Reviews - Page 77

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

Hot Docs Review: ‘Love & Stuff’

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Love & Stuff (USA, 80 min.) Dir: Judith Helfand Program: Revisionaries Navel-gazing and contemplating motherhood have an obvious affinity: we’re all linked on a chain of umbilical cords to mothers back through generations. Judith Helfand’s diary documentary, Love & Stuff (co-directed with David Cohen) regards herself as both a grieving daughter and, at 50, a new mother. Helfand is a Peabody Award-winning director whose work toggles between the personal and the social in issues of health and social justice. Her 2019 film, Cooked: Death By Zipcode, looked at the disproportionate number of African-American deaths during a mid-nineties Chicago heat wave, for the same

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Hot Docs Review: ‘Hong Kong Moments’

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Hong Kong Moments (Hong Kong/Germany, 90 min.) Dir. Bing Zhou Program: Special Presentations Were you blown away by the mammoth “umbrella demonstrations,” undertaken by pro-democracy forces last year to protest Beijing’s new extradition law? See this exceptional portrait of seven people on both sides of the struggle. It is a remarkable exercise in compassion that will make you think. Zhou puts the focus on subjects with disparate experiences during the hostilities. Ray the cabbie is distressed by the degree of protester violence; Peter Yip is a young police officer facing new demands on the job; An Bao is a protester

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Hot Docs Review: ‘Eddy’s Kingdom’

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Eddy’s Kingdom (Canada, 85 minutes) D. Greg Compton Program: Canadian Spectrum A story about Canadian provincial government abuse and terrorism that made international headlines in Canada in the 1970s and eighties gets resurrected with an oddly chipper treatment in Eddy’s Kingdom. The protagonist, Eddy Haymour, a Lebanese-Canadian, now in his late eighties, certainly has a story to tell: In 1971, he bought a five-acre island in Okanagan Lake, B.C. with plans to turn it into a Middle East-style theme park with a camel-shaped ice-cream parlour and a pyramid. The park was in Premier W.A.C. Bennet’s home riding, and the B.C. government

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Hot Docs Review: ‘Keyboard Fantasies’

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Keyboard Fantasies (UK, 63 min.) Dir. Posy Dixon Program: Artscapes This is an apt title if there ever was one, for two good reasons. It refers to the name of the 1986 album released by boundary-breaking musician Beverly-Glenn Copeland to almost no acclaim. The sometimes quirky, sometimes dreamy, always original work, distributed on cassette from Copeland’s home in the Muskokas, lay dormant until it was discovered in 2015 by a Japanese collector. He bought all the remaining albums and sold them, reviving Copeland’s career and triggering a series of concerts that attracted thousands of adoring fans. Is that every underappreciated

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Hot Docs Review: ‘Wood’

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Wood (Austria/Germany/Romania, 95 min.) Dir. Monica Lãzurean-Gorgan, Michaela Kirst, Ebba Sinzinger Program: World Showcase James Bond might be on hiatus until November, but cinephiles hankering for a spy game will appreciate Wood. The film is an eye-opening combination of investigative journalism and international espionage. This environmental docu-thriller sees some bold activists put themselves on the line while saving the planet from greedy corporations and inspiring change. Wood chronicles an ambitious years-in-the-making investigation in which activist Alexander von Bismarck is a fearless crusader. Through his work with the NGO Environmental Investigation Agency US (EIA), von Bismarck amasses an astonishing range of evidence about an illegal

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Hot Docs Review: ‘I Am Samuel’

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I Am Samuel (Kenya/USA/Canada, 70 min.) Dir. Pete Murimi Program: World Showcase (World Premiere) I Am Samuel is a work of true bravery. This verité-style feature directorial debut from Pete Murimi offers an intimate portrait of Samuel, a young gay Kenyan man. Samuel shares with Murimi and the audience both the heartwarming joy he experiences with his first love, Alex, as well as the hardship he faces for putting their relationship into the open. Although it isn’t a crime to be gay in Kenya, intimate acts between members of the same sex are criminal offenses. The stigma for coming out is

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Hot Docs Review: ‘Tales from a Prison Cell’

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Tales from a Prison Cell (Hungary/Croatia/UK, 80 min.) Dir. Ábel Visky Programme: Artscapes (World Premiere) A Hungarian prison might not be the place one expects to encounter uplifting children’s stories. However, Tales from a Prison Cell ingeniously conveys how sparks of inspiration emerge in the most astonishing places. This film by Ábel Visky offers a surprising perspective on life in prison. Tales from a Prison Cell explores how creativity can be liberating, therapeutic, and rehabilitating as individuals cathartically explore their demons through art. The premise of Tales from a Prison is that imagination is the key to freedom. Visky presents a novel idea in which convicts create

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Hot Docs Review: ‘Bare’

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Bare (Belgium, 94 min.) Dir. Aleksandr M. Vinogradov Programme: Artscapes (World Premiere) Editions of Hot Docs in the post-#MeToo era might lead cinephiles to believe that all men are dicks. This year, Hot Docs reclaims the dick with the phallus-friendly dance doc Bare. The film has more, er, “gents” on display than a trip to the beach on Toronto’s Centre Island. Told with neither an erotic whisper nor a juvenile giggle, Bare celebrates the male body in all its complexity, might, and vulnerability. This unconventional dance doc pulses with originality. It’s an edgy thrill for viewers thirsty for experimental art when galleries and

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Hot Docs Review: ‘First We Eat’

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First We Eat Canada, 101 min.) Dir. Suzanne Crocker Program: To Serve & Protect A force of nature blocks access to the general store in a remote area of the Yukon and it looks like things won’t open up for a long time. Some people would just find a boat, head to the airport and leave town. But filmmaker Suzanne Crocker has a better idea. She convinces her family, including her three teenagers, to eat locally for a full year and decides to put the project, including their familial struggles under the lens. The result is an absorbing documentary about resourcefulness under

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Hot Docs Review: ‘The 8th’

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The 8th (USA, 94 min.) Dir. Aideen Kane, Maeve O’Boyle & Lucy Kennedy Program: Persister (World Premiere) Documentaries have a bum rap for being kind of grim, focused as so many of them are on real-life oppression and the often futile pursuit of social justice. So how sweet it is to see The 8th, a documentary on the movement in Ireland to gain abortion rights for women. Spoiler: the movement succeeds. Actually that’s not a spoiler. The triumph is history. What’s not well-known is how a grassroots posse of savvy activists bloomed, fought the Catholic Church and transformed public consciousness to

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