Narrative sovereignty. Films reviewed: El Equipo, Praying for Armageddon, The Stroll, Twice Colonized at #HotDocs30
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival is on its last weekend, but with many more terrific movies yet to be seen. If you’re a student or under 25 or over 60, all daytime screenings are free. So be sure to catch a movie today or tomorrow.
This week I’m looking at some of the movies that played at Hot Docs, including ones dealing with narrative sovereignty. There is archaeology vs the military, religion in international politics, indigenous decolonization, and sex workers reclaiming their history.
El Equipo
Dir: Bernardo Ruiz
It’s 1984, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Falklands War has just ended and the military Junta has fallen, leaving a fragile democracy in its place. The rule by military and police has ended but over 10,000 people are missing — the “disappeared”. And the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo demonstrate daily demanding justice for their lost sons and daughters.
Enter Dr. Clyde Snow, a chain-smoking, martini-quaffing Texan in a cowboy hat. He’s a forensic archaeologist, known for authenticating the remains of notorious Nazi Dr Mengele and the victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. He’s in Argentina to rattle some bones and expose the skeletons in the closet. But first he needs some help. He recruits young university students — including Mimi Doretti, Patricia Bernardi, and Luis Fondebrieder — from the anthropology and archaeology departments. They are hesitant at first; if there’s another coup, Snow could easily fly back to North America while the students would be among the first to disappear. But they agree to help excavate unmarked graves to prove they were tortured and killed by the police and military. And in some cases to identify the remains. And after studying with Dr Snow, they become internationally renowned, called to investigate massacres and war crimes around the world.
This very moving film documents the group over 40 years, at the trials in Argentina, as well as projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Iraqi Kurdistan and Mexico.
El Equipo is a crucial film.
Praying for Armageddon
Dir: Sonje Hessen Schei, Michael Rowley
Why does the US have such close ties with Israel? According to the US state department, “Americans and Israelis are united by our shared commitment to democracy, economic prosperity, and regional security. American ties to the State of Israel are strong and longstanding.”
Al Jazeera says: “Washington’s unwavering support for Israel is rooted in the aftermath of World War II, the Cold War, pro-Israeli political influence and PR heft.” But there is another, less well-known reason: American Evangelical Christians’ belief that the Rapture and Armageddon cannot occur without the State of Israel controlling the city of Jerusalem. Only then can Jesus return to earth in the End of Days. Armed with a sword, he will smite all those who don’t believe he’s the Messiah; but this who do will ascend to heaven, leaving the world in its wake.
These beliefs in Armageddon and the End of Times are absolute and unequivocal. That’s part of the reason why Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, and why Evangelicals send so much support to Israel.
It’s a religious thing.
This documentary digs deep into a world of sword-bearing motorcycle gangs, megachurches and ordinary people who believe wholeheartedly in biblical prophesies. It also looks at violence against Palestinians by settlers in the Occupied Territories that their donations support. Pray for Armageddon is a fascinating look at America through a glass darkly by curious Scandinavian filmmakers.
The Stroll
Dir: Zackary Drucker, Kristen Lovell
The meatpacking district around 14th street in New York City was for decades the home of trans sex workers who plied their trade at night in cars and alleys around the empty trucks cleared of carcasses. Many were runaways, largely black or hispanic, ostracized by their families, and rejected by the mainstream community. Their only possible work was sex work. They banded together to protect each other from violent johns and the constant threat of arrest and assault by the brutal 6th Police Precinct, using a law known as “walking while trans.” The district is now a gentrified shopping area, but co-director and subject Kristen Lovell returns to her former neighbourhood as she pieces together their shared history. Many of her friends were murdered, beaten or sexually assaulted by police, murdered or sentenced to long prison sentences, especially since Rudolph Giuliani’s crackdown based on the “broken window policy”.
