Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints: category

Guinea pig detectives cover page. Illustration by Pierre Durand.
Together with my friend and colleague Patricia Bergeron I spent last week in intensive consultations about cross-platform documentaries - meaning documentaries which aren’t just a film or a TV program but also play themselves out on the web, including in the social networks. ( Cross-platform or transmedia [...]

Béthièle when she was five.
A documentary filmmaker in Canada today might be forgiven for being discouraged. The combined impact of the crisis of television, the more general economic crisis, and the Conservative government’s policies are having a devastating impact on our traditional sources of funding. There is definitely a ‘paradigm shift’ underway. New models of [...]

Ebbe the movie by Jane Magnusson and Karin af Klintberg
The nominations for the Swedish Guldbagge, the equivalent of Quebec’s Jutras were very interesting. In the documentary category Ebbe the movie by Jane Magnusson and Karin af Klintberg is a fascinating film about Publisher Ebbe Carlson, a larger-than life character whose social climbing and political manipulations [...]

We are all of course terribly sad about the tragedy in Haiti – our family not the least since we have a daughter who lived her first years in Port au Prince. I of course encourage everyone to contribute money to the relief and reconstruction efforts.
Among the many film crews now in Port au Prince [...]

I just saw the film The Informant! labeled a dark comedy, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Matt Damon, based on the 2000 non-fiction book by the same name by journalist Kurt Eichenwald. It tells the story of a bumbling whistleblower who takes on the management of the giant agribusiness corporation he works for, but who [...]

A couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to once again see Burma VJ, one of the most remarkable documentaries from last year. The film documents the use of small digital cameras by courageous Video Journalists – VJ’s – to reveal what goes on inside the Burmese dictatorship. With digital cameras and satellite uploads [...]

This is about a film which was nominated in three categories at the recent Rencontres internatinales du documentaire de Montreal, and which I saw at Cinema Parallèle the other day. Very much à propos, as the Copenhagen climate change conference enters the real negotiating stage. The film, H2Oil by Shannon Walsh (Loaded Pictures), is about [...]

During the Rencontres Internationales du documentaire de Montréal which just ended, I saw a number of really excellent documentaries. Over the next few weeks I’ll tell you about a couple of them, not just because of their qualities as films but because they are making a difference, having a real impact. To start with, here [...]

Maxime in Les Petits Géants.

Normally I would write this in French, but many francophones who read this blog will already know about this film, and it deserves to be widely distributed. So here goes…
Les Petits Géants ( The Small Giants) is a documentary about children from low-income neighborhoods who take on the challenge of [...]

Kent Nagano directs throatsingers Taqralik Partridge and Evie Mark
(credit: Robert Fréchette)

The other day at Cinéma Parallèle I saw a really excellent new documentary on the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra’s visit to three Inuit communities in Nunavik. Tusarnituuq! Nagano in the Land of the Inuit was directed by Félix Lajeunesse and produced by Katarina Soukoup. [...]