I just wanted to congratulate The Documentary Blog’s own Charlotte Cook, who has just been announced as the new director of programming for the Hot Docs Film Festival! I wish her all the best in her new position at the festival and am excited to see the films she and her fellow programmers bring to us at next year’s festival! Good luck Charlotte!

I’ve tried to avoid posting too much about Beauty Day here at The Documentary Blog but I thought it might be worth mentioning that the film is hitting limited theatres in Canada TOMORROW (Friday, June 10th) and I’m thrilled. Here are the current dates, with more to come:

Cumberland (Cineplex), Toronto: Opening June 10
Mayfair Theatre, Ottawa: Opening June 10
Empire Pen Centre, (Pen Centre Mall), St. Catharines: June 10 – 16
Regina Public Library Film Theatre: June 30 – July 3
Princess Cinema, Waterloo: July 1 – 7, 2011
Gimli Film Festival (Beach Screening), Gimli, MB: July 23 (Midnight Screening)
Winnipeg Cinematheque: Aug 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17

In light of the theatrical release, I wanted to share this great piece that a friend of mine wrote about the film. Mike Meneghetti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University. I’ve gotten to know him over the last year after he invite me to show a rough cut of the movie to his documentary class. Since then we’ve had lots of great discussions about a number of documentary films and he was kind enough to share his thoughts on Beauty Day in the following review. I thought it would be great to share it with you guys. (To maintain a sense of balance, you can also read Linda Barnard’s 2.5 star review in the Toronto Star here) Enjoy!

Anyone who attended Beauty Day’s Canadian premiere at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival in April can attest to the film’s remarkably enthusiastic reception by its first audience. Preceded by an impromptu, boisterous performance by Cap’n Video/Ralph Zavadil (the film’s subject) in front of the Isabel Bader Theater, Beauty Day’s screening was punctuated by the sort of applause, laughter, and chatter that one typically encounters only at projections of the most cherished cult films. A great deal of this enthusiasm was undoubtedly generated by Zavadil himself: an outsized personality, Zavadil is never less than intriguing and engaging throughout the film, and his fearless commitment to his own video-making and self-expression is frequently inspiring. In its insistent focus upon a single figure, Beauty Day is in this respect an excellent example of what the film’s director, Jay Cheel, has sometimes called documentary “character pieces.” It vividly renders its subject’s story by closely examining the larger-than-life Zavidil’s modest rise and fall as a cable TV performer in the early 1990s, alternating between archival footage of various kinds and present-day recollections. Cheel’s film alludes to a considerable amount of other historical material over the course of its narrative, but it invariably returns to this immediate preoccupation with its central “character.”





As the creator of The Cap’n Video Show, a local cable access program that ran from 1990 to 1995, Zavadil attracted a small and loyal following in the Niagara Region. Each weekly episode was devoted to the performance of purposely sophomoric and sometimes dangerous stunts (“rooftop tobogganing,” “instant breakfast,” “clothesline skiing,” “instant razor in a bottle,” etc.), but Zavadil quite clearly saw his undertaking as a calculated provocation of the stolid St. Catharines/Niagara television world and its audience. Early reviews of Beauty Day have understandably seized upon Zavadil’s status as an antecedent to contemporary gross-out stunt comedies like Jackass and The Tom Green Show; yet The Cap’n Video Show’s irreverence appears to be a form of anti-television when compared to these more popular programs: hilariously derisive and never passing up an opportunity to challenge convention and decorum, The Cap’n Video Show retains a strong sense of outsider-hood even today. Now that Beauty Day is being released to a wider viewing public this weekend, it can continue its resuscitation of this important precursor to key contemporary phenomena. For some spectators, Cheel’s film will surely be most valuable as an entertaining introduction to Zavadil/Cap’n Video and this re-situating of his work in a broader historical context.

