Hot Docs 2012 in Review

This year's festival was yet another resounding success for Hot Docs aficionados.  I saw over a dozen films and have friends who saw even more.  All but one of the feature length films I saw were very good.  Compared to other years, where my picks had ended up being mostly quite political, this year they leaned toward gentle and heartwarming, with Brooklyn Castle and G-Dog being my favourites.  World Before Her was another fabourite and they were all on the Top Ten list of audience favourites.  The winner of the People's Choice award was Chasing Ice.  It was a National Geographic photographers documentary on the disappearing ice in the Arctic.  Alas, I didn't even read the details because I assumed it was about hockey!  My bad.

Some stats about the festival:

• 11 days
• 165,000 audience
• 395 screenings of 189 films
• 17 theatres across Toronto, plus two films simulcast to 37 theatres across Canada
• 143 films went rush
• nearly 200 film makers and film subjects participated in Q&A

Great job by the Hot Docs team.

The refurbished Bloor Cinema was a delightful place to see a movie and was filled to its capacity of 727 seats for all the films I attended there.  Hot Docs has taken on a major commitment with this theatre and I wish them well in screening great docs throughout the year.  I missed many of the films that made the Audience Favourites list or earned Jury awards, but I hope that some of them might find their way onto the screen at the Bloor.  I've also always yearned for a chance to catch the winners from past years.  I hope the Bloor might be a home to show those films.

Yesterday I attended the second-to-last screening in the Cumberland Theatre, one of the mainstays of the Hot Docs festival.  It's sad to see it go, because while TIFF Lightbox is a fantastic venue, it's not in the wonderful cluster that let film goers walk easily from film to film in the Bloor/Avenue Road area.  It underlines the difficulty in keeping open smaller theatres screening excellent films that aren't necessarily top box-office.  All the more reason to support the Bloor Cinema.

Congratulations to all those at Hot Docs for a great festival.  See you next year.

The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche

My last film at this year's Hot Docs was The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche, a trademark NFB film blending archival footage with reenactment.  I've been interested in de la Roche since living in Lorne Park, where my daughters went to Whiteoaks Public School, on Mazo Crescent and our street Greenoaks was around the corner from Whiteoaks and Jalna Avenue.  Mazo de la Roche had lived in the area briefly but was not forgotten.

Mazo de la Roche

de la Roche is the best-selling Canadian author ever, selling millions of books in multiple languages around the world.  The novels Jalna series and The Whiteoaks of Jalna started the series and de la Roche fed the public's appetite for more books with ten more books. 

Mazo de la Roche was a very private person, not exactly eschewing the spotlight, but revealing little either in interviews or in her vague autobiography.  From the director's comments at the Q&A, it sounds as if this biography was what I would call 'content free'.   Her lifelong companion, Caroline Clement, was an orphaned cousin who had been adopted by her parents at an early age.  Their relationship was characterized as a 'Boston marriage', a term usually applied in the case of lesbian relationships.

McCullin

What is a war photographer?  An intrepid professional who heroically puts himself in harm's way to capture the perfect photo of a conflict situation?  Or a sleazy voyeur addicted to the adventure of war?  In McCullin, we see both sides of Don McCullin, the British war photographer considered to be the best ever.  We view a retrospective of his powerful war photographs and we hear him reflecting on whether he was just a war junkie chasing the adrenalin of being in danger.

What incredible photographs!  The chronicle of the 60-80s: Cyprus, the Congo, the Biafran-Nigerian revolution, Lebanon, Viet Nam, Northern Ireland, Cambodia.  Working for the Sunday Times and its proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, McCullin had the support and freedom to chase the big stories, to be featured in the Sunday Times magazine.  With Murdoch's purchase of the Sunday Times, those days were over as the Sunday Times magazine moved to fluffy lifestyle rather than gritty hard news.  McCullin lost his job.  Like so many people, when the merry-go-round stopped, he questioned his past career, wondering whether he should have helped more often than just recording. He told us how some of the horrific situations had affected him, but he did it in a flat dead voice, betraying no emotion.