Through period photos and films and new interviews, the film shows them as they fought for their lives and livelihood, often among a disinterested or hostile larger community. It lionizes heroes like activist Sylvia Rivera, who founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) are they were then known. But it also shows explicit photographs and the sex-workers own graphic descriptions — some hilarious, others harrowing — of their work and lives.
Although Lovell was once herself the subject of a documentary, The Stroll reframes their story to their own version of history, not that of an outside filmmaker.
This is what is meant by narrative sovereignty, where the film’s subject is also a director allowed final say on her own portrayal.
Another example of narrative sovereignty is:
Twice Colonized
Dir: Lin Alluna, Aaju Peter
It’s the 1970s. Aaju Peter is a young Greenlandic Inuk and a top student. Her parents support her moving to Denmark (Greenland is its colony) to continue her education. She stays there until she is 18, but when she returns home, she finds she can’t talk to anyone — she speaks Danish now but has lost her Greenlandic language and culture. She quickly marries a Canadian and moves to Iqaluit. She is now a practicing lawyer, an Inuit activist and has served as an international delegate at the EU, and the United Nations fighting for indigenous rights and representation.
But the film is a highly personal view of her life over a seven year period. We follows her return to Denmark, to revisit her past, and confront her worst fears. It also reveals the impact of a terrible death of one member of her family, as well as a bittersweet reunion with another. With beautiful, stark images of life in the arctic, this is an unvarnished portrait that shows Aaju Peter at her best and worst.
Twice Colonized, The Stroll, Praying for Armageddon and El Equipo are all playing at the Hot Docs Festival through the weekend. Twice Colonized is also opening theatrically next Friday at the Hot Docs cinema in Toronto.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Indigenous films at TIFF22. Movies reviewed: Ever Deadly, We Are Still Here
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival is back again with guns ablazin’, after a two-year hiatus. Yes, TIFF didn’t actually stop over the past two years — there were some great films online in 2020 and some in-person shows during last-year’s hybrid version, but very few people were in actual attendance. No celebs, no parties, no volunteers, no lineups, and no red 
carpets. When the anti-piracy laws popped up on your home screen, there was no crowd there to say Grrrrr. You couldn’t turn to the stranger sitting beside you and ask what did you think of this movie. It felt more like a simulacrum than an actual event.
Well, this year it’s on again,
They’re sticking a toe in the water to see how it feels. It’s called the TIFF Experience (whatever that means) and you can experience it right now, if you go down to King Street West in Toronto, between Peter and University. Even if you’re not up to going indoors yet, they’re showing outdoor screenings of 
classic movies. On stage, there are free concerts, and there are always sponsors handing out free samples to munch on, street performers, people dressed up, fans waiting to photograph arriving celebrities, the whole kit and kaboodle. This is pre-recorded so I can’t promise that’s what it will be but that’s prediction. It’s actually fun. That’s just on this weekend, so if you’re in Toronto, you should drop by.
This week I’m talking about two new movies playing at TIFF, both on indigenous peoples in the two antipodes. There’s throat singing in the far north and a new telling of history, far, far south of the equator.
But first here are a few other TIFF movies I can’t wait to see.
MOVIES AT TIFF
Chevalier (Stephen Williams) is about a little-known Guadaloupe-born composer in Paris during Mozart’s era. I want see it because it stars Kelvin Harrison Jr, one of the best new actors around who creates an entirely new character for each movie he’s in to the point he’s virtually unrecognizable.
Steven Spielberg has a world premier at TIFF with The Fablemans, his first autobiographical movie. Why do I want to see it? I’m just really curious to see what he did.
Women Talking is based on a book by Mirriam Toews about a Mennonite-type colony. It stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Sheila McCarthy, Frances McDormand, but I really want to see it because it’s directed by Sarah Polley.
The Kingdom Exodus is about a weird Danish hospital. It’s a 
TV show, something I rarely bother to watch at TIFF, and I know nothing about it, but the reason I want to see it is it’s directed by Lars von Trier, and I’ll watch anything he makes, no matter how painful.
