I'm a published writer, illustrator, and film critic. Cinema has been a passion of mine since my first viewing of Milius' Conan the Barbarian and my film tastes go from experimental to modern blockbuster.
Thomas Stuber’s A Heavy Heart is the complex story of a former boxer turned teacher and bouncer who life takes a sudden turn for the worse. In many ways, it’s both a gritty and an uplifting film at that. Thomas Stuber’s feature debut is deservedly garnering a lot of talk at this year’s film festival. Peter Kurth’s portrayal of a deteriorating Herbert is a tour de…
Although this is the first Apichatpong Weerasethakul film I’ve been treated to, his name does come with a reputation of expecting the unexpected. The truth is Cemetery Of Splendour is cinematic poetry in storytelling.
This year TIFF came to town in a giant swoop. Flooded with screeners and interview requests, this is probably the busiest I’ve been before the festival since I’ve started covering it. I’m trying my best to cover as much as possible considering the festival this year is incredibly diverse and some of them already have Academy awards written all over them…
Imagine millions of people tuning into a televised political debates featuring men with high IQs. That actually happened in 1968 during the presidential elections. ABC News featured ten debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Through scholarly verbal sparring Vidal and Buckley threw up fireworks that spoke more about their volatile relationship than about the politics of the time itself.
BAFTA winning Asif Kapadia first came on the scene with his engrossing 2010 documentary Senna that elucidated the iconic status of late Formula racecar driver Ayrton Senna. He follows it up this year with Amy an in-depth look at the life of Amy Winehouse. It is a tragically tender portrayal of the artist behind the troubled sensation that exposes the reality…
One of the great aspects of the documentary feature is in its ability chronicle the lives of people that audiences would regularly be unaware of. A director’s lens will act like a microscope to the world illuminating varied stories such as the lives of the disenfranchised youth of a little town in South America or the narratives of hard working people in Africa that…
It’s hard to be unbiased about this film. My Colombian parents learned a lot of their English by watching Sesame Street. They were always seeking to improve their pronunciation, therefore, when I was born we’d all sit and watch The Children’s Television Network together. My favorite character has always been Cookie Monster, but something about Big Bird always stood out. He pretty much asked all the questions we were burning to ask as kids. His comments would sometimes come out as funny or naive, but he knew what to ask. Oscar the Grouch was easily the coolest punk around. There’s no denying that.
This touching film is a portrait of friendship and courage in the face of adversity. Ugandan Catherine and Finnish Riita, two sixty-something women, work together in a project in Uganda that gives sexual health centre. Both men and women attend the health centre where they learn about the inequalities in their…
I was in my parents’ living room stuffing my face with potato chips when I first heard and saw the video for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. I almost choked. The punk rock bands that I was heavily in to then, were long gone, so the noise and anarchic imagery coming out of the television spoke to something…
The thing about Hot Docs and documentaries in general is that you never know how you’re going to feel after a viewing. Emotions can go from infuriating to tearjerking to stirring all in the span of a few hours. If done well, film essays are importu../../../../author/jacqueline-valencia/page/2/nate in their arguments while personal profiles can bring__8230.css;