Hot Docs '14: In the Spotlight

[Amir, our Canadian correspondent, is reporting from The Hot Docs Film Festival, the biggest documentary festival in North America currently underway in Toronto.]

 One of the tendencies that festival-goers develop over time is finding connecting threads between films that might otherwise be completely unrelated. This unconscious search for umbrella themes, even if unintended by festival programmers, intensifies when you sit down to write about the films. At first glance, there is little connecting three films about aging Belgian transsexuals, Argentinian civilians on camera, and Turkish-American political pundits. Beneath the surface, though, all deal in some way with a desire for self-expression in the spotlight.

Before the Last Curtain Falls follows a group of gay and transsexual performers who get together in the later years of their lives to put on an avant-garde show called Gardenia. When the film begins in the hauntingly beautiful city of Ghent in Belgium, where the performers hail from, the show has already become a massive international success and it is returning home for one final performance after more than 200 outings. Director Thomas Wallner combines interviews with the cast members with footage of the show to paint a portrait of each of them, drawing on their experiences of sexual identity struggle, social oppression and therapeutic theatre work.

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Hot Docs '14: Actress

[Amir, our Canadian correspondent, is reporting from The Hot Docs Film Festival, the biggest documentary festival in North America currently underway in Toronto.] 

Where does an act end for a performer? What happens if the persona seeps in so deep that the performer can never shake it off? Can an actress adopt the traits of the characters she once embodied so deeply that she permanently remains in their skin? How far can passion for the craft take an artist? These are all questions that Robert Greene’s intelligent, artfully constructed documentary, Actress, poses to the audience in the first few minutes.  

The subject, Brandy Burre, played the part of Theresa D’Agostino, a recurring character over a 15-episode arc in the third and fourth seasons of The Wire. She was never a star, but her future seemed bright, having taken a prominent role in one of television’s best reviewed series...

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Hot Docs Wrap-Up: Favorites and Oscar Prediction

Amir here, to wrap up my coverage of the Hot Docs international documentary film festival. The festival is regarded as TIFF’s younger, less glitzy sister here in Toronto but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an abundance of great films on display.  The real difference is in the pleasure of discovery, since most of the titles come to Hot Docs with very little advance buzz. Coincidentally, though, my favorite film happened to be one of the most anticipated. I still have a couple interviews and screeners but with the festival now over and about 35 films under my belt, it’s as good a time as any to wrap things up. 

Favorites
The audience prize winner was Muscle Shoals, a documentary about the titular town in Alabama that became the spiritual and creative inspiration for many influential musicians of the 20th century. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film. It’s quite entertaining but it owes its prize more to the magical music of the artists it features than the film that encases them.

my favorites and the Oscar hopefuls after the jump...

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Hot Docs: LGBT Films

Amir here, reporting from the Hot Docs documentary festival in Toronto. There are a few films at the festival this year that deal with LGBT issues. Paolo has already reviewed one of them – though I’m using the term “issue” very loosely with regards to that one - but on a more serious note, here are three more documentaries about the gay community.

First up is Valentine Road, which explores the story of a 15 year old student, named Larry King, in Oxnard, California who was fatally shot by a classmate, Brandon McInerney, during school hours for confessing his love for him in front of a group of friends. Larry, a biracial boy who had always shown female tendencies, had begun to dress in girls’ clothing and put on heels and make-up to school. On the face of it, the crime is one born of hatred, homophobia and racism, but director Marta Cunningham isn’t satisfied with such reductive explanations. Her film is a wild ride that smacks the audience right out of their conclusions every time one is apparently reached, digging layer after layer of evidence to uncover the complexity of the case.

Valentine Road spends its entire running time exploring the grey areas of human psyche. It’s a gut-wrenching film that patiently and intelligently unravels the background to the dark events of that fateful February 2008 day [more...]

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Interview: Steve Hoover, Director of Oscar-Buzzing "Blood Brother"

Amir here. When Steve Hoover's debut Blood Brother, won both the audience and jury prizes at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it automatically became one of my most anticipated documentaries of the year. Lucky for me, I didn't have to wait long to see it. Hot Docs brought it to Toronto. Having now seen the film twice, crying through and laughing with it both times, I am confident this is one of the year's best films and deserves all the plaudits that will come its way.

a scene from Blood Brother

Blood Brother is a personal close-up of the director's best friend, Rocky - affectionately referred to by Indian children as "Rockyanna" - who has spent the past few years living in India in an orphanage where HIV-positive children and women are cared for. It is a character study of a man whose strength, humility and grace are unparalleled. Needless to say, the environment of the film is absolutely heartbreaking, particularly at the climax where we follow the story of a young boy named Surya and his experience with AIDS. What I didn't expect, however, was to leave the film filled not with sadness, but with joy and a new found appreciation for every little moment of my life. Hoover's film is anything but a tear-jerker. It maintains a fine balance between "extreme joy and extreme pain", as he put it, and in that balance finds a way straight to our hearts. 

On the occasion of Blood Brother's Hot Docs premiere, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Steve Hoover for a chat. Understandably, most of you haven't had the chance to see it yet and the intimate details of the films discussed here probably won't mean as much to you as they do to me, but this film is an absolute must-watch. I hope you'll seek it out and check back on this interview again then. 

AMIR: I’ll admit upfront that I’m a bit jealous of you, both because you’ve made such a wonderful film at such a young age and because you get to be friends with Rocky.

STEVE HOOVER: Thanks! You know, I’m 30. You still have a few years to get here.

AMIR: I’m not optimistic about my chances! But let’s get to your story. I want to ask you a bit about your relationship with Rocky prior to the film...

Steve Hoover (director) and his best friend Rocky (subject) in "Blood Brother"

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