France Televisions’ six channels, none of them major, broadcast 7,644 documentaries last season, 351 in prime time. 5,269 hours in all. According to the Canadian Media Fund (CMF), the number of documentary projects the CMF funded at the production level for two years, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, was 603. According to the Canadian Media Producers Association,
Documentary Culture
Little India: Village of Dreams shows why Toronto earns the distinction as ‘the most diverse city in the world’.
It’s a frigid February evening in Whitehorse when Tanya Tagaq takes the stage. She’s in a black dress and still buzzing from her recent Polaris Prize win. “I just want to tell the children in the audience that I’m going to make some sounds you’ve never heard before, but don’t be afraid.” More than 400 people have
In the Name of All Canadians (Canada, 75 min.) Dir. Vivian Belik, Karen Chapman, Aisha Jamal, Khoa Lê, Annick Marion, Ariel Nasr, Patrick Reed, Andréa Schmidt, Jérémie Wookey Earlier this year, TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey posed a fair challenge to Canadian filmmakers. In a Globe & Mail piece titled ‘Dear Canadian filmmakers: it’s
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (USA, 76 min.) Dir. Errol Morris Starring: Elsa Dorfman, Allen Ginsberg Errol Morris has won great acclaim for his documentaries on powerful, conflicted men like Robert McNamara (The Fog of War) and Donald Rumsfeld (The Unknown Known), so it’s fascinating to see him make a lovely reversal in
The queer connection to documentary filmmaking is longstanding and unmistakable. Around the world, fiction filmmakers have had to deal with a long history of censorship and repression, meaning images of LGBTQ characters were often diminished or simply deleted, rendering the queer community invisible. But non-fiction filmmakers could often bypass this rule by the very fact that
Heritage Minister Joly has teased us with the suggestion that some kind of “contribution” model will happen from OTTs; it just won’t be an “internet tax.” So what will it be?
In Search of Israeli Cuisine (USA, 96 min.) Dir. Roger Sherman “What does Israeli cuisine taste like?” asks Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov. The title of this new doc by Roger Sherman is on point as Solomonov returns to the land of his birth in search of Israeli cuisine. The chef acts as our guide
Manifesto (Australia/Germany, 95 min.) Dir. Julian Rosefeldt Starring: Cate Blanchett “Nothing is original,” says a teacher, played by the extraordinary Cate Blanchett (Carol, Blue Jasmine), to a class of wide-eyed youngsters. The teacher delivers a lecture on the principles of Dogma 95, the Danish anti-cinematic movement pioneered by directors like Lars Von Trier and
The Babushkas of Chernobyl (USA, 71 min.) Dir. Holly Morris, Anne Bogart The world’s most catastrophic nuclear power plant accident, the Chernobyl Disaster, occurred on April 26 1986 in Pripyat, in the former Ukrainian Republic of the USSR. Due to an emergency shutdown, nuclear reactor number 4 blew up, releasing immense amounts of radioactive