( I love this still from Alanis Obomsawin’s WABAN-AKI…her most recent film, and one of my faves. Alanis will receive the Outstanding Achievement Award at Hot Docs 2009)
As mentioned below, Sundance was quite nice. I think I even got a bit of a tan in the pleasant walks between Main St. and the Yarrow. They gave out some awards, yesterday, apparently.
Though, browsing through my index cards, on screen it all boils down to a rather bleak, apocalyptic stew: dolphins are being brutally slaughtered in Japan (THE COVE); big corporations continue to disown their eco-terrorism in developing nations (Chevron in Ecuador (CRUDE); and Union Carbide/Dow Chemical in Bhopal (THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD); there may be environmental factors behind autism (OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY); the world’s most powerful nations are not buying into international justice (THE RECKONING); we have about forty years of food remaining in our oceans (THE END OF THE LINE); torture in North Korea (KIMJONGILIA); honour killings in Kurdish Iraq (QUEST FOR HONOUR); all this, and MORE, much more, while journalism is in crisis (REPORTER).
And L’il Wayne is addicted to cough syrup (THE CARTER)! And Anna Wintour (THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE) is even more steely, stony and spiky souled – there were gasps at the screening I attended – than Meryl Streep in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA! And yet she despises black. Really hates it. As much as I love Meryl Streep, Anna Wintour plays Anna Wintour much better than Meryl Streep plays Anna Wintour. Yeah, I know, Streep’s character was only referencing Wintour, a composite based on a legend. Yet, she, Anna Wintour, should get an Oscar nom in 2010. It had to be the most compelling performance at Sundance this year. (However, I can vouch, second hand, for Wintour’s overall niceness and human-like compassion….in Park City our Senior Int. Programmer, Shannon Abel, somehow found herself petting a black and white puppy with, yes, Anna Wintour….then she, Wintour, scolded it for wearing black, crushing the puppy’s zest for life with her dismissal of its genetic frock….though she liked that it was wearing real fur.
At dinner one night a few programmers and I briefly chatted about compassion fatigue, an occupational hazard for those who watch alot of documentaries. Then we cheered ourselves up by talking about how over-worked we are. Nibbling on the last of the world’s seafood.
Related, we are now deep into the sea of submissions at Hot Docs, and at last count there are 225 films on the Short List (also called, internally, “The Prog List”…as it is at TIFF, from where the term migrated). It will get longer before it gets shorter. We have two weeks of HEAVY screening, then Berlin, then we shape this big mound of documentary clay into a semi-coherent film festival.
Also, last week Hot Docs made our first programme announcement. We will honour Alanis Obomsawin with the annual Outstanding Achievement Award; the work of Ron Mann will be featured in the Focus On programme; we will do one national cinema programme this Fest, Made In South Korea; and will present a Spotlight on the National Film Board of Canada, in celebration of their 70th.