Posts tagged doc soup

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Should documentaries have their own home? The Hot Docs Bloor cinema, Toronto Words: David KirkpatrickSince this is the week that the Hot Docs festival open their own dedicated documentary cinema in Toronto, I’ve been asking myself -  why do docs need their own home?Media outlets throughout Toronto have been racking up the column inches this week in anticipation of its long awaited opening (http://www.toronto.com/article/715106), but the idea of a doc-only cinema raises a number of questions around the nature of the doc movie and its relationship with mainstream cinema. Will this venture be a long-term success? Torontonians are ridiculously eager when it comes to Doc Soup monthly screenings but will this be translated into day-in day-out sustained sales?If the hunger for docs really does exist - and from what I have seen over the last year, there very much is the demand - why have the existing network of cinemas not seen the gap and fulfilled the need? Maybe it has just been an oversight or a closed view on their part, but docs have been propelled into the mainstream both in Britain and North America over the recent months. The outstanding Senna was victorious to much acclaim in this year’s reinstated doc category at the BAFTA awards. The Academy Awards were awash this year with talk of the docs that didn’t make it under Michael Moore and friends’ new doc applicability rules. Among the waves of Hollywood sequels and comic book action pictures with ludicrous budgets, people seem to have turned to the documentary in search of something more challenging, something with more depth of character. Personally, I hope and believe that the refurbished Hot Doc cinema will be a success, particularly in the coming months, with opening week buzz quickly followed by the Hot Docs festival at the end of April.  Although, keeping the schedule fresh and ushering the patio worshipers in from the sun over the summer months will the acid test for this great venture.

Should documentaries have their own home?
The Hot Docs Bloor cinema, Toronto

Words: David Kirkpatrick

Since this is the week that the Hot Docs festival open their own dedicated documentary cinema in Toronto, I’ve been asking myself -  why do docs need their own home?

Media outlets throughout Toronto have been racking up the column inches this week in anticipation of its long awaited opening (http://www.toronto.com/article/715106), but the idea of a doc-only cinema raises a number of questions around the nature of the doc movie and its relationship with mainstream cinema. Will this venture be a long-term success? Torontonians are ridiculously eager when it comes to Doc Soup monthly screenings but will this be translated into day-in day-out sustained sales?

If the hunger for docs really does exist - and from what I have seen over the last year, there very much is the demand - why have the existing network of cinemas not seen the gap and fulfilled the need? Maybe it has just been an oversight or a closed view on their part, but docs have been propelled into the mainstream both in Britain and North America over the recent months. The outstanding Senna was victorious to much acclaim in this year’s reinstated doc category at the BAFTA awards. The Academy Awards were awash this year with talk of the docs that didn’t make it under Michael Moore and friends’ new doc applicability rules. Among the waves of Hollywood sequels and comic book action pictures with ludicrous budgets, people seem to have turned to the documentary in search of something more challenging, something with more depth of character.

Personally, I hope and believe that the refurbished Hot Doc cinema will be a success, particularly in the coming months, with opening week buzz quickly followed by the Hot Docs festival at the end of April.  Although, keeping the schedule fresh and ushering the patio worshipers in from the sun over the summer months will the acid test for this great venture.

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Doc Soup Toronto Review: An African Election

Words by David KIrkpatrick

Almost a year since its world wide debut in Sundance in January 2011, An African Election, directed by Jarreth Merz, finally got it’s Canadian premiere in the first Doc Soup of 2012. The movie has toured the festival circuit for the year to reasonable acclaim, and this was certainly one of the more anticipated Doc Soups of recent times.

After an early evening rush line wait (and needing a rush line for a 6.15 doc soup screening tells us something of the strength of hot docs as an institution currently), we had missed out on the director Q&A but had scraped in for the opening scene. The movie centers around the 2008 Ghanian general elections and how Ghana temporarily became the focal point for all of Africa - there was real hope that Ghana could produce something that is a rarity in Africa - a fairly contested election with legitimate results. The documentary takes a straightforward chronological pace from here, taking us through two rounds of voting while getting the viewer deep into the offices of the two political parties as well as the director of elections. 

Director Jarreth Merz returned to his home country of Ghana to make this record of the 2008 elections, but he never gets in front of the camera (as can sometimes be the case for these types of accounts) and he doesn’t use this movie as a platform to push his personal experiences or agenda.  What he does do brilliantly though is bring us to the heart of a process where all the rhetoric is of fairness but never far away do you feel the presence of more sinister happenings. At one point, there was a scene with people lining up for 8 hours to vote and then polling stations closing without the majority getting their opportunity. While this can be viewed as a symptom of an ailing democracy, we can remind ourselves that many “first world democracies like the US use similar means to systematically prevent people to vote. There are a couple of excellent turning points in the election office perfectly timed within the movie that stand to the edited and direction of the movie.

