Daniel Garber talks with Joshua Oppenheimer about The End at #TIFF24
Photograph by Jeff Harris.
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s some time in the not so distant future. A tight-knit family live in a mansion furnished with old masters and French impressionist paintings on their wall. Their stay-at-home mom is fastidious with keeping things in order. Dad is a retired powerhouse exec who made a killing in the Indonesian oil industry. And their beloved homeschooled 20-year-old son who is curious about the world and loves playing with his toy train set. This lovely, peaceful household is complemented by their faithful butler, Mom’s best friend, and a doctor who is always on call. But something is wrong here. Why is their skin so pallid, their lighting unnatural, and why don’t they ever go outside? It’s because they’re living in a bunker, hidden deep underground as the planet burns. These people may be the only survivors of the end of the world.
The End is also a new film, a musical drama about the last survivors of climate catastrophe. It’s fascinating and devastating, infused with dry, dark comedy. The End is directed and co-written by award-winning filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, best known for his shocking documentaries The Act of Killing and the Look of Silence.
I spoke with Joshua Oppenheimer on-site at TIFF.
The End opens theatrically in Toronto on Dec 13, 2024.
Daniel Garber speaks with Jamie Kastner about Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Applebaum
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo of Jamie Kastner by Jeff Harris.
Jacob Appelbaum is a computer programmer, hacker, and journalist. He was a core member of TOR, and a major player in the world of information privacy. Through his access to NSA files released by whistleblower Edward Snowden he helped break stories like the US government spying on Angela Merkel. He was good looking, charismatic a crucial spokesman for Wikileaks, a 
highly sought-after writer and pubic speaker and has worked with major cultural stars like Ai Weiwei and Laura Poitras. But in 2016, in the wake of sexual abuse accusations, everything came to a halt. Since then, a cloak of silence has descended on everything about him. Is the US government surveilling him? Is he a victim of Cointelpro? Will he end up like Julian Assange, locked away for years without a trial? And how come nobody wants to talk about Jacob Appelbaum anymore?
Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum is a new documentary that looks at this man’s life before and after 2016. It’s clever, surprising and revealing. The film follows him from East 
Berlin to Tel Aviv to Portugal to interview him and those who know him. It’s the latest work by award-winning Toronto documentarian Jamie Kastner. I’ve previously talked with Jamie about The Secret Disco Revolution (2012), The Skyjacker’s Tale (2016), There are no Fakes (2019) and Charlotte’s Castle (2023).
I spoke with Jamie Kastner in Toronto via ZOOM.
Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Applebaum is screening at the TIFF Lightbox on June 23, and premieres on CBC Gem on June 26th.
Daniel Garber talks with Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge about Red Fever
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
What do a feathered headdress on the cover of Vogue, a 70s pop video by Cher, and the gesture used by fans of the Kansas City chiefs have in common? They’re all about the world’s obsession with North American indigenous culture and how it’s been appropriated by the mainstream for fun and profit. And it’s used and misused everywhere, in Europe, North America — even in Asian culture — but with little or no attributions or compensation ever given to the people who originated them. What’s wrong with this, how 
can it be corrected, and what is the cause of Red Fever?
Red Fever is a punchy new documentary that takes a look at cultural appropriation of indigenous art, religion, customs, and their bodies and faces within the mainstream of art, fashion, sports, entertainment, and even democracy. Using fast-moving historical footage, photos and music, it brings us back to the largely unrecognized origins of many aspects of our daily lives. It’s seen through the eyes of 
Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond who guides us across oceans and continents, as he confronts, in a humorous way. Neil Diamond is known for Reel Injun, The Last Explorer and One More River. It’s co-directed by Catherine Bainbridge, a Canadian writer, producer and director who co-founded the award-winning indigenous production company Rezolution Pictures, and is best known for co-directing the award doc Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World.
I spoke with Neil and Catherine in person, in Toronto during Hot Docs.
Red Fever opens in Toronto on June 14th, 2024 at the TIFF Lightbox.
Daniel Garber talks with Jeff Harris about #Oscars 2023!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s post-pandemic Oscar time, when they roll out the red carpets for the stars, choose some issue to temporarily weep about, and pay homage to some of the best, (and not-so-best) movies from the past year. And always a surprise. Will this year be a punch or a slap? A photobomb? Or maybe a misread best picture award? Stay tuned tomorrow to find out.
And to help us understand the movies in competition at this 
year’s academy awards — what to see, what to avoid, what’s great, what’s terrible, who should win, and who we think will win — I’m going to speak with cinephile Jeff Harris. Jeff is a Toronto-based photographer, former photo editor at Maclean’s, and who is continuing a twenty five year art project of self-portraits taken each day. You may recognize his he takes the pics that go with my interviews each year at Hot Docs and TIFF (which he has been covering since 2002). And now he’s the one producing my segments on this show.
I spoke with Jeff Harris in person, in Toronto.
The Academy Awards will be televised on Sunday, March 12th.
Daniel Garber talks with Kevin Hegge about TRAMPS!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo by Jeff Harris.
It’s the late 1970s in a Covent Garden, London nightclub with an exclusive policy. To get in you have to look amazing in some way. An older man in blue jeans gets turned away at the door. The man is Mick Jagger, the place is Bowie Night at the Blitz Club 
and the doorman and organizer is Steve Strange. And so a new movement, born out of the ashes of punk, is dubbed the New Romantics by the mainstream press. But who were these tramps, really?
