Saturday, April 21, 2007

Girls Rock!

by James McNally on April 21, 2007 · 2 comments

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Girls Rock!

Girls Rock! (Directors: Arne Johnson, Shane King, USA, 2006): I’m a sucker for doc­u­ment­aries with kids in them. At every fest­ival, often full of dark films about human greed and viol­ence, I always try to pick a film with kids in it. There’s just some­thing won­derful about seeing their eyes when they learn some­thing new, or hearing them talk about the things that matter to them. Girls Rock! com­bines that sense of wonder with the kick-ass atti­tude of DIY rock by taking us inside the Rock N’ Roll Camp for Girls, an annual week-long crash course for young women from 8–18.

This real-life School of Rock takes place in Portland, Oregon and girls and young women come from all over the country to be part of it. We get to wit­ness their ini­tial anxiety about being grouped with others to form bands, choosing an instru­ment, and even choosing names for their bands. It’s clear that the camp organ­izers want to use the power of rock music to give these girls a voice. In a society that limits women’s choices so early and in so many ways, this camp is a shot in the arm; lit­er­ally an inn­ocu­la­tion against all the neg­ative mes­sages that are thrown at young women today.

But that sounds preachy. And even when the film is throwing stat­istics at us, it does it in a playful way, using cute anim­a­tions and jazzy fonts. And a film about rock music should be fun, and the film def­in­itely is that, even when band squabbles and unre­solved beha­vi­oural prob­lems threaten to des­troy the vibe.

The girls we meet are all ador­able and gifted in unique ways, even though a few of the younger ones fall into that “pre­co­cious” cat­egory that can be enter­taining in small doses, but can drive you crazy if you see them get­ting their way too often. In this area, it needs to be said that there are some prob­lems that can’t be solved by music alone, espe­cially in a week.

The camp exper­i­ence cul­min­ates in a huge con­cert in front of 750 people, and it was great to see all of these thrown-together bands playing songs they’d written them­selves. It was hard to believe the camp was only a week long.

It was also hard to believe that this was the fea­ture debut of the two dir­ectors, who’ve pro­duced a pol­ished piece of work that man­ages to deliver a pos­itive mes­sage in such a fun way.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ectors Arne Johnson and Shane King from after the screening:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Duration: 19:32

Official site for the film

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, children, music

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Yoga Inc.

by James McNally on April 21, 2007 · 1 comment

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Yoga Inc.

Yoga Inc. (Director: John Philp, USA, 2006): A fas­cin­ating excur­sion into the world of “for-profit” enlight­en­ment, Yoga Inc. suf­fers from having just too many good stories to tell.

First, there’s the explo­sion of yoga all over the Western world, with the res­ultant rise of busi­nesses to cap­it­alize on it. Philp speaks with yoga experts who decry the sep­ar­a­tion of yoga as a spir­itual prac­tice from yoga as simply a phys­ical fit­ness tech­nique. They claim that making yoga pal­at­able to Western audi­ences in this way dis­respects tra­di­tion and viol­ates the very soul of yoga. When the film showed some of the flakier vari­ations out there (including nude and “Christian yoga”), I found myself agreeing with them. With yoga’s soaring pop­ularity has come the inev­it­able arrival of yoga fran­chises, which are now put­ting inde­pendent yoga stu­dios out of busi­ness. And with every gym now offering some form of yoga classes, the fad may be reaching a breaking point. The film included a very funny inter­view with Barnaby Harris, who founded a store in New York City called Fuck Yoga. I’m not sure if it’s funny or just sad that some of the people who buy his t-shirts wear them to their yoga classes.

Secondly, we dis­cover that there are ten­sions within the yoga move­ment itself. Bikram Choudhury, the man behind “Bikram” or hot yoga, is suing anyone who tries to use his methods or yoga poses without cred­iting him. He has copy­righted yoga poses that his critics main­tain have existed for thou­sands of years, causing a huge rift in the yoga busi­ness com­munity. This type of squab­bling seems all the more sad when con­trasted with some quo­ta­tions from tra­di­tional yogis one that stressed that yoga is about peace, not power. When there’s money involved, that seems to be for­gotten. It felt very much like the con­tro­versy over tel­ev­an­gel­ists from a few years back. Focussing on the earning poten­tial and for­get­ting the basis of the teaching seems very easy to do in our Western culture.

