Stranger than fiction
Hot Docs film festival kicks off this week with some odd tales indeed
The adage about truth being stranger than fiction has possibly never been more appropriate for Hot Docs, Toronto’s annual documentary festival. Selections for this year’s fest, running Thursday until May 7, include docs about people who dress up as mermaids and zombies, who ride hobby horses as a competitive sport or who obsessively study the Psycho shower murder. Eclectic Hot Docs filmmakers also zoom in on the man who let James Bond get away, another who counts the personal cost of terror and the worldwide heroes desperately trying to stave off extinction for a threatened rhino. These and other unusual human activities are included in the films previewed by Peter Howell and the rest of the Star’s Hot Docs team. For our look at some of this year’s movies, turn to page
20th Circuit Suspects (Hesam Eslami) (out of 4) Eslami follows the Tehran youths who broke into his car for years — accompanying them on their roaming trips looking for audio systems to liberate — as their thieving lifestyle begins to catch up with them. Much, however, is left unanswered and even unasked, including the economic context (passing remarks about unpaid rent and social Darwinism aside) and conditions the young men faced in Iranian prison. Garnet Fraser 78/52 (Alexandre O. Philippe) The shower murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror Psycho may be second only to the Zapruder film as the most-scrutinized piece of celluloid, forever changing movies with its taboo-breaking voyeurism and nihilistic violence. Bernard Herrmann’s slashing score made it all the more so. Stare through the peephole with hardcore film geeks — directors, editors, scholars and actors — at terror that can’t be scrubbed away. Essential viewing, even if you have to watch through your fingers. Peter Howell Becoming Bond (Josh Greenbaum) One-off 007 George Lazenby has been called “the forgotten James Bond,” although critics highly rank 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. If you’re expecting “coulda been acontender” blues, think again. With a younger actor playing him in flashbacks, admitted fabulist Lazenby spins the amusing yarn of a lifelong rebel who serendipitously succeeded Sean Connery as Bond and immediately chafed at the role’s demands. Regrets? A few about the gig, but more about the woman who got away. P.H. Bee Nation (Lana Slezic) Award-winning photographer Lana Slezic has turned her talents toward filmmaking and her first featurelength film is a winner: warm, charming and illuminating. Slezic follows several young people from Saskatchewan as they compete in an inaugural First Nations spelling bee in hopes of heading the national championship in Toronto. Slezic’s storytelling style is simple and cleareyed, and it’s lovely to see First Nations people portrayed as everyday folk unencumbered by stereotypes linked to poverty and addiction. Bruce DeMara
Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World (Barry Avrich) The title of this doc is a promissory bait-and-switch: The film is less an insider’s look at the art world than a long tour around its outer rim, with an intensive focus on its hyperactive commercialism at the exclusion of most else. Fair enough: The idiotic prices contemporary art has commanded over the past decade have dominated its popular perception. But the film is less a revelation than an Art World 101 of the commodity nature of the field. It can be fun, but in its heavy tilt to analysis over narrative, by the end it drags mightily, rehashing its points over and over, to a dreary conclusion. Murray Whyte
Communion (Anna Zamecka) Polish teenager Ola is doing her best to prepare her autistic younger brother for his first communion, while at the same time keeping house for her alcoholic father. Their tiny flat barely holds the three of them and yet all Ola wants is for her mother, away for reasons of her own, to come home. Director Zamecka is a fly on the wall who watches this woman-child try to steer her family through stormy situations beyond her years. Kathryn Laskaris
Dolores (Peter Bratt) United Farm Workers’ co-founder Dolores Huerta breaks free of the better-known story of union cofounder Cesar Chavez to claim her own legacy. Vilified for the number of children she had (and with whom), or dismissed as “girlfriend of,” her single-minded devotion to the farm labourers’ cause is the central focus of this doc that underscores the achievements of an activist still working for women and workers in her mid-80s. Linda Barnard
Hobbyhorse Revolution (Selma Vilhunen) Girl power rides a stick steed in this Oscar-nominated documentarian’s uplifting creation. Quirky oddity meets serious sport for these Finnish teens, where riders do all the prancing and jumping. But the benefits go beyond fitness when they encounter bullying for their passion, especially sweet Elsa, whose depression overwhelms her. Her anxiety is eased by love of the sport and its sisterhood, whose devotees march astride their stuffed mounts demanding: “Respect the hobby horse!” L.B.
Hope (Alan Zweig) It’s been two years since fallen Canadian legend Steve Fonyo nearly died in a brutal home invasion, seen at the close of Alan Zweig’s award-winning documentary, Hurt. Zweig returns to Fonyo as he breaks away from old haunts and habits to enter rehab. But can the bitter and delusional Fonyo really change his life? As with Hurt, Zweig is part of the documentary’s narrative as Fonyo and his girlfriend try to find a new life amid oftenunrealistic expectations. L.B.
La Chana (Lucija Stojevic) A whirlwind of passion and thrilling performances infuses this tautly edited profile of Spanish flamenco dance legend Antonia Santiago Amador, known as La Chana. The award-winning doc opens with the La Chana of 50 years prior, making impossibly fast staccato rhythms with her feet, her proud face in ecstasy. Her potential limited by an abusive husband, La Chana rises, sublime, later in life. Her body has aged; her spirit and soul still burn white hot. L.B.