And finally I hope to catch The Hotel, about a bunch of Chinese people stranded in a hotel in Thailand during 2020’s Spring Festival, just as the pandemic lockdown hit. I want to see it because it’s directed by Wang Xiaoshuai, who is an under-appreciated but skilled and thoughtful filmmaker.
Ever Deadly
Dir:Tanya Tagaq and Chelsea McMullan
Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer and performance artist from Nunavut. Ever Deadly documents a performance accompanied by musicians and singers. It’s experimental, avant-garde music interspersed with stories and poems recited as part of the concert. Throat singing is a traditional Inuit art form, but she also experiments with it, in a unique, highly sexual, sensual, visceral, animalistic and at times even supernatural voice. If you’ve seen her before you’ll know what I mean. The film is also about her family’s history, and that of Canada. Her nomadic grandparents were forcibly relocated to a barren arctic area, with nowhere to hunt or fish, in order to 
claim sovereignty of the land along the northwest passage. Chelsea McMullan also includes stunning scenes of the stark arctic landscape, polar bears, migrating birds, aurora borealis. And not just the visuals but also the sounds like the unique squeaking crunch of walking on pebbles on a beach. There are vintage footage and photos contrasting lawmakers in parliament with Inuit kids gleefully eating bloody raw seal meat. And grotesque, highly-sexualized animated drawings.
If you’ve ever seen Tagaq perform you’ll know exactly why you should see this, but if you haven’t, it’s time for you to experience it.
We Are Still Here
Dir: (Various)
At the height of the British Empire maps were coloured pink on every continent, showing both colonies and the so-called Dominions, areas, like Canada, Australia and New Zealand that were settled by Europeans who make up most of their populations. But these places weren’t empty when the British arrived.
This film rewrites the history of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific as seen from an indigenous point of view. It’s made by eight filmmakers, four each from Australia and Aotearoa, and it consists of a number of scenes set in the past, present and future. The first British ships appear on the horizon to a mother and daughter catching fish. A settler lost in the bush demands an aboriginal guide show him the way back to his town. A Maori village debates whether to go to war against settlers, ending in a Haka war dance. And a soldier in the trenches of Gallipoli, has an unusual conversation with his enemy, a Turkish soldier. There’s also a dystopian view if the future, and a number set in the present day, including a clandestine graffiti artist and a young protestor. One of the 
most moving ones is about an ordinary guy, a tradesman, just trying to buy a bottle of wine from a grog shop (liquor store), who is stopped each time by an abusive cop because he’s indigenous, and it’s Northern Territory where, apparently, it’s legal to routinely treat some people as second-class citizens.
I shy away from reviewing short films because they’re too short and there are too many of them. But We Are Still Here functions as a feature film, telling all the stories not as individual short films, but interwoven into a common coherent thread, jumping back and forth between then and now. It’s nicely done and relevant, very moving, and made by indigenous filmmakers. And it helps restore parts of history that have up to now been erased.
We are Still Here and Ever Deadly are both playing at TIFF; Festival Street is open all weekend.
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 Nyla Innuksuk about Slash/Back
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s summer solstice in Pangnirtung, on Baffin Island Nunavut where the sun is up all night. But a group of teenaged girls — Maika, Jesse, Leena, Uki and Maika’s little sister Aju — notice something weird is going on. They see a polar bear acting very un-bearlike; and a fisherman who seems less than human. Their blood is black, their skin seems detached from their bodies, they walk in jerky steps, with creepy tentacles that squirm out to suck your blood. Are they monsters? Aliens? Zombies? Whatever they are they’re killing people, and the grown-ups aren’t around to help — they’re all at an annual dance. But nobody messes 
with the girls of Pang. So it’s up to them to fight back.
