fourONEsixSTYLE

The Hot Docs festival kicked off in Toronto last Thursday with a moving documentary, Air India 182, bringing to life the stories of families touched by the worst act of terror Canadians have ever encountered.

After this opening weekend the festival buzz is heating up, giving high honours to Football Undercover, a film profiling a Muslim women’s soccer team, as well as Carny, a colourful doc that explores the strong and unusual bonds of one girl on the road.

Cuban Song could be given a miss I’m told. The documentary follows in the tracks of other Cuban docs that show how life and music mesh in Havana, however it lacks the depth and tone set by its cinematic predecessors. Tiger Spirit failed to engage audiences in the story of divided Koreans reuniting for the first time in decades, while Club Native hit home showing the difficult side of life for Mohawk Indians uniting with partners off their reserve. (Thanks for the tips & reviews John, Lana & Diego).

I’ve got my festival pass – 10 films for $90 – but have been caught up preparing for a BBC micro-session on how to approach research for forensics documentaries. I’ll be presenting a Cold Blood case study Wednesday at 2:30PM - those with an industry pass are welcome to swing by and see what you can learn about the field of archive and visual research from our experienced panel.

Though the causes of autism cannot be definitively pinpointed, it has become apparent that cases of autism have increased dramatically since the 1980’s. It wasn’t until a couple of summer’s ago that I’d met someone with this brain development condition. At first he seemed odd, sociable, but unable to make eye contact. Then, his fixations with unusual things like highway rumble strips and recording everything from voices to generator noises, made him more curious to me and my friends who interacted with him. Now, what defines him most is his fascination with the play Evil Dead: The Musical. He’ll ask everyone he meets whether they’ve seen it and what they think of it. He’s gone so far as to get some of the cast members’ t-shirts, covered in fake blood, and wear them out to parties. No doubt dressing up for Halloween is his favorite time of year.

Since I really know very little about people with Autism, I’m hoping that this week’s Doc Soup screening “Autism: The Musical” will shed some light on the associated personality traits, not only the repetitive and extremely intelligent aspects of the neurological encumbrance we’ve come to know from Rain Man, but also how a focus on creative expression can help those with Autism. It’s fascinating, when you know that most of us only use 5% of our brain’s capacity, that there may be a key there in understanding this different wiring that might help us all evolve a little further.

Screenings are at 6:30 and 9:15 this Wednesday the 5th. Tickets are currently available online for the later show. You’ll have to take your chances to get into the early one.

It’s the first time in the history of the Cannes Lions Prize that an ad has taken home awards for both the Cyber and Film categories furthering convergence of these two mediums. I first saw Dove’s Evolution ad on YouTube last fall and immediately added it to my favorites list, it’s brilliant. Since it was uploaded it’s been viewed over 3.5 million times, that’s a huge audience that sought out the ad and gave it their 1 minute and 15 seconds.

The ad, produced by the Toronto office of advertising empire Ogilvy & Mather, continues to demonstrate the ideal of authenticity that the Dove brand is known for. I’m continually impressed at their use of media. Two summers ago Dove presented a photo exhibit featuring real and diverse women taken by well-known female photographers (Lieibovitz for example). In tandem they were working on a documentary with Toronto prodco Telefactory and broadcaster W Network called Beauty Quest. The documentary followed a female fashion photographer in Toronto as she confronted her own ideals of beauty.

At the end of the day we all want to feel good about ourselves and know there’s more to it than buying the perfect product.

Australian architect John Andrews was considered a groundbreaking genius in the sixties, fashioning plans based on a new kind of architecture: brutalism. He’d achieved Mr. Big status after completing Scarborough College for the University of Toronto and went on to build the tallest freestanding structure in the world - our beloved CN Tower. Back in the day concrete was king and brutalism was associated with a brave new social utopian ideology. Nowadays, people like Prince Charles refer unfavourably to the works as “piles of concrete”. “Rubbish”, I say. While they can sometimes give off a gloomy, almost heavy feel to the city blocks they dominate, they are as much a part of the urban landscape as the sidewalks and steel. In btonbrut’s blogTO video called brutopia eclipsed we’re shown other landmarks Andrews has created while questions arise as to why some are being destroyed.

The Toronto Film Festival is showcasing 352 films this year and we all know it can be a bit daunting to jump into it at this stage of the game. If you haven’t made any picks for this week there are still plenty of options. I’ve narrowed down what I think are some very worthwhile films and documentaries for this Tuesday and Thursday night, all of which had tickets available at the time I posted this.

