The Strangest Dream

Joseph Rotblat’s life’s work after leaving the Manhattan Project (the only invited scientist to do so) was nuclear disarmament and this NFB documentary centres on this strangest of dreams. The formation and directing of the Pugwash Conferences in 1957 provided a powerful and revolutionary (in the best way) forum to counter the insanity of nuclear arms build-up. To honour this organization, Rotblat donated his 1995 Nobel Peace Prize medal to the town of Pugwash, Nova Scotia where it all started.
In this post cold war world it is sometimes difficult to see just how close to nuclear annihilation we came. The odds against Hiroshima and Nagasaki being the only uses of atomics as a weapon were astonishing small considering the fact that there were 65,000 active weapons in 1985, the most insane point. Through the tireless efforts of groups like Pugwash these have decreased to the current level of about 8,000 active nuclear warheads and 23,300 non-active.
One of the scary points brought up in the film is that the building of a nuclear weapon is now just a technical matter. It can be accomplished by an engineer or technician now. Most of what you need in the way of ‘plans’ can be found online. I wonder if this is true, however. I hope not. Surely some watchdogs at the Pentagon or MI6 or the EU or somewhere are searching the internet for that kind of information.
We had a panel discussion following the film. It was revealed that current discussion between the U.S. under the Obama administration and the Russian government may result in the reduction of their nuclear arsenals (they have 95% of these weapons) to 1,500 each. This order of magnitude miracle would truly be a large step forward in achieving Rotblat’s dream and is reason enough, IMHO, for Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace prize too.
For those who want to learn more about nuclear disarmament or about the life of a true humanist and exceptional physicist this movie is highly recommended.

Toxic Baby

Having a baby in this age is nearly always a joy filled thing but the very complexity of our lives makes it a frightening experience. Small worries about your baby’s environment can become big ones as you are suddenly thrust into the role of protector in the crazy 21st century. Industrial Disease by Dire Straits or System Of A Down’s Toxicity lodges in my mind. Karen and I have three kids and we can relate: it rips out our heart when any of them are in any kind of danger or pain.
This documentary is director Min Sook Lee’s personal exploration of a short list of what she’s had to come to terms with as a new parent. Water, food, lead pain, PVC, bisphenol A, baby formula, disposable diapers, lions, tigers and bears! Oh my! So many things to worry about. Sook Lee took part in a panel with other mothers after the showing and stressed, as she alluded in the documentary, that you have to be gentle with yourself and decide which level on the trip down the rabbit hole you and your spouse are most comfortable at. ‘Green may be the new black’ but just because the label has green on it doesn’t it mean it’s really necessary. That should be the first question you ask yourself: do I need this gizmo or that technique?
Some choices are really anti-establishment: like the crazy act of breast feeding that so many of our parents were brainwashed into avoiding. But who profits from baby formula? Or from vaccination for that matter? Or disposable diapers? All of these are considered luxuries in most of the world’s populations. But these conveniences have many negative consequences for your child and the environment.
So what are the alternatives? Breast feeding is obvious, of course. But vaccination? There is much controversy to be had here. People used to gather for the ancient tradition of pox parties where children were willingly infected with chicken pox and other illnesses. In the documentary we get to attend a modern day pox party. This seems just so bizarre but it makes a lot of sense. And diapers? Well there’s the obvious cloth diaper option but Sook Lee showed me something new. Actually, it’s another old tradition but doesn’t have even have a name: it’s now called ‘elimination communication‘. This is potty training that starts incredibly early: even as soon as three months. The idea is to take the baby to the toilet and let it pee or poop there. An incredible number of diapers in the dump and discomfort will be prevented by this.
Kids cannot be raised in a bubble and there are so many things outside your control. But there are those things you can take control of when looking for non-toxic parenting methods. Some of these may leave your friends and family looking at you strangely (or even hurtfully because they didn’t put in the effort) but you have to be true to yourself and your child.
This 46 minute film is highly recommended for parents.