But Beauty Day is much more than a simple compilation of Cap’n Video stunts, and we should perhaps resist collapsing the substantial difference between The Cap’n Video Show and Cheel’s film. So instead of returning to Beauty Day’s subject matter or reexamining Cap’n Video’s status as an forerunner to Jackass, “Reality TV” and You Tube, I want to look very briefly at Cheel’s superb rendering of this character study. Beauty Day’s achievements as a documentary ultimately hinge upon its interest in this figure and the manner in which it tells its story: if Zavadil/Cap’n Video is intriguing to us as viewers, it’s in large part because of Cheel’s skillful shaping of this material into a very compelling story.

Broadly organized as a narrative film, Beauty Day is composed of two large-scale movements that bookend a slightly shorter middle section: the drama here ostensibly unfolds in three acts. In the film’s first section, we’re told about the creation and rise of The Cap’n Video Show. Unhappily employed as a millwright at General Motors, Zavadil’s entry into video production and cable television is explicitly understood as an escape from despair and small town drudgery. The Cap’n Video Show is a both a vehicle for self-expression (or Zavadil’s “idiocity,” as he puts it) and a challenge to his surrounding world’s excessive staidness. Throughout this section of the film we see footage from The Cap’n Video Show, learn of Zavadil’s growing relationship with Nancy Dewar, and witness his longstanding friendship with Robert Buick. It’s a period of creativity, risk-taking and possibilities for Zavadil. By contrast, Beauty Day’s middle section is marked by a series of crises, both professional and personal. A serious motorcycle crash for Dewar is quickly followed by Zavadil’s ill-conceived and nearly fatal “pool plunge” stunt, a disastrous Easter episode of The Cap’n Video Show that eventually leads to its cancellation, and a pot bust that appears to be career suicide. The film’s final movement is devoted to Zavadil’s energetic attempt to resuscitate The Cap’n Video Show on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary by producing a commemorative hour-long episode for cable TV. He is an older and slightly more serene figure at this point, of course, but Zavadil’s creative zeal is still plainly evident in his staging of new Cap’n Video stunts for the proposed anniversary show.





Summarizing Beauty Day’s narrative this way might risk making it appear too conveniently diagrammatic; but the film’s deliberate structure is precisely what permits an uncommonly compassionate character study to slowly emerge. Readers of The Documentary Blog already know that Cheel has been writing about documentaries for several years, and the “character piece” is a constant point of reference and concern in his film criticism. In works as disparate as Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994) and The English Surgeon (Geoffrey Smith, 2007), Cheel returns time and time again to the special problems of creating a character-driven documentary film. In his discussion of Crumb, for instance, he writes of the film’s “delicate balance between traditional retrospective talking head biopic and a more immediate and intimate character piece.” Similarly, he lauds The English Surgeon’s “utterly watchable non-fiction characters.” Even more complex examples of “character pieces” like Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up (1990) appear in Cheel’s writing, and one can’t help but think that Hossain Sabzian’s metamorphosis into a fictional being of his own imagining in Kiarostami’s film has at least some tangential relation to Beauty Day’s unmistakable fascination with Zavadil. Indeed, this interest in self-invention may also shed some valuable light on Beauty Day’s close kinship with American Movie (Chris Smith, 1999): self-invention in indifferent and apparently hopeless environments (Mark Borchardt’s “northwest,” Zavadil’s St. Catharines) is at the heart of each of these works about creative people working single-mindedly in the distant margins of their respective fields.