G-Dog

Father Greg Boyle, aka G-Dog

"Nothing stops a bullet like a job".  Father Greg Boyle may be a priest but that message is almost like religion to him.  That and the motto on all Homeboy Tshirts "Jobs not Jails".  Boyle, known by the gang-type name G-Dog, knows what he's talking about:  he runs the most successful gang intervention and rehab progrma in the US.  This film shows why he's successful

Personally I think hugs might be as big a part of the formula as jobs.  Father Boyle never saw a person he didn't want to hug.  People join gangs because they're fleeing something, not because they're running toward something.  Homeboy Industries provides a community that they can run to.

 Homeboy operates several businesses which provide jobs for gang members leaving incarceration:

• Homegirl Cafe
• Homeboy Bakery
• Homeboy Silkscreen and Embroidery
• Homeboy Merchandise
• Homeboy Catering

Unlike the rest of the world, having a record is the entrée into this company.  Father boyle visits camps where gang members are incarcerated, and hands out his card, inviting them to come the Homeboy when they leave.  When times are good (i.e. when the donations are flowing in), he greets them with an instant job in one of Homeboy's different businesses.

But Homeboys doesn't just put someone in a job.  They offer job training and experience, and find 'felon-friendly' employers who will employ Homeboy graduates.  They run a charter high school, parenting classes, life classes, art classes and AA meetings.  The tattoo removal service run by volunteer doctors removes 4,000 tattoos a year, because it's very hard to get a job with the extravagant gang tatoos these guys have.  But mostly, Homeboys is a family.  Members of opposing gangs end up working side by side.  They get respect, love, a sense of community and a father figure in Boyle who will never let them down. 


This was a great warm bear hug of a movie. 

The Law In These Parts

In the Palestinian Territories captured by Israel in the 1967 War, justice is still dispensed under the aegis of military law.  Or is it really justice?  That's the question examined by The Law In These Parts.  The film proceeds through a series of interviews with the military judges in charge of the justice system and questions whether this situation, the longest ever time than an occupied area was subject to military law.

Film maker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz joined for the screening.  He expressed, as have many directors I've seen at Hot Docs over the years, how exhilerating it is to walk into a theatre on a weekday afternoon and see a sell-out crowd to watch their movie.  Another film maker this year cautioned against the assumption that this was the golden age of documentaries, though.  He said it was getting harder and harder to get funding to complete a documentary, evidenced by the long list of funder acknowledged in each film.

Indie Game: The Movie

Indie Game: The Movie is, like, fantastic.  Like, I mean, it's really, like, awesome.  Like, I really really, like, enjoyed it.  Like, the characters were totally engaging.  And the narrative line was, like, quick-moving and the production quality was, like, totally sweet.

Yes, indeed this Hot Docs audience was an average of 20 years younger than the typical Hot Docs crowd, and I never heard so many 'likes' from the audience, the movie characters, and film makers. And that was before they started discussing Facebook likes.
 
The film follows the development of three independent game developer teams.  For Jonathan Blow, San Francisco-based creator of Braid, the most successful indie game of 2010, life is good.and he can be philosophical about the meaning of indie game development.  These are people that feel as strongly about their personal creative statement as any musician, author, or artist would feel.

 Edmund McMillen is half of the bi-coastal Team Meat which is creating Super Meat Boy.  Edmund has been drawing since he was a child, mostly dark characters and monsters. We'd have to call him an eccentric character for sure.  The other half of Team Meat is the talented but neurotic programmer Tommy Refenes, nearly suicidal with worry about whether they can meet the deadline, whether the game will be successful.  They do indeed make the deadline.  Tommy goes berserk when the game is not promoted in the XBox Live Arcade.  After several hours delay, the game is finally featured, ecstatic reviews stream in and sales skyrocket, matching first day sales of Braid, the biggest Indie game success story so far. Try multiplying a million copies times $15, and dividing that by two.  Tommy pays off the mortgage for his parents, Edmund's wife gets the hairless cats she's been craving.  Years of sacrifice, and a happy ending.

