Reviews from Guelph Festival for Moving Media
The Guelph Festival for Moving Media proved to be bigger and better than ever this year with a diverse slate that brought out many large crowds and solicited a lot of interesting discussion around complex issues facing the world. Well, some of the time. Other times, the subject matter was a little more light-hearted. But let’s let the reviews speak for themselves.
We are Wizards
It’s not an easy thing to construct a documentary about any fan culture without making those profiled seem ridiculed or just otherwise the butt of an hour and a half worth of jokes. Josh Koury however manages to navigate this tricky field in the doc We are Wizards, which chronicles numerous facets of Harry Potter fan culture.
 | The film predominately focuses on the music sub-genre “wizard rock,” an art form initiated by a couple of high school boys from the Boston-area who called themselves Harry and the Potters. They in turn gave birth to other luminaries like the Hungarian Horntails, Draco and the Malfoys and the Order of Merlin. Other aspects of fandom are covered like a graphic artist’s self-made book on tape read to the first Harry Potter movie and the creators of fan sites The Leaky Cauldron and The Daily Prophet. A couple of things come into play that really speaks to the appeal of not just the Mad-About-Potter crew, but fan communities generally. One is the fight put up by Harry Potter studio Warner Bros. who tried to shut down a number of fan sites in the interest of protecting their intellectual property and the fan-driven backlash to protect their right to riff and rave about the Potter-verse. The Boycott-Potter movement taught Warners a timely lesson about the driving force of fans en masse and at the same time helped distinguish that there is a difference between quantifiable threats to intellectual property and free expression in support of a story that means so much to so many. |
| Surfwise Normally, you don’t get a lot of profound thinking out of a movie about surfing, but I think it’s safe to say that there aren’t many people like Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz. Paskowitz, his wife Juliette and his family of nine children are the subject of the documentary Surfwise, a fascinating and frequently brutally honest look at one of life’s truly odd ducks. Doc was a Stanford grad, a full-on medical doctor that was at the peak of his profession and beyond that, a man brandied about as one of Hawaii’s top citizens. Some people went so far as to want him to run for Governor of the then newly created state. Doc, however, recalls this part of his life as the most miserable time he’s experienced. Instead of accepting a life of professional success and all its trappings, Doc shed all worldly possessions and lived the nomadic life of surf bum. He, Juliette and his increasing brood of children traveled the countryside in a 24-foot trailer hitch; living a clean and simple life off the grid. Director Doug Pray builds up Paskowitz as a kind of folk hero, but takes a startling turn as he delves into the humanitarian surfer’s surprisingly authoritarian reign, which ended up actually pushing most of his children away when they came of age. Of course, those kids discovered a world outside their little Winnebago where things like going to school and having a social security number mattered. One of the kids talks about having wanted to be a doctor like his father, but learning to his shock and crushing disappointment that it would take him ten years of catch-up learning before he could even pursue an undergrad degree at college. |  |
Paperback Dreams
 | The difficult of being a round hole in a square peg world is the fascinating subtext of this documentary chronicling the struggle of two San Francisco independent book stores, Colby’s and Kepler’s, in the modern day book market. The film also looks back at the highly influential role that both these stores and, to an extend degree, all independent book sellers generally, played in creating the counter culture of the 60s. And that’s not to mention the role they also played in bringing a great number of marvellous authors to the forefront. The dizzying highs of the 60s radical movement at Berkley are balanced by the lows of the plight in the modern, retail economy, where fads, quantity and immediacy trump the discovery of small authors and small presses; let alone the advancement of new authors. The film plays extremely ambivalent as to where the blame lies and stands a comfortable distance back to merely witness the struggle without testing the reasons why. And while the big box stores and discount retailers are mentioned, the condemnation on the part of the indies is laid more at the feet of the consumer. The complexities of the situation defy an outright, cure-all solution. Kepler’s aims to be more diverse in its offerings by adding gifts and other curios all the while asking whether the attraction of new customers through these measures will be a turn-off to their loyal cliental. Meanwhile Cloby’s goes big by opening a third store in San Francisco, which is a risky gambit that costs the original location in Berkley. The film ends with an ambiguous note of what’s next? Can these stores survive in the age of Amazon? Stay tuned. |
| The Price of Sugar A lot of sugar comes out of the Dominican Republic, but it’s not Dominican labour that’s harvesting the cane in the fields. In fact, it’s a very real and very under represented form of slavery, which sees thousands of Haitian workers illegal brought in to the Dominican Republic every year, solely to farm sugar for the lowest price possible. In a film often attempted to be banned from screenings by the powerful Vicini family of the Dominican Republic, filmmaker Bill Haney, with assisting narration by the late Paul Newman, follows a Catholic priest into the Bateyes of sugar plantations. Bateyes are basically company built slums in which the Haitian workers live, for lack of a better word. These workers are maltreated to the point of walking around with lost limbs and suffering from easily curable diseases. Father Christopher Hartley shines the unbearable light of media scrutiny on the situation and the Vicinis don’t like that – not one bit. The film documents both Father Hartley’s struggles and the plight of the Haitian people in the Dominican Republic. The thing is that even the film talks around the fact that this truly is slavery in our own hemisphere. Typically we think of these things as being a world away from where we are, but literally a few miles from where wealthy vacationers are enjoying fun and sun people are being enslaved; they have no right to travel, and they have no documentation to protect them even if they could. |  |
Another thing is the scary use of nationalism to demonize Haitian workers, very similar to the Mexican illegals backlash in the United States. Dominicans take to the street to protest the way Haitians are taking jobs, even though, apparently, Dominicans are too good or too demanding for these jobs. The coup de gras though is a confrontation between Hartley and Bill O’Reilly’s cheap, female, Dominican equivalent, which more or less ends with her running from Hartley’s parish without much of a confrontation happening anyway.
