Hot Docs 2013: Aatsinki: The Story Of Arctic Cowboys

Aarne and Lasse Aatsinki are cowboys in Finnish lapland. Well, they tend herds of wild reindeer but I suppose "Reindeer boys" doesn't have the some ring.  Aatsinki: The Story Of Arctic Cowboys is the story of one year in the...

Pam's Top 5 Canadian Documentaries

Canada has a long tradition of documentary filmmaking excellence, and many Canadian directors have been very influential on the genre - Allan King, Michel Brault, and Alanis Obomsawin, to name just three. The best documentary films, to my mind, are t...

Hot Docs 2013: Interview with Chimeras Director Mika Matilla

I have a secret theory about documentary filmmaking: it is the most personal kind of filmmaking. Even when a doc isn't a first person film, the filmmaker is often drawn to a story that illuminates some part of their own life or own concerns. And so i...

Hot Docs 2013: Interview with Massey Whiteknife from Oil Sands Karaoke

As watchers and critics of films, we focus almost solely on the filmmaker. But in the case of documentaries, there are real people behind the stories. I often wonder why a subject submits to the camera. Why tell such tough and personal stories? For o...

Hot Docs 2013: Interview Charles Wilkinson, Director of Oil Sands Karaoke

One of the most powerful aspects of documentary filmmaking is the ability to bring a depth of opinion and examination to a topic. Often, some of the most pressing contemporary concerns become rendered as black or white, this or that in our fast paced...

Hot Docs 2013: Good Ol' Freda

The moment that I saw Good Ol' Freda listed in the Hot Docs program, without reading the description, I knew exactly who this doc was about. That's good ol' Freda Kelly, once called the luckiest girl in the world by newspape...

Pam's Top 5 Documentaries

Gotta love documentaries. The best ones teach you something, but I enjoy them so much more when they make me think. Or when they entertain me. Or fascinate me. I especially like documentaries that do all those things at once. And since Toronto's in t...