The Documentary Download Dilemma
Much ink has been spilled and pixels punctuated regarding the ongoing controversial topic around the copyright, downloading, streaming and file sharing of creative content, yet there has been little discussion…
Ezra Winton
Identity, Oppression, Resistance
For this week’s Friday Film Pick I’m choosing two very different, seemingly unrelated docs that are available for online viewing. Girl Inside is an intimate portrayal of a male transitioning…
Pirate Bay documentary debuts online
The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard documentary, which tells the story behind the embattled Swedish Pirate Bay project, is now available on YouTube. The film just premiered in Europe and…
War on Drugs doc launches for free – Friday Film Pick: Breaking the Taboo
It’s too early in the day for us to watch a documentary on the so-called “war on drugs,” so we’re not actually endorsing this week’s FFP, Breaking the Taboo, which…
Scrap America – Friday Film Pick & Interview: Scrappers
An interview with one of the filmmakers behind the poetic documentary Scrappers.
Scrap America – A conversation with Scrapper filmmaker Brian Ashby
This week’s Friday Film Pick is the beautifully shot and tenderly rendered Scrappers, a documentary that quietly follows two Chicago residents as they eke out a living from the salvaging…
Embedded with a West London Eco-village – Friday Film Pick: Grasp the Nettle
Filmmaker Dean Puckett is following up from his fantastic documentary The Crisis of Civilization with another doc from the front lines of the war on want. This time Puckett’s lens…
Russian LGBT Film Fest pushes ahead despite attacks – A conversation with the founder of the Side By Side Festival
It is an extreme act of bravery and commitment to put on a queer film festival in many parts of the world, where the cultural politics of film festivals play…
Love and death on the side of the road – A conversation with taxidermy sculptor Kate Puxley
Kate Puxley is a visual artist whose work has drawn attention to the Harper government’s damaging policies toward art and culture as well as our relationship with animals and the…
The art of roadkill – A conversation with artist Kate Puxley
Kate Puxley is a visual artist whose work has drawn attention to the Harper government’s damaging policies toward art and culture as well as our relationship with animals and the…
Russian LGBT Film Fest pushes ahead despite attacks – A conversation with the founder of the Side By Side Festival
It is an extreme act of bravery and commitment to put on a queer film festival in many parts of the world, where the cultural politics of film festivals play…
Green among the grey – Friday Film Pick: Edible City
Edible City is a new documentary charting what for some, has become familiar non-fiction territory: that of food politics. In recent years a raft of films looking at organic growing,…
A loud revolution – Friday Film Pick: Casseroles – Montréal, 24 Mai 2012
This week’s FFP is a lovely short film showing what has become the nightly ritual of taking to balconies and the streets of Montreal to bang on pots and pans,…
Aggressive misinformation from millionaires – Koch brothers-funded institute takes down offensive billboards
The Heartland Institute, that whacky rightwing think tank in the US that has corporations abandoning it faster than you can say Titanic, has added another bonehead move to its long…
Indian state attacks artists – Poets & performers jailed, driven underground
Last week the award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist Anand Patwardhan, along with Ratna Pathak Shah, Sudhakar Suradkar and Prakash Reddy launched a defence fund for Kabir Kala Manch, a cultural…
Watching them watching us – Monday Music Pick: Our Protection by LAL
The deeply political, community-committed, and talented LAL from Toronto, sing about surveillance with images from the Toronto G20 manifestations from two summers ago. LAL was formed in 1998 and is…
More houses, less prisons – A review of the compelling documentary Herman’s House
It’s hard to make a house without materials, and even harder if you are in solitary confinement in a US prison and have been there for forty years. What is…
A doc that makes you want to occupy – We Are Wisconsin at Hot Docs 2012
Yesterday we caught three political docs at Hot Docs, and before I race off to The Law In These Parts, here is the first of many more micro-reviews. We Are…
Hot Docs 2012 Midpoint Roundup – A guide to the political stuff at Toronto’s fest
Today is day five of Hot Docs 2012 and unlike last year, a lethal combination of meetings, movies and meanderings have kept me from a daily tally here at Art…
Just do it (direct action)! – Activist documentary made free for May Day
From our activist and filmmaker friends in the UK: Constellation and Occupy.com present A FREE 24-hour ONLINE SCREENING of Just Do It – a tale of modern-day outlaws, in celebration…