Hot Docs: Our Nixon – Penny Lane

Oh Mr. Nixon. Last night the Royal screened Our Mr. Nixon by Penny Lane, and it proved to be an entertaining, occasionally angering, and often humorous look at one of the most infamous of all American presidents. After the Watergate scandal the federal government seized over 500 reels of super8 film and kept it locked away for…

Hot Docs: The Ghosts In Our Machine – Liz Marshall

  Jo-Anne McArthur is a talented and passionate photographer with a determination and drive rarely seen in people at all, let alone in someone so young.  McArthur is also an activist, and uses her photographic skills to document and share her empathetic view of animals in captivity.  From the appalling conditions of slaughterhouses and factory…

Hot Docs: The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear – Tinatin Gurchiani

  The best documentaries can amaze and move you, and some leave you in stunned silence at the beauty of what you have just seen. Tinatin Gurchiani’s The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear does all of these things. Halfway through this feature I realized exactly what it was. It’s your grandmother’s patchwork quilt, some pieces…

Hot Docs: Last Woman Standing – Lorraine Price and Juliet Lammers

The film opens with three important facts. Women’s Boxing has been added as an official medal event at the 2012 Olympics for the first time in history. The world’s two best female boxers reside in Canada. Only one can be selected to compete for Olympic gold. All that in itself would make for a captivating…

Hot Docs: William and the Windmill – Ben Nabors

  Hot Docs screened this engaging film last night at the Scotiabank theater. William Kamkwamba is a young, pensive, and protective man. He made waves on the world stage when he appeared on TED Talks, and we all learned how this young man was forced to drop out of high school in his Malawian village…

Hot Docs: Expedition To The End of the World – Daniel Dencik

My first Hot Docs film of 2013 was a beautiful Danish/English piece about a group of artists and scientists who get to explore an area of north-eastern Greenland, a location usually inaccessible due to ice and glaciers, but with global warming, they have a window of time that will allow them to see sights rarely seen by man. I…

Bermuda International Film Festival – The Attack – Ziad Doueiri

The Bermuda International Film Festival screened The Attack last night, a gripping drama about a Palestinian doctor working in Israel. Dr. Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman) is an Arab working in a Jewish world, he’s a prominent and successful surgeon, has a beautiful wife, and friends. But when a suicide bomb claims the lives of 17…

Bermuda International Film Festival – The Network – Eva Orner

Screening last night at the Liberty Theater (seat A8 yet again) for the Bermuda International Film Festival was a brilliant documentary that had only screened at SXSW previously. The Network follows the first media group blossoming and developing during the continued growing pains that fill its home country, Afghanistan. The Mohseni family returned to their…