It’s a powerful documentary; the frequent pouring of pure, white sugar against a black background giving ominous appeal to the horrible plight of the people that help bring sugar to our breakfast table as cheaply as possibly, but paying for it in their 18th century living conditions. The only thing for potent than the David Vs. Goliath drama is that sinking feeling that maybe you can’t fight city hall.
Examined Life
This was an unusual offering, and for GFMM that’s really saying something. In little 10 minute segments, director Astra Taylor walks and talks with such modern philosophic power houses like Cornell West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Martin Nussbaum and Michael Hardt. From each of these highly regarded academics, and many more, comes a look at our world covering numerous aspects and issues from democracy to individualism to ecology to accessibility. All I can say is prepare to have your mind blown. The ideas move so fast and furiously, it’s almost hard to keep up.
A Promise to the Dead Speaking of big ideas, the nature of survival and responsibility to the dead are foremost in the thoughts of this documentary, which retraces Ariel Dorfman’s life in exile. Dorfman served in the government of Salvador Allende, Chile’s duly elected-President, just before the coup d’etat orchestrated by Augusto Pinochet was launched in September 1973. Several members of the government and protestors against Pinochet’s coup were “disappeared,” meaning killed but without little niceties like letting the family know what happened to the body. Part of Dorfman’s journey was deconstructing how and why he survived. Ultimately, he decided, and was confirmed by a fellow survivor, that the reason was that someone had to survive to tell the story, and that’s what he does here. In what I have to imagine was an incredibly difficult journey for the man, Dorfman retraces his harrowing journey from his escape from the capital to numerous safe houses, the Argentine embassy and then onward out of the country and to the United States. It’s unbelievable the ordeal and Dorfman’s own remembrances are as sharp as they are nearly impossible to believe. Of course, part of the journey is the fact of Dorfman’s return to Chile, the decision of the electorate to remove Pinochet from office and the difficult road to recovery for him and the Chilean people, may of whom still consider Pinochet a national hero. One of the film’s most powerful moments comes when Dorfman meets a Pinochet supporter outside the hospital the General stayed in after suffer heart attack prior to his death. In a touching act of kindness, Dorfman reaches out to the woman to console her. Now many may remark to the weakness of the left in such an act, but to me it shows that the quality of mercy is truly not as strained as we believe. |  |
The Water Front
Imagine living on the largest fresh water lake in the world. You’re community’s impoverished because the sole industry in town has disappeared, joblessness is everywhere, people are beholden to government social programs just to barely survive, and to top it all off, your water bill has gone up 60 per cent before you can say “Lake Huron.” In Highland Park, MI, it actually happened. The community of 16,000 were forced to pay exorbitantly higher rates for water after a decision by the town’s council and its surrogates decided to exploit the only resource the town had left.
In Highland, a new city manager with experience in corporate accounting is brought in to get the city’s finances under control. The pre-hike actions taken are incredible: from slashing expenses, to cancelling public services (like the public library) and slashing the number of city employees at the water plant down to four. Seeing Gloria Pogue, who’s getting on in years to put it mildly, wander around the empty plant going about her duties is the very picture of absurdity. But then again, there ain’t nothing in this situation that makes a lick of sense.
The audacity of these financial saviours would be commendable if their tactics and whom they were targeting weren’t so deplorable. The poor, black community of the city take the brunt of what is easily one of the most ridiculous plans in the history of public policy: getting blood from a stone. The silver lining is the way community organizers gather the wagons in order to stand against an unfeeling, uncaring regime in city hall. Not to mention the Outsiders that are looking at and treating government like a business and are pointedly out to do one thing: making a profit.
The film is appalling. That is not to say the actual film is appalling but rather the actions of the city employees there in presented. Given recent political developments, it’s further proof that the people en masse are more powerful than the PTBs (that’s Powers That Be) would have us believe. And more importantly, it’s a startling look at things to come, with water and its commoditization being a factor of much concern as the 21st century marches on.
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