originally posted at Toronto Star:
Marwencol: A tiny world within
Editorial Rating: 3 (out of 4)
by Bruce DeMara
After five drunken yobs beat him nearly to death outside a bar, Mark Hogancamp is a changed man. After nine days in a coma and 40 days in hospital, the Kingston, N.Y. native has little memory of his past life. Not surprisingly, the U.S. health care system cuts him off from Medicaid, forcing him to pick up the shattered fragments of his life pretty much on his own.
Is it any wonder that Hogancamp retreats into a fantasy world he calls Marwencol, a miniature World War II town constructed of cardboard and hobby store accessories and populated with valiant action figure American soldiers, beautiful Barbie doll women and evil SS troops? Using a badly-functioning camera, Hogancamp creates a series of “stills” — similar to his own memory — and becomes an unlikely artist of sorts, attracting the attention of a magazine editor that eventually leads to having a show of his work in New York's Greenwich Village.
To say the chain-smoking Hogancamp is an unlikely subject of a documentary is an understatement. By his own admission, prior to the accident he was a serious boozer with a failed marriage behind him, stuck in a dead-end job at a local restaurant. Post-trauma, he remains a fearful eccentric who can be seen walking down the side of the road near his home towing a toy jeep filled with Marwencol characters to ensure its tires show a proper amount of wear. If nothing else, at least his appetite for booze is gone with the beating that has permanently scrambled his brain, leaving him a man-child naïf.
Director Jeff Malmberg sees something in Hogancamp that he wants all of us to see, an imperfect human scarred by horrific trauma who nonetheless finds a reason to live — even if much of his time is spent within a fantasy world — and a previously undiscovered artistic soul.
Like Hogancamp's understanding of himself, there are some pieces missing. We don't know what happened to his marriage, only that it is over. We see photos of the five creeps who attacked him and hear briefly from one of them via a police tape recording, but have little understanding of their motivation. Hogancamp does have one little kink — one the film's producers don't want revealed — that may have triggered the beating and no, it's not that he's gay.
Malmberg allows us to see Hogancamp, imperfect as he is, as a man worthy of empathy and respect, not just a victim but a man who strives to believe in the goodness of others and to find peace within himself. It's not an easy film to watch and Hogancamp isn't the most obvious protagonist. But the film carries a message of redemption and hope that all can heed.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Toronto Sun: Marwencol
originally posted at Toronto Sun:
'Marwencol' deserves Oscar buzz
Editorial Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)
by Jim Slotek
A haunting movie about a haunted man, Marwencol is a revelatory documentary which is already generating Oscar buzz.
It manages to touch, in one personal profile, themes of consciousness, imagination and reality, indomitability of spirit, alternative lifestyles, the nature of art, even the sink-or-swim harshness of the American healthcare system.
And it defends the dignity of the documentary -- a genre that seemingly has been hijacked of late by polemicists and sophomoric pranksters (yo, Joaquin!).
The subject of Marwencol is Mark Hogancamp, a man who was beaten nearly to death by five men outside a bar in Kingston, N.Y., in April 2000 and left in a coma. After 40 days in hospital, he emerged with impaired motor skills, severe memory loss (he couldn't remember having once been married for several years) and myriad odd brain chemistry changes (a longtime alcoholic, he found his desire for liquor had completely disappeared).
A perfunctory state-funded therapy program quickly ran out, leaving Hogancamp basically alone. On his own, living in a trailer, he created a strange form of therapy, sort of dollhouse Gestalt. He constructed a town in Nazi-occupied Belgium named Marwencol (a collage of his name and the names of Wendy and Colleen, a co-worker and a friend), full of Barbies, G.I. Joes and other action figures dressed in carefully tailored period clothing to support their backstory.
The backstory: Hogancamp is an American airman who crashes behind enemy lines. Wandering about, he discovers Marwencol, a town where the men have either fled or been conscripted, and the women remain. It's his town now, and he creates a bar reminiscent of Casablanca's Rick's Café Americain, where American and German soldiers can drink in a state of truce.
All, that is, except for the SS, who hover about menacingly seeking the bar.
To Hogancamp, they represent the men who beat him. And in one of his cathartic plotlines, he is kidnapped and tortured by these very same men, with a different result.
In fact, everybody in Marwencol turns out to be a representation of somebody Hogancamp knows in real life. All his friends and co-workers, the married neighbour he knows he can't have (but whom he makes love to in miniature), the professional photographer who discovers his proxy life and deems it art, even the director of the film become characters.
There's a witch, there's a time machine, and there are paroxysms of Inglourious Basterds-style violence (yes, these are dolls we're talking about). Dutifully photographed in storyboard style by their creator with all the emotion and drama their frozen faces can muster, it's no wonder they'd end up in a gallery.
And that's the second half of Marwencol -- Hogancamp's New York debut, and no-less-than heroic attempt to represent himself at his own gallery show.
His "discovery" doesn't make Hogancamp rich, but it does free up other aspects of his damaged personality that paint a fuller picture of what went on that night in 2000.
Hogancamp's artificial reality is clearly so real to him, it demands respect. Credit director Jeff Malmberg, who takes what could have been simply presented as a freak show and allows it its dignity.
'Marwencol' deserves Oscar buzz
Editorial Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)
by Jim Slotek
A haunting movie about a haunted man, Marwencol is a revelatory documentary which is already generating Oscar buzz.
It manages to touch, in one personal profile, themes of consciousness, imagination and reality, indomitability of spirit, alternative lifestyles, the nature of art, even the sink-or-swim harshness of the American healthcare system.
And it defends the dignity of the documentary -- a genre that seemingly has been hijacked of late by polemicists and sophomoric pranksters (yo, Joaquin!).
The subject of Marwencol is Mark Hogancamp, a man who was beaten nearly to death by five men outside a bar in Kingston, N.Y., in April 2000 and left in a coma. After 40 days in hospital, he emerged with impaired motor skills, severe memory loss (he couldn't remember having once been married for several years) and myriad odd brain chemistry changes (a longtime alcoholic, he found his desire for liquor had completely disappeared).
A perfunctory state-funded therapy program quickly ran out, leaving Hogancamp basically alone. On his own, living in a trailer, he created a strange form of therapy, sort of dollhouse Gestalt. He constructed a town in Nazi-occupied Belgium named Marwencol (a collage of his name and the names of Wendy and Colleen, a co-worker and a friend), full of Barbies, G.I. Joes and other action figures dressed in carefully tailored period clothing to support their backstory.
The backstory: Hogancamp is an American airman who crashes behind enemy lines. Wandering about, he discovers Marwencol, a town where the men have either fled or been conscripted, and the women remain. It's his town now, and he creates a bar reminiscent of Casablanca's Rick's Café Americain, where American and German soldiers can drink in a state of truce.
All, that is, except for the SS, who hover about menacingly seeking the bar.
To Hogancamp, they represent the men who beat him. And in one of his cathartic plotlines, he is kidnapped and tortured by these very same men, with a different result.
In fact, everybody in Marwencol turns out to be a representation of somebody Hogancamp knows in real life. All his friends and co-workers, the married neighbour he knows he can't have (but whom he makes love to in miniature), the professional photographer who discovers his proxy life and deems it art, even the director of the film become characters.
There's a witch, there's a time machine, and there are paroxysms of Inglourious Basterds-style violence (yes, these are dolls we're talking about). Dutifully photographed in storyboard style by their creator with all the emotion and drama their frozen faces can muster, it's no wonder they'd end up in a gallery.
And that's the second half of Marwencol -- Hogancamp's New York debut, and no-less-than heroic attempt to represent himself at his own gallery show.
His "discovery" doesn't make Hogancamp rich, but it does free up other aspects of his damaged personality that paint a fuller picture of what went on that night in 2000.
Hogancamp's artificial reality is clearly so real to him, it demands respect. Credit director Jeff Malmberg, who takes what could have been simply presented as a freak show and allows it its dignity.
NOW: Marwencol
originally posted at NOW:
Marwencol: Model Subject
Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
by Norman Wilner
Outsider art has never seemed as riveting – or as revealing – as it does in Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg’s study of Mark Hogancamp of Kingston, New York, who’s constructed an elaborate scale-model world in his backyard as a way to cope with the after-effects of a brutal beating that left him with a brain injury and memory loss.
Hogancamp’s fantasyland is a Belgian village where Germans and Americans can wait out the Second World War in peace. Its unfolding narrative finds his avatar, “Hank,” dragged away by the SS and tortured until the local women rally to his rescue, attacking the evildoers and liberating their hero.
Arranged and photographed by Hogancamp as an action epic, the film is wish fulfillment and self-mythologizing at its most nakedly obvious, though its creator doesn’t quite see it that way. That’s clearly what fascinates director Malmberg, at least at first; as the documentary progresses and Hogancamp’s ever-expanding installation becomes more and more complicated, another story emerges.
When the images of Marwencol come to the attention of a Greenwich Village art gallery, everything changes – and Malmberg probes still deeper into his subject’s complicated, wounded soul.
It’s absolutely thrilling to watch the camera push Hogancamp closer and closer to confronting some elements of himself that he obviously doesn’t want to discuss, and what happens after that is even more incredible.
This is one of the best movies you’ll see all year. Don’t let anyone ruin it for you.
Marwencol: Model Subject
Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
by Norman Wilner
Outsider art has never seemed as riveting – or as revealing – as it does in Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg’s study of Mark Hogancamp of Kingston, New York, who’s constructed an elaborate scale-model world in his backyard as a way to cope with the after-effects of a brutal beating that left him with a brain injury and memory loss.
Hogancamp’s fantasyland is a Belgian village where Germans and Americans can wait out the Second World War in peace. Its unfolding narrative finds his avatar, “Hank,” dragged away by the SS and tortured until the local women rally to his rescue, attacking the evildoers and liberating their hero.
Arranged and photographed by Hogancamp as an action epic, the film is wish fulfillment and self-mythologizing at its most nakedly obvious, though its creator doesn’t quite see it that way. That’s clearly what fascinates director Malmberg, at least at first; as the documentary progresses and Hogancamp’s ever-expanding installation becomes more and more complicated, another story emerges.
When the images of Marwencol come to the attention of a Greenwich Village art gallery, everything changes – and Malmberg probes still deeper into his subject’s complicated, wounded soul.
It’s absolutely thrilling to watch the camera push Hogancamp closer and closer to confronting some elements of himself that he obviously doesn’t want to discuss, and what happens after that is even more incredible.
This is one of the best movies you’ll see all year. Don’t let anyone ruin it for you.
Globe and Mail: Marwencol
originally posted at Globe and Mail:
Marwencol: Dolls, Nazis and fiction as brain therapy
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Liam Lacey
One of the oddest and most moving documentaries since Best Boy or Grey Gardens, Jeff Malmberg’s debut film, Marwencol, is a marvel. A portrait of a small-town drunk whose near-fatal beating turned him into a compelling outsider artist, it is both an inspirational back-from-the-abyss tale and an uncanny experience of watching a mind trying to heal itself by creating fiction.
In 2000, 38-year-old Mark Hogancamp lived in an upstate New York town where he was a part-time illustrator and “gallon a day” drunk. One night, outside a bar, he was viciously beaten by five men. After recovering from a nine-day coma, he had lost his taste for alcohol and most of his memory. When his health benefits ran out, he invented his own form of therapy to keep his hands and mind busy: he started playing with children’s dolls and action toys.
The result was a 1/6 scale Second World War-era Belgian town named Marwencol that fills his backyard, built of scrap construction materials and populated by more than 100 Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures.
Marwencol (a contraction of the names of Mark and two women friends, Wendy and Colleen) is also a simulacrum of Hogancamp’s hometown, Kingston, N.Y., populated by dolls representing the artist, his friends, the occasional celebrity (Arnold Schwarzenegger, rock star Thom Yorke) and even his assailants, dressed as SS officers.
Because he was unable to draw any more, Hogancamp bought a camera and began photographing his dolls and creating stories about their world. Some of his ideas seem inspired by the 1960s Nazi-prison-camp comedy Hogan’s Heroes (a play on his surname) but there are also time machines, episodes of brutal violence and revenge, and, for the soldiers’ entertainment, evenings of girl-on-girl wrestling.
Malmberg treats Hogancamp, a down-to-earth guy with extremely specific aesthetic ideas, with non-patronizing fascination. We are placed in the world of Marwencol (including a bit of stop animation), shooting the dolls from low angles and getting to know them as characters in an imaginary movie.
But even in a town of plastic heroes and beauties with frozen stares, real life has a way of intruding. A local photographer managed to get Hogancamp’s work into a New York art magazine. A gallery called. Those developments set up the second act of Marwencol, in which Hogancamp deals with his private world going public.
Thanks to some of Malmberg’s own storytelling savvy – he holds back a significant detail of the night that changed Hogancamp’s life until late in the film – Marwencol doesn’t stop delivering surprises until its last frame.
Marwencol: Dolls, Nazis and fiction as brain therapy
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Liam Lacey
One of the oddest and most moving documentaries since Best Boy or Grey Gardens, Jeff Malmberg’s debut film, Marwencol, is a marvel. A portrait of a small-town drunk whose near-fatal beating turned him into a compelling outsider artist, it is both an inspirational back-from-the-abyss tale and an uncanny experience of watching a mind trying to heal itself by creating fiction.
In 2000, 38-year-old Mark Hogancamp lived in an upstate New York town where he was a part-time illustrator and “gallon a day” drunk. One night, outside a bar, he was viciously beaten by five men. After recovering from a nine-day coma, he had lost his taste for alcohol and most of his memory. When his health benefits ran out, he invented his own form of therapy to keep his hands and mind busy: he started playing with children’s dolls and action toys.
The result was a 1/6 scale Second World War-era Belgian town named Marwencol that fills his backyard, built of scrap construction materials and populated by more than 100 Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures.
Marwencol (a contraction of the names of Mark and two women friends, Wendy and Colleen) is also a simulacrum of Hogancamp’s hometown, Kingston, N.Y., populated by dolls representing the artist, his friends, the occasional celebrity (Arnold Schwarzenegger, rock star Thom Yorke) and even his assailants, dressed as SS officers.
Because he was unable to draw any more, Hogancamp bought a camera and began photographing his dolls and creating stories about their world. Some of his ideas seem inspired by the 1960s Nazi-prison-camp comedy Hogan’s Heroes (a play on his surname) but there are also time machines, episodes of brutal violence and revenge, and, for the soldiers’ entertainment, evenings of girl-on-girl wrestling.
Malmberg treats Hogancamp, a down-to-earth guy with extremely specific aesthetic ideas, with non-patronizing fascination. We are placed in the world of Marwencol (including a bit of stop animation), shooting the dolls from low angles and getting to know them as characters in an imaginary movie.
But even in a town of plastic heroes and beauties with frozen stares, real life has a way of intruding. A local photographer managed to get Hogancamp’s work into a New York art magazine. A gallery called. Those developments set up the second act of Marwencol, in which Hogancamp deals with his private world going public.
Thanks to some of Malmberg’s own storytelling savvy – he holds back a significant detail of the night that changed Hogancamp’s life until late in the film – Marwencol doesn’t stop delivering surprises until its last frame.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Winnebago Man Q&A and QTV Appearance
Here's part of the Q&A with Jack Rebney from after the premiere at the TIFF Bell Lightbox last week:
And as a bonus, here's Jack Rebney attempting to do a station ID for Jian Ghomeshi's QTV show:
And as a bonus, here's Jack Rebney attempting to do a station ID for Jian Ghomeshi's QTV show:
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Water on the Table Nominated for a Gemini
Acclaimed doc will make its Toronto premiere at Planet in Focus
Gemini-nominated for the Donald Brittain Award for Best Social Political Documentary, Water on the Table is a character-driven, social-issue documentary by Liz Marshall that explores Canada's relationship to its fresh water, arguably its most precious natural resource. The film asks the question: is water a commercial good like running shoes or Coca-Cola, or, is it a human right like air? Following its highly anticipated Toronto theatrical premiere at Planet in Focus at the ROM on October 14th at 7:00pm, Water on the Table will screen at the Royal Cinema on October 16th & 17th.
There will be a Q&A session with director Liz Marshall and subject Maude Barlow following the October 14th screening.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Globe and Mail: No Heart Feelings
No Heart Feelings: Nothing much happens, but it's a quiet triumph
Editorial rating: *** (out of 4)
by Rick Groen
Get past the rather laboured pun in the title, and No Heart Feelings is a quiet delight. Quiet, because nothing much happens. Delightful, because nothing much happens in sharply observed and revealing ways. What emerges is a thin yet credible slice of Toronto life among the hipster crowd, twentysomethings who wear their light irony like heavy armour, only occasionally lifting the visor to peer out at the world head-on. As they do, the characters and the city fuse neatly - both relatively young, both self-conscious, alternating between energetic bursts of construction and anxious bouts of de-construction.
Appropriately, then, the film is framed in break-up scenes, once-solid relationships razed by life's wrecking ball. Mel (Rebecca Kohler) is the early victim, sitting on a front stoop and sifting through the debris. Inside, a house party rages and there, in an Altmanesque flurry of overlapping dialogue, we hear someone or other making this non-commitment to something or other: "I don't think I can't not do it." Yes, a triple negative struggling to seem positive - the lingo of the ironic class, and it rings perfectly true.
From there, on park benches and bar patios, the script follows Mel and friends through their journey into tomorrow. Of course, that's well-travelled turf in the movies. But the distinguishing mark here is the picture's acute sense of time and place. Working with a Lilliputian budget and a non- professional cast, the trio of directors (Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth) has managed to do in Toronto what Whit Stillman did in New York with Metropolitan - precisely capture particular mannerisms, turns of phrase, modes of dress, then allow all that specificity to resonate. So the threesome has made a virtue of necessity. When you're poor in money and scant of plot, get rich by deifying the details.