Slash/Back is the name of a new alien horror movie set in the arctic. It interweaves traditional Inuit culture with contemporary genre filmmaking. It features a cast of first-time Inuit actors, set against the stunning ice, sky and ocean landscape of Nunavut. Slash/Back is the work of acclaimed producer, writer and director Nyla Innuksuk, who is well-versed in both the technical and creative sides of film-making. And she’s the only film maker I’ve ever heard of who has also co-created a superhero for Marvel Comics!
I spoke with Nyla in Toronto via Zoom.
Slash/Back opens across Canada on Friday, June 26th.
Does isolation mean alienation? Films reviewed: Une Colonie, The Grizzlies, High Life
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Does isolation mean alienation? Or can it be its cure? This week I’m looking at three movies about people who choose to live their lives in isolated areas. There’s an astronaut with a baby in outerspace, a girl in a village in rural Québec, and a lacrosse team in a remote town in Nunavut.
Une Colonie (A Colony)
Dir: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
It’s the first day of high school and Mylia (Emilie Bierre) is overwhelmed. She’s a 14-year-old girl from rural Quebec. She’s used to seeing her mom and dad, her four-year-old sister Camille (Irlande Côté) and some chickens and cows. When she wants to get away she hides in secret shelters she builds in the woods. But she doesn’t know how to handle the noise and stress of her new school and the hundreds of people there. And she doesn’t quite understand her 
new classes in history and citizenship. What does that mean, anyway?
Luckily she makes two friends with different paths to choose from. Jacinthe (Cassandra Gosselin-Pelletier) is sophisticated, sexually active and popular. She offers the pretty but naïve Mylia an exciting life full of “lipstick parties”, online challenges and social networking. She sets her up on alcohol-infused dates with strange boys she has nothing in common with. But she also whispers behind her back, spreading rumours that her mother is a stripper.
The second path is offered by Jimmy (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie) a 
neighbour from the Ibanaki Nation. He has strange powers – like taming wild animals – as well as a trampoline he lets Camille bounce on. But he is forced to sit through a history class that describe his people as “simple savages” engaged in depraved orgies. He is bullied for not speaking “proper” Québec French. And he hates seeing Mylia act like the rest of them, people who always colour within the lines. Can Mylia hold onto her idyllic, rural life even as she learns to conform and mature?
Une Colonie is a wonderfully thoughtful coming-of-age story seen through the eyes of a young woman. It deals with Québec both as colony and colonizer and the blurred lines separating the two. It doesn’t fully explain everything you see — it lets you make sense of it as the story is revealed. Une Colonie won best picture and Emilie Bierre best actress at the Canadian Screen Awards, and rightly so. This is a terrific movie, espcially for a first film.
The Grizzlies
Dir: Miranda de Pencier
It’s 2004 in Kugluktuk, a small village in Nunuavut. Russ (Ben Schnetzer) is an idealistic but inexperienced high school teacher newly arrived from the south. He starts by meeting his students. There’s Kyle (Booboo Stewart) who runs away from home each night. Zach (Paul Nutarariaq) punches him in the face when he tells him to speak English. Spring 
(Anna Lambe) is deeply in love with her boyfriend. Miranda (Emerald MacDonald) is silent but observes everything.
Russ may speak no Inuktitut but he can still see a problem… an epidemic of death by suicide. He decides to do something about it: start a lacrosse team! He manages to pull a team together, and even gets them a place on the national championships in Toronto. But can the Grizzlies raise the money, convince the local council to support them, and 
overcome the many social problems they face? Or is Russ just another fly-by-night white saviour from the south, quick to make promises he can’t keep?
The Grizzlies, based on a true story, is a typical sports movie, about an unlikely team that tries to overcome its obvious obstacles using heart, grit and comradery. What’s different is it’s shot in Nunavut, in English and Inuktitut, with a mainly Inuit and indigenous cast. And it interweaves realistic scenes of actual culture — you get to see people sharing and eating raw seal meat — with the dark side of history, including issues like the residential schools. It’s not earth-shattering, but The Grizzlies works as a meaningful movie that’s also fun to watch.
