| Planet in Focus film reviews |
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| Monday, 09 August 2004 | |
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The appeal of the videos and films at the Planet in Focus festival is the rare opportunity to see skilled and entertaining work that simply is not available any where else. It?s an inexpensive privilege (thanks to the public funders!) : a complete festival pass only costs $35 dollars and each film only $8. This third year?s program includes 38 films and videos from across the globe and features 11 Canadian and 9 World Premieres. The complete selection can be accessed at www.planetinfocus.org along with box office details and scheduled showing times. Although billed as an environmental film fest, the content ranges from touching drama involving the most appealing eight year heroine outside of the Disney Studios! in "Tainah-An Amazon Adventure" to a mini-fest labelled "Against the Grain," of experimental works featuring moving insights, humour and colourful animation. Of the 4 films I viewed recently, one thing stays with me: an uplifting mood of inspiration crreated by the experience of witnessing people in other worlds telling their stories. Entertaining and moving at the same time. Each one very different. "The Return of the Navaho Boy" by Jeff Spitz (USA), is a documentary set in the awesome (correct use of the word!) red rocked landscape of Utah?s Monument Valley familiar to us from the films of John Ford featuring John Wayne. It engages us in a narrative search for the members of a family of Navaho whose childhood was captured on amateur footage at the time those movies were made. Yet in the same frame, we become privy to their exploitation by the mining of Uranium on their lands, and their struggles to pass on the traditional culture. As I got hooked on the story of little namesake, John Wayne Junior, the strength and pride of the grandmother, and the later struggles of one elder to get compensation for cancer and lung operations from radiation poisoning, I also soaked up the extraordinary colour and sculptural grandeur of the vast desert?s atmosphere. |
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