Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

A reel close-up on diversity

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A reel close-up on diversity

    The Globe and Mail, Canada
    April 1 2004

    A reel close-up on diversity

    Documentaries and social-realist dramas dominate this film festival
    dedicated to giving visual minorities greater exposure, LIAM LACEY
    writes

    By LIAM LACEY

    Toronto's fourth ReelWorld Film Festival, which kicks off today and
    runs through the weekend at the Famous Players SilverCity Empress
    Walk cinema, is moving up to a new level this year with a series of
    seminars and panel discussions about breaking into the film business.

    Started four years ago by soap-opera actress Tonya Lee Williams, the
    festival (and the ReelWorld Foundation behind it), has generated
    government financing and corporate sponsorship, and on that level is
    already a success. What remains difficult to pin down is what the
    festival, with its all-too generic name, is about.

    The aim is diversity, specifically films about and by visual
    minorities, but there's a lot of overlap with existing Toronto
    festivals. There is already a successful Reel Asian film festival in
    the fall, and for black film, Planet Africa at the Toronto
    International Film Festival and the Get Reel Film Festival (April
    21-25). But nobody ever suggests a cap on the number of film
    festivals for white people, and more festivals may mean more
    opportunities and better representation of minorities in films.

    The handful of films I've seen -- there are more than 80 works
    ranging from feature films to music videos in the festival -- look
    like good old Canadian multiculturalism. Several of the films have
    white lead characters. Several others -- the short Nigel's
    Fingerprints, the feature Little Brother of War and the Cuban film,
    Entre Ciclones (Between Hurricanes) -- have bi-racial lead
    characters.

    Documentaries and social-realist dramas are predominant. (The extreme
    example of this is a film called Take Out, about Chinese immigrants
    in New York, which spends most of its running time taking us on a
    tour of food deliveries.) The opening gala, Little Brother of War
    (tonight at 6:30), is Vancouver director Damon Vignale's story about
    an eight-year-old half-Indian orphan boy who travels across the
    country to Chicago for a lacrosse championship, and befriends a jaded
    cop. The film previously played at the Vancouver and Montreal film
    festivals.

    The closing-night gala on Sunday is the world premiere of a romantic
    comedy, The Seat Filler (at 7 p.m.), about a regular guy who falls
    for a superstar, Destiny's Child's Kelly Rowland.

    A couple of documentaries look promising. Change from Within (Sat., 3
    p.m.), a first film from Montreal's Peter Farbridge, is about
    inspirational teacher Margaret Bolt and her success in giving poor
    children a break through her St. Peter Claver school in Kingston,
    Jamaica.

    Wet Sand: Voices from L.A. Ten Years Later (tomorrow at 1 p.m.) is
    Korean-American filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson's re-examination of the
    L.A. riots of 1992, and its aftermath, on relations between the
    Korean and black communities.

    I Made a Vow (tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.) is a documentary focusing on
    Canada's oldest black community in Nova Scotia. Filmmaker Juanita
    Peters (winner of a $5,000 National Film Board's Reel Diversity Award
    for her story pitch) offers a charming shot-on-video profile of the
    importance of elaborate weddings in the town of North Preston. The
    hour-long film follows the year-long preparations for Sharon and
    Robbie up to the big day. The film does little to explain the
    cultural history of these elaborate fetes but the music and warmth of
    the characters carries it through.

    Music and dance are the subjects of a quite wonderful film, Dame La
    Mano (Give Me Your Hand) (Sunday, 3 p.m.), by veteran Dutch
    documentarian Heddy Honigmann, which follows a group of irrepressible
    Cuban expatriates. These characters gather each Saturday night at a
    New Jersey nightclub to sing and dance the rumba, a dance that is
    promoted as doing everything from stopping aging to promoting sexual
    vigour and fighting cancer.

    Cuban culture is also the focus of Entre Ciclones (Between
    Hurricanes), which is screening Saturday at 9:30. This Havana-set
    comedy, a huge hit in its native country last spring, follows the
    misadventures of a handsome telephone repairman and the various women
    in his life. While it does offer some insights into contemporary
    Cuba, its bureaucratic frustrations and the differences between the
    revolution generation and the pragmatic self-interested children,
    it's a shrill affair, with the stereotypes broadly drawn.

    Neither is there much new in director Michael Tolajian's feature
    Bought & Sold (Friday, 9 p.m.). This multi-ethnic dramedy is about a
    young Hispanic man who takes on work for a local Italian loan shark,
    befriends an Armenian pawnbroker, learns about the Armenian genocide
    and ditches his gold-digging girlfriend for a better choice.

    A much more ambitious if not entirely successful drama, set in the
    world of graffiti artists, is Bomb the System (Saturday at 7 p.m.).
    When the film was shown at festivals in New York and Los Angles last
    year, Variety hailed its director, Adam Bhala Lough, as a fresh new
    directing voice, with a kinetic visual and driving narrative sense.

    The film follows recent high-school graduate Anthony (Mark Webber,
    who played Scooby in Todd Solondz's Storytelling), who lives to go
    out at night with his crew and "bomb" or paint walls with his art.
    Anthony's older brother, also a graffiti artist, was killed years
    before on the streets. The movie, which plays out like Footloose with
    spray cans, feels more than a little absurd, but it's a visual tour
    de force, with the director throwing in jump cuts and dissolves in
    celebration of a visual art form, all accompanied by a layered
    techno-rap soundtrack.

    All screenings take place at the Famous Players SilverCity Empress
    Walk, 5095 Yonge St., Toronto. For more information: the ReelWorld
    website (http://www.reelworld.ca); for tickets call (416) 923-9232.
Working...
X