DOXA is Vancouver’s documentary film fest. This year marks the seventh year the DOXA organizers have scoured the planet (and our own backyard) to bring you the best in non-fiction film making. Here are five picks you shouldn’t miss.
Emoticons
Director: Heddy Honigmann; The Netherlands, 2007, 53 minutes.
Emoticons is a timely and compassionate exploration of the lives of six young girls deeply immersed in the online worlds of social networking. Ignored or abused in their “first lives,” these young women have created second lives where they find the understanding and equality they crave.May 29 at 1 pm at the Vancity Theatre.
Club Native
Director: Tracey Deer; Canada, 2006, 78 minutes.
The seemingly innocuous term “marrying out” can have severe consequences for a Mohawk woman on the Kahnawake reserve in Quebec who chooses to wed outside her tribe. This unsparing doc from the NFB doesn’t shy away from Canada’s racist and sexist policies toward these women but strives to show that love can withstand anything. May 29 at 9 pm at the Vancity Theatre.
City Beats: Lost Vancouver from the ’40s to the ’60s
Curated by Graham Peat
If you’ve lived in Vancouver for any length of time, then you’ve probably given money to Graham Peat. As owner and founder of the city’s finest cinematic emporium, Videomatica, he has been part of our film lives for decades. Here, he curates a fascinating collection of films made about the city over the last 100 years – Vancity before the developers sank their claws into it. May 30 at 7 pm at the Vancity Theatre.
Dirt
Director: Meghna Haldar; Canada, 2008, 85 minutes.
Vancouver filmmaker Meghna Haldar’s film asks what seems like a simple question. What is dirt? The results are anything but. This is a gorgeously photographed piece of philosophical poetry that travels from the filmmaker’s birthplace in India to Vancouver’s Downtown East Side to find the answer to her not so simple question. May 31 at 7 pm at the Vancity Theatre.
Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains
Director: Gonzalo Arijon; France, 2007, 130 minutes.
Voted by audiences as one of the top ten films at the 2008 Hot Docs, this film is the harrowing companion to the fiction feature Alive. You know the grim story: a Uruguayan rugby team crashes in the mountains and resorts to cannibalism in order survive. What you don’t know are the actual stories of the people who lived the ordeal. Amazing. June 1 at 7 pm at the Empire Granville 7 Theatre.
