At the heart of Lee Demarbre’s new film Vampiro: Angel, Hero, Devil is the story of a man’s incredible journey, from small-town outcast to celebrated international figure. That figure, Ian Hodgkinson, pro-wrestler, former bodyguard, sometime-actor, and all-around hell-raiser, is profiled with wit, insight, and passionate feeling in DeMarbre’s 90-minute documentary. The Ottawa-born director, who previously helmed the cult horror-musical Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, also directed Hodgkinson in The Dead Sleep Easy, an independent feature about a Mexican wrestler who becomes entangled with the mob. Talk about blurring the lines between fiction and reality. One of Vampiro’s earliest scenes features Hodgkinson trying to raise money for his newly-formed company, and casually mentioning the necessity of mob and drug-dealer involvement to get the new venture off the ground. Angel/hero/devil indeed.
For those unaware of the world of international wrestling, Hodgkinson is somewhat of a cult figure. A native of Thunder Bay, Hodgkinson made his name in the competitive, highly theatrical world of Mexican wrestling, under his stage name, Vampiro. With his multiple tattoos and corn-rowed hair, he’s a darker version of the colourful luche libre style of wrestler the country is known for, and yet, in his heydey in the mid 90s, Vampiro’s fame amongst Mexico’s passionately committed wrestling aficionados rivaled that of American Hulk Hogan’s. For all the film portrays its leading man in both flattering and unflattering lights, it’s as if Hodgkinson has been able to manipulate his director to only portray the parts that matter most –the parts that fit best with the angel-devil roles. The film moves along with a bouncy style that’s bumped up by the peppy raucousness of Teenage Head on the soundtrack, although the rat-a-tat punk style becomes a bit wearing, leaving one seeking the sounds of Rancid and Insane Clown Posse (supposedly two of Hodgkinson’s favourites) as well as snips of Billy Idol when it’s mentioned that the wrestler was once a big fan of the British singer.
Budgetary limitations aside, Demarbre and crew do a fine job of portraying the chaotic energy in and around the ring. Moving back and forth in time, the film is structured in two phases, between the lead-up to a fateful night when Hodgkinson tries to start his own wrestling federation, Revolution X, and the European match tour months earlier. Viewers are lead into the world of international wrestling, and, far from the bright lights of the WWF, we find a world that makes up with passion what it lacks in glamour. DeMarbre shows Hodgkinson carrying his own luggage and provoking his British handler to the point of near-tears; compare these scenes with those in which the brawny wrestler talks about missing his ex-wife and plays with his five-year-old daughter. We see the various sides to Vampiro –the light, the dark, and even the grey –through interviews with family and past friends, learn about his unresolved relationship with his father, childhood sexual abuse, his connection to French Canadian wrestler Louis Laurent, his youthful thuggery in Montreal, and eventual employment (as a bodyguard-come-fake-bassist) for Milli Vanilli. Quite the life for a kid from Thunder Bay who could’ve been a goalie with the Montreal Canadiens.
According to the director, many more stories got left on the cutting room floor, including a friendship with The Wrestler actor Mickey Rourke (whom Hodgkinson resembles, minus the plastic surgery), but with the material at hand, Demarbre has crafted a fascinating portrait of a man passionately dedicated to his life’s work. One memorable scene shows Hodgkinson instructing a group of younger British wrestlers about the choreography of a scene, as each move, done later before a cheering crowd, is performed with bloody precision. Another scene features Revolution X’s match coordinator yammering to Hodgkinson about the ongoing match as the wrestler listens intently and takes a bevy of vitamin supplements at the same time. It’s all part of the show –a literal example of the life-giving elixir needed to maintain the part, and a perfect encapsulation of the world from which the character of Vampiro arose.
Hodgkinson is nothing if not a willful contradiction under Lemarbre’s close lens; highlighting the saint/sinner dialectic, the wrestler, who has EVIL tattooed across his abdomen, is shown in the film’s opening scenes as founding the Guardian Angel’s Mexico City chapter. Though this element is (sadly) never subsequently re-visited, it does provide some interesting illumination later on, as Hodgkinson is shown visiting the Italian church where the shroud of Turin is housed. By the time he instructs a tattoo artist on where he wants crosses on his forehead, we sense the only faith he hangs onto, amidst the pressures of career and family, is his ability to perform in the ring. But the story Lemarbre tells is one that goes far past the testoserone-fuelled sport; through a combination of insightful shooting and skillful editing, the film details the contradictions that lay at the heart of one man in his journey to embrace his own capabilities –as a father, a husband, a businessman, a son.Angel/Devil/Hero? Not quite. Walking contradiction? Perhaps. Showman? Absolutely.
