This weekend past I took the children to the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival. On Friday night, just me and the boy (the girl at a Brownies sleepover), we went to see "Sand and Sorrow" - a documentary narrated by George Clooney on the civil war in Darfur. OK, informative, but not a great documentary.
On Saturday we attended 2 more - one a CBC documentary on the Alberta Tarsands, incredibly boring. Television brought to the big screen, but I wanted the boy to see it. Our "local" ethical commitment. And then one on Chernobyl - a very well paced, informative and enlightening documentary on the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 in the Ukraine. An enjoyable film, which more than made up for the afternoon's presentation.
For those of you not familiar, the Film Festival is used to highlight topical social issues both in the world at large, and nearer to home in our communities. The format is a selected film is shown, then followed by a brief (3 or 4 question) discussion with "experts" present on the issues raised in the film. The "real" discussion is held in the lobby afterwards. Overall the films are chosen to overlap themes - for example the Saturday film on the Tar Sands raises the possibility of a Nuclear Power plant in Alberta's north to fuel the tar sands, and the following film on Chernobyl explores what happens when Nuclear Power goes wrong. This was my/our first time attending.
The festival was modestly well attended, slightly more than half full, good for the event, but a disinterested showing for a city of a million people. Noteworthy was the fact that in the last 2 films we saw we recognized most of the audience as people who were at the previous film(s), so one might generalize that those interested in social issues are very interested. Probably we should have stayed and chatted with some of them in the lobby afterwards to learn more, but 3 documentaries in a weekend was enough punishment for the boy...