There’s even a third major story in Yoga Inc. Esak Garcia, one of Bikram Choudhury’s fol­lowers, is a par­ti­cipant in com­pet­itive yoga. Bikram claims that this tra­di­tion of yoga cham­pions goes back “thou­sands of years” in India, though that seems dubious. The sight of yoga prac­ti­tioners com­peting for trophies and medals seemed crazy enough, but there is a cam­paign led by Bikram to have yoga admitted as an Olympic sport. In this other major thread of the film, we follow Esak as he pre­pares for the yoga world cham­pi­on­ships. This type of com­pet­i­tion seems to be strictly about the phys­ical prac­tice, with con­test­ants trying to out­pose each other or fold them­selves into con­tor­tions. In a very American sense, this type of dis­play is more about the sur­face than about the depth, about the attractive body rather than the beau­tiful soul.

The film was con­stantly enga­ging, but I just felt it needed more time to fully explore all the issues it dug up. This would work as a series, I think. On the other hand, Philp did a good job of using various doc­u­mentary tech­niques, including the use of stock footage and image scans, though the low budget showed through at times with some low-resolution images and the odd cheesy effect.

Overall, this taught me quite a bit about some­thing that is extremely trendy right now. And though I’m skep­tical of the cur­rent “McYoga,” I do have respect for the tra­di­tional ver­sion, wherever that might exist. Though yoga isn’t my spir­itual path, I believe that it should be treated as a spir­itual path, and not as simply busi­ness, or fit­ness, or sport.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector John Philp from after the screening:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Duration: 11:10

Yoga Inc. weblog

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, yoga

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Orange Revolution

by James McNally on April 21, 2007 · 1 comment

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Orange Revolution

Orange Revolution (Director: Steve York, USA, 2006): Coming straight from a screening of How It’s Done to this film already had me feeling wary of the folksy pop­u­lism of Ukrainian pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates Viktor Yuschenko and Viktor Yanukovych. The inter­esting thing about this film is how at the begin­ning it seemed like it was going to be a Yuschenko hagi­o­graphy, broad­casting footage of early ral­lies from the pres­id­en­tial cam­paign of 2004. A smiling Yuschenko serves food and talks about raising pen­sions, and the crowds go wild. It becomes apparent later that this archival footage, not shot by the American film­makers, is almost incid­ental. As is Yuschenko, des­pite his obvious cha­risma and the sym­pathy he receives after he is poisoned in an assas­sin­a­tion attempt during the cam­paign.

The real story of the film is how a young pop­u­la­tion, hungry for change, defies a cor­rupt regime and brings down a powerful gov­ern­ment. The Orange Revolution refers to the peaceful occu­pa­tion of Kiev’s Independence Square for sev­eral weeks in November and December of 2004. Crowds approaching a mil­lion people camped out, singing and chanting, clad in orange scarves and hats, and waving orange ban­ners, the colour of Yuschenko’s polit­ical party.

Almost unbe­liev­ably, the occu­pa­tion, in response to a rigged elec­tion that declared Yanukovych the winner, suc­ceeds in get­ting the elect­oral com­mis­sion to set aside the vote. After par­lia­ment quickly passes some elect­oral reform laws, the elec­tion is re-held on December 26th, and Yuschenko pre­vails with more than 52% of the vote (to Yanukovych’s 44%). That all this happened in a few short weeks and without any blood­shed is almost miraculous.

