FOUR STARS
Stalags: Holocaust
and Pornography in Israel **** Ari Libsker (Israel)
Libsker's film seems to start off as a kind of sick joke or tale of camp perversity. How else to interpret its portrayal of Israeli Jewish writers who, using American pseudonyms, produced, in the early sixties, a series of cheap paperbacks with racy covers in which American PoWs are made the sex slaves of curvaceous, whip-snapping female SS officers? These books, called "Stalags," were enormously popular in Israel as were those in the sub-genre known as "Israelis," in which Jewish men travel to Germany to rape and torture women there. Libsker's film soon becomes a sobering and absorbing account of the young Israeli state's struggle to make sense of both the Holocaust and the concentration-camp survivors who emigrated there from postwar Europe. J.A.
Al Green, April 24, 9 p.m.; Isabel Bader, April 27, 7 p.m. 3 1/2 STARS Air India 182 ***½ Sturla Gunnarsson (Canada) The story of the 1985 aircraft bombing is so multifaceted and devastating, director Gunnarsson needn't have added the small touches of suspense at the beginning of the film to entice viewers. While his portrait of the extremists, investigators, families and political actors involved in the deadliest-ever mass murder of Canadians is more than enough to captivate viewers, his vivid retelling also provides an understanding of the events leading up to the bombing and the unspeakable emotional weight that remains. The film isn't strictly chronological, but skillfully jumps around as it picks up thematic threads, such as the terrorist forces at work and the intelligence agents trying to stop a massacre they could only speculate would even occur. The candour of the families, in particular, turns this into much more than a re-edit of the news, particularly their comments about the guilt they feel as survivors, or how some felt, standing in the airport terminal, a vague sense of dread. By distilling such a sprawling tragedy into a concise documentary, this film does a major public service. G.D.
Isabel Bader, today, 1:30 p.m. Anvil! The Story of Anvil ***½ Sacha Gervasi (U.S.)
Like Martin Scorsese's Shine a Light, Anvil! The Story of Anvil is a document of an indomitable rock band that refuses to grow old gracefully. Otherwise, the distance between the Rolling Stones and Anvil is astronomical. Anvil, based around lifelong friends guitarist-singer Steve (Lips) Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, hails from Toronto, and the band was poised for metal superstardom 25 years ago with the album Metal on Metal, which is still cited by the metal big four (Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax) as a seminal influence. Where did it go wrong? asks a fan on a dismal European tour. "I can answer that in one word," Reiner says. "Two words. Three: We don't have good management."
British filmmaker Sacha Gervasi (writer of Steven Spielberg's film The Terminal) worked as a roadie for the band in his teens and this improbably winning and heartfelt film is a return favour for the stars of his youth. What starts out looking like a real-life This Is Spinal Tap evolves into something more like Man of La Mancha with drum solos. L.L.
Isabel Bader, today, 4:15 p.m.; Royal, April 27, 9:30 p.m. The Art Star
and the Sudanese Twins *** Pietra Brettkelly (New Zealand)
Like Madonna and Angelina Jolie, celebrated Italian-born conceptual artist Vanessa Beecroft wanted to adopt an African baby - two of them, in fact. Beecroft, famous for posing groups of naked women in the centre of an art gallery, has a powerful instinct for pushing emotional and social buttons. New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly, who met Beecroft by chance in Sudan, followed the artist for 16 months, showing her attempts to bring the boys to her New York home and exploring her artistic milieu. A kind of poetic document of the artist in action, the film is a portrait of a real piece of work. Imperious and fastidious in her high-minded art-making, Beecroft is jaw-droppingly insensitive to basic human relations. She fails to consider that photographing naked children in a church might upset local Sudanese villagers, or that her New Yorker husband might want to be consulted about her decision to bring home a couple of African infants whom even he suspects she may think of as provocative props. L.L.
