Hot Docs Planner: George Lucas, Gaza, and the Diaries of an Urban Priest

By Torontoist

Every weekday and Saturday throughout Hot Docs, Torontoist is looking at a handful of festival offerings, recommending the worthwhile and de-recommending the not-so-worthwhile.

Still from Alexandre Phillipe’s The People Vs. George Lucas.

Relaxing weekend? Perfect! You’ll need the energy if you’re going to take on this full week of Hot Docs goodness. Unspooling Monday: The People Vs. George Lucas, an exhausting examination of fans’ love/hate relationship with the Star Wars franchise; Aisheen [Still Alive in Gaza], a vérité-style look at life in Gaza; and Ito – A Diary Of An Urban Priest, a meditative look at a Buddhist minister working the Tokyo underground. Torontoist’s John Semley, Hamutal Dotan, and Steve Kupferman fill you in on all three, after the jump.

TORONTOIST’S RECOMMENDED PICKS GET A

The People Vs. George Lucas

Directed by Alexandre Philippe. USA. 97 minutes.
An audience favourite when it premiered at South by Southwest in March, The People Vs. George Lucas proved similarly popular with the hundreds of jaded, aging Star Wars fans that packed the Bloor Cinema for the film’s Canadian premiere on Saturday. Consisting of 97 minutes of unchecked nerd rage, The People Vs. George Lucas proves definitively that the only thing geekier than fervently loving Star Wars is fervently hating Star Wars.
In sketching the love/hate relationship the franchise’s fans have with Star Wars and its pudgy, bearded, flannelled creator/arbiter George Lucas, Phillipe’s film makes a couple of interesting points. Chief amongst these is the idea that Star Wars, blockbusting cultural phenomenon that it was, inspired the imaginations of a generation in a way unprecedented in American entertainment. This unparalleled level of fan appreciation and involvement—many would-be-George-Lucas-types remade, remodeled, and rejigged the Star Wars canon in homemade fan films—has somehow managed to confuse fans into thinking that Star Wars belongs to them, and not George Lucas.
But as any Star Wars fan (or former Star Wars fan) knows, in the mid-‘90s, Lucas begin tinkering with his original trilogy: color-correcting the original prints, splicing in deleted scenes, and working diligently to make the original cuts unavailable to fans in an effort to reassert his authorial primacy. This betrayal was followed by the much-maligned prequel trilogy, which brought about a resounding, near-universal fan backlash that still echoes across the Internet today.
The issue of who a film belongs to once it has entrenched itself in the cultural consciousness is one of the more interesting questions at play in The People Vs. George Lucas. Unfortunately, its examination is tripped up by the shrill testimonies of so-named “faneditors,” “nerdlebrities,” and other basement-bound Star Wars fanatics who spend the whole film calling George Lucas a Judas, only to turn around and say that, hey, they still love him. Like many other pop-docs, People zips from talking head to talking head, never lingering long enough to actually discuss an issue. Instead, we get an hour and a half of exhausting sound bites, few of which bother diverging from the consensus that George Lucas is (but also isn’t) a big tyrant weenie.
The film is lightened considerably by all the clips of fan-made Star Wars movies. But considering you can watch those on the Internet for free, there’s nothing here of interest for any but the most hardened of Lucas haters looking to have their opinions validated. JS
Screens Monday May 3 at 4:00 p.m. at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue) and Tuesday May 4 at 11:45 p.m. at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor Street West) as part of the Word Showcase series. Co-presented with the Toronto After Dark Film Festival.

Still from Nicolas Wadimoff’s Aisheen [Still Alive in Gaza].

Aisheen [Still Alive in Gaza]

Directed by Nicolas Wadimoff. Qatar and Switzerland. 85 minutes.
There’s a scene, about midway through Aisheen, in which two boys taunt a baboon in a small, worn-down, partially bombed-out Gaza zoo. It’s complex and layered: the boys have named the monkey Sharon (after the Israeli prime minister) because of his penchant for aggression, and they talk about the experience of being under fire while simultaneously slapping at the baboon’s cage. The director, Nicolas Wadimoff, gives all this to his viewers without editorializing; this hands-off approach characterizes the whole film. Shot in Gaza shortly after the Israeli offensive in January 2009, Aisheen shows the daily lives of Palestinians coping with the aftermath.
It’s a wise, important choice, to present this footage unmediated—it gives a viewer scope to form individual, complex reactions, and breathing room that news reports on this subject don’t often afford. We wished, at times, for more context—not commentary, but information—to help put the scenes in perspective. How much the direness of the conditions we see pre-dated the Israeli incursion and how much was caused by it, for instance, was never entirely clear.
Those who follow events in the region closely will find little that is new here. But for those trying to understand the texture of life in Gaza, Aisheen is a helpful guide delivered with a light directorial touch. HD
Screens Monday May 3 at 9:30 p.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles Street West) and Thursday May 6 at 1:30 p.m. at the ROM theatre (100 Queen’s Park) as part of the International Spectrum series. Co-presented with the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.

Still from Pirjo Honkasalo’s Ito – A Diary Of An Urban Priest.

Ito – A Diary Of An Urban Priest

Directed by Pirjo Honkasalo. Finland. 111 minutes.
Yoshinobu Fujioka is an ex-boxer turned Buddhist priest who makes his living tending bar at a little watering hole he owns, somewhere in Tokyo. As the enigmatic subject of Ito – A Diary Of An Urban Priest, he makes for a compelling study in regret.
Finnish director Pirjo Honkasalo turns a patient, unwavering camera on Fujioka, who ministers to a series of troubled individuals―some of them friends, others strangers―as they unburden themselves of their existential distress. It gradually emerges, in these sessions, that Fujioka has some lingering troubles of his own.
The doc’s scenes are long and monotonous, but subtle editing touches make them curiously meditative. We hear the sounds of rainfall and crickets filtering in from outdoors, and we see reaction shots of Fujioka’s face, rapt with concentration―and sometimes full of other, less priestly emotions. Tokyo itself is also very much a character, and is presented under a gorgeous rain-slick, neon-lit, nighttime pall. You won’t learn anything new from Ito, but, if you’re receptive to its charms (and not everyone will be), it might just open your eyes. SK
Screens Wednesday, May 5 at 4 p.m. at the Cumberland 2 (159 Cumberland Street) as part of the International Spectrum series.
All stills courtesy of Hot Docs.