TIFF 2010: Further Thoughts On Jody Shapiro's HOW TO START YOUR OWN COUNTRY

When the Canadian lineup for the Toronto International Film Festival was announced two days ago one title jumped out in particular due to its surprising familiarity. The film was Jody Shapiro's documentary How To Start Your Own Country, the surprise being that it had the exact same title as a television series that aired on the BBC covering the same topic five years ago. To say I was surprised was a bit of an understatement and I wondered aloud how two such similar projects could release so closely together with the exact same name.

Well, that was before I'd had the chance to see the film and compare it directly to the BBC series, which I have now done. And other than the unfortunately shared title the two works are quite distinct. The BBC series was a very personality based show driven by Danny Wallace and his quest to start his own country in his London flat while Shapiro's work is a much more standard, information driven documentary. Interestingly the personality based doc actually contains significantly more information on the practicalities of founding a nation than does Shapiro's work, which focuses primarily on the people who have actually done so. Other than a couple of interview subjects - inevitable given the small pool of subjects to draw from - and the title, these two projects don't really share much at all.