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Reel People’s top picks for DOXA Documentary Film Festival

In this dizzying age of fake news and seemingly fascist regimes, separating fact from codswallop can be a Herculean task – but the 2017 DOXA Documentary Film Festival is here to help you make sense of it all.
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A Moon of Nickel and Ice.

 

In this dizzying age of fake news and seemingly fascist regimes, separating fact from codswallop can be a Herculean task – but the 2017 DOXA Documentary Film Festival is here to help you make sense of it all. This year’s festival places truth-tellers, freedom fighters and rabble-rousers squarely in the spotlight with its jam-packed schedule of feature-length and short documentaries from local, national and international filmmakers. Though each are different in tone and subject matter, DOXA films almost universally hold a mirror up to where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed. Take Charles Wilkinson’s Vancouver: No Fixed Address, about our city’s ongoing housing crisis, or Manifesto, in which the glorious Cate Blanchett portrays 13 different characters reciting the 20th century’s greatest cultural and social manifestos.

It’s next to impossible to make a wrong choice when setting out on a DOXA adventure – but if you need a starting point, Reel People humbly suggests the following:

 

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Limit is the Sky


LIMIT IS THE SKY (Julia Ivanova | Canada) May 5

In the first five minutes of Julia Ivanova’s gripping documentary about Fort McMurray, the city’s appeal is summed up in an incredible improvised street performance by oil sands worker Corey Pohl: head to Alberta, make a ton of money in a short span of time, and then leave. Ivanova spent several years following a handful of people from all over the world chasing that coveted oil sands money. The veteran documentarian shows us a city of extremes: extreme wealth, testosterone, poverty, weather, isolation, environmental desecration, and expectations – as well as what can happen to a thriving oil city when the cost of oil sinks low, and a wildfire threatens to shut it all down.

 

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Complicit

COMPLICIT (Heather White and Lynn Zhang | US/China) May 6 & 14

Long before your screen of choice arrives at your nearest retailer, it is likely born in China, where 90 per cent of the world’s electronics are produced. In Complicit, we meet the migrant workers who piece together the world’s phones and laptops in egregious conditions (little to no ventilation, no time off, no sleep for days on end) for scandalously low wages. Many suffer grave health consequences, like occupational leukemia and even death, while corrupt corporations place profit over people in order to meet the global demand for the latest tech. This jarring film might compel you to look at your phone and ask yourself, “How complicit are we in the West?”. Watch the trailer here

 

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Drunken Laundry Day with Charles Bukowski

 

DRUNKEN LAUNDRY DAY WITH CHARLES BUKOWSKI (Fiona Tinwei Lam, H. Kristen Campbell, Henry Doyle, Analee Weinberger | Canada) May 6

A visual poem from the DTES springs to vivid life in this animated short featuring text written and performed by Henry Doyle and clean and simple line drawings. Drunken Laundry Day with Charles Bukowski serves up a cheeky and biting commentary on the middle class, Eastside life, and bar visits on mundane laundry days.

 

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For My Mother


FOR MY MOTHER (Manny Mahal | Canada) May 7 & 14

In this powerful short, Vancouver filmmaker Manny Mahal employs a single unbroken POV shot to pack a major emotional punch. The film has Mahal retracing a walk his mother, Sital, took in South Vancouver on April 27, 2015 – a day that was to be a paradigm-shifting one for Sital and everyone who loved her. During the unbroken POV shot, Mahal relates his mother’s remarkable immigrant story: Canucks fan, arranged marriage, kidney transplant, parent – and we get to know the filmmaker, too. A stunning rumination on failure, success, and the impact we have on the people we love.

 

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Fattitude


FATTITUDE (Lindsey Averill and Viridiana Lieberman | US) May 9

Why is fat such a dirty word? Why are fat characters in pop culture overwhelmingly evil – Ursula in The Little Mermaid, The Blob, Jabba the Hutt – or the sassy sidekicks who exist to support a slender lead? Fattitude takes aim at our society’s obsession with thinness, and explores the impact that fat shaming has on anyone who internalizes the narrative that fat people are less than human. The documentary explores the history of fat shaming, the multitude of ways in which fat people are discriminated against by legislators, advertisers, clothing manufacturers, Hollywood, and the healthcare profession, and what happens when you don’t see yourself reflected anywhere in pop culture – and also looks towards reclaiming the word fat through “fatshion” and new ways of thinking about body positivity.  

 

A MOON OF NICKEL AND ICE(Francois Jacob | Canada) May 9

Norilsk is a city shaped by its gulag history and yet wiped clean of any trace of it; the Russian city – home to 177,000 and closed to foreigners – began as a prison town in the 1930s and is the coldest city in the world. Today, Norilsk produces more than 20 per cent of the world’s nickel, and its historical roots are largely unknown in town. French-Canadian filmmaker Francois Jacob braves the freezing temperatures, darkness, snow, ice, and remoteness to reveal the truth of Norilsk to its citizens and audiences worldwide, via the head of the local theatre group, miner lifers, high schoolers, and a historian determined to make his fellow citizens confront their dark history. A Moon of Nickel and Ice is haunting and atmospheric, right down to its sweeping shots of concrete, factory chimneys, and industrial waste; even in summer, a permanent black cloud hangs over the city.

 

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Tokyo Idols


TOKYO IDOLS (Kyoko Miyake | UK/Canada) May 11

In Japan, idols are a billion dollar business. More than 10,000 teenage girls sing and dance as part of the idol circuit in Japan – and their fans are mostly adult men who pay big bucks for the opportunity to shake their hands and take photos with them at meet-and-greet events. Tokyo Idols introduces audiences to the teen girls who work the idol circuit – including a 14-year-old who sings and dances in a cat costume for a room full of men, and a 10-year-old who is just getting her start – as well as the adult super-fans who fawn over these young girls but are otherwise unable to interact with women in their daily lives. Tokyo Idols offers a fascinating and unsettling deep-dive into a booming sub-culture.