For more information, please go to www.vampiromovie.com.



Some think of art as political, others think it is personal.
The late documentary filmmaker David Maysles said, “all art is autobiographical”.
While films like Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, Salesman or Running Fence might provide little in the way of clues as to their personal dimensions for Maysles, it’s in his daughter’s film that one finds insight into the artist, his life, and his work –and the connections therein.
Wild Blue Yonder, Celia Maysles' first film, was shot over four years, and examines the emotional terrain of loss, regret, family, and relationships.
We see Celia seeking out her uncle, the noted documentarian Albert Maysles, who worked closely with her late father. The start of the film documents their abundant joy at this long-awaited reunion.
Little would anyone be able to guess at the myriad of problems that arise over the course of the film.
It was a source of conflict Celia herself says she didn’t see coming.
"I thought the film would have this happy ending," she says with a hint of sadness, "I thought we’d have this great relationship, we'd spend time together. I had really high hopes. That was the hardest part of making the film - trying to accept that that would never happen."
The fact she chose to include both her and her father's therapy sessions provides a whole new layer of insight into the connection both father and daughter share.
"That’s why I included the therapy sessions," she says, "it was the hardest thing to deal with -moreso than dealing with my dad's death –was the fact I was being turned away by a relative. It was a frustration when everyone else was so cooperative, and I couldn't accept (Albert) wouldn't be. I couldn't understand why. It was the sticking point. I was really determined to change his mind –but I did not succeed."
She says the fact she shows her family experiencing such conflict is a point of connection with others -whether they have filmmaking fathers or not.
"As I was making it, people would hear bits and pieces about Al, and they would say, 'that’s just like my sister in law', or whatever," she notes, "Everybody has a story like this -every family. That also was part of the process, realizing I wasn't the only one, and making light of it."

Because her uncle owns the rights as well as footage itself, Celia was unable to use many pieces from her father’s work, including his last, and perhaps most personal work, Blue Yonder, a work that is directly about his own past and family.
Under the Fair Use Copyright Act however, a number of clips from Maysles’ works are shown in the work, and mixed in with these are interviews with the noted artists Jean-Claude and Christo (subjects of Maysles’ documentaries), Lois Irwin (from Grey Gardens) and various colleagues who had been involved with or known her father in some way, including film theorist Bob Sitton, editor Charlotte Zwerin, and another noted documentarian, D.A. Pennebaker, along with his son Frazer.
"Getting in touch with people was very easy," Celia notes, "Everyone just dropped everything. Many filmmakers, who were the busiest, were like, 'can you come by this afternoon?' They loved him so much –that was one of the first things I knew. And the second I started doing this, it happened so organically. People were so willing."
She says the biggest challenge was balancing the professional side of her father’s career with the more personal aspects she, as a daughter, had a natural interest in exploring.
"That was the biggest challenge," she says, "At times, it got too hard for me to know the right balance. It was trial and error. We spent a year in the editing room, working footage, trying it in different ways. It took time to get it right, because it was important to me that the personal stuff came across."
Making Wild Blue Yonder was "incredibly emotional", Celia says.
"It was really a growth period, something that I had kept inside my whole life. I never wanted to uncover anything, it was this little area that I kept locked, but once I decided, and really immersed myself in it, and accepted the fact it was going to be a long and difficult journey.... I had to do it to grow up a little bit. I had been carrying the weight of (the family fallout with) my uncle and the death of my dad around –I was sick of it. I didn't want to be so emotionally wrought. When I first started filming, the second they'd say “David”, I'd get upset. I was so fragile.”
She laughs at the memory.
“But by the end, the conversations were so funny. He was so alive!"
So while the world may remember David Maysles as a brilliant filmmaker and documentarian, Celia effectively uncovers the person behind the camera, using the sort of naturalistic, unforced, loose narrative structure that has become the Maysles’ family’s stock and trade.
The film is a meditative, meandering contemplation on family, identity, and self.
Surprising as it may sounds, Celia says she doesn't consider herself an artist.
"I learned a lot about myself and a lot about pushing the boundaries of openness with something I was really focused on ... A lot of people are scared of personal filmmaking, because they're not that open themselves –it’s uncomfortable to see a film like this, but to me, these are the ones that are the most interesting."