Intangible Asset Number 82

This documentary is Australian jazz giant Simon Barker’s journey to discover the influences of a Korean drummer/Shaman named Kim Seok-Chul. Director Emma Franz takes us, sensitively, along. Simon is not allowed by his contact, Kim Dong-Won, to see Seok-Chul right away. There is a lot of resistance there although Simon doesn’t know, at first, why. Is the master drummer, who is regarded as such a national treasure by his country that he is Intangible Asset Number 82, being protected from the foreigner? Is he not worthy?
The truth was that Kim Seok-Chul was very ill and in hospital but also that Dong-Won wasn’t sure it would be right to present Simon to him. Would the Australian drummer actually understand the honour? Would he be worthy? So, as a process, Dong-Won goes on a trip with Simon to visit other musical Shamen. The singer Bae Il-Dong is one. This is a singer who lived in the wilderness in a hut he built beside a waterfall for seven years, singing up to 18 hours a day. Learning to out-sing the noise of the falls. Il-Dong considers the mountain as yin and the valley as yang with the waterfall the holy place where yin and yang meet. His is a powerful, raw voice that seems too big and too much noise for the Western ear. But he sings pure nature and without fear or ego. I would love to hear him in concert.
Simon also learns about drumming with his entire body. To begin throwing himself down on the ground as if in mourning to learn to let go and relax into the music. And to listen to his own heart for true rhythm.
Near the end, Seok-Chul has left the hospital and Simon does get the chance to visit with the master three days before he dies. We, as voyeuristic companions, get a rare glimpse into some of the final hours of a man revered by his family and society. It is impressive and touching.
I learned, in the end, a great deal about South Korea and music in this wonderful and powerful documentary. I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone!
This was the first of the five documentaries I saw during the 2009 Guelph Festival of Moving Media.

A Promise to the Dead

This documentary was a portrayal of the events leading up to and following the brutal Pinochet coup of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile (1973). This was an incredibly interesting but devastating time with the United States aiding the toppling of an elected government merely because they were socialist. The death toll was incredibly high and often completely senseless.
The promise to those who died is being kept by Ariel Dorfman who was a cultural advisor in the Allende government. He managed to survive with his life and was able to escape to exile in Latin America and then to Europe and the States. He is a famous writer of books and plays and returned to live part of the time in Chile while it was still under the rule of Pinochet.
I find the story of the Chileans to be deeply moving and that sustained me through this film. The audience certainly learns more about it. I can’t help but think it would have been better if the focus wasn’t always on Dorfman. He is very much a larger-than-life human being and, although I admire him, he steals a lot of the spotlight from the story he’s trying to tell.
Recommended for those interested in Chile at the time.

The Price of Sugar

This documentary by Bill Haney was the one that shook me up the most at the Guelph Festival of Moving Media and so is what I would consider the best of those I had the privilege to watch this year. As you probably realize from reading my blog, if you read it at all, I do love to be knocked out of complacency every now and again. I’m not a masochist but I think our modern lives grow too comfortable for our own good. There’s still evil in the world and this film is a testimony to that fact as it attempts to show the true price of sugar.
The Dominican Republic has had an incredibly tumultuous and violent history especially where the western third of the island, its neighbour (Haiti) is concerned. The capital, Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the site of the earliest permanent European settlement in the Americas. It hasn’t had a dictatorship since Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina’s death in 1961 and boasts the region’s most flourishing economy. Haiti, on the other hand, is one of the poorest countries in the region and therein lies the problem and the opportunity for the unscrupulous.
This remarkable film shows clear evidence for the exploitation of Haitian people who are regularly and illegally brought into the Dominican Republic by the bus load. They are enticed with the offer of steady work and money, stripped of their documents and imprisoned in ‘bateyes’ on sugar plantations. These are poorly constructed enclosures surrounded by barbed wire (ostensibly for their own protection but even the ceilings of their ‘homes’ are strung with it) and patrolled by armed guards. All this only kilometres from posh vacation spots for wealthy American and European tourists. You have to see the film to witness the shockingly squalid conditions these people are living and working in.
Enter Father Christopher Hartley in 1997 who, against the advice of many, begins to minister to Haitian cane workers, the poorest in his flock. The film concentrates on this courageous Catholic priest’s efforts to win basic human rights for Haitians in bateyes from the powerful Vicini family. To call this ‘family’ modern slavers would, in my opinion, be apt. Hartley won several concessions from them by convincing the cane workers to strike. And what were they striking for? Not for higher pay but to know how much and whether they would be paid. Using donations the priest set up locations where the children of the workers could get a nutritional meal (often their only one of the day). He also brought in American doctors and Bill Haney, a co-founder of Infante Sano (a nonprofit dedicated to improving maternal and child health in Latin America) to try to make a difference.
The Vicini fought back used their money and influence to try to get the priest ousted. Their efforts finally bore fruit when Hartley, after nine years, was removed by the Church in October of 2006. He is now once again working with Mother Teresa’s missionaries of Charity somewhere in Africa. Father Hartley tries to keep in touch with what he started by phone. He is a very impressive person, an outstanding ambassador for the Church and worthy of anyone’s admiration. Well, perhaps members of the Vicini family differ with me there.
Two of the Vicini men have filed a libel suit in the States against the film and Bill Haney. Obviously they don’t like all the negative publicity it has brought them especially with politicians in the United States, a country with which they have a very favourable sugar trade treaty. As for the cane workers, their lot has supposedly improved. I, for one, will be buying only Fair Trade Certified sugar and sweets made with Fair Trade sugar if I can get them.
This is a link to an interview with Bill Haney and Christopher Hartley on NPR. It is worth a listen if you want another source for this story.
Very, very highly recommended!

