Hot Docs 2013

Well, the festival is over and the docs are flying south (and west, and east – and maybe even north) for the summer – hopefully to a cinema near you.

Teenage Directed by Matt Wolf Written by Matt Wolf & John Savage USA, 2013 Adolescence was the greatest demographic discovery and invention of the mid-20th century. Armed with adult-sized interests and freed by a child’s leisurely schedule to explore them to the fullest, teenagers have been dictating pop culture policy since the advent of rock and …

The Last Black Sea Pirates Directed by Svetoslav Stoyanov Written by Vanya Rainova Bulgaria, 2013 The sea has always provided the last refuge (or final resting place) for those who can see no future for themselves on dry land.   Always in flux, but more permanent than anything that has ever dared to poke its head …

Blackfish Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite USA, 2013 Forty-nine years ago, agents of the Vancouver Aquarium harpooned a 15-foot long orca (later dubbed “Moby Doll”) and dragged the suffering animal back to a public display pen at the Burrard Dry Dock company. The traumatized whale lasted less than three months in captivity, after refusing to eat …

The Punk Singer Directed by Sini Anderson USA, 2013 One of the most energetic and iconoclastic aesthetic/political movements in the history of popular expression, 1970s punk nevertheless left many long-entrenched attitudes virtually undisturbed by its vitriolic passage. In some ways, the arrival of the hyper-aggressive “mosh pit” during the 1980s may even have exacerbated certain …

Modern Western philosophical patriarch René Descartes is probably best known for his pithy dictum: cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) – a formulation which led him step by step to a “dualistic” vision of existence, with a radical divide between the physical body and the purely spiritual “mind”.

If there is one thing human beings have mastered, it’s thinking about the future. Theologians, affianced lovers, political theorists, social revolutionaries, TV franchise creators, actuaries and bankers all have that fundamental activity in common. Whether we are entertaining sweeping changes on a global scale, or merely wondering about our own prospects for retirement, we cannot help but beam mental images onto the blank screen of what’s to come.

There is no denying the role other animals have played in fueling our species’ dubious ascent to world mastery. We have eaten them, competed with them, ridden them, made deals with them and yoked them to the plow. It is, to put it mildly, a tragic record of unchecked instrumentalization – and of course, with the advent of factory farming, it’s only getting worse.

The movies have taught us a great many things. How to “meet cute”. How to sing in the rain. How to squint into the sun. How to keep an eye in the frame when a juicy tear’s on the way. But perhaps most of all, they’ve revealed the tremendous allure (and symbolic expressivity) of smooth criminality.

Tales From the Organ Trade Directed & Written by Ric Esther Bienstock Canada, 2013 The prospect of going under the surgeon’s knife terrifies most human beings. And rightly so. Despite the extraordinary theoretical and technological advancements of the past two centuries, no major medical procedure has a 100% success rate. Ultimately though, very few of …

Free The Mind: Can You Rewire The Brain Just By Taking A Breath? Directed & Written by Phie Ambo Denmark, 2012 Neuroscientists have formed a pretty clear picture of what a healthy brain looks like — but what, if anything, can their methods tell us about a “healthy mind”? Is it even possible to quantify …