Hot Docs 2012: Reviews #7

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

Michel Brault: Shorts [shorts programme]

Closing out the Outstanding Achievement Award Retrospective was this trio of short works made for the National Film Board. Les raquetteurs (Dir. Michel Brault/Gilles Groulx, Canada, 1958, 15 min.) was the best of the lot, with its rigid application of the Direct Cinema approach. No interfering narration in this one, just a careful montage to give us the impression of a snowshoeing competition in Sherbrooke. A gorgeous-looking time capsule.

La lutte (Dir. Michel Brault/Claude Jutra/Marcel Carrière/Claude Fournier, Canada, 1961, 28 min) was a good contrast, showing how much of an imposition a voiceover can feel in comparison. As impressive as that list of talent in the committee-of-directors was, the credits revealed even more of an NFB dream team, with well-known names such as Don Owen listed among the camera operators. However that multi-headed beast might be a sign there was less of an authorial "voice" here, and this film felt more populist in its structure. Perhaps that befits the topic, which spent a lot of time watching the audience of a wrestling match. Regardless of the approach, this was a beautiful-looking film, with plenty shots of the old Montréal Forum and the well-dressed crowd who put today's sporting attendees to shame. Focusing on the ritualized elements of the wrestling match (replete with good-triumphs-over-evil storylines) as well as its athleticism, it's also a souvenir of a different time when a film about wrestling didn't even passingly reference the underlying fakeness of the "sport" (to say nothing of the rampant homoeroticism).

The sexualized gaze was more openly acknowledged in Quebec-USA ou l'invasion pacifique (Dir. Michel Brault/Claude Jutra, Canada, 1962, 27 min) which got amusingly sidetracked from its account of American tourists in Vieux-Québec to simply drift along into girlwatching. That would be just one element here showing the progression of Direct Cinema into more personal and experimental forms of expression. Here, there felt like something of a clean delineation between the two directors, with the early part of the film following an American sailor on leave with his girlfriend taking a guided tour through the Old City in his giant convertible. Things got weirder after that, starting with a display of marching guards insouciantly flipping upside down and marching backwards as the audio slipped into an abstracted collage. The whole latter section (that girlwatching included) came off as pure Jutra, something you could easily extend to his later, more psychedelic work (like 1969's Wow). Quite fabulous.

Overall, a very fine retrospective of Brault's works. The only disappointment was that his attendance at the festival was limited to a couple insider-y events, not dropping in to any of the screenings to discuss his work with the hoi-polloi. But still, screening-for-screening, the best thing going at Hot Docs.

Smoke Traders (Dir: Jeff Dorn/Catherine Bainbridge, 51 minutes, Canada)

If you know budget-conscious people who smoke, you probably know someone who smokes "Indian cigarettes", sold on the cheap and showing up in a variety of informal packagings. This movie examines the phenomena from the perspective of the Mohawks who have pioneered the industry. Because of geography and history, the Mohawks have been at the centre of several controversies, growing from simply bringing untaxed cigarettes across the St. Lawrence River back in the 90's to a growing native-owned manufacturing sector today.

When we see before-and-after shots of their communities, it's hard not to feel some measure of support for anything that gives people steady jobs, better homes and some manner of economic clout. As the film introduces us to some of the new generation of entrepreneurs, we see how muddy the waters are. Brian White, a former smuggler, wants a safer and more respectable job and has a dream to open a solar panel plant. Robbie Dickson wants to go legit and take on the big tobacco companies at their own game — not just manufacturing his own cigarettes but even taking the trouble to pay the excise tax that should make his product legally marketable. Both face the frustration of bureaucratic quagmires that keep them from taking flight, as if designed to trap their communities in the status quo.

Especially in Dickson's case, there's an underlying current here that all levels of government (as well as the broader public at large) want to sweep this under the rug, not merely out of racism or neglect as much as a strong disinclination to really have to face up to thinking through what Aboriginal Sovereignty means in the twenty-first century. If the Mohawks truly are a nation that has made binding deals with the Canadian state, how does this play out? For well over a century, the general approach has been to ignore the question by papering over the cracks. What will happen if someone like Dickson stands up long enough to force governments to truly deal with this?

So there are a lot of fascinating questions invoked by this film. Sadly, though, one of the overarching ones is ignored: does it make a difference that the product at hand is a poisonous death-bringer? Do the Mohawks care that they're promoting cancer while robbing governments of the tax dollars required for the health care their products will create? Do they see this as a sly form of payback against their colonizers? Ignoring this giant blind spot only serves to undermine a lot of the sympathy that the film otherwise engenders for its protagonists.

Screens with: Pot Country (Dir: Mario Furloni/Kate McLean, 27 minutes, USA), a fascinating visit to Humboldt County, California, where marijuana cultivation is the leading economic activity. Giving us a quick historical overview on how hippie back-to-the-landers accidentally gave the region a new economic identity, this film is set against the campaign for Proposition 9, which would legalize their industry.

This causes mixed emotions from area residents — while it would mean they would no longer have to conduct their careers in secret, it would also bring them back into a mainstream/taxpaying relationship with the government that they moved here to avoid. Plus, it would open the way for big business to step in and put smallholders out of business, just as the area had seen a century before during the logging era. After all, those scummy lobbyists that are suddenly showing up at their doorsteps are being paid by someone, right? This creates a situation where the residents' best interests, in fact, are against the legalization of their work. A beautiful-looking film, this expanded thesis project handles all these threads quite well in its running time, and was the best mid-length doc I saw at the festival this year.

Price of Gold (Dir: Sven Zellner/Chingunjav Borkhuu, 86 minutes, Germany)

Mongolia is in the midst of a monumental, nation-transforming gold rush, with giant multinationals (including some of Canada's notoriously venal mining companies) staking their claims. Well, why shouldn't the locals get a piece of the action, then?

Suddenly "ninjas" (former nomads digging unsanctioned mines) are dotting the landscape, and in this film, we follow the adventures of one small crew, from Day 1, when they simply slow up in a scrubby, rocky corner of the Gobi Desert and start digging. No megaproject, this mine is just a hole in the ground dug with sweat, shovels and a balky Chinese jackhammer. A few crude sticks of dynamite help dislodge the rock, and they're just one dangerous element in this laissez-faire workplace. Split between bosses (who stake the capital to buy the equipment and outfit the crew) and workers, we watch them dig down for more then ten meters over twenty days, giving up after finding only quartz and moving to a more promising (but less hidden) location.

Along the way, we get to meet the members of the mining crew, and both bosses and workers alike agree that they would rather be living a traditional herding life, in tune with nature instead of poisoning the landscape with the mercury used to separate gold from stone. In fact, the general view is that they are living a cursed life, doomed to suffer misfortune for the disharmony they are creating. But such is the economic imperative.

We also get close in on the workings of the miners, so things get a little claustrophobic as we descend deep into the narrow mineshafts. I might have felt I was in danger of contracting silicosis just from watching this, but it was an enriching experience. Recommended.