Cheel is, in this regard, part of a very long tradition of cinephile filmmakers who have also worked as film critics, refusing to distinguish between these two practices. It hardly seems accidental that Beauty Day strikes us as such a fully formed feature-length film debut: Cheel’s film criticism has functioned as a sort of laboratory for him to test, think about and deepen many of his ideas about character-driven documentaries. The refinement of these ideas is everywhere evident in Beauty Day. The film opens with Cap’n Video’s most infamous stunt-gone-wrong: the “pool plunge.” Looking for a novel way to remove his pool cover, Cap’n Video climbs to the top of a poorly secured ladder, leaps and lands headfirst on the concrete, breaking his neck in the process. As he will throughout the first two-thirds of the film, Cheel strategically uses Zavadil’s archival footage here – a single long take from a fixed position (Zavadil had no camera operator), given to us in the nearly square aspect ratio of an old television set. But beyond quickly introducing us to Zavadil/Cap’n Video through his most notorious stunt and its immediate aftermath, the film’s pre-credit sequence sets the terms for Cheel’s engagement with this frequently unruly figure. Seeing the disastrous “pool plunge” without immediate contextualization produces an enigma: the rationale for such an ill-conceived and dangerous stunt is completely inscrutable to us; yet we are undeniably curious about this person as a consequence. The film’s sudden shift to a widescreen aspect ratio for its subsequent images of a present-day Ralph Zavadil recounting this tale cleverly alerts us to the film’s approach: it will intervene and balance the documentary’s potential for invasive curiosity with a surprising degree of dexterity and generosity when dealing with its subject. Although he never appears in Beauty Day, one frequently senses that Cheel is subtly shaping his character study in this manner throughout the film.

Beauty Day is extremely well made, but Cheel’s work here strikes us as something more than mere technical proficiency. This is nowhere more apparent than in the film’s lyrical and poetic widescreen compositions. As Zavadil and Buick concoct and stage various stunts for the twentieth anniversary episode of The Cap’n Video Show, one senses Beauty Day’s increasingly confident creation of arresting images. The sight of Zavadil paragliding through the air produces a wondrous image, in this respect, and so too does the shot of Cap’n Video riding his motorized skateboard in slow motion, accompanied by Dan Deacon’s “The Crystal Cat” on the film’s soundtrack. Beauty Day’s closing image of Cap’n Video riding his scooter alone along the beach is equally unforgettable. There is a pervasive air of empathy and generosity in all of these images, and their lyricism speaks directly to Cheel’s approach to this character and his story. The significant capacity for image-making was already on display in Cheel’s early short films, Obsessed and Scientific (2005), The Goblin Man of Norway (2008), and Colore Non Vedenti (2009); but it has reached a higher level of refinement in Beauty Day precisely because of its relation to the broader goals of a character study as Cheel understands them. In the end, Zavadil’s attempt to create a twentieth anniversary episode for Cap’n Video is little more than a pretext for the film’s excellent final movement. In Jay Cheel’s Beauty Day, The Cap’n Video Show has in fact found a greater commemoration than it ever could have imagined for itself.

First off, merry X-Mas and all that. I hope you all have the most wonderful of holidays! So I was trying to think of something to post that’s both non-fiction and Christmas related but wasn’t having much luck. SO…I decided to post a holiday video I just finished a butt-load of work on over at our sister site, Film Junk. It might not be completely documentary related but hey, it’s X-Mas!! So, it’s time to introduce The Documentary Blog’s readers to Reed Farrington, a great friend of mine and a truly mysterious human being. In A Very Gerry X-Mas we watch as Reed attempts to make a gingerbread house, decorates his Christmas tree with Star Trek ornaments and beams himself out of existence. It’s a truly magical experience that we’re hoping might find a spot along side such other traditional holiday classics as The California Raisins Christmas Special (aka Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas) and The Star Wars Holiday Special. If you find you enjoyed A Very Gerry X-Mas, you’ll find more Reed Farrington related videos after the jump.

Merry X-Mas to you all and a huge thanks to everyone who’ve been supporting the site over the years!

Cooking With Gerry – Episode #2: Poutine

Cooking With Gerry – Episode #1: Turkey Shrimp Fried Rice

Cantankerous Episode #7: Reed’s House

For those that don’t know about the film yet the synopsis is below:

Before there was Tom Green…before there was Jackass…there was Ralph Zavadil.

His cable access television show, The Cap’n Video Show, ran from 1990 to 1995, spawning a small but loyal cult following. Each week, Ralph performed a series of idiotic and occasionally dangerous stunts, challenging the sensibilities of Southern Ontario audiences for five seasons. With the advent of the Internet and reality television only years away, his unique brand of gross-out stunt comedy was truly ahead of its time.

All it took was a broken neck for him to get noticed.

Huge congratulations to Jay from our tiny team at the Documentary Blog and you can follow the progress of the film at its official website and at facebook and twitter.

