Director Alison Rose, second from right, and her astronomer friends take a break at the Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah.
Majestic music, monumental landscapes, mighty telescopes, and millions and millions of stars and galaxies! Billions, actually, but I was enjoying the alliteration.
You will find those things and more in the documentary film Star*Men. It’s a real treat. In addition to the sound and images mentioned above, you get human interest stories with historical significance.
The 1957 launch of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik in 1957 caused serious alarm in the West. The other side in the Cold War had better technology – what might they do with it? There must have been some wounded pride, too, because Sputnik was right up there in the night sky for anyone to see.
The U.S. did not have enough experts of its own and recruited scientists from all over the world to help it compete in this “Space Race.” The “star men” of the film’s title are Roger Griffin, Donald Lynden-Bell, Wal Sargent and Nick Woolf, British astronomers who were hired to work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. As they explain, this was wonderful in so many ways. At that time there was little work in the U.K. for people with degrees in astronomy. They could leave the class system and the U.K. weather behind for sunny skies and open roads.
Photo taken by Roger Griffin in 1960 show his fellow astronomers at a their U.S. campsite with a large English flag. After they noticed the American fondness for their flag, they decided to take lots of photos with their own.
All four made important discoveries in astronomy during their working lives. In time two returned to the U.K. and two found other jobs in the U.S. Beside explaining their accomplishments, director Alison Rose takes us along when the four have a reunion, 50 years after their arrival in California, that includes much fascinating talk and some very strenuous hiking, including a visit to the Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah. And they wear huge backpacks while doing it, too! The cinematography of Star*Men is exceptional – natural landscapes and the views of star galaxies and nebulae are stunning. The music is great, too. Director Alison Rose will attend the screening and answer questions afterwards.
The Very Large Array, an astronomical radio observatory in New Mexico. Do they look like giant ears to you? (Malcolm Park photo from Star*Men web site.
Star*Men
Directed by Alison Rose
Country: Canada
Year: 2015
Language : English
Runtime: 88 min
Production : Alison Rose
Cinematography : Daniel Grant
Editing: Dave Kazala
Sound: Ken Myhr, Daniel Pellerin, Peter Sawade
Contact: Alison Rose
aer@inigofilms.com Star*Men, Monday, Nov. 16, 2015, 6 p.m.
Cinémathèque Québécoise – Salle Claude-Jutra, 335 de Maisonneuve Blvd E.
RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal) runs from Nov. 12-22, 2015. Visit the web site ridm.qc.ca for more information.
Kang Gye-yeol, left, is 89 and her husband, Jo Byeong-man is 98. They just might be the cutest couple you have ever seen. You can see them in the Korean documentary film My Love, Don’t Cross That River
My Love, Don’t Cross That River is a portrait of a marriage. Jo Byeong-man is 98 and Kang Gye-yeol and is 89. They have been together for 75 years. Pretty amazing, right?
Director Jin Mo-young records their lives for 15 months, as they discuss their past, clean up around their rural home, prepare meals and take walks. They are slow walks, to be sure, but they can still move, and in one scene Jo Byeong-man carries an impressively large load of firewood on his back.
Many of their walks are taken hand in hand and that’s how they fall asleep each night, too. They are always seen in traditional Korean clothes, usually in matching colours – bright, beautiful colours. Were they on their best sartorial behaviour for the full 15 months, or is that just the way they like to dress? I’m going to assume the latter.
While you’ll hear the occasional comment like “people get old, you can’t do anything about it,” they are remarkably upbeat. They’re playful, too, like children, newlyweds, or the cute little puppies that arrive in the fullness of time (after the pastor’s dog pay a visit to their own pooch.)
Jo presents his wife with a little bouquet of flowers and she accepts them happily, rubbing them on her face and his. They throw autumn leave at each other, sample the seasons first snowfall (then play with that, too).
After all these years, he still appreciates her cooking: “He’s never said it isn’t good. . .he eats a lot and then says ‘what a great meal.’ ” Actually, Kang Gye-yeol seems to have more energy (or patience) for food preparation than I do!
