May 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • The annual documentary festival DOXA is on this month. The Vancouver fest is hosting 72 screenings across five different venues from May 4 to 13. DOXA opens with the NFB Digital Studio’s interactive documentary Bear 71, which makes extensive use of surveillance footage of an electronically tagged grizzly in...

Apr 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • Given that recent polls suggest that around 40 percent of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form 10,000 years ago, some people might consider Journey of the Universe quite a radical documentary. This story of the universe, which has screened on PBS, starts around 14 billion years ago...

Mar 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead   • On March 17, it will be six months since the beginning of Occupy Wall Street and the subsequent cascade of grassroots occupations that followed across the Western world. Two local filmmakers who have been documenting the Occupy movement – from the Arab Spring, through Zuccotti Park to the Vancouver Art...

Feb 8, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • There have been many movies about the Holocaust. So much so there is a fear that filmmakers’ constant re-framing and re-imagining of it undermines and clouds the awful history they seek to convey. However, for Polish director Agnieszka Holland, there is still a sense the “main mystery” surrounding...

Jan 4, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead   Two films due to open this month bring the wizardry of digital cinema to the arthouse with stunning results. Firstly, there’s Wim Wenders’ Pina 3D, a portrait of the work of the celebrated German choreographer Pina Bausch (due out January 27). Pina was a film that almost didn’t get made. On June 30,...

Dec 2, 2011

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead One of the main criticisms levelled at the Occupy movement has been that it is unclear what it is about. Critics have pointed to a plethora of issues – corporate greed, government debt, indigenous rights, unemployment, homelessness, ecological destruction, GMOs, climate change, and more – that seemed to be...