Hot Docs 14

The documentary Meet the Patels continues its Toronto theatrical run by opening today at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema for a week-long run. The documentary focuses on Ravi Patel, who undergoes the matchmaking process by his very traditional parents. The whole process was filmed by Ravi’s sister Geeta and turned into a romantic comedy-styled documentary. Meet …

The documentary The Overnighters opens this Friday, November 7, 2014 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.  The film focuses on the booming oil town of Williston, North Dakota and the local Pastor Jay Reinke, who starts allowing outsiders, who come to the town looking for work, to stay in the church.  The Overnighters is directed by …

The 2014 edition of Hot Docs has finally concluded.  This was my fourth time attending the festival and my second time providing full coverage as accredited media.  I went all out for my media coverage this year, with me beginning to watch screeners of the films a full month prior to the start of the …

Here are my brief thoughts on the four short documentaries I saw during Hot Docs: Love YaScreening with Mugshot, this short consisted of a split screen view of six couples talking about their relationship with each other.  The short was shot with an “interrotron” apparatus, originally developed by Errol Morris, so the couples saw each …

Aside from his main career as a documentary filmmaker, Doug Block has had a 20 year side-career as a wedding videographer.  As he prepares to do the wedding video for his 112th wedding, Block decides to revisit a number of his past clients and catch up with how their marriages turned out.  What follows is …

Alexander is a teenage boy with autism, who has just finished school and is preparing to head out to live on his own.  Following his 18th birthday, Alexander goes on a trip to Barcelona with his older brother Sebastian.  As they head off to attend a game by FC Barcelona, the two brothers bond, as …

In 2006, Baltimore native Matt VanDyke went on a 3 year motorcycle trip across North Africa and the Middle East in a self-described “crash course on manhood.”  Along the way, he became friends with a Libyan man named Nuri.  As such, when the revolution broke out in Libya, Matt felt obliged to travel to the …

Aubrey de Grey and Bill Andrews are two scientists, who hope to find a way to cure the human aging process. Aubrey is using his company SENS to research ways to clean up the “molecular garbage” that causes aging, while Bill is using his company Sierra Science to find a way to completely reverse the …

Giuseppe Andrews is a former child actor, who had parts in films such as Detroit Rock City, American History X, and Independence Day.  Living in a trailer park, Giuseppe has produced almost 30 no-budget films with his producer Ed (a former background musician with the BeeGees).  With the goal to shoot his latest film Garbanzo …

This semi-experimental documentary features intimate confessional interviews with 50 unique individuals. Sitting in front of a blank white screen, these people talk about everything from relationships, the search for identity, family violence, depression, suicide, sexuality, mental illness, aliens, religion and death.  These interviews are accompanied by a subtle synthesized score and the occasion inclusion of …

Narrated by Fairuza Balk, Beyond Clueless is a cinematic essay that looks into the mind, body, and soul of the teen movie.  The documentary consists clips and examples from over 200 films, including The Craft, Mean Girls, and Euro Trip. Diving headfirst into the psyche of the teen movie, Beyond Clueless focuses on issues, such …

Winner, Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award In this follow-up to last year’s NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, director John Kastner returns to the Brockville Mental Health Centre, which is a forensic psychiatric unit, dealing with mentally ill individuals, who committed criminal acts.  Having unpredicted access to the facility, Kastner focuses on a number of patients over …

All over the world, people call telephone hotlines for a wide variety of reasons.  Some people may be looking for support, through LGBT or suicide-prevention lines.  Others may be looking for advice from psychics like Miss Cleo or be looking for phone sex.  However, most times, people are just looking for someone to talk to.  …

Best known for their 1995 hit song “Common People,” British rock band Pulp stopped playing around 2001-02.  With frontman Jarvis Cocker wanting to give the band a happy ending, they reunited for a tour of the UK in 2012.  Pulp: a Film about Life, Death & Supermarkets follows the band as they prepare to play …

