Hot Docs 2012: Reviews #2

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

Dragan Wende - West Berlin (Dir: Lena Müller/Dragan von Petrovic, 90 minutes, Germany/Serbia)

Every historical change creates winners and losers. The collapse of the Iron Curtain is generally considered as a positive historical moment, but there are those who prefer things the way they used to be. Some people adjust to historical changes, and others semi-willingly become living anachronisms, to whom "West Berlin" is still a walled city and "Yugoslavia" an undivided country.

From his childhood home in Yugoslavia, Vuk Makismovič always thought that his uncle (the titular Dragan Wende) lived a life of romantic intrigue in the clubs and restaurants of West Berlin's famous Ku'damm. When, as an adult, Makismovič makes the trek to Berlin he finds things are more banal then he imagined. The nightlife has gone downhill since the wall collapsed, and Uncle Dragan now works as a hustler and security guard outside a bordello, living in a cramped apartment with a piano that Liza Minnelli might have played once. Still, Makismovič follows his uncle around, watches him work and meets his friends while trying to get to the core of all the stories of the glamourous (and occasionally shady) decades gone by.

The problem here is that Uncle Dragan isn't nearly as interesting as Makismovič wishes he was — and Makismovič himself, who spends a fair amount of time on camera, isn't particularly compelling either. Although there might be an interesting documentary to be made reflecting on the high times on Ku'damm during the Cold War, this isn't it.

Some occasional newsreel-style historical segments are intrusive (and a little cheesy) and don't help matters. There are a few moments where things come to life a bit, especially when Grandpa Mile (Uncle Dragan's father) comes to Berlin to collect a pension for building a city he feels no affection for. Another anachronism, he pines for the days of Tito and a united Yugoslavia while castigating the younger generations for being lazy. But overall, this drags along to the point it wears out its welcome. The film-makers commented that the cut being shown here was still something of a work-in-progress, so some trimming might improve things a bit. But as it stands, this one's not recommended.

Hunting Bobby Oatway (Dir: John Kastner, 45 minutes, Canada)

Part of the Festival's Focus On John Kastner series, this screening brought together two utterly dissimilar works that had been commissioned by the CBC's Witness series in the 90's. Hunting Bobby Oatway had the greater heft of the pair, going inside a Toronto halfway house to get face-to-face with Oatway as he began a program of controlled release as he ended a jail term for child abuse. Local residents were unsurprisingly angry at the prospect of having a pedophile in their neighbourhood, while some of his former victims vowed to ensure that he would never be able to slip anonymously into society.

That created a pressure-cooker environment with protesters making things uncomfortable for Oatway's fellow inmates — hardly a good scenario for calm and patient consideration of how the rights of the offender, his victims, and the community at large all balance out. Yet Kastner's camera follows the situation with patient reserve, revealing the tension behind the scenes of the correctional bureaucracy while putting us face-to-face with Oatway and allowing us to consider what would be a just resolution to this scenario. Did the simple act of allowing this observation aid in Oatway's rehabilitation? Given the terrible things that he did, does it even matter whether or not is is rehabilitated? Heavy stuff, but handled here with sincere restraint.

Ask a Silly Question (Dir: John Kastner, 45 minutes, Canada), its counterpart in this screening, showed no restraint at all, going joyfully over the top in its efforts to delve into the murky world of opinion polls and consumer reports. Kastner steps in front of the camera to act as a less-than-scrupulous interviewer, and in a sequence that was a clear forerunner to Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans segments, fielded a series of increasingly outrageous propositions to see whether or not people would agree with anything. (And, indeed, a strong majority of Americans interviewed would support military intervention to stop Canadian trawlers from poaching silverfish in US waters.) Meanwhile, interviews with political pollsters reveal how the wording of a poll question can be a tool to get desired results. Lighthearted in tone, this still made its points in an effective manner — even as it already looks like a product of a far more innocent time.

Given the huge variety of choices on offer in the festival, it might seem mildly misguided to spend some time watching a couple documentaries that aired on CBC a decade and a half ago, but I went to these to consider them as part of Kastner's whole oeuvre. And in the meantime, it was a strong reminder of how important it is that we have outlets like the CBC that funds investigative work like this and where Canadians can share our stories with each other — as I left, my strongest feeling was of how I wanted to write my MP and ask him if he would consider protecting and promoting our culture instead of undermining and defunding the CBC.