Festivals
James Franco. People either love him or hate him. His public persona has been constructed around his love and dedication to his art. His roles vary from serious and learned projects to stoner comedies and hysterical cameos. In Francophrenia (Or: Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is), he and co-director Ian Olds document a special event episode of General Hospital Franco did in which he plays a character named… Franco. This is not abnormal, as he has a penchant for playing himself, or characters called “James Franco”, but Francophrenia “documents” his seeming break from reality as he begins...
Many people would be quick to say that we live in a post-feminist society, where women and men walk together equally with none of the repression seen in the ’50s and ’60s. I am usually the first person to quickly try and prove those people wrong, and this movie has been added to my list of documentaries to site as proof of the fallacy of that argument. Sexy Baby, directed by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, is about the lives of three women and how they are coming to terms with their sexuality in a world where, more than ever,...
Making its world premiere at the 2012 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, My Name Is Faith is the story of 12-year-old Faith. Born to a drug addicted mother, Faith and her younger brother lived in a meth lab, sleeping only feet away from a known sex offender until they were removed from their home by Child Protective Services. After deciding to adopt Faith and her brother, Tiffany and Jason Junker were faced with a new set of challenges. Faith suffers from reactive attachment disorder. This occurs when an infant does not bond properly with their mother and can result...
Seventeen years ago, Redzo came up with a clever plan to escape the Bosnian war by slipping in with a group of patients from a mental hospital who were being shipped out to refugee camps and ultimately a hospital in neighbouring Hungary. Nearly two decades later, he’s still there, trying to get back to his homeland and convince the officials that he’s not really sick. Redzo’s fellow patients are a tragic group. One man bangs his head against a wall when he runs out of cigarettes, another talks of a baby she had (with Redzo) which was taken away from...
“Act up! Fight back! Fight AIDS!” Words repeated over and over at protests during the AIDS crisis in America that took place in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At the front of these protests was the group ACT UP, short for the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power. Started in 1987 in New York City, it was initially a group of 300 men and women angry at the government’s dismissal of the AIDS crisis that quickly exploded into thousands of men and women of all races, sexual orientation and income groups. The documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT...
There are few horrors more pervertedly fascinating than those of the North American serial killer. Killing with seemingly endless creativity and depravity, the US has produced an alarmingly large number of mass murders, most of whom take their community wholly by surprise when they are revealed. Jeff is a documentary about the Jeffrey Dahmer case that looks at the impact a serial killer has on those around them, highlighting the fact that before these monsters were revealed, they were just the guy next door. Director Chris James Thompson has taken a different path in the telling of a serial killer...
Didier Cros‘ biting documentary The Job is essentially The Apprentice on steroids; ten unemployed hopefuls enter a board room expecting a job interview, only to find that they are to be pitted against each other in a series of gruelling challenges, with a minimum wage job waiting at the end of the rainbow. By the marathon’s end, the candidates are sweating, and Cros has shed a light on the oppressive power dynamic between interviewees and their prospective employers. Where The Apprentice exploits its trumped-up “reality” label (pun intended) for cheap laughs, The Job opts to play it straight, and attempts to evoke a more nuanced, emotional response to the...
One of the year’s most anticipated film festivals is here again and it’s celebrating 20 years of fantastic films. The Toronto Jewish Film Festival returns May 3 through May 13 with a programme of 96 films from over 15 countries, celebrating cultural diversity and the many aspects of the Jewish experience....
It’s not unusual to see the Kennedy clan featured in documentaries or biopics. From the perspectives of wealth, power and American politics, they’ve been prominent figures throughout the 20th century. Patriarch Joe Kennedy had success on the stock market and served as the first chairman of the SEC, and his sons made quite a splash in the Democratic party as US senators, and as Presidents and hopefuls. But this documentary, Ethel, takes a more personal look at the family from a different vantage point – home. Directed by Rory Kennedy, the youngest of Ethel (née Skakel) and Robert Kennedy’s 11...
In The Frog Princes, co-directors Ryan Mullins and Omar Majeed (who also directed the awesome Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk in Islam) follow a theatre troupe as they mount a production of “The Frog and the Princess”. But this isn’t just any theatre company. Run by the caring and charismatic Dr. Stephen Snow, Concordia University’s Centre for the Arts in Human Development serves adults with developmental disabilities and other special needs, using creative arts therapies to improve the quality of life of its participants. As the casting and rehearsals progress, we get to witness not only the slow construction of a...
Living in Canada, it’s hard to imagine being in a position where you’d have to choose between buying groceries and paying for medicine or vital medical treatment. Unfortunately in the United States, that’s exactly the decision that many citizens struggle with each and every day. This sad truth is eloquently highlighted in Peter Nicks’ fly-on-the-wall documentary The Waiting Room, in which an Oakland, California public hospital waiting area brings together people from all levels of the socio-economic scale. On sight, the various patients that wander through the hospital – divorced parents with three children, a young couple and a homeless...
As a child of the ’80s, it was hard to ignore wrestling. Names like Hulk Hogan or Randy “Macho Man” Savage echoed through the playground as the kids talked about the last match they had watched. Those names may sound familiar, but others like Mountain Fiji or Matilda The Hun may not. Director Brett Whitcomb is looking to change that with his documentary GLOW: The Story Of The Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, playing at the 2012 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Although GLOW (which stands for thr titular ‘Glorious Ladies of Wrestling’) didn’t last very long on television, the...
