May 1, 2013

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • This year’s DOXA Festival (doxafestival.ca), our version of Hot Docs, bristles with ideas and provocations over its 10 days in May. If the five films I’ve seen are representative of the whole program, expect some intelligent and well-crafted documentaries coming your way, along with lively Q&As and...

Apr 1, 2013

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • Rob Stewart is the underwater filmmaker who, with Sharkwater, showed everyone it’s safe to go back in the water; what’s more, he opened our eyes to the barbaric practice of shark-finning. The film’s impact came from gorgeous, up-close footage of different species of sharks combined with hard-hitting sequences...

Mar 1, 2013

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • “When you retire, you become a bit of a leftist,” says one of the interviewees in Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers, a statement that helps explain why six retired heads of Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service) agreed to share candid insights into their shadowy and frequently lethal profession. While I’ve...

Feb 1, 2013

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • When the hog-tied, naked bodies of three eight-year-old boy scouts were discovered at the bottom of a ditch in 1993 it didn’t take long for local authorities in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, to find their men. Three working class teenage boys – one whose diary revealed a lurid interest in Satanism –...

Jan 1, 2013

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • Recently, I’ve been filming University of Victoria climate scientist Dr. Andrew Weaver, who is campaigning as the BC Green Party candidate for the Oak Bay Gordon Head riding in Victoria in the May provincial elections. As I research the project, I’ve been looking back at how climate change has been covered on-screen...

Dec 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • There’s a point early on in off-beat romcom Silver Linings Playbook where the protagonist, Pat, who has been feverishly reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms through the night, picks up the book in a fit of rage and hurls it straight through the top floor window of his parents’ house. It lands with a slap...

Nov 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • There’s a school of thought that says authors should never be allowed to adapt their own books for the big screen. They are just too close to the source material to make the necessary cuts and re-mixing to make a book come alive on the big screen. In Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children (opening November 2), Salman...

Oct 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • New York is not a place that springs to mind when you think about bird watching. All that concrete and human bustle. But smack in the middle of Manhattan you’ll find one of the most famous urban parks in the world and as Birders: the Central Park Effectreveals, it’s a magnet for hundreds of different species of...

Sep 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead In Bitter Seeds, Micha X. Peled reveals an appalling statistic: a farmer in India commits suicide every half-hour. The documentary, showing at the Vancouver International Film Festival (September 27-October 12), puts a human face on this ongoing tragedy with its intimate portrait of a poor farming community in India’s...

Aug 1, 2012

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • It’s easy to forget that many Chinese teenagers know nothing about the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989; just ask any young Chinese immigrant to Vancouver. Given China’s huge and fast-growing economic and military power, there’s ongoing pressure for it to open up, but as documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry...