Fighting the big fight. Films reviewed: How to Blow up a Pipeline, Renfield PLUS #HotDocs30
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This coming Wednesday is Canadian Film Day, where you can see great Canadian movies for free all across the country. And Hot Docs — is right around the corner offering documentaries from Canada and around the world. It’s their 30th anniversary, and once again daytime screenings are free for seniors and students, so don’t miss it.
This week, I’ll be talking about films to look out for at Hot Docs as well as two new features — a horror comedy and a suspense thriller. There are radical activists in Texas fighting Big Oil, and a servant in New Orleans fighting Big Vampire.
Films coming to Hot Docs
Photo by Angela Gzowski Photography
The festival opens with the first pan-polar indigenous documentary about the Inuit in Greenland and Nunavut. It’s called Twice Colonized.
In You Were My First Boyfriend the filmmaker looks back at her traumatic high school days.
Someone Lives Here is about the young guy in Toronto who built those tiny wooden houses, providing shelter for the homeless during the pandemic.
Praying for Armageddon is about the political power wielded by evangelical groups in the US.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer is a tribute to the queen of disco.
Lac Megantic is the first documentary on that railway disaster in Quebec.
And Satan Wants You retraces the satanic panic that sprung up in the US in the 1980s.
These are just a few of the many films coming to Hotdocs, that caught my eye.
How to blow up a Pipeline
Co-Wri/Dir: Daniel Goldhaber
If you heard that bombs exploding near Odessa are affecting world oil prices, you’d probably say Of course! There’s a war on in Ukraine. But what if the explosion is near Odessa, Texas? And the bombing is planned by young radical climate activists making a statement about Big Oil? This is a film about a group with loose ties across the country who get together in Texas to blow up an oil pipeline in two places, to make a big statement felt worldwide, because West Texas Crude determines the world’s price of oil
Who is this diverse group sharing a single goal?
Xochitl (Ariela Barer) and Theo (Sasha Lane) have been best friends since childhood. They grew up beside an oil refinery, and now Xochitl has terminal cancer, a type of leukemia specific to people who live near oil refineries. Xochitl’s lover, Alisha (Jayme Lawson) is also there. Michael (Forrest Goodluck) is from North Dakota where his indigenous community couldn’t prevent a pipeline from running through their town. Rowan and Logan (Kristine Froseth, 
Lukas Gage) are anti-fa-type activists who up to now have done low-key actions. And Dwayne (Jake Weary) is a Texan, married with a kid, whose ancestral homestead was demolished by another oil company using eminent domain. Shawn (Marcus Scribner) met Dwayne while working as the sound guy on a documentary.
How to Bomb a Pipeline is not a documentary, it’s a suspense /thriller about this diverse crew trying to build bombs and set them off without getting caught. They use public access information that’s online and work out careful plans… but things don’t go exactly how they plan it. And at least one member of the group is a rat, reporting progress to the police. I liked this movie; it was pretty good alternating between the group at work and flashbacks showing the backstories of each member. If you’re into watching (un-)civil disobedience by radical activists, told in a gripping style, you might like How to Bomb a Pipeline.
Renfield
Dir: Chris McKay
It’s present-day New Orleans. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) is an Englishman, new to the city but with the same old job, one he really hates. So he joins a 12 step group for people in co-dependency relationships. But it will take more than 12 steps to get quit his job. You see he’s Dracula’s servant, the one who brings the vampire (Nicolas Cage) bodies to feast on. TO be a better person, he kills the rotten spouses or lovers spouses of other people in his group. But Dracula wants more: Bring me a busload of nuns, cheerleaders and innocent tourists! Dracula commands. But though he has ever disobeyed his master, he does have some superpowers: insects are to Renfield as spinach is to Popeye. Chew up a cricket and he can fight off an armed gang. And he does exactly that when heir to a criminal family, the notorious Lobos clan comes after him. Tedward Lobo (Ben Schwartz) wants to prove his skills to his mother the mob boss, but Renfield is a thorn in his side. The fight is witnessed by Officer Quincy (Awkwafina) a traffic officer 
who is the only cop in New Orleans not on the take. She tells the Renfield he’s a hero, something he’s never been called before. Together they vow to bring an end to crime. But what will Dracula do if he ever finds out?
