By Amir Ganjavie. Montreal-based, Chilean-born filmmaker Patricio Henríquez has previously made two documentaries examining the issues surrounding abuse at the Guantánamo Bay prison. The first was Under the Hood: A Voyage into the World of Torture (2008), which centers on the treatment of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in […]
Programmer Magali Simard on the 2015 Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival
By Amir Ganjavie. Between March 26 and April 2, TIFF presented the 12th series of Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which featured eight movies: The One That Got Away, The Look of Silence, Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd, Beats of the Antonov, The Salt of the Earth, Burden of Peace, The Wanted 18, and Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story. As the […]
She Goes for It: Cortney Palm on Zombeavers (2014)
By Matthew Sorrento. When Patricia Arquette debuted in the hit A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), few could have imagined the major artist she’d become. Granted, she soon shined in vehicles with room for her talent, as an innocent yet subversively sexual ‘50s nurse – the gal who […]
Moved by Faith: Krzysztof Zanussi on Foreign Body (2014)
By Amir Ganjavie and Shadi Javadi. Although Krzysztof Zanussi’s films received less global exposure over the past couple of decades and were not commercially successful, he is one of the most commonly seen Polish directors on the international festival circuit. Zanussi is very productive, having made almost fifty features with an average […]
Seed Money: Capturing a Pivotal Era of Gay Porn
By Mark James. The gains of the gay liberation movement in the late 1960s rode the back of a gay culture that, in part, came together watching porn. Though erotic images of men have sold as long as pictures were for sale, court cases allowing images to be sent through […]
A Dark Fable: Pascal Chind on Extrême Pinocchio (2014)
By Paul Risker. Veteran of the short film Pascal Chind’s latest endeavour Extrême Pinocchio (2014) finds the French filmmaker looking back into the past to Carlo Collodi’s original story by giving it a more “contemporary spin.” The spectatorial experience of a film in one sense could be perceived as being […]
Inside a Pop Mystery: Denny Tedesco on The Wrecking Crew (2008)
By Pete Donnelly. A group of long-revered musicians who performed countless hits in the 60s and 70s, the “Wrecking Crew” consisted of mostly unheard of session players who created a production line style, a kind of music-making machine. Record producers relied on their exceptional competence and speed to “crank out […]
Keeping the Peace: A SXSW Interview on Peace Officer (2015)
By Jude Warne. Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber are no strangers to the investigative process; as immensely talented documentary filmmakers, this is part of what they do. Dub Lawrence, the subject of the team’s SXSW-screened film Peace Officer, is no stranger to this either, having been a police officer that […]
Da Sweet Blood of Inspiration: A Conversation with Spike Lee
By John Duncan Talbird. Back in college, my friends and I went to see Do the Right Thing (1989) when it first came out. We’d been reading about the film for weeks before it arrived in the little Southern college town where we lived. Some critics were raving that this […]
Documenting Fiction: Jaret Belliveau and Matthew Bauckman on Kung Fu Elliot (2014)
By Paul Risker. Going behind the scenes of Blood Fight, the latest film from amateur filmmaker and aspiring Canadian action hero Elliot Scott, Jaret Belliveau and Matthew Bauckman encounter the truth of cliché first hand in their documentary Kung Fu Elliot. Viewer sentiments like “fact is stranger than fiction,” “art […]
