‘The Great Hip Hop Hoax’
Part of the fun of any film festival is the choose your own adventure aspect. Even those fests that are more like showcases, screening a limited amount of titles one after the other, allow for attendees to be present or absent for each depending on their preference and scheduling. Of course, it’s more exciting the more options you have, as in the case of a huge event like Hot Docs. There’s a good chance that your experience of this Toronto-based documentary festival will be unlike that of any other person in attendance, and if you’re a real fan of non-fiction filmmaking, there’s an even greater chance your experience will be favorable.
As I was leaving the 2013 Hot Docs fest on Tuesday evening following five days there (my first time), tons of people were just getting into town. Had I come at the wrong time? Not at all. There’s just different ways of doing a fest like this. From what I was told, Hot Docs is unlike many major film fests in that it’s not all front-loaded. Compared to, say, Sundance, where everyone drops in at the beginning and then the crowds get lighter after the first weekend, Hot Docs apparently takes it slow its first few days. Especially industry people arrive only after the first weekend to devote primarily to the market and forum.
Part of me does feel like I should have gone later. A lot of films I’m dying to see didn’t play even once while I was still around. But a lot of those titles are docs that are on my radar and either do or will have an opportunity to be seen in the future. By attending when I did, I was able to concentrate on discovering lesser-known international gems and be open to a few world premieres. Even though this was my first fest of the year and I felt like I needed to play catch up on a lot of buzzed about films, when it came down to determining what I want to get out of a fest far from my home, I decided to try stuff that I might never get to see again.
The thing is, I’m not good at choosing things, especially when all the options are as good as this year’s Hot Docs selections. As awesome as it is that the fest has hundreds of films spread out over more than ten screens and over more than a week’s time, picking and scheduling can be very stressful. So, I operated on a sort of random path, seeing whatever was playing near to where I was at the moment without bothering to look up too much in terms of what the film was about or if anyone was talking about it.
Interestingly, every time I made an effort to see something I was looking forward to, it turned out to be just okay. And films I didn’t think were going to be good or that I’d heard just so-so reactions for, these were the ones that surprised me.
‘The Expedition to the End of the World’
For example, the word I’d gotten about The Expedition to the End of the World was that it looks great but had little else going for it. That word was very wrong, as I found out. This documentary on a scientific sea voyage to the Arctic is indeed breathtakingly gorgeous, but it’s also one of the deepest, most philosophically fascinating films I’ve seen in years. Perhaps its fatalist attitude, founded in the notion that we’re seeing beautiful new sights thanks to climate change exposing the North to our discovery and that within the big picture man’s extinction won’t be that significant, bums out some viewers.
Some of my enjoyment of the film (which I graded with an A in a review for Film School Rejects) is hinged on my tastes and sense of humor and sense of the universe. It’s still undoubtedly a cinematic work that fits necessarily into the history of documentary and the context of recent global warming discourse. I can’t wait for it to find theatrical distribution in the U.S., preferably with an endorsement from Werner Herzog (who made the similarly titled film of the other side of the Earth, Encounters at the End of the World) or maybe Lars von Trier, who is linked to director Daniel Dencik via the latter’s employment as an editor on The Five Obstructions.
That film’s semi-defeated themes involving the future of humans and the planet made it fit well in with a trend I noticed. I can’t exactly call it a trend of the fest’s program so much as a trend of my experience and my choice (consciously, subconsciously and purely accidentally) of films relative to that trend. And that trend is towards a kind of hopeless complacency and acceptance of the world as is, even if it’s going downhill.
I’ve already written about three such films that made me feel powerless — the stunning Tough Bond, about glue-huffing African children; the anger-provoking Fatal Assistance, about the failure of aid to Haiti after the 2011 earthquake; and the brilliant Oil Sands Karaoke, about Alberta tar sands workers who find solace to their controversial employment by singing at a local pub.
’15 Reasons to Live’
After that piece, I wound up seeing Who Is Dayani Crystal?, which is interesting for being about investigating a tragedy that already happened and will continue to happen to others. And part of the significance of SXSW winner William and the Windmill is how it addresses, with a specific narrative, the West’s need to help people who are actually probably better off without our interference. I also caught Alan Zweig‘s 15 Reasons to Live thinking it’d be an antidote to the trend. For many of its compiled nonfiction vignettes, though, the idea is finding value in life in spite of all the unhappy circumstances we can’t change.
Maybe I missed out on some real crowd pleasers (the only audience favorites I’ve seen in the latest ranking are those two I’d caught prior to the event), and maybe that’s just where my head is at in terms of picking what to see, but I do want to point out a few more appealing and accesible docs I saw while at Hot Docs. One is fest opener The Manor (for which I posted an interview with director Shawney Cohen last week and wrote a joint review with American Commune over the weekend). It’s sad at times (mainly when dealing with the anorexia of Cohen’s mother), but it’s also very funny (especially when dealing with Cohen’s larger-than-life father) and just plain genuine, one of the freshest parentally focused personal films in a while.
And then there’s The Great Hip Hoax from director Jeanie Finlay (Sound It Out), which I’ve been pushing on people as “The Imposter of music docs.” It’s about a couple of Scottish rappers who can’t get a record deal with their current background and image so they pretend to be Americans from California and coast along for two years of minor success before their luck and fame runs out. I enjoyed it on one level because I’d never heard of these guys before and almost can’t believe they got away with so much, bu there’s more to it than fascination. The ironies involving the record industry are overflowing. It almost does for the music world what Exit Through the Gift Shop did for the art world.
That’s not even all that I saw and enjoyed (including two very different actor-in-NYC tales, the Improv Everywhere history, We Cause Scenes, and the beautifully arty Brazilian film Elena). And I’ve got some leftovers to get to via screeners or finish once they come out (I managed to see about half of AJ Schnack‘s Caucus before running off to the airport, and I can’t wait to see the rest). With only a few days there I only cracked a tiny percentage of what was available, and as a doc junkie I want to eventually see everything I missed.
Film fests aren’t solely about watching films, although that is the most important part. With Hot Docs, there’s also workshops and panels and places and opportunities to meet filmmakers and all kinds of other activities and goings on. I learned about a petition to make documentary the national art form of Canada (the equivalent of jazz in America). And I also participated in a panel discussion about documentary criticism with Indiewire’s Basil Tsiokos, POV’s Tom Roston and filmmaker Robert Greene, which dealt with just a tip of the iceberg of the state of today’s nonfiction film reviews. I hear it’ll be online at some point, and I’ll be sure to post it to the blog when it does.
And that’s my experience of the 20th annual Hot Docs fest. It’s but one combination of films and responses to them. If you attended or are attending I’d love to hear experiences all your own. Or find some diaries, dispatches and roundups from other writers.
