Board in Toronto during TIFF 17.
Our People will be Healed is playing at the ImagineNative Film Festival in Toronto on Saturday, 21 October 2017 at 3:00 pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Journeys. Movies reviewed: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping, Tikeq, Qiterleq, Mikileraq, Eqeqqoq
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
ImagineNative, the world’s biggest indigenous film festival, is showing 96 fantastic movies including 27 world premiers right now through the weekend. Daytime screenings are free for students, seniors or underemployed. And native elders are available for counselling and smudging. Also on this weekend is Planet in Focus showing docs with an environmental theme.
This week I’m looking at three very different movies about journeys. There are container ships floating around the globe, a fighting hobo hitchhiking across America, and four teens in Greenland who begin their journey in a pile of dirt.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Dir: Edward Zwick
Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) is an itinerant army vet, hitching around America carrying just a toothbrush, armed with just his fists. He’s heading to DC to take a woman to dinner. Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) sits at Jack’s old desk, MP in the same division where he once worked. They’ve never met but he likes her voice — she helped him solve a crime by telephone. But things change fast in the army. Today, Turner is in the brig charged with murder, a young woman named Sam claims she’s his daughter, and a professional hitman (Patrick Heusinger) is trying to kill him. He doesn’t know why any of this is happening.
He decides to tackle all his problems at once. First he helps Turner escape from prison. She’s a smart but stern woman with straight black hair pulled back. She wants to find out who is behind the case she’s investigating about the unexplained death of two soldiers in Afghanistan. Clearly some sort of conspiracy at work. Sam (Danika Yarosh), his purported daughter, is a lot like Jack – she’s anti-authority and given to petty crime, yet analytic in nature. And she can think on her feet, solving problems on the fly. But Jack has no recollection of ever meeting her mother, never mind sleeping with her. The three of them form a make-shift family as they chase and are chased by armed killers. But who will survive the ultimate showdown?
This is a good action thriller, the latest in a series based on Lee Child’s novels. It has a complex plot, salted with lots of chases, explosions, and shootouts. And interesting characters, at least the good guys. The villains, though, are basically robotic, dull killers, dangerous but entirely unsympathetic. To enjoy a Jack Reacher novel you have to suspend your moral disbelief, and embrace his caveman-like brutality: Kill the bad guys, save the good guys and maim any neutrals who get in your way. The character depends on his intimidating looks. And there lies the problem: Tom Cruise can’t do intimidating. He’s too nice.
But despite all this — and the extreme violence — I still enjoyed the movie.
Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping
Dir: Denis Delestrac
You know that cool H&M T-shirt you just bought on sale for three bucks? It may say Made in Bangladesh on the label, but it’s actually been around the world a few times, with buttons from Vietnam, plastic from Europe, American cotton, and Indian dye. And it travels in uniform containers aboard one of the 60,000 ships plying the seas. This documentary looks at the underside of the shipping industry and the hidden environmental damage it inflicts in exchange for the low, low prices we all enjoy.
For example, the stinky sodium oxide belched from a single ship is equivalent to that of fifty million cars. (There are no international emission standards at sea.) And the ballast — the water a ship might take on in one ocean and expel in another — is a leading cause of invasive species, the displaced plants and animals that are killing off native sea life. Flying flags of convenience, ship owners are rarely fined for their frequent accidents and spills, while international environmental organizations largely ignore shipping altogether.
Freightened is an information-packed documentary, with lots of stuff I didn’t know. It alternates between talking-head experts and beautiful, Burtynsky-like vistas of mammoth container ships in port and at sea.
Tikeq, Qiterleq, Mikileraq, Eqeqqoq (Fore Finger, Middle Finger, Ring Finger, Little Finger)
Dir: Ujarneq Fleischer
Four teenaged boys live in Sisimiut, western Greenland. Their mission? To be the coolest crew in town. They excel at skating, biking, playing cards and goofing off to imported pop music. In the community centre they rule. But then a stranger shows up from Nuuk who says he’ll show them things they’ve never seen, and reveal secrets they’ve never heard. He leads them to a pile of dirt with a tiny wooden door. Inside is an enormous world almost exactly like the one they came from.
Next they go on a journey in the mountains searching for a white box with a tupilaq — a monster totem – lying on top. Inside is a message written in the old language telling them what to do. It’s up to them to find love, honesty, and politeness, in this coming-of-age drama.
