Against the backdrop of wine country with the dull thrum of the falls imaginable at the farthest edge of earshot, members of the film and wine industry gather to make connections, share experiences and celebrate the finer things in life – film and a good vino. And I was fortunate enough to be invited…
Category: Film Festivals
Hot Docs 2015: The Visit – Dr. Michael Madsen
If alien life landed on our doorstep, would we be ready? Would we know how to handle it? Are there procedures in place? The simulated experience of an alien’s (the audience) arrival on Earth is put up onto the screen by Madsen, as he puts the United Nations in the spotlight, as the only body in the…
Hot Docs 2015: Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi – Neal Broffman
Screening today at the ROM theatre at 7:00pm is this amazing, important, and emotionally involving film that introduces us to the Tripathi family. In the early months of 2013, their youngest son, Sunil, a Brown University student left his home in Providence one night, and disappeared. The family was distraught, but organized, and welcoming the help of friends and volunteers…
Hot Docs 2015: The Nightmare – Rodney Ascher
Eschewing objectivity, or any real investigation into the phenomena and instead focussing on sharing the experience, The Nightmare is quite possibly the first true horror documentary. Director Rodney Ascher sits down and chats with 8 people, Jeff, Ana, Kate, Korinne, Stephen, Chris, Connie and Forrest, people who suffer from the terrifying phenomena of sleep paralysis. I’ve been…
Hot Docs – The Messenger – Su Rynard
The Messenger is a beautiful, thought-provoking film which takes a look at the rapidly-depleting global population of songbirds, and what that likely means not only to the planet, but to our survival as a species, as well. Director Su Rynard deftly takes us all over the world, speaking with various birders and ornithologists about bird…
Hot Docs 2015: Monty Python – The Meaning of Live – Roger Graf & James Rogan
I came to the Monty Python phenomena in the late 80s, early 90s during my uni days, which is sad as they’d been around since 69, and had basically not done anything together in a long time at that point. But immediately afterwards I was a devout fan, my favorite member of the troupe…
Hot Docs 2015: Possessed by Djinn – Dalia Al Kury
Hot Docs is well underway, and today, I got a look at this intriguing offering, Possessed by Djinn, which screens at the ROM Theatre today at 6:00. Director Al Kury takes us inside the dark superstitious corners of the Islamic faith, that no one seems to talk about, but innumerable people believe. One could…
Hot Docs 2015: Deep Web – Alex Winter
Planetary may have been the most important film at the festival in terms of our species and its relation with our tender planet, but Alex Winter’s documentary, Deep Web, brings to the screen the topical, and argumentative subject of internet privacy. The digital frontier is turning into the latest battleground, a wild west shootout,…
Hot Docs 2015: Journey with Prabhat – Samarth Dixit & Jessica Sadana
Film preservation, and cinematic history are a huge part of Western culture, as we restore, and catalogue our seemingly endless collection of films, so I was rather interested to see how things played out in other countries. Prabhat Studios was a big and well-recognized Indian studio when talkies came along. After that, though it fell…
Hot Docs 2015: Welcome to Leith – Michael Beach Nichols & Chrisopher K. Walker
It will be interesting if this review doesn’t become a tirade, as I’ve never understood racism, and think that those who go around spouting it, are all manner of moronic. So, I settled in to be as objective and open-minded as I could, which proved to be not very. The first time Craig Cobb, and…
