Hot Docs 2023 Film Review - July Talk: Love Lives Here

Toronto Indie band July Talk want their band, fans, audiences, and ultimately their band to be inclusive, a safe space where everyone has a voice and can be heard. Their reputation was built though touring starting with the smallest and growing steadily upward mainly by word of mouth, some airplay but mainly by audiences seeing the band in person. The Pandemic took away the live show so for their only show of 2020 they decided to try something different. Play a Central Ontario Drive in Two raised large screens  a good distance from the stage, multi-cameras broadcast out to their fans and everyone on site theoretically in their cars facing the stage. The events leading up to the live show are the foundation of the documentary. 

One of the two poignant moments that crystalize what the band is about occured at a show in Buffalo at the Towne Ballroom in December of 2016. A lout in the crowd hurled a sexist derogatory remark at co-front person Leah Fay Goldstein. She pounced, The band and audience backed her up. The culprit was quickly identified and turfed. The other James Bailey recruited by Leah from a spiritual service who brought along Kyla Charter to back up and sort though the harmonies.  The result of the collaboration produced the song Champagne digging into how privilege works from two very different perspectives. When the song is played; James and Kyla take centre stage as true collaborators. The visuals as the back story is told in a live frenetic concert sequence causing chills. There are many such instances throughout the piece. Especially with the lens falls on Leah. The monochrome tone invokes an Andy Warhol performance art feels. 

A major theme during the lead-up to the concert is co-front person Peter Dreimanis' health. He was inexplicably losing weight. down about 30 pounds. His bones were clearly visible. The weight loss was not covid related making the other band members worried. On top of the health concerns, Peter was pushing hard to make the drive-in show a reality along with fourteen hours a day of  post-production work on the newly completed album. Four days before the August 12, 2020 concert. Peter got confirmation of a type one diabetes diagnosis along with a plan of insulin therapy to treat it.  Accompanied with a warning of doing two shows full on back to back in four days could lead to low blood sugar, hypoglycemia shaking sweating and potentially passing out in the middle of nowhere at the Stardust Drive-in. Not to mention a covid scare with another of the band members. 

July Talk: Love Lives here tracks the rise of an indie rock band from their first EP sessions in 2012 after a prologue announcement of the Drive-In dates, time-lapse set build and last words before hitting the stage. Their process front and mission statement are always at the forefront. Covid-19 telltale signs are everywhere. Along with the true message, that the band needs this, their fans need this show and society in general by August 2020 needed reasons for people to get together to begin to share common experiences again. 

*** 1/2 Out of 4.

July Talk: Love Lives Here | Brittany Farhat | Canada| 2023| 83 Minutes.

Tags: Concert, Covid-19, Indie Rock, Touring, Studio Sessions, Type 1 Diabetes, Collaboration, Stardust Drive-In. 

Hot Docs 2023 Film Review - Iron Butterflies

Piecing together the sequence of events leading up to the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, then on to and the investigation afterward are the push and the pull of Roman Liubyi's documentary film Iron Butterflies. The director had a premonition that the making of this film would serve as a warning to head off a potential future war. In reality, the war in Liubyi's home country of Ukraine has been raging for more than a year as the film has hit the festival circuit.  Only his thought of a larger conflict has yet to take place. A Dutch court in November of 2022 found Russia responsible for the incident. The missile that struck flight MH17 was Russian made and the fateful strike was fired by a four person anti-aircraft team or Russian BUK missile-launcher made up of 3 Russians and one Ukrainian based in Eastern Ukraine. Western powers' reaction to this event plus the invasion of Crimea  was part of Vladimir Putin's calculus that he could march into Ukraine unopposed in February 2022. Expect to be in Kyiv in a few days, remove the sitting government, and put in a Russia-friendly one without any involvement except maybe empty rhetoric from the West. 

The information communications and media clips gathered, organized, and presented by Liubyi and his team is staggering. The audio intercepts alone show the joy of the ground from the initial thought that they had hit a military target, to justifications based on the plane being used to smuggle weapons to the truth that children and civilian bodies and luggage were all that were found at the scene then the panic and plan hatched to avoid and shift blame being forming in real-time. The Russian propaganda machine shifts into overdrive. Discrediting the scientific findings. Calling independant footage from multiple sources of Russian equipment movement as doctored. Even going as far as doing their own recreation to get to the expected favourable conclusion. 

