Tag: hotdocs
Hot Docs 2022: BLUE ISLAND Trailer, Where Did Hong Kong Go?
I know a few people in Hong Kong who are wrestling with this question right now: Should I stay or should I go? Director Chan Tze Woon's film Blue Island has just won the 2022 Best International Feature Documentary Award...
Hot Docs 2022: ETERNAL SPRING Trailer, Survival and a Battle
Jason Loftus' animated documentary Eternal Spring just won multiple awards at the recently-concluded Hot Docs 2022, where it made its North American premiere. "Combining present-day footage with 3D animation inspired by Daxiong's art, Eternal Spring," according to the official verbiage,...
Friday One Sheet: A BROKEN HOUSE
New key art from Akiko Stehrenberger is always a thing to celebrate; here for Jimmy Goldblum's short documentary, A Broken House (Hiraeth). A Syrian Architecture student in the United States, who smashed his own models meticulously handmade of his Damascus...
Friday One Sheet: ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE
You may not guess that this week's poster is for a documentary on police body cameras. It is striking, nonetheless. The One Sheet resembles Mercury orbiting the sun (indeed, it could very well be a minimal poster art for Danny...
Hot Docs 2021 Review: MAU Designs Rules For Life
Watching the Bergman Brothers' wide-reaching, yet fleet documentary, Mau, on the life and career of Canadian super-star architect and designer Bruce Mau, I could not help but think of the final scene of Shaolin Soccer. After having won the big...
Hot Docs 2021 Review: WUHAN WUHAN Is An Engaging Display Of Empathy
Yung Chang's quietly effective documentary Wuhan Wuhan is both a time travelling machine and an empathy machine. Straddling the cinematic line between Frederick Wiseman and Robert Altman, high praise that is both obvious and merited, Chang's film takes us back to February...
Friday One Sheet: ONCE UPON A TIME IN VENEZUELA
The HotDocs film festival in Toronto opened yesterday, in its virtual edition, and it seems fitting to offer key art from a documentary. The poster for Once Upon A Time In Venezuela simply frames a still from the film, two...
Hot Docs 2019 Review: HONEYLAND Intertwines Humanity and Mother Earth in a Melancholy, Universal Story
We first meet Haditze walking precariously cliff-side to harvest a wild colony of bees. With the sun gorgeously settling in on the valley, she makes her way back to the isolated homestead she keeps with her infirm octogenarian mother. It...
Hot Docs 2018: THE ARTIST & THE PERVERT, North American Trailer Debut
Our attention turns to the upcoming Hot Docs Film Festival here in Toronto in April. Of the many films that will raise eyebrows and questions the film The Artist & The Pervert by directors Beatrice Behn and René Gebhardt is...
Interview: Listen to Music On Screen - Author Dennis McNally, Archivist David Lemieux, and Director Amir Bar-Lev on LONG STRANGE TRIP
Throughout this trilogy of podcast episodes, I’ve spoken about musical sources and the faraway fruits of their trajectories via music documentaries. In the first installment, Rumble spoke to the varying multi-cultural influences on roots music at the turn of the...
Hot Docs 2017 Interview: Jeff Malmberg Talks SPETTACOLO
It goes without saying that a chief purpose of art, if nothing else, consists of the catharsis of its creator(s). The aesthetic realm is where artists sort out their innermost conflicts and dreams, melding them into a form of expression...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: HOBBYHORSE REVOLUTION Revels in the Intensity of Youth
Dressage, in equestrian terms, is the art of riding and training a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance. It factors significantly into Selma Vilhunen's documentary on the most curious of Finland subcultures, one involving hobbyhorses and (mostly)...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: PACMEN Is Exquisite Schadenfreude
How many people have selfies taken with Dr. Ben Carson on their phones that they will probably never look at again? For a few shining moments, the former neurosurgeon whose stab-to-scalpel story was adapted into a television movie starring Cuba...
Hot Docs 2017 Curtain Raiser: A Deep Dive Into Toronto's Super-Sized Documentary Festival
North America's premiere documentary film festival kicks off in a few days in Toronto for its 24th edition. As is the norm, it features a daunting number of titles for lovers of standard, and not so standard, non-fiction cinema. ...
Hey Australia! Win Double Passes For Australia's First Hot Docs Film Festival!
Australia’s first Hot Docs Film Festival is fast approaching. This documentary film festival is the Australian edition of the renowned Canadian festival. It will take place across three cities - Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra - between June 14 and July...
Hot Docs 2016 Review: HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE Beautifully Mixes Craft And Emotion
The famous Serenity Prayer of american theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is as follows: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Jay...
Hot Docs 2016: ScreenAnarchy Cherry-Picks Titles From Full Festival Lineup
North America's largest documentary film festival just announced its full line-up and schedule. Hot Docs returns to Toronto in its 23rd year, and as per usual, it features a massive number of titles for lovers of non-fiction cinema: 232 features...
Hot Docs 2015 Interview: Rodney Ascher On Living THE NIGHTMARE
No horror film will ever live up to the genuine terror one experiences during a nightmare. Many will try, but ultimately, the easier it is to wrap your head around a premise, the less chilling the film.And so it...
Hot Docs 2015 Review: The "Fuckery & Shenanigans" Of FINDERS KEEPERS
What would you do if you acquired a storage locker and all its random contents, only to discover one such item consisted of a barbecue containing a human foot? I guess the answer largely depends on who you are. If...
Hot Docs 2015 Review: UNBRANDED, Wild, Wild Horses Couldn't Drag Us Away
Four Texas A&M University graduates choose one hell of a in-between-school-and-real-life adventure, opting to adopt a dozen or so wild mustangs, train them, and make a 3000 mile journey from the Arizona-Mexican border up the spine of former 'wild west'...