The most interesting character was Montrealer Phil Fish.  Phil is the developer of Fez.  Phil showed the game in 2007, attracting enormous attention.  However, he was hit with several personal setbacks, split with his original partner, and missed multiple release deadlines.  Phil is living in a pressure cooker to get the game finished.  He arrives in Boston to show off a pre-release version of the game at PAX, a huge gaming show.  But his ex-partner is holding up release until he signs an agreement.  As much as this situation enrages Phil, his main concern is to see if people like the game.   However, the game is crashing due to the last minute changes Phil made the night before.   Finally  Phil gets it working, people love it and Phil heads back to Montreal with renewed determination and near-suicidal insecurity to get the game finished and released.  So ends the movie.  Will he or won't he get it released?

Indie Game: The Movie won a Jury Award at Sundance.  Producer Scott Rubin (producer of The Social Network, Money Ball and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is developing a series based on the film for HBO.  Tonight the movie was live-screened at 40 Cineplex theatres across Canada.  Not bad for first-time film makers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky from Winnipeg!  They had the courage to start the movie after raising only $15,000 on Kickstarter, not nearly enough to complete the movie.  However, they believed in their movie.  After all the gaming industry is bigger than movies of music, and yet this is the first documentary about the games industry from the point of view of game developers.

Pajot and Swirsky were joined on stage by Phil Fish, and we heard the epilogue of his story.  Fez made it to market!  And its reception equalled that of the hugely successful Super Meat Boy.  Moreover, Phil has learned his lesson - he refused to divulge even a shred of detail about his next game.

This film is goingto be released in New York later this month and will be returning to Canada soon after.  Don't miss it!!!

World Before Her

Describing India as a land of contrasts is so cliché.  Yet something becomes cliché because it's true.  World Before Her explores the contrast in the lives of two groups of women.  

On one side are young women at the Miss India pageant.  They see themselves as modern women seizing the opportunities the contest to give them the financial security to take control of their lives.

On the other side are Hindu girls learning to hate Muslims and Christians at the fundamentalist Hindu military-style Durga Vahini  training camps.



Both choices are ugly.  The pageant contestants are relentlessly groomed and forcibly botoxed.  Their bodies are celebrated over their minds.  Yet, they throw themselves into the pageant with passion.  Only a woman of independent means can escape the prison of rigid choices for Indian women and these young women hope to ride their beauty to independence. 

Prasha, the nasty drill sergeant of ambiguous sexuality at the Durga Vahini camp, spouts vitriol against anyone not a Hindu and against Westernization in India - with the Miss India pageant a prime example of such Westernization.  Prasha has suffered at the hands of her father in her strictly Hindu family.  Her father proudly explains that he regularly beats her, and has even burned her with a hot poker.  Yet Prasha defends his right to abuse her, because he gave her gift of life in this nation of rampant female foeticide and infanticide.

 This table (taken from Wikipedia) illustrates Indian demographics, showing the incredible dominance of the Hindus relative to the people they feel threatened by, and also the gender ratios within each religious group.  Presumably the advent of ultrasound explains the continuing decline in the number of females (see the ratios for 0-6 years old).

Table 2: Census information for 2001

Composition	Hindus[23]	Muslims[24]	Christians[25]	Sikhs[26]	Buddhist[27]	Jains[28]	Others1[29]
% total of population 2001	80.5%	13.4%	2.3%	1.9%	0.8%	0.4%	0.6%
10-Yr Growth % (est '91–'01)[30]	20.3%	29.5%	22.6%	18.2%	24.5%	26.0%	103.1%
No. of females/1000 males. (avg. = 944)	935	940	1009	895	955	940	1000
Literacy rate (71.7% for Age 7 & above)[31]	75.5	60.0	90.3	70.4	73.0	95.0	50.0
Work Participation Rate	40.4	31.3	39.7	37.7	40.6	32.9	48.4
Rural sex ratio[30]	944	953	1001	895	958	937	995
Urban sex ratio[30]	922	907	1026	886	944	941	966
Child sex ratio (0–6 yrs)	925	950	964	786	942	870	976

^1 including Bahá'ís, Jews, and Parsis. Tribal Animists (and non religious) are included after 1926 (1931 census onwards)

The Indian government is working to reduce this practice as I described in this post from New Delhi.

