News

For further proof of the crucial place documentaries now occupy in our culture, look no further than Air India 182, a new Canadian documentary about the 1985 airliner bombing, which will have its world premiere at next month's Hot Docs festival in Toronto.

While most of the films in the 15th-annual edition of the festival follow the more traditional documentary route of telling the stories of people who would have otherwise remained unseen, Air India 182 is a film about an event we've all seen and read about for more than 20 years.

But this is still somehow a story that has remained outside Canada's national narrative, said the film's director Sturla Gunnarsson yesterday at the Hot Docs press conference to introduce some of the 170 films screening at the largest edition of the festival so far.

This ability to create a story beyond immediate news reports is the new role docs are filling.

"What we've tried to do is bring clarity to the narrative, to create a coherent narrative out of this," Gunnarsson said. News reports have only doled out the story in dribs and drabs. As a result, "What happened has never crystallized in the public mind. And that's what we tried to do."

Or take Standard Operating Procedure, also playing the festival, which looks at the stories behind the horrific photos of torture of prisoners held by the U.S. Army at the Abu Ghraib prison. Errol Morris, who also directed the 2004 Oscar-winner The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, describes his new film as a "non-fiction horror movie."

Meanwhile, photojournalist-director Dilip Mehta will show his documentary The Forgotten Woman, described as a response to his sister Deepa Mehta's dramatic feature film Water, about the persecution of widows in traditional India.

The documentary, written by Deepa, brings the story up to date by looking at how close to half of India's widows are still forced to live a life of isolation.

Of course, not all of the films on the Hot Docs roster are as heavy. The festival's opener Anvil! The Story of Anvil, about the hard-luck Canadian metal band on a disastrous European tour, is instead heavy on humour and pure "rawk."

Preceding Anvil!'s screening will be actress-director Isabella Rossellini and filmmaker Jody Shapiro's series of short films Green Porno, examining how bugs make love. It features Rossellini in various bug get-ups.

"What is a documentary?" said Shapiro in mock-defence. "No, these are scientific films exploring the sex lives of insects. They just happen to be starring Isabella Rossellini as the male insect. But she talks about how insects have sex and then demonstrates that. I don't know, that's kind of like a documentary."

Hot Docs runs from April 17-27 at various Toronto locations (for more information, http://www.hotdocs.ca or 416-637-5150).

Ones to watch

All Together Now

A film about the remaining

Beatles and Cirque du Soleil's production of its Beatlesque

extravaganza Love.

Virtual JFK: Vietnam

If Kennedy Had Lived

This movie ponders what might have happened in Vietnam if President John F. Kennedy

hadn't been shot.

Second Sight

A film by Toronto poet and playwright Alison McAlpine about a ghost story on Scotland's remote Isle of Skye and the dying art

of storytelling.