Wielding a surprisingly fluid camera, they've taken the same approach to the city, offering up specific but telling glimpses - of Kensington market in all its fresh avocado/rotten tomato variety, of bike paths that weave theatrically from urban exhaust to pastoral retreat. There's even a cinematic sight gag that Toronto everywhere invites: a crane shot that is literally a shot of a crane, its vast steel arm nurturing yet another embryonic condo.
As for that meagre plot, it touches on Mel's slow-to-develop feelings for Lewis (Dustin Parkes), just arrived from Vancouver to start a new job. Speaking of which, the hipsters' attitude to work is fascinating. Most toil in web-related gigs, grateful for the pay cheque yet bemused by how they earn it. But if the work has changed, the workplace has not, and a drone's complaints are classic: "I've got five bosses and, all together, they've got, like, one sense of humour."
Classic too, even among the irony-clad, is the trodden path from flirtation to sex to mild regret, sometimes leavened with rising hopes. En route, the amateur casting succeeds for the simple reason that, in this case, self-conscious acting is a perfect fit for self-conscious characters. They, and the nothing much they do, are equal parts endearing and annoying. But the mix is deliberate, maybe even wise, a quiet argument that the search to "find yourself" is a dead end at any age. In a rare moment of unfiltered candour, dear annoying Mel puts it best: "You're always going to be the person you are, except a few years later."
Editorial rating: *** (out of 4)
by Rick Groen
Get past the rather laboured pun in the title, and No Heart Feelings is a quiet delight. Quiet, because nothing much happens. Delightful, because nothing much happens in sharply observed and revealing ways. What emerges is a thin yet credible slice of Toronto life among the hipster crowd, twentysomethings who wear their light irony like heavy armour, only occasionally lifting the visor to peer out at the world head-on. As they do, the characters and the city fuse neatly - both relatively young, both self-conscious, alternating between energetic bursts of construction and anxious bouts of de-construction.
Appropriately, then, the film is framed in break-up scenes, once-solid relationships razed by life's wrecking ball. Mel (Rebecca Kohler) is the early victim, sitting on a front stoop and sifting through the debris. Inside, a house party rages and there, in an Altmanesque flurry of overlapping dialogue, we hear someone or other making this non-commitment to something or other: "I don't think I can't not do it." Yes, a triple negative struggling to seem positive - the lingo of the ironic class, and it rings perfectly true.
From there, on park benches and bar patios, the script follows Mel and friends through their journey into tomorrow. Of course, that's well-travelled turf in the movies. But the distinguishing mark here is the picture's acute sense of time and place. Working with a Lilliputian budget and a non- professional cast, the trio of directors (Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth) has managed to do in Toronto what Whit Stillman did in New York with Metropolitan - precisely capture particular mannerisms, turns of phrase, modes of dress, then allow all that specificity to resonate. So the threesome has made a virtue of necessity. When you're poor in money and scant of plot, get rich by deifying the details.
Wielding a surprisingly fluid camera, they've taken the same approach to the city, offering up specific but telling glimpses - of Kensington market in all its fresh avocado/rotten tomato variety, of bike paths that weave theatrically from urban exhaust to pastoral retreat. There's even a cinematic sight gag that Toronto everywhere invites: a crane shot that is literally a shot of a crane, its vast steel arm nurturing yet another embryonic condo.
As for that meagre plot, it touches on Mel's slow-to-develop feelings for Lewis (Dustin Parkes), just arrived from Vancouver to start a new job. Speaking of which, the hipsters' attitude to work is fascinating. Most toil in web-related gigs, grateful for the pay cheque yet bemused by how they earn it. But if the work has changed, the workplace has not, and a drone's complaints are classic: "I've got five bosses and, all together, they've got, like, one sense of humour."
Classic too, even among the irony-clad, is the trodden path from flirtation to sex to mild regret, sometimes leavened with rising hopes. En route, the amateur casting succeeds for the simple reason that, in this case, self-conscious acting is a perfect fit for self-conscious characters. They, and the nothing much they do, are equal parts endearing and annoying. But the mix is deliberate, maybe even wise, a quiet argument that the search to "find yourself" is a dead end at any age. In a rare moment of unfiltered candour, dear annoying Mel puts it best: "You're always going to be the person you are, except a few years later."
National Post: No Heart Feelings
originally posted at the National Post:
No Heart Feelings: Fresh, local and organic cinema
Editorial rating: *** (out of 4)
by Chris Knight
Full disclosure: This film had the potential to produce the most conflicted review of my career. It was co-directed by my boss’s wife and features a lot of National Post friends and colleagues. I couldn’t, for instance, say that I found the actor playing Michael to be completely xxx, because he’s editing the story and would just strike out the offending term. See?
But the conflict would only have come into play if the film were bad. Thankfully, it’s not. No Heart Feelings is a simple, approachable little feature about the romantic travails of a pair of thirtyish Torontonians, set against the patio get-togethers and cottage getaways of a typical summer in the city. It’s not Scott Pilgrim, though it does feature a lot of local locales, TTC vehicles and Toronto streetscapes.
It opens with Melanie (Rebecca Kohler) breaking up with her long-distance boyfriend, Joe (Jonathan Goldstein, phoning it in -- really, he’s just a voice on her cellphone). “I think that we should stop not seeing each other,” she says haltingly. “We should not stop seeing each other?” comes the confused reply.
Clearly, communication is not this couple’s strong point. And yet time and again the halting dialogue manages to capture the mood of both the movie and its cast. “Pick yourself up and get drunk,” is the seemingly contradictory advice offered to another recently broken-up character. I also liked the accurate backwardness of “…and a 20 box of Timbits.”
Melanie, not long after picking herself up and getting drunk, runs into Lewis (Dustin Parkes), recently returned to the city after a stint at university in British Columbia. They amble through Kensington Market, have coffee, buy a used bicycle and then fall into bed together. Ron Sexsmith, as the bemused garage-sale guy, likes the look of them but declares: “Cute is the new annoying.”
Co-writers and directors Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth make do with a less-is-more ethos in which Toronto’s green spaces as well as its urban environment are used to create a wide array of settings. If the production values are a touch uneven, it can be set off against the fact that some scenes were filmed during actual thunderstorms.
The are-they-or-aren’t-they couple struggles to define their feelings for each other. With Melanie on the rebound and Lewis new in town, it’s unclear whether anything other than mutual loneliness and convenience is bringing them together. Contrasting with their confusion, their circle of friends are starting to buy condos, have babies and realize that most of the Blue Jays are younger than they are.
As such, the film feels like a slice of generational pie, cooked up using local ingredients -- a 100-mile movie, if you will. It’s light, but it’s tasty. And I’m not just saying that because Steve Murray, who plays Chris, has the power to draw funny pictures of me in the paper. For the record, though, Steve, I loved your performance.
No Heart Feelings: Fresh, local and organic cinema
Editorial rating: *** (out of 4)
by Chris Knight
Full disclosure: This film had the potential to produce the most conflicted review of my career. It was co-directed by my boss’s wife and features a lot of National Post friends and colleagues. I couldn’t, for instance, say that I found the actor playing Michael to be completely xxx, because he’s editing the story and would just strike out the offending term. See?
But the conflict would only have come into play if the film were bad. Thankfully, it’s not. No Heart Feelings is a simple, approachable little feature about the romantic travails of a pair of thirtyish Torontonians, set against the patio get-togethers and cottage getaways of a typical summer in the city. It’s not Scott Pilgrim, though it does feature a lot of local locales, TTC vehicles and Toronto streetscapes.
It opens with Melanie (Rebecca Kohler) breaking up with her long-distance boyfriend, Joe (Jonathan Goldstein, phoning it in -- really, he’s just a voice on her cellphone). “I think that we should stop not seeing each other,” she says haltingly. “We should not stop seeing each other?” comes the confused reply.
Clearly, communication is not this couple’s strong point. And yet time and again the halting dialogue manages to capture the mood of both the movie and its cast. “Pick yourself up and get drunk,” is the seemingly contradictory advice offered to another recently broken-up character. I also liked the accurate backwardness of “…and a 20 box of Timbits.”
Melanie, not long after picking herself up and getting drunk, runs into Lewis (Dustin Parkes), recently returned to the city after a stint at university in British Columbia. They amble through Kensington Market, have coffee, buy a used bicycle and then fall into bed together. Ron Sexsmith, as the bemused garage-sale guy, likes the look of them but declares: “Cute is the new annoying.”
Co-writers and directors Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth make do with a less-is-more ethos in which Toronto’s green spaces as well as its urban environment are used to create a wide array of settings. If the production values are a touch uneven, it can be set off against the fact that some scenes were filmed during actual thunderstorms.
The are-they-or-aren’t-they couple struggles to define their feelings for each other. With Melanie on the rebound and Lewis new in town, it’s unclear whether anything other than mutual loneliness and convenience is bringing them together. Contrasting with their confusion, their circle of friends are starting to buy condos, have babies and realize that most of the Blue Jays are younger than they are.
As such, the film feels like a slice of generational pie, cooked up using local ingredients -- a 100-mile movie, if you will. It’s light, but it’s tasty. And I’m not just saying that because Steve Murray, who plays Chris, has the power to draw funny pictures of me in the paper. For the record, though, Steve, I loved your performance.
Toronto Star: No Heart Feelings
originally posted at the Toronto Star:
No Heart Feelings: Modern Love
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
What with their newfangled social networks, fondness for hook-ups and reluctance to define intimate relationships in anything but the vaguest terms, today’s 20-somethings require a new kind of romantic comedy. Surely the old-school formula of boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl — and, in its Judd Apatow-favoured incarnation, girl-waits-for-boy-to-drop-the-bong-and-get-a-life — begs for an upgrade.
A Toronto-made indie feature that makes its local premiere with a run at the Royal this week, No Heart Feelings gets us closer to the mark. An almost-love-story with a summery feel, lively dialogue and plenty of perceptive observations about the mating rituals of the young and the aimless, it feels very much like a rom-com for the Facebook age.
One of a cast comprised largely of non-professional actors, Toronto comedian Rebecca Kohler makes her movie debut as Melanie, a 29-year-old who finally opts to end her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend (voiced by CBC host Jonathan Goldstein). Her friends eagerly help her sort out her next move over a brunch at Aunties & Uncles and a clandestine drinking session in Kensington Market.
The arrival of a new boy in town nudges her in a new direction. Sparks fly with Lewis (Dustin Parker) when Melanie gives him a tour of her neighbourhood, an odyssey that includes a strange encounter with a yard salesman played by Ron Sexsmith.
Yet Melanie is a little too comfortable with her own state of inertia. As she and Lewis are thrown together at patio drinking sessions and a cottage weekend, the would-be couple continue to suss each other out. Desire may exist in the lives of these characters but deciding what to do about it is a whole other matter.
The sarcastic chatter of Melanie and her friends fills the film with memorable lines that ring true to their social milieu. (Says her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend after she rebuffs his request to Skype, “We’ve had some nice video chats, I thought.”)
Largely improvised based on scenarios developed by the movie’s trio of directors — Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth — the scenes boast great vitality and authenticity even when the film’s exact direction is as unclear to viewers as it is to the people on screen.
No Heart Feelings also has no shortage of hometown appeal — like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and This Movie Is Broken, it’s another cinematic tribute to Toronto that captures the city in all its slacker splendor.
And given the characters’ enthusiasm for touring the town on two wheels, it’s only fitting to learn the screenings will be equally cyclist-friendly — patrons of the 9 p.m. screenings on Friday and Saturday at the Royal can enjoy bike valet parking and complimentary air and oil.
What more could the movie’s target audience of tender-hearted commitment-phobes possibly ask for?
No Heart Feelings: Modern Love
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
What with their newfangled social networks, fondness for hook-ups and reluctance to define intimate relationships in anything but the vaguest terms, today’s 20-somethings require a new kind of romantic comedy. Surely the old-school formula of boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl — and, in its Judd Apatow-favoured incarnation, girl-waits-for-boy-to-drop-the-bong-and-get-a-life — begs for an upgrade.
A Toronto-made indie feature that makes its local premiere with a run at the Royal this week, No Heart Feelings gets us closer to the mark. An almost-love-story with a summery feel, lively dialogue and plenty of perceptive observations about the mating rituals of the young and the aimless, it feels very much like a rom-com for the Facebook age.
One of a cast comprised largely of non-professional actors, Toronto comedian Rebecca Kohler makes her movie debut as Melanie, a 29-year-old who finally opts to end her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend (voiced by CBC host Jonathan Goldstein). Her friends eagerly help her sort out her next move over a brunch at Aunties & Uncles and a clandestine drinking session in Kensington Market.
The arrival of a new boy in town nudges her in a new direction. Sparks fly with Lewis (Dustin Parker) when Melanie gives him a tour of her neighbourhood, an odyssey that includes a strange encounter with a yard salesman played by Ron Sexsmith.
Yet Melanie is a little too comfortable with her own state of inertia. As she and Lewis are thrown together at patio drinking sessions and a cottage weekend, the would-be couple continue to suss each other out. Desire may exist in the lives of these characters but deciding what to do about it is a whole other matter.
The sarcastic chatter of Melanie and her friends fills the film with memorable lines that ring true to their social milieu. (Says her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend after she rebuffs his request to Skype, “We’ve had some nice video chats, I thought.”)
Largely improvised based on scenarios developed by the movie’s trio of directors — Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth — the scenes boast great vitality and authenticity even when the film’s exact direction is as unclear to viewers as it is to the people on screen.
No Heart Feelings also has no shortage of hometown appeal — like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and This Movie Is Broken, it’s another cinematic tribute to Toronto that captures the city in all its slacker splendor.
And given the characters’ enthusiasm for touring the town on two wheels, it’s only fitting to learn the screenings will be equally cyclist-friendly — patrons of the 9 p.m. screenings on Friday and Saturday at the Royal can enjoy bike valet parking and complimentary air and oil.
What more could the movie’s target audience of tender-hearted commitment-phobes possibly ask for?
Friday, July 16, 2010
Globe and Mail: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Globe and Mail:
Following the herd has its rewards
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Stephen Cole
A documentary of the last-ever sheep drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, Sweetgrass occasionally feels in need of a shepherd. Or maybe a drama coach. Grizzlies attack the flock at night, dining on lamb. A cowboy chases off after them with a rifle, but filmmakers stay with the herd. Elsewhere, there is a bottleneck in a pass – a noisy, 3,000 sheep pile-up. Once again, the camera remains at the back, uninterested in getting in front of “the story.”
After a while, however, we understand that husband-and-wife filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor – Harvard anthropologists – aren’t really interested in conventional drama. And that there are audience rewards for sticking with the herd and its lonesome cowboys.
For instance, a scene late in the drive, shot from atop a mountain, where we see tiny sheep wandering loose below – a white river curling around rocks – as their aggrieved shepherd, Pat Connolly, talks on a cellphone, bellyaching to his mother about how his knees hurt and he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in forever and the sheep … hell, even his dog, never listens to a thing, he says.
As Pat continues whining, the camera drifts away; we enjoy a God’s eye view of the world. Sky and stone go on forever. The complaining cowboy, the filmmakers seem to be saying, is but a single speck in a glorious universe that is almost completely indifferent to his suffering.
Sweetgrass is a study of man and animal struggling to make their way in the natural world. Cowboys sing to themselves, mumbling the words to Coming Down the Mountain when they do just that. They sing to their horses, dogs and sheep, too. And sheep call out to each other (in a subtle variety of inflections we eventually discover). After a while, we understand the voices, every one of them, repeat variations of the same phrase, “I’m alive, I’m alive.”
Sweetgrass isn’t exactly a cowboy movie, but it does have a star cowboy – John Ahern, a slow moving, chain-smoking (unfiltered rollies) drifter who is so accustomed to being alone that he answers every question with the same startled, “what?” as if he’s been pulled from a prolonged sleep.
Montana sheep ranchers have been driving herds 150-some miles through the Beartooth range for over 100 years. Barbash and Castaing-Taylor attended the last three-month round-ups, from 2001-03, amassing more than 200 hours of documentary footage. The resulting film is an anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre – Red River and Lonesome Dove.
Following the herd has its rewards
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Stephen Cole
A documentary of the last-ever sheep drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, Sweetgrass occasionally feels in need of a shepherd. Or maybe a drama coach. Grizzlies attack the flock at night, dining on lamb. A cowboy chases off after them with a rifle, but filmmakers stay with the herd. Elsewhere, there is a bottleneck in a pass – a noisy, 3,000 sheep pile-up. Once again, the camera remains at the back, uninterested in getting in front of “the story.”
After a while, however, we understand that husband-and-wife filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor – Harvard anthropologists – aren’t really interested in conventional drama. And that there are audience rewards for sticking with the herd and its lonesome cowboys.
For instance, a scene late in the drive, shot from atop a mountain, where we see tiny sheep wandering loose below – a white river curling around rocks – as their aggrieved shepherd, Pat Connolly, talks on a cellphone, bellyaching to his mother about how his knees hurt and he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in forever and the sheep … hell, even his dog, never listens to a thing, he says.
As Pat continues whining, the camera drifts away; we enjoy a God’s eye view of the world. Sky and stone go on forever. The complaining cowboy, the filmmakers seem to be saying, is but a single speck in a glorious universe that is almost completely indifferent to his suffering.
Sweetgrass is a study of man and animal struggling to make their way in the natural world. Cowboys sing to themselves, mumbling the words to Coming Down the Mountain when they do just that. They sing to their horses, dogs and sheep, too. And sheep call out to each other (in a subtle variety of inflections we eventually discover). After a while, we understand the voices, every one of them, repeat variations of the same phrase, “I’m alive, I’m alive.”