The Canadian director Nisha Pahuja worked for two years to gain enough trust to be allowed to film in the Durga Vahini camps; this is the only filming that has been allowed in the camp.  Watching these naive girls from Indian villages being fed such venomous propaganda, and being trained to use rifles, to be ready for the moment when they might have to defend Hinduism, was chilling.   This experience, like being in the pageant, made them feel strong and confident.

Four years in the making, this is an excellent movie, winner of the Best Film award at last week's Tribeca Film Festival.   I'm sure it will do well here in the Hot Docs audience ratings.

 
World Before Her was paired with a short film, Durga, by another Canadian director, Paramita Nath, which explored the dichotomy between the reverence for the goddess Durga and the desperate lives of many Indian women.  It showed dramatic footage of the celebrations of the festival of Durga, juxtaposed against the hard facts that two thirds of Indian women suffer domestic violence in their marriages.  Another interesting take on the same theme.

Brooklyn Castle

Oh what a lovely movie!  If you can score a ticket to the one Hot Docs viewing left of this movie - do it!


Brooklyn Castle is everything you want in a documentary.  It's a heartwarming story about a remarkable group of kids at a remarkable school IS 318 in Brooklyn.  Huge trophies and banners decorate the halls of this school.  Are they sports banners?  No.  At this school, they play chess.  And do they ever play chess!   A week ago this middle school just won the US Chess Federation National High School championships - first middle school ever to achieve such a feat.  Who'd have thought chess could be so hip?

IS 318 is a middle school in Brooklyn, serving a population which is 60% below the poverty line.  It is blessed with dedicated teachers and administration which drive the school's passion for chess, teaching the kids life lessons as they learn the moves of chess.  In the movie we meet the heroes of IS 318, the hip nerds and they are an amazing cast of characters:

Justus 
11-year-old Justus Williams is the youngest black chess master ever.  (He achieved that status after the movie).  He commutes to IS 318, attracted by the exceptional chess program.  In the movie, we see this shy thoughtful kid fighting his jitters in the big tournaments.  You get the sense that these jitters are going to be his biggest obstacle to future success.  He is getting specialized tutoring from volunteer chess masters in New York.

Rochelle

13-year-old Rochelle Ballantyne's goal is to be the first ever female African-American chess master.  She's already reached Expert, one level below master.  By winning the girls championship at the 2011 middle school championship, she earned a full-ride scholarship to University of Texas, even though she's just begun high school at Brooklyn Tech.  She is struggling with priorities: her parents are determined that she should put her schoolwork first.  Meanwhile, the chess masters who have volunteered to tutor her demand at least one hour a day of practice.  It's hard to juggle all those demands.

Patrick

Patrick suffers from ADHD.  Extremely self-aware, he recognizes chess is helping him develop his ability to focus.  We cheer for him in the movie when, after a rocky start at the tournament, he pulls off some final wins, to leave the tournament feeling satisfied.  The audience asked why the producers picked Patrick to be featured in the movie, as he wasn't slated to win a championship.  They said that from the minute they entered the school, Patrick was on their heels asking questions about the filming process.  He was just too engaging to leave out.

 Pobo

Pobo is the son  of a widowed mother from Nigeria.   We see him dwarfing the children in her day care as he keeps them amused with a story.  But he's at his best with the chess team.  A relentless cheerleader, he is always there for the other players, encouraging them win or lose, clutching them in big bear hugs.   When his smiling face hit the screen, you could feel the whole theatre smiling back.  We ached with him as he awaited the results of the election for school president - undoubtedly hamming up his anxiety for the camera!  Unsurprisingly, this charismatic character won.  The producers told us he still comes back to IS 318 on weekends to tutor younger kids in chess, even though he is now at high school, playing centre on the basketball team. 