Renfield is a very funny horror/action/comedy. I went this one expecting total crap, so I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is. Nicolas Cage is always hit and miss — he’s prone to hamming it up, and is in a lot of dreadful clunkers. But he’s terrific as Dracula, the perfect blend of disgusting, sleazy, scary and funny. He’s on a roll. And he never breaks character. Nicholas Hoult is just as good as a meek serial killer/hero, and Awkwafina serves as the perfect foil. In 
fact everyone plays their roles really well. If you can’t stand blood, stay away. This movie is Fangoria material. Lots of violence spilled guts and cut off limbs, in a semi-comical way. But if that’s no problem I think you’ll enjoy this one.
Hotdocs begins on April 27th. Renfield and How to Blow Up a Pipeline both open across Canada this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Exposing secrets. Films reviewed: John Wick: Chapter 4, The Five Devils, Ithaka
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies — an action film, a mysterious drama, and a documentary— from the US, France and Australia. There’s an assassin battling a secret organization, a little girl sticking her nose into hidden places, and a journalist jailed for bringing secret war crimes into the light.
John Wick: Chapter 4
Dir: Chad Stahelski
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a Belorussian assassin, under the control of a powerful, international cabal known as The High Table. He’s infamous for his relentless killing skills; he can wipe out an entire squadron with a just a pair of nunchucks. Wick wants out, but to do that he needs to be free. So he embarks on a complex series of tasks to complete before the Table frees him. In the meantime, The Marquis (Bill Skarsgård), the head honcho, wants him dead… so he gets Wick’s former best friend and partner to kill him.
Caine (Donnie Yen) is an expert martial arts fighter and shooter who happens to be blind. So Wick turns to another old friend, Shimazu 
(Sanada Hiroyuki) a hotelier in Osaka. Even though he could lose everything, he still agrees to hide Wick from the Marquis’ agents. Meanwhile, the marquis has put a multimillion dollar mark on Wick’s head, a reward that its steadily rising, letting loose an army of killers out for a quick buck, including a man with a dog known as the tracker 
(Shamier Anderson). Can Wick survive this army of killers? Or will this be his final showdown?
John Wick: Chapter 4 is nearly three hours of non-stop violence. The characters and storyline is strictly cookie-cutter, but the settings — in New York, Osaka, Paris, Berlin and Jordan — is vast and opulent. Every chamber has cathedral ceilings and gaudy rococo elegance. And the fight choreography is spectacularly orchestrated. The cast — including Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick — are fun to watch. No one will call this a great movie, but if you enjoy endless fight scenes with hundreds of extras whether among the writhing bodies of a Berlin nightclub or in a traffic jam around the Arc de Triomphe, John Wick 4 will satisfy.
The Five Devils (Les cinq diables)
Co-Wri/Dir: Léa Mysius
Vicki (Sally Dramé) is a bright young girl who lives in a small village in the French alps. Joanne, her mom (Adèle Exarchopoulos) teaches aqua fitness, while Jimmy, her dad (Moustapha Mbengue) is a fireman. But Vicki has no friends, and is constantly bullied at school, perhaps because she’s mixed-race in a mainly white town (her mom is white, her dad’s from Senegal.) Vicki has a unique skill no one else knows about: she can identify anything or anyone purely by its scent. If she picks up a leaf she instantly knows what kind of animal bit it, and its size, age, even its feelings. And she can recognize people at twenty paces, blindfolded, just by their smell. Vicki starts finding things, and like an alchemist, puts them into jars, carefully labelling each one.
But when a surprise visit by her aunt Julia, her father’s sister (Swala
Emati), things start to change. There’s something in Julia’s past that has turned the whole village against her. When Vicki discovers how to harness her power of smell to travel, temporarily, back in time, she finds that she may have played a role in Julia’s younger life. But can she influence what already happened?
The Five Devils is a very cool French mystery/drama with a hint of the supernatural and a sapphic twist. The alps may be majestic but they hide a sinister past, and a stultifyingly provincial and xenophobic culture. This is conveyed in the large, tacky murals and oddly dated architecture that pops up everywhere. The three female leads Exarchopoulos, Dramé and Emati are amazing (with full points on the Bechdel test). Mysius is an accomplished 
scriptwriter who has worked with such luminaries as Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard. You can tell. And an unexpected twist at the very end will have you leaving the theatre with an extra jolt.
I like this movie.
Ithaka
Wri/Dir: Ben Lawrence
Twenty years ago this month, US- and British-led forces invades Iraq under the pretence of finding Weapons of Mass Destruction supposedly threatening the west. Nothing is ever found and over 200,000 civilians are killed, 4 million displaced, and the entire middle east thrown into disarray, leading to the rise of fundamentalists like ISIS, unrest and civil war from which, 20 years later, it has yet to recover. In 2010, army specialistChelsea Manning anonymously releases a huge trove of secret military files to Wikileaks, a website founded specifically to expose things like war crimes and corruption, without endangering news sources and reporters who cover them.
