Obomsawin: Trick or Treaty? DOC-MAKING IN 360 DEGREES Art of the Real in NYC THE WANTED 18 Let It Rain Sturla Gunnarsson’s Monsoon captures the power of nature FALL 2014 | CANADA $8.95 | POVMAGAZINE.COMFALL 2014 | ISSUEPOV 95 195 NO. 95 FALL 2014 FESTIVAL DOCS 36 DEPARTMENTS 8 I’ll Take the Rain: Sturla Gunnarsson’s 2 Editorial BY MARC GLASSMAN Monsoon BY ADAM NAYMAN 5 Policy Matters BY BARRI COHEN A look into Gunnarsson’s poetic essay on Disrupt or Be Disrupted India’s climatic game-changer 46 Pointed View BY ROB KING 12 Trick or Treaty? BY KIVA REARDON Regulate Netflix Examining First Nations icon Alanis Obomsawin and her tough new film 48 Freeze Frame BY THOMAS WALLNER Documenting a scene in 360 degrees 16 Where’s the Beef? BY MATTHEW HAYS The Wanted 18? Cows? Hays explores a unique documentary-animation mashup CARLY CLARKE CARLY PERSONAL ACCOUNTS 20 Documentaries in VR BY THOMAS WALLNER Look out: 360-degree cinema is about to surround us 28 Twisted Roots BY STEPHANIE BOYD 8 Twenty years of doc-making in Peru 33 Lost Atlantis BY MOZE MOSSANEN Remembering the golden age of art films in Canada DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY INTUITIVE PICTURES INC. COURTESY 36 Remember Me BY CARLY CLARKE A personal view of the denizens of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside OPINIONS 40 The Art of the Real BY CHRISTINA CLARKE Reviewing the Lincoln Center’s new hybrid-doc festival From top: Roberto (photo by Carly 44 An Interview with Thom Andersen 40 Clarke); Monsoon BY CHRISTINA CLARKE (dir. Sturla Clarke discusses hybrid cinema with auteur Gunnarsson, 2014); and scholar Andersen during Art of the Real Eadweard Muybridge, COURTESY FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER OF LINCOLN FILM SOCIETY COURTESY Zoopraxographer (dir. Thom Andersen, 1975) On the cover: Monsoon (dir. Sturla Gunnarsson, 2014), courtesy Intuitive Pictures Inc. FALL 2014 POV 95 1 POINT OF VIEW MAGAZINE EDITORIAL BY MARC GLASSMAN Publisher Judy Wolfe Editor Marc Glassman Art Director Dave Donald Production & Marketing Manager Brian St. Denis Copy Editor Deanna Wong Sales Director Marsha Cummings Photo Researcher Nicholas Gergesha Communications Assistant Zoë Robertson Intern Sonya Suraci Contributing Editors James Buffin, Daniel Cockburn, Janis Cole, Blake Fitzpatrick, Matthew Hays, Tom McSorley, Adam Nayman, Ezra Winton, Jessica Duffin Wolfe Editors Emeritus Manfred Becker, Geoff Bowie, Katherine Dodds, Noelle Elia, Laurence Green, Barbara Mainguy THE FALL IS THE SEASON of city festivals in Canada. From Halifax to Montreal Guiding Light Peter Wintonick to Toronto to Calgary to Vancouver, celebrations of documentaries, new narrative Board of Directors Melissa Shin (chair), films and animation take place to rapturous crowds, who rarely seem to show up Nadine Sharon Anglin, David Craig (treasurer), in exceptional numbers the rest of the year. Premieres always incite audiences to Sean Farnel, Barry Greenwald, Perry King, Michaelin McDermott (vice-chair), Michael McNamara rapt attention and there seems to be something delightfully piquant about expe- riencing something eagerly anticipated for the first time. Subscriptions rates within Canada, $20/yr ($50 institutions; $15 students); to US, $30 CDN ($65 This fall, Canadian audiences will get a chance to view, appreciate and debate institutions); and overseas, $35 CDN ($80 institutions). three new feature documentaries: The Wanted 18, Trick or Treaty? and Monsoon. All taxes and delivery included. Single issues within They’re by veteran Canadian directors Paul Cowan (with an assist by the talented Canada, $8.95 Amer Shomali), Alanis Obomsawin and Sturla Gunnarsson, all of whom were ini- Point of View acknowledges the support of the tially trained by the NFB. Each film has strong visual and narrative appeal and is set Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1-million in writing and publishing throughout in a fascinating (and contentious) area of the world: Palestine (in The Wanted 18), Canada. Canada’s First Nation reserves and environs (Trick or Treaty?) and India (Monsoon). It’s a pleasure to lead off this issue with articles on all three films and filmmakers. We at POV pride ourselves on getting filmmakers involved in writing pieces for Point of View acknowledges the financial support of the magazine. It’s important to have their voices heard in the only documentary the Ontario Arts Council. magazine in this country dedicated to them and their issues. In a section entitled Point of View is available at major bookstores and Personal Accounts, we invite readers to experience the diverse perspectives newsstands across Canada. Point of View is indexed in of Moze Mossanen, Stephanie Boyd and Thomas Wallner. In “Lost Atlantis,” the Canadian Periodicals Index. Send articles, letters Mossanen, who first came