Long Strange Trip (Amir Bar-Lev) Anybody who thinks a four-hour doc on the Grateful Dead is excessive probably also thinks it’s weird to collect dozens of live tapes of “Althea” or “Dark Star.” The Dead have always ignored limits, man. But this film, lovingly assembled and rich in music and memories, persuasively makes the case the group was also “the most American of all bands.” You don’t have to be a Deadhead to get caught up in this epic rock saga, especially when late bandleader Jerry Garcia tearfully gets his due. P.H.
The Last Animals (Kate Brooks): As a photojournalist, Kate Brooks has travelled to war zones and other global hot spots. For her feature directing debut, she aims her probing lens at humanity’s ultimate act of violence: extinction of an entire species. Brooks visits scientists, conser- vationists and park rangers who are heroically attempting to stop poachers and crime syndicates from causing the threatened demise of the world’s elephants and rhinos — especially the Northern White Rhino, now down to a handful as rescue hopes dim. P.H.
Mermaids (Ali Weinstein): They call it “mergasm:” a euphoric feeling when a woman slips on the carefully constructed tail that transforms her from ordinary human to a figure of aquatic legend. Seems like a curious hobby on the surface, but the film deep dives into the psychology behind this real-life fish story, interviewing some fascinating subjects. Among them: mom and daughter mermaids, an older mermaid who once swam for a delighted Elvis and a transgender mermaid whose new passion assists her lifelong identity quest. P.H.
Playing God (Karin Jurschick): For a lawyer like Ken Feinberg, it takes the wisdom of Solomon to decide as “special master” — a legal term — how much to compensate victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, those exposed to Agent Orange or Gulf Coast residents after the 2010 BP oil spill. Another conundrum: finding the middle ground between retired union members facing drastic cuts to benefits and the fund facing looming bankruptcy. It’s a fascinating story with a wise and wordily protagonist at its heart. B.D.
Quest (Jonathan Olshefski) Filmmaker Jonathan Olshefski spent a decade peering into the life of Christopher “Quest” Rainey and his family and the north Philadelphia neighbourhood they call home. The film captures the everyday travails of Rainey, who emerges as a hero of sorts as he navigates a hardscrabble life, including a random shooting that leaves daughter PJ permanently scarred. The makeshift studio in his home lets community members express their lives through hip hop. The result is authentic and poignant filmmaking at its best. B.D.
Rumble ( Catherine Bainbridge, Alfonso Maiorana): Subtitled The Indians Who Rocked the World, this ear-opening and mind-expanding doc reveals how musicians with aboriginal roots — among them guitar greats Jimi Hendrix, the Band’s Robbie Robertson, Link Wray and Charley Patton as well as singers Rita Coolidge and Buffy Sainte-Marie — made a massive impact on popular music. Their musical contributions may be celebrated, but their heritage is often unknown or deliberately suppressed — often by the musicians themselves, for fear of discrimination. P.H.
Spookers (Florian Habicht): Imagine if the lurching, drooling and dancing zombies of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video opened their own theme park. It might be something like Spookers, a commercial fright fest inside the sprawling grounds of a shuttered psychiatric hospital near Auckland, New Zealand. It’s run by a non-scary Kiwi couple and eagerly staffed by young recruits who are working out personal issues or just letting their freak flags fly. The pantswetting (and worse) horror is convincing — the makeup is great — although the individual stories start to zombify through repetition. P.H.
Thank You for the Rain (Julia Dahr, Kisilu Musya): Decades of climate change debate can’t top the sobering sight of Kisilu Musya’s Kenyan farm first scorched by relentless sun and then drowned by flash floods. Determined to save both his home and the planet, he becomes a latter-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the gospel of tree planting far and wide, including a Paris environmental summit. Good intentions take a toll in this astutely human film: Kisilu grapples with setbacks, disillusionment and a wife and brood of children back home who seriously miss him. P.H.
Tongue Cutters (Solveig Melkeraaen) With her stuffed rabbit never far away, 9-year-old Ylva makes the trek from her urban Oslo existence to northern Norway to stay with relatives and carry on the tradition of working in the fishery, cutting the tongues out of cod caught by the grown-ups. Her mentor Tobias shows her the ropes; at 10 he has made almost enough money to buy himself a boat. Director Melkeraaen is Ylva’s aunt. This upbeat fish tale is nothing short of delightful. K.L.
Winnie ( Pascale Lamche) Interviews with South Africa’s Winnie Madikizela-Mandela give Pascale Lamche’s documentary an air of authority, despite missing some balance elsewhere, in this screen profile of the woman alternately heralded as the “mother of the nation” and despised as deviously ambitious and violent. For freedom fighter Madikizela-Mandela, who says: “I lost my identity when he (husband Nelson Mandela) got out (of prison),” it’s a chance to explore her life’s work and respond to critics. A fascinating, if occasionally limited, look at a polarizing figure. L.B.