Children and grandchildren come to visit, bring gifts and pay their respects on New Year’s Day and Kang Gye-yeol’s birthday. Presumably they live far away, because we don’t see them much, apart from those days. I was uncomfortable watching a nasty fight between two siblings; it’s a harsh contrast to the warm affection that the two love birds share and it leaves them in tears.
Even at the beginning of the film, Jo Byeong-man coughs frequently and things just get worse as time goes on. Sometimes his cough keeps him awake at night. When they take their walks he has to stop more often to rest. Do you see where this is going? Kang Gye-yeol asks her husband to hang on a little longer, but at the same time, she starts burning some of his beautiful, colourful clothes so that he will have things to wear in the afterlife.
My Love, Don’t Cross That River was a big hit at the Korean box office, outselling many U.S. hits in the first weeks it was in cinemas. So far it is Korea’s most popular homegrown documentary. (Old Partner, about a man his ox and his wife, pretty much in that order, holds the No. 2 spot. The AmerAsia Film Festival showed Old Partner in Montreal in 2011. Read my review Old Partner for the Montreal Gazette here. )
My Love, Don’t Cross That River
Directed by Jin Mo-young
Country : South Korea
Year : 2014
Language : Korean
Subtitles : French, English
Runtime : 86 min
Production : Kyungsoo Han
Cinematography : Moyoung Jin
Editing : Zinsik Hyun
Sound : Minu Jung
Contact: Maëlle Guenegues
Cat & Docs
Maelle@Catndocs.Com
Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, 4:15
Cinéma Du Parc 1, 3575 Park
Spending more than two hours watching the goings on in Bois de Vincennes of Paris? Wouldn’t that be a bit much? The time passed relatively quickly, actually. The film opens with shots of a park that’s so expansive it looks like part of the countryside. Once upon a time it was, but then Paris grew around it. Other scenes will show that there are apartment buildings close to the edge of the park and that sometimes you can hear the rumble of traffic even if you can’t see it.
There are many reasons to visit the park: to exercise, to relax, to commune with nature, to work, officially or unofficially. Some people set up tents and live in the park in the warmer months.
Director Claire Simon shows us people who do those things; sometimes she talks with them, other times she observes from a distance. I was curious about the man who filled dozens of plastic water bottles from a fountain while thirsty joggers waited for their turn to drink. What was he going to do with them? Sell them to unsuspecting people? Who knows?
A man paints in nature, though not from nature, in a scene from the French documentary film The Woods Dreams Are Made Of (Le Bois Dont Les Rves Sont Faits).
Some guys who catch a large carp spend a long time examining it; distraught spectators tell them they’re being cruel and urge them to put it back in the water. A man paints outdoors, though he does not paint what he sees. A gay man explains cruising etiquette and laments the advent of smartphone apps; he doesn’t meet as many men in the woods as he used to do.
Workers who clean up the fallen leaves of autumn use horse-drawn wagons to reach places to narrow for trucks. Other employees look more bureaucratic, taking notes on their clipboards, discussing the possibility of redirecting some of the decorative waterways. Yet others, wearing hazmat suits, clear away abandoned tents and other possessions.
In the late 1960s, philosopher Gilles Deleuze was one the professors at an experimental university in the woods; as if in a dream, his daughter shows where the classes took place. It feels like being inside a ghost story.
Claire Simon spent one year shooting the film; if that year was typical, Paris does not get much snow at all – it barely made an appearance.
The Woods Dreams Are Made Of (Le Bois Dont Les Rêves Sont Faits)
Country : France, Switzerland
Year : 2015
Language : French
Subtitles : English
Runtime : 144 min
Production : Jean-Luc Ormières
Cinematography : Claire Simon
Editing : Luc Forveille
Sound : Olivier Hespel, François Musy, Gabriel Hafner
Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, 2:30 p.m., Salle Claude-Jutra, Cinémathèque Québécoise, 335 de Maisonneuve Blvd E.
RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal) runs from Nov. 12-22, 2015. Visit the web site ridm.qc.ca for more information.
Omar Khadr, centre, talks to members of the media outside the Edmonton home of his lawyer Dennis Edney.
The fine Canadian documentary Guantanamo’s Child Omar Khadr is many things at once – chilling, heartbreaking and heartwarming; a record of shameful behaviour but also one of kindness and dedication; and a testimony to the resilience of the human body and spirit.