Filmmaker Bruce LaBruce personally recommended Cuban doc The Sugar Curtain about 70s utopian dreams: Tuesday at 8:15PM.

More reasons to make fun of the suburbs, Radiant City, Tuesday at 8:45PM.

Not just for the title, Dong, a documentary which explores the building of the Three Gorges dam in China and its subsequent devastation of everything surrounding it, Thursday at 7:15PM.

For Liz and Craig - competitive gymnasts in White Palms, Thursday at 8PM.

First love warms up cold Toronto nights, In Between Days Thursday at 8:30PM.

If you ever been compelled to Hula, uplifting Hula Girls Thursday at 8:45PM.

With so many terrific films at the festival you can’t go wrong, but get your tickets soon.

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Originally uploaded by 416style.

Hot Docs wrapped its festival yesterday, handing out a slew of awards to filmmakers from around the globe. The last documentary I checked out, The Chances of The World Changing, didn’t garner any recognition but there was tough competition with industry veterans like Werner Herzog submitting to the festival.

The Chances of the World Changing was a melancholy look through the eyes of troubled NYC writer Richard Ogust, who, years ago, rescued a turtle from an Asian food market. His passion for saving turtles grew until he ended up with over 1600 turtles in his Manhattan apartment, many of them on the endangered species list. His life and ability to help the creatures spiraled downward, facing eviction, charges from wildlife authorities and declining resources to finance the $100,000+ a year venture.

The documentary takes us along for the ride, leading us all to hope that this man’s dream of opening a herpetology institution on a farm in New Jersey would make all his struggles eventually seem worthwhile. We’re always told we can make our dreams come true, so can’t we? In fact, the filmmakers reveal at the screening that they had pictured Richard’s final narrative on the grounds of the turtles’ new conservation area in NJ.

However, Richard makes his final remarks from Coney Island after some devastating realizations about this life’s work and dreams. It left me with the feeling that the filmmakers had seemed intent to take us on the hard road from the very start, deciding to leave out every spark of life, every new egg hatched, every glory that Richard achieved along the way. In the end, it’s Richard who reveals the narrative we’ve clung to all along, ”It’s not the process he admits, it’s the end goal”, and without achieving your dreams it makes the whole process worthless. I can’t say I agree, Richard made some amazing headway and I think he should be recognized for that alone. However where he failed, or where others failed him, was in raising the funds necessary to make the Herpetology Institution a reality.

As a turtle lover myself (see my 13-year-old turtle pictured above) I found it extremely hard to digest the lack of attention given to species who are falling into extinction, mostly because no institution exists that cares enough. The Turtle Survival Alliance does offer some hope but has very little funding to work with. If there is anything you can do to help, please visit: http://www.turtlesurvival.org/

Most of us would never want to work at a call centre, but in many parts of the world this outsourced occupation is offering new hope for youth who have the ability to speak English. Offering up to 10,000 rupees a month ($300 Canadian), it’s a tough and competitive occupation. If you miss a day you’ll be fined (never mind one’s wife is giving birth) and if you don’t make a sale you’ll be standing up until you can close one.

Bombay Calling, which played today at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival, gives us a window into the world of Indian youth living the good life. With what we would consider a meagre salary, they can offer their parents their own apartment, eat out every day and party ’til dawn. Beyond that, Bombay Calling seeks to point out the parallel between increased prosperity in India and the westernization of this large nation; interviews are conducted outside call centres at Pizza Hut, while Nescafe and Coca-Cola ads dot the cityscape. We all know it’s inevitable, with globalization and free trade companies can jump across borders and find new markets. Realisticaslly, this documentary shows us that this movement works both ways, and it appears to be a win-win situation.

Bombay Calling was produced by the National Film Board of Canada and has been acquired by National Geographic.

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Originally uploaded by blamb.

The Hot Docs festival in Toronto has grown at a fantastic pace since its inception in 1993 and now it’s attracting increased international attention too, as it well should. The documentaries I have seen at the festival over the past several years still resonate with me today. The premises are varied, I have seen well-captured docs that portray everything from a ship stranded by the Canadian government on the shores of Vancouver in the 1910s becuase of rascist attitudes, to a daring filmmaker who smuggled the first ever video message of the Dalai Lama into Tibet since he left the country decades ago. Powerful stuff, uncovered for eager eyes. Pick up your guide or go online, Hot Docs is not to be missed. Runs April 28 - May 7th in downtown Toronto.