Alexis

Alexis is totally driven to succeed in life, to get educated, get a good job, and provide money for his immigrant family.  He is a totally intense player, unable to sit still as he faces the board.  Even more than chess, he is consumed with the desire to excel on the do-or-die exam that will determine whether he is accepted at a 'choice' school.  Getting into one of these good high schools








And who are the people that make this all happen?

Elizabeth Vicary

Vicary is an expert-level player (notice that Justus has already surpassed her) who turned IS 318 into the powerhouse of chess that it is.  We see her high-energy style as she coaches the team and teaches chess classes.  Chess is mandatory for everyone in Grade Six and optional for  Grades Seven and Eight.  Some vignettes of her one-on-ones with students show her instilling life lessons along with chess lessons.  She is a force of nature.  Catch her blog if you want to read more about these students.

John Galvin

Vice Principal Galvin, a 17-year veteran of IS 318, is the coach of the team, fighting for money to support the team's travel to tournaments and other costs associated with running the program.  Threatened with extinction by the harsh budget cuts, Galvin has fought back with political pressure, solicitation of sponsors, walkathons.  The movie's web site has a call to action to support after-school programs in America's deepening cuts to education.

Off Label

When I go to Hot Docs, I hope that each movie will deliver a mix of information, new perspectives, inspiration, and perhaps along the way, a dollop of entertainment.  The best movies deliver a film maker's message in a way that provokes me to think differently - to question ossified assumptions, and to open up new possibilities.  For me, the key to a good documentary is a clear theme, which is expanded both through hard facts and stories.  And year after year, Hot Docs slakes that thirst.

Off Label was a sloppy, lazy movie that took a scatter shot approach to several loosely-related themes and delivered on none of them.  And it didn't come close to living up to my expectations of a good Hot Docs film. It frustrated me that these filmmakers missed the opportunity to make a really good movie on a fascinating and important topic.  And they blew it.  They didn't sort out their primary message, and then use the film to deliver that message clearly.  They needed adult supervision, or a better editor.

The movie could have focused on the use of human guinea pigs in pharmaceutical human trials.  We saw a couple of people who eked out a living as human guinea pigs.  Such people enter trials with a cocktail of drugs from previous trials in their system, (which they fail to declare so they won't be rejected).   Could some scientist explain the risk of tainted trials from using such participants?  How much can a person earn this way and how many people do it?   From the Q&A with the directors, it emerged that this was the original idea for the movie; they should have stuck to this one message and nailed it. 

One human guinea pig we met had been induced to participate in human drug trials while a prisoner and suffers very poor health, allegedly because of these trials.  I try not to be swayed by correlation; I like to see cause and effect laid out clearly. There was no solid indication of his medical issues arising from these unethical trials on prisoners.  The movie could have focused on this theme alone and delivered a powerful movie.

A former pharmaceutical sales rep relates how he could skirt the letter of the law and yet encourage GPs to prescribe ever more drugs for off label (i.e. unapproved) use.  The movie could have explored this theme in depth, but the filmmakers chose to introduce it solely through the anecdotes of this one sales rep.  Focusing on this theme would actually have lined up the movie with the title!


It could have explored the trend toward overmedication in the US.  The most interesting character of all in the movie was a bipolar woman, living in a Sasquatch museum, and dosing herself with over 20 different anti-psychotic drugs a day.  How common is that?  How did she manage to get all those pills?  Did she get them all from one highly unprincipled doctor?  Did she visit many doctors, each of whom prescribed one or two?  Did she lie to get the pills, or did they not even ask her what else she was on?  Would personal electronic medical records eliminate such malpractice?

One segment portrayed the heart-wrenching struggles of a young man who volunteered as a medic for Iraq and was ordered to perform inhumane treatments at Abu Ghraib.  He told of cavalier treatment by the VA, who simply threw a variety drugs at him sequentially, in the hope that one would work, without any accompanying therapy.  This segment could have explored this in depth; however, the segment felt like a completely tangential thread that was never developed and detracted from the main movie.

