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| Step - My pick for 'Best of the fest' at Hot Docs 2017 Courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures |
That’s a wrap for Hot Docs! Another festival is in the can. There’s
a simplicity to covering Hot Docs that can’t be beat in Toronto and perhaps
that’s purely the relaxed attitude of the documentary crowd. Complete coverage may be found over at the POV Hot Docs hub
and while we’ve been busier than ever cranking out two issues back to back
before Hot Docs, it’s nice to be back here at Cinemablographer after six weeks of winter. Big thanks to the programmers,
staff, volunteers, publicists, and filmmakers for another good festival.
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| Bee Nation Courtesy of Hot Docs |
Hot Docs opened nicely with the enjoyable premiere of Lana
Slezic’s Bee Nation. The film offered
an entertaining and inspiring portrait of Indigenous children as they readied
for a national spelling bee—the first time that kids from reserves took part in
the event. Bee Nation drew some criticism,
and rightly so, for the awkwardness that arose in feeling inspiration from
Indigenous kids mastering the colonial language. But some of the assessments
proved needlessly myopic, mostly notably POV’sown takedown of the movie. Bee Nation
was Slezic’s first feature and took audiences into the reserves to tell an
empowering story about children gaining confidence and confronting the unfair
reality of being an outsider in one’s home territory. This is why the film
succeeded—it used a crowdpleasing spirit to give hope for the future. To quote
Slezic in Judy Wolfe’s current cover story from POV, “Negativity, especially
when persistent, can be fatiguing.” Much of the criticism of Bee Nation put Slezic herself as the issue, which is especially dangerous because it devalues the role of non-Indigenous allies when it comes to bridging audiences and growing awareness.
Bee Nation
highlighted Slezic’s background as a photographer and she brought a
compassionate eye that looked warmly at the children without shying away from
the harshness and poverty of the reserves. One couldn’t help but note the mould
on the walls in the kids’ homes that contrasted with their sunny dispositions. Or
the barren poverty of the houses that populated the landscape jumped out amidst
the playtime and golden sunlight. The systemic inequality that prevents schools
from teaching in Cree made a compelling point to address the inherent problem
in the bee. Then there was kids’ discomfort with English. Perhaps subtlety
doesn’t work for some viewers, but yes, we did “see that.”
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| Birth of a Family Courtesy of the NFB |
There were a few notable trends among the films at Hot Docs
this year. One was the power of Indigenous stories by Indigenous filmmakers with
Canadian docs Rumble, Birth of a Family, and
The Road Forward standing out. This
biggest trend was the prominence and popularity of character portraits and
first-person point of view docs. While these docs are always part of
documentary, there seemed to be more of them this year—a product, perhaps, of
broadcasters emphasising the importance of interesting characters in landing a
sale.
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| Bobbi Jene Courtesy of Hot Docs |
There certainly were great characters at the festival this
year: dancer Bobbi Jene Smith (Bobbi Jene),
Joshua Wong (Joshua: Teenager Versus
Superpower), Steve Fonyo (Hope),
and Bill Nye (Bill Nye: Science Guy)
to name a few. Seeing so many similar films in a cluster somewhat sharpens the
quality of the docs and exposes the strengths and weaknesses of films side by
side, and this certainly happened with the profile docs as some struggled to
balance an interesting character with a story of greater significance. Take Becoming Bond, which proved to be the
biggest disappointment of the festival because it landed a great interview with
the former 007, but didn’t do much else besides have a good time. Character-driven shorts Babe, I Hate to Go and Take a Walk on the Wild Side eclipsed many features with tighter, yet broader portraits. The winner on
the profile front, however, was the festival’s biggest surprise: Susanne Bartsch: On Top. This energetic
portrait of New York’s queen of the nightlife does a fantastic job of
highlighting Bartsch’s career while situating her work within the growth of the
LGBTQ rights movement and AIDS crisis.
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| 78/52 Courtesy of Hot Docs |
Other highlights from the festival included a strong
contingent of docs about art and culture. The Hitchcock master class of 78/52 offered a film buff’s dream by
deconstructing the iconic shower sequence from Psycho from every possible angle. Anyone with an interest in film
theory, criticism, and history will love this cinematic film club. The duo of
dance docs Bobbi Jene and Rebels on Pointe gave unique profiles
with their looks at the risqué art of Bobbi Jene Smith and the queer camp of Les
Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. The former was an artful odyssey of passion
and dedication, while the latter offered a fun and inclusive study of breaking
convention.