Full list of recipients after the jump.

2010 Recipients

Round Five: Canwest-Hot Docs Completion Fund

Eligible projects were considered by the Canwest-Hot Docs Completion Fund Selection Committee, which included Lynne Carter, Production Executive-Factual Content, Canwest Media Inc.; Sean Farnel, Director of Programming, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; and Aynsley Vogel, Head of Creative – Factual, Paperny Films. Six completion grants totalling $182,000 were awarded to the following projects:

AT NIGHT, THEY DANCE
Producer: Lucie Lambert
Directors: Stéphane Thibault, Isabelle Lavigne
Production Company: Les films du tricycle
An observational portrait of a family of belly dancers in a working-class district of Cairo by award-winning filmmakers Stéphane Thibault and Isabelle Lavigne.

BEAUTY DAY
Producers: Michael McMahon, Kevin McMahon, Kristina McLaughlin
Director: Jay Cheel
Production Company: Primitive Entertainment
A very funny and moving personal history of one-time cable television star Ralph Zavadil, St. Catherine’s own Cap’n Video.

CUDA
Producer and Director: Jeremy Torrie
Production Company: High Definition Pictures Inc.
A Canadian soldier faces trials and tribulations when attempting to restore the classic muscle car of his deceased platoon buddy.

FAMILY PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE
Producer: Boris Ivanov
Director: Julia Ivanova
Production Company: Family Portrait Productions Inc.
Olga Nenya is raising 16 black children in Ukraine, where 99.9% of the population is white.

RECESSIONIZE! FOR FUN AND PROFIT!
Producer and Director: Jamie Kastner
Production Company: Cave 7 Productions Inc.
Jamie Kastner is our host for an international survey of inspirational and instructional tales from people finding creative ways to weather the economic storm.

RON HYNES – MAN OF A THOUSAND SONGS
Producers: Terry Greenlaw, Jordan Canning
Director: William D. MacGillivray
Production Company: Primitive Thunder Productions Ltd. (Picture Plant Ltd.)
A visceral profile of iconic singer-songwriter Ron Hynes, said to have provided the soundtrack for a generation of Newfoundlanders.

Round Five: Canwest-Hot Docs Development Fund

Eligible projects were considered by the Canwest-Hot Docs Development Fund Selection Committee, which included Ric Bienstock, Producer/Director/Writer, Associated Producers Ltd.; Sean Farnel, Director of Programming, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and Samantha Linton, Director, Factual Content, Canwest Media Inc. Six no-interest loans totalling $69,000 were awarded to the following projects:

THE ART OF AFFLICTION
Producer: Mary Barroll
Production Company: Mbmedia Productions Inc.
An exploration of the historical connections between art and illness.

A HISTORY OF BATTLE FATIGUE
Producers: Michael McMahon, Kristina McLaughlin, Alan Zweig
Director: Alan Zweig
Production Company: Primitive Entertainment
A point-of-view essay on post traumatic stress disorder as something we do to our own soldiers.

LOST HIGHWAY
Producers and Directors: Derreck Roemer and Neil Graham
Production Company: Insurgent Projects Inc.
The stories of people living and working along a once prosperous but now desolate stretch of Ontario’s Highway 7.

PAINTING BY NUMBER$
Producer: Jeannette Loakman
Director: Brenda Kovrig
Production Company: Chaser Films
An exploration of the world of corporate art.

RISE UP
Producer: Deborah Parks
Director: Shelley Saywell
Production Company: Bishari Films
Follows Lorraine Segato’s efforts to organize a concert featuring homeless performers.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRES
Producer: Ed Barreveld
Director: Rama Rau
Production Company: Storyline Entertainment
A look inside the lives of actual millionaires living in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum.

Details of the Canwest-Hot Docs fund can be found here.

Hey guys, back already with yet another DVD giveaway. This time around we’ve got a film called ‘The People Speak’, which looks at ordinary Americans that have shaped or changed the course of history. (Tay Zonday better be in there somewhere) Here’s a little more info:

THE PEOPLE SPEAK is a documentary film inspired by the books, “A People’s History of the United States” and “Voices of a People’s History” which chronicles the lives and experiences of ordinary Americans who, through their words and actions, changed the course of our history.

