Good DOXA selection

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

The 2009 DOXA Documentary Film Festival is bookended by Jewish-related films. It opens with Inside Hana's Suitcase, based on the award-winning book by Karen Levine, and finishes with Act of God, which features award-winning author Paul Auster. In between, there are several more movies, including many of particular interest to the Jewish community. Some of them are reviewed below.

Not just any suitcase

The book Hana's Suitcase spans almost 70 years and several countries. Fumiko Ishioka, director of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Centre, receives a battered suitcase with the name Hana Brady, a date of birth and the word waisenkind (orphan) painted on the front. She and her students are determined to find out more about Hana and their efforts are fascinating and heart-warming.

Eventually, Ishioka tracks down Hana's brother, George Brady, who survived the war. Living in Toronto, he has had a successful life by almost any measure, but is still tortured by the thought that he should have been able to protect his younger sister. The fact that Ishioka has researched Hana's life and is teaching future generations about tolerance and the need to fight prejudice offers Brady some comfort.

Director Larry Weinstein's documentary accomplishes things that a book can't do: viewers can hear about Hana and George Brady's remarkable experiences from George and people who knew Hana. They get to listen to Hana's favorite song, the centipede song: the centipede's feet are hurting, "Consider walking in her shoes / And then my life seems sweet indeed." The narration by children in Japan and Toronto, who have been moved by Hana and George's experiences, add to the story's impact.

Inside Hana's Suitcase opens the festival May 22, 7:30 p.m., at Granville 7 Theatre. It plays again May 25, 1 p.m., at Pacific Cinémathèque. The filmmaker will be in attendance at both screenings.

America's upper crust

In The One Percent, director and narrator Jamie Johnson, of the family who began the Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical company, uses his family's name and connections to explore the wealthy's view of capitalism and how they feel about the fact that they are part of the one per cent of the population that controls 40 per cent of the country's wealth.

As with most documentarians who begin with a conclusion, the 27-year-old Johnson finds many crazy rich people who feel entitled to their fortunes or are indifferent to the struggles of the other 99 per cent. He offers Nobel laureate Milton Freedman a couple of sound bites, but Johnson never really attempts to understand or offer solutions to the problem he perceives. It is fun to feel superior to rich people though, even if only for an hour.

The One Percent is at Vancity Theatre May 27, 9 p.m.

Promiscuous 1970s

American Swing is a raunchy, R-rated look at Plato's Retreat, a heterosexual swingers club that opened its doors in 1977 and enjoyed many years of immense popularity. Directors Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart combine interviews with the some of the club's more famous patrons, sexually explicit footage of the club in its hey days and clips of Plato's founder, Larry Levenson, on such programs as The Phil Donahue Show.

The club ran into trouble after a few years, when Levenson and a few others were sent to jail for tax evasion, but its death knell was AIDS and the justifiable fear it brought. Plato's closed for good on New Year's Eve, 1985, and Levenson's life went downhill from there.

While the story of the club is compelling, it would have been more interesting if Kaufman and Hart had replaced some of the club scenes with more about Levenson, his childhood, his motivations, etc.

American Swing plays at Vancity Theatre on May 28, at 9 p.m.

Villagers ridiculed

Carmen Meets Borat is a bit of a misnomer, since Carmen's first name is actually Ionela and she never really does meet Borat, or Sacha Baron Cohen, in the documentary. But, the 17-year-old, who dreams of leaving her small, impoverished village in Romania to live in Spain, did have the unfortunate opportunity of meeting Baron Cohen when he and his film crew came to her village to film Borat.

The villagers co-operated on what they thought was a real documentary, which, of course, it was not. In Borat, they are portrayed as imbeciles from Khazikstan. Carmen's grandfather, for example, was cast as a backstreet abortionist.

When they find out how they were ridiculed, they are outraged and, when an American lawyer fails to win a $30 million suit against Baron Cohen, the villagers become even angrier. Carmen's family – believed to have been part of the scheme to make them look foolish – is more or less ostracized.

While a bit slow in pace, Carmen Meets Borat is an interesting mix of depressing and uplifting moments in the small village.

Carmen Meets Borat is at Vancity Theatre on May 29, at 9 p.m.

When death strikes

"There's something monumental about a lightning bolt coming from the sky, it doesn't feel like an ordinary death, it has something of the divine about it," says Auster in Act of God. His whole way of looking at the world changed when, at the age of 14, he witnessed a friend of his struck and killed by lightning.

Jennifer Baichwal's documentary explores the science of lightning and the experiences of people who have survived a bolt or witnessed a loved one being killed by one. It poses metaphysical questions with which we have all struggled at some point in our lives. It contains some brilliant photographs of lightning, as well as a creative soundtrack by musician Fred Frith, which, for the most part, is pleasant.

Act of God closes the festival on May 30, 7:30 p.m., at Granville 7 Theatre. Baichwal will be there.

Tickets for opening night are $15, or $35 for the film and the after party. For the other screenings, single tickets are $10 (plus a one-time $2 membership) and a festival pass is $125. For more information, visit www.doxafestival.ca.

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