Reviews - Page 56

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

You Are the Days to Come Review: Profiling an Artistic Revolution

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“Chinese rock ‘n’ roll is like a rolling egg,” says musician Cui Jian at the end of You Are the Days to Come. “Yet, we have not been broken or harmed. I hope that one day the egg will hatch and a new life will be ready to fly.” You Are the Days to Come is the story of the chickens who laid the first eggs in post-Mao China. This film by Ronja Yu offers a portrait of China in the 1980s as seen through the works of six artists who gave voice to a new national consciousness in a

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Fruits of Labor Review: A Labour of Love

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“My body stinks of strawberries and work when I wake up,” says Ashley Solis, the teenager at the heart of the new doc Fruits of Labor. The film follows Solis and her family as they work to make ends meet as a Mexican-American immigrant family on the central coast of California. Your next bowl of berries may not taste so sweet. Fruits of Labor is both a documentary and a coming-of-age story. It is Solis’ senior year of high school, and at the same time that she is shopping for prom dresses, she is working around the clock to afford

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zo reken Review: A Brilliant Ride

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In Haiti, the term zo reken (meaning “Shark Bone”) refers both to a local cane alcohol and the popular 4×4 Toyota Land Cruiser that can be seen weaving through the congested streets. Frequently used by both Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the police, the vehicle is both a source of humanitarian aid and a symbol of repression. In zo reken, director Emanuel Licha’s uses the powerful all-terrain vehicle as a metaphor for the inequality that divides Haiti. Primarily placing the audience within the interior of a zo reken, Licha’s documentary provides an intimate look at a country in crisis. It has

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Portrayal Review: To Catch a Thief

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Vladimir Dvorkin was a prolific artist who painted thousands of beautiful portraits during his lifetime. One wouldn’t know it, however, from gallery catalogues, exhibition reviews, or Google searches. One wouldn’t even know of him by looking at signatures on paintings made by his own hand, for Dvorkin was a ghost painter. For years, the Russian-born artist painted portraits that he sold to Israeli “artist” Oz Almog, who proudly re-sold and exhibited the works as his own. This story haunts Dvorkin’s grandson, Roman Lapshin, who vows to expose the truth and give his late grandfather the recognition he never enjoyed during

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Blue Box Review: The “Big Moral Problem” of History

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The winner of the 2017 Corus-Hot Docs Forum Pitch Prize, Israeli director Michal Weits’ Blue Box links her family story linked to bitter debates about Israel’s founding. The filmmaker’s great-grandfather, Joseph (Yosef) Weitz emigrated to Palestine from Eastern Europe as an 18-year-old labourer in 1908. In the 1930s, he became director of the non-profit Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose international blue box donation campaign raised money to buy Jewish land and, through its forestation program, served as an inspirational Zionist campaign, fulfilling the Biblical promise of trees blooming in the desert. Michal interviews members of her extended family about their

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My Mohamed Is Different Review: “It Is What It Is”

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In the tourist driven city of Luxor in Egypt, some marriages begin on the banks of the Nile where mature foreign women find love and companionship with local younger men. Though it isn’t quite what it seems to be. In My Mohamed is Different, director Ines Marzouk presents a candid, verité style film that follows ‘three’ mature European women as they navigate their new lives and love relationships in a mysterious world where the boundaries between business and romance seem to continuously blur. The film’s opening scene is a close-up shot of Sarannah, a 79-year-old Scottish woman, clearly gazing at

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Zaho Zay Review: A Family Story, Complete with Murder and Dice

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Set on the island of Madagascar, the experimental Zaho Zay is a hybrid documentary, drama and poetic reverie that defies paraphrase. Co-directed by French Malagasy filmmaker Maéva Ranaïvojaona, and Austrian filmmaker Georg Tiller, the film has a binary structure: One part is a document drawn from life on the island nation and the other is a magic realist reverie about a travelling serial killer. The two parts are united by the voice-over monologue of a woman prison guard, daydreaming of her long-absent father while watching inmates in the yard. At the core of its documentary material in the film is

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Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra Review: A Stage for Reconciliation

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Further proof that Canadian arts can learn a lot from their Australian counterparts can be seen in Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra. This striking dance doc is a portrait of the internationally acclaimed Bangarra Dance Theatre and the three brothers—David, Russell, and Stephen Page—who fuelled the company’s success. Moreover, it’s an invigorating study of the road to reconciliation by supporting Indigenous communities through the arts and giving them a platform to share their heritage and culture. Firestarter is the story of the Page brothers’ heritage (they’re descendants of the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh Nation)

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Any Given Day Review: Masterfully Empathetic Filmmaking

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Perhaps one of the most challenging films at Hot Docs this year, but also among the most essential, Margaret Byrne’s Any Given Day masterfully interrogates the ways in which we treat mental health. The film shows us a five-year observation of three participants, all of whom are in a mental health court probation program in Chicago. Byrne empathetically documents their journeys towards rehabilitation as she observes the participants negotiating a system in which the county jail all but serves as the treatment centre for people with mental health. Bars and confinement are obviously not the answer. The film asks audiences

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With Drawn Arms Review: Fists Raised High

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For those of us who witnessed it live on TV, the image is indelible. 200-metre Olympic champion Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos stand on the podium, their fists raised in the black power salute as the U.S. national anthem plays. As protests raged in the United States after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., there had already been threats of a summer Olympic boycott from Black American athletes. But Smith, already a world champion and expecting to medal, headed to Mexico City, determined to make a statement. He always said that as he raised his fist, he

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