Nice People is a very timely film. In our current state of mass migration of Arabic and African refugees to European countries and the right-wing propaganda that follows such events, it is important for audiences to get a view of the conditions of these people. The fact that Nice People’s view is all wrapped up in a feel-good narrative about a happy-go-lucky sports team is just a smart strategy from documentarians Karin af Klintberg and Anders…
This weekend, the ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival hits theatres in the city’s downtown core – you won’t want to miss it. The selected documentaries hold their own importance against each other, and show how hopeful futures are still within reach against global issues. The selections are raw, but the filmmakers are and determined to be heard.
Eco-friendly independent documentaries are sometimes a hard sell to the general moviegoing public. Unless you have pre-invested interest in the subject matter (in this case, fracking) or the film’s guiding hand (in this case, indigenous activist Caleb Behn), these movies can come across as droning strolls through textbooks of material. It’s a shame since so many of these films are thoughtful and important.
Every so often, I would pull myself out of Nintendo Quest because it made me either gasp loudly or smile until my face hurt. Robert McCallum’s documentary wasn’t just connecting with me on a nostalgic level, it’s also an entertaining thrill ride.
The works of people like Norman McLaren (Pas de Deux, Ballet Adagio, Narcissus) and Wim Wenders (Pina) have shown that ballet can be useful subject matter for beautiful cinema. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, this pleasurable quality somehow cannot find its way into documentaries. The most recent example of this failure to showcase ballet in the genre is A Ballerina’s Tale, Nelson George’s portrait of noted ballerina Misty Copeland – the first African-American woman to be…
Stig Björkman has the right ingredients to chronicle a psychological side of acclaimed actress Ingrid Bergman in his award-winning documentary, Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words. But then, almost as if another director hijacked the project, the film chooses a generically trodden formula.
What we have here is a patchy documentary that works to great effect in spurts.
What if we were to meet with timeless movie couples who connected through dance? Would they still be dancing, or would they be reminiscing over how they moved people with their routines? For the Dirty Dancing/Footloose crowd, the final stretch of 2015 offers German Kral’s Our Last Tango – the real life story of this very scenario.
Based on Pierre Deschamps documentary Noma: My Perfect Storm, I couldn’t work in chef René Redzepi’s kitchen. What begins as a foodie’s wonderland with non-stop decadent dishes soon turns unpalatable for the viewer.