Wild Blue Yonder screens at the Cumberland cinemas on Monday, April 21st at 7pm; it screens again at the Isabel Bader Theatre on Wednesday, April 23rd at 11am.
Wild Blue Yonder also has a Facebook page.
For more information, go to www.hotdocs.ca.
Beautiful Losers is a poetic, energetic tribute to a group of artists who, having started life as outsiders, became the toast of the art world in the late 90s.
Mike Mills, Harmony Korine, Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton, and Barry McGee are just a few of the artists whose lives and works are explored with equal mixes of zeal and contemplation in Aaron Rose’s compelling 90-minute long documentary.
Using a mix of interviews, historical footage, as well as scenes from the artists’ own works (including cartoons, commercials, and films) Rose takes the viewer on a journey that is a collage-like kaleidoscope of colour and experience. It’s poetic, beautiful, and very energetic, if also unclear in the effects its subjects’ work had on wider society.
We begin with the artists’ memories of childhood, their first experiences with art, and their shared position as adolescent outcasts.
Canadian artist Geoff McFetridge, who has worked for the Beastie Boys, among others (and who contributes titles and animation to Beauitful Losers) says he was first inspired to draw by seeing the film Battlestar Galactica in a theatre. Mike Mills, the artist behind the famous “falling Golf” TV commercial, says he got into art by drawing his toys as a child.

We are given a taste of Korine’s past as he morbidly describes a childhood friend who in later life was decapitated in Dragon Park, Nashville. Wandering among the multi-colour mosaic of faux-scales, he calls to some nearby children, asking them if they realized his friend’s head was found in the spot they’re now standing in.
Making a face only a child could, one can’t help but be reminded of Solomon, the main character of Gummo, Korine’s later work that would enjoy wide release. Talk about an auspicious start.
Skateboarding culture figures prominently in the documentary, particularly as a means of fostering and embracing alternative underground cultures. Ed Templeton, who was a champion boarder, is shown in multiple shots doing some pretty slick moves amidst impressed gallery-goers. Pop goes the art.
The scenes of the artists, whether via grainy old experimental films or casually-recorded shots, shows a group of people who aren’t so much at odds with their society as separate observers of it.
Thus, one might think the director would take a similiarly objective view of his subjects, providing the audience with some sort of wider resonance with which these artists related with the world and their audience, but alas, Rose only provides a few short clips of the mainstream success these artists enjoyed.
I had to wonder, in watching Beautiful Losers, what Andy Warhol might make of the group. The famed pop artist made a career out of his awareness of art’s relationship with mainstream culture; I kept wishing for some sort of magical back-from-the-grave appearance (or even a clever edit) as scenes of McGee and others listlessly described the spoils of their success. A bit of balance and perspective could’ve made the scenes of the group’s enormously successful shows in Tokyo much more lively, and elevated them from the merely trite and trashy.
This balance would have best come in the form of with figures other than the artists themselves. Chats with art directors (who the subjects themselves admit are probably also artists), graphic folks, up-and-coming artists influenced by this group’s work, and various other figures would’ve provide a more solid grasp as to the reach this set of ‘beautiful losers’ had within both the art world as well as the wider world itself.
Still, being an artist viewing Beautiful Losers, the combination of grainy footage, gooey paint strokes, and great soundtrack makes for one heck of an inspiration.
The joy, vitality, and sheer beauty of the works shown (to say nothing of the breathless style of the film itself) is enough to propel paint to canvas, to forego all custom of propriety, and, to quote the late artist Margaret Kilgallen, to allow the mistakes.
As Chris Johanson notes, “I’d rather have scars than live a totally bland life”.
Beuatiful Losers is anything but bland. Then again, too many spices ruin the curry. It’s worth keeping in mind –not everyone is used to eating Indian, after all.
Beautiful Losers screens at the Cumberland Cinemas on Monday, April 21st, at 1.30pm.
For more information, go to www.hotdocs.ca or www.beautifullosers.com.
Mothers have always been challenging for daughters to deal with. Cynthia Lester knows a thing or two about that.
The New York-based filmmaker turned the camera on her own mother, resulting in a wonderfully compassionate and fascinating film, My Mother's Garden, now at the Hot Docs Festival.
The film opens with a shot of Cynthia's mother, Eugenia, looking glamorous in a red gown, prancing around a castle-like setting. What follows is shocking for its contrast between this and the one Cynthia and her siblings know.