High Life
Wri/Dir: Claire Denis
It’s the future.
Monte (Robert Pattinson) is a single dad raising an infant girl at work and at home. They live on a space ship hurtling towards a distant blackhole. How did they get there and where did the baby come from? Through a series of flashbacks we see what life was like back on earth and later on board the spacecraft. It used to be peopled by healthy young astronauts working together both as 
scientists and as scientific subjects, experimenting and being experimented on.
The ship has everything they need: regular video reports sent from earth, a garden growing succulent fruit and vegetables in a misty arboretum; areas for exercise; and spacesuits for outdoor repairs. There’s also an orgasmic chamber that spins, throbs and penetrates anyone needing sexual release.
They are ruled by a doctor in a white lab coat (Juliette Binoche). She dispenses pills in exchange for sperm samples from the men, and use of the women’s wombs. She calls herself a shaman who wants to create 
life in outer space. Only Monte, nicknamed the Monk, refuses to participate. But far from placid and cooperative, an atmosphere of violence and sexuality hangs heavily over the voyage. It turns out these astronauts were chosen for their good genes inside prisons back on Earth, where they were serving life sentences for violent crimes. What will happen to them?
High Life is an unusual and fascinating space fantasy like few movies 
you’ve ever seen. Instead of flashing lights, laser beams or robotic mechanicals, this movie stresses bodily fluids – with semen, breast milk, drool, and unexplained pools of milky white discharge spilling onto the metal floors. It shifts from sex and violence to warm scenes of family bonding. The cast is uniformly amazing from the stoic Pattinson to the witchlike Binoche.
I’ve seen High Life twice now, and I liked it even more the second time. Claire Denis is a genius.
The Grizzlies and High Life both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Une Colonie is showing as part of Cinefranco’s Tournée du Quebec.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
O Canada. Films reviewed: Hello Destroyer, Maliglutit
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Happy New Year! It’s the sesquicentennial. You’ll be hearing that word a lot. It means it’s been 150 years since Canada’s Confederation in 1867.
CRTC chief Jean Pierre Blais thinks Canadian TV should be designed to appeal on the world stage – we shouldn’t worry about Canadian culture. Writer Charles Foran, in the Guardian, calls Canada the world’s first post-national country. He’s quoting Justin Trudeau, but I think they’re missing the point. There is a strong 
national identity. It’s just not an ethnic-based nationalism. It’s not a jingoistic nationalism. It’s not an exclusive identity, it’s an inclusive one that is welcoming and tolerant and multifaceted. But we do have a distinctive Canadian culture.
And part of our identity is Canadian literature, art, music and film. In this Sesquicentennial year look out for lots of chances to consume Canadian culture. The NFB has put thousands of films and documentaries online. And there’s Canada on Screen, a nationwide retrospective running all year with 150 of the best docs, animation, features and TV. All screenings are free!
This week I’m looking at Canadian movies playing as part of the annual Canada’s Top Ten series. We’ve got a hockey drama out of the far west, and a western from the extreme north.
Hello Destroyer
Wri/Dir: Kevan Funk
Tyson Burr (Jared Abrahamson) is a minor league hockey player in Prince George, BC. He’s a rookie at his first job. He’s welcomed by a hazing where the players hold down the newbies while they forcibly shave their heads and pummel them. It helps them feel “part of the team”. Violence builds manhood and comradery. He’s known as a destroyer, an enforcer who keeps the other teams’ players at bay – fighting on the ice is just another part of the game. Tyson is at his physical peak and on top of the world. But he admits to another rookie that he has doubts and fears of his
own.
The coach (Kurt Max Runte) tells the team they should aim to be heroes. You’ve got to hammer your steel into excalibur! We are fighters, brawlers, men! That’s when they’re winning. But when they are losing he bawls them out and tells them to fight back – aggressively. Tyson does just that, and sends a player to hospital.