American journalism has been tending toward the presentation of human interest stories as the foundation of the news.  There's no question that a human story can help to pique interest in a topic and draw you into an important subject.  But it is dangerous to extrapolate from a single human story to concluding that there is a systemic problem around an issue - decisions, and public opinion, should be based on evidence.  This was a movie without a shred of evidence or fact.  There could be only one drug rep in the US facilitating off label drug use, there could be only two people making a living as a human trial participant, but these kinds of human interest stories can create a ground swell of response to special cases.

I seem to have written an awful lot about a movie I didn't like.  I guess I was just so frustrated because it could have been so good.  The next post will describe a movie I LOVED!

Garden in the Sea

Garden in the Sea was my second film from the Hot Docs festival today.  The movie is about the installation of an underground sculpture by SPanish artist Cristina Iglesias in a new marine reserve off the coast of Baha California.  The huge concrete structure will provide a fish habitat similar to that provided by coral.  This is an interesting attribute, given the disappearance of half of the ocean's coral.  The scenery in the movie was absoluting breathtaking, but for my taste, the movie moved too slowly.

Platform Moon

Platform Moon was a highly unsatisfying movie.  We see a group of men living in extremely claustrophobic conditions.  We don't know where they are.  The only dialogue during the 25 minute movie takes place between these men and a disembodied voice that responds to their commands to turn things on of off, or to open or close hatches.  The men move slowly and deliberately through various hatches and narrow tunnels.  Finally, we see one man get in a diving suit, and exit to the water where he begins to hammer.  The movie ends.

Only during the Q&A with the filmaker do we discover that the men are in a small bathyscopic container for 30 days at a time, so that they can do repair work on a oil rig.  His intention was to leave us in the dark.

I like documentaries because I learn things.  Not sure I'd categorized this as a documentary.

Ethel

And so on to my third and favourite Hot Docs film of the day - Ethel.  The film is a wonderful tribute to an exceptional woman, Ethel Kennedy, wife of Robert Kennedy.  It was made by her 11th child Rory Kennedy, who was born after her father's death.

Ethel Kennedy emerges as a vibrant, athletic, and fun-loving woman.  She fell in love at first sight on a two-family ski trip to Mont Tremblant, but had to wait for two years while Bobby dated her sister.  Pictures of her in her youth show a fresh-faced, outdoorsy woman, brimming with vitality.  She came from a wealthy and - shudder - Republican family, but soon swallowed any reservations to become an energetic campaigner in Jack Kennedy's campaigns, along with the other Kennedy women.

She could be irreverant, like the time she took the children to observe the shooting gallery in the basement of the FBI building and spied a suggestion box.  J. Edgar Hoover was a thorn in the side of the Kennedys, and she submitted a suggestion, in her trademark red ink, to 'get a new director'.  Another time, she 'rescued' an abused horse from a neighbour and was charged with being a horse thief, a hanging offence in Maryland.  And of course, her flamboyant driving earned her a few speeding tickets. 

Ethel was an unflagging supporter in Bobby's political campaigns; indeed, she was far fonder of campaigning than he was.  The picture on the movie cover showing Ethel standing just behind Bobby was symbolic of their marriage.  The children accompanied them on many campaign trips and other trips representing the US abroad.  How she found time to do all this when she was chronically pregnant is beyond me!  Of course, the ordinary tasks of life were taken care of by the servants, leaving her lots of time to ski, sail, play touch football, and enjoy the multitudinous children and pets on their vast properties.   


Ethel went on to support and fight for the social justice causes Bobby had espoused, and, of course, to bring up those eleven children.

Interviews with the droll Ethel herself and many of the children are commingled with a rich trove of family videos and photos.  The film also treated the remarkable historical events of this era, which touched Robert Kennedy's life - the Viet Nam war, the Civil rights movement, the Cuban missile crisis, the assassinations of Jack Kennedy, Martin Luther King and of course Robert Kennedy himself. 

This was a truly enjoyable portrait of an interesting woman living through interesting times.  See it if you can.