Omar Khadr was only 15 years old when he was gravely injured in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. That made him a child soldier by definition, though it did not save him from being accused of murder and being imprisoned for 12 years. (A photograph taken after the battle shows gaping holes in his chest; I was amazed that he survived at all.)
In the film, Khadr himself describes the torture and ill treatment he suffered at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and later at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His account is backed by former prisoners and the former military men who witnessed or delivered this torture themselves. Treatment and medication were withheld when Khadr would not or could not say what his interrogators wanted to hear, in contravention of the Geneva Convention.
We see videotape of a visit that CSIS investigators made to Guantanamo. Khadr is happy to learn that they are Canadians, you can hear it in his voice – he mistakenly thinks they have come to help him, but then he realizes that’s not the case at all. When he tells them about his wounded arms, one man says “you look fine to me.” This interview was not new to me, it’s part of the film You Don’t like the Truth: Four Days Inside Guantanamo, but watching it still makes me sad and angry. It’s one more lesson to all of us that we can’t necessarily depend on our own government to look out for our interests, even though it is legally and morally obliged to do so.
Omar Khadr as a teenager.
Those are some of the shameful things in Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr. Now for the positive side.
Edmonton lawyer Dennis Edney spent years representing Khadr and fighting for his release. It took four years of effort before he was even allowed to meet with Khadr. Others might have given up long before then. Edney has won many awards for his work, and probably deserves many more. Khadr was returned to Canada in September, 2012, and sent to prison. In May, 2015, he was released on parole into Edney’s custody. He lives with Edney and Edney’s wife Patricia, in their Edmonton home. Khadr says that over time, their relationship has changed from a lawyer-client one to a father-son one. It’s lovely to see the way they interact with each other. Edney says he looks forward to seeing Khadr graduate from university. He wipes away tears describing prison visits with Khadr at Guantanamo, when he tried to reassure him that eventually he would be released and that they would go camping and fishing together in Alberta. Edney wanted to show Khadr photos or maps of the places they would go, but even that was not allowed.
Despite the treatment he received, Khadr is amazingly, remarkably calm. (he could probably write a self-help book about surviving under intense pressure.) He takes obvious joy in just breathing fresh air, and being able to look up at the sky. He talks of his decision, while still in Guantánamo, not to allow the people who were mistreating him to take up too much space in his head. I wonder how many of us could do the same? Khadr wants the chance to prove to former prime minister Stephen Harper, and other Canadians, that he is not the man they think he is.
Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr is co-directed by Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shepherd and Patrick Reed. Shepherd followed the case for years and also wrote a book, Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr, which was published in 2010. Reed’s previous films include Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children (2012), which is about former General Roméo Dallaire and his campaign to end the use of child soldiers.
Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr (click on the film’s name to be taken to the RIDM synopsis)
Directed by Patrick Reed Michelle Shephard
Country : Canada
Year : 2015
Language : English, Arabic
Subtitles : English
Runtime : 80 min.
Production : Peter Raymont
Cinematography : John Westheuser
Editing : Cathy Gulkin
Sound : Downy Karvonen, Sanjay Mehta, Peter Sawade
Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015, 6 p.m. Theatre J.A. De Sève, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal) runs from Nov. 12-22, 2015. Visit the web site ridm.qc.ca for more information.
Members of the band Songhoy Blues are among the musicians who appear in the documentary film They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile.
They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile is a documentary about the difficulties faced by residents of northern Mali, especially the musicians, after a Tuareg rebellion in 2012 was hijacked by Islamist forces. Mosques, tombs, libraries, and ancient manuscripts were destroyed. The imposition of sharia law meant veils for women, amputated limbs for convicted thieves and a ban on all music – even ringtones on cellphones. Musicians fled cities like Gao and Timbuktu in fear for their lives. Among those who appear in the film, some went to Bamako, in Mali’s south, while others went to refugee camps in Burkina Faso.
Malian musician Fadimata Walett Oumar, who is nicknamed Disco, right, and her husband Hassan (Jimmy) Mehdi, in a scene from the documentary film They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile. The film is being shown at RIDM, Montreal’s documentary film festival.
