In what is likely to be the only piece of non–Hot Docs–related news for the next little while, I’m happy to announce that BBC America/BBC Canada this week released Seasons (or more accurately, Series) 1 and 2 of Adrian Hodges’ post-apocalyptic drama Survivors. I became hooked on this show more than a year ago, and up until now had to resort to some rather dubious means in order to keep up with it. Based on the original 70s series created by Terry Nation (although Hodges calls it more of a re-imagining), Survivors follows a small group of people who survive a catastrophic virus that wipes out 99% of the world’s population in a matter of a few days. The storyline has lots of twists and turns, but the best part for me is just seeing how people might survive when all of their creature comforts are suddenly taken away. Who is best-equipped to survive in a world like that? Since the series is based in the UK, at least everyone isn’t going around with automatic weapons, so the threat of violence, though ever-present, doesn’t erupt into ludicrous firefights every episode.
I’ll have to say that the writing starts to wobble a bit in Series 2, especially when it’s obvious that the producers are reluctant to kill off any of their characters. But Survivors is hugely enjoyable, and may even have you thinking about how you might endure if/when everything eventually goes pear-shaped.
The original series has also been released. All 38 episodes from 1975–1977 are included, as well as the featurette “The Cult of Survivors”. Although the fashions haven’t aged kindly, the stories hold up remarkably well, and you can see how the newer show has changed some of the original characters. As you can see from the extensive Wikipedia entry, this series has attained cult status and for fans of the show, this is likely to be the bigger prize.
Tagged as:
bbc,
postapocalyptic
Mine was the December 2009 selection of
Film Movement Canada, a subscription service that brings the best of independent cinema to your door each month. Though it’s only recently launched here,
Film Movement has operated in the US for several years, and has long been one of my favourite sources of great films.
Mine is screening theatrically around the US until the end of March 2010 (
more information) and will be available through iTunes this month, too.
Mine (Director: Geralyn Pezanoski): Winner of the Audience Award at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, Mine is a gut-wrenching look at some of the forgotten victims of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina: pets and their owners. My wife and I are thinking of becoming dog owners, and after watching this film, I’m more convinced than ever that pets really do become part of the family.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of evacuees were forced to leave their cats and dogs behind. Shelters wouldn’t accept animals, and in some cases, people left their pets thinking they’d be gone just a few days. We all know what happened. Many people still haven’t returned to the city, and those who did had to wait months. In the meantime, more than 150,000 animals died. Thanks to the efforts of volunteers, several thousand were rescued, but many were shipped to other states, and when their owners didn’t claim them within a few days, some were adopted out to new families. This is where the film gets really interesting.
The failure of the government to adequately respond to the catastrophe has been the subject of many fine documentary films, but in this case, ordinary people around the country stepped in to do all they could to rescue these pets who’d been left behind. Unfortunately, there is a political edge to some of these “rescue” organizations, as some of the former owners soon found out. For instance, many dog owners in New Orleans don’t have their dogs spayed or neutered, whether for financial or cultural reasons. Among the rescue community, this is considered irresponsible. As well, many of the rescued animals turned out to have heartworm infections, something that can be prevented with medication. Again, probably due to financial hardship or simply ignorance, many New Orleans residents hadn’t treated their pets for heartworm.
The end result was that many of the rescue organizations saw the original owners as negligent, and after treating the animals for sickness, they would spay or neuter them and then adopt them out to more “suitable” families in their areas. When the original owners were finally able to track their pets down, the rescue organizations would tell them that their pet had a new family, and the new family didn’t want to give it up.
We follow several of these heartbreaking custody battles throughout the course of the film. Though it’s only hinted at, race and class are central to how the stories are played out. Since pets are considered property under the law, it should simply be a matter of having one’s property returned, but in the emotional battlefield of pet ownership, things are rarely that simple. Having already survived the hurricane and the loss of their homes and possessions, the residents of New Orleans have no money to hire lawyers to pursue their missing pets, so a number of volunteers help them to find lawyers who are willing to work pro bono on the cases. It’s an ugly process, and one particular phone conversation (part of which appears in the trailer embedded below) between the owner of a missing dog and the head of the rescue organization who got him out of New Orleans sums up the film in a nutshell. People who love animals can often forget that there is a person attached to that animal. If you care about animals, you cannot pretend that that relationship never existed.
You don’t have to be a dog lover to enjoy Mine. And even if you think you’ve seen all there is to see about Hurricane Katrina, don’t let that keep you away from this insightful film, which has exposed the class divisions of our society more clearly than anything I’ve seen in a long time.
Official site of the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
class,
hurricanekatrina,
pets,
race
Finally, the DVD subscription service I’ve been mentioning since 2006 is available in Canada! That first link is a tiny bit unfair, since it deals mostly with Ironweed Film Club, another DVD service that has been available in Canada all along. But while Ironweed’s focus has been documentaries, and of late, mostly environmental docs, Film Movement has over the years focused on international cinema, with quite a few festival gems available nowhere else. In fact, just a few months ago I was complaining via Twitter that Film Movement had picked up a number of great films that were not being distributed in Canada, including Munyurangabo, Lake Tahoe, and Somers Town. I haven’t done an exhaustive comparison, and I know that there may still be some titles that won’t be available to Canadian subscribers, but this is a huge win for cinephiles in this country.
