HOT DOCS FILM FESTIVAL LOOKS BACK AT FEMALE DIRECTORS
This year’s Redux program presents many great, older Canadian documentaries directed by women
Going retro at Hot Docs: What with being North America’s largest festival of non-fiction filmmaking and all, Hot Docs tends to take up a lot of local screen space. And while new titles occupy much of the real estate at busy venues such as the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and TIFF Bell Lightbox, there’s once again room for older fare in the fest’s array of special series and spotlights.
This year’s Redux program presents many great Canadian documentaries directed by women. Among the landmark works are P4W: Prison for
Women, Janis Cole and Holly Dale’s 1981 portrait of five inmates at the women’s prison in Kingston (it plays Saturday), and Sisters in the Struggle, an equally powerful documentary about the activist efforts of black Canadian women directed by Dionne Brand and Ginny Stikeman (it screens May 6).
Toronto’s Maya Gallus is also honoured with the festival’s annual “Focus On” filmmaker spotlight. The director demonstrates her capacity for wit and insight, whether her subject is women’s roller derby (in Derby
Crazy Love), the struggles of servers
(in Dish: Women, Waitressing & The Art of Service) or iconic Canadian
writers (in Elizabeth Smart: On the Side of the Angels and The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche).
Another filmmaker with a deep love of artists and the arts, Tony Palmer is this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award recipient, which is great news for Leonard Cohen fans who will appreciate a rare big-screen showing of Bird on a Wire, Palmer’s fascinating document of Cohen’s 1972 European tour. (It screens May 5 at the Lightbox.) Though best known for his docs
on Cohen and the Beatles, Palmer was equally astute when tackling the life and work of composer Sergei Rachmanioff (in The Harvest of Sorrow on Thursday) and playwright Athol Fugard (in Falls the Shadow on May 6). Hot Docs continues to May 7.
Toronto Jewish Film Festival: The spring film-fest season kicks it up another notch with the launch for the TJFF on Thursday. The festival opens with the Toronto premiere of 1945, a Hungarian period drama about a small town whose guilty-minded inhabitants are thrown into a panic when two Orthodox Jewish men arrive for reasons unknown. Director Ferenc Torok is on hand for a Q&A after the screening on Thursday at the Varsity.
The TJFF continues to May 14. Read next week’s Projections column for more highlights. Love’s Labour’s Lost at Stratford HD: The Stratford Festival’s series of HD presentations of recent productions continues at Cineplex with the Bard’s proto-romcom about four young men who fail terribly in their efforts to give up the company of women. Love’s
Labour’s Lost screens at participating Cineplex locations throughout the GTA on Saturday with a special event at Yonge-Eglinton featuring a Q&A with cast members Ruby Joy and Mike Shara and an onstage conversation between producer-director Barry Avrich and Richard Ouzounian.
I Am Heath Ledger: Coming to Toronto for a one-night engagement after its premiere at the Tribeca festival, I Am Heath Ledger promises an intimate look at the Australian actor who weathered many struggles with the demands of fame before his untimely demise from an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers and other medications in 2008.
Directors and fellow actors, including Naomi Watts, Ben Mendelsohn and Ang Lee, share their feelings about the man who conveyed the depths of heartache in
Brokeback Mountain and the upside of anarchy in The Dark Knight. It plays Cineplex’s Yonge-Dundas location on Thursday.