Reviews - Page 144

Giving you our points of view on the latest docs in release and on the circuit.

Review: ‘Holy Angels’

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Holy Angels (Canada, 14 min.) Dir. Jay Cardinal Villeneuve   Number 34. That is the name that Lena Wandering Spirit recalls receiving upon arriving at Holy Angels Residential School. Not an Anglicized name or a colonial name, but a number. A cold two-digit label that defined her in the eyes of her teachers, like something they could organize and track, but she defies her teachers and abusers in Holy Angels by finally speaking about the traumas of the past. Lena Wandering Spirit spent a half dozen years of her childhood at the Holy Angels in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, but her

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Review: ‘West of the Jordan River’

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West of the Jordan River (Israel/France, 88 min.) Dir. Amos Gitai   In 1982, a renowned Israeli director Amos Gitai visited the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to film Field Diary, a documentary that chronicles the region’s escalating tensions. At the time, Gitai and his crew were deeply concerned about the daring vehemence of the right-wing Israeli movement. In his new documentary, West of the Jordan River, which has its North American premiere at VIFF, Gitai resumes the discussion he started in the 1980s with vigor, resilience and determination. Through multiple interviews with journalists, activists,

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Review: ‘Bosch: The Garden of Dreams

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Bosch: The Garden of Dreams (El Bosco, el jardín de los sueños) (Spain/France, 90 min.) Dir. José Luis López-Linares   Earlier this year, Alexandre Philippe devoted an entire feature documentary to analysing a single sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Critics called Philippe’s 78/52 the biggest film geek movie ever made for unpacking all 78 set-ups and 52 cuts of Psycho’s iconic shower scene in passionate detail. The world of fine art receives a similarly focused discussion in Bosch: The Garden of Dreams, José Luis López-Linares’ feature-length analysis of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s a thoughtful seminar on

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Review: ‘School Life’

School Life (Ireland, 99 min.) Dir. Neasa Ní Chianáin, David Rane   It’s fall and the kids are back to school. For John and Amanda Leyden, the season brings about their 46th year at Headfort, an Irish boarding school for primary-aged students. Set in Headfort’s grand 18th century estate surrounded by sprawling lush woods and featuring a great cast of characters, this award-winning observational drops audiences into a few days in the life of a dying breed as the school approaches the end of its tenure and the teachers, like their students, face an uncertain future. The Leydens have a

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Review: ‘Unarmed Verses’

Unarmed Verses (Canada, 85 min.) Dir. Charles Officer   The thought experiment called the ship of Theseus asks if a boat remains the same if one removes all of its boards and nails and replaces them with new ones. The question pertains to any physical structure that carries intangible elements within it that are essential to its identity. Are they ephemeral things like memory and meaning? Toronto has many vessels of this nature in the ever-changing housing communities that fall only to rise as something new. Villaways, for example, saw a forced exodus of its residents over the past year,

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Review: ‘Armed with Faith’

Armed with Faith (USA, 74 min.) Dir. Geeta Gandbhir, Asad Faruqi   Since 9/11, life in Pakistan has drastically changed. “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” – was the post 9/11 US rhetoric, which led to Pakistan joining forces with the US in the war on terror. As a result, the terrorist organizations declared war on Pakistan, bringing fear and instability to the region. Bomb attacks have predominantly disrupted life in the northern province of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). Bordering Afghanistan, this area is susceptible to suicide bombings and IEDs and known as a gateway for terrorists

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Review: ‘Where You’re Meant to Be’

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Where You’re Meant to Be (UK, 75 min.) Dir. Paul Fegan   VIFF features two docs about traditional music from the UK and the difference is as sharp and strong as the distinction between Scotch and Irish whisky. Scottish doc Where You’re Meant to Be features Aidan Moffat, Scottish “cult-pop raconteur” and former frontman for the band Arab Strap, on a road trip as he performs and reinvents folk songs. Irish hybrid Song of Granite, on the other hand, offers a feat of reinvention of its own as it charts an unconventional biography of late Sean-nós singer Joe Heaney. (Read

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Review: ‘Song of Granite’

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Song of Granite (Ireland/Canada, 97 min.) Dir. Pat Collins   The world of the musical biopic can be a well-worn path. It can also be one of inspiration. Pat Collins offers the most original interpretation of a musician in Song of Granite since Todd Haynes cast a gaggle of actors ranging from Richard Gere to Cate Blanchett to embody the many forms of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. Song of Granite illuminates the life and music of Joe Heaney through an unclassifiable film that blends verité, neo-realism, archival footage, mockumentary, and good old-fashioned musical performances to create a timeless

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Review: ‘Like a Pebble in the Boot’

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Like a Pebble in the Boot (Comme un caillou dans la botte) (Canada, 70 min.) Dir. Hélène Choquette   While street vending is illegal in Italy, it is the only source of income for many Senegalese migrant workers. Deceived by the Western image of prosperity, they reach the Mediterranean coast in hope of finding promising jobs. Instead, many Senegalese men end up sacrificing their health and often their dignity by illegally selling cheap merchandize to scrape sufficient funds together to survive. As desolate as this premise might sound, Hélène Choquette (Refugees of the Blue Planet, Chienne de Vie) turns it

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Review: ‘Chaplin in Bali’

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Chaplin in Bali (France, 80 min.) Dir. Raphaël Millet   Here’s the thing about home movies: they’re only interesting when they’re your own memories. Not even the home movies of the great Charlie Chaplin can conjure the same captivation that one experiences with his Hollywood classics. Director Raphaël Millet mines the Chaplin archive to offer snippets of 16mm that the Little Tramp shot in Bali in 1932. It’s a bit of a slog although film buffs might enjoy the novelty of this glimpse of a Hollywood icon. The first act of the film, however, isn’t particularly interesting aside from a

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