Sweetgrass isn’t exactly a cowboy movie, but it does have a star cowboy – John Ahern, a slow moving, chain-smoking (unfiltered rollies) drifter who is so accustomed to being alone that he answers every question with the same startled, “what?” as if he’s been pulled from a prolonged sleep.
Montana sheep ranchers have been driving herds 150-some miles through the Beartooth range for over 100 years. Barbash and Castaing-Taylor attended the last three-month round-ups, from 2001-03, amassing more than 200 hours of documentary footage. The resulting film is an anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre – Red River and Lonesome Dove.
Toronto Star: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Toronto Star:
Sweetgrass: A sheepish look at the modern world
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
Rarely seen on the silver screen outside of the animated adventures of Wallace & Gromit and the occasional horror flick about killer livestock, sheep have long been denied the movie exposure accorded other members of the animal kingdom.
Is it due to some collective case of denial over the source of our favourite wool sweaters? Or is this distaste due to painful memories of childhood traumas that occurred during singalongs of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”? Only our psychotherapists can know for sure.
Hopefully, this abominable practice of barnyard discrimination will come to an end with the arrival of Sweetgrass, an American documentary that puts these creatures front and centre for what may be the first time.
A surprise hit on the festival circuit last year that begins a Toronto run at the Royal this weekend, Sweetgrass depicts a year in the life of several flocks in the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges in Montana.
A team of artists with backgrounds in visual anthropology and environmental studies, Sweetgrass directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash favour lengthy shots of sheep mostly being sheep in a variety of often stunning landscapes.
Their movie has no music, narration or much of anything else that other filmmakers typically use to add drama to nature-oriented documentaries. Instead, the viewer comes to feel like part of the herd, an experience that may send some audience members to sleep but will prove to be curiously compelling for others.
Though the film’s mood is mostly serene, it’s still punctuated by surprising moments of humour and tension. Seldom seen in the opening stretches, the animals’ human guardians are the sheepherders and cowboys who tend the sheep, collect their wool and protect them from predators. The last task proves especially difficult during the film’s final section, which depicts a long and stressful drive across snow-covered ridges and valleys.
The fact that this was to be the last instance of traditional sheepherding practices in the region lends a certain poignance to Sweetgrass. What Castaing-Taylor and Barbash document is the end of a way of life. The harsh economic reality for the people involved becomes evident when we hear a sheepherder vent his frustrations in a cellphone call — his very liberal use of profanities seems even more extreme when juxtaposed with the pastoral beauty of his location.
The presence of a hilariously laconic old cowboy adds echoes of cinema’s most famous representations of the American west. In its own subtle way, Sweetgrass compels viewers to lament the loss of the real thing, and perhaps consider the fraying bonds between humans and the animals that have long provided so much for us.
Of course, the real stars of the show remain oblivious to any of the weightier matters at hand, which is part of Sweetgrass’ charm. If there’s anything we can learn from the creatures here, it’s that any day in which you don’t get stripped of your coat or eaten by a bear is probably a good one.
Sweetgrass: A sheepish look at the modern world
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
Rarely seen on the silver screen outside of the animated adventures of Wallace & Gromit and the occasional horror flick about killer livestock, sheep have long been denied the movie exposure accorded other members of the animal kingdom.
Is it due to some collective case of denial over the source of our favourite wool sweaters? Or is this distaste due to painful memories of childhood traumas that occurred during singalongs of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”? Only our psychotherapists can know for sure.
Hopefully, this abominable practice of barnyard discrimination will come to an end with the arrival of Sweetgrass, an American documentary that puts these creatures front and centre for what may be the first time.
A surprise hit on the festival circuit last year that begins a Toronto run at the Royal this weekend, Sweetgrass depicts a year in the life of several flocks in the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges in Montana.
A team of artists with backgrounds in visual anthropology and environmental studies, Sweetgrass directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash favour lengthy shots of sheep mostly being sheep in a variety of often stunning landscapes.
Their movie has no music, narration or much of anything else that other filmmakers typically use to add drama to nature-oriented documentaries. Instead, the viewer comes to feel like part of the herd, an experience that may send some audience members to sleep but will prove to be curiously compelling for others.
Though the film’s mood is mostly serene, it’s still punctuated by surprising moments of humour and tension. Seldom seen in the opening stretches, the animals’ human guardians are the sheepherders and cowboys who tend the sheep, collect their wool and protect them from predators. The last task proves especially difficult during the film’s final section, which depicts a long and stressful drive across snow-covered ridges and valleys.
The fact that this was to be the last instance of traditional sheepherding practices in the region lends a certain poignance to Sweetgrass. What Castaing-Taylor and Barbash document is the end of a way of life. The harsh economic reality for the people involved becomes evident when we hear a sheepherder vent his frustrations in a cellphone call — his very liberal use of profanities seems even more extreme when juxtaposed with the pastoral beauty of his location.
The presence of a hilariously laconic old cowboy adds echoes of cinema’s most famous representations of the American west. In its own subtle way, Sweetgrass compels viewers to lament the loss of the real thing, and perhaps consider the fraying bonds between humans and the animals that have long provided so much for us.
Of course, the real stars of the show remain oblivious to any of the weightier matters at hand, which is part of Sweetgrass’ charm. If there’s anything we can learn from the creatures here, it’s that any day in which you don’t get stripped of your coat or eaten by a bear is probably a good one.
Toronto Sun: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Toronto Sun:
Sweetgrass a love letter to the West
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Liz Braun
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
So you'd gather from a documentary called Sweetgrass, a love letter to the old West that shows all the hardships and all the beauty involved in working a herd.
In this case, the herd is sheep, and the people who raise and tend them are a dying breed of workaholics. An anthropologist's dream and a desk-job guy's worst nightmare, Sweetgrass reveals the intense labour involved -- for man and beast -- in the seemingly simple annual task of moving a flock up to high pasture to graze.
Sweetgrass takes place in and around the town of Big Timber and the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains of Montana. Almost completely without dialogue or music (except for what seems to be Highway to Hell playing in the barn during a sheep-shearing scene), the movie shows the animals moving through an extraordinary physical landscape and initially shows them eating, being shorn and having babies in lambing season.
Once the annual summer migration begins up into the mountain range, things change. First comes the amazing sight of a massive flock of sheep moving through town, and then the slow journey to pasture begins. Although the camera tends to stay out of the faces of the humans in Sweetgrass, there are scenes of setting up camp the old-fashioned way, hints of the horsefly situation (or are they bluebottles?) and shots of the awe-inspiring physical surroundings.
Those surroundings include any number of places for sheep and people to get stuck: Streams to cross, piles of deadwood, thick brush, large rocks. The sheep get stuck, they wander, they spread out too far from one another, they bleat. As the film makes clear, sheep need constant attention. The word 'ornery' comes up more than once.
And then there are the predators. Bears are sighted; wolverines are talked about. At night, all is dark and desolate, with only the remarkable dogs to sound a warning if any four-legged danger comes near. A gutted sheep is the distressing clue that something is stalking the herd. After a heart-rending scene that has one cowboy weeping over the phone to his mother about the endless frustration and physical mishaps -- he, his dog and his horse are all lame from scrabbling up and down the hills after sheep -- you begin to wonder how anyone could still live this way.
And in fact, they generally don't. The idea for Sweetgrass began with Lawrence Allested, a rancher who was the very last in the area to drive his sheep long distances into the mountains to take advantage of his family's grazing permit. The filmmakers began following the sheep drive in 2001; before Sweetgrass was even finished, the ranch and the sheep had been sold off. The movie celebrates a particular lifestyle and it's an homage to a dying tradition -- a slice of history that's fascinating to witness.
Sweetgrass a love letter to the West
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Liz Braun
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
So you'd gather from a documentary called Sweetgrass, a love letter to the old West that shows all the hardships and all the beauty involved in working a herd.
In this case, the herd is sheep, and the people who raise and tend them are a dying breed of workaholics. An anthropologist's dream and a desk-job guy's worst nightmare, Sweetgrass reveals the intense labour involved -- for man and beast -- in the seemingly simple annual task of moving a flock up to high pasture to graze.
Sweetgrass takes place in and around the town of Big Timber and the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains of Montana. Almost completely without dialogue or music (except for what seems to be Highway to Hell playing in the barn during a sheep-shearing scene), the movie shows the animals moving through an extraordinary physical landscape and initially shows them eating, being shorn and having babies in lambing season.
Once the annual summer migration begins up into the mountain range, things change. First comes the amazing sight of a massive flock of sheep moving through town, and then the slow journey to pasture begins. Although the camera tends to stay out of the faces of the humans in Sweetgrass, there are scenes of setting up camp the old-fashioned way, hints of the horsefly situation (or are they bluebottles?) and shots of the awe-inspiring physical surroundings.
Those surroundings include any number of places for sheep and people to get stuck: Streams to cross, piles of deadwood, thick brush, large rocks. The sheep get stuck, they wander, they spread out too far from one another, they bleat. As the film makes clear, sheep need constant attention. The word 'ornery' comes up more than once.
And then there are the predators. Bears are sighted; wolverines are talked about. At night, all is dark and desolate, with only the remarkable dogs to sound a warning if any four-legged danger comes near. A gutted sheep is the distressing clue that something is stalking the herd. After a heart-rending scene that has one cowboy weeping over the phone to his mother about the endless frustration and physical mishaps -- he, his dog and his horse are all lame from scrabbling up and down the hills after sheep -- you begin to wonder how anyone could still live this way.
And in fact, they generally don't. The idea for Sweetgrass began with Lawrence Allested, a rancher who was the very last in the area to drive his sheep long distances into the mountains to take advantage of his family's grazing permit. The filmmakers began following the sheep drive in 2001; before Sweetgrass was even finished, the ranch and the sheep had been sold off. The movie celebrates a particular lifestyle and it's an homage to a dying tradition -- a slice of history that's fascinating to witness.
NOW Toronto: Sweetgrass
originally posted at NOW Toronto:
Sweetgrass: As Ewe Like It
Editorial Rating: NNN (out of 5)
by Susan G. Cole
Is there such a thing as an ethnography of animals? If there is, Sweetgrass qualifies. It tracks a mammoth flock of sheep as they’re herded through the mountains of Montana in 2003 – the last such trek ever undertaken – and it’s directed by two anthropologists who let the beasts take the spotlight.
The film begins with a near-one-minute shot of a sheep snacking on grass and then bleating for the camera. Except for a fascinating early sequence in which the sheep get shorn, industrial-style, and a few lambs are birthed, that opening reflects what you can expect from this doc. The sheep are, well, sheep – eating, nursing and following the sometimes not so clear trail.
One thing about a visual art like film: it can’t convey how much that flock must have reeked. Not that filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor worry about such things. They’re only slightly interested in the experience of the herders, a fairly dim crew with apparently no personal relationships except with their dogs, which really do all the work.
Sweetgrass is a hypnotically gorgeous thing, though. The mountains are spectacular and the wide shots of the flock superb. Too bad there’s a little dip in the last half-hour even though it features the film’s only tense moment – the appearance of hungry bears.
Sweetgrass: As Ewe Like It
Editorial Rating: NNN (out of 5)
by Susan G. Cole
Is there such a thing as an ethnography of animals? If there is, Sweetgrass qualifies. It tracks a mammoth flock of sheep as they’re herded through the mountains of Montana in 2003 – the last such trek ever undertaken – and it’s directed by two anthropologists who let the beasts take the spotlight.
The film begins with a near-one-minute shot of a sheep snacking on grass and then bleating for the camera. Except for a fascinating early sequence in which the sheep get shorn, industrial-style, and a few lambs are birthed, that opening reflects what you can expect from this doc. The sheep are, well, sheep – eating, nursing and following the sometimes not so clear trail.
One thing about a visual art like film: it can’t convey how much that flock must have reeked. Not that filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor worry about such things. They’re only slightly interested in the experience of the herders, a fairly dim crew with apparently no personal relationships except with their dogs, which really do all the work.
Sweetgrass is a hypnotically gorgeous thing, though. The mountains are spectacular and the wide shots of the flock superb. Too bad there’s a little dip in the last half-hour even though it features the film’s only tense moment – the appearance of hungry bears.
Metro: Sweetgrass
originally posted at Metro:
Not interested in a sheep herding trek? Think again
Editorial Rating: ***** (out of 5)
by Adam Nayman
The brilliant Sweetgrass is a documentary that’s also a hymn to tradition: the annual sheep herding drive in Montana's Beartooth Mountain range.
The directors spent three years in the company of cowboys and their flock, and the film evinces that intimacy. It’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers’ ability to provide multiple perspectives on the action even as they’re in the middle of it with a single camera.
Not interested in a sheep herding trek? Think again
Editorial Rating: ***** (out of 5)
by Adam Nayman
The brilliant Sweetgrass is a documentary that’s also a hymn to tradition: the annual sheep herding drive in Montana's Beartooth Mountain range.
The directors spent three years in the company of cowboys and their flock, and the film evinces that intimacy. It’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers’ ability to provide multiple perspectives on the action even as they’re in the middle of it with a single camera.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
CBC.ca: Sounds Like a Revolution
originally posted at CBC.ca
by Greig Dymond
Songs of defiance
The documentary Sounds Like a Revolution explores modern-day protest music
It’s hard to believe in this era of Biebers and Ushers and Jonases that the pop charts used to pack a political punch.
Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction (penned by P.F. Sloan) was a certified No. 1 hit in 1965, and caused an uproar among several American conservative groups who felt the lyrics were unpatriotic (“The eastern world, it is exploding/ Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’/ You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’/ You don’t believe in war but what’s that gun you’re totin’/ And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’”). One suspects that Miley Cyrus will never get quite this incendiary.
Although protest music doesn’t register on today’s charts, the genre still thrives outside the pop mainstream. In their documentary Sounds Like a Revolution, co-directors Summer Love and Jane Michener deftly trace its evolution over the past 50 years. The idea for the doc came to Love after a chat with her mother in 2003.
“By the time the invasion of Iraq happened, you had a huge wellspring of activism, millions of people marching, the largest pre-war demonstrations ever,” says the Toronto filmmaker. “And I was inspired. My mom and I were having a conversation around that time and she said, ‘Where’s the music? Where’s the soundtrack of this generation?’ I thought that was a very good question.”
Love travelled around North America between 2003 and 2008, interviewing modern-day musical activists like Michael Franti, rapper Paris and punk bands NOFX and Anti-Flag. Although they create wildly disparate sounds, the doc shows just how much these musicians have in common: a loathing of George W. Bush and the Iraq war, a desire to distribute their own music on indie labels (in several cases created by the artists themselves) so they don’t have to compromise their lyrics, and impressive internet savvy they use to connect with their respective fan bases. During the 2004 U.S. election, NOFX lead singer Fat Mike created the website Punkvoter.com, an attempt to engage punk youth in the voting process.
These artists don’t need to appear on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to attract sizeable crowds — the film devotes a large chunk of time to Michael Franti’s annual Power to the Peaceful festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which regularly draws 50,000 people. Of all the artists profiled in the doc, he caters most directly to the neo-hippie demographic. Among his fans, Franti’s song Bomb the World has become an anti-war anthem to rival Give Peace a Chance. “We can bomb the world to pieces,” he sings, “But we can’t bomb it into peace.”
“I connected with Michael early on, because I saw him changing a business model that he didn’t agree with,” says Love. “He didn’t just acquiesce, he was trying to make it into his own, and in a way that he could feel proud of later on. Even in the film he says, ‘20 years from now, when my son asks, “What did you do during this time?” I can say proudly that I was there doing something.’ That’s why I connected with each one of these artists; I felt like I needed to do something. This is my small piece of the puzzle.”
Although Sounds Like a Revolution focuses on 21st-century protest music, the spectre of the 1960s and early 1970s hovers in the background. Early on, David Crosby tells a remarkable story about the genesis of Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic indictment of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 (“Four dead in Ohio”). Seeing the famous photos of the incident a few days afterward in Life magazine, Neil Young wrote the song on the spot, placing the blame squarely on Richard Nixon (“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming”). The band recorded the tune the same night and it was rush-released within a matter of days by their label, Atlantic Records. It went to No. 14 on the Billboard charts.
That chain of events could never happen today, and Sounds Likes a Revolution explains why. Indeed, the film is at its best when it delineates how the noose gradually tightened on politically charged music at major labels. The doc takes the viewer on a tour of relevant events, from Ice-T’s Cop Killer controversy at Warner Music in 1992 to the Dixie Chicks’ backlash during the lead-up to the Iraq War. (At a concert in England, Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines had said, “We’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” the band’s home state. It led to a boycott of their music by several country music radio stations.)
“Today’s highly corporatized environment leads to a general risk aversion,” Love argues. “That risk aversion is in every aspect of the industry, and it didn’t exist on the same level in the 1960s as it does today. I find it slightly condescending when people think that no generation since the ‘60s counterculture has cared [about politics]. Part of my personal mission was to prove that the business context had changed, and to make any value judgments about the music or the message was wrong, because the context is so different today.”
Sounds Like a Revolution suffers from some repetition in its musician interviews, but the film makes a convincing case that there’s more protest music today than at any other time in history — it’s just being distributed in a different way.
Love was thrilled when Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name — a powerful track condemning racism — went to No. 1 in the UK charts at Christmas last year, the result of a massive online protest against the manufactured-by-Simon-Cowell pop idols that traditionally inhabit that spot.
“It’s exactly the kind of backlash that you would expect from a hyper-commercialized environment,” she says. “The UK is even worse than the US in my opinion for this sort of bubble-gum pop karaoke. This was a retaliation against all of those values. It was about the need for some content, something more today. That’s what people are craving.”
Sounds Like a Revolution opens in Toronto on June 25. It opens in Ottawa on July 2.
by Greig Dymond
Songs of defiance
The documentary Sounds Like a Revolution explores modern-day protest music
It’s hard to believe in this era of Biebers and Ushers and Jonases that the pop charts used to pack a political punch.
Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction (penned by P.F. Sloan) was a certified No. 1 hit in 1965, and caused an uproar among several American conservative groups who felt the lyrics were unpatriotic (“The eastern world, it is exploding/ Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’/ You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’/ You don’t believe in war but what’s that gun you’re totin’/ And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’”). One suspects that Miley Cyrus will never get quite this incendiary.
Although protest music doesn’t register on today’s charts, the genre still thrives outside the pop mainstream. In their documentary Sounds Like a Revolution, co-directors Summer Love and Jane Michener deftly trace its evolution over the past 50 years. The idea for the doc came to Love after a chat with her mother in 2003.
“By the time the invasion of Iraq happened, you had a huge wellspring of activism, millions of people marching, the largest pre-war demonstrations ever,” says the Toronto filmmaker. “And I was inspired. My mom and I were having a conversation around that time and she said, ‘Where’s the music? Where’s the soundtrack of this generation?’ I thought that was a very good question.”
Love travelled around North America between 2003 and 2008, interviewing modern-day musical activists like Michael Franti, rapper Paris and punk bands NOFX and Anti-Flag. Although they create wildly disparate sounds, the doc shows just how much these musicians have in common: a loathing of George W. Bush and the Iraq war, a desire to distribute their own music on indie labels (in several cases created by the artists themselves) so they don’t have to compromise their lyrics, and impressive internet savvy they use to connect with their respective fan bases. During the 2004 U.S. election, NOFX lead singer Fat Mike created the website Punkvoter.com, an attempt to engage punk youth in the voting process.
These artists don’t need to appear on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to attract sizeable crowds — the film devotes a large chunk of time to Michael Franti’s annual Power to the Peaceful festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which regularly draws 50,000 people. Of all the artists profiled in the doc, he caters most directly to the neo-hippie demographic. Among his fans, Franti’s song Bomb the World has become an anti-war anthem to rival Give Peace a Chance. “We can bomb the world to pieces,” he sings, “But we can’t bomb it into peace.”
“I connected with Michael early on, because I saw him changing a business model that he didn’t agree with,” says Love. “He didn’t just acquiesce, he was trying to make it into his own, and in a way that he could feel proud of later on. Even in the film he says, ‘20 years from now, when my son asks, “What did you do during this time?” I can say proudly that I was there doing something.’ That’s why I connected with each one of these artists; I felt like I needed to do something. This is my small piece of the puzzle.”
Although Sounds Like a Revolution focuses on 21st-century protest music, the spectre of the 1960s and early 1970s hovers in the background. Early on, David Crosby tells a remarkable story about the genesis of Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic indictment of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 (“Four dead in Ohio”). Seeing the famous photos of the incident a few days afterward in Life magazine, Neil Young wrote the song on the spot, placing the blame squarely on Richard Nixon (“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming”). The band recorded the tune the same night and it was rush-released within a matter of days by their label, Atlantic Records. It went to No. 14 on the Billboard charts.
That chain of events could never happen today, and Sounds Likes a Revolution explains why. Indeed, the film is at its best when it delineates how the noose gradually tightened on politically charged music at major labels. The doc takes the viewer on a tour of relevant events, from Ice-T’s Cop Killer controversy at Warner Music in 1992 to the Dixie Chicks’ backlash during the lead-up to the Iraq War. (At a concert in England, Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines had said, “We’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” the band’s home state. It led to a boycott of their music by several country music radio stations.)
“Today’s highly corporatized environment leads to a general risk aversion,” Love argues. “That risk aversion is in every aspect of the industry, and it didn’t exist on the same level in the 1960s as it does today. I find it slightly condescending when people think that no generation since the ‘60s counterculture has cared [about politics]. Part of my personal mission was to prove that the business context had changed, and to make any value judgments about the music or the message was wrong, because the context is so different today.”
Sounds Like a Revolution suffers from some repetition in its musician interviews, but the film makes a convincing case that there’s more protest music today than at any other time in history — it’s just being distributed in a different way.
Love was thrilled when Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name — a powerful track condemning racism — went to No. 1 in the UK charts at Christmas last year, the result of a massive online protest against the manufactured-by-Simon-Cowell pop idols that traditionally inhabit that spot.
“It’s exactly the kind of backlash that you would expect from a hyper-commercialized environment,” she says. “The UK is even worse than the US in my opinion for this sort of bubble-gum pop karaoke. This was a retaliation against all of those values. It was about the need for some content, something more today. That’s what people are craving.”
Sounds Like a Revolution opens in Toronto on June 25. It opens in Ottawa on July 2.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Globe and Mail: Land
originally posted at the Globe and Mail
Land: Where land is all they’ve got
Documentary examines the impact of developers on a pristine stretch of the Nicaraguan coast
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Jennie Punter
In January, 2006, three starry-eyed American resort developers, two expat eccentrics and some increasingly restless locals were living in imperfect harmony in a sleepy fishing village on a gorgeous stretch of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast dubbed the Central American Riviera. Toronto filmmaker Julian T. Pinder’s captivating, intimate and often funny documentary Land lets us join the citizens of this “underdeveloped” community during the months leading up to a general election that threatens radical change to the status quo.
Of course the November, 2006, election results in Nicaragua are known: Former revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega became president for the second time. But this knowledge in no way detracts from this rich film, which uses the looming election (with artful use of archived footage and photographs providing historical and political context) to build tension.
The main attractions of Land, however, are the engaging folk Pinder finds to illustrate the complexity of land issues in Nicaragua. The issues aren’t as simple as “developers bad, locals good,” although some gringos do exploit cheap local labour. Pinder makes sure his key characters are not merely “representative” but real people whose fates we care about – even if we don’t like some of them that much.
My favourite is Dean, an irascible, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling American expat who’s a hilarious commentator on the intrigue between developers (“land whores and dirt pimps”) and locals. His gruff poetry finds its counterpoint in lovely scenes with Nicaraguan poet and ex-guerrilla Sebastien Narvaez, who feels for the nation’s broken, forgotten soul.
We also get choice words from politician Eden Pastora, who once cut a dashing figure as a revolutionary leader nicknamed Commander Zero. Pastora points out Nicaragua has few exports and no industry: “All we have is our land.” This passion drives some locals to take both legal and illegal actions to change the game.
With a personal touch, Land tells a universal story of foreigners transforming paradise to attract more foreign tourists. Whether this is good or right depends on your idea of the ideal vacation.
Land: Where land is all they’ve got
Documentary examines the impact of developers on a pristine stretch of the Nicaraguan coast
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Jennie Punter
In January, 2006, three starry-eyed American resort developers, two expat eccentrics and some increasingly restless locals were living in imperfect harmony in a sleepy fishing village on a gorgeous stretch of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast dubbed the Central American Riviera. Toronto filmmaker Julian T. Pinder’s captivating, intimate and often funny documentary Land lets us join the citizens of this “underdeveloped” community during the months leading up to a general election that threatens radical change to the status quo.
Of course the November, 2006, election results in Nicaragua are known: Former revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega became president for the second time. But this knowledge in no way detracts from this rich film, which uses the looming election (with artful use of archived footage and photographs providing historical and political context) to build tension.
The main attractions of Land, however, are the engaging folk Pinder finds to illustrate the complexity of land issues in Nicaragua. The issues aren’t as simple as “developers bad, locals good,” although some gringos do exploit cheap local labour. Pinder makes sure his key characters are not merely “representative” but real people whose fates we care about – even if we don’t like some of them that much.
My favourite is Dean, an irascible, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling American expat who’s a hilarious commentator on the intrigue between developers (“land whores and dirt pimps”) and locals. His gruff poetry finds its counterpoint in lovely scenes with Nicaraguan poet and ex-guerrilla Sebastien Narvaez, who feels for the nation’s broken, forgotten soul.
We also get choice words from politician Eden Pastora, who once cut a dashing figure as a revolutionary leader nicknamed Commander Zero. Pastora points out Nicaragua has few exports and no industry: “All we have is our land.” This passion drives some locals to take both legal and illegal actions to change the game.
With a personal touch, Land tells a universal story of foreigners transforming paradise to attract more foreign tourists. Whether this is good or right depends on your idea of the ideal vacation.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Straight.com: Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space
originally posted at Straight.com
by Ken Eisner
With the social, financial, and environmental problems bubbling up at the moment, we can’t be blamed, exactly, for failing to search the skies for trouble. Still, we’re idiots to ignore the warning signs above, and that’s the main message of this troubling documentary.
Directed by French-born Denis Delestrac, and written by him and others, including Siobhan Flanagan, Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space details the history and possible outcomes of a space race that began with Russia’s 1957 Sputnik launch. Of course, things started much earlier, when Hitler sent those V-2 rockets into English airspace, followed by Washington’s instant de-Nazification of rocket man Wernher von Braun, who put a big smile on NASA’s public face.
The prevalence of “kill vehicles” and other potentially lethal exotica in space sped up under Ronald Reagan, who gave carte blanche to the U.S. Air Force to expand dominance of the stratospheric high ground. And every president since has increased the budget for this dangerous grandiosity, always in the guise of national defence, of course—a position asserted by the many military figures seen here.
As illuminated by a welter of commentators, including Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, and Martin Sheen, this less-than-heavenly push has been a spectacular boondoggle for the military-industrial complex—a “long con”, as one congressional observer calls it, designed as a licence to print money for programs that generally fail before getting off the ground. The scam may hide even more sinister purposes, but the most threatening aspect could be the proliferation of fast-moving space junk encircling our planet even before a catastrophic conflict or accident takes place.
Given all these fright factors, it almost seems wrong that the 85-minute film, goosed along by fast edits, high-tech graphics, and Amon Tobin’s electronic music, should be so cosmically entertaining.
by Ken Eisner
With the social, financial, and environmental problems bubbling up at the moment, we can’t be blamed, exactly, for failing to search the skies for trouble. Still, we’re idiots to ignore the warning signs above, and that’s the main message of this troubling documentary.
Directed by French-born Denis Delestrac, and written by him and others, including Siobhan Flanagan, Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space details the history and possible outcomes of a space race that began with Russia’s 1957 Sputnik launch. Of course, things started much earlier, when Hitler sent those V-2 rockets into English airspace, followed by Washington’s instant de-Nazification of rocket man Wernher von Braun, who put a big smile on NASA’s public face.
The prevalence of “kill vehicles” and other potentially lethal exotica in space sped up under Ronald Reagan, who gave carte blanche to the U.S. Air Force to expand dominance of the stratospheric high ground. And every president since has increased the budget for this dangerous grandiosity, always in the guise of national defence, of course—a position asserted by the many military figures seen here.
As illuminated by a welter of commentators, including Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, and Martin Sheen, this less-than-heavenly push has been a spectacular boondoggle for the military-industrial complex—a “long con”, as one congressional observer calls it, designed as a licence to print money for programs that generally fail before getting off the ground. The scam may hide even more sinister purposes, but the most threatening aspect could be the proliferation of fast-moving space junk encircling our planet even before a catastrophic conflict or accident takes place.
Given all these fright factors, it almost seems wrong that the 85-minute film, goosed along by fast edits, high-tech graphics, and Amon Tobin’s electronic music, should be so cosmically entertaining.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Straight.com: Pax Americana delivers history lesson on weaponization of space
originally posted at Straight.com
by Travis Lupick
Nuclear weapons are frightening. The prospect of kinetic bombardment is even scarier. And if you believe the information presented in Pax Americana: The Weaponization of Space, it won’t be long before delivery systems capable of kinetic bombardment are orbiting Earth.
The concept is simple. Load a satellite up with rods of tungsten that can be fired down to the surface. Those projectiles would travel at an estimated 11,000 kilometres an hour and, with all of that energy, strike the planet with the force of an atomic bomb.
Even with a small network of such satellites, any target on Earth could be destroyed in less than 10 minutes of the press of a button.
In Pax Americana, which opens at the Vancity Theatre on Friday (June 4), director Denis Delestrac methodically presents publicly available information that should serve as a warning: the weaponization of space is happening and could end with a scenario not unlike the one outlined above.
“What is inevitable is that there is always going to be somebody who will want to dominate any territory,” Delestrac told the Straight in a telephone interview from Barcelona, where he is currently based. “That doesn’t make inevitable the fact that we can’t stop it.”
Which is what Pax Americana, Delestrac’s first feature-length film, is trying to do.
“The first step we need to take…is to inform and to get people to know what is happening,” the French-born writer and director said.
He explained that a handful of nations—primarily the United States, but China and others as well—are already far along in the process of weaponizing humankind’s final frontier, and that the public is largely unaware of this fact.
“It is called the Pax Americana, or the ‘American peace’,” a preacher delivering a sermon on a US military base says in the film. “It refers to the period in which American influence throughout the world has caused a relative peace to come about.”
Delestrac, who previously worked on the 2005 IMAX film Mystery of the Nile, said encountering that sort of attitude was an intriguing part of making the film.
“Some of the people who want to weaponize space really believe that if somebody has to dominate, then it has to be the US,” he said. “They have a good heart.”
The problem, Delestrac continued, is that moving militaries into space will likely bring consequences dangerous for the entire planet. As the film illustrates, a new arms race may already be under way.
Since former US president Ronald Reagan started the country’s “missile defence” program in 1983, the American government has spent $200 billion trying to figure out how to use satellites to shoot down projectiles launched from earthbound sites. In January 2007, China successfully destroyed one of its own satellites in a military exercise that caused international alarm. And Russia has vowed to destroy any weapon the US deploys in space.
Delestrac emphasized that all of this is happening just 100 kilometres above our heads.
“When the weapon is there,” he said, “there could always be a hand that could use the weapon not the way that it is supposed to—not to protect or not to defend, but to attack.”
by Travis Lupick
Nuclear weapons are frightening. The prospect of kinetic bombardment is even scarier. And if you believe the information presented in Pax Americana: The Weaponization of Space, it won’t be long before delivery systems capable of kinetic bombardment are orbiting Earth.
The concept is simple. Load a satellite up with rods of tungsten that can be fired down to the surface. Those projectiles would travel at an estimated 11,000 kilometres an hour and, with all of that energy, strike the planet with the force of an atomic bomb.
Even with a small network of such satellites, any target on Earth could be destroyed in less than 10 minutes of the press of a button.
In Pax Americana, which opens at the Vancity Theatre on Friday (June 4), director Denis Delestrac methodically presents publicly available information that should serve as a warning: the weaponization of space is happening and could end with a scenario not unlike the one outlined above.
“What is inevitable is that there is always going to be somebody who will want to dominate any territory,” Delestrac told the Straight in a telephone interview from Barcelona, where he is currently based. “That doesn’t make inevitable the fact that we can’t stop it.”
Which is what Pax Americana, Delestrac’s first feature-length film, is trying to do.
“The first step we need to take…is to inform and to get people to know what is happening,” the French-born writer and director said.
He explained that a handful of nations—primarily the United States, but China and others as well—are already far along in the process of weaponizing humankind’s final frontier, and that the public is largely unaware of this fact.
“It is called the Pax Americana, or the ‘American peace’,” a preacher delivering a sermon on a US military base says in the film. “It refers to the period in which American influence throughout the world has caused a relative peace to come about.”
Delestrac, who previously worked on the 2005 IMAX film Mystery of the Nile, said encountering that sort of attitude was an intriguing part of making the film.
“Some of the people who want to weaponize space really believe that if somebody has to dominate, then it has to be the US,” he said. “They have a good heart.”
The problem, Delestrac continued, is that moving militaries into space will likely bring consequences dangerous for the entire planet. As the film illustrates, a new arms race may already be under way.
Since former US president Ronald Reagan started the country’s “missile defence” program in 1983, the American government has spent $200 billion trying to figure out how to use satellites to shoot down projectiles launched from earthbound sites. In January 2007, China successfully destroyed one of its own satellites in a military exercise that caused international alarm. And Russia has vowed to destroy any weapon the US deploys in space.
Delestrac emphasized that all of this is happening just 100 kilometres above our heads.
“When the weapon is there,” he said, “there could always be a hand that could use the weapon not the way that it is supposed to—not to protect or not to defend, but to attack.”
Friday, May 28, 2010
Toronto Sun: Documentaries Thrive on DVD
originally posted at Toronto Sun
by Bruce Kirkland
Sadly, despite being an exciting art form and a source of enlightenment, documentaries do not travel well through cinemas.
Exceptions such as Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth ($48.8 million worldwide) and Cannes Palme d’Or winner Fahrenheit 9/11 ($222.4 million worldwide) merely prove the rule. Obviously, they were hits as well as controversial catalysts for public debate.
But docs in general are almost dead in theatres.
So it is great news that the genre is alive and well and living on DVD in specialized collections. One outstanding series comes from Canada’s KinoSmith, run by its president, Robin Smith. This innovative independent distributor just added four new titles to its Hot Docs DVD Collection, bringing the series to seven.
The first-wave was: The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, RIP!: A Remix Manifesto and FLicKeR. The new titles are Unmistaken Child, The Bodybuilder and I, Prom Night in Mississippi and The Betrayal. With three more titles due in June (Burma VJ, Collapse and The Unforeseen) and two in July (Army of One and When We Were Boys), the Hot Docs DVD Collection is heating up. For those of us who love docs, it is incendiary.
Hot Docs is a Toronto phenomenon, a filmfest that is as important in its specialized niche in the spring as the Toronto International Film Festival is for all film genres in the fall. KinoSmith’s DVD series takes Hot Docs across Canada. Everyone can participate, at least for these titles.
All major DVD stores can carry these films, or order them in if they do not stock them. But two major chains are on-board with special displays devoted to the collection.
