Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Sophie Deraspe about Antigone
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
Antigone is a straight-A high school student in Montreal. She lives with two brothers and a sister, raised by ther grandmother. They immigrated from North Africa when she was still a child. She’s heading for university and is dating Hémon, the son of a prominent politician. But her normal life is shattered when the 
police kill one brother and jail the other. She comes up with a scheme to take her brothers place in prison. But what will become of Antigone?
Antigone is the title of a fantastic new film from Québec, about a strong young woman willing to confront the government and risk everything for the love of her brother. The film transplants the classic Greek play into 
modern day Montréal, incorporating contemporary cinema, drama, literature, and music. The film is written and directed by Sophie Deraspe who also served as cinematographer and editor. Antigone is her first feature and has won countless prizes, including best Canadian Film at TIFF and is Canada’s choice for Best Foreign Film Oscar.
I spoke with Sophie at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Antigone opens today in Toronto.
Bro Movies. Films reviewed: Bigger, First Man, Free Solo
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Fall Film Festival season in Toronto now, meaning more movies than you can shake a stick at. Toronto After Dark will thrill and chill you with horror, cult and fantasy pics. 
Cinefranco brings brand new French language comedies, dramas and policiers from Quebec and Europe. And Rendezvous with Madness plays fascinating films 
accompanied by panel discussions on addiction and mental health.
But this week I’m talking about bro films, two biopics and a doc about men with lofty goals. One wants to climb a sheer cliff, another wants to build the perfect body, and a third one who just wants to fly to the moon.
Bigger
Dir: George Gallo
Joe Weider (Tyler Hoechlin) is a poor jewish kid in depression-era Montreal. On the streets tough kids beat him up and steal his paper route money, and at home his cruel mom beats him for not keeping clean. At least his little brother Ben (Aneurin Barnard) looks up to him. Joe finds inspiration in unusual places: a 
strongman at the circus and photos of weight lifters he see at newsstands. He begins to obsessively draw pictures of perfect male bodies, copying from textbooks at the McGill library. He wants to promote beautiful physiques, bodies that are muscular, symmetrical and healthy. But fitness for health and looks is still a new concept. In those days people guzzled booze, smoked like chimneys, and thought exercise was a dangerous thing best left to 
olympic athletes.
Weider challenges all that with self-published magazines, promoting new exercises, diets and weight training, illustrated with glamour shots of barely-dressed muscle men. It’s a smash hit, he gets a US contract and Joe and Ben’s empire expands to bodybuilder contests, weights, and a wide range of magazines. And when business takes him to Hollywood, he spots a bleached blonde pin up model working out at Jack LaLanne’s gym. Betty (Julianne Hough) is everything he desires: beautiful, fit and 
smart (he is separated from his first wife). Is this true love? Later he discovers Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger – the personification of his childhood drawings – and brings him to America.
Bigger is a fun, if idealized, look at the life and career of Canadian fitness mogul Joe Weider. It’s a bit corny, with Montreal-born Joe talking in an unplaceable, choppy accent. And it steers clear of his lawsuits and scandals. But Hoechlin and Hough are enjoyable as Joe and Betty, and there’s even a super villain, a racist, anti-semitic homophobe named Hauk (wonderfully played by Kevin Durand) who is his business rival and real-life enemy. Not a great movie, but an enjoyable one.
First Man
Dir: Damien Chazelle
It’s the 1960s in America, the space race is on, and the Soviets are winning. Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) is a test pilot exploring the skies. He can land any plane, even one about to explode. He’s married to Janet (Claire Foy), a pixie-ish woman with a fierce temper. They have a young daughter they both love. But when the girl dies of an incurable illness, and Neil loses his 
job despite his skills they know things have to change. So Neil makes a big decision: NASA needs astronauts, and he’s going to be one. They move down to Houston and settle in to suburban life.
First Man follows the career and home life of the renowned astronaut, from Gemini missions, to Apollo’s first landing. Armstrong is portrayed as a strong silent type, a no-nonsense guy who drives off alone to handle anger and depression. It also deals 
with astronauts and their uncertain lives (lots of them died). And director Chazelle makes you feel like you’re there with them in the planes and rockets. He even inserts showtunes into his astronaut movie. (Wait — showtunes?) So why didn’t I Iike it? First Man is too heavy, too long, too ponderous. It’s one of those overly stern and patriotic American movies about national heroes. And where’s the suspense? We already know he was the first man on the moon. What’s the point? Ok, there are a few powerful scenes, but First Man consists mainly of rattling cockpits, brooding astronauts and suburban housewives yelling about their husbands.
