Everything’s Cool (Directors: Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand, USA, 2007): These directors scored a hit a few years ago with Blue Vinyl, about the harmful effects of PVCs. This time, they turn their attention to global warming, maintaining their “toxic comedy” approach. This film is like a hip companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth, bringing some humour and aiming at a younger audience.
We meet a variety of interesting characters in the war on climate change, including Bish Neuhauser, a ski resort snow groomer who embarks on a journey to convert his 1975 Mercedes to run on vegetable oil, and Rick Piltz, a former White House staffer turned environmental whistle-blower. There are several other personal stories weaved into the narrative, and taken together, they give us a good picture of where we are in the fight against climate change.
I liked the attitude of this film, how it tried to present the positive side of the struggle. As environmental bad boys Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus pointed out, Martin Luther King didn’t give a speech entitled “I Have A Nightmare,” but that is just what the environmental movement has been doing for the past thirty years, with no real success. By focussing on the positive aspects of change (ie. the millions of new jobs and businesses that will be created by innovative entrepreneurs), we can move forward without being burdened by liberal guilt. In this respect, I’d highly recommend Alex Steffen’s book Worldchanging which is packed with innovative ideas and examples.
Official site for the film
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
environment
Circus School (Directors: Dingding Ke and Jing Guo, China, 2006): The filmmakers take us on a harrowing journey inside the world of Chinese acrobats, and the pictures are not pretty. Trainers push children as young as 8 to repeat their moves over and over, despite injuries and emotional breakdowns. This was a very interesting film because the filmmakers were young Chinese, and I’m sure a film made by a Western crew would have featured a lot of interviews with the children and their parents. Here, we just see the training and the occasional tirade by the principal or one of the trainers. The looks on the faces of the children tell us everything they are feeling, though they hardly speak in the film.
Acrobatics in China goes back hundreds of years, and it appears that the training regime has changed little in that time. Repetition, even when the children are exhausted, is the norm, and when things don’t go right, it’s common for the trainer to hurl insults and abuse at the students. In turn, the trainers are the subject of the same sort of attacks from the principal, as evidenced in one long and uncomfortable scene involving the teacher of the Triple Handstand group.
A few of the acrobats stand out. Eight-year-old Xu Yu is just adorable, even when the trapeze acrobats keep dropping her over and over. And Cai Ling, though 13, looks about 10, and struggles to keep his weight down even as he demonstrates his incredible talents. To see these kids so clearly suffering is heartbreaking, and yet, when we see their final performances, it’s almost enough to make us forget the rest. Almost, but not quite.
I knew before seeing the film that there would be quite an outcry from some in the Western audience. We’re not used to seeing such pressure put on kids. They were battered physically by the training and psychologically by their trainers. But the truth is that their families all pay to send the kids to circus school, and for some of them, it’s their only chance at a career.
Here in North America, we’re really not all that much kinder to our kids sometimes. I’ve seen films about competitive gymnastics where the treatment is just the same, and quite a few hockey-playing kids here in Canada face incredible amounts of pressure and abuse from their parents.
That being said, the young filmmakers did admit that they hope their film will help improve conditions for the acrobats. It’s a microcosm of a huge dilemma for China, who wants to hold onto its traditions while at the same time modernizing and opening up to the rest of the world. In that sense, this will be a thought-provoking film for all audiences, both Western and Chinese.
Here is the Q&A with directors Dingding Ke and Jing Guo from after the screening:
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Duration: 15:33
(8/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
children,
china
We Are Together (Thina Simunye) (Director: Paul Taylor, UK, 2006): It would be pretty hard to make a bad film from such promising material, and I’m glad to say that director Paul Taylor has not made a bad film, though he takes us through some pretty grim territory.
12-year-old Slindile Moya lives with several of her siblings at the Agape orphanage in South Africa. Both of her parents have died from AIDS, and her older siblings can’t afford to care for the younger ones at home anymore. What holds this incredibly close-knit family together is music. The younger ones sing in a choir at the orphanage, and when the whole family is together, they are always singing.
When a chance comes for the choir to record a CD and go on a fund-raising tour for the orphanage, the children are incredibly excited, but when the trip falls through and Slindile’s older brother succumbs to AIDS, our hearts break with her. But as usual, the music pulls everyone through, and they finish the CD anyway, hoping for other opportunities. There are a few more twists and turns in the story that I won’t share, but through it all, Slindile keeps singing and smiling.
