12 TFI Alumni Selected For Hot Docs 2013
The lineup for the 2013 edition of Hot Docs was announced today and 12 projects that have been supported by TFI have been selected, including the world premiere of Shawney Cohen and Mike Gallay's The Manor (2012 TFI Documentary Fund grantee).
The renowned doc festival in Canada will take place this year from April 25-May 5.
Here are descriptions of the 12 films taken from the Hot Docs website. Learn more about Hot Docs here.
The Manor (TFI Documentary Fund) Shawney Cohen reluctantly returns home to a small Ontario town to help his family through a difficult time: his 400-pound father is about to undergo stomach reduction surgery, his 85-pound mother refuses to acknowledge her complicated relationship with food and his younger brother needs help running their unconventional family business. Now an adult in his mid-30s, Shawney was only six years old when his father bought the Manor, a strip club adjoining a 32-room motel. Shawney’s role as filmmaker and son provides an astonishingly intimate and rarely seen perspective on a family facing the consequences of their livelihood, dependence and love.
Shooting Bigfoot (TFI Documentary Fund) “I don’t think an hour goes by in the day where I don’t think about Sasquatch,” divulges one aficionado. So begins Morgan Matthews’ rollicking foray into the obsessive, hoax-filled cult of Sasquatch. Using the in-the-trenches style of The Blair Witch Project, the film allows us to accompany the adventures of three Sasquatch search parties: socially awkward “master tracker” Ric Dyer; crotchety old guys Dallas and Wayne; and Tom Biscotti, perhaps the most devoted of the bunch, who has hunted Sasquatch unabatedly for 37 years.
William And The Windmill (Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund) With only a library book as his guide, 14-year-old William Kamkwamba builds a windmill in his Malawian village that changes his life forever. Using junk parts and an inexhaustible imagination, he harnesses enough energy to power a generator that saves his family from famine and resuscitates his dying farming community. An instant media sensation, the teen soon has the ability to chart a previously unimaginable future of Ivy League schools and speaking tours. But despite the help of an American entrepreneur who helps navigate his success, some changes threaten to capsize him.
Gideon's Army (Tribeca All Access) Travis, Brandy and June are the most appealing people with the toughest job in America. They are public defenders. Each carries the weight of more than 150 cases that read like a catalogue of misery. In spite of long hours, low pay and no social life, they manage to offer their clients their only hope. It’s tough when a client is guilty, but even tougher when an innocent client gets hard time from a judicial system that prioritizes expediency over justice, plea bargains over the fundamental right to a trial. Effectively matching the exhausting efforts of these exceptional people is the considerable craftsmanship demonstrated by first-time documentary director Dawn Porter and editor Matthew Hamachek.
Our Nixon (TFI Documentary Fund) It’s January 20, 1969. As Richard Nixon prepares to take the oath of office, three of his closest associates fire up their cameras. Young, idealistic and dedicated, they had no idea that a few short years later they’d find themselves in jail. Obsessed with Super 8 home movies, Special Assistant Dwight Chapin, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman set out to capture everything with the enthusiasm of novice aficionados: Nixon’s historic visit to China, man’s landing on the moon, the Vietnam War protests…until the Watergate scandal broke. The footage, over 500 reels, confiscated by the FBI as part of the investigation, inexplicably sat forgotten for decades in a government office until now.
Big Men (Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund) In 2007, a massive oil field is discovered beneath the ocean in Ghana’s waters. The first commercial find in the country’s history, it carries unprecedented potential risk and incalculable reward. Well, nearly incalculable. Enter Jim Musselman, CEO of the Dallas oil startup Kosmos, who together with some of the world’s largest private equity investors, is ready to stake massive dollars on a possible $2.2 billion payoff. When neighbouring Nigerian militants blow up the country’s pipelines, demanding cash for the people and sending the price of crude soaring, Musselman must somehow assure Ghanaian government officials from the king on down, and his own board members, that his deal will benefit the nation and all involved.
Cutie and the Boxer (TFI Documentary Fund) A beautifully crafted and intimate, portrait of two Japanese artists, Ushio and Noriko, and their forty-year love story. When they meet in New York in the 1970s Noriko has felt in the shadow of her older, higher-profile, husband who is lauded for his “boxing paintings” and sculptures. However his work has rarely earned enough income to pay their way. Now, as they prepare for their first joint show, the couple traverse a different dynamic as the positive response to Noriko’s autobiographical work telling the story of their alter-egos, Cutie and Bullie, unsettles Ushio’s understanding of her both as a companion and as an artist.
Elena (TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund) Twenty years ago, Elena, a young Brazilian actress, sought success in the bright lights of New York City. Petra follows in her big sister’s footsteps, searching the foggy city streets for a connection to her troubled sibling. She looks for traces of Elena everywhere. Not only are both women thespians, but they could be twins. On screen, Petra and Elena merge fluidly, like water, until one is the other. Acting is the ultimate act of submersion, a delicate process of losing and finding yourself in someone else, and filmmaker Petra Costa captures that spirit completely
Mercy Mercy (Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund) Easily one of the most important documentaries on inter-country adoption, Mercy Mercy gives a rare look at all participants in the adoption process, including the parents who give their children up. Two loving Ethiopians parents, Sinkenesh and Husen, have just been diagnosed with HIV and told they have only a year to live. They make the painful decision to give their two youngest children up for adoption, handing them over to a Danish family. In an emotional departure, the Danish family promises to stay in touch and the adoption agency agrees to broker the relationship.
Teenage (TFI Documentary Fund) Between childhood and adulthood sat an age that needed to be invented—an age of boy scouts and soldiers in training; an age where you were free to party in pearls, swing in heels and cause a scene in your best zoot suit without the responsibilities of adulthood; an age not yet defined but waiting to be born. Using Jon Savage’s highly acclaimed book as source material, filmmaker Matt Wolf creates a visual collaborative guide to Savage’s historic exploration of adolescence.
God Loves Uganda (TAA & Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund) For over 100 years, Western Christian churches have been sending missionaries to Africa. At first, missionaries saw their enterprise as a campaign to civilize a backward people. More recently, they’ve presented themselves as supporters of social welfare, as well as harvesters of souls in regions less corrupted by modernity than the West. In fact, the missionary movement in Africa today is both an outgrowth of the colonial past and an effort to make over a continent in the image of the most extreme fundamentalist Christian values. Through the prism of Africa’s poorest, youngest and most religious country, the film explores the true influence of the American evangelical movement in Africa through the intersecting arcs of three characters: an American missionary, Uganda’s most anti-gay evangelical minister, and a Ugandan priest and human rights activist.
When I Walk (Tribeca All Access) When Jason DaSilva was diagnosed with a severe form of multiple sclerosis at 25, his legs were literally taken from beneath him, forcing him to confront some harsh realities about his future. He was a filmmaker who travelled the world and now had to face that he couldn’t brush his teeth without help. He wonders if he can find love with someone who can see past his physical challenges. Turning the camera on himself, he documents a seven-year struggle with a disease that has no cure and a world filled with increasing obstacles. The result is a very personal, ambitious and genuine view of a life that takes nothing for granted.
[Photos: The Manor; Mercy Mercy]