Having been exposed to UK television for most of my life, and specifically being brought up on a diet of the BBC and Channel 4, a documentary of this nature could be viewed in similar lines as to ones produced for viewing on the small screen as opposed to the big screen. In saying that, An African Election is a sound and well put together documentary that portrays the incredible difficulty in achieving functioning democracy and the characters involved in attempting to reach that goal.

Check out their website: http://anafricanelection.com/

And for the latest Doc Soup schedule: http://www.hotdocs.ca/docsoup/doc_soup_toronto/#

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Film Review - Doc Soup Toronto 7th Dec: Granito: How to Nail a Dictator Words: David Kirkpatrick  Part autobiography, part sequel, part epilogue the December installment of Doc Soup in Toronto featured Pamela Yates’ Granito: How to Nail a dictator. The movie picks up 20 years on from where the award-winning 1982 When the Mountains Tremble (Yates’ on-the-ground account of the beginning of a decade of genocide in Guatemala) left off. We are told by the director beforehand that the purpose of the movie was to reflect on the role of the documentary film maker and to inspire younger documentary makers to use their work for real change. The results though are mixed, with Yates having limited success in figuring out how much she should tell us about her previous movie, Guatemala in the 80’s and about her as a director and activist.      The first of three acts, reviews how Yates, as a young director, filmed around the atrocities in Guatemala in the early 80’s, comprising mostly of cuts from When the Mountains Tremble. The second and third act tell the story of how a wide variety of people from around the world were working to get justice for the 200,000 people who were slaughtered there. Here, Yates is piecing together accounts from survivors, international investigators and former guerrillas with a central focal point of providing evidence for a Spanish Genocide case being brought on Efrain Rios Montt, the military leader of the time, along with other leading members of the ruling military of the time. These accounts represent the highlights of the movie: The young idealistic Spanish judge who presided over the genocide case, the survivors who are now in their 30s but are staying to fight and represent their Mayan roots and the repatriated Forensic scientist who, despite death threats from on high, continued to exhume thousands of bodies to begin the identification process. The stories end gives us a great insight into how a country deals with atrocities and division in the aftermath of war.  While some accounts of this movie being a vanity project are unfair, the movie was unfocused and it seemed that there probably wasn’t enough new footage to constitute a follow up of feature length. This had the feel of a network television follow up on a news story, or an epilogue to a greater piece. This is not to say that the work in the movie and the courage shown by some participants is not admiral, and as a movie, it still opened the audience’s eyes to a greater story that we would not otherwise been exposed to. Check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dbKDMniQpQ    

Film Review - Doc Soup Toronto 7th Dec: Granito: How to Nail a Dictator

Words: David Kirkpatrick 

Part autobiography, part sequel, part epilogue the December installment of Doc Soup in Toronto featured Pamela Yates’ Granito: How to Nail a dictator. The movie picks up 20 years on from where the award-winning 1982 When the Mountains Tremble (Yates’ on-the-ground account of the beginning of a decade of genocide in Guatemala) left off.

We are told by the director beforehand that the purpose of the movie was to reflect on the role of the documentary film maker and to inspire younger documentary makers to use their work for real change. The results though are mixed, with Yates having limited success in figuring out how much she should tell us about her previous movie, Guatemala in the 80’s and about her as a director and activist.     

The first of three acts, reviews how Yates, as a young director, filmed around the atrocities in Guatemala in the early 80’s, comprising mostly of cuts from When the Mountains Tremble. The second and third act tell the story of how a wide variety of people from around the world were working to get justice for the 200,000 people who were slaughtered there. Here, Yates is piecing together accounts from survivors, international investigators and former guerrillas with a central focal point of providing evidence for a Spanish Genocide case being brought on Efrain Rios Montt, the military leader of the time, along with other leading members of the ruling military of the time.

These accounts represent the highlights of the movie: The young idealistic Spanish judge who presided over the genocide case, the survivors who are now in their 30s but are staying to fight and represent their Mayan roots and the repatriated Forensic scientist who, despite death threats from on high, continued to exhume thousands of bodies to begin the identification process. The stories end gives us a great insight into how a country deals with atrocities and division in the aftermath of war. 

While some accounts of this movie being a vanity project are unfair, the movie was unfocused and it seemed that there probably wasn’t enough new footage to constitute a follow up of feature length. This had the feel of a network television follow up on a news story, or an epilogue to a greater piece. This is not to say that the work in the movie and the courage shown by some participants is not admiral, and as a movie, it still opened the audience’s eyes to a greater story that we would not otherwise been exposed to.


Check out the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dbKDMniQpQ

 

 

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