Hot Docs: Sunday, May 3

Reviews of screenings from the 2009 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada.

Necrobusiness (Dir: Richard Solarz, Fredrik von Krusenstjerna)

An investigative journalism story filmed to feel more like a feature than a doc,¹ this digs up some shady dealings in the undertaking industry in Lódz, Poland. Not only are paramedics being bribed to favour certain funeral homes, but they may be taking it upon themselves to create more customers! Peeling back the scandal like layers of an onion, the doc mostly follows Skrzydlewski, the man at the top of the heap in this cut-throat game, as well as some of his former business associates. It dragged in a few places, but the story is so strange and compelling, with revelation after revelation that it is worth watching. The fact that Skrzydlewski is a colourful fellow, and the big cinematic look of the film are positives as well. Sadly, there was no Q&A to allow us to find out how the film-makers got such intimate access, including one scene where a prisoner receives the letter informing him of his trial's outcome.

Carmen Meets Borat (Dir: Mercedes Stalenhoef)

Tracking the aftermath in the Romanian village featured at the start of the film Borat, this doc starts just by observing life in the town of Glod. The name translates as "Mud", and in many cases, it doesn't actually seem that the film, which offended the townspeople greatly, stretched the truth all that much. But the film is also about Carmen, one girl who thinks that this town is too small for her spirit, and longs to get away, Featuring Carmen's ambitious father, a boy-next-door with an eye for marriage, and some oily lawyers that appear to help the town sue to recover its stolen dignity, all of these are played nicely against Carmen's own struggles. By turns hilarious and sad this is an above average doc that compares Hollywood dreams to the realities of life's real character arcs.

Flak / Dream Tower (Dir: Ron Mann)

A pair of mid-length films by Ron Mann, linked by their examinations of the aftermath of the failure of the '60's dreams of social transformation. First up was Flak, shot by the sixteen-year-old Mann in 1976, a semi-documentary following the lives of five young men deciding what, if anything they could do to stop the pollution emanating from the factory near their home. The film is raw and shows struggles against some of the technical limitations it was shot under, but is not without some interesting moments.

More accomplished was Dream Tower, the story of Toronto's infamous Rochdale College, established in the transformational zeal of the 60's as a new kind of educational institution based on radical equality and democracy. Rochdale, then, also became a metaphor for the death of that time's optimism, as the project sank into an un-self-governed den of drug use and communal indifference. On the other hand, Rochdale inspired a generation of creative minds and left its mark on the birth of some of the city's most important cultural institutions (including Coach House Press and Theatre Paisse Murialle). Narrowing the focus from the identically-titled book which inspired it, the doc tells the story well and has some excellent footage of life inside Rochdale.

---

¹ Including some giant crane shots that would surely make Johnny LaRue intensely jealous.