Ryan Gosling is wasted in this boring example of Oscar Bait.
Free Solo
Dir: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin
It’s 2016 and Alex Honnold has one obsession: to scale a sheer cliff in Yosemite. Mountain climbers have done it before in teams rapelling with ropes, pitons and caribiners. But Alex wants to do it “free solo”, that is, by himself 
and without safety ropes. One slip, one miscalculated reach, will send him plunging to his death. But he really wants to climb El Cap, and if it’s not free solo, what’s the point?
Alex is a boyish, wiry vegetarian who cares little for material things. He’s a loner who lives out of a trailer. He’s also in perfect shape, lithe, bendy and incredibly strong. He has to be to hold onto a crack in a rock with just a few fingers while stretching his body 
sideways to the next outcropping. He intensely studies the cliff, practicing each stage in separate small climbs using ropes. And he is accompanied by the filmmakers, who are accomplished climbers themselves. Alex proves to be a bit camera shy, hesitant to “let go” before the cameras. Is it performance anxiety? And will Alex make it to the top of El Capitan… or plunge to his death?
Free Solo is an amazing and spectacular look at one climber 
attempting the nearly impossible. I have no deep-seated passion for rock climbing – I even have a fear of falling – but this movie kept me riveted the whole time. Scenes that show Alex’s quirky nature and the people around him — including other climbers, his family and his girlfriend – help give him a more rounded portrayal. But it’s the climb itself, and the truly amazing photography, that really keeps your attention.
Bigger, First Man, and Free Solo and open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Changes. Films reviewed: Venus, RBG, Boom for Real
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
Spring Film Festival Season is going strong in Toronto with world premiers, features and short films to reflect every taste. Inside Out is one of the world’s largest LGBT film festivals; ICFF, the Italian Contemporary film festival, has parallel screenings in eight cities across Canada; and Toronto’s Japanese Film Festival features great movies and a special appearance by Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient Setsuko Thurlow. And brand new this year is Toronto’s True Crime Film Festival – the title says it all. They’re all coming soon.
This week I’m looking at three new movies – a dramedy ad two documentaries – opening today, which (coincidentally) are all directed by women. There’s a teenaged boy who changes New York’s art scene, a diminutive judge who changes US laws, and a woman in her thirties who just wants to change herself.
Venus
Dir: Eisha Marjara
Sid (DeBargo Sanyal) is a Montrealer in her thirties going through some major changes. Her longtime boyfriend Daniel (Pierre-Yves Cardinal: Tom at the Farm) dumped her, and a strange, 14-year-old kid has been following her 
around. But the biggest change of all is her gender – she’s transitioning from male to female, and is about to appear as a woman, in public, for the very first time. That’s when Ralph (Jamie Mayers) the 14 year 
old skate kid who’s been following her around finally tells her why: Sid, he says, you’re my dad!
What?! First of all, she says, I only have sex with men, second of all I’m brown – Sid is of a Punjabi ancestry – and you’re white. But doesn’t she remember Kristin from high school? (Kristin is 
Ralph’s mom and Ralph read in her diary that she had a fling with Sid as a teenager).
When she gets over the shock Sid takes a crash course in Parenting for Dummies, and starts to bond with Ralph. Her 
ex-partner Daniel reappears in her life, and accepts her change of gender. And her estranged parents, her transphobic Mamaji (Zena Darawalla) and laid-back Papaji (Gordon Warnecke: My 
Beautiful Launderette), welcome her back with open arms when they discover they’re grandparents. But trouble lurks. Will Daniel come out publicly as her partner? Will Ralph tell his Mom he found his birth parent? And will Sid survive the stress of transition?
Venus is a very cute dramedy, one that shows pathos without too much treacle, and keeps you interested. And the cast is uniformly believable and endearing, especially the principals: Sanyal, Mayers and Cardinal.
RBG
Dir: Julie Cohen, Betsy West
In 1970s America it was not illegal to refuse women bank loans without a man’s signature, to fire them for being pregnant, to pay them less than men, to bar them from public schools, private clubs and other institutions… even for husbands to rape their own wives.
Enter noted lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Born in Brooklyn, she is one of few female students at Harvard Law in the 1950s which helps shape her legal outlook. She observes the oppression and panic of 
the Red Scare. She also experiences discrimination first hand, as she and other women are ignored by professors and barred from accessing archives. Later, she works for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and begins to challenge laws that discriminate against women, 
one at a time, through lawsuits. Many of her cases make it to the all-male Supreme Court, whose members understand civil rights on the basis of race, but can’t yet conceive of it on the basis of sex.