It’s founded by Australian journalist and hactivist Julian Assange. That’s when Wikileaks catches the world’s attention by exposing, 
on video, the US military gunning down innocent civilians in Iraq in cold blood, including Reuters journalists. None of the perpetrators of these — and countless other war crimes — ever served time, but Manning is arrested and jailed, while Assange is forced to seek refuge in the Ecuador Embassy in London. He is afraid that travelling to Sweden for questioning will lead to him being extradited to the US. His fears are correct, and he is later jailed in Belmarsh, a maximum security prison in London, awaiting deportation to the US on charges of espionage. He remains there today.
Ithaka is a personal and intimate documentary about Assange in jail in London during the trial, and the events that led up to it. Using original interviews and contemporary news reports, it fills in the blanks you may have missed. It also reveals the CIA’s involvement, including plots to murder him. The doc follows two people: John Shipton, Assange’s dad, and Stella Moris, his wife and the mother of their two sons. Shipton is an Australian house builder and peace activist. Moris is the Johannesburg-born daughter of Swedish and 
Spanish parents who were active in the anti-Apartheid movement. She also serves as his lawyer. Assange is off camera, but his cel phone voice is often present.
For a man like Assange, who has done more to expose government and corporate corruption than almost any other journalist today, to be charged with espionage and threatened with life in prison is a travesty of justice. His suffering and deterioration in solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment. If you want to learn more about him, or to show your support, Ithaka is a good place to start.
John Wick Chapter 4 and The Five Devils open in Toronto this weekend; check you local listings. Ithaka is now playing at the Hot Docs cinema.
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 Buffy Sainte-Marie about Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On at #TIFF22
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Buffy Sainte Marie was born to Cree parents on a reserve in the Qu’Apelle valley Saskatchewan but was adopted and raised by a family with Mi’kmaq roots in Massachusetts. She grew up musically-inclined and sang folk songs in Yorkville and Greenwich Village coffee houses. Her dynamic guitar style and distinctive vibrato set her apart.
The songs she wrote and performed climbed the charts and were covered by hundreds of other musicians, from Elvis to 
Donavan, Joni Mitchell to Barbra Streisand. Her song Universal Soldier became an anthem of the anti-war movement while Now That the Buffalo’s Gone did the same for the American Indian Movement. She starred in movies and on TV, became a regular on Sesame Street, won countless awards, and was the first — and for many years only — indigenous person to win an Oscar.
Her story is told in a new documentary by Madison Thomas called Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On. Narrated by Taj Mahal, Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell and others, and Buffy Ste Marie herself, it combines period footage and personal photos, dramatizations, and lots of music and concerts, both vintage and new.
I spoke to Buffy Sainte-Marie on site at TIFF22.
Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On had its world premiere at TIFF and is opening at the Hot Docs Cinema later this month.
Urban chaos. Films reviewed: Crimes of the Future, The Divide
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring film festival season continues in June, when the idea of sitting in an air-conditioned movie theatre starts sounding better and better. The Female Eye film fest is on next Thursday through Saturday at the TIFF Bell Lighbox, showing films by female directors. Look out for Go On and Bleed about an American draft-dodger in 1971 — it’s directed by J. Christian Hamilton, host of Dementia 13, playing psychedelic music at this station. And if you’re down California way, catch the 3rd Annual Blue Water Film Festival, celebrating the United Nations World Oceans Day, with movies about Antartica, whales, oceans.
But this week I’m looking at two new movies — both opening this weekend in Toronto — about urban chaos and society in decline. There’s a film from France about an artist and a protester seeking refuge in a hospital; and another one from Canada about an artist who treats radical surgery as performance.
Crimes of the Future
Wri/Dir: David Cronenberg
Picture a future where you don’t just sit in a chair, it latches onto you with grotesque bone-like appendages. It’s a world that diverged away from ours in the 1980s or 90s. People still carry huge clunky portable phones, they keep files in filing cabinets, and everything’s analogue. But technology has taken an unexpected turn — humans have “evolved”… drastically so. Pain and pleasure sensations have mainly disappeared, so people seeking sexual fulfillment might slice pieces of flesh of their lovers’ bodies… and then snack on it in a non-lethal, cannibalistic orgy. Government has largely collapsed, and police operate undercover in cels of corruption.
