Toronto Star's Early Festival Round-Up

0 Comments POSTED: September 4, 2006 11:37 | By: Thom Powers

The Toronto Star's movie critics Peter Howell and Geoff Pevere, joined by Malene Arpe, Peter Goddard, Martin Knelman, John Terauds and Susan Walker, have previewed 80 of the entries at the Toronto International Film Festival here. Below are some of their doc entries....

[Left: from Allan King's new documentary EMPz 4 Life]

Deliver Us From Evil To the adoring and faithful members of his various California parishes, Roman Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady was simply "Father Ollie," a man they could count on. And so it went for some 30 years, until the public learned the hidden truth: O'Grady was a serial pedophile who had raped and molested dozens and possibly hundreds of children ? one as young as nine months. He was aided and abetted by a church hierarchy which swept the scandal under the rug. Writer-director Amy Berg's directing debut is a stunning indictment of institutional betrayal that plays like a Catholic Watergate, going to the top with evidence that shocks and sickens. (Sept. 7, 8 p.m., Varsity; Sept. 9, 2:45 p.m., Varsity.) PH

EMPz 4 Life The new doc from Canadian vérité pioneer and master practitioner Allan King is a frequently searing look at life among Toronto's disenfranchised black kids. Forgoing both liberal piety and dramatic sensationalism, King uses the heroic efforts of the ex-convict- turned-volunteer social worker Brian Henry to walk a razor's edge straight down the middle of his subject. (Sept. 9, 11:45 a.m., Varsity; Sept. 11, 5:45 p.m., Varsity.) GP

The Films of Peter Mettler In practicing a form of filmmaking that blends documentary with experimental concerns, the Toronto-based filmmaker Peter Mettler may rank as one of this country's most unabashedly Canadian artists. Which might also explain why he's not nearly well-enough known. This retrospective, which is being shown in conjunction with a gallery installation, a live music/film performance and the publication of a TIFF-commissioned book by University of Alberta professor Jerry White, may go some distance to rectifying that situation. Mettler is a beguiling and resolutely probing filmmaker, and his work ? ranging from 1980's Lancalot Freely and 1982's Scissere to the more recent Picture of Light and Gambling, Gods and LSD ? ranks as yet another argument for the terminally alien status of the unreconstructed artist-filmmaker in Canadian society. The Mettler retrospective runs throughout the festival. GP

Made in Jamaica "Guns shots stop heart beat / And shoots off brain cells," raps Bounty Killer, Jamaican reggae star. He sings of the harsh reality of Jamaica's hard dancehall music ? too often, the violent macho posturing and gun worship of the lyrics become tragic reality. Jérôme Laperrousaz seeks answers, building his inquiry around the aftermath of the murder of dancehall pioneer known as simply Bogle. Music-rich documentary features spellbinding performances by such stalwarts as Bunny Wailer, Toots and Third World. (Sept. 13, 2 p.m., ROM; Sept. 15, 9 p.m., ROM.) PH

Manufactured Landscapes Jennifer Baichwal's superb documentary about the brilliant Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is certain to rank as one of the high points of this year's festival. Cinematographer Peter Mettler follows Burtynsky around China shooting the most massive industrial revolution in history. The audience gets a chance to step back and see how Burtynsky captures stunning images of endless factory floors, Shanghai's urban renewal project and the massive Three Gorges Dam. Burtynsky explains the epiphanies he has experienced, muses about the envrionment and the way we live, and explains why he decided not to take a didactic approach to his subject. (Sept. 9, 3 p.m., Bader; Sept. 15, 8 p.m., Varsity: two screens.) MK

My Life as a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein In the 1970s, Hans-Joachim Klein was one of the world's most feared and wanted men, an associate of Carlos the Jackal and a participant in the 1975 terror attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna that left three people dead. Today, freed from jail, he's a quiet gardener living in the country and reflecting on his angry past. His cautiously told story provides insights into the terrorist brain. (Sept. 13, 5:15 p.m., ROM; Sept. 15, 1:45 p.m., ROM.) PH