1000 Journals

I really enjoyed this documentary about Someguy (an artist in San Francisco who preferred to remain anonymous) distributing 1000 blank journals in random places around San Francisco and to people who requested to write in one over his website. There were few rules: only a request that the journal be returned at some point. What an interesting and hopeful idea and one with results no one could have expected. Here’s the stamp that accompanied each journal.
The Producer, Writer and Director was Andrea Kreuzhage, and director of photography was Ralph Kaechele. These two really provide an intriguing glimpse into this unique story about what can happen with an idea. Someguy wanted his brainchild to travel the world for him: and it certainly has.
Not all have returned to him but such is the nature of such an organic idea: perhaps they’ll come home to roost sometime in the future if they aren’t forever lost. It’s very exciting, really. The person who lead the discussion after this film was shown in the Alma Gallery said that Someguy has received 40 of them back to date. He’s scanned them and has made some available on the website and has even put together an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art showing some of the entries (November 01, 2008 – April 05, 2009) and a book.
Another interesting consequence is the emotional attachment to the material by people who have poured a little of themselves into one or more of the pages. For some it took a long time (years in probably more than one case) to figure out exactly what they wanted to put down and others only minutes. And it extends beyond the time they have it too. One woman who was interviewed after comments made by another person to her entry was extremely upset about what she considered a personal attack. Such investment in something that transcends ownership. And yet, at the end of the documentary, there was a cathartic moment when she was on again and indicated how important the project was to her.
In another case the documentary focuses on several pages that were defaced (often literally) by another entrant. Even when blank pages were available. That brings up questions of artistic freedom, ownership (again), loss and, perhaps, the inability for some to do their own original thing.
The project continues anew at the 1001 journals site.
Highly Recommended!

The Linguists

Two American professors, David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, are featured in this documentary. They are searching the world for vanishing languages and trying to preserve them before it’s too late. The point is made that the rate of loss is as high as that for species extinction per capita. The following quote from the people that produced this film is telling:

Roughly 40 percent of the world’s estimated 6,800 languages may disappear within the next century, linguist Stephen Anderson said this month in Seattle at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This film is a fascinating look at the life’s work of two men intent on preserving something as ephemeral and mercurial as a language. And what is a language after all but a way for humans to describe the world and themselves.  So they say that it is a whole world that is being lost here:  not just a set of vocabulary and grammar.
And my favourite finding by the Linguists is the number system for the Sora language in India. In English, we use a base 10 numbering system where the numbers cycle from 1 to 10 and then repeat. But check this out:

In India they find that the Sora language operates with a strange numbering system. The native speaker counts to 13 and says, “twelve-one.” The linguists conclude that it operates on a base-12 system.
But at the number 30, he says “twenty-ten,” which indicates a base-20 system. The linguists look at each other in amazement as they realize that Sora uses both: at 32, it’s “twenty-twelve,” 33, “twenty-twelve-one.”
“Our favorite number is 93,” Anderson said. “It’s four-twenty-twelve-one.”

That’s cool. I thought French was complicated enough with its 90 (four-twenty-ten) and 70 (sixty-ten) constructs but those are really just oddities in what is really a base 10 system too.  Dave and Greg think this is the first double base numbering system in a language they’ve come across.  Just shows you how inventive a species we are!
I recommend it.

Unforeseen

In the documentary Unforeseen a link is made between unrestricted housing development and the growth of cancers in the human body. Though by no means subtle, I still feel that the audience was given the right to draw their own conclusions. This is an incredibly well made film that really forces the issues out into the open. You follow the course of events with a developer, Gary Bradley, whose star rises big and bright in Austin, Texas, and falls just as spectacularly. It’s a tribute to the director that you actually feel for Bradley even though he’s a crook and dangerous to the environment.
Of particular interest was how the municipal will of the people of Austin was crushed by the State legislature which was influenced by land speculating lobbyists. How the greed of a few can manipulate the lives of the many. Discussion after the film made the link between events in Guelph and the power of the Ontario Municipal Board.
Wendell Berry’s poem Santa Clara Valley is featured at the beginning and end of the film with the poet reading his own work. It very beautifully book ends the film.
Another image which sticks will you is of an elderly farmer walking through the concrete and asphalt of ultra developed parts of the city. Just walking. But such a powerful statement about man’s place in nature.
The documentary is centred on a spring-fed pool in Austin that is under the threat of development. The juxtaposition of this little bit of paradise and the rank and file, mud-surrounded suburbs that are being built brings out the values so well. Inverviews with Robert Redford (who spent time in Austin when growing up), William Greider and Gov. Ann Richards, and lobbyist Dick Brown provided balanced reporting all around.
Another image that is seared into my mind is that of growth-minded Texans marching with their signs ‘Birds don’t pay taxes’ shown marching to defend their right to despoil the Earth to the death. And that’s exactly where that attitude will take us. Good Christians all, I’m sure. Never mind taking seriously the responsibility of being custodians of the Earth: “It’s mine, God damn it!” And God may not have much to damn by the time we’re all done with it. There will be no consideration of lilies or birds either. They don’t pay taxes.
Highly recommended.