One is HMV, which has always supported docs by celebrating the offbeat, odd and obscure on its shelves. Good on them. The surprise partner is Blockbuster, which has an appalling record of supplying only mainstream fare. Giving the Hot Docs Collection its own focus in many Blockbuster stores is a nice change of pace: Hurrah!
For obvious reasons with documentaries, it is worth knowing what they are about. While filmmaking style is critical to getting the message across, it doesn’t mean much if the message does not intrigue the viewer. So here are capsule takes on the new titles:
One bonus is that KinoSmith will donate a percentage of each sale to the Hot Docs Education Fund for school programs related to documentary films. Youth need not be wasted on the young — if they are learning.
by Bruce Kirkland
Sadly, despite being an exciting art form and a source of enlightenment, documentaries do not travel well through cinemas.
Exceptions such as Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth ($48.8 million worldwide) and Cannes Palme d’Or winner Fahrenheit 9/11 ($222.4 million worldwide) merely prove the rule. Obviously, they were hits as well as controversial catalysts for public debate.
But docs in general are almost dead in theatres.
So it is great news that the genre is alive and well and living on DVD in specialized collections. One outstanding series comes from Canada’s KinoSmith, run by its president, Robin Smith. This innovative independent distributor just added four new titles to its Hot Docs DVD Collection, bringing the series to seven.
The first-wave was: The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, RIP!: A Remix Manifesto and FLicKeR. The new titles are Unmistaken Child, The Bodybuilder and I, Prom Night in Mississippi and The Betrayal. With three more titles due in June (Burma VJ, Collapse and The Unforeseen) and two in July (Army of One and When We Were Boys), the Hot Docs DVD Collection is heating up. For those of us who love docs, it is incendiary.
Hot Docs is a Toronto phenomenon, a filmfest that is as important in its specialized niche in the spring as the Toronto International Film Festival is for all film genres in the fall. KinoSmith’s DVD series takes Hot Docs across Canada. Everyone can participate, at least for these titles.
All major DVD stores can carry these films, or order them in if they do not stock them. But two major chains are on-board with special displays devoted to the collection.
One is HMV, which has always supported docs by celebrating the offbeat, odd and obscure on its shelves. Good on them. The surprise partner is Blockbuster, which has an appalling record of supplying only mainstream fare. Giving the Hot Docs Collection its own focus in many Blockbuster stores is a nice change of pace: Hurrah!
For obvious reasons with documentaries, it is worth knowing what they are about. While filmmaking style is critical to getting the message across, it doesn’t mean much if the message does not intrigue the viewer. So here are capsule takes on the new titles:
- Prom Night in Mississippi: Fuelled by Morgan Freeman’s passion for Civil Rights, this uplifting, life-affirming, Canadian-made doc examines how a high school in Charleston, Miss., was forced to integrate its student population in 1970 but ignorantly refused to allow blacks to go to the senior prom. In 2008, that finally changed when the school finally accepted Freeman’s offer to pay for the prom — if integrated. And, guess what, it became a great experience for all. Directed by Canadian Paul Saltzman.
- Unmistaken Child: When Tibetan Buddhist leader Lama Konchog died in 2001, he left behind a daunting task for another monk: To find his reincarnated being. This Israeli film chronicles the extraordinary, four-year mission. Directed by Nati Baratz.
- The Bodybuilder and I: In this Canadian production, an estranged son, filmmaker Bryan Friedman, rediscovers his father during the elder man’s bizarre odyssey to regain his competitive bodybuilding crown at 59.
- The Betrayal: It took 23 years to film and earned a 2009 Oscar nomination as best documentary feature. Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath’s American-made film shows what compelled Phrasavath’s family to migrate from Laos to New York after America’s dirty Vietnam War spilled over into their home country.
One bonus is that KinoSmith will donate a percentage of each sale to the Hot Docs Education Fund for school programs related to documentary films. Youth need not be wasted on the young — if they are learning.
Friday, April 30, 2010
National Post: Passenger Side
originally published at the National Post
by Vanessa Farquharson (April 29, 2010)
A scene near the end of Passenger Side involves Michael (Adam Scott) trying to figure out whether he's a stupid white guy sadly wasting his life, or a sad white guy stupidly wasting his life.
He concludes it's the former, although if this is true, one must admit that watching a feature-length film about precisely how a stupid white guy sadly wastes his life has never been so entertaining -- or come with a better soundtrack (think Wilco, Leonard Cohen, Dinosaur Jr., Evan Dando and more).
The third effort from Canadian writer-director Matthew Bissonnette, whose 2006 film Who Loves The Sun was nominated for a Genie award, Passenger Side relies very much on its script, achieving that elusive balance of smart, funny and -- most difficult of all -- authentic.
That said, Bissonnette can't take all the credit; his brother Joel, who plays recovering drug addict Tobey, and Scott, in the role of a not-quite-successful writer with a not-quite girlfriend, have clearly spent enough time together off-screen that their chemistry and sense of timing is bang-on. After all, it's one thing to come up with snarky banter and lines like, "I love the future -- in fact, I have a feeling it's going to be the next big thing," but quite another to deliver this with the perfect mix of ennui, defensiveness and bitter sarcasm.
Certain moments seem so natural, it's hard to know whether they were improvised or not -- one, in particular, comes when the guys are standing outside a car wash; Michael compliments Tobey on his new shoes, which are fire-engine red. "They look really good," he says, pausing only for a second before adding, "They match your eyes."
The story itself involves a languorous, day-long drive in and around Los Angeles to find Theresa (Robin Tunney), the love of Tobey's life. A range of bizarre characters end up tumbling in and out of their car (the dog is the only one that sticks around until the end), which makes for some added humour amidst the more serious discussion.
There's a nice twist, too, but it's hardly essential -- audiences will feel as though they could sit in the backseat forever, alternately listening to Guided By Voices (on cassette, of course) and the ramblings of Michael and Tobey as they tackle everything from existentialism to how the Habs will win the Stanley Cup again and whether they'd have sex with Laura Bush or Dick Cheney.
About halfway through the film, they get a flat tire while in the desert -- but just when viewers may be thinking this feels slightly clichéd, Scott's character comments on how flat tires never provide much in the way of plot development.
Clearly, this director is always one step ahead, incredibly self-aware, and even willing to poke fun at himself. These are traits not often found amongst the indie Canadian filmmaking set; hopefully, it leads to more critical recognition and a long road ahead for Bissonnette.
by Vanessa Farquharson (April 29, 2010)
A scene near the end of Passenger Side involves Michael (Adam Scott) trying to figure out whether he's a stupid white guy sadly wasting his life, or a sad white guy stupidly wasting his life.
He concludes it's the former, although if this is true, one must admit that watching a feature-length film about precisely how a stupid white guy sadly wastes his life has never been so entertaining -- or come with a better soundtrack (think Wilco, Leonard Cohen, Dinosaur Jr., Evan Dando and more).
The third effort from Canadian writer-director Matthew Bissonnette, whose 2006 film Who Loves The Sun was nominated for a Genie award, Passenger Side relies very much on its script, achieving that elusive balance of smart, funny and -- most difficult of all -- authentic.
That said, Bissonnette can't take all the credit; his brother Joel, who plays recovering drug addict Tobey, and Scott, in the role of a not-quite-successful writer with a not-quite girlfriend, have clearly spent enough time together off-screen that their chemistry and sense of timing is bang-on. After all, it's one thing to come up with snarky banter and lines like, "I love the future -- in fact, I have a feeling it's going to be the next big thing," but quite another to deliver this with the perfect mix of ennui, defensiveness and bitter sarcasm.
Certain moments seem so natural, it's hard to know whether they were improvised or not -- one, in particular, comes when the guys are standing outside a car wash; Michael compliments Tobey on his new shoes, which are fire-engine red. "They look really good," he says, pausing only for a second before adding, "They match your eyes."
The story itself involves a languorous, day-long drive in and around Los Angeles to find Theresa (Robin Tunney), the love of Tobey's life. A range of bizarre characters end up tumbling in and out of their car (the dog is the only one that sticks around until the end), which makes for some added humour amidst the more serious discussion.
There's a nice twist, too, but it's hardly essential -- audiences will feel as though they could sit in the backseat forever, alternately listening to Guided By Voices (on cassette, of course) and the ramblings of Michael and Tobey as they tackle everything from existentialism to how the Habs will win the Stanley Cup again and whether they'd have sex with Laura Bush or Dick Cheney.
About halfway through the film, they get a flat tire while in the desert -- but just when viewers may be thinking this feels slightly clichéd, Scott's character comments on how flat tires never provide much in the way of plot development.
Clearly, this director is always one step ahead, incredibly self-aware, and even willing to poke fun at himself. These are traits not often found amongst the indie Canadian filmmaking set; hopefully, it leads to more critical recognition and a long road ahead for Bissonnette.
Globe and Mail: Passenger Side
originally published at the Globe and Mail:
by Liam Lacey
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
Simple and smart, Canadian director Matt Bissonnette’s Passenger Side is what’s known in theatre circles as a two-hander, a two-person play in which everything depends on dialogue and performance. The film also fits into another familiar genre, the road movie, although in this case it’s two brothers on a wandering day trip around Los Angeles and its environs in a beat-up vintage BMW. The older brother, an acerbic writer, is Michael (Adam Scott); the younger brother is a recovering junkie named Tobey (the director’s brother Joel Bissonnette).
The film begins with that most annoying of attention-getting devices – the unanswered telephone – which rings in Michael’s apartment repeatedly. Michael is a technophobe; his answering machine still uses a cassette tape. We subsequently learn that he’s an author struggling to write a second novel, and to compound things, today is his 37th birthday. Tobey wants Michael to pick him up and drive him around town to run errands since his own car has broken down. Reluctantly, Michael agrees and the rest of the movie consists of their day, as they go on a sojourn out of the city, to the desert and back.
Michael and Tobey dive immediately into a kind of hostile, familiar banter. Tobey’s annoyed with Michael’s message machine, which he describes as “like calling East Germany in 1982…You have a fear of the future.”
“No, I don’t,” says Michael. “I love the future. I think it’s going to be the next big thing.”
And so the talk goes along with the journey, both pointed and somehow pointless. Tobey says he has a new job. Michael sounds skeptical. Sad, indie-rock songs play on the soundtrack. We learn that Tobey is a failure but an optimist, while Michael is slightly successful but embittered. While Tobey keeps stopping to visit various houses, we spend a lot of time sitting with Michael in his car. At one point a trans-sexual prostitute, Carla, hops in with him and begins initiating business, which rattles Michael’s facade of cynical composure.
In the course of their day travelling through un-touristy backstreets and dull byways of Los Angeles, they meet a lot of eccentric characters, including a Mexican man who has just severed two fingers, a spooky clairvoyant who serves them lunch, a drunken party girl with right-wing political views and the cast of a porn movie. Early on, Michael believes Tobey is using him for a drug connection, but Tobey says no, he’s on a different kind of quest, a search for a woman.
At times, the plot meanders, but there’s a shape to the events, a sense that the brothers – Canadians, as it turns out – have been orphaned here in Los Angeles in their adult lives. In the midst of the verbal and physical detours, there’s a conversation about hockey (like director Bissonnette, they’re Montrealers). Later, they’re chased by an angry anti-Canadian gas station owner, one of the film’s quirky evocations of The Odyssey. Finally, they arrive back in Los Angeles for an ending that has been signalled but has a twist which puts their journey in perspective.
The lead actors have their familiar, sibling banter down cold – dialogue that’s half-funny, half-bitter and designed mostly to kill time. Scott, in particular, shows himself to be one of the best young American actors going. Though he has appeared in small roles in dubious mainstream films (Monster-in-Law, Leap Year and Step Brothers) and has a lead role in the upcoming horror film (Piranha 3D), his best work is here and in another indie film The Vicious Kind, which had its debut at Sundance last year. There are echoes of a young Michael Keaton or even Jack Nicholson in his performances, which have that great rare quality of vulnerability and danger.
by Liam Lacey
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
Simple and smart, Canadian director Matt Bissonnette’s Passenger Side is what’s known in theatre circles as a two-hander, a two-person play in which everything depends on dialogue and performance. The film also fits into another familiar genre, the road movie, although in this case it’s two brothers on a wandering day trip around Los Angeles and its environs in a beat-up vintage BMW. The older brother, an acerbic writer, is Michael (Adam Scott); the younger brother is a recovering junkie named Tobey (the director’s brother Joel Bissonnette).
The film begins with that most annoying of attention-getting devices – the unanswered telephone – which rings in Michael’s apartment repeatedly. Michael is a technophobe; his answering machine still uses a cassette tape. We subsequently learn that he’s an author struggling to write a second novel, and to compound things, today is his 37th birthday. Tobey wants Michael to pick him up and drive him around town to run errands since his own car has broken down. Reluctantly, Michael agrees and the rest of the movie consists of their day, as they go on a sojourn out of the city, to the desert and back.
Michael and Tobey dive immediately into a kind of hostile, familiar banter. Tobey’s annoyed with Michael’s message machine, which he describes as “like calling East Germany in 1982…You have a fear of the future.”
“No, I don’t,” says Michael. “I love the future. I think it’s going to be the next big thing.”
And so the talk goes along with the journey, both pointed and somehow pointless. Tobey says he has a new job. Michael sounds skeptical. Sad, indie-rock songs play on the soundtrack. We learn that Tobey is a failure but an optimist, while Michael is slightly successful but embittered. While Tobey keeps stopping to visit various houses, we spend a lot of time sitting with Michael in his car. At one point a trans-sexual prostitute, Carla, hops in with him and begins initiating business, which rattles Michael’s facade of cynical composure.
In the course of their day travelling through un-touristy backstreets and dull byways of Los Angeles, they meet a lot of eccentric characters, including a Mexican man who has just severed two fingers, a spooky clairvoyant who serves them lunch, a drunken party girl with right-wing political views and the cast of a porn movie. Early on, Michael believes Tobey is using him for a drug connection, but Tobey says no, he’s on a different kind of quest, a search for a woman.
At times, the plot meanders, but there’s a shape to the events, a sense that the brothers – Canadians, as it turns out – have been orphaned here in Los Angeles in their adult lives. In the midst of the verbal and physical detours, there’s a conversation about hockey (like director Bissonnette, they’re Montrealers). Later, they’re chased by an angry anti-Canadian gas station owner, one of the film’s quirky evocations of The Odyssey. Finally, they arrive back in Los Angeles for an ending that has been signalled but has a twist which puts their journey in perspective.
The lead actors have their familiar, sibling banter down cold – dialogue that’s half-funny, half-bitter and designed mostly to kill time. Scott, in particular, shows himself to be one of the best young American actors going. Though he has appeared in small roles in dubious mainstream films (Monster-in-Law, Leap Year and Step Brothers) and has a lead role in the upcoming horror film (Piranha 3D), his best work is here and in another indie film The Vicious Kind, which had its debut at Sundance last year. There are echoes of a young Michael Keaton or even Jack Nicholson in his performances, which have that great rare quality of vulnerability and danger.
Eye Weekly: Passenger Side
originally published at Eye Weekly:
by Chris Bilton
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 5)
In director Matthew Bissonette’s third feature, Passenger Side, much fantastic dialogue punctuates the cassette-tape aesthetic of older brother Michael (Adam Scott) and the whims of his dubiously life-embracing ex-junkie brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) as the pair drive around on a hopeless day-long journey from place to place through regular people’s LA. (There’s not one pass by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre or the Disney/Gehry opera house.)
Carefully paced and, at times, cleverly self-conscious, the gentle unfolding of the brothers’ relationship via an urban road trip is full of nostalgia and regret, hope and forgiveness, all of which emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Consequently, Passenger Side feels a bit like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy if it were set in downtown LA instead of the Pacific Northwest wilderness. Bonus points for the Can-con hockey talk, which is excellently paired with a Leonard Cohen song.
by Chris Bilton
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 5)
In director Matthew Bissonette’s third feature, Passenger Side, much fantastic dialogue punctuates the cassette-tape aesthetic of older brother Michael (Adam Scott) and the whims of his dubiously life-embracing ex-junkie brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) as the pair drive around on a hopeless day-long journey from place to place through regular people’s LA. (There’s not one pass by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre or the Disney/Gehry opera house.)
Carefully paced and, at times, cleverly self-conscious, the gentle unfolding of the brothers’ relationship via an urban road trip is full of nostalgia and regret, hope and forgiveness, all of which emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Consequently, Passenger Side feels a bit like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy if it were set in downtown LA instead of the Pacific Northwest wilderness. Bonus points for the Can-con hockey talk, which is excellently paired with a Leonard Cohen song.
NOW Toronto: Passenger Side
originally published at NOW Toronto:
by Norman Wilner
Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
In writer/director Matthew Bissonnette’s follow-up to Who Loves The Sun, brothers Tobey and Michael (played by the director’s brother Joel and Step Brothers’ Adam Scott) spend a day driving around the greater Los Angeles area looking for Tobey’s ex-girlfriend.
It’s like a Richard Linklater movie from the mid-1990s: very little happens, and that’s sort of the point. The conversation is engaging, the two leads snap instantly into the relaxed but guarded vibe of lifelong adversaries, and the script parcels out little bits of information as needed.
The twist at the end is unnecessary, though. Had Passenger Side ended five minutes earlier, it would have been much more fulfilling.
by Norman Wilner
Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
In writer/director Matthew Bissonnette’s follow-up to Who Loves The Sun, brothers Tobey and Michael (played by the director’s brother Joel and Step Brothers’ Adam Scott) spend a day driving around the greater Los Angeles area looking for Tobey’s ex-girlfriend.
It’s like a Richard Linklater movie from the mid-1990s: very little happens, and that’s sort of the point. The conversation is engaging, the two leads snap instantly into the relaxed but guarded vibe of lifelong adversaries, and the script parcels out little bits of information as needed.
