Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s Murderball, a bracingly unsentimental look at the culture of quadriplegic rugby, is not only mainstream documentary filmmaking of a high order, but also undoubtedly the best movie ever inspired by a story in Maxim magazine. A successful premiere at the 2005 Sundance festival, where the film was fêted with the Audience
This is a story about love—love between a man and a woman from vastly different worlds, love of family and love of multi-cultural Toronto. A good storyteller has the ability to gently open us up, touch our hearts and enhance the way we look at the world. But for real professionals, like Germany’s First Hand
As the lights went up in the small Berkeley auditorium, there was a stunned moment of silence, then several hands rose in the air: “Will this be on PBS?” It was a question I had been asked at almost every stop on my tour through California in 2003, during the weeks following the US invasion
“In a real tragedy, it is not the hero who perishes; it is the chorus.” — Joseph Brodsky On May 29, 1985, in the final of the annual tournament to decide Europe’s best football team, reigning champions, Liverpool, met Juventus of Turin at Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Thousands travelled to watch their heroes play. Kick-off was postponed
“In my dreams I harvest my realities into film dreams.” Phil Hoffman never said those words to me, but here’s why I dreamt he could have. Hoffman Harvests a Film Culture Late June in Ontario is synonymous with the harvest of luscious field strawberries. Eager city folks flock to rural ‘pick-your-own’ outlets such as Andrew’s Berry
I’m sitting on free transit in Park City, Utah, watching the warm sun recede over the pristine ski-hilled Wasatch Mountains, talking to young Gabrielle. She’s a blond, brown-eyed, squeaky-clean, super-nice, single-mom Utah native who’s taken three weeks off work to volunteer for the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. I’m on my way to my first screening
Many filmmakers make documentaries but there are few countries where they have the freedom and opportunity to so consistently shine a light on all the foibles, injustices and controversies of their society as they do in Israel. Films like David Ofek’s No. 17, which explores the aftermath of a suicide bombing and one unclaimed, unidentified victim,
Since their splashy beginning fifteen years ago with the “non-fiction movie” The Falls, Primitive has beena major force in documentary production. They’ve built their enviable reputation for integrity and innovation with such important point-of-view docs as In the Reign of Twilight, Intelligence, Cod: the fish that changed the world and McLuhan’s Wake. Kevin McMahon’s impressive skills as a writer and director
What has happened to the fabulous festival bag? And I don’t mean the aged blonde puffing away on the terrace, martini in one hand, cellphone in the other. Long gone are the weighty corporate satchels with multi-pockets, flaps and key chains. We’ve grown accustomed to the refreshing urban sidewalk look of casual mail bags—or in
BRITISH COLUMBIA — Katherine Dodds Paris Stories Paris Stories, The Fiction of Mavis Gallant tells the story of Canada’s famously “unknown” writer. One of The New Yorker’s most frequently published short story writers, Gallant often appears in anthologies of great American writers. A Montrealer who has been living in Paris since 1950 yet writes in English, Gallant has