We Are Wizards

Harry Potter is, as even Muggles know, a phenomenon.  For fans, like myself, seven books and possibly more movies will never be enough to satisfy their desire and need for all things Potter.  You can only read and watch them so many times.  There must be more!
And so a subculture was born.  Some have argued that this is THE subculture.  This is the Wizarding World spawned by the creative genius of J. K. Rowling and this documentary serves as an introduction.
The director, Josh Koury, chose the Wizard Rock Scene to begin with.  Groups such as Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, The Hungarian Horntails and Whompy of the Whomping Willows were featured.  I’d heard of only one of these groups prior to seeing this film and that was Harry and the Potters:   two brothers who write short and amusing songs about the Harry Potter saga.  I enjoy their work.  The Hungarian Horntails is fronted by a seven year old boy who is having a lot of fun on stage but he wouldn’t be someone I’d pay to see.  I didn’t find the other acts much better but you have the links above and so can make your own judgement.  Of course, I have to remind myself that this isn’t about skill.  This is really about Pottermania and these groups often get together and do sell lots of tickets to see their show.
Brad Neely is covered by the documentary as well.  He basically creates CD’s that you would play with one of the HP movies after having turned down the sound.  This is basically commentary but one which is seemingly meant to make fun of the movie.  Personally I would find that kind of media would get old real fast but I certainly see how kids love cynical add-ons like this. That style of making fun of stuff is very popular with my own kids.  I do like Neely’s comics though:  he’s a very good artist.  His rants about Warner Brothers’ agents hunting him down were also funny.
Heather Lawver’s fight with Warner Brothers for her freedom to express herself on all things Potter was good.  There’s something to be said about a David such as this, especially when successful in starting boycotts against this particular Greedy Goliath.  I don’t think it was necessary to talk about her disease:  her case was strong enough with out that.
Melissa Anelli’s Leaky Cauldron site was also featured and her site was one I’d heard of before.  I think more time should have been spent on Melissa, a true fan’s fan.
Of course, as Rochelle pointed out (see below for who Rochelle is) the glue that holds all this crazy fandom together is the internet.  Using it there can be enough of a base for almost any lunatic fringe group (and there is).  Having said that I don’t want crazed readers out there getting the wrong idea.  This is not a bad thing.  I have always been a fan of nearly anything on the lunatic fringe.  It’s usually fresh, interesting and good for a laugh.
But back to the review.  I found the editing could have used tightening up:  it dragged in places and not enough transition was used to move from topic to topic.  It was easy to get confused.  There was also too much swearing especially by Brad Neely.  This is often a real problem at film festivals, like ours, where you don’t really know the rating for a film.  Kids were attracted to this film and they came to watch it but the foul language, which is completely unnecessary IMHO, really shut them out.  I know I was embarrassed that the kids that came had to hear it.  And that goes back to lazy editing again.  Why diminish your audience like that, Josh?
After the show Rochelle Mazar, a UofT Mississauga Librarian, lead some interesting discussion after the film.  She was knowledgeable, interesting and knew the topic very well.  Rochelle made the point that this documentary was only scratching the surface of the Wizarding subculture.

Guelph Festival of Moving Media 2008

The Guelph Festival of Moving Media is done for another year and, including the pre-festival screening of the raw milk saga of Michael Schmidt, I saw eight documentaries in total. I volunteered as the tech for all the films shown at the Alma Gallery venue which were:

• We are Wizards
• The Linguists
• 1000 Journals
• The Price of Sugar
• The Unforeseen
• A Promise to the Dead

The first three were yesterday and the last; today. I managed to squeeze in one more documentary at the e-bar venue in between shows yesterday:

• Surfwise

Of course this is all fodder for future blog entries so reviews will follow. I want to think about them and do a little more research before I write up each.
If anyone from Guelph or area is reading this I would very much encourage them to attend next year’s festival. I think you’d find any of these well chosen films worth the price of admission. And if you can’t afford that and are willing to commit your time you could volunteer as I did. I was just an assistant for setting things up last year but with this festival I had the responsibility for setting up and running the equipment for all the screenings at a single venue. I saw pictures I might not have been inclined to pick but I ended up enjoying all of them.  A very enlightening weekend.