When confronted by so many strong, compelling documentaries, you momentarily forget about Hollywood fiction films (that suspension of disbelief), or that that interpretation of the world even exists. -Michael Udris
We returned to Providence energized by wonderful screenings and discussions. The film’s relevance, an engagement with political and economic environments through a dizzying reworking of social authority. remains of vital importance. This was truly a wonderful documentary film festival. -David Udris
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The owl of Minerva (aka wisdom), says Hegel, only flies at twilight. This seemed to be the case at Hot Docs. As Atom Egoyan (always a name worth dropping) told us after the sold-out Saturday screening, Human Terrain is a very complex issue, making for a complicated film. Which is why, I suspect, it has been so hard to say, in a short, pithy sound-bite, just what the film is ‘about’ (in Canadian, that’s ‘aboot’). But in Toronto, facing the prospect of introducing the film, the ‘meaning’ of the film finally dawned on me (if you will). It was the battle of the ‘Carl’s: Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian strategist, who declared that ‘War is a realm of chance’; and Carl Gustav Jung, the great mapper of the human mind and collective unconsious, who said, ‘There are no accidents.’ In life, when seemingly random events happen and then repeat, it is usually for a reason, even if not always a conscious one; in war, and with the deaths that result from war, those reasons are even harder to discern. The synchronicity of our Hot Doc screening taking place on the second anniversary of Michael’s death was not lost on us; but it was hard to fathom. -James Der Derian