Hot Docs has come and gone for another year. Having missed most of my films, I wanted to get an overview of the festival to find out which films I need to see and which ones to pass on.
For Livebait.tv, I decided to interview James because of the stellar job he did in reviewing all the films he saw. Also interviewed were Philip Hamilton and Ian Stuart who, between them, saw 73 of the 129 films at Hot Docs this year. Incredible!
In this interview, filmed at the Drake Hotel, James, Philip and Ian provide a nice overview of Hot Docs and discuss some of the films they saw.
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
livebait
Echoes of Home (Heimatklänge) (Director: Stefan Schwietert, Switzerland/Germany, 2007): You might think a documentary about yodeling — wait, yodeling? Yes, you read right — may induce yawning from an audience, but Echoes of Home proves the contrary. It investigates yodeling through the eyes (and vocal cords) of three Swiss musicians: Christian Zehnder, Erika Stucky and Noldi Alder. In some way I was prepared for an 81-minute version of the Lonely Goatherd song from The Sound of Music, a fun song, albeit Richard Rodgers’ “musicalized” take on the Swiss tradition. But what I got was a beautiful film about the traditional yodeling as expressed by Noldi (part of the famous Alder family) and the more contemporary sounds of Christian and Erika. Their voices mimicked seagulls at the shore or the chugging of a locomotive or a baby’s cry. It sounded odd at first, but I grew accustomed to the wordless, harmonious notes.
Schwietert captures these musicians in various settings, whether in front of an audience, on the mountains, in the kitchen or in a pub. They need no concert hall, only a quiet space — a void — to create sound.
Although about 10 minutes too long (there were several points around the 70-minute mark where it could have ended), the film certainly warrants a look – and a listen. And if the harmonious sounds are too much, just mute the DVD and enjoy the scenery.
Official site for the film
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs07,
music,
switzerland
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:
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: 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