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| Whitney: Can I Be Me? Courtesy of Hot Docs |
On the music side of things, Whitney: Can I Be Me? deserved a stronger response than the mixed
to mildly positive reception it received. The doc by Nick Broomfield and Rudi
Dolezal unpacked the tragic life and career of Whitney Houston with an
impressive range of archival footage including some unseen images of her 1999 tour
in Berlin. The film raised some intriguing points about Houston’s fragile
psyche and did an admirable bit of sleuthing, but the failure to secure a few
key interviews with players like Bobby Brown, Clive Davis and Robyn Crawford
(with whom it suggests she had a bisexual romance, although potentially an
unrequited one) prevented it from hitting the mark to which it aspired. It’s
nevertheless an impressive, object, and all-encompassing look at a
one-of-a-kind career wrecked by destructive behaviour. The only shame, really,
is that it premiered in the shadow of Amy.
Other music docs, like Rumble: The
Indians Who Rocked the World and the Grateful Dead epic Long Strange Trip proved to be
additional highlights.
The meta-movie Flames
was the festival’s boundary pusher with its engrossing portrait of a couple
performing its own break-up. The film put Zefrey Throwell and Josephine Decker
in a hypnotic exercise in which they lived out their relationship before the
camera. The strains of “performance” blurred art and life uncomfortably
intimately in Flames as passion—for both
art and each other—blinded the ex-lovers to reality. While Flames doesn’t always work, it proved to be a consistently
fascinating experience
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| Step Courtesy of Hot Docs |
Best of the Fest:
(Dir. Amanda Lipitz, USA)
The standout film of the festival, however, was Step. Amanda Lipitz’s exhilarating and
inspiring dance doc about the “Lethal Ladies” step dancing team at an inner
city Baltimore high school eclipsed the competition. Step brilliantly conveyed the significance of the dance team for
the girls as they readied for graduation and aspired to go away for college.
Lipitz really captured the boost of confidence that the team afforded the girls
and the positive effect it has on their performance in the classroom. This
upbeat film set against the greater backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement
had its finger on the pulse and its heart in exactly the right place.
Runners-up:
Rounding out the top ten of the festival, in alphabetical
order, are:
(Dir. Dir. Chang-Yong Moon, Jin Jeon; South Korea)
This moving film about a young Tibetan monk’s journey home
to reconnect with the friends of his past life is a transcendental study of the
teacher/student relationship.
(Dir. Attiya Khan, Larry Jackman; Canada)
Attiya Khan might be the MVP of Hot Docs with her brave act of
documentary therapy in which she invites her abusive ex-boyfriend to sit down
and discuss his effect on her. A Better
Man feels like one of those film that can truly make a difference.
Brimstone and Glory
(Dir. Viktor Jakovleski, Mexico)
This visually stunning film takes audiences to Tultepec,
Mexico where the annual Day of the Bull celebrates the awesome spectacle and
terror of fireworks. The film records fireworks in remarkable cinematography in
the dark hours of the night and it captures every hiss, crackle, and spark of
the show. It’s a thrilling and beautiful work of art.
City of Ghosts
(Matthew Heineman, USA)
Cartel Land director
Matthew Heineman returns with this visceral and compelling look at the Civil
War in Syria. City of Ghosts uses
covertly shot footage to highlight the efforts of the civilian journalists of
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently who uses the power of images to fight in
lieu of terror.
(Dir. Amir Bar-Lev, USA)
One doesn’t need to be a Deadhead to appreciate this wild, if flawed, four-hour epic rockumentary about The Grateful Dead. Through an exhaustive
(and, sometimes, exhausting) range of archival material, Long Strange Trip unpacks the legacy of The Grateful Dead from
every angle. It’s a riot and, dare I say, better than the band itself.
(Dir. Kalina Bertin, Canada)
This raw and powerful study of family history and mental
illness yields a promising talent in newcomer Kalina Bertin. The director mines
her father’s strange but true experience as a bipolar cult leader and as she
re-interprets the childhood she thought she knew, Bertin takes ownership of her
family legacy.
The Road Forward
(Dir. Marie Clements, Canada)
The first and only Indigenous doc musical ever comes from
the brilliant mind of Marie Clements, who tells the story of the Native
Brotherhood in this years-in-the-making feat that uses songs and interviews to
tell an unsung chapter of history. The music is particularly inspiring—and fun!
Rumble: The Indians
Who Rocked the World
(Dir. Catherine Bainbridge, Alfonso Maiorana; Canada)
Canada finds its 20
Feet from Stardom in this winner of both the Audience Award and the
Audience Award for Canadian film. Rumble
assembles an admirable cast of talking heads including Buffy Sainte-Marie,
Robbie Robertson, Stevie Salas, Steven Tyler and Martin Scorsese to pay tribute
to the unheralded legacy of Indigenous musicians.
(Dir. Anthony&Alex, USA)
Susanne Bartsch is
without a doubt the biggest surprise and hidden gem of Hot Docs. Bartsch is a
delight as a character—a flamboyant presence whose joie de vivre jolts out of
the screen. Her infectious energy only makes the film’s transition into a
greater story of queer rights and the AIDS crisis an effective arc about the
power of creating safe and inclusive spaces.
(Plus, she does one heck of a fun
Q&A!)