She teaches them what’s what.
Later this diminutive, shy woman becomes a law professor, a circuit judge in the Washington, D.C. Appeals Court and eventually a Supreme Court 
justice herself, often leading dissenting positions on the increasingly conservative court. More recently, in her eighties, she has been adopted by young feminist activists as a “rock star” or celebrity of sorts; an unusual role model for a youth-obsessed culture.
RBG is an interesting and informative – if conventional – look at her policies, her home life, her late husband, and her love of opera.
Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Dir: Sara Driver
It’s 1978 and New York is a bombed out city. Crime rates are soaring, the government is bankrupt, and poor neighbourhoods like the Lower East side are abandoned and crumbling. With hard times come big changes. Both Punk rock and hip hop culture 
are developing side by side, and into this incubator steps a 16 year old boy named Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Born in Brooklyn, the son of a Haitian Dad and a Puerto Rican mom, Jean Michel is homeless, 
kicked out for dropping out of high school. Now he’s couch-surfing in the lower east side, and becoming an artist. He expresses himself as SAMO, a graffiti artist. But instead of the 
bold, chunky murals and tags that cover the subways Jean-Michel scrawls pensive poetry and enigmatic thoughts using plain – though distinctive — letters. He later develops his images – childlike hearts, crosses, three pointed crowns, Batman and science books – and applies them to diverse media: everything from walls, to clothing, to refrigerator doors. He targets walls near Soho, so galleries will notice. He already 
thinks of himself as a superstar, just one who is not famous yet.
But Soho galleries don’t care much about youth, punk, hip hop or black culture in general. So the artists create their own spaces in a DIY mode. Still a teenager he attends seminal art happenings and events around the city, whether or not he is actually invited, spontaneously adding his art directly 
to gallery walls And he refines his distinctive look, with short dreads and a partly shaved skull.
Boom for Real is a brilliant documentary about an artist life before his incredible fame in the art boom of the 1980s and his untimely death. It situates him within an era: of Fab 5 Freddy and Planet Rock; Club 57 and the Mudd Club; Grafitti art, Jim Jarmusch, club kids and Quaaludes, fashion, music, rap and art. It’s the best sort of documentary, one that functions as a constantly-flowing oral history told by the people who were there. It shows a fantastic array of period photos, videos and images documenting Basquiat’s teenaged years. Even the closing credits are thoughtfully laid out.
Beautiful movie.
Venus, RBG, and Boom for Real all open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Can depression lead to great sex? Films reviewed: Axolotl Overkill, Entanglement, Fake Tattoos
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Feeling blue? Don’t worry, things will get better, and bad events, even depression, can sometimes lead to great sex. This week I’m looking at three movies (from Berlin, Montreal and Vancouver) where a chance meeting offers new hope to depressed people.
There’s a brooding introvert picked up by a girl at a thrash concert; a teenaged girl who encounters a middle-aged woman in a coke-filled haze; and a depressed guy who wants to have sex …with his sister?!
Axolotl Overkill
Wri/Dir: Helene Hegemann (Based on her novel Axlotl Overdrive)
Mifti (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) is a student at an alternative high school in Berlin, and she’s depressed. Her parents are divorced, with her mom in hospital, brain dead, and her rich dad gallavanting around with no time for his kids. She’s forced to live with her adult half-sister and half-brother, in an uneasy arangement. She hates school and acts out, upsetting everyone she meets. She even gets in a food fight with the lunch lady. Turns out this lunch lady is an equally rude TV star named Ophelia (Mavie Hörbiger) who is working at the school because she was sentenced to community service. She’s beautiful, famous,
and occasionally psychotic. Mifti attaches herself to Ophelia and her entourage to explore and discover the mysteries of Berlin’s nightlife. This involves exotic pets, throbbing music, cigarettes and handguns. She goes on weekend-long benders, snorting coke in men’s rooms, and picking up cab drivers for furtive sex. Somewhere along the way she meets a strikingly beautiful, but mysterious, woman named Alice (Arly Jover), who is at least three times her age. They embark on an intense 
sexual relationship. Can Mifti survive her dysfunctional family, her nihilistic nature, and her crash-and-burn lifestyle? Or will it all come tumbling down?