Eugenia Lester, Cynthia’s mother, suffers from what’s known as Compulsive Hoarding Disorder. Both the disease and its terrible effects are shown in graphic, sometimes disturbing detail, as the family comes to grips with the illness and the steps they must take to heal the rift within their family.
Making films since she was in junior high, Lester had a spotty upbringing, with little time spent at ome. She says she had "always been searching" for a way to flesh out her various film experiments –and using her family as the subject was the obvious way to expand her skills.
My Mother's Garden is Lester’s attempt at "try(ing) to give people a little more understanding in terms of how I grew up - what it's like to grow up under these circumstances."

Among the shots of knee-deep high items, impassable doorways, and Cynthia's mother entering and exiting her house via a window, there are also interviews with neighbours, whose dislike of Eugenia is evident. The scenes serve to highlight the underlying class issue of the film.
"She was the struggling mom, the fighter,” Lester explains, “We could've lived in the projects, like every other poor family - we would've felt more at home, but she wanted a better life for her children. She struggled and worked 24/7, had three jobs, she went on welfare. We were the only poor family in this neighbourhood. We felt alienated. We always knew we were different.”
Lester says it was her mother’s desire to give her kids a better life that started her hoarding problems.
“My mum would go to the Christmas tree lane and buy the tree the day after Christmas, so it was cheaper. That’s when she started pulling in things that others were throwing away, (thinking) 'I can give these things to my children'. It’s that mentality of never being able to provide for us the way she wanted
Lester uses her mother's disorder in two interesting ways: as a springboard for her own compassion towards her and her family, and as a commentary on the rampant consumerist culture that she says has taken away from more important things.
"It’s about how our society deals with consumerism, how we tend to hold on to material things to bring us wealth, this idea of ... who you are through your things, rather than through creating a safe, comfortable environment, a loving environment. Where are people promoting that ideal? No, it's 'oh you have to have the nice car, the new fridge, the clothes'."
One of the biggest challenges was culling the footage of she and her family's journey. Lester had to make some hard choices about what went and what stayed, all while trying to balance the personal aspects with the demands of a good narrative.
"There was 180 hours of footage -definitely good moments and a good story there. I had never made a narrative feature that was 70 minutes long, and it was such a struggle to keep people's attention, to keep the themes flowing from one thing to the next, to keep a natural organic rhythm, without feeling like you're throwing something in there that's going to jolt you.”
How did her mother deal with having her life thusly documented and exposed?
“Oh, she's comfortable in front of the camera,” says Lester, “she likes the attention. It lets her put down her barriers in a way. She’s so used to being the strict mom all the time, there’s always something wrong she has to talk about, but camera she'll lighten up a bit. I enjoyed that time of getting to know my mum, and she liked the attention, especially if other people would come around. She was very isolated, so having us be there was helpful.”
In terms of the film itself, Lester says her mother “has mixed reviews about it. She supports me and my art, my desire to get this story out there, to help people through this story. She herself does not believe she has this problem, still to this day, but she is going to therapy and she is taking care of her life.”
The final scene is of her mother, wandering through the woods. Even the red dress from the beginning makes a return appearance.
“We went to Poland to show her, in her happiest state, being with nature, and moving her from all the things she’s created, to making her own little special garden of things. I also wanted to bookend her coming back to the castle, with the idea of introducing her as very active, beautiful woman, so that you see her in that state before you see the chaos... and so I felt it was important to go back to that at the end.”
While documenting her mother presented its own unique set of challenges, the exposure of both herself and her family's past was a different matter.
“Yeah, that was very hard, something I dealt with on a daily basis. My brothers didn't necessarily want to be exposed this way, that’s not how they process their life. They're more closed off about it. It was hard for me to do it -I’m exposing my family, and everybody else who is related to my family, but I feel like in order to have a healthy society we have to be open about these things, and if it has to start with me, I'll do it, I’ll put myself out there for the cause.”
The “cause”, as she sees it, is allowing healing within families, as well as creating a greater awareness of the disorder that afflicted her mother.
“What I’m hoping is that people see there are obviously a lot of deep-rooted issues, but I wanted to show a family can come together and create a source of strength and come out of it in a beautiful way.”
My Mother’s Garden screens on Monday, April 21st, at 9.15pm at the Al Green Theatre; it screens again on April 23rd at 1.30pm at the Cumberland Cinemas.
www.myspace.com/mymothersgarden
For more information, go to www.hotdocs.ca.