Hot Docs 2012: Advance Reviews

Advance reviews of screenings from the 2012 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada.

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (Dir: Brian Knappenberger, 93 minutes, USA)

A talking heads documentary about people in masks may not be a compelling recipe for an engaging feature. And, indeed, at the outset, I was dubious that I was going to enjoy — or learn anything — from this film. Static interviews alternating with a lot of fast-cutting montages, at first I thought this was going to just be like an extended Nightline feature. But it manages, in the end, to mostly transcend that as the momentum of its story builds.

Getting swept up in the moment it's capturing, We Are Legion is definitely sympathetic towards the hacktivists it portrays and the trade-off of close access to some key players in the story comes, to some extent, at the expense of asking some hard questions. (Though with respect to the latter, McGill professor Gabriella Coleman comes off as articulate and cogent while keeping an eye on the larger issues.)

The film-makers, meanwhile, seem content with D&D-esque explanations that the amorphous "movement" can be seen as more chaotic than inherently good or bad, while not calling to task the elements that are willing to cause all sorts of trouble (to individuals, and not the corporations they claim to detest) in the name of "lulz" (or, as we called them back in my day, "kicks"). And in the end, there's probably more to be said about how the Anonymous phenomenon is feeding into larger social uprisings (such as Occupy), and, ultimately, how this fits into the broader historical anti-capitalist struggle.

Zeitgeist-y and worth seeing, though this isn't the sort of thing I'd necessarily recommend going out of one's way to see on the big screen during Hot Docs. It would look better seen on TV — or, perhaps appropriately, in a window on one's computer screen nestled in amonsgt all the other data flowing through your life.

Screens: Tue, May 1 6:15 PM @ Bloor; Thu, May 3, 3:00 PM @ TIFF Lightbox 1; Sat, May 5, 7:00 PM @ TIFF Lightbox 1)

The Tundra Book. A Tale of Vukvukai, the Little Rock (Dir: Aleksei Vakhrushev, 105 minutes, Russia)

"Mother Nature, let the herd be ever well." It's no surprise that the Chukchi people's prayers might be reindeer-centric — in the blank, treeless tundra of northeastern Siberia, there's not a lot else to sustain life. Taking a largely hands-off observational approach, this film takes us into the world of an extended family of reindeer herders, eking out a living in the unforgiving arctic. It's certainly not all grim — the adorably ewok-like children have lots of time for play before falling into the busy life of their parents.

Cajoling, shouting and bringing in wayward individualists looking for some alone time, patriarch Vukvukai doesn't always come off as a likeable guy. He watches and treats his extended family just like his herd — as something needing to be ordered around and watched constantly. Vukvukai is our focal point, but by dwelling on him, we don't get any other sharply-drawn characters, which is one of the film's biggest flaws.

And it's interesting, of course, to consider what the film does and doesn't show us — just as there are no guns and no predators in sight threatening the herd, besides a tractor and a plane passing by overhead, there are very few signs of modernity, which makes me curious as to whether the director was trying to present a sort of airbrushed anthropological view of the Chukchi. The whimsical chapter titles feed into that a bit as well.

It's only at the end, when Vukvukai is fretting over the children being herded into a helicopter to be taken away to school that we feel any tension between modern Russian and ancient Chukchi ways. (And here in Canada, the sight of the words "residential school" tends to send a chill down the spine.)

That this isn't the most interesting documentary I've seen about nomadic herders probably says more about my film-watching habits than about this doc's intrinsic value. There's some nice — if intensely snow-bright — scenery to behold, and I don't mind the languid, observational pace. Those with short attention spans might want to give this a miss, however.

Screens: Sun, Apr 29, 6:00 PM @ TIFF Lightbox 4; Tue, May 1, 1:00 PM @ TIFF Bell Lightbox 4)

China Heavyweight (Dir: Yung Chang, 89 minutes, Canada/China)

Director Yung Chang follows the top-notch Up the Yangtze with another look into the fast-changing world of contemporary China. Boxing — banned under Mao for being too violent and too Western — is now a fast-growing sport, and it brings to the foreground a lot of the tensions evident in China today, as the older Communist (and Confucian) values of meekness and collective identity are being pushed aside by a brash, hit-them-back individualism.

Boxing is perhaps the greatest of cinematic sports, and there's enough of a tradition of boxing flicks that they have a familiar cinematic grammar. The notions of the underdog, the coulda-bin-a-contender, and the Big Fight (to say nothing of run-up-the stairs training montages) are instantly familiar, and the ability to tap into these tropes is both a positive and negative for this film.

Here, Chang cuts between several storylines as different members of the Huili provincial boxing team struggle to push themselves as far as willpower will go. There's a nice sense of place and a feeling for the regimen the boxers go through, but the film struggles as Chang shows a bit of a heavy hand in trying to craft storylines for characters that sometimes blur together. Only Coach Qi, coming out of retirement for One Last Shot At The Title, really stands out.

I don't know what this was shot on, but this was not the sharpest movie visually. Although there were some fascinating vistas, both rural and urban, there was also too often a strange fisheye effect giving a queasy quality to the wide shots. Worth seeing for those interested in watching the rapid changes in China, but this isn't a work at the level of Up the Yangtze. And as a minor aside, I don't know a lot about boxing, but I'm pretty sure that none of the boxers that we follow are actually heavyweights. But now that China is intent on making an impact, there's no doubt that it will soon be a heavy-hitter in the boxing world.

Screens: Wed, May 2, 9:00 PM @ Bloor; Thu, May 3, 2:00 PM @ TIFF Lightbox 2; Fri, May 4, 9:30 PM @ Fox Theatre)

The Ambassador (Dir: Mads Brügger, 94 minutes, Denmark)

Mads Brügger, who brought the fabulous North Korea undercover exposé The Red Chapel to Hot Docs in 2009, returns with another work burrowing deeper into his "performative journalism" approach. Looking into the shadowy world of blood diamonds and dubious diplomats, Brügger takes us down a rabbit hole where half-truths thrive, even as danger lurks.

Finding the means to acquire some fairly dubious Liberian credentials, Brügger sets up shop in the hardly-more-functional Central African Republic, where a charge d'affairs dispensing envelopes of cash is quickly welcomed into ever-higher circles of power. Hundreds of diplomats have already been carrying out diamonds without being scrutinized by customs; why not him? There's a lot of smoke and mirrors, and certainly more insinuation than proof, but the glimpses that we get here of the seedy underbelly of business and government reveal deep corruption.

Brügger, in character as a cynical (and sometimes mildly racist) asshole, is rather entertaining, and there's no shortage of laughs here. There's also a lot of questions left unanswered — like what percentage of this film's budget was spent on bribes? Hopefully Brügger will be in attendance for what should be one of the festival's most fascinating Q&A sessions.

Screens: Fri, Apr 27, 4:00 PM @ Isabel Bader Theatre; Fri, May 4, 4:45 PM @ TIFF Lightbox 2; Sat, May 5, 9:00 PM @ The Regent)