Helene Heggemann is 25 now, and a sensation in contemporary Germany. This is her first directed feature, but she’s been writing novels and plays for a decade. I like the picaresque structure of the movie, journeys from place to place with Mifti absorbing it all, taking it all in. At the same time, Mifti is self-centred, rude and offensive — and comes from a privileged background — so it’s hard to sympathize with her. Lots of passion and emotion in this movie but no love, just alienation. The plot’s confusing too, so it’s hard to tell what’s real, what’s imaginary and what’s a flashback. Still, I enjoyed this unsparing look at underground Berlin seen through a teenager’s eyes.
Entanglement
Dir: Jason James
Ben (Thomas Middleditch) lives alone in an apartment in BC. He was married and successful, until his wife ran off with another guy. Now he’s severely depressed, to the point of suicide. He’s seeing a child psychologist (he’s 30) and takes anti-psychotic meds. Only his 
neighbour Tabby (Diana Bang) is looking out for him. He has hit rock bottom… until two random events change everything.
First his parents tell him a family secret. He has a sister he’s never 
met… well almost a sister. In fact she was an infant adopted by his childless parents but taken back on the first day when his mother discovered she was pregnant. Ben decides to find his almost sister. Next he meets a woman at random who is everything he’s not. Ben is gangly, ginger haired and shy. Hanna (Jess Weixler) is vivacious and spontaneous, willing to break into a swimming pool for a late night skinny dip. She is sexy and wild, with bleached-blonde hair. She’s a pick-pocket and also a bit of a stalker – she pursues Ben with a vengeance. She even wants to have sex with him. Tabby warns Ben to take it slowly… she might not be what she says she is. But Ben is totally 
into her… even though Hanna might be that almost sister he’s looking for. He’s convinced it’s all quantum physics, random events are all connected and we should let the universe figure it out.
Entanglement is a fun and comic look at a dark subject – depression, attempted suicide and psychotic breakdowns. It shifts from simple comedy into psychedelia, as Ben sees the world in his own way. It also has a very surprising ending – no spoilers. Middleditch and Weixler make a great yin and yang couple, while Bang is perfect as the “straight man.”
I liked this movie a lot.
Fake Tattoos (Les Faux Tatouages)
Wri/Dir: Pascal Plant
Theo (Anthony Therrien) is a shaggy-haired guy in Montreal, celebrating his 18th birthday. He’s broody and intense, into hardcore black Tshirts and tattoo designs. He quaffs a six pack of beer – bought legally for the first time – and heads to a thrash punk concert by himself. He’s a loner, but lets loose in the crowd, just another moshing body.
Afterwards a young woman approaches him about a tattoo on his arm. It’s a fake, she says, but a good one. Mag (Rose-Marie Perrault) has a nose ring and blonde hair with pink tips. She’s getting over a bad breakup. She’s a funny extrovert, and tries to break through Theo’s standoffish attitude. They end up sleeping together, which quickly turns from a one-night stand into an intense serious relationship. This may be love. Alas, like a cup of 
yogurt, it’s due to expire in just a few weeks. He’s moving to LaPocatiere a small town way up the St Lawrence, to get away from something terrible in his past. Why is Theo a loner? What is he escaping? Can Mag recover from a previous bad relationship? And will their love endure?
Fake Tattoos is a wonderful story about young summer lovers in Montreal. The pair have amazing chemistry that comes through in this short and simple love story. It’s a sweet look at first love. This is Pascal Plante’s first feature – 
it played at Slamdance and at the Berlinale this year — and I can’t wait to see his next one.
Entanglement opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Fake Tattoos and Axlotl Overkill are both playing at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival that’s on next week. And if you’re 25 or under, tickets are free – 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.
Flashback. Films Reviewed: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Rings, Shepherds and Butchers
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT
89.5 FM.
If the 1970s was Hollywood’s golden age then the 80s and 90s were its tin foil age —when a series of corporate takeovers placed short-term profits over creativity, and the Oscars celebrated forgettable, middle-brow pap. Even so, there were some fun and popular movies from 80s and 90s. Films like Alien, Shallow Grave, and Starship Troupers are playing at Cineplex’s Flashback Film Festival (FBFF) across Canada starting today, giving you a chance to revisit favourites on the big screen.
This week I’m looking at flashbacks. There’s a rerelease of a Canadian coming-of-age classic from the 70s, a flashback to a courtroom drama set in apartheid South Africa in the 80s; and a new sequel to a Japanese horror movie from the 90s.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)
Dir: Ted Kotcheff Based on the novel by Mordecai Richler
It’s the 1940s in a poor, Jewish section of Montreal. Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss) is a teenager recently graduated from Fletcher’s Field (a.k.a. Baron Byng) High School. 