The coach and team lawyers, rather than reaching out to him, throw Tyson beneath the proverbial bus. They make him read a prepared statement talking all the blame, all the responsibility. Suddenly he plummets from hero to pariah. He gets kicked out of his home, suspended – temporarily they say – from the team, and is forced to move back in with his parents.
He’s also plagued with guilt – he wants to apologize to the guy he hurt, to tell
him he didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t fit with the league’s plans. From beating players on the ice, his new job at a slaughter house, hacking at bloody carcasses in the cold.
He seeks solace and solitude with another guy who has fallen on hard times, and doesn’t hold it against him as they salvage an old shack. Can Tyson face his 
doubts and regain his self-respect, or will he continue in a downward spiral of loss and self-destruction?
Hello Destroyer is a moving look at violence and self doubt in the world of professional sports. But don’t expect to see a conventional, movie of the week type drama. This is an impressionistic, introspective art-house movie. No slow-mo punch fights or zooms at key moments. No reaction shots. The camera 
always stands back, following Tyson from behind, or capturing a conversation through a half-open doorway. Dialogue might be muffled or turned off entirely. Jared Abrahamson carries the whole movie – the frustration, anger and self-loathing – on his shoulders, and pulls it off admirably. This is a good first film.
Maliglutit (Searchers)
Dir: Zacharias Kunuk
It’s 1913, in Igloolik. There’s a party going on in a large igloo with singing, storytelling and all around good times. But there’s friction as well. A couple of foul mouthed men are openly groping The father’s wife and not sharing the food they caught. Those are both against Inuit law. The offenders are kicked out, and ride off on their dog sleds. But they haven’t seen the last of them.
Following a spiritual forecast, the hunters – father and son – head out to catch caribou, leaving the kids, women and elderly behind. And while the hunters are away they hear dogs barking and strange noises outside. Is it a bear attack? No it’s something worse. The bad men are back, breaking down the walls of their home, attacking and killing almost everyone. They rope up the mother and 
daughter and tie them to their sleds, as bounty. But the women refuse to cooperate and “be nice”. They fight back.
Our heroes spot their home through a telescope and know something is terribly wrong. There’s a gaping wound in its side. In the igloo, dying grandfather passes him a bird talisman. He summons the bird’s call to help him track the attackers. Who will survive this life and death battle?
Maliglutit is a great movie — part mystery, part western, part historical drama — with information you might only get in a documentary. It captures an era after western contact and technology – they use a telescopes and rifles, and drink tea – but before Christianity, snowmobiles, forced resettlement and the killing of dog teams. It loosely follows the classic John Wayne The Searchers, a so-called Cowboy and Indian movie, but this time from the indigenous point if view. Like all of Kunuk’s movies it is stunning to watch with its arctic vistas and intense whites, blacks and blues, punctuated with the occasional splash of red blood or the glow of fire.
See NFB movies at nfb.ca; Canada’s Top Ten starts on January 13th – go to tiff.net/seethenorth for details; and for information about the year-long, sesquicentennial retrospective go to tiff.net/canadaonscreen.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks to Andrew Gregg about his documentary THE NORSE: AN ARCTIC MYSTERY
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM
I grew up thinking in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and that he was the first European to make contact with people in the Americas. But evidence uncovered by archaeologist Pat Sutherland suggests that contact began 
much, much earlier. A new documentary shows that first contact was not by the Spanish in the Caribean but between Northern Europeans and the indegenous people dwelling in Canada’s North. THE NORSE: An Arctic Mystery is playing on CBC’s The Nature of Things on November 22.
In this interview the director, writer and producer ANDREW GREGG tells me 
about the unknown history of the Norse in Canada, where they came from, what they did, how long they stayed, and what is the evidence that proves this. He also talks about the politics likely behind the strange dismissal of the noted archaeologist from Canada’s Museum of Civilization.
culturalmining.com 
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