In this future world, Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Lèa Seydoux) are a 
celebrity couple known for their artistic performances. Fans flock to events where Caprice records Tenser cutting open his belly to excise fully-grown, tattooed organs from his body, organs that developed spontaneously. Afterwards they visit a clandestine quasi governmental office where two dry bureaucrats Timlin and Wippet (Kristen Stewart and Don McKellar) file their cases in the appropriate folders.
But there are complications. An undercover cop wants Tenser to be his informant. A young father named Lang (Scott Speedman) is also seeking out Lang and Caprice. He recently lost his son when his ex-wife murdered the boy because she didn’t like the way the boy ate plastic trashcans. He’s also stalking Tenser; but why?
Crimes of the Future is an extremely strange movie, maybe Cronenberg’s weirdest yet. Its full of sex, art and cringe-worthy gross-outs. Things like after Tenser gets a living-flesh zipper sewn into his belly, Caprice unzips it to performs oral sex on his gaping wound. It’s grotesque, but I’m not even revealing any of the most crucial horrific scenes. The costumes and special effects are terrific, and the locations (the movie was shot in Greece) are appropriately seedy and falling apart.
Does any of this make sense? Well it does, kinda.
It fools around with our fear of Big Pharma and the physical changes it could make to our bodies. It also deftly satirizes the worlds of art, celebrity and government. There’s an otherworldly feel to the whole movie, the stuff of dreams (or nightmares). It’s slow moving and very creepy but this isn’t a screamer-type horror movie, more of a constant supply of shock and yuck. Viggo Mortensen acts like a vampire or an unwrapped mummy, always shrouded in hoods and shawls, while Lèa Seydoux as Caprice is equal parts model and body-modification fanatic. Do I like this movie? Not exactly, it creeps me out and occasionally slides into the ludicrous, but I’m glad I saw it — with some of its images permanently burned into my brain’s synapses.
The Divide (La fracture)
Wri/Dir: Catherine Corsini
Raf (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is a middle-aged, middle-class liberal cartoonist in Paris. She’s also a neurotic, relentless nag, given to sending countless text messages at 3 am. The recipient of the texts is her lover Julie (Marina Foïs), an editor and publisher who shares her bed. They live together along with Julie’s teenaged son. And Julie has had it — she wants to break up. And despite Raf’s pleas, she refuses to budge. They take their fight onto the street, but when Julie stomps away in anger, Raf slips and falls, ending up in hospital. But this is no ordinary day.
It’’s 2019 in Paris, and France is angry. Macron’s corporate and wealth taxes cuts, are making people angry. So are his austerity measures, cutting unemployment insurance and the general social Gas prices are rising, and surveillance cameras are appearing on the 
streets…So a huge coalition of truckers, precarious workers, and anarchists converge on the Champs Elysée to stop traffic and get noticed.
But the police crack down on the Yellow Vest protesters, sending dozens to hospital. So doctors and nurses are overworked and overwhelmed with patients. One is Yann (Pio Marmaï) a trucker in Paris just for the afternoon to check out the protests. He has shrapnel in his leg, and if he doesn’t get home by morning he’ll lose his job. Kim (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna) is a nurse in the hospital, dealing with the sudden influx of injured patients… and he own baby is not doing well. Meanwhile the police are trying to break in to arrest the injured protesters. And Raf and Julie’s teenaged son — who went to the demonstrations — is still missing. Can the chaos of the hospital bring these very different people together? Or is the divide too great?
The Divide is a terrific, realistic day in the life of a group of Parisians stuck in a crisis. I like the French title, La Fracture better, because it’s about Raf’s broken arm, but also about the huge divisions in French society. In its really warm and quirky view of diametrically opposed people forced to confront one another and work together, it humanizes all sides of the conflict. And there were lots of revelations — the yellow vests protesters were not right-wing followers of Le Pen… but they were angry at Macron. And while all this is going on, the on again, off again relationship of Raf and Julie, is resolved, one way or another by the end. The direction, script and acting are all just fantastic — Aïssatou Diallo Sagna won a César for best supporting actress and the film won the “Queer Palm” award as well. And after I watched it I remembered I‘ve seen this director’s work before, back in 2015; Summertime (La Belle Saison) was one of my favourite films that year. Which made me realize that this was no fluke, Corsini is a genius. The Divide is a wonderful warm human drama.
The Divide is playing at the Inside-Out film festival through Sunday; and Crimes of the Future opens this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with 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.
More Hot Docs! Films reviewed: Dark Blossom, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, The Big, Scary “S” Word
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Hot Docs — Canada’s International Documentary Festival — continues through the weekend with tons of great movies online. Free tickets each day for students and seniors. I plan to binge watch documentaries this weekend before it’s over.