The twist at the end is unnecessary, though. Had Passenger Side ended five minutes earlier, it would have been much more fulfilling.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Montreal Gazette: Passenger Side Takes On Gunless
originally posted at the Montreal Gazette:
by Brendan Kelly (April 28, 2010)
How about this for a David vs. Goliath battle? In one corner, we have Gunless, the new multi-million-buck western spoof starring Paul Gross, who is like the closest thing we have to a real bona-fide movie-star in English Canada. In the other corner, the ultimate underdog - former Montrealer Matthew Bissonnette's micro-budget, shot-on-the-run Passenger Side. Matt Bissonnette's flick opens on a grand total of 3 screens Friday - one each in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Gunless, well it opens on a load more screens across the country and benefits from a mega promotional campaign from heavy-weight distributor Alliance Films.
It's the battle of two oh-so-different visions of Canadian cinema. On one side, you have the Paul Gross school - spend a lot of money, go for big commercial projects and chances are it'll work (which it did for both Men With Brooms and Passchendaele).
Then there's the auteur guy. Bissonnette makes little ultra-personal films, like the memorable Looking for Leonard and Who Loves the Sun, and with Passenger Side, he's hit his stride creatively. L.A. Weekly called it "a thinking man's Judd Apatow flick" and they're right. It's a brilliant film - smart, funny, a little disturbing and utterly original. It's about two brothers who spend a day driving around L.A. looking for one brother's ex-girlfriend. That's it for plot. (For more on the movie, I will have a profile of lead actor Joel Bissonnette in The Gazette Monday.)
Like I said, two different visions of Canadian cinema. Now wouldn't it be cool if Passenger Side somehow turned into this year's little-Canadian-film-that-could. You could help make it happen if you live in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Go see the film. And, if you still have any money, then you can go see Gunless too, if you want.
by Brendan Kelly (April 28, 2010)
How about this for a David vs. Goliath battle? In one corner, we have Gunless, the new multi-million-buck western spoof starring Paul Gross, who is like the closest thing we have to a real bona-fide movie-star in English Canada. In the other corner, the ultimate underdog - former Montrealer Matthew Bissonnette's micro-budget, shot-on-the-run Passenger Side. Matt Bissonnette's flick opens on a grand total of 3 screens Friday - one each in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Gunless, well it opens on a load more screens across the country and benefits from a mega promotional campaign from heavy-weight distributor Alliance Films.
It's the battle of two oh-so-different visions of Canadian cinema. On one side, you have the Paul Gross school - spend a lot of money, go for big commercial projects and chances are it'll work (which it did for both Men With Brooms and Passchendaele).
Then there's the auteur guy. Bissonnette makes little ultra-personal films, like the memorable Looking for Leonard and Who Loves the Sun, and with Passenger Side, he's hit his stride creatively. L.A. Weekly called it "a thinking man's Judd Apatow flick" and they're right. It's a brilliant film - smart, funny, a little disturbing and utterly original. It's about two brothers who spend a day driving around L.A. looking for one brother's ex-girlfriend. That's it for plot. (For more on the movie, I will have a profile of lead actor Joel Bissonnette in The Gazette Monday.)
Like I said, two different visions of Canadian cinema. Now wouldn't it be cool if Passenger Side somehow turned into this year's little-Canadian-film-that-could. You could help make it happen if you live in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Go see the film. And, if you still have any money, then you can go see Gunless too, if you want.
Eye Weekly: Land
originally published at Eye Weekly:
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 5)
by Jason Anderson (April 28, 2010)
Some developers’ dreams of creating a “Nicaraguan Riviera” inevitably run into more than a few hitches in the land of the Sandinistas. This engrossing and wryly funny doc by Toronto’s Julian Pinder introduces viewers to a wealth of colourful figures, from big-talking would-be hoteliers to a hippie farmer to a one-eyed revolutionary poet. All prove to be subject to historical forces far beyond their control as we witness the latest weird chapter in Nicaragua’s long and tumultuous relationship with interlopers and profiteers from El Norte.
Land screens as part of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival on Sunday May 2nd at 9:30pm at the Royal Cinema and Sunday May 9 at 2pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre. Buy Tickets.
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 5)
by Jason Anderson (April 28, 2010)
Some developers’ dreams of creating a “Nicaraguan Riviera” inevitably run into more than a few hitches in the land of the Sandinistas. This engrossing and wryly funny doc by Toronto’s Julian Pinder introduces viewers to a wealth of colourful figures, from big-talking would-be hoteliers to a hippie farmer to a one-eyed revolutionary poet. All prove to be subject to historical forces far beyond their control as we witness the latest weird chapter in Nicaragua’s long and tumultuous relationship with interlopers and profiteers from El Norte.
Land screens as part of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival on Sunday May 2nd at 9:30pm at the Royal Cinema and Sunday May 9 at 2pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre. Buy Tickets.
Friday, March 5, 2010
The Province: Last Train Home
originally posted at The Province:
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Katherine Monk
Montreal-based director and former Chinese broadcaster Lixin Fan directs this verite-style documentary that takes a close-up look at the annual migration of 130 million factory workers from major cities to their agrarian homes. Homing in on the Zhang family, Fan exposes the generational rifts as tradition faces off against prosperity and personal ego. It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Moving through Chinese society like a large paper dragon on parade, economic fortune is not only dividing huge swaths of the population between rich and poor, it's also changing the way Chinese see themselves in relation to both traditional values and the western world.
It's a complicated, taboo-laden, and culturally spicy noodle of a situation to twirl with your mental chopsticks, but Lixin Fan does an elegant job of grabbing the hydra-headed beast by the throat in his feature documentary debut, Last Train Home.
A former TV news professional for Chinese state television, Fan decided to take a close-up look at changing Chinese society through a very specific portal: the annual migration of 130 million people during New Year celebrations.
Forget Mecca. This is the largest annual human migration in the world, as factory workers leave city centres to return to their ancestral villages and reconnect with family.
It's a brilliant place to start for a few reasons, and prime among them are the images. Fan's camera captures the frenetic chaos at train stations as hordes of people cram the platforms hoping to get a seat in oversold coaches.
The density of people as they scurry, laden with luggage, through the frame makes the reality of living in China undeniable. This is a place where people are so numerous and so apparently disposable, that finding personal identity and ego among the millions of other souls is a sizable challenge.
At times, the sea of people seem to move more like amoebae under a microscope than any sentient mass of humanity, and using a scientist's empirical process, Fan sorts through the specimens by finding ideal examples, and getting even closer.
The central focus in Last Train Home becomes the Zhang family. A typical clan from a small, agrarian village, the Zhang parents left their children for factory work, in the hopes they'd be able to provide their offspring with opportunities for improvement.
When their eldest daughter decides to turn her back on the family's larger plan, and drop out of school to seek work in a factory for herself, there's a crisis of epic proportions.
The moment is captured in all its uncomfortable drama as the father strikes his daughter in the face, and she - somewhat surprisingly - fights back like a feral bobcat.
One is never sure just how much the camera's presence has influenced or inspired the participants in this verite exploration, but it doesn't really matter if the whole movie is contrived, acted, or even scripted.
The reel derives a sense of authenticity from the way it's made. The camera becomes our window to a whole other world, where we're given the luxury of simply watching life unfold without overt commentary or an articulated point of view.
You can't really tell what Fan is thinking, as he maps the rifts and crevasses in a monolithic culture. There is no palpable agenda working here, and that releases the film from any obligation other than to entertain and enlighten the viewer.
The entertainment factor comes through the pictures of the metamorphosing Chinese landscape, as well as the soap-opera family dynamics, but the enlightenment is something the viewer has to create for herself.
Is economic success the be-all and end-all for a society, or is there something more to the human experience beneath the emotional permafrost of cold, hard cash?
Fan keeps the film open-ended, which only makes the experience richer for those willing to do a little work, but in the end, this feels like a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Katherine Monk
Montreal-based director and former Chinese broadcaster Lixin Fan directs this verite-style documentary that takes a close-up look at the annual migration of 130 million factory workers from major cities to their agrarian homes. Homing in on the Zhang family, Fan exposes the generational rifts as tradition faces off against prosperity and personal ego. It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Moving through Chinese society like a large paper dragon on parade, economic fortune is not only dividing huge swaths of the population between rich and poor, it's also changing the way Chinese see themselves in relation to both traditional values and the western world.
It's a complicated, taboo-laden, and culturally spicy noodle of a situation to twirl with your mental chopsticks, but Lixin Fan does an elegant job of grabbing the hydra-headed beast by the throat in his feature documentary debut, Last Train Home.
A former TV news professional for Chinese state television, Fan decided to take a close-up look at changing Chinese society through a very specific portal: the annual migration of 130 million people during New Year celebrations.
Forget Mecca. This is the largest annual human migration in the world, as factory workers leave city centres to return to their ancestral villages and reconnect with family.
It's a brilliant place to start for a few reasons, and prime among them are the images. Fan's camera captures the frenetic chaos at train stations as hordes of people cram the platforms hoping to get a seat in oversold coaches.
The density of people as they scurry, laden with luggage, through the frame makes the reality of living in China undeniable. This is a place where people are so numerous and so apparently disposable, that finding personal identity and ego among the millions of other souls is a sizable challenge.
At times, the sea of people seem to move more like amoebae under a microscope than any sentient mass of humanity, and using a scientist's empirical process, Fan sorts through the specimens by finding ideal examples, and getting even closer.
The central focus in Last Train Home becomes the Zhang family. A typical clan from a small, agrarian village, the Zhang parents left their children for factory work, in the hopes they'd be able to provide their offspring with opportunities for improvement.
When their eldest daughter decides to turn her back on the family's larger plan, and drop out of school to seek work in a factory for herself, there's a crisis of epic proportions.
The moment is captured in all its uncomfortable drama as the father strikes his daughter in the face, and she - somewhat surprisingly - fights back like a feral bobcat.
One is never sure just how much the camera's presence has influenced or inspired the participants in this verite exploration, but it doesn't really matter if the whole movie is contrived, acted, or even scripted.
The reel derives a sense of authenticity from the way it's made. The camera becomes our window to a whole other world, where we're given the luxury of simply watching life unfold without overt commentary or an articulated point of view.
You can't really tell what Fan is thinking, as he maps the rifts and crevasses in a monolithic culture. There is no palpable agenda working here, and that releases the film from any obligation other than to entertain and enlighten the viewer.
The entertainment factor comes through the pictures of the metamorphosing Chinese landscape, as well as the soap-opera family dynamics, but the enlightenment is something the viewer has to create for herself.
Is economic success the be-all and end-all for a society, or is there something more to the human experience beneath the emotional permafrost of cold, hard cash?
Fan keeps the film open-ended, which only makes the experience richer for those willing to do a little work, but in the end, this feels like a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Globe and Mail: Call it the low-budget, Canuck take on Scenes from a Marriage
originally appeared at The Globe and Mail:
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by James Adams
Canadians have a knack for making depressing films - think Goin’ Down the Road, Act of the Heart, Between Friends, Le Confessional. Zooey & Adam is very much in that tradition.
Shot on HD in and around Winnipeg on a budget so low as to be subterranean, it’s the story of a couple, the eponymous duo of the title, married one year, who are trying every which way to conceive. One summer weekend - this occurs less than 15 minutes into the film - they head to the bush on a camping trip where a late-night romantic revel is interrupted by a trio of belligerent, drunken males. As the husband is pinned to the ground by two of the threesome, his wife is raped. In short order, she discovers she is pregnant. Is the baby Adam’s? Or the result of the rape? Whatever the answer, does it even matter?
Zooey, who’s on the cusp of 30, believes it doesn’t: “It’s my baby; it’s our baby; it’s a baby,” she declares. “It’s ours if we decide it’s ours.” Adam is not so easily convinced. There’s talk of an abortion (she had one at 18 and isn’t keen to repeat), of a sperm test (he thinks his count may be low), of a DNA analysis (at 12 weeks, with seemingly a high chance for a miscarriage) -- but finally Adam relents to Zooey’s determination to bring the pregnancy to term. It’s a fateful decision, the harrowing ramifications of which Garrity traces in unsparing, quasi-documentary detail for the remainder of the film’s 85 minutes.
What to make of this Canuck Scenes from a Marriage? Certainly Garrity, who reportedly used only a three-page outline as a script for this, his third feature, and let his characters improvise much of the dialogue, was wise to cast fellow Winnipeggers Tom Keenan and Daria Puttaert as the leads. They are a thoroughly credible couple. The same adjective could be applied to pretty much the rest of the cast, including Omar Khan who plays Zooey’s new love interest as her relationship with Adam fades over three or four years to a blacker shade of dark and Adam himself unravels.
Had Garrity had the budget to hire, say, Evangeline Lilly as Zooey and Ryan Reynolds as Adam, the film almost surely would have capsized into laughable melodrama. Zooey & Adam remains a melodrama, but its very lack of glossy, blemish-free star power, gives the viewer the sense that real lives are being lived, not just acted. Certainly it’s not a great film: for all its handicam-DIY it is pretty conventional, with an ending that swerves into sub-Gothic Robert Aldrich territory (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?) while too neatly tying up what has gone before.
Still, this is a little movie that prompts big thoughts. Like: Has Hollywood so corrupted our taste that when an unabashedly serious film dealing with truly adult issues crosses our eyes we start groping for dismissives like “pretentious,” “overwrought,” “excruciating” and “bathetic”? Maybe we should also entertain words such as “brave” and “thought-provoking.”
Zooey & Adam plays at the Royal Cinema in Toronto Friday through March 11.
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by James Adams
Canadians have a knack for making depressing films - think Goin’ Down the Road, Act of the Heart, Between Friends, Le Confessional. Zooey & Adam is very much in that tradition.
Shot on HD in and around Winnipeg on a budget so low as to be subterranean, it’s the story of a couple, the eponymous duo of the title, married one year, who are trying every which way to conceive. One summer weekend - this occurs less than 15 minutes into the film - they head to the bush on a camping trip where a late-night romantic revel is interrupted by a trio of belligerent, drunken males. As the husband is pinned to the ground by two of the threesome, his wife is raped. In short order, she discovers she is pregnant. Is the baby Adam’s? Or the result of the rape? Whatever the answer, does it even matter?
Zooey, who’s on the cusp of 30, believes it doesn’t: “It’s my baby; it’s our baby; it’s a baby,” she declares. “It’s ours if we decide it’s ours.” Adam is not so easily convinced. There’s talk of an abortion (she had one at 18 and isn’t keen to repeat), of a sperm test (he thinks his count may be low), of a DNA analysis (at 12 weeks, with seemingly a high chance for a miscarriage) -- but finally Adam relents to Zooey’s determination to bring the pregnancy to term. It’s a fateful decision, the harrowing ramifications of which Garrity traces in unsparing, quasi-documentary detail for the remainder of the film’s 85 minutes.
What to make of this Canuck Scenes from a Marriage? Certainly Garrity, who reportedly used only a three-page outline as a script for this, his third feature, and let his characters improvise much of the dialogue, was wise to cast fellow Winnipeggers Tom Keenan and Daria Puttaert as the leads. They are a thoroughly credible couple. The same adjective could be applied to pretty much the rest of the cast, including Omar Khan who plays Zooey’s new love interest as her relationship with Adam fades over three or four years to a blacker shade of dark and Adam himself unravels.
Had Garrity had the budget to hire, say, Evangeline Lilly as Zooey and Ryan Reynolds as Adam, the film almost surely would have capsized into laughable melodrama. Zooey & Adam remains a melodrama, but its very lack of glossy, blemish-free star power, gives the viewer the sense that real lives are being lived, not just acted. Certainly it’s not a great film: for all its handicam-DIY it is pretty conventional, with an ending that swerves into sub-Gothic Robert Aldrich territory (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?) while too neatly tying up what has gone before.
Still, this is a little movie that prompts big thoughts. Like: Has Hollywood so corrupted our taste that when an unabashedly serious film dealing with truly adult issues crosses our eyes we start groping for dismissives like “pretentious,” “overwrought,” “excruciating” and “bathetic”? Maybe we should also entertain words such as “brave” and “thought-provoking.”
Zooey & Adam plays at the Royal Cinema in Toronto Friday through March 11.
Toronto Star: Zooey and Adam, Experimental Cinema Worth Watching
originally appeared at the Toronto Star:
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
Fifteen years after a group of Danish mavericks outlined a manifesto for a leaner, purer brand of cinema they dubbed Dogme, some directors are still trying to strip down the filmmaking process to its bare essentials.
In the case of Zooey & Adam – an often harrowing drama about a married couple coping with the aftermath of a violent crime – Winnipeg filmmaker Sean Garrity did away with such apparent necessities as a script, a budget and even the tiniest of crews.
Instead, he and his actors developed Zooey & Adam scene by scene in chronological order, with Garrity filming all by his lonesome with a digital camcorder. Only toward the end of the shoot did the participants realize that this exercise – which Garrity originally hoped would be the basis of a future screenplay – was yielding a bona-fide movie.
Garrity, whose debut film Inertia won the award for best Canadian first feature at TIFF in 2001, has referred to his third feature as an example of "solo cinema." Whether other directors will follow in his stead remains to be seen – it's hard to resist the allure of having your own craft services table. Yet Zooey & Adam's unusual degree of intimacy and emotional power prove that methods like Garrity's can produce strong results.
They also facilitate courageous performances by Daria Puttaert and Tom Keenan as the titular couple. These young Winnipeggers' plans for a happy family life are torn apart when Zooey is sexually assaulted during a camping trip. When Zooey discovers that she's pregnant, Adam agonizes over the question of whether he's the father.
As time goes on, their torments are compounded by some difficult and arguably callous decisions by both parties. In other words, neither character is easy to like, a fact that may further alienate audience members already put off by Garrity's barebones tactics.