He lives with his widowed father Max (Jack Warden) who works as a taxi driver and part-time pimp, and his big brother Lennie. Lennie is a smart and sophisticated med student at McGill. But Duddy has neither the brains nor the inclination to study.
He’s a boorish and loud, nervous and uncouth, always sweating and scratching, jumping 
and cussing. He has a filthy mouth and an intrusive manner. With no friends or admirers he just wants to get rich quick. His idol is a gangster known as The Boy Wonder (Henry Ramer), and his favourite retort is kiss my Royal Canadian Ass.
He gets a summer job at a holiday resort in the Laurentiens, but is relentlessly put down by rich kids from Westmount and Outrement. He makes friend with a pretty waitress named Yvette (Micheline Lanctot). They fall for each other and she takes him to a secret spot beside a pristine lake. He’s struck by its beauty and vows to buy it, but is blocked by Québécois farmers who never sell property to jewish people. And Yvette is turned off by his constant drive for profits and 
wealth.
Duddy sets off on a series of impossible ventures he thinks will make enough money to buy the land: Importing Pinball machines with his friend Virgil, an American he meets on a train (Randy Quaid); and producing films with an alcoholic British communist (Denholm Elliot). But in his quest for success, he risks alienates his friends, his lover and his family. What will he learn from his apprenticeship with the real world?
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a hilarious and audacious drama from the 70s which deserves to be seen on the big screen. It’s a dark slice of Canadian life, a world full of bigotry, snobbery, selfishness and deceit, tempered with the glorious freedom of a young man pursuing his dreams.
Rings
Dir: F. Javier Gutierrez
Julia (Matilda Lutz ) is a high school grad in small town USA. She’s sad because her pretty, but dumb-as-a-post boyfriend (Alex Roe) is heading off to university in Seattle. Don’t worry, Holt says, I’ll skype you every night. But when the calls stop coming and he doesn’t answer her texts, brave Julia heads off to Seattle to investigate. And she finds something strange: there’s an old black-and-white video everyone tells her to watch. What she doesn’t know is that anyone who watches this video will be dead in seven days. But if you trick someone else into
watching it, you get another seven days added to your life.
Like Orpheus in the Underworld, Julia decides to forge ahead, rescuing her boyfriend from Hell. She intentionally watches the dreaded video, and using her powers of second sight – she’s clairvoyant — she decides to follow a ghost to its point of origin. But first she has to deal with a secretive professor named Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) and a blind graveyard custodian (Vincent d’Onofrio).
Can Julia rescue Holt, defeat a ghost with long black hair, and figure out the meaning behind the cursed video tape?
Rings is a reboot of the scary Japanese movie Ring and its sequels. Last week I interviewed two ghosts from that era, Sadako vs Kayako. In the American films, Sadako is called Samara, and urban Japan becomes a village somewhere in Washington State. More than that, Rings trades the chill feel of video static for a more conventional American ghost story.
Is it scary? A little, especially towards the end as Julie’s visions start to pay off. But the story is so ridiculously disjointed it’s laughable. It treats the original Ring as just a jumping-off point for an unrelated story, discarding much of what made that film so scary.
Shepherds and Butchers
Dir: Oliver Schmitz
It’s 1987 in Apartheid-era South Africa. Leon Labuschagne (Garion Dowds) a white Afrikaner, is arrested for murdering seven black African members of a soccer club in a quarry. The seven bodies were found neatly lined up in a row. The accused refuses to defend himself or even to say anything about what he did; he says he can’t remember. It’s an open 
and shut case. Or is it?
In walks the famed jurist Johan Webber (Steve Coogan), a staunch opponent to the death penalty. While not contesting the actual crime, instead he says it is the brutal South African justice system that led to the crime. A shy, church-going kid turned into a mass murderer in just a few years? Preposterous!
It turns out Leon, since age 17, has been forced to work on death row in a maximum security prison. His work is like a shepherd, tending to the needs — food, showers, and prayers — of men “on the rope” (waiting to be hanged). But he’s also a butcher, forced to 
kill — en masse, often seven at a time — the same men he takes care of.
