Winner of the Cinema Fan Award at the 2020 PIA Film Festival at the National Film Archive of Japan, Luginsky is an incredibly unique animated film replete with early and modern computer graphics, still photography and a collage of cut-outs, which are dizzyingly utilized to maximum effect to tell a story which seems as delirious as the protagonist. The main character of the film is named Deerman, whose head is a deer and who recently endured an accident resulting in chronic hallucinations. Deerman has recently lost his job, and in a series of events that led him to become reliant on alcohol, frequently is beaten up as a result of his drunken behaviours. His addiction takes an even worse turn when he stumbles upon a panther-barmanpriest who creates a forbidden cocktail for Deerman designed by an ex-boxer named Luginsky that alters his life even further with so-called reality and fantasy dancing in unprecedented ways. A most unique film of fantastical visions you won’t soon forget.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH DIRECTOR HAIENA
Please join film artist Haiena for a virtual Q&A to discuss his experience creating the unique
animated reality of Luginsky. The discussion will be moderated by animator animator Jeff Chiba
Stearns with Japanese to English interpretation, ASL interpretation and captioning.

Keywords: Addictions | Alcoholism | Animation | Class | Surrealism

After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor and trans embodiment. Lyrically assembled images, decades of home movies and ethereal narration form an idiosyncratic and poetic undertow that guide a viewer through lifetimes and relationships. Like the relentless Michigan seasons, the meaning of family shifts, as Madsen Minax, his sister and his parents strive tirelessly to accept each other. Poised to incite more internal searching than provide clear statements or easy answers, North By Current dives head-first into the challenges of creating identity, the agony of growing up and the ever-fickle nuances of family.

“For me, a personal, first-person approach to storytelling was the only way to make North By Current. My own voice is the only one I feel capable of representing. This merger of personal and political storytelling became an opportunity for my family members and myself to converse, collaborate, and create together — our own version of transformative justice.” — Angelo Madsen Minax

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH ANGELO MADSEN MINAX
Watch a pre-recorded Q&A with the filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax about his experience creating the deeply intimate personal documentary North By Current. The discussion is moderated by Mike Hoolboom, a filmmaker and writer who lives in Toronto and director of Rendezvous 2020 opening film Judy Versus Capitalism.

Keywords: Addictions | Family | Gender | Religion | Trauma

Every now and then, a film comes along that rips out your heart and shreds it to pieces. Director Jessica Nilsson’s staggering documentary The Testament of Oliver chronicles her friendship with Oliver Juvonen-Peel. Oliver has schizophrenia and struggles with alcohol use disorder. He drinks to cope with his psychiatric issues, but his dual diagnosis makes it challenging to find effective treatment. He reveals
to the camera that mental health facilities reject him due to his alcohol abuse, and he’s involuntarily discharged from outpatient clinics because he’s mentally ill.

The Testament of Oliver reveals what happens to the people who fall through the cracks of the healthcare system. Nilsson’s documentary offers a raw and hardhitting account of a man in dire need
of specialized treatment and support systems. Nilsson captures her dear friend’s struggles with an unflinching eye, sharing Oliver’s soaring highs and crushing lows on his arduous road to recovery.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH JESSICA NILSSIN & OLIVER JUVONEN-PEEL
Join us for a virtual conversation with the director and subject of the film The Testament Of Oliver. Discussion moderated by Victor Stiff member of the Toronto Film Critics Association and Rendezvous’ film programming committee.

Keywords: Addiction | Schizophrenia | Recovery

We are excited to co-present the program His Name is Ray with Hot Docs Ted Hot Rogers Cinema.

In his anticipated follow-up to Transformer, which took home the Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs 2018, acclaimed director Michael Del Monte gives a human face to our growing homelessness and opioid crises. Ray once had everything. A job that he loved with the Canadian Coast Guard. The husband to a wife. The father to a family. But his heroin addiction took it all away. Now, the former sailor lives on the streets of Toronto with an entire population that seems to have just fallen through the cracks. Who was he? How did he end up there? With a remarkably compassionate and intimate lens, Del Monte follows Ray on his precarious journey to get off the streets and back on the water, where — in the ultimate achievement of the oblivion he craves — he could just sail away from it all.