The rising tensions and mostly grim mood can make for a gruelling viewing experience. And as often happens with improvisation-based narrative features, the movie's essential volatility works against the possibility of a satisfying and coherent conclusion.
Then again, Zooey & Adam is designed to provoke viewers rather than coddle them. The characters' moral, ethical and emotional dilemmas would be plenty troubling even if Garrity weren't so keen on challenging assumptions about how a movie fiction ought to look and function. His film's sheer boldness makes this accidental experiment in solo cinema well worth watching.
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by Jason Anderson
Fifteen years after a group of Danish mavericks outlined a manifesto for a leaner, purer brand of cinema they dubbed Dogme, some directors are still trying to strip down the filmmaking process to its bare essentials.
In the case of Zooey & Adam – an often harrowing drama about a married couple coping with the aftermath of a violent crime – Winnipeg filmmaker Sean Garrity did away with such apparent necessities as a script, a budget and even the tiniest of crews.
Instead, he and his actors developed Zooey & Adam scene by scene in chronological order, with Garrity filming all by his lonesome with a digital camcorder. Only toward the end of the shoot did the participants realize that this exercise – which Garrity originally hoped would be the basis of a future screenplay – was yielding a bona-fide movie.
Garrity, whose debut film Inertia won the award for best Canadian first feature at TIFF in 2001, has referred to his third feature as an example of "solo cinema." Whether other directors will follow in his stead remains to be seen – it's hard to resist the allure of having your own craft services table. Yet Zooey & Adam's unusual degree of intimacy and emotional power prove that methods like Garrity's can produce strong results.
They also facilitate courageous performances by Daria Puttaert and Tom Keenan as the titular couple. These young Winnipeggers' plans for a happy family life are torn apart when Zooey is sexually assaulted during a camping trip. When Zooey discovers that she's pregnant, Adam agonizes over the question of whether he's the father.
As time goes on, their torments are compounded by some difficult and arguably callous decisions by both parties. In other words, neither character is easy to like, a fact that may further alienate audience members already put off by Garrity's barebones tactics.
The rising tensions and mostly grim mood can make for a gruelling viewing experience. And as often happens with improvisation-based narrative features, the movie's essential volatility works against the possibility of a satisfying and coherent conclusion.
Then again, Zooey & Adam is designed to provoke viewers rather than coddle them. The characters' moral, ethical and emotional dilemmas would be plenty troubling even if Garrity weren't so keen on challenging assumptions about how a movie fiction ought to look and function. His film's sheer boldness makes this accidental experiment in solo cinema well worth watching.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Globe and Mail: Last Train Home
originally published at the Globe and Mail:
by James Adams
If this documentary came with a pre-screening advisory, it probably would read: Warning! Contents Under Pressure. The contents in this case are the four members of the Zhang family and, by metaphoric extension, the 1.4 billion residents with whom they share the People’s Republic of China.
Shot over three arduous years by Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan (he was an associate producer on 2007’s Up the Yangtze), Last Train Home structures its narrative around a key moment in the Chinese calendar: New Year, when, each January or February, many of the nation’s 130 million migrant urban factory workers take the one-week holiday to return to the rural communities they left behind. It’s the world’s single largest human migration, we’re told at the film’s start – an exodus almost existential in its motivation. In the words of one traveller, “If the family can’t even celebrate New Year’s together, life would be pointless.”
It’s an intense and tense time, unsurprisingly, and superbly realized by Lixin’s unflinching yet compassionate eye, the Zhang family his microcosm for the Chinese macrocosm. More 21st-century Grapes of Wrath than Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the film opens in the winter of 2006 in Guangzhou, the sprawling capital of Guangdong province, where we meet Changhua Zhang and wife, Suqin, sewing-machine operators in the same garment factory. With New Year’s looming, they are desperately seeking train tickets to Sichuan, the province they left 2,000 kilometres to the west 16 years earlier. The Zhangs’ two children – a girl, Qin, who has entered full-blown teenagehood, and a young boy, Yang – still live in a village there. If the ticket search is successful, it will be the family’s first reunion in 12 months.
Heartwarming though the film seems, the viewer quickly discerns that this fractured family is on the verge of crumbling. The parents have rationalized their prolonged absences (and resultant estrangement from their children) as the price to be paid to ensure that son and daughter stay in school and have at least the prospect of a better future.
Qin, however, doesn’t appreciate the sacrifices: “My parents barely lived with me,” she says. “How can I have any feelings?” Around the film’s midpoint, she ditches school, leaving brother and grandmother in Sichuan to get a job in a (yes) garment factory in (yes) Guangzhou.
Qin’s parents try to repair the rupture while continuing to pressure their daughter to return to Sichuan and resume her schooling. Just before her 18th birthday, they invite her to accompany them to their home village for New Year’s. But to get there, they must first pass the portals of the Guangzhou train station. Here, Lixin’s film becomes a kind of Boschean vision of hell: A snowstorm has knocked out much of the electricity feeding China’s rail system, leaving hundreds of thousands of frantic migrants to swarm and sweat in the station, sometimes for days, as they wait for service to resume. Working deep within the madding crowd, Lixin’s camera brilliantly captures its claustrophobic crush, the frustrations, the exhaustion.
When the depleted Zhang family finally does reach the home village, the respite is not restful. An argument between father and daughter devolves into violence. In perhaps the film’s most electrifying, or at least Godardian moment, a teary-eyed Qin turns to the camera to defiantly proclaim: “You want to film the real [reel?] me? This is the real me!’”
Sober? Dark? Bleak? You bet. Yet for all its unsparing depiction of frayed nerves, slumped bodies and wan faces, Last Train Home is, in its matter-of-fact way, a celebration of sorts of the resilience, determination and stoicism of China’s people. Lixin’s camera always has time, it seems, for the haunting beauty of the nation’s countryside while noting the impressive achievements – the bridges, railways, tunnels and factories – bought by blood, sweat, tears and cheap wages. Already an award-winner at several documentary festivals, Last Train Home stands as an impressive feature debut from the thirtysomething Lixin Fan and a harbinger of more great documentary cinema.
by James Adams
If this documentary came with a pre-screening advisory, it probably would read: Warning! Contents Under Pressure. The contents in this case are the four members of the Zhang family and, by metaphoric extension, the 1.4 billion residents with whom they share the People’s Republic of China.
Shot over three arduous years by Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan (he was an associate producer on 2007’s Up the Yangtze), Last Train Home structures its narrative around a key moment in the Chinese calendar: New Year, when, each January or February, many of the nation’s 130 million migrant urban factory workers take the one-week holiday to return to the rural communities they left behind. It’s the world’s single largest human migration, we’re told at the film’s start – an exodus almost existential in its motivation. In the words of one traveller, “If the family can’t even celebrate New Year’s together, life would be pointless.”
It’s an intense and tense time, unsurprisingly, and superbly realized by Lixin’s unflinching yet compassionate eye, the Zhang family his microcosm for the Chinese macrocosm. More 21st-century Grapes of Wrath than Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the film opens in the winter of 2006 in Guangzhou, the sprawling capital of Guangdong province, where we meet Changhua Zhang and wife, Suqin, sewing-machine operators in the same garment factory. With New Year’s looming, they are desperately seeking train tickets to Sichuan, the province they left 2,000 kilometres to the west 16 years earlier. The Zhangs’ two children – a girl, Qin, who has entered full-blown teenagehood, and a young boy, Yang – still live in a village there. If the ticket search is successful, it will be the family’s first reunion in 12 months.
Heartwarming though the film seems, the viewer quickly discerns that this fractured family is on the verge of crumbling. The parents have rationalized their prolonged absences (and resultant estrangement from their children) as the price to be paid to ensure that son and daughter stay in school and have at least the prospect of a better future.
Qin, however, doesn’t appreciate the sacrifices: “My parents barely lived with me,” she says. “How can I have any feelings?” Around the film’s midpoint, she ditches school, leaving brother and grandmother in Sichuan to get a job in a (yes) garment factory in (yes) Guangzhou.
Qin’s parents try to repair the rupture while continuing to pressure their daughter to return to Sichuan and resume her schooling. Just before her 18th birthday, they invite her to accompany them to their home village for New Year’s. But to get there, they must first pass the portals of the Guangzhou train station. Here, Lixin’s film becomes a kind of Boschean vision of hell: A snowstorm has knocked out much of the electricity feeding China’s rail system, leaving hundreds of thousands of frantic migrants to swarm and sweat in the station, sometimes for days, as they wait for service to resume. Working deep within the madding crowd, Lixin’s camera brilliantly captures its claustrophobic crush, the frustrations, the exhaustion.
When the depleted Zhang family finally does reach the home village, the respite is not restful. An argument between father and daughter devolves into violence. In perhaps the film’s most electrifying, or at least Godardian moment, a teary-eyed Qin turns to the camera to defiantly proclaim: “You want to film the real [reel?] me? This is the real me!’”
Sober? Dark? Bleak? You bet. Yet for all its unsparing depiction of frayed nerves, slumped bodies and wan faces, Last Train Home is, in its matter-of-fact way, a celebration of sorts of the resilience, determination and stoicism of China’s people. Lixin’s camera always has time, it seems, for the haunting beauty of the nation’s countryside while noting the impressive achievements – the bridges, railways, tunnels and factories – bought by blood, sweat, tears and cheap wages. Already an award-winner at several documentary festivals, Last Train Home stands as an impressive feature debut from the thirtysomething Lixin Fan and a harbinger of more great documentary cinema.
Friday, February 26, 2010
EYE Weekly: Last Train Home Review
originally published at Eye Weekly:
Editorial rating: **** (out of 5)
An uneasy verité takes hold as Montreal-based filmmaker Lixin Fan trains his two cameras on a family of migrant workers in Guangzhou, China. Couple Yang and Suqin Zhangs have long since left their two children behind with grandparents on the farm in order to make money as factory workers in the city. Their pledge to reunite the family in domestic normalcy, after some 16 years apart, is foiled when it turns out that the distance, the passing of time and a good dose of teen angst has given their 17-year-old daughter Qin some migratory plans of her own.
Gaining extensive access to the family’s day-to-day life that, over time, leads to relaxed interviews and much hard-won trust, Fan seamlessly crafts a family drama from his raw documentary footage. The Zhangs aren’t so much compliant as they are natural — as much themselves, it seems, as anyone under such scrutiny could be. They are ultimately unabashed as their slow-to-crack stoicism gives way under the stresses of life amongst the gears of industrialized China. (The eponymous train ride back to the country from Guangzhou city is the sort of mind-boggling, state-sanctioned ordeal that’d have Westerners hyperventilating from acute inconvenience.) Yet this is hardly National Geographic turf, and Last Train Home becomes all the more resonant and empathetic as it draws us into the Zhangs live-to-work reality — a reality that may well await us, too.
Editorial rating: **** (out of 5)
An uneasy verité takes hold as Montreal-based filmmaker Lixin Fan trains his two cameras on a family of migrant workers in Guangzhou, China. Couple Yang and Suqin Zhangs have long since left their two children behind with grandparents on the farm in order to make money as factory workers in the city. Their pledge to reunite the family in domestic normalcy, after some 16 years apart, is foiled when it turns out that the distance, the passing of time and a good dose of teen angst has given their 17-year-old daughter Qin some migratory plans of her own.
Gaining extensive access to the family’s day-to-day life that, over time, leads to relaxed interviews and much hard-won trust, Fan seamlessly crafts a family drama from his raw documentary footage. The Zhangs aren’t so much compliant as they are natural — as much themselves, it seems, as anyone under such scrutiny could be. They are ultimately unabashed as their slow-to-crack stoicism gives way under the stresses of life amongst the gears of industrialized China. (The eponymous train ride back to the country from Guangzhou city is the sort of mind-boggling, state-sanctioned ordeal that’d have Westerners hyperventilating from acute inconvenience.) Yet this is hardly National Geographic turf, and Last Train Home becomes all the more resonant and empathetic as it draws us into the Zhangs live-to-work reality — a reality that may well await us, too.
CBC News: Montreal filmmaker focuses on China's migrant workers
originally published at CBC News:
Montreal filmmaker Lixin Fan set out to expose the underbelly of the Chinese economic miracle in his documentary Last Train Home.
The film, shot over three years in his native China, made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and is scheduled to open in Toronto and Vancouver on Friday.
Last Train Home follows the fortunes of a single peasant family, the Zhangs, who labour in the factories of Guangdong province, making cheap goods for the West. Mom and Dad get a chance to travel back to their home village and see their children just once a year, at the Chinese New Year. But in the 16 years they have been living like this, their daughter has grown estranged from them.
Fan said he first witnessed how hard the lives of migrant workers can be when he was a reporter for CCTV in China before immigrating to Canada. Compared to his own comfortable city life, these former peasants have to make huge sacrifices, he said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show.
"Since China opened up to the world 30 years back, economic growth — the development — so largely depends on the contribution and sacrifices of millions of migrant workers. It's them who builds the skyscrapers and works on the line making all these exports for the country's economy," Fan said. "I felt I should really make a film to document their lives."
Last Train Home is the debut documentary for Fan, who worked as associate producer on the acclaimed film Up the Yangtze and as editor on To Live Is Better Than To Die, about AIDS in China. Like Up the Yangtze, Last Train Home was produced by Montreal's EyeSteelFilm.
Fan said he met and talked to dozens of workers in Guangzhou factories before deciding to follow the Zhangs.
"When I first met the mother, she told me that they left the village and their daughter 16 years ago and they only got to spend less than a year [with her] in those 16 years. It's a heartbreaking story in this family and it really resembles the lives of millions," he said.
Especially painful is a fight during the New Year holiday that leads to a breach in the family and leads to the daughter leaving school and seeking out a factory job of her own.
"The father and the daughter get into a very intense fight. Those are difficult moments for me as a documentary filmmaker," Fan said. After following the family over three years, and developing a strong relationship with them, he had to stop himself from intervening.
The documentary touches on the rapid changes Chinese peasants have faced in the past 60 years. The grandmother was encouraged to stay on the farm, the parents saw their only opportunity at factories in the city and their daughter has yet another set of expectations.
"That generation — they are more bold and courageous to pursue the kind of life they want," he said.
Fan reflected on his shock, in his early years in Canada, at the comfort of the lifestyle here. It made the lack of rights for Chinese workers all the more shocking when he began making the film.
"In the West, we take things for granted, like cheap products I don't think all of us realize what is the real cost behind all these cheap products — there is a human cost," Fan said.
There's no easy solution, as China relies on the export of cheap goods to feed its people, he said.
The film was shown at the Guangzhou Documentary Film Festival last year, an emotional experience for Fan. The young audience, many of them students, loved the film.
"One boy said he couldn't stop crying during the screening — it was like seeing his own life on screen. His older sister had to give up school and go to work in the factory so he could continue studying," Fan said.
Last Train Home opens Friday in Toronto and Montreal and across the country in March.
Montreal filmmaker Lixin Fan set out to expose the underbelly of the Chinese economic miracle in his documentary Last Train Home.
The film, shot over three years in his native China, made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and is scheduled to open in Toronto and Vancouver on Friday.
Last Train Home follows the fortunes of a single peasant family, the Zhangs, who labour in the factories of Guangdong province, making cheap goods for the West. Mom and Dad get a chance to travel back to their home village and see their children just once a year, at the Chinese New Year. But in the 16 years they have been living like this, their daughter has grown estranged from them.
Fan said he first witnessed how hard the lives of migrant workers can be when he was a reporter for CCTV in China before immigrating to Canada. Compared to his own comfortable city life, these former peasants have to make huge sacrifices, he said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show.
"Since China opened up to the world 30 years back, economic growth — the development — so largely depends on the contribution and sacrifices of millions of migrant workers. It's them who builds the skyscrapers and works on the line making all these exports for the country's economy," Fan said. "I felt I should really make a film to document their lives."
Last Train Home is the debut documentary for Fan, who worked as associate producer on the acclaimed film Up the Yangtze and as editor on To Live Is Better Than To Die, about AIDS in China. Like Up the Yangtze, Last Train Home was produced by Montreal's EyeSteelFilm.
Fan said he met and talked to dozens of workers in Guangzhou factories before deciding to follow the Zhangs.
"When I first met the mother, she told me that they left the village and their daughter 16 years ago and they only got to spend less than a year [with her] in those 16 years. It's a heartbreaking story in this family and it really resembles the lives of millions," he said.
Especially painful is a fight during the New Year holiday that leads to a breach in the family and leads to the daughter leaving school and seeking out a factory job of her own.
"The father and the daughter get into a very intense fight. Those are difficult moments for me as a documentary filmmaker," Fan said. After following the family over three years, and developing a strong relationship with them, he had to stop himself from intervening.
The documentary touches on the rapid changes Chinese peasants have faced in the past 60 years. The grandmother was encouraged to stay on the farm, the parents saw their only opportunity at factories in the city and their daughter has yet another set of expectations.
"That generation — they are more bold and courageous to pursue the kind of life they want," he said.
Fan reflected on his shock, in his early years in Canada, at the comfort of the lifestyle here. It made the lack of rights for Chinese workers all the more shocking when he began making the film.
"In the West, we take things for granted, like cheap products I don't think all of us realize what is the real cost behind all these cheap products — there is a human cost," Fan said.
There's no easy solution, as China relies on the export of cheap goods to feed its people, he said.
The film was shown at the Guangzhou Documentary Film Festival last year, an emotional experience for Fan. The young audience, many of them students, loved the film.
"One boy said he couldn't stop crying during the screening — it was like seeing his own life on screen. His older sister had to give up school and go to work in the factory so he could continue studying," Fan said.
Last Train Home opens Friday in Toronto and Montreal and across the country in March.
