Screenings at hotdocs continue through the week.  Here are two more reviews. 

5 Days / Yoav Shamir / Israel 2005

Yoav Shamir’s 5 Days shows the August 2005 removal of the Israeli community from the Gaza Strip.  Eight camera crews followed the major participants, including General Dan Harel, shooting 7×24 as the drama unfolded.

Shamir tells the story from the Israeli point of view.  His thesis is that this was a drama to be played out by various actors, each of whom needed to go through their part even though the eventual outcome was clear to all. 

We have those who cling to the idea that this is Israeli land and cannot be ceded to others at any cost.  We have the supporters who live elsewhere, but who come to support the Gaza residents.  We have the media circus that inevitably encourages grandstanding.   And, of course, we have the Israeli Defence Force and General Harel whose astounding calm runs through everything.

Watching this film, I had the sense it was some alternate view of the Middle East where violence stopped mainly with taunts and graffiti, where ever so civilized people protested, cried, pleaded, but ultimately were removed peacefully.  Just over the border, the Palestinians waited, and 250,000 of them would replace the 8,000 Israelis. 

If anything, it’s the absence of any commentary on the relative scale of resources and land use I found troubling.  Shamir was documenting events some would regard as an Israeli tragedy — the destruction of a settlement — but he avoided the larger question of the propriety and impact of the settlements.  Maybe that’s another film (at least one), but the lack of a larger, regional context is troubling.

5 Days will air in Israel in August on the first anniversary of the events, and it repeats Thursday, May 4 at the ROM 3:45 pm.

Glenn Gould Hereafter / Bruno Monsaingeon / Canada/France 2006

Gould has been Monsaingeon’s topic for eight films now, and Glenn Gould Hereafter assembles bits and pieces, outtakes, archival footage, photos into an appreciation of Gould’s impact rathert than a bio.  Many we have seen before, and Monsaingeon has gone to the well, I hope, for the last time.

A linking device is the use of two women — one an Italian in Toronto, the other a Russian in Moscow — who came to Gould decades after his death.  The Torontonian enjoys a quiet love affair with the music while the Russian basks in a rediscovery of life through the profundity of Gould’s art.  These are mildly intriguing, but out of context and ultimately just waste time attemtping to give Gould a modern-day significance at a personal rather than a musical level.

Worst of all, the screening suffered from a digital projector in less-than-ideal condition, and sound that was so badly clipped that beautiful performances all sounded like they were coming through a scratchy radio.  I had to listen with an inner ear and remember the music as it should be.  The film’s producers, sitting down the row from me, were distraught throughout about the sound, and hotdocs should be ashamed for such a presentation.

CBC and Bravo! have money in this production, and you can expect to see it in their 2006/07 seasons.