to prominence as a documentary filmmaker dedicated and notices to: to dance, writes about a time in Canada’s recent past when arts broadcasters were Point of View Magazine far more responsive to performance-art docs than they are today. Stephanie Boyd, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 392 Toronto ON M5V 3A8 a courageous Oshawa-raised doc-maker who makes her home in Peru, evokes the Telephone: 647-639-0653 romantic, difficult life of radical filmmakers in her adopted land in “Twisted Roots.” E-mail: [email protected] In a more forward trajectory Wallner describes working with (and experiencing povmagazine.com the effects of ) 360-degree equipment, which may utterly transform the way we twitter.com/POVmagazine experience cinema in the future. facebook.com/POVmag youtube.com/PointOfViewMagazine POV’s expanded mandate is to explore documentary culture in all of its forms. Wallner’s expanded cinema, Cowan & Shomali’s The Wanted 18, with its mixture Please contact Marsha Cummings at 416-556-5302 or e-mail [email protected] of animation and documentary, and Carly Clarke’s “Remember Me” push our for all inquiries related to advertising in boundaries beyond “simply” docs. “Remember Me” is classic street photography, Point of View. with its radical, humanist agenda. It’s a pleasure to welcome Clarke to POV with If you are interested in either working for Point of View her remarkable shots of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and its dwellers. or contributing to the next issue, please contact us at Also looking at expanded definitions of documentary are the programmers of [email protected]. Art of the Real, a new festival dedicated to hybrid cinema in Manhattan. Christina Clarke reviews the first edition for POV. We hope you enjoy this issue of POV, the new season of festival docs—and life in autumnal Canada. Point of View was founded by the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, now the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) Printed in Canada. ISSUE 95 Fall 2014 Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40012284 ISSN 1198-5666 2 POV 95 FALL 2014 FALL 2014 POV 95 3 4 POV 95 FALL 2014 POLICY MATTERS BY BARRI COHEN Disrupt or Be Disrupted Can the CBC “disrupt” its abysmal decline into irrelevance? IN ALL THE YEARS of doing this policy column, I’ve written so many pieces on the CBC that I’ve lost count and vowed I wouldn’t venture down that tedious path again. In part, that’s because there’s a sense that nothing ever fundamentally changes with the “Corp(se)” except more loss: of vision, shelf space for documentary and edgy scripted programs, staff and money. Even common good manners seems to have gone if you’re a producer—they’re appalling at getting back to people in a timely way, which leads one to the distinct and unpleasant conclusion that they just don’t give a damn. But since my last column in the spring, the CBC has rolled out a succession of new shocks and with each one, the parade of usual suspects has valiantly shambled forth to opine on “whither the CBC” one more bloody time. So what the heck? It’s a national pastime and I might as well shinny down the rink. As for the CBC shocks, we all grimly know them: more layoffs both immediate and planned (possibly 1,500 by 2020); less space and money for programming owing to $130 million in cuts; and a spin document issued to cauterize it all. Called “A Space for Us All,” it was issued in played in all of this—to wit, policy folks are now using Netflix as a verb: June by the Harperite president, Hubert Lacroix. If you missed it over to get Netflixedis to be truly disrupted, i.e., to see your traditional TV the rousing din of CBC staffers braying for Lacroix’s resignation, you business and advertising model go irretrievably south. are well forgiven. (He refused to go, of course.) Amongst Lacroix’s other “disruptive” ideas are finally some that So what is this “space” and who are the “us” implied here? In a word, policy wonks and critics have wanted for a very long time: selling it’s the Internet, and the “us” are the few staffers left and the millions hardware and real estate assets and outmoded technologies, and of Canadians who, um, use the Internet. In other words, they want outsourcing more content to independent producers, save for news, to “disrupt” (Lacroix’s words) what a public broadcaster traditionally current affairs and the jewel in its crown, radio. does—make content for radio and TV—in favour of making content Yet, the problem, as Simon Houpt noted in The Globe & Mail on for mobile and digital platforms. By riffing (badly) on the au courant June 28, 2014, is that it’s been a long time since English-language business start-up language of “disruption,” Lacroix et al. are just trying TV, at least, has played a significant role in our culture.