Primo Levi's Journey This is a film that finds common ground in the travails of one man freed from Auschwitz in February 1945. Holocaust survivor Primo Levi took nearly eight months to make it home to Turin, on a long and winding road through Eastern Europe and Russia. Filmmaker Davide Ferrario retraces Levi's steps, but he's interested in how the war affected not just one man ? who later became a best-selling memoirist ? but rather the many people he met on his homeward path. (Sept. 12, 9 p.m., Paramount; Sept. 14, 10 a.m., Paramount.) PH

The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair Mild-mannered Iraqi print and TV reporter Yunis Khatayer Abbas is tortured during his months-long detention by Uday Hussein's henchmen in the 1990s. Then, in 2003, filmmaker Michael Tucker follows an American army raid in Baghdad that sees Yunis and his three brothers arrested and detained in prisons, including Abu Ghraib. Tucker and his wife Petra Epperlein direct a brilliant first-person account of an innocent man accused of plotting to kill the British prime minister. (Sept. 8, 3 p.m., Paramount 3; Sept. 10, 5:30 p.m., ROM; Sept. 15, 9:15 p.m., Varsity.) SW

Radiant City With Radiant City, Gary Burns (co-directing with broadcaster Jim Brown, and working once again with The Suburbanators' cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin) both probes beneath the suburbs' surfaces and glides mysteriously across their impermeable surfaces. At once a documentary on the meaning and impact of suburban life, a portrait of a newly suburbanized family, and a kind of visual space probe of another planet, Radiant City is also funny in a shuddery kind of way. (Sept. 10, 2:15 p.m., Bader; Sept. 12, 8:45 p.m., Cumberland.) GP

Remembering Arthur At least two generations of Canadian students can recall watching Arthur Lipsett's surrealistic 1961 short film collage, Very Nice, Very Nice. For a while Lipsett could do no wrong ? he enjoyed an Oscar nomination and kudos from Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas ? but he could never live up to the hype or rigours of his own brilliance and perfectionism. He committed suicide just before his 50th birthday in 1986. This long-overdue appreciation, featuring the thoughts of friends and family and lovingly rendered by Toronto's Martin Lavut, brings a forgotten Canadian star back. (Sept. 14, 8:45 p.m., ROM; Sept. 16, 12:15 p.m., ROM.) PH

The Sugar Curtain The story of great expectations and painful disenchantment, this affecting documentary is about those who grew up in the early days of Fidel Castro's Cuba, thinking they'd landed in paradise ? only to discover that the world was different, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Sept. 10, 12:30 p.m., JCC; Sept 12, 8:15 pm, ROM; Sept. 15, 7 p.m., Varsity). MK

Tales of the Rat Fink Hitherto unexplored links between hot rods, Rat Finks, T-shirts, monster movies, Bart Simpson and iMacs are in this amusing, informative biopic on Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, the car customizer and pop-cult savant whose grooviness influenced generations. Toronto's Ron Mann connects the dots on the life of the coolest of cats. John Goodman recalls the recently departed Roth, master of the "anti-Mickey Mouse" attitude. (Sept. 15, 6 p.m., Varsity; Sept. 16, 11 a.m., Paramount.) PH

The U.S. vs. John Lennon In recounting the chapter of Lennon's life when he was persona non grata to the Richard Nixon Administration, documentarians David Leaf and John Scheinfeld reveal him to be far more thoughtful and committed to his causes than previously thought. We see all the publicity stunts (bed-ins, War Is Over posters) but much more gratifying is the chance to actually see and hear Lennon pursue his dreams despite the risk to his popularity and U.S. residency. (Sept. 9, 3:30 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 11, 8 p.m., Varsity; Sept. 11, 8 p.m., Varsity.) PH

The White Planet In the (mostly) frozen Arctic, seasons pass, revealing life ranging from the mammoth to microscopic. Smashingly well shot ? including images of polar bear cubs nursing under the snow ? this is also layered with thick blankets of cheesy narration ("Beware, creatures of the deep ? the giant octopus is on the prowl!"). The White Planet is a TV nature doc on a blockbuster scale. Myself, I wanted to hibernate. (Sept. 9, 1:30 p.m., RTH; Sept. 11, 9 p.m., Cumberland.) GP