Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints: category

Colourized archive footage of Hitler from Apocalypse, Hitler series © CC&C / Nara     Colourized archival footage of Hitler from Apocalypse, Hitler series © CC&C / DR   Over the last few weeks, I have been watching the terrific French mini-series Apocalypse, Hitler on Télé-Québec. It chronicles the rise of Adolf Hitler until the outbreak of World [...]

I’m an outdoors person, and the only thing that reconciles me to a gym is… podcasts! This time of the year, while waiting for more snow, I listen a lot to radio programs, from Radio-Canada, the BBC and Democracy Now in particular. Over the last few weeks, I noted a few very interesting comments about [...]

I’ve always been fascinated by paintings and music from Germany’s inter-war Weimar period. My friend Jennifer Alleyn has created a film on one of the most representative artists of that period, Otto Dix. (View the trailer here.) The film came out earlier this month in Montreal and Quebec City (see original post – in French [...]

J’ai toujours été fasciné par la peinture et la musique de la République de Weimar, la période d’entre les deux guerres mondiales en Allemagne.  Mon amie Jennifer Alleyn a un film sur un des artistes le plus représentatifs de cette période, Otto Dix, et le film prend l’affiche cette semaine à Montréal et à Québec. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Heureusement la Québec a une politique culturelle et s’est donné le cadre institutionnel nécessaire pour la mettre en pratique. La semaine passée, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) remettait des bourses de carrière à quatre cinéastes :  Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Mireille Dansereau, André Gladu, et Garry Beitel. Ma collègue Helene Kladowsky et [...]

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 [...]

One of my films, Uranium, 1990 (in Canada you can watch it on the NFB website here) was selected to participate in the first international Uranium Film Festival in Brazil, which just ended. (Read a wrapup article here from Environment News Service.) As Brazil is not known for its uranium or nuclear industry, I found [...]