The people we meet include established stars Khaira Arby and Fadimata Walett Oumar (nicknamed Disco, because she was a big Madonna fan in her younger days). Disco is a longstanding member of the group Tartit, though it is not named until near the end of the film. She is also married to a high-ranking Malian soldier who changes allegiance more than once, which makes their lives somewhat complicated. The film also serves as a promotional vehicle for a younger band called Songhoy Blues, and includes footage from their U.K. tour. (Earlier this year, they toured North America, making stops at SXSW and in Toronto, too.) You can find music by Khaira Arby, Tartit and Songhoy Blues on iTunes; click on their names to go there. The film’s soundtrack will be released, but sadly, it isn’t ready yet. If you like what you heard in the film, check out Tinariwen, as well.
Khaira Arby is among the Malian musicians who appear in the documentary film They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile.
Most of us will never see the wonders of Timbuktu in person, so I appreciated glimpses of them in the film. I suspect that some scenes were shot before the widespread destruction and that many of those intriguing structures no longer exist.
At 100 minutes, the film seems stretched out. I expected lots of music, since it is about musicians, after all, but got tantalizing snippets instead. There is lots of talking, and some of it is repetitive. Perhaps I am just a victim of my own expectations – the film has many positive reviews on the Internet. Sample quote from a review in the Austin Chronicle:
“Social journalism of the highest order, They Will Have to Kill Us First is by turns horrific and front-loaded with sonic heroism. It’s also one of the most vibrantly shot and masterfully edited documentaries of this or any other SXSW year.”
Full disclosure, I did watch They Will Have To Kill Us First at home via an online screener, which must have reduced its power considerably.
(Justified) spoiler: The film ends with a joyous outdoor concert in Timbuktu, with lots of happy women and children among the audience. They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile(Click on the film’s name to read more about it on the RIDM web site.)
They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile
Country : Mali, United Kingdom
Year : 2015
Language : English, Bambara, French, Songhay
Subtitles : English
Runtime : 100 min
Production : Kat Amara Korba, Sarah Mosses, Johanna Schwartz, John Schwartz
Cinematography : Karelle Walker
Editing : Andrea Carnevali, Guy Creasey
Sound : Phitz Hearne
RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal) runs from Nov. 12-22, 2015. Visit the web site ridm.qc.ca for more information about the festival.
(T)error is a documentary that shows how the FBI keeps itself in business by using informers and infiltrators to create “terrorists” it can then arrest. Neat trick, huh? This has been going on for decades, but things were stepped uo considerably after 9/11. Montrealers, I suggest that you watch this film tonight, at 7, at Concordia University. Friends in other cities, I hope that you have a chance to see it, too.
There are many positive reviews of (Terror on the Internet, one is by Peter Debruge of Variety. It begins with this: “A vital expose of American law enforcement carried out with almost reckless zeal, Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s “(T)error” pushes the boundaries of documentary ethics, plunging itself into the middle of an active FBI sting operation while playing both sides in an attempt to understand — and by extension, to reveal — how the U.S. government identifies and apprehends terror suspects.”
Debruge’s review ends this way: “The FBI may seem all-powerful and intimidating, but by focusing on an imperfect in-the-trenches personality like (informant Saeed) Torres, who does it for the money at great cost to his own conscience, the film stresses just how fallible the system is — and the urgent need to police it more closely.”
The headline on Alan Scherstuhl’s review for the Village Voice says that the films is “Absurd And Revealing.” Yessiree! He goes on to say: “The war on terror bumbles home in Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s amusing and dismaying portrait of incompetence and entrapment. Former Black Panther Saeed “Shariff” Torres has been pressed into service as an FBI informant, tasked with cozying up to American Muslims the Bureau finds suspicious — and then doing whatever he can to confirm his overseers’ assumptions. This time, the 63-year-old is dispatched to Pittsburgh to investigate Khalifa al-Akili, a convert Torres doesn’t believe is a threat: ‘That dude ain’t gonna bust a grape.’ ”
“Soon things go from sadly dumb to dizzyingly absurd, a surveillance-age roundelay. . . Inevitably, this tense comedy dips into tragedy, with our fearful intelligence agencies getting everything wrong and the filmmakers using their rare access to chart each mistake as it happens.” (T)error will be shown at 7 p.m., Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, in Room H-110 of the Hall Building at Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. It’s a pay-what-you-can event, with suggested amounts ranging from $5 to $10.
