Movie history, Hollywood dreams, conspiracies, finger-pointing, millions of dollars, back-stabbing, and the most iconic items in cinema history, Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz are the topics up for perusal in White’s documentary, The Slippers. Having its Canadian Premiere this afternoon at the Lightbox at 3:15pm, the film delves into the world…
Tag: lightbox
Hot Docs 2016: Chatting with The League of Exotique Dancers
The Hot Docs Film Festival gets underway today, and it’s opening night film features some amazing women. Sue and I got to sit down and chat with three of them, the film’s director, Rama Rau as well as burlesque legends, Camille 2000 and Judith Stein. We chatted about the film, feminism, burlesque, stripping, stage…
Theeb (2014) – Naji Abu Nowar
Opening today at the Lightbox here in Toronto, as well as Vancouver and Calgary, with additional locations to follow on December 18, is the latest work from award-winning director Naji Abu Nowar. Shot in Jordan, and being submitted as their official Oscar Entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2016 Academy Awards, comes this…
Best of Enemies (2015) – Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon
It’s documentaries like this that illustrate to me how much I have grown as a film buff, and one interested in political subjects as well. Opening today at the Lightbox, as well as other select theatres worldwide, is this fantastic documentary about the 10 televised debates between socialite and conservative media man, William F….
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 2015: (T)error – David Felix Sutcliffe and Lyric R. Cabral
Screening tonight at the Lightbox at 9:45pm is this thriller of a documentary, that pulls the curtain back from the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts within the continental United States and the revelation that it isn’t all as above-board and by the book as the public would like to believe. Saeed, alias Shariff, an ex-con has been working…
Hot Docs 2015: Raiders! – Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen
Screening today at the Hart House theatre at 9:30 is a documentary that completely encapsulated my youth and filled me with awe, and a fire to create. Back in 1981, a film came along that changed many a young viewer, myself included, Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. It affected a number of…
Hot Docs 2015: Chuck Norris Vs Communism – Ilinca Calugareanu
Screening today at the Hart House theatre at 9:30pm is this masterful, and highly enjoyable documentary that plays like a Cold War thriller. The year is 1985. The place, Romania, a country under strict control by its socialist/communist government, there’s one television channel for the nation, and it broadcasts nothing but state propaganda. The…
Italian Contemporary Film Festival 2014: The First Snowfall (Andrea Segre)
Screening this evening at 6:30 at the Lightbox is this gentle drama filmed on location in gorgeous Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy. Dani (Jean-Christope Folly) is a refugee from Togo, flawed and broken, he is trying to hold his own life together, and cannot even bear to look at his baby daughter, because all he sees…
ICFF – Italian Contemporary Film Festival 2014
Toronto is a truly fortunate when it comes to the film industry. There are times when it seems you can’t turn around in this city without striding onto a film location, or finding out there is a film festival of some for or another being held. I LOVE IT! Starting today and running through to…
The Mind Reels 