For as little as about $10/month (based on a 12-month subscription), you’ll get a new film sent to you, curated by Film Movement’s team of programmers. Part of the fun is just letting them surprise you, and I guarantee you’ll find some gems you would otherwise have missed. Subscribers also get discounts on buying DVDs from their extensive back catalogue, too.
To make the offer even more irresistible, how about a promo code for an additional 5% off? Just enter “hellocanada” in the promo code box before you check out. But the code is only good until November 30th, so don’t hesitate. Let’s show them that Canadians love great cinema, and make them wonder why they took so long to get here!
Film Movement Canada
P.S. The November selection is Uruguayan film Gigante (review), which screened at this year’s TIFF.
Gigante (Director: Adrián Biniez): Fabian Jara (Horacio Camandule) is the titular giant, working as an overnight security guard at a large grocery store in Montevideo. He spends his evening shifts watching security cameras of other night employees doing their jobs, including a crew of female cleaners. He gradually comes to fall in love with one, even though he doesn’t know her name. He begins following her from afar in the mornings, discovering her routines. On the weekends, he works as a bouncer at a nightclub, though he’s far too gentle a giant to really hurt anyone. Although he loves aggressive heavy-metal music, he’s far too shy to actually approach his crush. Instead, his stalker-like behaviour increases, although each time the film steers toward darker territory, Jara’s basic decency surfaces, preserving the light tone. Eventually, he discovers her name is Julia, and by the end a work-related crisis throws them together at last.
It’s the slightest of premises, basically a “nerd gets the girl” story, but the performance of Camandule as the innocent “Jarita” (as his co-workers jokingly call him) is completely endearing. Leonor Svarcas as Julia is just the right combination of dorky and alluring to be believable as a woman Jara believes he might actually have a chance with. The film has the languid pacing and gentle humour that Uruguayan film is becoming known for, and it was a pleasure to recognize Juan Andrés Stoll from Hiroshima (review) in a small role. Though it’s not great cinema, this is a perfect festival film, a crowd-pleasing slice of life that for me personally was a welcome respite from the steady diet of abusive families, suicide, disease and obsession I’ve been watching so far at this festival.
Here is the Q&A with director Adrián Biniez 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: 24:40
Here’s a clip from the film, which is available now on DVD in the US through the excellent Film Movement subscription service:
(7/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
uruguay
Small Town Gay Bar (Director: Malcolm Ingram, USA, 2006): This film was part of the June 2007 release from Ironweed Film Club, and features two short films as well that I haven’t yet watched. I missed this when it played originally at this year’s Inside Out festival, so was glad to see it on DVD so soon.
While my own experience with gay bars has been pretty limited, I understand that they serve a vital social function within the community, serving as sanctuaries from a world that is very often hostile to gay people. The situation is even more dire in the rural South, where prejudice has been tolerated and even encouraged for a long time. This small film keeps its focus tightly on a very specific area, northeastern Mississippi, and on the patrons of a bar called Rumors, located in tiny Shannon, population 1,726. In rural communities where everyone knows everyone else, it’s not unusual for gay people to stay “in the closet” and so the bar becomes the only place where they can actually be themselves. However, since Mississippi is in the middle of the “Bible Belt,” the bars are often targetted by conservative church groups and forced out of business. Part of the film covers the history of gay bars in this part of the state, and Crossroads, once located in larger Meridian (pop. 39,000), seemed to be just the sort of place that conservatives would want to close. As one former patron put it, the sense of desperation was so strong that it became a sort of circus, a place where “anything went” and so local law enforcement found a way to close it. Happily, this same former patron bought the property and reopened it as a much more congenial place, recognizing that people were being forced to drive several hours to Memphis for lack of a local place to go. I found myself reminded very much of British pub culture while watching the film, where the bar is not only a place to drink and meet romantic partners, but a hub of information and a surrogate family. Ingram’s film does a great job of capturing a sense of place and of the very unique people who populate it.
Perhaps the only weakness I found in the film was in its choice of counter-voices. Reverend Fred Phelps (of GodHatesFags.com fame) was born in Meridian, so I can see why the filmmaker wanted to feature him, but giving this nutbag so much screen time was unnecessary. Ingram also interviewed Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association, another extreme organization with their headquarters in nearby Tupelo. While this generated lots of sparks, I was rather hoping to hear more from local regular people and even local pastors instead of people whom the majority of Americans would view as raving lunatics. As well, it would have been interesting to hear why the patrons of Rumors and the other bars haven’t just given up and moved to larger cities where they could live more openly.
As a side note, I was intrigued when I heard so many Toronto bands on the soundtrack (Metric, The Hidden Cameras, Broken Social Scene) and guessed, rightfully, that director Malcolm Ingram was indeed from Toronto. I’d love to hear what drew him so far from home to tell this story.
Official site for the film
(7/10)
Tagged as:
Documentaries,
DVD,
DVD Clubs,
homosexuality,
Inside Out,
Ironweed
