DOCUMENTARY SERIES FOCUSES ON SITUATION IN SYRIA
Eight-film Lightbox program explores the country’s difficult past and catastrophic present
Syrian Self-Portraits: That heartwrenching image of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh in the back of an ambulance in Aleppo has swiftly become an emblem of the suffering caused by Syria’s civil war. A new series at TIFF Bell Lightbox offers many more images that may have a similarly profound effect on anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the country’s difficult past and catastrophic present.
Titled “Syria Self-Portraits: Chronicles of Tyranny, Chronicles of War,” the eight-film program comprises the work of filmmakers who often defied the artistically and politically repressive policies of the ruling Baath Party. The series opens on Friday with Step
by Step and A Flood in Baath Country, two short documentaries that expose the regime’s corrosive effects on Syrian society during the decades before the war. Step by Step director Ossama Mohammed made the film in 1977 as his graduation project for Moscow’s VGIK film school.
The series also includes screenings of Mohammed’s later narrative features Stars in Broad Daylight and Sacrifices, as well as Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait, a doc he co-directed not long after he fled Damascus in 2011.
Much of the film’s footage was shot by Mohammed’s collaborator Wiam Simav Bedirxan, an activist who provides a powerful firsthand view of life during the siege of Homs. Another documentary in the series, Return to Homs (Thursday), portrays the street battles and daily sufferings that would continue in the city, much of which would be destroyed by the time the government forces finally forced out the rebels in 2015. Syrian Self-Portraits runs Friday to Sept. 4.
Heartworn Highways: Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood calls it “one of the richest films about music ever made.”
Even so, Heartworn Highways —a documentary about the creative renaissance of American country music in the 1970s featuring stellar performances by alt-country heroes such as Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark — slipped out of circulation not long after it was released in 1981, five years after it was initially finished by director James Szalapski.
Thankfully, a recent reissue of its amazing soundtrack has spurred new interest in the film — the Royal hosts the Canadian theatrical premiere of the newly restored 40th anniversary edition on Wednesday. Bring your nicest hat and boots.
Robert Frank: Don’t Blink: The second of two recent docs about the legendary Swiss-born photographer behind some of the most iconic images of America in the 1950s and ‘60s, Robert Frank: Don’t Blink takes an admirably wide view of the life and work of its subject. And whether he’s seen in his messy Manhattan apartment or his more rugged abode on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, Frank himself is an irascible and fascinating figure.
It clearly helps that director Laura Israel developed a warm rapport with her subject through her work as an editor on many of his recent experimental films. Robert Frank: Don’t Blink opens at the Lightbox on Friday.
Tunnel: Another of the summer’s big hits with audiences in South Korea, Tunnel is a survival-themed thriller about a car dealer who’s trapped in a tunnel collapse while driving home with his daughter’s birthday cake.
Though his ordeal initially attracts a frenzy of media attention, the various blundered rescue attempts — led by government officials more interested in photo ops — leave our everyman hero in an increasingly desperate situation. Toronto audiences can see Kim Seong-hun’s hugely popular disaster movie when it opens at Cineplex’s Empress Walk location on Friday.
In Brief:
The Christie Pits Film Festival ends its summer season with back-toback screenings of Psycho on Saturday and Gravity on Sunday.
TIFF’s monthly Short Cuts series presents a lineup of recent docs at the Lightbox on Sunday.
Anime fans will feel free to geek out at Cineplex’s Yonge-Dundas location on Sunday for the Canadian premiere of Kizomunogatari — Part 1: Tekketsu.
Harbourfront Centre’s Free Flicks series ends its run at the Concert Stage on Wednesday with the winner of an audience-choice battle between The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire and Gravity — you can look online to find out what movie won or just wait for the surprise.
Hairspray and Chicago play a double feature of movie musicals at the Carlton on Thursday — all proceeds go to the AIDS Committee of Toronto.