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Hot Docs Continues: The rest of the week’s picks.
What’s that you say? We didn’t manage to give you any picks for this Monday? Ahem, well, oops? Let’s pretend there wasn’t anything really on, eh? Not that we were too busy going to screenings to write about them or something. But if we were too busy going to see screenings instead, here are a few things we might have learned.
1) Hot Docs screen just slightly too many adverts before the film starts, and in a terrific faux pas, not one of them is an add inviting us to thank the volunteers. How will we thank them without clapping before the film starts? My mind is blown!
2) None likes the new Cadillac Escalade, as at, ooh, two thirds of screenings we’ve seen it’s been booed heavily by the audience. Surprisingly, however, it wasn’t booed by the audience of the otherwise anti-corporate Black Gold.
3) Live Action Role-playing looks like good fun (Darkon) and you can never drink coffee again (Black Gold).
But enough of that jibber jabber, here’s what there is to see until Friday!
May 2nd
Bombay Calling (9pm, Bloor) – Who cannot say they’re fed up of cold calls, eh? Particularly if, say, you’re a single woman and they keep calling for a non existent male partner, or you just have a difficult to say name, or you DON’T WANT A TORONTO STAR SUBSCRIPTION GNNGH!!!111 I honestly have no idea where most of those calls come from, but that’s because India is not only the location of hundreds of outsourced call centres, but that the call centres keep getting better at disguising it. This is a film about India’s new industry.
37 Uses for a Dead Sheep (9:30pm, Al Green) – What initially feels like a bit of a cheat (They don’t actually tell you these uses till the credit rolls… Well, not exactly) is in actuality a really interesting potted history of the lives of the Kirghiz people originally of Afghanistan, who found themselves drifting to China to escape the Russians, back to Afghanistan to escape the Chinese, then to Pakistan to escape everyone, then finally settling in Turkey to escape constantly escaping.
May 3rd
An Unreasonable Man (1pm, Bader) – Lots of people have said lots of things about Ralph Nader, fair and unfair, but one truth is that he has been a social and civic activist absolutely unwilling to compromise on the issues that matter to him. Good or bad, this doc attempts to cover the life of a formidable character.
Cottonland with No Past to Speak Of (6:45pm, Al Green) – Two harrowing documentaries to deal with one after another, No Past to Speak Of deals with the unspeakable act of infant rape in Africa, which makes Cottonland’s tale of prescription drug addiction in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, a much closer to home problem, sound almost palatable. Difficult, but almost surely rewarding viewing for those who can stomach it.
May 4th
5 Days (3:45pm, ROM) – For the most part, people who know anything know to stay the hell away from discussing the Israel/Palestine situation in polite company (or ever), but few can deny that the recent removal of Jewish Settlers from, um, the places where they settled was a significant event in the ongoing conflict, and one that deserves to be seen with a passionate but neutral eye.
The World According to Sesame Street (6:45, Bloor) – You can probably forget about going to see this, as with one showing only and having already gone rush this take on the effect Sesame Street has had on the world probably won’t be seen by as many people who should see it. The same, of course, could be said for Sesame Street itself.
May 5th
My Best Fiend (6:30pm, Bloor) – “We had a mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder.” – Werner Herzog.
Well, what more is there to say to entice you to see Herzog’s film covering his relationship with Klaus Kinski?
Fuck (9:15pm, Bloor) – It’s telling that in the free pullout guides for Hot Docs this word has been censored, such is it’s power. I don’t really get it, though. I mean, it’s not even the worst! But it is one of the most versatile – remains to be seen what can be said about it, though.