This festival, organized by the Naional Film Board (NFB) and a dozen other media and government organizations, launched its seventh annual documentary film gathering on Nov. 11. It will be showcasing docs from Quebec, Canada and around the world for the next week, up to Nov. 21st.
The festival is aptly named the “Rencontre” because it is not only a place where filmmakers and film buffs converge to watch films, but they can exchange ideas in forums that address particular ideas, issues and concerns.
Among these forums are the “Master Class” series where filmmakers discuss the art and techniques of their trade. A particularly promising event is the debate at Concordia’s own Hall building after a screening of “Howard Zinn: you can’t be neutral on a moving train” by American filmmaker Ellis Mueller. The debate will focus on the crux of the film, the American balance of political power between left and right. This event begins with the film at 7pm on Friday Nov. 19, followed by the debate. This hotly debated issue promises to attract many outspoken Concordia students.
An issue that received less media attention than U.S. politics, but is closer to home, was addressed by “Inuuvunga: I am Inuk, I am Alive”. This documentary, screened on the first night of the festival to a quiet yet interested crowd, is an interesting project that combined teaching and filmmaking. The fact that anyone coming from this remote northern village could boast of merely being alive is touching in two senses: their ability to survive the climate alone is cause for celebration, and the systemic problem of suicide is another. The film, produced by Eyesteelfilms and the NFB, and directed by Daniel Cross (director of the popular film “S.P.I.T.: Squeegee Punks In Traffic”) is a combination travelogue and video diary of several Inuk teenagers in their last year of high school (grade 11) while they learn the art of filmmaking from Cross and his team. Each student was given the opportunity to produce his or her own vignette for the film. Each vignette has its own individual stamp, as some soundtracks remind us. Blending sounds of rap and Inuk singing was probably one of several challenges that the editors faced when trying to fashion a cohesive whole from these mini-films.
What results is a funny, highly informative, yet un-intrusive look at the Inuk teens’ choices. As Dan Cross explains in the film’s introduction, these kids come from an intimately connected collective. He said he realized his job as a teacher was not only to teach the art of filmmaking, but also to morally guide them, monitoring his own choices.
There were certain topics not fully addressed, he explained, because as an outsider to this community he was not willing to go in, stir up emotions, and create controversy for his own gain. His role in this joint project was to help these students learn the tools to tell their own stories. If anybody was going to revisit their stories, issues, and concerns in a more intimate fashion, it was going to be one of the students, he exclaimed.
Eyesteelfilms started a scholarship fund for Inuuvunga students wishing to go to C
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