Liubyi's film plays more like a defense attorney laying out exhibits to garner a conviction rather than a writer's storyline. The title comes from the shape of the shrapnel fragments embedded into the nose and front section of the Malaysian serving as fingerprints leading the investigators to Russian missile stock. Also included for reference are old 80's era instructional videos on the BUK and the roles of the four unit members. A narrative contradicted by the Russian in-house reconstruction. A first-person account from the debris field to the courthouse in The Hague by former Dutch soldier turned musician Robby Oehlers. He had a cousin who was with her boyfriend on the plane at the time of the attack. Oehler probes smartphones, takes video at the crash site and shows film of happier times with his relatives. He also poses important questions at the time that peaked at the start of the current war. If the courts found Russia responsible resulting in scores of Dutch causalities.  Why are the Netherlands and the rest of Europe still buying their oil filling their coffers?  A telling shot towards the end of the film shows flight paths across Europe. In most countries, you can see below a bee hive activity of planes above. Except for one noticeable spot above Russian and separatist-controlled Ukraine is a gaping hole. 

***1/2 Out of 4

Iron Butterflies | Roman Liubyi | Ukraine/Germany| 2023 | 84 Minutes.

Tags: Flight MH17, Eastern Ukraine, Malaysian Airlines, Russia,  BUK Missile Launcher, The Hague, War Crime, Video Footage, Intercepted Audio, Crime Scene, Butterfly shaped Shrapnel, Reconstruction,  Disinformation, 

Hot Docs 2023 Film Review - Smoke Sauna Sisterood

Nestled in an Estonian forest lies a wooden sauna beside a small lake.  A group of female regular inhabitants seeking refuge with the knowledge they can speak freely and openly on any topic that comes to mind. This tradition is elemental to the Estonian Voro community. Bodies of all shapes and sizes on display. This particular peer group is into or approaching  middle age still scared by stinging comments about their looks hurled at them by their mothers decades ago. The story starts in the wintertime as the women go from their discussion inside the smoke sauna trekking through the snow and into a  swimming hole cut in the nearby freezing lake for a different physical experience. They chant,lay on the wooden sauna benches, and out in the snow. Pour buckets of water on themselves and each other and use birch whisk bundles to massage each other to clean the skin and improve  blood flow and circulation.  

Water and steam are the lifeblood of the experience. droplets fall everywhere. Beads form on all sections of the sauna and dot every body part. Director Anna Hints' lens is closely trained on each moment of activity as it unfolds. Men and the patriarchy are as expected major topics. Struggles to survive in a male-dominated society. Even a survey on who has received dick pics.The conversation probes today's issues and tales are told dating back to the women's grandmother's time. Including the reality of no clear path to escape a loveless or evan an abusive marriage two generations back.   

Ants Tammik's cinematography is particularly stunning. The small windows to the outside world are bathed in light. A stark contrast to the dark shadowy interior of the sauna full of bodies and steam clouds rising. Sound also plays a vital role. Whether it's the rhythmic chanting. Smacking of birch whisks on skin. Water and wooden buckets being filled overflowed and spilled. Or the rising and falling of voices as stories are told.  Director Hints takes her time with her vulnerable subjects. Each is allowed to put as much of themselves on film in line with their individual comfort level. 

Two stories stand out amongst the tales told in the film. The first, a bather tells the details of coming out to her parents. The viewer can hear the anxiety and trepidation in her voice as she vividly remembers the event. The cumulation of which was her father's reaction which she feared the most but amounted  no big deal at all. The other was a recount of a teenage rape followed by a second sexual assault that same evening. The bather lying on her back with the crook of her arm across her eyes gives a specific chronological account of those terrifying events with the others in the communal group fixated on every word. She is surrounded by encouraging support then the bathers exit out into the lush green grass of the forest and into a much warmer summertime lake. The smoke saunas of Southern Estonia  are UNESCO listed Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity Structures as noted in the closing titles.  They are a place of healing of the physical and the spiritual in unison.

***1/2  Out of Four.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood | Italy/Norway | 2023 | 89 Minutes.

Estonia, Smoke Sauna, Pregnancy, Forest, Lake, Steam, Birch Whisks, Motherhood, Nudity.