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If you're a documentary film buff, you're not reading this—because right now you're in a theatre in Downtown Toronto!
Wait, that's not right: I'm a documentary film buff and I'm not in a theatre in Downtown Toronto right now. Well, give me a minute to pack up everything up, and I'll give you minute too, and then we can meet up on Bloor or King or College in 15 or 20 minutes, and settle in for a very intertesting ride at Hot Docs 2013.
Hot Docs gets more popular every year. It's just one of those things: he told two friends, then she told two friends, then I told 19,892 (for lack of a better number, I present our current Twitter follower count), and suddenly the cinemas are close to full. The reason why is simple: documentaries are some of the most compelling and well-made films these days. They're certainly better at giving the average person a voice, and in a day and age when we spend nearly as much time or even more on YouTube and Vimeo than we do on TV, we are used to seeing more home-grown content on screen that represents our values, we want that engagement in our cinemas too. Want to be energized/empowered/enraged/elated by a film? See a doc.
UrbanToronto does not report on the wide-range of festival films in detail. There are lots of other media outlets that will tell you all about the 200-ish films on offer. We just focus on the urban-issuey-architectureful films that we think you, our loyal demographic, would be into. Sure you'll like other stuff too, we do, but we're reading reports by better writers to cover the rest.
Today; one film to talk about. The Human Scale is all about life in our cities. Danish architect and urban designer Jan Gehl and his team from Gehl Architects take us through cities across the globe—Chongqing, Melbourne, Dhaka, New York, Copenhagen, and Christchurch-post-earthquake (all beautifully shot by cinematographer Heikki Färm) which are dealing with the pressures of development. Some are doing well, some poorly, but all faces challenges as more people pour into cities. Are there lessons in this film for Toronto? Many will say innumerable ones; there's certainly much to consider from lessons being learned right now in cities worldwide.
This morning's screening was packed, and screenings on Saturday the 27th (tiff Bell Lightbox 4.30 PM) and Sunday the 5th of May (ROM Theatre, 9.00 PM) have gone Rush, but that doesn't mean you won't get in. As long as you are early enough in line, there are always seats set aside. Director Andreas M. Dalsgaard will be at Hot Docs for the last screening of his film—he was not present at the first and won't make the second—but there or not the film will give you some great ideas, and questions for you to put to your City Councillor come next election. Some of those questions will no doubt be asked at upcoming public consultations on developments too: like 'Why aren't we turning over road space to pedestrians at the rate even bigger and more congested cities are?' The Flatiron area on Broadway (as per above) has never looked so good!
