Reality ignites

>> The NFB rolls out a season of documentaries

by MATTHEW HAYS

Though the National Film Board of Canada can boast an international reputation and oodles of awards (including 10 Oscars), the crown corporation has been severely reduced by government cuts over the past decade. Though the Liberals have made noise recently that the NFB will see another cash injection, some still argue that the institution's glory days are over.

It is amazing, then, considering the economic constraints that the NFB has faced, just how much solid documentary content it continues to produce. The NFB gained yet more vital cred at Cannes this month, when its doc-influenced dramatic feature Atanarjuat won the prestigious Golden Camera Prize for first-time directors. Director Zacharias Kunuk used Inuit actors and a primarily Inuit crew to capture this 165-minute feature, a film based on Inuit legend.

Beyond the Cannes buzz, though, there are a number of NFB films to look out for in the coming season. This week NFB publicists launched a sneak preview at the coming slate of productions, and the glimpses unleashed do indicate that the institution is alive and well. A sampling:

Toronto-based director Nisha Pahuja explores the wonderful world of Indian cinema in Bollywood Bound, in which the cameras follow two aspiring Canadian-born South Asian actors who want to make it big in the Indian film biz. During their foray to India, Pahuja and producer Karen King-Chigbo apparently found that East meets West more often than many of us might have thought. The film is slated for a fall release.

Former political prisoner, Iranian-Canadian Masoud Raouf was so haunted by the suicide of a young Iranian student in Canada that he was inspired to make Darker Than Black, a film exploring the fallout from serving prison time for political reasons. Raouf, who escaped incarceration in his native Iran and came to Canada, explores the isolation those who share his path often face. The film has been shot and edited in Montreal and should hit the festival circuit by late summer.

Seven up

With Film Club, Canada just might have its own answer to the 7 Up series, Michael Apted's wildly successful episodes that followed a group of people from the age of seven, every seven years, right up to the most recent chapter, last year's 42 Up. In '73, seven Toronto Grade 8 students got together to make a film about their experiences as immigrant students in Canada, titled Ohh Canada. A quarter century later, one of the kids who made the original film, Cyrus Sundar Singh, reconnects with the other students who worked on the film and sees if Canada's promise of multiculturalism holds true. Due late summer or early fall.

Winnipeg-based director John Paskievich has long had a fascination with Eastern European cultures, from his If Only I Were an Indian, which followed a group of Czechs who emulated North American native lifestyles and customs, to Gypsies of Svinia, which examined the horrendous conditions faced by outcast gypsies who live near bigoted white Europeans. Now he's focussing the camera on his own family's experiences, tracing his mother's trek from Europe to Canada 50 years ago as a Ukrainian refugee, in My Mother's Village. The film just wrapped post-production in Montreal and should be out within weeks.

Celluloid from the Summit

Local social-activist and doc guru Magnus Isacsson is coordinating an epic doc about the much-publicized Quebec City Summit of the Americas. Isacsson brought together seven of Quebec's best doc filmmakers--including Philippe Falardeau, Anne Henderson and Paul Lapointe--each of whom contributes a segment of View From the Summit. The doc will air on English- and French-language TV in the fall.

Also of special interest to Montrealers will be the two winners of last year's Reel Diversity East competition, a program that aims to give opportunities to visible minority filmmakers. Last year's winners, Atif Siddiqi and Kaveh Nabatian, will launch their films later this year; Siddiqi's, titled Chances, is an examination of a number of single men and how and why they remain single, while Nabatian's, 645 Wellington, profiles the residents of an Old Montreal apartment block who are trying to resist the gentrification that is taking over the 'hood.

Those interested in applying for the NFB's second edition of Reel Diversity East, a competition that will give two emerging visible minority filmmakers the opportunity to direct a short documentary video, should apply by the submission deadline of Oct. 31, 2001. Info: 283-9536.