Here are a few I want to see:
Four Seasons in a Day – a novel look at the ferry across the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic; 7 Years of Lukas Graham — about the eponymous Danish band; Gaucho Americano — about real cowboys from Chile working in the Western US; and Archipelago — a stunning animated look at an imaginary animated island in Quebec.
But this week I’m talking about three more docs at hotdocs, all directed by women, two of which offer a new take on American history. There’s the dark past and present of American racism; the brighter side of 200 years of populist, home-grown American socialism, and — for something completely different — a look at three dark goths in sunny, rural Denmark.
Dark Blossom
Wri/Dir: Frigge Fri
Josephine is a young woman who lives in a small town in Northern Jutland, Denmark. She hates sports, and rejects the H&M conformity of her high school classmates. She prefers to wear black, accentuated with theatrical makeup, wigs and a pierced septum. If you haven’t guessed yet, she’s a brooding goth. Luckily, Jose is not completely alone. She’s best friends with two guys: Jay, whose parents are devout christians but who prefers big hair and dark fantasies; and fashion-obsessed Nightmare, who knows choice curse words in Punjabi (from his father’s side) but can’t find a boyfriend. They give each other home-made tattoos, and go out on adventures in the grassy fields. They’re totally into roadkill, boiling dead weasels to make jewelry from their bones. Together they form a tight 3-goth posse.
But things start to fray when Jose meets a guy she really likes. And when she moves to Copenhagen to live with him, Nightmare takes this as a personal slight. Will the three best friends ever get back together, or is this a permanent shift? And will Jose trade in her animal skulls for Hello Kitty dolls?
Dark Blossom is a highly personal look at three young non-conformists in rural Denmark as they express their fragile feelings of friendships in their art fashion and music.
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Dir: Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler (whose father was the famous civil rights lawyer William Kunstler)
Can a country be both good and bad? Cana country founded on slavery be a bastion of freedom and liberty? So asks Jeffery Robinson, a director of the ACLU in a lecture he gave in New York City on Juneteenth (June 19th) in 2018 to mark the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. This lecture interspersed with vintage photos and personal interviews — looks at the history of slavery and racism and the dominant role it holds in the country. And like the toppling down of old statues, this iconoclast exposes some of the worst aspects hidden in plain sight. Did you know the third verse of the Star Spangled Banner celebrates the capture and killing of escaped slaves? They sing it for you, on stage. Andrew Jackson, whose face greets you on each $20 bill — and whom ex-president Trump says he adores — was a major advocate of the slave trade who proudly owned 150 human beings. A large 
part of the US economy, both the North and the South, was based on the trade of cotton, tobacco and rice, all of which were produced mainly by slave labour. And that’s just before the US Civil War.
The film looks at the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, massacres of black neighbourhoods, widespread lynching, segregation, the Jim Crow laws, widespread incarceration and police violence. It covers how ingrained anti-black racism is in the foundations of sectors you might not ever think about, including the financial system, real estate, education, insurance, and government.
This is all told by Robinson himself in a personal way: he grew up in a manly white neighbourhood in Memphis, Tennessee, during the beginning of integration and the implementation of civil rights there. So we see him revisit and talk about his own past, what has improved and what remains the same. Who We Are is an excellent and meticulously researched look at the history of racism and white supremacy within the US, covering hundreds of years in just two short hours.
The Big, Scary “S” Word
Dir: Yael Bridge
With its two-party system, its entrenched political views, and its relative lack of class mobility, the US is considered one of the most conservative, developed countries in the world. But what is often forgotten is the longstanding streak of leftist populism and socialism throughout its history. And with the explosive rise in popularity of politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC, and movements like the Democratic Socialists, the “S” word no longer holds the negative connotations it once did. This movie digs up some really unusual facts that will suppose almost everyone who watches it. Did you know it was the republican party who originally espoused socialist ideals after the civil war? And that Karl Marx wrote regular columns in American newspapers? He was intrigued by the socialism in the US long before he write his 
books. It looks at the cooperative communities that sprung up in the mid 1800s in places like Wisconsin; and the non-commercial Bank of North Dakota that saved the farmers there from losing their land and homes.
The film looks at a huge range of topics eloquently explained by dozens famous talking head like Cornell West and Naomi Klein, as it covers centuries of American history. It also follows some people making history now, like Lee Carter a former Marine turned state politician after he was screwed by his private employer, and Stephanie Price an Oklahoma public school teacher forced to take on a second job just to raise her son (she joined in the statewide teachers strike).
If you’re into history, and not the kind they teach you in high school, check out the Big Scary “S” Word; it’s punchy, fast moving, well-edited, highly informative and most of all, entertaining.
