Of ubiquity and chicken skin

Atom Egoyan, not known for non-fiction filmmaking, had a high profile doc at Hot Docs this year. Here is the blurb on it:

"Things in this city are never what they seem," says Atom Egoyan of Beirut. He's traveled to Lebanon with his wife, the actress Arsinée Khanjian, and their son, Arshile. It has been 28 years since Khanjian has been here, where she lived as a child. Egoyan has purchased a new Mini DV camera for their family vacation, and he's "still trying to work things out." The result is a playful, provocative film hinging on Egoyan's "peculiar alchemy" with Khanjian, but with curious diversions into religion, history, politics and the nature of documentary itself. Peppered with tender family observations and self-deprecating humour, somewhere along the way a modest journal effortlessly morphs into an engaging travelogue and astute personal essay. In particular, Egoyan's interrogation of the ubiquity of captured images, and their availability for mediation and construction, firmly places Citadel within the director's impressive body of work.

Do we really need to see his Vacation video? This review is typical of a film that has no redeeming qualities and thus substance must be added to the selling of said shit.

So I'm here at Hotdocs in Toronto and what a ride this is. This is probably the only film fest I've attended where I haven't seen a film; I'm restricting myself to the trade forum this time around. It's all about selling, selling, selling. We sat through 30 Documentary pitches and had several meetings in hopes of flogging our Superdogs Doc. There are hundreds of commisioning editors from all over the world here and it's all a little overwhelming. Pitching the show has been hard for me because I'm not naturally extroverated. I need time to warm up and this world is still very foreign to me. David is a vetran of this world so he's helping me out quite a bit.

My three favourite pitches were Basement tapes, Scott Walker: 30 Century Man and Up the Yangtze. Basement Tapes is a film about these ever popular mash-ups ala Dangermouse and it'as basically an ode to open-source culture. The Scott Walker film is basically self explanitory. I met the director Stephen and he's a great guy. Up the Yangtze is about the flooding of a valley to provide power for many needy Chinese. It takes place on cruise ship and one of the villages that is going to be flooded. The characters are great and it's a huge historical event, so yes, I will see it when it comes out. During a pitch for a film about Jazz pianist Bill Evans a European broadcaster said: This music of Bill Evans gives me Chicken Skin. Shit, I thought that was priceless. The cross-cultural differences are running rampant here all week but that just topped it off.

I've been able to meet three of my heros of Candaian Documetary - Peter Lynch (Project Grizzly), Peter Wintonick (Manufacturing Consent, Cinema Verite: Defining the moment) and Allen Zwig (Vinyl, I Curmudgeon). I had a long talk with Peter Lynch and we have a lot in common. I will email him and hopefully we will form some sort of correspondence.

Toronto itself is a large, sprawling piece o' crap. There are all these piles of trash on the streets and assorted junk lying all over the place. It's very different than the experience that we are accustomed to in Vancouver. This is the first time I've been here in over 20 years and I think it's better than most people say. I don't hate Toronto I just hate the idea of it.

On my last night we went to a party hosted by one of David's friends. It was held a really cool loft in an older part of Toronto. Everyone was friendly there and having been a part of this world for nine months now I'm starting to feel comfortable around these filmmakers. Velcro Ripper (Scared Sacred) was there and I just thought he was going to be the biggest freak/prick ever to commit his ideas to film. He was actually approachable and pretty normal. We talked about problems with broadcasters and budget concerns; just standard stuff all filmmakers bitch about. I probably won't see his film cause it's not really my taste but good to know the "it boy of the moment" isn't what you'd think he'd be.

In the end there was a lot of positive response for our film and I look forward to taking it into production. The Dog movie marches on.