Described as true stories from the other side, The Darkside features ghost stories from all across Australia.  A number of Australia’s most beloved actors, such as Claudia Karvan, Aaron Pedersen, Bryan Brown, Jack Charles and Deborah Mailman, were cast to tell these true stories in front of the camera.  The result is a series of …

Hot Docs has announced the awards for this year’s festival, which were presented yesterday Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto. The awards were determined by four juries: The Canadian Feature Documentary Jury: Shelley Ambrose (executive director, The Walrus Foundation; publisher, The Walrus magazine), Malcolm Ingram (director, CONTINENTAL, Hot Docs 2013), Stephen Schroeder (executive director, Calgary International …

Celebrity apes are the subject of the observational documentary See No Evil.  Cheeta is the last of the apes to play the sidekick of Tarzan and is celebrating his birthday; Kanzi communicates with his trainer via a touchscreen computer and is learning to bond with his son Teco; Knuckles was the was subject a number …

Inspired by the blog of fashion photographer Ari Seth Cohen, Advanced Style follows a group of seven New York women, aged 62 to 95, who have maintained a sense of style, despite their advanced ages.  These women include Lynn Dell Cohen (80), who runs a storied boutique, Ilona Royce Smithkin (93), an artist recognized by …

In 2005, Scottish rock musician Edwyn Collins, best known for his 1994 hit “A Girl Like You,” suffered a serious stroke.  After waking up, Collins was only able to utter the phrases “Grace Maxwell” (his wife) and “The Possibilities are Endless.”  The Possibilities Are Endless places the audience into Collins’ mind as he recovers from …

Originating after the invention of the daguerreotype in the 19th century, mugshots were originally intended to keep track of criminals.  However, aside from their use in law enforcement, they are considered by many to be a form of entertainment.  In addition, these photographs can be used as a visual history of the time period they …

Over the past 30 years, obesity has essentially become an epidemic, with two out of every three Americans being overweight.  Narrated by journalist Katie Couric, Fed Up examines why the obesity rate is going up, despite the efforts of people to eat right and regularly exercise.  The answer possibly lies within the food industry itself, …

In this follow-up to his 2011 documentary You’ve Been Trumped, Scottish director Anthony Baxter gives an update on the fight against Donald Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire, while also exploring the larger issue of the wealthy 1% building golf courses on the world’s most fragile ecosystems.  Particular attention is given to the historic Croatian town …

Elliot “White Lightning” Scott is a man from Halifax, whose goal is to become Canada’s first action hero.  Claiming to have 7 lightweight kickboxing titles, Scott has written, directed, and starred in a series of hilariously awful no-budget kung fu b-movies, with titles such as They Killed My Cat (2009) and Stalker and the Hero …

Rich Hill, Missouri is a small town with a population of only 1393.  Andrew is a 14 year old, whose family is frequently moving; Appachey is a violent and foul-mouthed 13 year old, who’s always getting into trouble; Harley is a 15 year old with anger issues, living with his grandmother, while his mother serves …

From directors Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen (Metal: A Headbangers Journey) and Reginald Harkema (Leslie, My Name Is Evil) comes this “doc opera” about the career of Alice Cooper.  Narrated by Cooper and others, Super Duper Alice Cooper tells the story of how a preacher’s son by the name of Vincent Furnier became the shock …

In May 2008, same-sex marriage became legal in California.  However, mere months later, conservative forces placed a proposition on the November ballot, which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.  This initiative, known as “Prop 8,” passed, resulting in the banning and invalidation of same-sex marriages in the state.  The Case Against …

Inspired by the memoir by author Poe Ballantine, Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere examines an unsolved mystery in the isolated prairie town of Chadron, Nebraska.  In the Summer of 2006, a somewhat aloof but brilliant mathematician named Dr. Steven Haataja entered the town and began teaching at the local college. A …