(T)error was directed by David Felix Sutcliffe and Lyric R Cabral. Sutcliffe will answer questions afterwards, via Skype, or something like it. I already have several in mind!
Poster for the documentary film The Creeping Garden. Note the reference to Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival in the upper left hand corner.
The documentary film The Creeping Garden was one of the sold-out hits of the 2014 Fantasia Film Festival. Now the film is in limited release in Europe and North America, and Montrealers can watch it again, or for the first time, at the Dollar Cinema.
I saw and enjoyed The Creeping Garden at Fantasia, and reviewed it for the Montreal Gazette. Here are the first few paragraphs of my review:
“Slime mould – each word is bad enough by itself, but the effect is much worse in combination – eww, ick, gross! Slime mould sounds dangerous AND disgusting. Parents might panic if slime mould were found in their child’s school; potential buyers would refuse a home with slime mould in it, and on top of that, it sounds as slippery as the proverbial banana peel.
“And yet, after watching the documentary film The Creeping Garden (which had its world premiere at Fantasia) I know that it is not dangerous, and I do believe that an enterprising person could turn slime mould into the next chia pet, or a modern-day version of “sea monkeys.” Somewhere, an MBA class might be working on such a project right now. If so, the first order of the day would have to be – a name change.
Transforming plasmodium., looking pretty and colourful. Credit: Steven L. Stephenson (Part of a New York Times slide show “Beauty and the Blob.”)
“Using beautiful, often hypnotic images, and the words of artists and scientists (amateur and professional), The Creeping Garden introduces us to this fascinating . . . entity. Slime mould was once thought to be a plant at one stage of its existence and an animal at another, because of its ability to move, albeit slowly. (It moves slower than the slowest snail; you need time-lapse photography to see it.) For some time, slime mould was classified as a fungus, but that designation was later changed, too.
“Scientists estimate that slime mould could be as much as 600-million years old.There are more than 1,000 varieties of slime mould out there. It can look like a delicate fern, little yellow balls, grains of translucent rice, chopped up spaghetti, or a meandering river, seen from above. On the other hand, one kind goes by the common name of Dog Vomit, for reasons that are quite obvious when you look at it.
“Sometimes the film shows us slime mould as the naked eye would see it, other times we see it magnified through a high-powered microscope.
“Slime mould has attracted many fans, and they come in many varieties,too. There are those who study it in their spare time just for the joy of discovery, others who make art with it (images or music) yet others who are using it to solve real-world problems, such as the quickest way to get to a fire exit in a building with a complicated layout.”
Metatrichia vesparia, looking quite weird! Credit: Steven L. Stephenson (Part of a New York Times slide show “Beauty and the Blob.”)
If you want a very quiet pet, you can order your own slime mould kit from the Carolina Biological Supply Company. The Creeping Garden is co-directed by Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp. It’s 81 minutes long and can be seen at the Dollar Cinema, 6900 Décarie Square, in Montreal, until Nov. 12, 2015. It’s one of the cinema’s “Marquee” presentations, which means that tickets actually cost $5. Quite a good deal, really!
Public transit users can get to the Dollar Cinema via the Namur metro, via bus lines 17, 160, 161, and 166.
An image from Guy Maddin’s film Bring Me The Head of Tim Horton, one of many documentaries on the RIDM program.
Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton – as a film title, it’s quite arresting, don’t you think? It’s one of the 144 films that will be shown at RIDM, Montreal’s documentary film festival. Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal, the festival’s full name, will run from Nov. 12 to Nov. 22, 2015, at several venues in downtown Montreal, many of them conveniently located near metro stations.
The film clip from Bring Me the Head that we saw at the RIDM press conference was hilarious. The 32-minute production from Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson is a (sort of) “making of” about Hyena Road, a war film by Paul Gross. The RIDM synopsis says the film “is possibly the wildest making-of movie of all time.” I don’t doubt that for one minute!