+ Screening also includes a special recorded epilogue featuring Ray and Q&A with Michael Del Monte (Director), Scott Montgomery (Writer/Producer) and Hanan Townshend (Composer), moderated by Hot Docs programmer, Aisha Jamal.

On Wednesday, May 26 at 7:30 PM (EST), we hosted a free live panel Homelessness in the Time of COVID in conjunction with the screening of His Name is Ray. The talk wae moderated by Dr. Naheed Dosani, a palliative care physician who cares for homeless and vulnerably housed individuals with dignity and compassion. The recording of the talk is not available for streaming. Click here for more info or to view the panel discussion.

Panelists

Dr. Naheed Dosani (Moderator) is a palliative care physician who cares for homeless and vulnerably housed individuals. He’s a Lecturer at the University of Toronto & lead physician of Palliative Education And Care for the Homeless (PEACH). During COVID19, he has served as Medical Director for the Region of Peel’s COVID19 Isolation/Housing Program.

Michael Del Monte (Panelist) is a documentary filmmaker and the Director of His Name Is Ray. His film Transformer won both the Audience Award and the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award at the 2018 Hot Docs Festival.

Akia Munga (they/them) (Panelist) is a harm reduction worker, activist and consultant.

Jesse Upton Crowe (they/them) (Panelist) is an affordable housing advocate, musician and hairstylist who works with the Encampment Support Network (ESN) in Toronto’s Parkdale.

Jennifer (she/her) (Panelist) is a 50-year-old disabled, queer woman & artist currently trying to survive the shelter system. Happiest when living amongst the bees & trees.

In the lead-up to the annual Bell Let’s Talk Day on January 28, we’re showcasing free docs-and-conversations about mental health and mental illness in partnership with Bell Let’s Talk and Hot Docs.

Films will be available to stream from January 4-28 and culminate in a live virtual panel discussion with special guests on January 28. Tickets for all films and the panel discussion are free, and can be booked through the Hot Docs Box Office.

In 1978, Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander conducted a radical psychological experiment involving rats and heroin that would revolutionize the way we understand addictions. Thirty years later, this timely and conversation-worthy VICE doc connects the long-forgotten “Rat Park” findings with three stories taking place 10,000 miles apart—revealing why addiction is not really about the drug themselves, it’s about the environments we live in.

Film is a storytelling format that can splice directly into a person’s awareness of something. Yet in hindsight, when has the medium showcased the sensitive and nuanced topics of mental health and/or addiction?

Hindsight is a short film retrospective that traverses the topic of mental health and addiction within the National Film Board’s extensive archive. This co-presented program looks back almost seventy years to dynamically highlight a spectrum of stories and filmmaking techniques. Films sampled from the archive include Breakdown (1951), a fictitious film about a seemingly well-adjusted young woman who’s schizophrenic episode has landed her in a modern mental hospital. The Agony of Jimmy Quinlan (1978), a portrait documentary depicting the life of Jimmy Quinlan, one of an estimated 5000men who struggled with addiction in the alleys of late 1970s Montreal. Street Kids (1985), a succession of montaged black and white photographs voiced over to reveal a glance into juvenile prostitution. Nowhere Land (2015), a documentary narrated by Inuit Bonnie Ammaaq and her family tells their faint memories of attempting to live while the government-manufactured community of Igloolik becomes an elegy for Indigenous displacement and mental health. XO RAD MAGIQUE (2019) is an animated video work both psychedelic and hypnotic in nature, that takes you on an abstract journey living with schizophrenia in daily life.

Accompanying this NFB retrospective is a pre-recorded video interview with local Toronto artists Katelyn Gallucci, Greg Mccarthy and Derek Coulombe. In conversation, the artists will discuss the activity of looking back. How do the films bring up feelings of hindsight? How do we navigate these feelings? Why do we as artists sample from archives? Why is it important to create discussions around archival material?