NOW Toronto: Lixin Fan Interview
originally appeared at NOW Toronto:
Chinese check-in: Lixin Fan keeps track of the human cost of China’s growth in Last Train Home
by Susan G. Cole
Having just returned from my first visit to the U.S. since the attempted plane bombing at Christmas, I can report that flying across the border via Pearson is brutal: a two-and-half-hour wait, hordes of herded travellers. But compared to the migrant workers’s ordeal in Lixin Fan’s documentary Last Train Home, my trip was a breeze.
Fan’s emotionally gripping film tracks Changhua Zhang and Suqin Chen, two among 130 million Chinese who live and work in their big-city factories and visit their families back in the village only at the new year.
The story is both heartbreaking and astonishingly intimate. Fan was lucky to find a couple so willing to open up.
“They hesitated at the beginning,” he says, choosing his words carefully. His publicist tells me he’s worried about his English, which is ridiculous – he’s absolutely eloquent.
“In an ever-shifting migrant world, personal trust is hard to get in a short period of time. People come from different parts of the country. One day they’re on the production line, and the next they could disappear.”
As a camera operator for CCTV’s news group in China covering stories in remote areas, Fan got a feel for the vast rural society and the disparity between rich and poor.
Last Train Home makes some of these differences clear. The smog-covered cities seem downright ugly compared to the spectacular rural landscapes.
“I see it as a sort of irony,” he says. “If you just look at the scenery you want to have that pastoral life, but behind that scenery is poverty, a miserable life and not that much hope, especially for the younger generation.”
The film’s centrepiece is a sensational sequence showing the mammoth crowds trying to board their homeward-bound trains. In 2006, when the crew was shooting, a snowstorm triggered an electrical blackout that kept trains from departing, forcing people to wait for days at railway stations. The sea of jostling humanity, expertly shot, is a breathtakingly scary sight – almost like a war zone. Fortunately, the crew had a plan for keeping track of their subjects.
“It was a huge logistical challenge,” Fan says, “but we used small cameras. And we gave the parents a wireless microphone so that when they got lost they could speak into it and my cameraman could pick it up.”
Another moving sequence is much more private. The two parents, away from the brutal hardship of their factory, where they eat in a cafeteria and sleep in a tiny cubicle, have to face their profoundly alienated children. In an all-out family battle, daughter Qin tells Changhua to fuck off, turning to the camera to say, “See, this is the real me.” Her father, previously only stoic, loses it and strikes her.
Fan had a difficult choice to make: let the camera roll or intervene to stop the violence. Eventually, he stepped in to separate them.
“It’s a tough choice. You’re making a documentary film, and you have to be ethical. I wanted to address a bigger issue, but not at the risk of hurting the family.”
Essential to Fan’s perspective – and the film’s emotional resonance – is the fact that he blames no one for the painful working conditions and wretched family situations, even the Chinese authorities.
“No one has a choice,” he says emphatically. “The girl was born to the countryside and has no opportunity. The parents have to leave their children behind. The factory owner doesn’t share profits with the workers because the government is taxing him. The government taxes because it has to maintain a comparative advantage in exporting because the country depends on it.”
Next time you see an iPhone, remember that it’s not made in China, just assembled there, and as Fan puts it, China ends up getting only a crumb of the pie.
Chinese check-in: Lixin Fan keeps track of the human cost of China’s growth in Last Train Home
by Susan G. Cole
Having just returned from my first visit to the U.S. since the attempted plane bombing at Christmas, I can report that flying across the border via Pearson is brutal: a two-and-half-hour wait, hordes of herded travellers. But compared to the migrant workers’s ordeal in Lixin Fan’s documentary Last Train Home, my trip was a breeze.
Fan’s emotionally gripping film tracks Changhua Zhang and Suqin Chen, two among 130 million Chinese who live and work in their big-city factories and visit their families back in the village only at the new year.
The story is both heartbreaking and astonishingly intimate. Fan was lucky to find a couple so willing to open up.
“They hesitated at the beginning,” he says, choosing his words carefully. His publicist tells me he’s worried about his English, which is ridiculous – he’s absolutely eloquent.
“In an ever-shifting migrant world, personal trust is hard to get in a short period of time. People come from different parts of the country. One day they’re on the production line, and the next they could disappear.”
As a camera operator for CCTV’s news group in China covering stories in remote areas, Fan got a feel for the vast rural society and the disparity between rich and poor.
Last Train Home makes some of these differences clear. The smog-covered cities seem downright ugly compared to the spectacular rural landscapes.
“I see it as a sort of irony,” he says. “If you just look at the scenery you want to have that pastoral life, but behind that scenery is poverty, a miserable life and not that much hope, especially for the younger generation.”
The film’s centrepiece is a sensational sequence showing the mammoth crowds trying to board their homeward-bound trains. In 2006, when the crew was shooting, a snowstorm triggered an electrical blackout that kept trains from departing, forcing people to wait for days at railway stations. The sea of jostling humanity, expertly shot, is a breathtakingly scary sight – almost like a war zone. Fortunately, the crew had a plan for keeping track of their subjects.
“It was a huge logistical challenge,” Fan says, “but we used small cameras. And we gave the parents a wireless microphone so that when they got lost they could speak into it and my cameraman could pick it up.”
Another moving sequence is much more private. The two parents, away from the brutal hardship of their factory, where they eat in a cafeteria and sleep in a tiny cubicle, have to face their profoundly alienated children. In an all-out family battle, daughter Qin tells Changhua to fuck off, turning to the camera to say, “See, this is the real me.” Her father, previously only stoic, loses it and strikes her.
Fan had a difficult choice to make: let the camera roll or intervene to stop the violence. Eventually, he stepped in to separate them.
“It’s a tough choice. You’re making a documentary film, and you have to be ethical. I wanted to address a bigger issue, but not at the risk of hurting the family.”
Essential to Fan’s perspective – and the film’s emotional resonance – is the fact that he blames no one for the painful working conditions and wretched family situations, even the Chinese authorities.
“No one has a choice,” he says emphatically. “The girl was born to the countryside and has no opportunity. The parents have to leave their children behind. The factory owner doesn’t share profits with the workers because the government is taxing him. The government taxes because it has to maintain a comparative advantage in exporting because the country depends on it.”
Next time you see an iPhone, remember that it’s not made in China, just assembled there, and as Fan puts it, China ends up getting only a crumb of the pie.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
National Post: Have work, will travel
originally posted at the National Post:
To tell the story of one family of Chinese migrant labourers, Lixin Fan decided to move in with them
Vanessa Farquharson, National Post
Published: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
In 2006, Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal released the award-winning Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary that examined China's sprawling industrialization; that same year, a young Lixin Fan moved to Montreal from Hubei province in central China to work on Up the Yangtze, an award-winning documentary about the Three Gorges Dam.
Now, Fan has completed his own debut feature, Last Train Home, which opens Toronto's Human Rights Watch Film Festival tonight before coming to theatres on Friday.
Not surprisingly, the film is a sociopolitical documentary set in China. But what makes it stand apart from Manufactured Landscapes and other films of that ilk is its focus on the humanity behind the economics. It's one thing to marvel at the scale of China's workforce on a sprawling macro level, but quite another to focus intently on a single family -- in this case the Zhangs, whom he met while touring a denim factory in Guangdong province.
"In an ever-shifting migrant world, personal trust takes a long time to establish," the filmmaker says, "but time was on my side. I never had a deadline, I just kept filming and waiting to see how these people's destiny changed."
After accumulating some 300 hours of footage over the course of a few years -- essentially becoming part of the family himself -- Fan then spent even longer in the editing room.
The struggle lay in figuring out how to tell the story of China's 130 million migrant workers -- who all scramble to make the journey home to the countryside each New Year -- using only the five members of the Zhang family.
"Internal migration has many different levels of meaning to it," Fan says. "On a personal level, it's shifting the traditional family structure a lot. Economic change and advancements are having huge impacts on individual lives. But there are also challenges that China's overall economy has to deal with, and there's a global aspect, too -- all the products they export are made to support an unsustainable lifestyle at home."
Unsustainable is really an understatement: The Zhangs left their home and relatives 16 years ago to find work in Guangdong; subsequently, they only see their children a few days each year. Over the past decade, their eldest daughter has grown resentful, and the tension escalates during one particularly painful scene in the film.
"It was totally unexpected and just happened after this long train ride," Fan says. "I was actually in the next room, changing a light bulb and heard a shout. It was a very tough moment because we were so emotionally attached by that point. But it reveals so much of the conflict in this family and how it's an inevitable result of this society and this time, and how this big nation is just dashing towards modernity."
It's a pace that takes an incredibly harsh toll on China's working population, and Fan goes to great lengths exploring not just the financial and physical duress, but the psychological struggle, too. Still, he has hope for the future.
"I think it will change," he says. "The government has realized that if they have an economy growing at this rate, they need to deal with it differently. But it takes time."
To tell the story of one family of Chinese migrant labourers, Lixin Fan decided to move in with them
Vanessa Farquharson, National Post
Published: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
In 2006, Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal released the award-winning Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary that examined China's sprawling industrialization; that same year, a young Lixin Fan moved to Montreal from Hubei province in central China to work on Up the Yangtze, an award-winning documentary about the Three Gorges Dam.
Now, Fan has completed his own debut feature, Last Train Home, which opens Toronto's Human Rights Watch Film Festival tonight before coming to theatres on Friday.
Not surprisingly, the film is a sociopolitical documentary set in China. But what makes it stand apart from Manufactured Landscapes and other films of that ilk is its focus on the humanity behind the economics. It's one thing to marvel at the scale of China's workforce on a sprawling macro level, but quite another to focus intently on a single family -- in this case the Zhangs, whom he met while touring a denim factory in Guangdong province.
"In an ever-shifting migrant world, personal trust takes a long time to establish," the filmmaker says, "but time was on my side. I never had a deadline, I just kept filming and waiting to see how these people's destiny changed."
After accumulating some 300 hours of footage over the course of a few years -- essentially becoming part of the family himself -- Fan then spent even longer in the editing room.
The struggle lay in figuring out how to tell the story of China's 130 million migrant workers -- who all scramble to make the journey home to the countryside each New Year -- using only the five members of the Zhang family.
"Internal migration has many different levels of meaning to it," Fan says. "On a personal level, it's shifting the traditional family structure a lot. Economic change and advancements are having huge impacts on individual lives. But there are also challenges that China's overall economy has to deal with, and there's a global aspect, too -- all the products they export are made to support an unsustainable lifestyle at home."
Unsustainable is really an understatement: The Zhangs left their home and relatives 16 years ago to find work in Guangdong; subsequently, they only see their children a few days each year. Over the past decade, their eldest daughter has grown resentful, and the tension escalates during one particularly painful scene in the film.
"It was totally unexpected and just happened after this long train ride," Fan says. "I was actually in the next room, changing a light bulb and heard a shout. It was a very tough moment because we were so emotionally attached by that point. But it reveals so much of the conflict in this family and how it's an inevitable result of this society and this time, and how this big nation is just dashing towards modernity."
It's a pace that takes an incredibly harsh toll on China's working population, and Fan goes to great lengths exploring not just the financial and physical duress, but the psychological struggle, too. Still, he has hope for the future.
"I think it will change," he says. "The government has realized that if they have an economy growing at this rate, they need to deal with it differently. But it takes time."
Toronto Star: Last Train Home: The high price of low-priced Chinese goods
originally posted at The Toronto Star:
by Jason Anderson
February 24, 2010
An emotionally wrenching portrait of migrant workers in China, Last Train Home has already become one of the most acclaimed Canadian documentaries in recent years.
The winner of prizes at film festivals in Amsterdam, Whistler and Montreal, it plays Wednesday at the Isabel Bader Theatre as part of the Human Rights Watch series before starting a regular theatrical run on Friday.
Director Lixin Fan – who will be on hand for questions at tonight's screening – is in Toronto for his film's local premiere. As the 33-year-old Chinese-Canadian filmmaker explained in an interview, this city has particular significance to him as it was the first stop in his own immigration story.
"I was passing over Scarborough while I was flying into Pearson this morning," said Fan, who is now based in Montreal. "That was the area where when I came in spring of 2006 – I lived in a basement there as a freshly landed immigrant. Being on the plane today and seeing all those houses and buildings, I did get emotional. It's been quite a journey for me personally in the past four years."
Before immigrating to Canada, Fan worked as a journalist for the Chinese broadcaster CCTV. Keeping a foot both in the official sphere and the world of independent filmmakers more willing to be critical of the state, Fan also edited To Live Is Better Than to Die, a documentary on the impact of AIDS on a rural Chinese community that was banned at home after winning several awards abroad.
Unsure of how to begin his career in Canada after landing in Toronto, he chanced upon news of a spotlight on China at that year's edition of Hot Docs. A fortuitous meeting with Montreal director Yung Chang and producer Mila Aung-Thwin led to his involvement in a documentary they were planning. The result was Chang's film Up the Yangtze, which went on to become one of the most successful Canadian documentaries of all time.
"That was only three months after I landed," Fan said, "so I really feel like I was one of the fortunate ones in the big immigrant army trying to find their dreams in Canada."
But given the many ironies of life in our globalized economy, it's not so strange that this new immigrant would repeatedly return to his previous home. Part of Fan's goal was to pay tribute to those who he believes have helped fostered the "glamorous development" that China has today yet have reaped little of the benefit.
"The migrant workers are great contributors to China's prosperity," he said. "They're the people who made it possible. Yet they don't necessarily get what they deserve; there's not enough social care or social support for this group."
Fan and his small crew spent almost three years documenting the lives of Changhua and Sugin Zhang, two factory workers in the industrial city of Guangzhou. Like tens of millions of workers, they toil to support children and other family members left back home in China's impoverished rural areas.
Fan said creating the film had more to do with waiting than shooting. "My crew and I would go to the factory day after day and just sit with the parents and talk to them about their day and their lives," he said. "We'd sleep on the piles of clothing they made and waited until they got off work, usually at midnight. We tried to blend in and gain the amount of trust we needed. That really helped to make our way into their lives and hearts."
Then there were the surreal and gruelling scenes at the local train station, where huge mobs of desperate workers spend a week or more trying to start their journeys home to celebrate Chinese New Year, often their only chance to see their families in the entire year.
Fan believes that Last Train Home's often raw emotional content is the biggest reason why audiences are connecting with his film so strongly. "I think the story is really universal," he said. "On a personal level, it's a family story. It's something that could happen anywhere in the world so people can easily relate. On another level, audiences do realize after watching the film that the lives of migrant workers have a very close relationship with our lives in the developed world. It's very easy for us to ignore the real price behind the cheap price tag of the products we consume every day."
by Jason Anderson
February 24, 2010
An emotionally wrenching portrait of migrant workers in China, Last Train Home has already become one of the most acclaimed Canadian documentaries in recent years.
The winner of prizes at film festivals in Amsterdam, Whistler and Montreal, it plays Wednesday at the Isabel Bader Theatre as part of the Human Rights Watch series before starting a regular theatrical run on Friday.
Director Lixin Fan – who will be on hand for questions at tonight's screening – is in Toronto for his film's local premiere. As the 33-year-old Chinese-Canadian filmmaker explained in an interview, this city has particular significance to him as it was the first stop in his own immigration story.
"I was passing over Scarborough while I was flying into Pearson this morning," said Fan, who is now based in Montreal. "That was the area where when I came in spring of 2006 – I lived in a basement there as a freshly landed immigrant. Being on the plane today and seeing all those houses and buildings, I did get emotional. It's been quite a journey for me personally in the past four years."
Before immigrating to Canada, Fan worked as a journalist for the Chinese broadcaster CCTV. Keeping a foot both in the official sphere and the world of independent filmmakers more willing to be critical of the state, Fan also edited To Live Is Better Than to Die, a documentary on the impact of AIDS on a rural Chinese community that was banned at home after winning several awards abroad.
Unsure of how to begin his career in Canada after landing in Toronto, he chanced upon news of a spotlight on China at that year's edition of Hot Docs. A fortuitous meeting with Montreal director Yung Chang and producer Mila Aung-Thwin led to his involvement in a documentary they were planning. The result was Chang's film Up the Yangtze, which went on to become one of the most successful Canadian documentaries of all time.
"That was only three months after I landed," Fan said, "so I really feel like I was one of the fortunate ones in the big immigrant army trying to find their dreams in Canada."
But given the many ironies of life in our globalized economy, it's not so strange that this new immigrant would repeatedly return to his previous home. Part of Fan's goal was to pay tribute to those who he believes have helped fostered the "glamorous development" that China has today yet have reaped little of the benefit.
"The migrant workers are great contributors to China's prosperity," he said. "They're the people who made it possible. Yet they don't necessarily get what they deserve; there's not enough social care or social support for this group."
Fan and his small crew spent almost three years documenting the lives of Changhua and Sugin Zhang, two factory workers in the industrial city of Guangzhou. Like tens of millions of workers, they toil to support children and other family members left back home in China's impoverished rural areas.
Fan said creating the film had more to do with waiting than shooting. "My crew and I would go to the factory day after day and just sit with the parents and talk to them about their day and their lives," he said. "We'd sleep on the piles of clothing they made and waited until they got off work, usually at midnight. We tried to blend in and gain the amount of trust we needed. That really helped to make our way into their lives and hearts."
Then there were the surreal and gruelling scenes at the local train station, where huge mobs of desperate workers spend a week or more trying to start their journeys home to celebrate Chinese New Year, often their only chance to see their families in the entire year.
Fan believes that Last Train Home's often raw emotional content is the biggest reason why audiences are connecting with his film so strongly. "I think the story is really universal," he said. "On a personal level, it's a family story. It's something that could happen anywhere in the world so people can easily relate. On another level, audiences do realize after watching the film that the lives of migrant workers have a very close relationship with our lives in the developed world. It's very easy for us to ignore the real price behind the cheap price tag of the products we consume every day."
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