The philosophy espoused is that change doesn’t come from the top, but rather from the bottom, and that without those everyday citizens pushing for betterment, there would be no America. This film takes us on a journey from the founding of our country to the civil rights movement, all the way up through today.

To enter, just send your name and mailing address here with ‘TAY Z’ in the subject line and we’ll announce the winner next week. Good luck!

Thanks to everyone who entered and a big thanks to Brian at A&E New Video for supplying us with the prizes! JFK, 3 Shots that Changed America and The Kennedy Assassination, 24 hrs After are available now on DVD. Stay tuned for our next contest, which should be up sometime today.

As you may have noticed, we’ve been trying to redesign The Documentary Blog a little bit as of late, with a focus on making it easier to update on a regular basis. We want to be the best source for documentary films on the web, but in order to do that we need to be able to cover a lot more stuff. This is why we’ve decided to start up a Twitter account and integrate it with the rest of the blog’s content.

Now we’ll be able to post short headlines and links to the site quickly, while also writing up longer posts and reviews as time allows. We know there are a lot of people who have continued to follow this site despite the fact that it has only been updated sporadically over the last little while. Hopefully this will help us keep in touch with all of you.

So what are you waiting for? Follow The Documentary Blog on Twitter now!

It’s better than nothing, no? I’m currently in my hotel room in Salt Lake City with my fellow Film Junk podcast host Sean Dwyer. We’ve spent our first day at Sundance sorting out our press passes, eating and DVD shopping. (Picked up Doug Pray’s ‘Surfwise’. Been waiting to see that.) Over the next two days, we hope to squeeze in as many movies as we possibly can; some of which will certainly be documentaries. Actually, our very first screening is James Toback’s documentary ‘Tyson’ tomorrow at 8:30am. Early as hell, but should be good. I’m also hoping to catch Thrills in Manila, Big River Man and possibly The Reporter. I’ll also be catching some non-non-fiction films as well, so you can here what I have to say about all of them on this Monday’s Film Junk podcast.

Here’s a list of this years docs. (I don’t think I missed any):

US Competition Films

Art & Copy (Director: Doug Pray; Screenwriter: Timothy J. Sexton)—Rare interviews with the most influential advertising creative minds of our age illustrate the wide-reaching effect advertising and creativity have on modern culture.

Boy Interrupted (Director: Dana Perry)—An intimate look at the life, mental illness and death of a young man told from the point of view of the filmmaker: his mother.

The Cove (Director: Louie Psihoyos; Screenwriter: Mark Monroe)—Dolphins are dying, whales are disappearing, and the oceans are growing sick. The horrors of a secret cove nestled off a small, coastal village in Japan are revealed by a group of activists led by Ric O’Barry, the man behind Flipper.

Crude (Director: Joe Berlinger)—The inside story of the “Amazon Chernobyl” case in the rainforest of Ecuador, the largest oil-related environmental lawsuit in the world.

Dirt! The Movie (Directors: Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow)—The story of the relationship between humans and dirt, Dirt! The Movie humorously details how humans are rapidly destroying the last natural resource on earth.

El General (Director: Natalia Almada)—As great-granddaughter of Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles, one of The ReckoningMexico’s most controversial revolutionary figures, filmmaker Natalia Almada paints an intimate portrait of Mexico.

Good Hair (Director: Jeff Stilson)—Comedian Chris Rock turns documentary filmmaker when he sets out to examine the culture of African-American hair and hairstyles.

Over the Hills and Far Away (Director: Michel Orion Scott)—Over the Hills and Far Away chronicles the journey of the Isaacson family as they travel through Mongolia in search of a mysterious shaman they believe can heal their autistic son.

The Reckoning (Director: Pamela Yates; Screenwriters: Peter Kinoy, Paco de Onís, Pamela Yates)—A battle of monumental proportions unfolds as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo faces down warlords, genocidal dictators and world superpowers in bringing perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice.