Dark Blossom, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, The Big, Scary “S” Word, are all playing at Hot Docs now through May 9th.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Unsung Heroes at Hot Docs 21! Films reviewed: The Face of Anonymous, It Is Not Over Yet, Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The 28th edition of Hot Docs — Canada’s International Documentary Festival — has begun, with features and shorts streaming from today until May 9th. It’s online-only this year, but with many live events, Q&As and workshops. As every year, a selection of tickets are offered free to students and Students and Seniors (over 60) with new titles released each day.
I’ve started to watch some the films but first let me tell you about a few that I haven’t seen yet but look good. Wuhan Wuhan, by Toronto’s own Yung Chang, goes to the city where the current pandemic was first discovered. Misha and the Wolves tells the extraordinary story of a young Belgian Holocaust survivor who sought refuge by living among the wolves… but was her story true? Sex, Revolution and Islam looks at the first female imams in Europe and how they’re radically changing their religion’s outlook. And We are as Gods looks at an environmental iconoclast wants to de-extinct animals using DNA… an eco-hero or shades of Jurassic Park? These are just a few of the docs playing at HotDocs.
This week I’m looking at three more docs about unsung heroes. There are Danish nurses changing how we deal with dementia, a hacktivist changing world events, and a Mohawk activist who changed history.
The Face of Anonymous
Dir: Gary Lang
It’s the 2000s. The US has invaded Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions, supposedly looking for “weapons of mass destruction” and someone to blame for 9/11, when a video started circulating. It is secretly released by Chelsea Manning and published by Julian Assange at Wikileaks, and it shows footage of a heinous war crime, the gunning down of unarmed journalists in Baghdad by the US military. This leads to a crackdown on the whistleblowers, with corporations like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard trying to choke Wikileaks.
This is when a new group appears in the mainstream media. It’s called Anonymous (previously known for fighting Scientology), and consists of hundreds or thousands of anonymous hackers working in tandem. Together they DDOS (directed denial of service) the corporations and government agencies blocking the truth. And they release scary-looking announcement videos. Their members wear Guy Fawkes masks in public to conceal their faces, and one of their public voices is an unknown person called CommanderX. Later the US government starts a nationwide attack on Anonymous members, arresting many people across the country.
But not Commander X.
The Face of Anonymous gives you this background, but then reveals some things you never knew about. Commander X is living on the streets of Toronto in the 2010s having snuck across the border. He continues to be an active presence, even while he’s sleeping outdoors in a park using his laptop as a pillow. Christopher Doyon. You know why they wore Guy Fawkes masks? Because after V is for Vendetta the masks were sitting on warehouse shelves across the continent at discount prices — so everyone in Anonymous could easily get a hold of one.
This fascinating film follows Commander X, how he travelled from Canada to. Mexico, and where he is now. It reveals he also played a role in the start of the Arab Spring in Tunisia. It also interviews other prominent former Anonymous activists. For me, this is especially interesting because I was talking about We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists a doc that played at Hot Docs a decade ago, without knowing Commander X was here in Toronto at the same time viewing the same movie.
It Is Not Over Yet
Dir: Louise Detlefsen
It’s a nursing home in rural Denmark. The residents come from a wide variety of backgrounds; one woman is a former social worker and sexologist. Another ran one of the country’s biggest pharmacies. But they share a common trait: they’re all suffering from dementia. What’s unusual about this place, though is its approach. It’s an open-style residence, located near a forest. They keep chickens I’m the yard, and they’re encouraged to take walks and hug trees. People sing songs, tell jokes, and are always treated with respect. One thing not present is medications. In Denmark the average patient is on 10 different meds. Here they react with horror when they see the medical record of a heavily-drugged newcomer, whom they determine doesn’t have Alzheimers at all. They all share meals and celebrations to mark the death of any residentn(when the flag outside flies at half mast, their birthdays, and other major events.
It Is Not Over Yet is a slow-paced but tender look at the final years of some elderly Danes. It’s told in a “fly on the wall” manner — so we get to see the nurses and attendants discussing their cases, their interaction with the residents, and among the elderly themselves; their friendships, loves, and quirks. It’s not so much about dementia or dying as it is about living life to the fullest.
Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again
Dir: Courtney Montour
It’s the 1960s. Mary Two-Axe Earley is a Mohawk woman from Kahnawa:ke who marries a non-indigenous man. She is immediately told that she is no longer an Indian and must leave her home and community. (This rule is part of the Indian Act). She is shocked and flabbergasted but refuses to follow orders. I am Mohawk, I am an Indian, despite what they say, and you can’t take that away from me. She starts up a group, Indian Rights for Indian Women, and takes it to Ottawa to testify before Parliament. The hypocrisy of it all: can you imagine a brother and sister, one considered indigenous, the other not? A woman marrying a non-native man, even if later divorced, lost her Indian status for life. Even after death, she can’t be buried in her ancestral land. (In contrast, a man who marries a non-native keeps his status).
Other women’s groups join in solidarity. Mary Two-Axe struggles for many years until she triumphs, changing the law. And she — and 100,000 others — are finally able to say they are Indians again.
This loving and brilliant short film uses decades-old recordings made by Alanis Obomsawin at the NFB, played publicly now for the first time. It’s illustrated by period footage — historic figures like Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque pop up frequently — as well as still photos and new interviews with others involved in the struggle. Mary Two-Axe Earley died in 1996, but her legacy lives on.
This is a hero everyone should know about.
Mary Two-Axe Earley: I am Indian Again, It is Not Over Yet and The Face of Anonymous,…are all playing at Hot Docs now through May. 9th.
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 Chris McKim about his new doc Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s the 1980s in New York, a city in decay, nearly bankrupt and crumbling, with the AIDS epidemic looming just around the corner. David is the son of an abusive dad who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. He’s a rebel, in a punk band and into transgressive writers like Genet and Rimbaud. He earns money selling sex in Times Square. He expresses himself through murals in abandoned piers, and stencil graffiti spray-painted on city sidewalks. He samples found images, photocopying and 
rephotographing them. But suddenly he’s at the epicentre of a new art movement in the East Village. His paintings appear at the Whitney Biennial and people are paying money for his art. Eventually he becomes a central voice in both the art and gay rights movements before he died in his thirties in 1992.
Who was this David Wojnarowicz, anyway?
Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker is the name of a new documentary about the life and work of the artist, writer and activist. The film incorporates voice recordings, film, video and stills as well as new interviews with his contemporaries. It follows the events of his life where art, culture, sexuality and politics interacted. The doc is produced by WOW Docs / World of Wonder’s Randy Barbato & Fenton Bailey and directed by award-winning filmmaker Chris McKim, known for his wide range of projects from co-creator of RuPaul’s Drag Race to the Emmy-winning documentary Out of Iraq.
I spoke with Chris McKim in L.A., via ZOOM.
Wojnarowicz opens today in Toronto at the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox
Daniel Garber talks with Rebecca Snow about Pandora’s Box
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s as old as humanity, directly experienced by more than half the population, and indirectly by the rest; is crucial to our existence as a species. And yet it’s treated as a dirty and shameful taboo. It’s omnipresent yet never mentioned in public.
I’m talking about menstruation. And because we never talk 
about it, women and girls suffer social discrimination and economic hardship, at work and at home, in schools and in prisons. Isn’t it time we open this Pandora’s Box?
Pandora’s Box: Lifting the Lid on Menstruation is a new documentary that delves into its history and culture, and looks at human rights advocates around the world — in India, Kenya, North America and Europe — who are trying to normalize periods and to make them affordable, safe and accessible. It’s written and directed by Rebecca Snow, an award-winning Canadian filmmaker who specializes in social issue documentaries.
Pandora’s Box premiers on Monday, March 8th, International Women’s Day.
I spoke with Rebecca Snow in Toronto, via ZOOM. (Some of the dialogue is inaudible, due to technical difficulties.)
Separated. Films reviewed: Dear Comrades!, A Glitch in the Matrix, Two of Us
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Festival and award season has begun, so this week I’m looking at three new movies – from the US, Russia and France – now playing at Sundance or already nominated for upcoming awards. There are people who believe perception is separate from reality; a Communist official separated from her daughter; and an elderly woman separated from the love of her life.
Dear Comrades!
Co-Wri/Dir: Andrey Konchalovskiy
It’s summer in a small Russian city on the Don River, and the people are angry. Food prices are soaring while wages are going down. Thousands of factory workers take to the streets carrying red flags and pictures of Lenin. Is this the Russian revolution of 1905? Or is it 1917?
Neither… it’s the Soviet Union in 1962!
Lyuda (Yuliya Vysotskaya) is a single mom who lives with her and her daughter Svetka (Yuliya Burova) who works in a train factory, She’s an ardent Stalinist. And because she’s an apparatchik — a high-placed local official and member of the Communist Party — she lives a good life. This means access to hair salons, 
nylon stockings, negligees, and Hungarian salami. She’s having an affair with a married official.