Fingers is a comedy adventure about preserving traditional culture in modern Inuit Greenland. It’s also the first feature film ever coming out of Greenland. Made on a micro-budget with a DIY feel, it’s basically four guys with a video camera, with no costumes and just plastic bags as props. It’s also my first exposure to indigenous culture from Greenland… and it’s really good. It incorporates traditional storytelling with contemporary pop culture and all-around goofiness.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, opens today in Toronto, check your local listings; Tikeq, Qiterleq, Mikileraq, Eqeqqoq (Fore Finger, Middle Finger, Ring Finger, Little Finger) is playing today at 2:00 pm at ImagineNATIVE at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Go to Imaginenative.org for details. And for Freightened showtimes, go to planetinfocus.org.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Life and Death. Movies reviewed: Oddball, I Saw the Light
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s spring film festival season in Toronto right now. There’s Cinefranco Special Quebec showing French language movies for free. Next week is the 29th annual Images festival, with galleries and movie theatres both presenting art on film. And Hot Docs, Toronto’s documentary festival is on later this month. But right now, starting today, is TIFF Kids, with movies from all over the
world for kids age 3-13, including many free screenings.
This week I’m looking at movies about life and death. There’s a real-life drama about a dog trying to keep some animals alive, and a biopic about a country and western singer trying to drink himself to death.
Oddball
Dir: Stuart McDonald
Emily (Sarah Snook) is a conservationist from a small town in Australia. It’s a tourist village filled with locals dressed in historical outfits. Emily lives with her young daughter Olivia (Coco Jack Gillies) and her boyfriend, Bradley (Alan Tudyk) a tourism exec from New York. Her job? To keep alive a tiny flock of fairy penguins. These adorable little birds return each year to nest on a rocky island just offshore. It’s a wildlife preserve. But the penguins are threatened by an invasive, European species – foxes – that is knocking down their numbers. For the island to remain a sanctuary, free of development, it has to have at least ten little penguins.
So they set up a watchman with a tranquilizer gun to stop the foxes, and build special boxes for the penguins to nest in. But still the numbers decrease. What can they do to save them?
Enter Olivia’s Grandpa (Shane Jacobson) and his dog Oddball. Swampy is a husky, bearded chicken farmer, given to frank talk and wild schemes. Oddball is a furry white dog who keeps the foxes out of Swampy’s chicken coops. Olivia adores her grandpa and his dog. Emily does too, but finds them a bit if a nuisance. Bradley can’t stand the dog. When Oddball runs rampant through the town, all hell breaks loose. He messes up an important event and upsets the apple cart. Literally. The town bigwigs are furious and banish Oddball to the farm
forever.
But when Swampy notices how kind Oddball is to a penguin he saves, he and Olivia hatch a secret plan: Oddball becomes the official Penguin Guard on the rocky island. But they mustn’t let the bad guys who want to develop the island into a tourist trap – know what they’re doing. Can they save the penguins, outsmart the townfolk and preserve the sanctuary?
This is a cute movie based on a true story. It’s full of fair dinkum Aussie culture. And it avoids most of the pitfalls of kids movies: it’s not too violent or scary, no talking dogs, no princesses, nothing supernatural, and no commercial tie-ups. The only thing this movie is selling is conservationism.
I Saw the Light
Wri/Dir: Marc Abraham
It’s 1944, in Andalusia, Alabama. Hank and Audrey are young musicians madly in love. Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) is pretty as a picture with her doe eyes and auburn hair. Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) is skinny and tall with jug ears. They’re getting married on the sly, with no wedding, no preacher, no guests. They hope to be famous someday, but for now they still live with Hank’s single mom, Lillie (Cherry Jones). She’s a classic stage mother chauffeuring her son to shows for 10 years now. Her Hank can do no wrong, but that Audrey – she could be trouble.
Hank and his band — guitar, bass, fiddle and steel — perform their hillbilly tunes on local radio each morning and at a bar at night. Some people like the sad songs he writes, but it doesn’t stop the hecklers and fighters from making his life miserable. One man nearly breaks his back in an unprovoked barroom brawl. So Hank shows up drunk as a skunk at most gigs. Alcohol eases his pain. His mom keeps him happily inebriated dropping bottles of hooch into his coat pockets, and Audrey doesn’t like it one bit. She thinks they’d be famous by now if he weren’t such a lush. And when he drops her from his radio show – her screechy voice is unpopular — things get dicey between them.
Though he’s a prolific songwriter, churning out hits by the dozen, he wants to be known as a performer. His ultimate goal? To join the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.
I Saw the Light follows Hank Williams’ quick rise to fame, cut short by a heart attack at age 29. Based on a tell-all biography, the movie concentrates on his problems at home and his troubles at work. So we get to see his fights with his wife, his extramarital affairs, his alcoholism, his back pain and his addiction to painkillers. At work we’re privy to the back room deals of the country music industry, with his agent/manager Fred Rose (Bradley Whitford) as our guide and sometime narrator. The question is — why? His agent is boring. And his home life is depressing. It’s all very sordid and sad with hardly any good moments to relieve his relentless funk. I’m not saying the movie’s boring, just not fun to watch. We can ogle Hank’s hard times from afar, but we never get to see into his heart or share his passion.
The one redeeming factor is Hank Williams’ music. Something about his songs — both the sad tunes and the upbeat ones – always brings a tear to my eye.
I Saw the Light opens today in Toronto: check your local listings. And Oddball is the opening night movie for TIFF Kids. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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