Tramps! Is a new documentary that looks in depth at East London in the early 1980s, along with the art, fashion, film, 
music, hats, makeup, hair, magazines, sexualities, aesthetics and lifestyles that grew out of it. It’s a stunningly beautiful kaleidoscope of colour, a collection of period photos and footage combined with new interviews with the main players. And it talks about the celebrities who emerged from it, like Boy George, Leigh Bowery, Derek Jarman, Phillip Sallon, Judy Blame, and many others.
Tramps is the work of award-winning Toronto filmmaker Kevin Hegge, whom I last interviewed on this show back in 2012 about his documentary She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column.
I spoke with Kevin Hegge in Toronto, via Zoom.
Tramps! is premiering in Toronto at the Inside Out film festival on May 31st, 7 pm, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Daniel Garber talks with Jeff Harris about #TIFF21!
(Short version)
(Extended version)
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo by Jeff Harris.
TIFF is the one of the world’s biggest film festivals, where independent filmmakers from around the world show their latest work young actors give breakaway performances, and forgotten names try for their come-backs. Celebrities, publicist, the press and autograph seekers live in a weird symbiotic relationship. And movie lovers have a chance to see the best new movies of the year before they are released. But what’s it like during a pandemic when people are still tiptoeing around? How is TIFF right now? What is working, what isn’t? What’s surprising, and what movies are good, bad, or indifferent?
Well to answer some of these questions — and many more — I’m discussing this year’s festival with a long-time collaborator, marking his fifth time on this show.
Jeff Harris is an award-winning photographer and a freelance journalist who for 20 years has been covering TIFF for Macleans and The Walrus.
I spoke with Jeff in Toronto, in person.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Bretten Hannam about Wildhood premiering at #TIFF21!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos of Bretten Hannam by Jeff Harris.
Link and Travis are half-brothers who live with their physically abusive dad in a trailer park down east. Link hates it there, but it’s the only life he’s known since his mother died when he was three. But when he finds a birthday card his dad has hidden from him, he realizes his mother might still be alive. So the two 
brothers run away. On the road they meet Pasmay, a Mi’kmaq who was kicked out of his home because of his sexuality. Together the three embark on a journey down a twisted path where mi’kmaw and two spirited cultures meet. For Link, it’s an education and an initiation into a world he finds both frightening and alluring. Can this 
mismatched threesome become a makeshift family? And will they ever find out what happened to Link’s mother?
Wildhood is a wonderful new film that’s a romantic drama, a coming-of-age story, and a picaresque adventure all in one. It encompasses brotherhood, family and identity — all told from an indigenous and queer point of view. It’s written and directed by Bretten Hannam and it’s their first feature film.
I spoke with Bretten Hannam from Toronto via Zoom.
Wildhood had its world premiere at TIFF21.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn about “The Price of Everything”
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Art can be beautiful, shocking, moving or novel. It can function as a historical record or signal future changes in how we view the world. But it has never been a commodity, an investment, a future or a stock to be leveraged. That is until its steadily rising value proved irresistible to investors, many of whom know “the price of everything… but the value of 
nothing.”
The Price of Everything is the title of a fascinating new documentary that takes us behind the scenes of the monetary side of fine art. It talks with curators, collectors, historians, critics, dealers and auctioneers… people trying to determine — or change — the 
perceived value of a work of art. And it talks to the artists themselves who either embrace or reject the Long Game.
It’s written and directed by award-wininng American filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn, best known for the Oscar-nominated My Architect.
The Price of Everything showed at Hot Docs 18 in the spring and is now opening in theatres in Toronto.
I spoke with Nathaniel, via telephone, from CIUT 89.5 FM.
“What is Democracy?” Daniel Garber talks with Astra Taylor about her new documentary
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris
Is democracy justice or is it freedom? And if it’s freedom, is it freedom to think and say what you want, or is it freedom from hunger, poverty, and homelessness? Or is it just choosing which political party to vote for once every four years?
Should democracy just exist inside a nation, or should
it extend across borders? Is majority rule fair and equal?
What is democracy, anyway?
A new documentary poses just that question to intellectuals and the 
hoi polloi in America and across the Atlantic. It talks to barbers and doctors, students and politicians, in legislatures and at Trump rallies, to try to determine what democracy actually is.
It’s called What Is Democracy and is written and directed by noted documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor, whose works include Examined Life and Zizek!
What is Democracy had its world premier at #TIFF18.
I spoke with Astra Taylor at NFB’s Toronto headquarters during TIFF. Her film is opening soon.
Daniel Garber talks with Hirokazu Kore-eda about After the Storm at #TIFF16
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Ryota is a middle-aged man, separated from his wife and son, and estranged from his mother. Once a rising star in Japan’s literary world, his one novel gathers dust in second-hand bookstores. He hasn’t published anything for 15 years. Instead he earns his living at a skeezy detective agency, 
taking incriminating photos and selling them back to the victims caught on film. What money he does earn goes not for rent or child support but directly to the racetracks. A death in the family brings all the players in his life — his mother, his ex-wife Kyoko and Shingo his son – together again, in his childhood home. But clouds are gathering as a typhoon approaches. Will they still be talking… after the storm?
After the Storm is the name of the newest film by festival favourite and award-winning filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu. He wrote, directed and edited this film, a bittersweet, yet tender look at families, disappointment and loss. This film had its Canadian premier at the Toronto International Film Festival. I spoke to him on location at TIFF16.
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s feature After the Storm is now playing in Toronto.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
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