Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints: category

The other day I went to see two exceptional films in 3D at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal. Millions of words have been written already about Wim Wenders’ film about the amazing choreographer Pina Bush, and I don’t have anything to add. But that film was preceded by another extraordinary dance film, Philippe [...]

Ali Kazimi is an award-winning filmmaker. Since 2008, he has been researching stereoscopic 3D digital cinema at York University, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film. Q. Why is there this sudden groundswell of interest in 3D? The current stereoscopic 3D is propelled by the exponential rise in digital technology in [...]

The other night I went to see The Interrupters at another full-house Cinema Politica screening at Concordia University in Montreal, with the filmmaker in attendance. Cinema Politica regularly gets hundreds of people out to see socially and politically relevant documentaries – in this case 650 people on a Monday night! Kudos to organizers Ezra Winton [...]

For the last two years, I have been working on a film about a man who can be described as a footnote to history, Honoré Joseph Jaxon, alias William Henry Jackson. An enigmatic figure,  his life was full of drama. He admired the Métis and participated in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, acting as a [...]

Going to the Montreal World Film Festival is a hit-and miss kind of affair. One easily has the impression there is no serious programming effort, it seems like anything goes, and screening some of the films gives you a strong impression nothing would ever be turned down. But there are also some excellent films. At [...]

At a filmmaker lunch last year, my very creative friend Don McWilliams told this story. About fifteen years ago, the famous Polish filmmaker Kryzstof Kieslowsky gave a conference at Concordia University. After his presentation, a professor asked him what his greatest sources of cinematic inspiration had been. His answer: Molière and Dostoyevsky. The professor found [...]

I recently had the opportunity to hear the French-educated Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh speak at the Cinemathèque Québecoise. The occasion was a retrospective of his very impressive work. I first saw one of his films in 2000, when we both had films in competition at the Cinéma du Réel festival at Beaubourg in Paris. His [...]

For the last eight years, an exceptional and pioneering media experience has given new means of expression and a sense of hope to aboriginal youth on reserves in Quebec. The Wapikonimobile is a mobile video production unit – or rather three of them – travelling from community to community, providing video training and supervising the [...]

My friend Stefan Nitoslawski recently launched a film Liberty, Equality, Accommodation on a topic which is quite hot both in Quebec and elsewhere: ‘accomodement raisonnable,’ or the measures different bodies in society have to take to ensure peaceful coexistance and mutual respect betwen peoples and communities. Stefan followed the hearings Bouchard-Taylor Commission, co-chaired by the [...]

Quebec fortunately has a cultural policy and the institutional framework to implement it. Last week the Quebec Arts Council (Conseil des arts et lettes du Québec) celebrated the recipients of four special career grants in media arts. One of them very deservedly went to documentarian Garry Beitel. Together with Helene Klodawsky I was asked to [...]