His story is told at his trial in a series of gruesome and realistic flashbacks. Johan goads him into recounting what he – and the prisoners — has been through. This film shows the horrors of capital punishment, and particularly 
the mass executions held in South Africa, in graphic detail. It is horrifying and extremely hard to watch, because it brings you, the viewer, right into the gallows itself. Shepherds and Butchers is a touching story about an important topic, but believe me, it is not for the faint of heart.
Rings and Shepherds and Butchers both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is playing for free this Sunday as part of the Canada on Screen series. 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 filmmaker Mina Shum about her documentary Ninth Floor, world premiering at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In the 1960s, Canada opened its gates to new Canadians from the British Commonwealth and around the world. And in 1967, the 100th anniversary of Confederation, the world looked to Canada, especially Montreal, home of Expo 67, as the epitome of tolerance, progressiveness and multiculturalism. But just beneath surface trouble brewed. At Sir George Williams University, (now Concordia) a group of Caribbean students complained of racist treatment by a faculty member. Unrest gradually grew into the biggest student uprising in Canadian history. Crowds led to riots and a sit-in at the computer department became a conflagration on the ninth floor.
Ninth Floor is also the name of a new documentary that looks at the 
politics and history of this period through the eyes of the participants. It is directed by Mina Shum, the renowned Vancouver-based filmmaker, famous for her family dramas like Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. Ninth Floor, her first documentary, revisits a partly forgotten but vital piece of Canadian history. It’s having its world premier at TIFF. I spoke to Mina Shum, by telephone from Vancouver. She told me about Sir George Williams College, the computer lab, the sit-in, the mob, agents provocateurs, polite racism, housing discrimination, immigration, Montreal in the 1960s, Caribbean students in Canada, the RCMP, how she made the documentary… and more!
Daniel Garber talks to director Majdi El-Omari about his new film STANDSTILL
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Karhiio is a Mohawk science student in Toronto who steals some offensive nicknacks he sees in a souvenir shop and goes to jail. His Dad, John, a war photographer, drives out from Montreal to meet him there. He owes his son a debt for breaking up with his ex-wife, an artist. But he also has a responsibility to his neighbour in Montreal: Widad, a Palestinian woman who is hiding in plain sight after a crime. Until he addresses his obligations, his life is at a stand still.
Standstill is also the name of a new Canadian movie. It’s a film where English is rarely 
spoken — not so unusual for a film from Montreal. What is unusual is that most of the characters speak Kanien’kehà:ka, the language of the Mohawk First Nations, and possibly the first such film ever made. Shot in beautiful black and white, it’s a pensive character study of three alienated and misplaced souls.
It’s directed by award-winning filmmaker Majdi El-Omari, and Standstill is his first feature. It opens in Toronto at the Royal Cinema on March 13th, 2015.
I spoke to Majdi by telephone from Montreal. The Palestinian-Canadian director talks about the Oka crisis, Quebec, indigenous people, the film’s genesis, existentialism, media stereotypes, resistance, the role of police, internal violence, cultural representations, the Mohawk language, and more!
A French Connection? Movies reviewed: Finding Vivian Maier, L’autre vie de Richard Kemp, Triptyque
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-
brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
With Quebec elections coming up, this week I’m looking at movies with a “French connection” (francophone, that is.) These movies all share a dark, mysterious and introspective mood.
There’s a doc about an artist who never showed her art, a Quebec drama about two sisters – one loses her voice, the other writing; and a French thriller about a detective thwarted from catching a serial killer… by himself!
Finding Vivian Maier
Dir: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
When John, a third generation Flea Marketeer, buys a box of negatives at an auction, he doesn’t realize at first what he has. It’s a vast collection of never-printed negatives taken by an unknown photographer named Vivian Maier. She plied the streets of Chicago for decades documenting street life. Her shots are beautiful, poignant, the black and white photos aesthetically astute.
But who was she? Where did she come from? And why is she unknown to the
world?
Turns out the photographer, Vivian Maier, died recently. She left behind over 100,000 photos, plus audio tapes and some super-8 reels. But none of the photos had ever been professionally printed, and almost no one had seen them but the photographer herself. Maier was a very tall woman with a mannish haircut and a vaguely French accent. She wore heavy boots, old-fashioned hats, and always carried a rolleiflex camera. An eccentric, she was given to hording any items she found. Most surprising is how she earned her living… as a nanny and a maid.
This is a fascinating and intriguing documentary that pieces together parts of her life – though most is left unknown – while showing lots of her incredible photographs. We hear from her former bosses, the grown-up kids she had nannied, even a few Alpine relatives.
