“It usually started with: ‘you were a slave,’ when I was growing up, and that’s just not the case,” director Maya Annik Bedward tells me. We’re discussing what led the Jamaican French-Canadian filmmaker to jump on a plane to Brazil after university without knowing the language, or having a base. It was a trip that
Sahtu Dene musician Jay Gilday sits on a rooftop in Yellowknife, with his acoustic guitar and a microphone aligned with the treetops. Shot on a propped-up iPhone 12, this is the opening scene of Gilday’s instalment of Giiwewizh (the Ojibway/Anishinaabe word for ‘to carry home’). He is one of 16 musicians who shot their own
Edgar Wright deserves kudos for making his first documentary feature about Sparks, a band that is simultaneously quirky and anonymous, capable of performing in genres ranging from bubblegum to glam and from disco to art rock. Wright’s pop gods are perfect subjects for his method, which is to send up everything from gangster films (Baby
Entangled: The Race to Save Right Whales from Extinction (USA, 75 min.) Dir. David Abel The fight to protect the whales is at the heart of several environmental movements. From the Save the Whales campaign with Greenpeace and much earlier anti-whaling legislation in the USA, these large marine mammals have become symbols for humankind’s
Truman & Tennessee features one of the most engaging conversations that never happened. This warm documentary offers a two-hander of sorts by bringing together the voices of literary icons Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Love, Cecil Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict) couples the work of the two great writers through their own
In my corner of the filmmaking world, mostly filled with arty narratives, documentaries, and animation, Viktor Kossakovsky (Aquarela) is a big deal. He’s been winning awards since the early ‘90s for edgy docs, which use genre bending techniques to force audiences to become truly engaged with his subjects. In one film, he shot footage out
Can a movement survive the death of its leaders? Director Maxime Faure addresses this question in his first feature Sisterhood. At its peak, Quebec’s chapter of the Society of Helpers of the Holy Spirit, an order of nuns engaged in social and political activism, had 35 members. At the time of filming, only eight remained.
Alone Together follows the life of Ravit Raichman, a part-time professional baby-cradler. A “first hug” volunteer, she donates the much-needed physical touch needed to keep abandoned newborn babies alive at a Tel Aviv hospital. The doc is a revealing look at how selfless acts of care can be life-saving for both parties involved. The subject
“Either I marry now, or let the world be destroyed,” explains Yarden Naor, a gay Orthodox Jewish man recounting his feelings upon the day he married a woman. Mordechai Vardi’s documentary Marry Me However tells the stories of several gay and lesbian people raised in observant Jewish communities throughout Israel. Due to their religious obligations,
From MySpace to Kickstarter, Kate Nash has harnessed the power of the people to revitalise the music scene. Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl charts the rocky journey of the English singer who refuses to conform to convenient labels. Even the catchall “female artist” tag doesn’t rock her world, as she boldly noted when accepting the