From Oscar-nominated director Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost) comes this film, which follows the 2013 trial of Boston ex-mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.  Bulger has ruled the organized crime world in Boston for over 25 years and was finally apprehended in 2011, after being on the run for 16 years, and charged with 19 counts of murder.  …

Passed from generation to generation, the Slavic folk tale of Baba Yaga tells the story of a pair of children, who find the witch living in a hut perched on chicken legs in a haunted forest.  The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga tells this story in an illustrated style, while interweaving it with a …

During his career, magician James “The Amazing” Randi was known as the greatest escape artist since Harry Houdini.  Randi always started his shows by describing himself as a “liar, cheat, and charlatan” and describes magicians as the most honest people, since they tell you that they are going to fool you.  This is why Randi …

Inspired by the book A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power, Watchers of the Sky looks into the history of genocide. The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, who was seeking to change the laws that allowed sovereign nations to commit “legalized murder.”  The film looks at examples of genocide through the ages, including Rwanda …

Cenk Uygur is a Turkish-American political commentator, who is the creator and host of The Young Turks, which is described as the largest online news program in the world.  After graduating from law school, Uygur began The Young Turks as a public access TV show, before moving on to doing a radio show and eventually …

Mark Landis is one of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history.  For over 30 years, Landis has forged over 100 pieces, donating them to 46 museums in 20 states.  Suffering from mental illness, Landis describes himself as having an “addiction to philanthropy” and finds himself continuing to create forgeries, even though he knows …

From director Alexandre Philippe (The People vs. George Lucas) comes this examination of the evolution of the zombie in film and literature, as well as its impact on pop culture.  Zombies began as voodoo creations in films, such as 1932’s White Zombie, before being reinvented as the living dead in George A. Romero’s The Night …

Hossein Khosrow Ali Vazir is best known to professional wrestling fans as “The Iron Sheik,” who was one of the most hated villains from the 1970s and 1980s.  Born in 1942 in Iran, The Iron Sheik played on the Islamophobia of fans, with the character being genuinely hated. The Sheik briefly won the World Wrestling …

George Takei is best known to fans for his role as Hikaru Sulu on the television series Star Trek.  Takei came out as homosexual in 2005 and has since become known as a gay rights activist, as well having a bit of a career renaissance through social media.  To Be Takei covers Takei’s entire career, …

In 1990, 21 year old Pamela Smart was arrested for plotting the murder of her husband, which was committed by three teens – one of whom Smart had an affair with.  The case became a media sensation, with Smart’s trial being the first to be covered live on television.  The case also became inspiration for …

Ray Klonsky is a Jewish-Italian man from a racially mixed neighbourhood in Toronto.  When Ray’s father started to notice he was starting to go down a troubled path, Ray was connected with David McCallum, who is currently serving a life sentence in prison, for a murder that he did not commit.  With David’s story inspiring …

In this follow-up to their 2010 documentary The Clean Bin Project, Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story follows filmmakers Jen Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin on a six month challenge to live entirely on food waste.  One third of all food produced is not consumed, with much of it being thrown away, despite still being …

While growing up as a first-generation Indian-American, Ravi Patel lived a double life.  At home he maintained a traditional Indian lifestyle, while in the outside world he lived as a modern American.  This included his only meaningful, yet secret, romantic relationship with a red-headed girl named Audrey.  Shamed about living this double life, Ravi breaks …

Anyone who grew up watching the long-running children’s television series Sesame Street would likely be familiar with the show’s signature Muppet characters Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.  However, fans of the show might not be as familiar with Caroll Spinney, the man behind the characters.  Now in his 80s, Spinney is one the last …

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, there was growing perception that all the women from Ukraine become prostitutes.  To combat this, the feminist activist organisation FEMEN was formed.  FEMEN members perform topless protests to speak out against the patriarchy left over from Ukraine’s Soviet past.  However, when it comes to the rights of women …