The Ambassador

I wish that Mads Brugger, the filmaker, had attended this showing of his film The Ambassador, as is customary at Hot Docs.  I had so many questions in my mind at the end of the film.

As Mr. Cortzen, Brugger buys the post as Liberian ambassador to the Central African Republic.  The film introduces us to two brokers, one British and one Dutch, who specialize in selling these posts.  Venal politicians sell these regularly, we're told, to fill the coffers of the government, or the pockets of the politicians.  As these brokers put it, such a post at $150,000 is a bargain as the holder then has untrammeled passage out of the country to bring diamonds out of the country, making such a designation worth millions.  

The CAR is widely considered to be a failed state, but this film argues that you can't be a failed state without having once been a viable state.  The CAR has been oppressed by vile and lunatic dictators and is riddled with corruption.  And Liberia is no paradise of good governance either.  So the movie shines a harsh light on two of Africa's worst basket cases.  And it's not a pretty picture that emerges.

Cortzen arrives as a business diplomat and sets about making contacts, both for his avowed purpose of building a match factory, and his lightly veiled purpose of smuggling out blood diamonds.  He establishes a partnership, and hands over lots of cash, but wonders if he'll ever see it again.  Another diplomat warns him of the delicacy and risk involved in setting out to do what he doing.  The head of security he has been meeting is assassinated. His promised papers certifying he is indeed the Liberian ambassador to the CAR have mysteriously not arrived and the situation increases in tension.    Meanwhile, the whole tawdry business is being filmed, sometimes openly and sometimes with hidden cameras. 

The movie focused on two of the continents most pitiable countries.  There are many good news stories starting to emerge from Africa, and many are predicting that the continent may pull itself out of its despair.  This movie perpetuates an image of Africa as a continent rife with corruption and mistrust, which is sad.  It's not that it's untrue, it's just that we westerners tend to generalize from the worst situations to all of Africa.

The movie left me puzzled at the end.  The Ambassador was clearly a satire.  But Cortzen seems to have nevertheless pulled off the deception.  Did he ever reveal what he'd done to the Africans?  Did he ever smuggle those diamonds?  How did he finance the purchase of the ambassadorship and the considerable bribes in Africa?

   

Shadows of Liberty

American media is controlled by a small number of corporations, who manage the news their outlets are allowed to air.  Since 2008, 166 newspapers in the US have folded and 350,000 jobs have been lost, which contributes to the power and influence of these corporate giants.  This situation threatens the information flow to citizens, and the very freedom of the US, where freedom of the press was a founding principle.  This is the argument of the film Shadows of Liberty, my first movie at this year's Hot Docs Festival.

This film followed several big stories that news organizations had failed to deliver.  After the original exposé on Nike's labour abuses in Viet Nam, the same reporter fought to have a follow-up story aired on CBS; however, CBS was in negotiations with Nike for a major sponsorship of the Olympics, and senior executives quashed the story.

Another case involved the story of the connection between the crack cocaine explosion in the US and US support of the contras in Nicaragua.  Gary Webb, the reporter who broke that story in the San Jose Mercury, was hounded to suicide because of the backlash.

Another story was the loss of TWA 800:  there was considerable evidence pointing to the flight going down because of friendly fire from naval exercises nearby.  Government flooded the airwaves with cover-up stories, and the media compliantly let the story go.

And then there was the big one - the US media's lapping up of the Bush administration's  allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  The administration rewarded reporters who toed the line, and choked off access for those who challenged.  At the same time, the BBC was giving prime time to voices challenging Blair's position on the war.

Even such respected media as PBS have caved to corporate interests, such as their silence on the Archer Midland Daniels scandal over price fixing.  Even the respected New York Times came in for its share of vilication.

This was a good movie, but I was left wishing that it had been better.  I didn't learn much new that I didn't already know.  Although Quebec director Jean Phillippe Tremblay stated that he wanted to shed light on global media, the movie was entirely focused on the US, and mostly on CBS.  It also failed to analyze the impact of Internet outlets, citizen journalism, and even documentaries like this.