It might appear that it was easy to make this film. These are incredibly beautiful children making astonishing music, and if you just left a camera rolling, you’d get a good film. But director Taylor takes us into some incredibly intimate places and lingers there, letting the full emotional impact of these children’s lives take hold of the audience.
As with Born Into Brothels, the film has led the filmmakers to become involved in a charitable project, and I recommend that you buy a CD of the gorgeous music of the Children of Agape, which will go to support the children’s education costs.
Unfortunately for us, the film premiered last night at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, and so the director was there with 14 of the children. Here in Toronto, we had one of the producers, Pauline Von Moltke, who was gracious enough to conduct a Q&A. Unfortunately, my recording wasn’t very good, so I’m not going to post it.
Official site for the film
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
children,
HIV/AIDS,
southafrica
The Big Sellout (Der Grosse Ausverkauf) (Director: Florian Opitz, Germany, 2006): Beautifully shot on film, The Big Sellout is yet another strong political documentary, this one on the theme of privatization. Since privatization is a keystone of neoliberal economic policy all over the world, the film takes us to several different locales to see its effects on real people. What we discover is that the effort by multinational corporations to turn the necessities of life (healthcare, electricity, even water) into commodities is having a devastating effect on the people of the developing world.
In the Philippines, Minda spends all of her time trying to scrape money together for dialysis treatments for her teenaged son. In South Africa, Bongani is part of a group of skilled activists who restore electrical service to those whose power has been cut off for non-payment. In Bolivia, Rosa is a grandmother who stood up to the faceless corporation that was attempting to privatize her city’s water supply. And in England, Simon the train driver details the breakup of British Rail and the decline of rail service in that country.
In every case, privatization was the culprit, but to be fair, Opitz attempts to engage with the economists at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund who often impose privatization as a precondition for lending to developing nations. Surprisingly for the director, he gets very little cooperation from these shadowy bodies, who are ostensibly required to be transparent and accountable to their member nations. The one economist he does interview is Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank who now disagrees with the rush to privatize everything, and who has become an opponent of most of the economic policies of globalization.
I was reminded when watching this film of several other strong anti-globalization documentaries of recent years, including The Take, The Corporation, and even The Yes Men. The Big Sellout adds some heartrending personal stories from several corners of the world, and it’s clear that privatization is really only helping those with too much money make even more of it. Without having to pay lip service to the democratic ideals of national governments, corporations are concerned with just one thing: the pursuit of profits. The profits may come, but the human costs should be tallied against them.
The only weakness in the film may be that I was left wondering what I could possibly do, in my comfortable First World life, to combat this creeping sickness. The film’s German web site has some educational materials, so I hope these get translated for the English site soon.
Here is the Q&A with producer Florian Opitz from after the screening:
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Duration: 12:37
Official site for the film
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
bolivia,
Documentaries,
economics,
germany,
globalization,
Hot Docs,
philippines,
politics,
privatization,
southafrica,
uk
Driven By Dreams (À force de rêves) (Director: Serge Giguère, Canada, 2006): This film recently won Quebec’s top film honour, the Jutra award, for best feature-length documentary. It’s a gently-told cinema verite account of five elderly people, ranging in age from 74 to 92, as they continue to live their lives to the fullest. They paint, they make music, they fly radio control airplanes, and they talk about dying. It’s a quiet film, set mostly in rural Quebec, and it takes its time with its subjects, but mixed in with the contemplation is a healthy dose of humour.
We experience with these unique and lovable individuals the pain of losing a spouse, or being forced out of your home, or the small indignities that go with aging. This is the sort of film that was really made in the editing, and although the finished film feels seamless, the editing process took quite a while. As well, the film was helped immeasurably by the soundtrack, which featured a big band composed of seniors, and which appears at various points in the film.
This film touched on some of the same issues as The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, but without (for me) the same emotional power.
Here is the Q&A with producer Sylvie Van Brabant from after the screening:
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Duration: 11:48
(7/10)
UPDATE: The film was awarded the Special Jury Prize Canadian Feature Documentary at the Hot Docs Awards ceremony held on April 27. Congratulations to director Serge Giguère and everyone involved in the film.
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
aging,
canada,
quebec
