Hot Docs 2010: May 4 (Tuesday)

Reviews of screenings from the 2010 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada.

Pride of Place (Dir: Kim Longinotto)

Kim Longinotto's first film is a visit to the very same public (i.e. private) school that she had attended — and run away from. As such, it's no surprise that her camera seems at ease with students engaging in small acts of rebellion (like sneaking off for a smoke) and accusatory when watching the casual meannesses of the authority figures (one teacher has a particular relish for calling the students "stupid"). The senseless cruelties of British Public Schools have been widely portrayed, so it seems mildly surprising to think that this was apparently something of a shocker on its release — the school shut down a year later. But, then again, this was late in the game — the film was released in 1976 — and people might have thought such casual cruelty was already a thing of the past.

Conceived and made as a student film, this is a little rough round the edges and has a few wasted shots here and there and a less-strong narrative sense than Longinotto would develop. Plus, it's technically a bit rough, especially in regards to the limitations of the equipment of the era. The sound is rather rough, but comprehension has helped by the fact that everyone was generally speaking with their best received pronunciation. Interesting on its own merits, but all the richer to treat this as something of a Rosetta Stone to Longinotto's attitudes and methods.

That film was paired with Theatre Girls, Longinotto's second film, and again a student piece. Set in a women's shelter in Soho, we observe the residents (mostly poor and/or alcoholics) and watch them trying to get by. Taking more of a verité approach, this is less "plot-driven" than in Longinotto's signature style, and as such, although we come to feel a strong sense of place, there's a bit less meat here. Plus, this was technically even more rough than Pride of Place with some rough edits from whatever generation of film that managed to get converted to digital, and murky sound made even harder to comprehend by the fact that the subjects were often shouting at each other in a variety of broad accents. More interesting in thinking about how this fits into a body of work than as a piece on its own.

12th & Delaware (Dir: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing)

From the directors of Jesus Camp a perfect metaphor for America's obsessive concern over abortion — on one corner of the titular streets of Fort Pierce, Florida is an abortion clinic. Across the street is a religious-affiliated "Pregnancy Care Centre". Every day before dawn, protesters gather to harass the employees and patrons of the clinic.

Grady and Ewing's film takes no positions. We go inside the pro-life centre and meet its staff and patients, as well as spending time with the clinic's proprietors. We learn about the tactics that the pro-life centre uses to insinuate itself with women, many of whom arrive there in the mistaken belief that they are at the abortion clinic. With the even-handedness that all of this is presented with, it's quite possible that someone on either side of this issue could see as a vindication for their position, even as evidence slowly accumulates of some of the particularly shady practices that the pro-life centre engages in. Very well done, though leaving one with a bit if a chill at something the U.S.A. seemingly can't get over.

Disorder (Dir: Huang Weikai)

Not just a description of the subject, this film's title also reveals its method. Taking a variety of unusual occurences on the bustling streets of China's modern cities, the art of the film comes from the montage that slices and dices them together in grainy black and white, finding connections and discontinuities between different events. Although the larger theme might be about the unintended effects of social change and infrastructural stress, sometimes it comes off like a very special Shanghai episode of Chris Marker's Cops — complete with disoriented shirtless guy. But the editing brings together several different stories often linked by water (a distraught man trying to bring attention to his bureaucratic troubles by threatening to jump off a bridge; a sort of civic protest swim meet; a man casting his fishing net in fetid, garbage-strewn water) or roads (pedestrians risking their lives to cross busy highways; one dazed guy who seems to be doing tai chi in traffic; a truckload of pigs scrambling around a busy road). Perhaps at some points not as clever as it would like to be taken as, this is nonetheless a well-constructed document of the ongoing upheaval in urbanizing China, where on the ground, nothing seems as monolithic or straight ahead as the official version might make it out to be.

Screened with Tussilago (Dir: Jonas Odell), a short memoir of a former Swedish revolutionary. A visual delight, the narrative is illustrated with highly imaginative rotoscope animation, making it worth seeing on that regard alone. As for the story, it was certainly an interesting account of the urban terrorist days of Europe in the 70's, but its rigorous maintenance to its subject's point of view makes its conclusion — that this bank robber and shelterer of known criminals was made a victim by the justice system when apprehended — somewhat suspect.