Her story is similar to the case of Henry Darger, another eccentric artist (who worked as a janitor) who hoarded his own intricate drawings that were only discovered after death. And, as in that case, the filmmakers are tied to the one who owns all the art. There’s an ulterior motive: to get rich from the work of a previously unknown artist.
Still, this doesn’t detract from the beauty and mystery of her story or of the appeal of the street photos themselves. It does make you wonder, though. Is a photographer who never selects which photos to show and who never successfully prints the pictures she took – an artist? Or is the posthumous curator the real artist here? Either way, Finding Vivian Maier is a great story.
L’autre vie de Richard Kemp (Back in Crime)
Dir: Germinal Alvarez
Helene, (Mélanie Thierry), an elegant psychologist out for a morning run, finds a dead body washed up on shore. She’s questioned by a scruffy police detective named Richard Kemp. She is cold and dismissive. Kemp (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is troubled because it shares the M.O. with a case, never solved, from early in his career. An unknown killer – known only as the earwig — kidnaps his victims, punctures their ears, and throws them 
into the ocean. Was the killer back again?
Though their first meeting is frosty, eventually Helene and Richard hit it off. (She’s a widow with a son, he’s divorced.) But while investigating the case on a bridge, he is struck from behind and thrown into the water. When he climbs out things have changed. The streetcar driver won’t accept his Euros: they’re “foreign” money. At home he sees a stranger 
with a key to his modernistic apartment. He soon discovers the truth: it’s 25 years earlier, and the man he saw – is himself!
He rents a room in a highrise across from the curvy building his younger self rents. Maybe young Richard will do it right this time. But he makes the same mistakes again. So he decides to follow the earwig’s trail himself – he knows the MO, maybe he’ll catch him or at least save the 
victims. But he ends up as a suspect being chased by his younger self.
So he turns to the only one he can trust: Helene. Can he win her to his side, convince her his plight is true, and will they rekindle their future romance? This is a neat, dark detective story with a bit of a time travel twist. I like this one.
Triptyque
Dir: Robert Lepage
Marie and Michelle Lavallee are two Montreal sisters, the crème de la crème of Quebec culture. Marie (Frédérike Bédard) is an internationally-known singer. Michelle (Lise Castonguay) is a noted poet and author. But fame does not shield them from tragedy. Marie discovers she has a brain tumour. She seeks the help of Austrian brain surgeon Thomas (Hans Piesbergen) who, secretly, suffers from a hand tremor.
Michelle, diagnosed with schizophrenia, is committed to a mental hospital 
and kept on medication. Once released, she seeks solace in a Montreal bookstore. No coffee, no WiFi, just actual books by Quebecois artists and intellectuals. But, inhibited by her medication, she finds herself unable to write.
After her surgery, Marie is left with aphasia – she can’t recall words. She can 
sing the notes but not the lyrics. And her memory is faulty: she can’t remember her own father’s voice. But she has found love. All three characters in Triptique have to work through their losses, fill the gaps, and right the wrongs.
This film is an abbreviated version of part of Lepage’s epic stage drama Lipsynch which played in Toronto two years ago. It trades the intricate stage design for which he’s so famous, for an intimacy and closeness you can’t get on a stage. And it captures Montreal’s bitterly elegant winter cityscapes as only a movie can.
Triptyque and Lepage’s other films are now playing in a retrospective at TIFF; for details, go to tiff.net; l’Autre Vie de Richard Kemp (a.k.a. Back in Crime) is having its North American premier and is one of many great pics at CineFranco, Toronto’s francophone film fest (go to cinefranco.com for tickets); and Finding Vivian Maier opens today in Toronto, check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
TIFF13: Older/Younger. Capsule Reviews: Gloria, Gerontophilia, Bright Days Ahead, Adore
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
The Toronto Film Festival opens next Thursday for ten days, showing most of the good movies that will be in your theatres in the fall and spring. Well I’ve started watching some of these movies, and there seems to be a trend. Have you ever seen Harold and Maude? Or the Graduate? A lot of the films there are about cross-generational relationships.
So this week I’m looking at love and lust of May-September couples, but with a twist. The movies come from Canada, France, and Chile, and range from younger man/ older woman, middle-aged woman /older man, and very young man / geriatric man. (plus an Australian movie with a different theme.)
