Hot Docs 2012: Reviews #6

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

The Young Man Was (Part 1: United Red Army) (Dir: Naeem Mohaiemen, 70 minutes, Bangladesh)

The 1977 hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 472 might not ring a lot of bells on this side of the world, but it made a large impact on director Mohaiemen as a young child, even if it was then mostly because the live news coverage pre-empted The Zoo Gang, his favourite program. Now, the incident serves as a fulcrum in The Young Man Was, his multimedia exploration of the 70's ultra-left. His broad artistic interests (other parts of the project include journal essay, live performance, video wall, photography-text sequence, installation and collage) give a hint that he's interested in playing with artistic form, and this film (co-presented with the Images Festival) is indeed anything but a standard documentary.

Even if this did receive live-on-tv coverage, the mediasphere of 1977 was far less overwhelming than it is now, so the formal constraint here is to see how much story can be wrung out of limited source material. Although there is some grainy footage of concerned heads in a control tower and a distant plane on a runway, the main element is audio recordings of the radio conversations between the hijackers' liaison and the negotiator in the control tower. And rather than working with visual montages to accompany those transmissions, Mohaiemen chooses to simply present them without images — just a black screen with a continuous stream of captions.

Even with such a constrained style, the film wrings considerable tension from letting the drama unfold. It helps that it's a captivating story, with a lot of narrative threads to be teased out, including the background of the vicious Japanese Red Army terrorist group (who were so ideologically pure, they had a habit of killing off comrades who weren't adequately forthcoming in undertaking self-criticism); this particular hijacking's position as one of the last where the authorities negotiated with the terrorists (The Japanese government agreed to release several of the faction's imprisoned comrades and pay a multi-million dollar ransom); and the fact that the most "collateral damage" came in the wake of a failed coup that broke out while the hijacked plane was on the ground in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Oh — and, of course, the The Zoo Gang.

Anyone wanting these strands presented in a tidy narrative package should look elsewhere, and anyone simply interested in learning about '70's-era red faction terror might be unsatisfied, but it's rewarding if you're willing to entertain the film's formal constraints.

Rage Against the Darkness: Bunny and Leona (Dir: John Kastner, 85 minutes, Canada)

Made for CBC, this entry in the John Kastner retrospective examines the issues of family relationships and elder care, focusing on the difficult issue of the transition from independent living to an institutional setting. The titular characters are sisters, long-time co-habitants who are suddenly split apart as health issues loom. Sociable younger sister Bunny's multiple sclerosis seems under control when she suffers a stroke that constrains her mobility and confines her to a hospital bed. The fact that she will need the constant care of a nursing home means that older sister Leona must now find a space in a retirement home.

At one level, the film is a celebration of the fact that people never stop growing and changing. Living away from her family for the first time in her life, Leona is miserable at first — then suddenly comes out of her shell and starts enjoying life. Bunny, meanwhile, feels out of place among the older clients of the nursing home and becomes dispirited as her health declines. Meanwhile, children and grandchildren are busy leading their own lives and are sometimes absent when the elders are placed in new and tension-inducung situations.

Given the demographic situation in Canada, the issues in this documentary are even more pressing a decade and a half later. Simply put, as a society we need to take an honest look at the problems involving the myriad small indignities of institutional care. How any measure of dignity can be attained as long as "austerity" is our motivating civic principle is a problem that we're simply doing our utmost not to face. The enormous sympathy and sensitivity that Kastner employs here is a good way to break the ice; the best way we can repay the honour of having been allowed to get so close to Bunny and Leona would be to face the realities of aging openly and honestly.

Espoir Voyage (Dir: Michel K. Zongo, 82 minutes, France/Burkina Faso)

Director Zongo goes on a personal journey that ends up being an illuminating trip through contemporary West Africa. Arid, landlocked Burkina Faso has manpower but not resources, so it's traditional for workers to head away (often to the prosperous Côte d'Ivoire) to make their fortune before returning to buy land and raise a family. Some never return.

Such was the case with Zongo's barely-remembered older brother Joanny, absent for many years before word finally filtered back that he had died. Time passed, but as soon as he was able, Zongo decided to try and fill the absence he was feeling by going on a quest to find "traces" of his brother. Following his journey, we get to see hidden details of life — from the overnight trip through rough roads to life on cocoa plantations. Zongo's search leads him to a fellow villager — his brother's friend who had been the bearer of the tragic news, bringing with him a video message from his mother. From there, we move deeper into the country, picking up more traces.

It's an interesting trip, well-captured by Zongo's camera. There are some moments of slack narrative drift, but seeing all these small details of daily life is the movie's greatest strength.

Pour la suite du monde (Dir: Michel Brault/Pierre Perrault, 105 minutes, Canada)

The residents of Ile aux Coudres in the St. Lawrence River are proud of the fact that their island home was personally discovered by Jacques Cartier, and in the early 60's a lot of the old ways still prevail. This little community has its churches, farms and even a smithy and lives life following the slow turning of the seasons. The islanders celebrate that old Catholicism that's bursting with pagan rituals, from their gifts and invocations aux petites âmes to the drawing of l'eau de Pâques (Easter water), to a cross-dressing mid-Lent celebration that looks similar to Newfoundland's mummering.

One tradition that has faded, however, is the whale hunt. The mouth of the St. Lawrence River is in the path of the annual beluga migration (the islanders call them "porpoises") and for generations they were trapped in miles-long weirs painstakingly constructed during spring's low tides. After the turn of the twentieth century the market for whale products went into decline and eventually the hunt died out.

Wanting to save the hunt-lore known to a band of now-grizzled grandfathers, the islanders decide to revive the tradition. (This has also happened, we are told, at the film-makers' instigation, one element that gives room for discussion on the faux-neutrality of the "direct cinema" approach.) And so, most of the film is devoted to the planning (and arguments) leading up to it, and then the long process involved in reviving the weirs.

This gives Brault and Perrault a lens through which they can observe many facets of island life, and the film fascinates with the cultural snapshot it reveals. On the cusp of what will be a revolutionary change in the larger Québec society, this documentary paints a loving picture of the pure laine old ways, conservative in the original meaning of that word, celebrating a collective sensibility passing down traditions. (And while this film surely does cast a romantic spell over these old ways, let's not forget the stifling limitations of this worldview as well: this film and this society are very much a place for men, with the womenfolk seen occasionally at the edge of the frame, showing one of the fundamental inequalities at play. And as the islanders argue back and forth over whether weir fishing came down to les habitants from les sauvages we catch glimpses of a casual racism that can stand in open view.)

But on the whole, it seems like a good life, and it's the manifestations of "progress" that feel the least warming — from Bobby Hull besting the Habs on a fuzzy television broadcast to a New York roadtrip transporting the fruits of the whale hunt to an aquarium that no longer reads as a scientific paradise for the captured beluga.

This was one of the screenings at the festival that I was most looking forward to, yet it was also by far the least-attended I've seen, with a couple dozen viewers on hand. Just as the residents of Ile aux Coudres came together to preserve their traditions, against the glammy appeal of the new we, as the documentary audience, need to work harder to acknowledge and celebrate our filmed history. If a trip to the retrospective screenings hasn't been in your festival plans this year, I really suggest that you start resolving to change that next year.

This screening was of the 2006 restoration with particularly well-done subtitles. The NFB keeps material like this available to Canadians, so do seek it out. Also note, there's a nice article on Michel Brault in the new issue of Point of View magazine — and I am told there's a stack of free copies available to grab at The Bloor right now.