From Word To Word

The Guelph Festival of Moving Media is upcoming on the first weekend of November, from Thursday the 5th to Sunday the 8th.  The festival focuses on cinema and social justice and usually includes an eclectic mixture of documentaries, and this year’s program includes several that interest me very much.

Rip: A Remix Manifesto by Brett Gaylor, is a film that Dave Humphrey brought to my attention a while ago, but I have not yet had a chance to see it.  It focuses on the music of Girl Talk, which is created using samples and mash-ups, and which therefore raises some questions about copyright and free culture.  I will try to make this screening if at all possible.

I would also like to see Alanis Obomsawin’s Professor Norman Cornett, which explores the pedagogy of the former McGill University Professor.  Not only is his story an interesting one, but the issues that it raises about teaching and education are ones that concern me particularly.

I will also make a point of seeing Anders Ostergaard’s Burma VJ, because of how closely it relates to the themes of the documentary course that I will be teaching in January.  The film looks at high risk journalism, focusing on citizen journalists in Burma, and I am hopeful that it might be a film that I can use in my course in order to explore just this subject of journalism in areas of social upheaval.

Taking up a slightly lighter topic, Nollywood Babylon by Ben Addelman and Samir Malla also piques my curiosity.   It looks at the rapidly growing film industry in Nigeria, where the making of the films seems to be every bit as entertaining as the films themselves.  I have the premonition that I will like this one very much.

My biggest disappointment will be having to miss Murray Siple’s Carts of Darkness, which happens to be playing at the same time as Professor Norman Corbett.  It explores the lives of people who survive by collecting bottles in Vancouver, and is just the sort of quirky documentary that appeals to me.  If only it were playing at another time.

The whole of the lineup actually looks quite good, and the tickets are cheap, so do check the GFOMM website, and make some time in your calendar this first weekend in November.  Better yet, email me, and we can go see something together.