The film does a good job of keeping us in the moment, with inter­titles declaring each day of the vigil. But it seems almost over­whelm­ingly one-sided. There is a lot of input from journ­al­ists, but also from most of Yuschenko’s advisors, and the President him­self. It would have been inter­esting to hear from the other side, who were simply painted as vil­lains and left out. It was clear to most people in the West during the crisis that Yuschenko was backed by the U.S. and that Yanukovych had close ties to Russia. There were even rumours that much of the grass­roots organ­iz­a­tion for the Orange Revolution was sup­ported in some way by the U.S., either dir­ectly through the State Department or through NGOs like the National Democratic Institute. In a film made by an American dir­ector, not to address these ques­tions seems like a sig­ni­ficant omission.

As well, I think the film could have done a better job set­ting the stage as to why people were so willing to risk everything for change. What was life in Ukraine like before, and what is it like now? The point was made that in terms of press freedom, things are improving, but I wanted to know more about the envir­on­ment from which this “people power” move­ment sprung.

I liked that the film ends with an update telling us that Yuschenko’s coali­tion dis­in­teg­rated soon after the Orange Revolution’s suc­cess, and that Yanukovych was elected Prime Minister, thus ensuring the power struggle will con­tinue. Democracy is messy, and because the film was so uplifting and focussed on the gid­di­ness of achieving one goal, it needed to be brought back to earth a little bit.

And just to be cyn­ical, why all the press atten­tion to this dis­puted elec­tion and not the one closer to home in Mexico? In July 2006, socialist Andrés Manuel López Obrador dis­puted the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion res­ults, in which he nar­rowly lost to con­ser­vative Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. Obrador’s sup­porters held sim­ilar ral­lies and chal­lenged the res­ults in court. It took two months for the res­ults to be rat­i­fied, and the con­tro­versy has led to calls for elect­oral reform. And I haven’t even men­tioned the U.S. elec­tions of 2000 and 2004. Is it just me, or is this hap­pening a little too often?

Official site for the film

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, politics, ukraine

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How It’s Done

by James McNally on April 21, 2007 · 1 comment

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

(Jak To Sie Robi) How It's Done

How It’s Done (Director: Marcel Lozinski, Poland, 2006): Piotr Tymochowicz is a Polish polit­ical con­sultant and this film, shot over four years, fol­lows him as he molds a group of young hope­fuls into polit­ical con­tenders. The task is inter­esting because not only do none of them have polit­ical exper­i­ence, but most don’t have any strong polit­ical opin­ions at all, which suits Tymochowicz per­fectly. You see, the whole thing comes across as a sort of Machiavellian reality tele­vi­sion show, and his com­plete and utter cyn­icism and mis­an­thropy are apparent every second he’s on screen. Which made me feel like I needed a shower when it was over. Over time, most of the hope­fuls drop out, either due to inad­equacy or dis­com­fort with how they’re being manip­u­lated, but by the end, young Dariusz is in pos­i­tion to be elected to Parliament, even though he’s betrayed his ideals so many times he doesn’t know where he stands. “We haven’t final­ized my image,” he says evas­ively. What started with some public speaking les­sons and polit­ical exer­cises that seemed like per­form­ance art pieces has brought him to the brink of suc­cess. Only he’s a hollow man.

Journalist Jacek Hugo-Bader is along as an observer and acts as the audience’s hor­ri­fied proxy during the film. In an inter­view with Dariusz at the end of the film, he mar­vels, “You could become my pres­ident?” And it seems eerily possible.

Though the film makes some good points, it makes them often and the unpol­ished style com­bined with the length made the film flabby when it should have been sharper. I also didn’t like that it wasn’t until the end titles that we dis­covered that the film was shot over four years. The filmmaker’s decision not to share this inform­a­tion at the outset could lead the audi­ence to think that this was a “crash course” in polit­ical indoc­trin­a­tion when in reality, many young people’s polit­ical opin­ions form and change often over the course of four years.

But if this film proves any­thing, it’s that the arrival of “polit­ical con­sult­ants” like Piotr Tymochowicz shows that demo­cracy in all its messy glory has now firmly taken hold in Poland. And the film cer­tainly was still fresh in my mind while watching my next film.

6/10(6/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, poland, politics

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