While we’re on the subject of Guy Maddin, the festival will also show The 1000 Eyes Of Dr. Maddin in which French filmmaker Yves Montmayeur observed Maddin while he made his latest feature, The Forbidden Room, which was the closing film at the recent Festival du nouveau cinéma.
Speaking of arresting film titles, how about Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow and All Music Has Disappeared and They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile. While the first one sounds like a scary thought, it’s more about redefining our relationship to music, but the second is about the all-too-real dangers of being a musician in Mali.
RIDM will show 144 films from 42 countries; subjects include austerity and the economy, surveillance, wars and conflicts, and their effect on soldiers and civilians alike, family relationships, or the lack thereof (women who are childless by choice), work, or the lack thereof, astronomy, the environment, politics, music and architecture. Many films combine several of those elements. We might recognize our own situations in one of the 49 short and feature films from Quebec.
The usual suspects: In regard to directors, Chantal Akerman, Patricio Guzman, Albert Maysles, Ulrich Seidl and Frederick Wiseman, are just a few of the names that might ring a bell.
An image from the film L.A. Plays Itself, by Thom Andersen.
A Thom Andersen retrospective will give Montrealers a chance to see (or re-see) his wonderful, 170-minute film Los Angeles Plays Itselfalong with seven other Andersen works of various lengths, with the shortest and earliest being Olivia’s Place, a six-minute film about a Hollywood cafe, that was made in 1966. Thom Andersen
will give a free talk on Film, Architecture and the City at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (1920 Baile St.) at 3 p.m, on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015.
The well-written synopses in the RIDM catalogue make everything sound wonderful, but below are just a few of the films I’m especially looking forward to (besides the ones already mentioned above). Clicking on the name of the film will take you to the RIDM web site for more information about it.
Le Bouton De Nacre: “A new philosophical essay by Patricio Guzmán, exploring Chile’s painful past using water as a metaphor. A majestic and heartbreaking tribute.” I thought Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light, a film about memory, astronomy, the desert and the dead and disappeared of Chile, was fantastic, so I must see Le Bouton De Nacre.
Another film with a Chilean connection is Beyond My Grandfather Allende (Allende Mi Abuelo Allende)by Marcia Tambutti Allende. The director is the granddaughter of Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown on the first infamous 911, Sept. 11, 1973. Perhaps The Place, about a meteorological observatory in Poland, might be a little bit like Nostalgia for the Light. It sounds interestring, at any rate. Star*Men is about astronomers from the U.K. who went to work in the U.S. during the Cold War and the space race.
Oncle Bernard – L’anti-Leçon D’économie is about Bernard Maris, who was one of the people killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo earlier this year. “A fascinating and almost unedited interview with the late economic analyst for Charlie Hebdo, a tireless debunker of the myths of an ever more obscure market economy.” The film is from Richard Brouillette, who made the very long but totally engrossing film L’encerclement – La démocratie dans les rets du néolibéralisme (Encirclement – Neo-Liberalism Ensnares Democracy).
Llévate mis amores (All of Me) is about Mexican women who feed the migrants who are their way to the U.S. border; Le Divan du monde is about a psychiatrist in Strasbourg, France who helps many refugees and immigrants. “The therapy sessions of an atypical psychiatrist who sees therapy as humanist and political work.”
Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr. I’ve been following the story of Omar Khadr for a longtime, so naturally, I want to see the latest installment. In 2002, 15-year-old Khadr, a Canadian citizen who had been taken to Afghanistan by his father, was arrested for the death of a U.S. soldier there. Khadr ended up in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Successive Canadian governments abandoned their legal and moral duties and did little or nothing to help him. Khadr did receive support from lawyers, journalists, filmmakers, members of Amnesty International and citizens of the world. He’s now out on parole and living in the Edmonton home of his lawyer. (Toronto) “journalist Michelle Shephard and filmmaker Patrick Reed recount the story in all its complexity, analysing the U.S. government’s position and Canada’s non-intervention. . . “the film is the first time we hear Omar Khadr speak at length, after so many years of being forced to remain silent while others discussed him.”
