During the course of three years, director Jeremy Frindel traveled with Kirtan singer Jeffrey Kagel, now known to the world as Krishna Das, interviewing many of his colleagues and tapping into his strengths, not only as a Grammy Award winning singer, but also as a teacher, healer, and a man of depth and compassion. The…
If you pay attention to nutrition labels on the food products you buy, you may notice that next to the number of grams of sugar, there is no percentage shown. The sugar industry made sure of that. What they don’t want consumers to know is that the sugar content of many of their products is…
Tough Bond, the directorial debut of Anneliese Vandenberg and Austin Peck, is the type of the documentary that will leave most viewers speechless and cause others to simply stay away due to the subject matter. The story of Kenyan youth huffing glue is not exactly “misery porn” as some have labeled it, nor is it…
Birds, leaves, sky, trees, branches, things of beauty we see every day but hardly recognize, are brought to our rapt attention in Slovenian director Vlado Skafar’s lyrical documentary A Girl and a Tree (“Deklica in Drevo,” original title). Like Louis Malle’s “My Dinner With André,” the film consists mainly of a conversation between two friends,…
When my children were young, we went to the killer whale (orca) shows at the Vancouver Aquarium. It was fun to see the 8,000+ pound whales doing tricks for the trainer while the audience was being splashed. We gave little thought, however, to how the whales felt about it. Today, millions who attend SeaWorld shows…
Produced in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada, Canadian director Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell is a tender and often moving inquiry into the life of her mother Diana who died in 1990 from cancer when Sarah was only eleven years old. Her investigation, consisting of interviews with her Toronto family members…
Philosopher Albert Camus said, “Good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” Indeed, we have seen many examples in history of how ideology, no matter how well intentioned, can lead to disastrous consequences if not tempered with compassion and respect for the rights of the individual. We saw it in…
