GIANT SWAMP RATS, MONGOLIAN WOLVES AND DIGITAL CLEANERS
The roll call of subjects at this year’s CUFF. Docs proves one thing: Documentary filmmakers continue to shine a light in some very strange corners.
The Calgary Underground Film Festival released the lineup for its Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 non-fiction film festival earlier this week, revealing films that examine a number of intriguing people, subcultures and animals.
The main stars of Chris Metzler, Jeff Springer and Quinn Costello’s Rodents of Unusual Size, for instance, are nine-kilogram swamp rats that have invaded the coastal wetlands of Louisiana. Pablo Bryant’s Mr. Fish: Cartooning From the Deep End, which will open the Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 festival, chronicles the subversive political cartoonist’s struggles to stay commercially afloat. Veteran documentary filmmaker Ron Mann takes audiences inside an influential Greenwich Village guitar shop in Carmine Street Guitars. Andrew Simpson’s Wolves Unleashed: Against All Odds is about the Alberta animal trainer’s efforts to raise and train Mongolian wolf clubs for a Chinese blockbuster. Scott Christopherson’s The Insufferable Groo is a portrait of underground filmmaker Stephen Groo, who has made a number of Hollywood admirers through his nearly 200 no-budget films. Stephen Loveridge’s Sundance hit Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. is an intimate portrait of innovative pop star M.I.A., delving into her background as a refugee immigrant and the daughter of Tamil activist and revolutionary Arul Pragasam.
“They’ve either got really quirky characters or the subject matter that the films are about are something we all found fascinating or what we thought would connect with Calgarians,” said festival cofounder and director Brenda Lieberman. “We target some niche audiences and subcultures. It’s different films we think will resonate well with both our regular audience and, hopefully, attract a new audience.”
Now in its sixth year, programmers continue to find a bounty of non-fiction films to choose from, which is why they separated documentaries into its own festival to begin with.
But a quick glance at this year’s crop suggests festival staff were mostly moved by films with a lighter tone, rather than some of the darker, political titles of years past.
Amy Scott’s Hal examines the life and work of filmmaker Hal Ashby, who directed 1970s classics such as Being There and Harold and Maude. Max Powers’ Don’t Be Nice centres on the Bowery Slam Poetry Team, whose African-American, Afro-Hispanic and queer poets go for broke when preparing for the national championships.
Some of this can be attributed to the normal vagaries of film programming, with many of the darker political films which programmers were interested in not being available or already set to screen.
On the other hand, the tone may just be a reaction to the times.
“When it came down to it, we just wanted to have some fun,” Lieberman says. “There’s a lot of heavy stuff going on in the world.”
Which is not to say the festival is completely bereft of topical films. Bin Liu’s Minding the Gap is a coming-of-age tale about the filmmaker’s skateboarding friends in an impoverished town in Illinois that explores race, poverty and domestic abuse. This Changes Everything by Tom Donahue looks at sexism in Hollywood and the #Timesup movement through interviews with Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Sandra Oh and Jessica Chastain. The festival will also show the Canadian premiere of Abby Epstein’s Weed the People, which follows the efforts of American parents desperate to obtain cannabis oil to help their children battle cancer.
Other offerings have darker edges. Hans Block and Mortiz Riesewieck’s The Cleaners is an unsettling look at the strange profession of digital cleaning, done by thousands of people in Third World countries who have been hired to remove inappropriate content from the web. Hao Wu’s People’s Republic of Desire explores the strange new world of YY, a streaming platform in China that helps people turn their mediocre talents into fame and big bucks.
On the other side of the spectrum, Simpson’s Wolves Unleashed: Against All Odds may be
among the festival’s most anticipated films. It’s a followup to 2011’s Wolves Unleashed, a hit at the Calgary International Film Festival seven years ago.
The new film follows Simpson, who has trained wolves for everything from the Revenant to Wynonna Earp and Game of Thrones, as he raises Mongolian wolves and trains them specifically for the 2015 Chinese epic Wolf Totem.
“It’s a real different style of documentary; there isn’t any subject beyond the wolves,” Lieberman says. “It’s really cool. You spend the entire film with these wolves. You’re watching them from when he gets them as puppies to training them to work in this Chinese blockbuster film full-grown. It’s amazing to watch the relationship that he forms and builds with these wolves and the training he does with them. If you’ve never spent 90 minutes watching wolves and how they act as a pack, it’s totally fascinating.”
When it came down to it, we just wanted to have some fun. There’s a lot of heavy stuff going on in the world.