On a more local front, Métro gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Montreal’s subway network; it was made by Nadine Gomez (Le Horse Palace). Police Académie, by Mélissa Beaudet, follows the training of three recruits (the English title is Cop Class). Pouding Chômeurs looks at how changes to the unemployment insurance program have caused hardships for many.
There will be discussions, interactive events, installations, expositions, and nine (!) parties, including a karaoke night, during the festival. You can find links to those RIDM events here.
The films mentioned above are just a teeny, tiny sampling of the films on the RIDM schedule. You can read about all of the films, watch trailers for many and buy tickets on the festival’s very comprehensive web site, ridm.qc.ca.
RIDM takes place Nov. 12 to Nov. 22, 2015 in Montreal.
An image from the Japanese animated film Belladonna of Sadness.
The schedule for Sunday Oct. 18, 2015, the last day of the festival du nouveau cinéma includes two animated features that couldn’t be more different.
A recent film, Cafard, is about an elite Belgian armoured division in World War I. Read about Cafard here.
Cafard will be shown at 5 p.m. at the Phi Centre, 407 St. Pierre, in Old Montreal.
The Japanese film, Belladonna of Sadness, was made in 19 but never released in North America. It’s the story of a woman in medieval France who is falsely accused of being a witch. After much mistreatment by her fellow villagers, she does become one eventually, though, giving herself over to . . .the Devil!
Belladonna of Sadness of full of remarkable, flowing imagery, much, though by no means all, of a sexual nature. Some seem inspired by Tarot cards, while others reminded me of the models and actresses of the day. Read more about Belladonna of Sadness here.
Belladona of Sadness will be shown at 7 pm at Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Ave du Parc.
Wu Wei, standing, centre rear, with his fellow punk musicians outside his bar in Wuhan, China. Note the bagpipes! The history of Chinese punk music is explored in the documentary Never Release My Fist, by Shuibo Wang.
If you like punk music, China, or documentary films, then Never Release My Fist is especially for you. But really, I think this film would appeal to any living, breathing person with an interest in his or her fellow human beings, and how they live their lives, struggle to survive, and try to express themselves. I liked it a lot; if I didn’t have another musical commitment today, I would watch it again!
Montreal documentary filmmaker Shuibo Wang received an Oscar nomination for his NFB short, Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square. In Never Release My Fist he explores the world of Chinese punk, with particular attention paid to Wu Wei, who is often described as the father of Chinese punk. He formed his band SMZB in 1996.
Wu Wei describes himself as unemployed and aimless in the first few years after he finished high school, but he now comes across as very thoughtful and articulate man, distressed by the politics and rampant consumer culture in China. All the same, his lyrics sound quite poetic.
Wu Wei is from the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. It’s a city of 10 million people known for heavy industry but it also has several universities, with as many as one million students (potential fans! Though director Wang says that most young Chinese prefer pop music).
While he benefited from some time in Beijing, Wuhan is where Wu Wei played most of his music, and it became the punk hotspot of China.
Musicians everywhere have tough lives, but the punks of Wuhan had little money to buy instruments, few places to play, and they faced government censorship as well. Text messages and email were intercepted.
An image from Never Release My Fist, a documentary film about punk rock in China. It’s part of the lineup at the Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal.
Wu Wei might be the main star of the film but his bandmates, former bandmates and fellow punk musicians get their share of screen time. Punk in Wuhan was not just a guy thing, either. Women played a big part, too. We see their performances and they share their sometimes harrowing stories and as well.
At some point SMZB included bagpipes and a violin to some songs, a very interesting touch! And Hou Hsiao Hsien uses bagpipes in the closing credits of The Assassin. Are bagpipes a thing in China now?
Filmmaker Shuibo Wang was able to use lots of great vintage footage that was shot before he ever met the musicians. He will attend the screening and answer questions after the film.
Festival du nouveau cinema programmer Julien Fonfrede, left, and Montreal director Shuibo Wang. (Photo copyright Maryse Boyce)
Never Release My Fist
Directed by Shuibo Wang
China, Canada | 87 minutes | 2015, in Cantonese with English subtitles
Saturday, Oct.17, 2015, 17:00
Program #283
Cinéma du Parc 2, 3575 Ave. du Parc
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