by MATTHEW HAYS

Documentary filmmakers often wring their hands about the state of their craft. Average moviegoers, they argue, simply aren’t interested in taking in doc films. Funding is harder and harder to come by, especially for POV docs. And cheaper technology (i.e. digital video) has only made things worse, as financiers expect more to be done with less.

This year, there’s some good news: four of the most exciting films I’ve seen in the past few months have been documentaries: The Kid Stays in the Picture, Bowling for Columbine, Hell House and Trembling Before G-d are all getting overwhelmingly favourable reviews while also managing to cull more-than-respectable box office. Indeed, the former two of these had solid financial backing, but one hopes the overall heightened interest in documentary forms (beyond Survivor or The Bachelor) will mean that more marginalized films will gain wider audiences.

This year’s Rencontres internationales du documentaire, the fifth to be held, offers a wide range of documentary projects, many of them deeply personal and political. There are too many to mention, but what follows is my best shot at a short list.

Slamming siding

Judith Helfand is one impressive activist filmmaker; at age 25, she was diagnosed with cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. The illness was linked to DES, an anti-miscarriage drug her mother took during pregnancy. Helfand successfully sued the pharmaceutical company for malfeasance and won. She has been using her settlement ever since to make documentaries about carcinogens produced by corporations. Her latest, with co-director Daniel B. Gold, is Blue Vinyl, which won an award at Sundance. The feature is an examination of the vinyl-siding industry and its devastating effects on the environment. With a great deal of humour and a lot of chutzpah, Helfand and Gold create a solid examination of this industry, while also working to illustrate possible alternatives.

Filmmaker Walter Stokman manages a balanced view of an unbelievably tricky subject in his latest, ASH World Wide Suicide. Stokman was surprised to find an Internet support group for those who seriously consider suicide a valid option—and don’t want to be judged for it. The filmmaker profiles four members of alt.suicide.holiday, and the results are as disturbing as they are fascinating.

On the local front, Jennifer Alleyn has created a compelling portrait of the Rossys, the couple who have owned and run their discount department store for decades in Montreal. Les Rossy is a sweet and endearing film about a couple of resilient entrepreneurs, one that says as much about the evolution of Quebec and Montreal as it does the couple and their business. And Magnus Isacsson’s documentary about young union organizers battling the corporate giant McDonald’s, Maxime, McDuff and McDo is highly recommended viewing that will also screen at the fest.

Out of the past

The NFB must be lauded for their excellent work at the festival, including Masoud Raouf’s The Tree That Remembers. The film profiles several Iranian émigrés who arrived in Canada to find freedom, only to also find that escaping the severe memories they had of years of imprisonment was tougher to do. Raouf has crafted a beautiful film, employing animation techniques as well as traditional documentary practices.

Those who missed peace activist Anand Patwardhan’s latest feature, War and Peace, will have another opportunity to see it here—and it’s a film truly worth catching. In a film that has become amazingly prescient (now that the India-Pakistan conflict is seen as one of the hottest spots for potential nuclear battle), Patwardhan examines various sub-plots surrounding the two nations’ drive for nuclear power, including the effects of uranium mining on surrounding populations. An exceptional piece of work.

If these titles aren’t controversial enough for you, Fergal Keane’s The Accused is also slated to screen. The film, which asks whether or not Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a war criminal, was yanked from the roster at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival earlier this year due to extreme protests against it. The director certainly has solid credentials; he received an Amnesty International award for his reporting on the ’94 Rwandan massacre.

Celine Rumalean examines Japan’s history of war crimes in Yesterday Is Now, in which Japanese citizens look back at their complicity in WWII atrocities. As might be expected, Rumalean discovers that the country is sharply divided about what exactly its past really is. :

Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal
screens from Friday, Nov. 15–21. Info:
www.ridm.qc.ca or phone 499-3676

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