Reporter (Director: Eric Daniel Metzgar)—Set in Africa, this documentary chronicles, in verité fashion, the haunting, physically grueling and shocking voyage of Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Nicholas D. Kristof.

The September Issue (Director: R.J. Cutler)—With unprecedented access, director R.J. Cutler and his crew shot for nine months as they captured Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour and her team preparing the 2007 Vogue September issue, widely accepted as the “fashion bible” for the year’s trends.

Sergio (Director: Greg Barker)—Sergio examines the role of the United Nations and the international community through the life and experiences of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, including interviews with those who knew and worked with him over the course of his extraordinary career.

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech (Director: Liz Garbus)—An exploration of the history and current state of free speech in America narrated by the filmmaker’s father, First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus.

We Live in Public (Director and Screenwriter: Ondi Timoner)—We Live in Public is the story of the Internet’s revolutionary impact on human interaction as told through the eyes of maverick web pioneer, Josh Harris and his transgressive art project that shocked New York.

When You’re Strange (Director and Screenwriter: Tom DiCillo)—The first feature documentary about The Doors, When You’re Strange enters the dark and dangerous world of one of America’s most influential bands using only footage shot between 1966 and 1971.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (Directors: Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler)—With clients including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Chicago 10, the late civil rights attorney William Kunstler was one of the most famous lawyers of the 20th century. Filmmakers Emily and Sarah Kunstler explore their father’s life from movement hero to “the most hated lawyer in America.”

World Competition Films:

211:ANNA (Italy)
Directed by Paolo Serbandini & Giovanna Massimetti
The story of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and human rights activist who risked her life to report the truth about the Chechen conflict and President Vladimir Putin.

AFGHAN STAR (Afghanistan/UK)
Directed by Havana Marking
After 30 years of war and Taliban rule, Pop Idol has come to television in Afghanistan: millions are watching and voting for their favorite singer. This film follows the dramatic stories of four contestants as they risk their lives to sing.

BIG RIVER MAN (USA)
Directed by John Maringouin
An overweight, wine-swilling Slovenian world-record-holding endurance swimmer resolves to brave the mighty Amazon–in nothing but a Speedo.

BURMA VJ (Denmark)
Directed by Anders Oestergaard
In September 2007, Burmese journalists risking life imprisonment to report from inside their sealed-off country are suddenly thrown onto the global stage as their pocket camera images of the Saffron Revolution make headlines everywhere.

THE END OF THE LINE (UK)
Directed by Rupert Murray
Based on the book by journalist Charles Clover, The End of the Line reveals the devastating effect that global overfishing is having on fish stocks and the health of our oceans.

THE GLASS HOUSE (USA)
Directed by Hamid Rahmanian
The Glass House follows four teenage girls striving to overcome drug addiction, abandonment and abuse by attending a rehabilitation center in Tehran.

KIMJONGILIA (France)
Directed by N.C. Heikin
Defectors from North Korea finally speak out about the terrifying reality of their lives–and escapes.

LET’S MAKE MONEY (Austria/China/South Africa/Spain/Switzerland/U.S.A.)
Directed by Erwin Wagenhofer
From the factories of India, to financial markets in Singapore, to massive housing developments in Spain and offshore banks in Jersey, Let’s Make Money reveals complex and shocking workings of global money flow.

NOLLYWOOD BABYLON (Canada)
Directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal
Welcome to the wacky world of Nollywood, Nigeria’s bustling home-grown movie industry. U.S. Premiere
Old Partner / South Korea (Director: Chung-ryoul Lee)–A humble octogenarian farmer lives out his final days with his spitfire wife and his loyal old ox in the Korean countryside.

PROM NIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI (Canada)
Directed by Paul Saltzman
When a small-town Mississippi high school resolves to hold its first integrated senior prom, strong emotions fly and traditions are challenged to their core.