The food shortages and wage cuts don’t really affect her.
But her life is shaken up by the walkout at a locomotive factory (where Svetka works) and spreading across the city of Novocherkassk. And their meetings — they’re trying to figure out how to handle this — end up with bricks through the window and Lyuda and the rest forced to 
sneak out through a sewer tunnel. In comes the KGB who want to bring guns ammunition into the equation: the instigators must be stopped. Mayhem and killings ensue. Lyuda is a hardliner, but when her daughter disappears she has to decide whether her loyalty is to the state or to her kin.
Dear Comrades is a moving drama about a real event and the massive cover-up that followed it. It’s shot in glorious, high-contrast black and white, similar to 
Polish director Pawilowski’s Ida and Cold War, but with magnificent, classic cinematic scenes involving hundreds of rioters and soldiers in the public square. Yuliya Vysotskaya’s performance as Lyuda runs the gamut from cold official to angry mother to disillusioned and drunken party member as her entire existence and beliefs are called into question.
This is Russia’s nominee for best foreign film Oscar and definitely deserves to be seen.
A Glitch in the Matrix
Dir: Rodney Ascher
Have you ever had the sensation that everything around you — other people, your job, what you see and hear — is an illusion, that you’re living in a programmed reality? If so, you’re not alone. A new documentary talks to people who are convinced they are trapped in a world like the Wachowskis’ 1999 movie The Matrix, where everything they perceive is just a computer simulation. And anyone else — other than one’s self — is either a part of this conspiracy, or a victim of it, or they don’t even exist outside of your head. And it is only detectable by paying attention to weird glitches in the system, like odd 
examples of deja vu, or coincidences that are too absurd or fantastical to be merely random events.
The doc interviews people rendered into 3-D animated avatars who tell about their own experiences. It also gives a full history of these beliefs, dating back to Plato’s concept of shadows on the wall of a cave, through Descarte’s epistemological example of an “Evil Demon” deceiving us, all the way to the present. This includes a rare recording of a 
speech given by author Phillip K Dick in the 1970s, who says the ideas in his books are not science fiction but science fact. His stories inspired movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall.
A Glitch in the Matrix is a fascinating, informative and bizarre documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival a couple days ago. Aside from the animated interviews and narration, it presents a veritable tsunami of visual references to movies and TV shows video games that deal with these topics. I’m talking hundreds of clips, from the game 
Minecraft, to The Truman Show, to the kids’ book Horton Hears a Who, all of which propose that there are worlds or universes who don’t know they are just tiny self-contained units within much larger realities.
Do I believe I’m living in a glass dome or floating in a sensory deprivation tank? No. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying this mind-warp of a documentary.
Two of Us
Co-Wri/Dir: Filippo Meneghetti
Nina and Madeleine (Barbara Sukowa, Martine Chevallier) are two elderly women who live in Paris (Nina’s originally from Berlin). They first met as children in a public park in Rome, and kept in touch ever since. And for the past 20 years they’ve been passionate lovers who share one floor of an apartment building, floating back and forth between the two homes separated by a hallway. And they’re planning on selling them leaving Paris and retiring somewhere in Rome. The only thing holding them back are Madeleine (or Made as Nina calls her)’s two adult children and her Anne and 
Frédéric and her grandson Théo.
She was married to an abusive husband for Amy years until he died, though her actual relationship was with her lover Nina. But she’s never told her family the truth — she’s too worried about what they’ll think. But when Mado has a sudden stroke rendering her speechless, Nina is suddenly separated from her de facto wife. Mado’s family just think of her as the kindly neighbour Mme Dorn who lives down the hall. They bring in a paid caregiver who blocks her entry into the other apartment. When Nina demands to spend time with her lover, Anne and Frederic begin to regard Nina as a crazy woman who won’t leave their mother alone and cut off all contact. Will Nina and Mado ever see each other again? And can their relationship be saved?
Two of Us is a wonderful and passionate drama about two elderly lovers. It’s the young, Paris-based Italian director’s first feature, but it feels mature and masterfully done. And it co-stars the great Barbara Sukowa (If you’re into German cinema, you may remember her from movies in the 70s and 80s by Fassbinder and more recently by von Trotta), Sukowa is just as good now as she’s ever been. And Chevalier conveys volumes even when she can’t speak. The movie is full of pathos and tears and frustration and joy, you feel so much for both of them.
Two of Us is France’s nominee for best Foreign Oscar, and it’s definitely worth seeing.
A Glitch in the Matrix starts today, and Dear Comrade and Two of Us are both opening at the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.
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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