Now more than ever: 4 can’t-miss films at 2020 DOXA
COVID-19 has taken a lot from culture lovers, but it didn’t take DOXA Documentary Film Festival – and thank heavens for that.
The popular Vancouver festival has shifted its programming online for 2020, offering more than 60 feature-length and short documentary titles to audiences in British Columbia until June 26.
I, for one, am grateful. Documentaries offer perspective, insight, and big emotions – and in the midst of the double-whammy of the global pandemic and protests against police brutality, we need all of the perspective, insight, and big emotions we can get.
[Read my interview with DOXA festival programmer Selina Crammond in MONTECRISTO Magazine here; listen to my interviews with DOXA filmmakers Tamara Dawit, Greg Crompton, and Baljit Sangra on the YVR Screen Scene Podcast here].
It’s next to impossible to make a wrong choice at DOXA, but if you need some starting points for your DOXA adventure, here are a handful of films that bowled me over with their poignancy, their artistry, and their audacity.
Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open
A still from Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open. Image courtesy of DOXA
In the first few minutes of Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open, filmmaker Oksana Karpovych settles her camera on two old Ukrainian men talking politics. One gets upset over some piece of political news, and the other says that there’s no point getting upset over small things, to which the first man replies: “What is Ukraine? Ukraine starts from small things.” And perhaps we can piece together a picture of modern-day Ukraine from the small glimpses we receive in Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open, which shares vignettes of people riding the disintegrating train line that runs between Kyiv and several small provincial towns. Karpovych’s first feature is mesmerizing and meditative, and showcases the burden of poverty and the ways in which the defunct Soviet Union influences life even now.
Directed by Oksana Karpovych
Pier Kids
A still from Pier Kids. Image courtesy of DOXA
Half of all homeless kids in America are LGBTQ, and nearly half of those are kids of colour. Director Elegance Bratton elevates and amplifies the stories of homeless gay and trans Black teens who live and love and dream and survive in and around Chelsea Pier in New York City. Filmed in 2011-2012 and then 2016 – just before the election where Donald Trump became President of the United States – Bratton offers us glimpses of heartbreak (when they lose one of their own), fractured families (like that of a trans girl named Krystal and her mom, who constantly and pointedly misgenders her), and the gulfs and bonds that exist in the families these young people construct for themselves. We also see police harassment, racism, transphobia, and kids dancing and having fun and finding joy in each other. A raw, haunting film; difficult to watch; lots of heart.
Directed by Elegance Bratton
The Walrus and the Whistleblower
A still from The Walrus and the Whistleblower. Image courtesy of DOXA
Phil Demers worked at MarineLand in Niagara Falls, Ontario for years and bonded with a walrus named Smooshi. The connection between man and walrus was so deep and profound that the duo was profiled on late-night shows and national newscasts. But according to Demers and other former MarineLand employees, the popular attraction wasn’t an oasis for the animals in its care. Demers alleges that MarineLand deprived its animals of food for training purposes, drugged them with human antidepressants, and dumped so much chlorine into the water that they suffered chemical burns – and he eventually quit in protest, kicking off a legal battle with the park that continues to this day. The documentary – which does not include MarineLand’s side of the story, and not for lack of trying on the part of director Nathalie Bibeau – takes us into Demers’ activism, which seems driven by one factor, and it’s a big one: his abiding love for Smooshi.
Directed by Nathalie Bibeau
Wintopia
A still from Wintopia. Image courtesy of DOXA
When Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media filmmaker Peter Wintonick died in 2013, the man once dubbed the patron saint of documentary filmmaking left his daughter Mira Burt-Wintonick a treasure trove: more than 300 tapes shot over 15 years from his solo travels around the world documenting his search for utopia – a place that is perfect; a place that might not exist. In this poignant documentary, Burt-Wintonick wades into the footage and documentaries her father left behind, and finds something akin to her own utopia. Wintopia is a meditation on art, documentary, dreamers, work, legacy, and fathers and daughters.
Directed by Mira Burt-Wintonick
The 2020 DOXA Documentary Film Festival is online now until June 26; streaming is available for British Columbia audiences only. Purchase screenings at www.doxafestival.ca.
Top image: Phil Demers in ‘The Walrus and the Whistleblower.’ Photo courtesy of DOXA