THE QUEEN AND I (Drottningen och jag) (Sweden)
Directed by Nahid Persson Sarvestani
Swedish filmmaker Sarvestani, an Iranian exile who helped overthrow the Shah’s regime in 1979, confronts her own assumptions and complex truths about Iran when she enters the life of the Shah’s widow.

QUEST FOR HONOR (Kurdistan / USA)
Directed by Mary Ann Bruni
A former teacher and tireless activist works with local lawmen, Kurdish government agencies and her colleagues to investigate and eradicate honor killings in the tribal regions of Kurdistan.

ROUGH AUNTIES (UK)
Directed by Kim Longinotto
Fearless, feisty and unwavering, the ‘Rough Aunties’ protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa.

THRILLER IN MANILLA (UK)
Directed by John Dower
A tale of betrayal stoked by the racial politics of 1970s America, Thriller in Manila chronicles the most intense and bitter sporting rivalry ever: the 1975 final match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

TIBET IN SONG (USA)
Directed by Ngawang Choephel
Through the story of Tibetan music, this film depicts the determined efforts of Tibetan people, both in Tibet and in exile, to preserve their unique cultural identity. Choephel served six years of an 18-year prison sentence for filming in Tibet.

Spectrum – Documentary:

It Might Get Loud / USA (Director: Davis Guggenheim)—The history of the electric guitar from the point of view of three legendary rock musicians. Cast: The Edge, Jimmy Page, Jack White. U.S. Premiere

No Impact Man / USA (Directors: Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein)—The documentary follows the Beavan family as they abandon their high consumption Fifth Avenue lifestyle in an attempt to make a no- net environmental impact for the course of one year. Cast: Michelle Conlin, Colin Beavan. World Premiere

Passing Strange / USA (Director: Spike Lee; Lyrics: Stew; Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald)—A musical documentary about the international exploits of a young man from Los Angeles who leaves home to find himself and ‘the real’. A theatrical stage production of the original Tony-Award winning book by Stew. Cast: De’Adre Aziza, Daniel Breaker, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Stew. World Premiere

Tyson / USA (Director: James Toback)—An intimate look at the complex life of former heavyweight
champ Mike Tyson. Cast: Mike Tyson. North American Premiere

Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy / USA (Director: Robert Townsend)—Using rare archival clips along with provocative interviews with many of today’s leading comedians and social critics, Why We Laugh celebrates the incredible cultural influence and social impact black comedy has wielded over the past 400 years. Cast: Chris Rock, Bill Cosby, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Steve Harvey, Dick Gregory. World Premiere

Wounded Knee / USA (Director: Stanley Nelson; Screenwriter: Marcia Smith)—In 1973, American Indian groups took over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota to draw attention the 1890 massacre. Though the federal government failed to keep many of the promises that ended the siege, the event succeeded in bringing to the world’s attention the desperate conditions of Indian reservation life. World Premiere

The Yes Men Fix the World / France/ USA (Directors: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno and Kurt Engfehr)—A pair of notorious troublemakers sneak into corporate events disguised as captains of industry, then use their momentary authority to expose the biggest criminals on the planet. Cast: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno. World Premiere

I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d just catch you up with what I’ve been up to. The blogging has taken a back seat (let’s face it, it’s always taken a back seat) to some projects I’ve been working on lately. The biggest one being a short horror film I’m shooting over the next month or so. We’ve shot the first scene and it went well. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Secondly, me and Sean are going to be checking out a few films at this years Toronto International Film Festival. We split a ten pack of tickets and were lucky enough to get ALL of our first five choices. The only documentary of the bunch is Larry Charles’ ‘Religulous’, which I’m very excited to see.

Also, a short film I directed will be playing at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. The Goblin Man of Norway is a faux documentary which was released in support of the Xbox 360 title Too Human. The short draws inspiration from the films of Werner Herzog (specifically Wild Blue Yonder), Errol Morris and John Carpenter. I’m very excited to have been included in the festival and hope to get to visit some others throughout the year. You can check out the full film (broken into three parts) by following the link below.

The Goblin Man of Norway

So posting around here will be pretty sparse for a while. However, I hope to throw up some reviews now and again, so stay tuned.