A problem arises early on in Sex After Kids because of its instant quality of shooting. Digital may be the future but cinematographers often speak about how they have to use filters to dim down the quality of the shots otherwise they look too colourful, too crude, almost cartooni... Read More »
Empire of Dirt tackles issues that haunt many First Nations communities across Canada. A few issues that are taken head-on: substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and broken homes. You can find these issues in any region and culture but these issues are not uncommon on “the rez.” The f... Read More »
Antisocial is a well-made little thriller that keeps its thriller tone throughout the entirety of the film until abandoning it for a more stock horror ending. The story is simple: five college students gather at a house for a New Year’s Eve party. Three of the five are constantl... Read More »
Award winning director Gail Harvey is a photographer and filmmaker. Her latest film, Looking Is The Original Sin is the story of a young daughter’s journey to understand her photographer mother’s life. It’s an intriguing tale, most of all, because it’s an almost invisible topic i... Read More »
Greatness can be a gift as well as a curse. To be truly great, one must invest oneself fully in their work, must give up a large part of their soul for what they do. Selfishness is a negative trait, but in many ways it is an inherent aspect of greatness. The annals of cinema are ... Read More »
Television is overrun with so-called reality shows. Finding an interesting quirk in a person, or an industry, or a subculture and then documenting and producing a story built around that quirk is what it’s all about. It’s an easy way for the media to produce content, and to be fa... Read More »
The year is 1986. 15-year-old Lisa has been doomed to repeat the same day of her life as long as she can remember. Every day she eats the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She washes the same laundry and tells her mother she doesn’t know where the missing clothes went. Every nig... Read More »
John Kastner is an award winning Canadian documentarian and if you haven’t seen any of his films, this is a call saying that you should. After acting at a very young age, Kastner took on directing documentaries and went on to win four Emmys, and five Emmy nominations for his film... Read More »
There’s a certain stigma attached to Canadian films. Despite being home to such brilliant filmmakers as David Cronenberg, Norman Jewison, James Cameron, and Ivan and Jason Reitman, our film industry is still looked on as being an amateur operation. The general impression remains ... Read More »
One of the most difficult, and potentially exciting, things about directing a documentary about events as they unfold is the unpredictability. Making a movie about events that have already occurred allows the filmmaker to develop themes and to editorialize through focus in the wa... Read More »
You’ve probably played the game before. If you could pick any time or place to visit, where would you go first? For me, the answer has been static for as long as I can remember: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, when the area was a cultural and political center spawning not just fo... Read More »
It’s funny how filmmakers return time and time and time again to the found footage format, no matter the critical revulsion that greets it. It’s that lingering promise of reality; despite how popular the device has become—particularly in the horror genre—its potential to present ... Read More »