In preparation for visits from foreign dignitaries, the authorities in Tehran clear the streets of homeless people, sex workers and drug users. Those who get picked up are taken to special detention centers outside the city. Stripped of their rights, dignity and freedom, the authorities hold them there until the outside world’s eyes are directed elsewhere. Then the men are released to go back out onto the streets. But the women are not: instead, they become official state prisoners for life. First time feature film Director Behzad Nalbandi found ways around the official channels and gained access to one of the women’s prisons, where he used a sound recorder to document the harrowing stories of its inmates. Utilizing original stop-motion animation to illustrate the accounts of violence, humiliation, poverty and addiction, as well as the Director’s own impressions of the bleak detention center. Such inventive animation allows Nalbandi to offer these “invisible” women a platform without exposing their identity. What this powerful five-years-in-the-making documentary does reveal is the grim reality concerning the position of women in Iranian society—and these women in particular.

برای بازدید های مقامات عالی رتبه خارجی، مسئولان شهرداری تهران خیابان های شهر را از بی خانمان، کارگران جنسی و معتادان پاکسازی و بازداشت شدگان را به مکانی خارج از شهر انتقال می دهند. محروم از حقوق، عزت و آزادی خود مسئولین آنها را در این اماکن نگه می دارند تا زمانی که دنیای بیرون توجهش معطوف چیز دیگری شود. سپس، مردان آزاد می شوند اما زنان می مانند و تبدیل به زندانیان حکومت برای طول عمرشان می شوند. بهزاد نعلبندی با اولین فیلم بلند خود، به یکی از این زندان های زنان دسترسی پیدا کرده و با استفاده از دستگاه ضبط صدا داستان های دلخراش زندانیان را مستند کرده است. با به کارگیری خلاقانه از تکنیک استاپ موشن، این مستند–انیمیشن وضعیت خشونت، تحقیر، فقر و اعتیاد را در این اماکن به تصویر می کشد. فیلم‌ساز با انتخاب نوآورانه متریال و تکنیک متناسب با موضوع فیلم، فضایی را برای حضور این زنان “نامرئی“، بدون فاش شدن هویت شان فراهم می کند. این فیلم مستند تاثیر گذار که تولید آن ۵ سال طول کشیده است موقعیت ظالمانه و تلخ زنان را در جامعه ایران و بخصوص این زنان زندانی را نمایان می کند.

Following the screening of The Unseen, join us for a virtual panel with graphic artist and documentary filmmaker Behzad Nalbandi to discuss the addiction crisis in Tehran and the harsh realities of the city’s homeless population. Moderated by representatives from the Intercultural Iranian Canadian Resource Centre.

بعد از اتمام اکران فیلم، با ما و هنرمند گرافیست و فیلمساز بهزاد نعلبندی همراه شوید تا بیشتر درباره ی بحران اعتیاد در تهران و واقعیت های سخت جمعیت بی خانمان های شهر بحث و گفتگو کنیم.  این جلسه مجازی توسط نمایندگانی از مرکز فرهنگ ایرانی– کانادایی (Intercultural Iranian Canadian Resource Centre) مدیریت می شود. 

Winter’s Yearning is an eye-opening portrait documentary of the small fishing town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, which has been selected as the next plant location for US aluminium giant ALCOA. An aluminium plant could provide a useful step towards Greenlandic independence. However, visions of the anticipated windfall fade into a waiting game. Directors Sidse Torstholm Larsen and Sturla Pilskog intertwine the lives of three Maniitsoq residents: a social worker, a young woman and the town’s ‘aluminium coordinator’. Through attentively layering their stories, situations and personal efforts towards self-sufficiency, the atmosphere of a small-town yearning for progression and change is beautifully portrayed.

Screening with

Carlotta’s Face
Valentin Riedl and Frédéric Schuld | 2018 | Germany | German with English subtitles | 5 minutes

Carlotta’s Face illuminates a relationship dysfunction in its sensitive portrayal of a woman who suffers from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, and her salvation through art.