Gloria
Dir: Sebastien Lelio
Gloria (Paulina Garcia) is an average, middle-aged divorcee in downtown Santiago. Her kids are adults now so she lives alone in an apartment, with just a noisy neighbor and a hideous, hairless cat intruding on her privacy. But she’s still full of energy – she wants to enjoy life, sing songs, have sex, fall in love. So she starts hanging out in discos, picking up guys – much older guys. She falls for Rodolfo, a very conservative elderly man. At first their relationship seems solid, but he always runs home whenever his daughters need him (he says he’s divorced but still responsible.) She wants him to meet her family and friends. Will he commit? And will he fit in with her lifestyle (Gloria’s a free-thinking Chilean, Rodolfo has roots in Pinochet’s military.)
Although told in an everyday manner, this is a fantastic, bittersweet look at one woman’s life. Paulina Garcia completely embodies Gloria, and exposes her feelings –and her entire body — for the camera.
Gerontophilia
Dir: Bruce la Bruce
Lake (Pier-Garbriel Lajoie) is a young guy in Montreal who likes making out with his revolution-obsessed girlfriend beneath a blow-up image Gandhi. But one day, at an aqua fitness class, while giving mouth-to-mouth resusetation to an elderly man, he discovers something.
Old people turn him on. He gets a job at a nursing home, to satisfy his obsessive fetish. Soon he falls for Mr Peabody (Walter Borden), formerly a flamboyant actor, now nearly catatonic on meds. They embark on a trip across Canada, but can this relationship last? Or is it headed for its final burn-out? This is a cute, very Canadian (bilingual French and English), and very mainstream movie. The former Reluctant Pornographer has made the switch to conventional director. Bruce la Bruce has left out the porn, the explicit sex, the nudity and instead made a simple, sweet coming-of-age romance. You could bring your grandpa to this one without blushing… well, your gay grandpa. I liked this movie.
Bright Days Ahead
Dir: Marion Vernoux
The beautiful Caroline (Fanny Ardant) is bored and depressed in her seaside town. She’s mourning her best friend and the loss of her dental practice – she was forced into early retirement. So her daughters enroll her in classes at the local senior centre. She hates the cheesy nature of the place, the condescending tone of the teachers and the infantilisation of formerly dignified adults. That is until she falls into a passionate sexual relationship with Julien (Laurent Lafitte), a lusty computer teacher. Caroline is married and has never strayed before. But she decides to let go – get drunk, have sex, seize the day. Can her casual relationship survive the wagging fingers of small town life? Can she stand being one of many sexual partners? And what about her husband?
This is another light romance – the type that the French do so well. It’s a refreshing afternoon treat, with a palateable finish, much like the wines Caroline so enjoys tasting. Fanny Ardant is great, and Laurent Lafitte is a good foil. (Picture Mark Ruffalo with Candice Bergen…)
Outside of TIFF but opening next Friday is
Adore
Dir: Anne Fontaine (based on a story by Doris Lessing)
Roz and Lil are (Robin Wright, Naomi Watts) are blonde Aussie beach bums. Roz’s husband is dead, and Lil’s husband is distant – he wants to move to Sydney. But the two women grew up by the ocean and won’t leave it. Nor will they leave their friendship – they share everything. Now it’s just them and their two newly-adult sons, Ian and Tom. The boys are unusually handsome, the women are beautiful, and an unusual relationship develops there (no spoilers.)
It’s kept on the down low to stop gossip in the town, but everyone feels something is going on between the two families. Will there paradise last forever? Or will it wash away with the tides? Although Australian in location and cast, the feel of this movie is totally French. This is another summer sexual romance, with touching and erotic undertones.
Gloria, Gerontophilia, and Bright Days Ahead are all playing at TIFF starting next week – tickets are still available. Go to tiff.net for details. Adore opens next Friday in Toronto. And opening today is Our Nixon a documentary made of newly- uncovered super-8 footage taken by his Watergate co-conspirators Haldeman, Erlichman and Dean – excellent documentary.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website,culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber interviews Guy Maddin about his project Seances
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Winnipeg filmmaker GUY MADDIN is known for his tales of twisted nostalgia, his eerie retakes of Canadian history, and comical melodramas done in new interpretations of archaic styles.
His amazing movies include Tales from the Gimli Hospital, The Saddest Music in the World, and the semi-documentary My Winnipeg.
He’s one of the few directors that can make an arty film using experimental techniques that is totally enjoyable and funny.
But now he’s doing something different: bringing together live performance, interactive video and bilingual filmmaking in a
very unusual way. He’s currently shooting 12 movies in 13 days at the Phi Centre in a project known as SEANCES. Guy Maddin speaks by telephone from Montreal to help guide us through the smoke and mirrors.
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