From Chile to Colorado, from Morocco to Manitoba to Baghdad, the Canadian documentaries in the Real to Reel and Special Presentations programs are literally all over the map – in location, approach and perspective. Talented veteran directors mix with emerging talents – and one renowned musician – for five cutting-edge productions.

A PROMISE TO THE DEAD: THE EXILE JOURNEY OF ARIEL DORFMAN
Director/producer: Peter Raymont

With A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, director Peter Raymont (Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire) returns to the subject of mass murder overseas, this time in Chile. He accompanies the titular U.S.-based playwright of Death and the Maiden as Dorfman revisits Santiago, recalling events before and immediately after Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup overthrew democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende.

Dorfman, cultural advisor to Allende’s chief of staff, was forced into hiding when the coup occurred ‘on another Sept. 11,’ finally fleeing with his family to Europe, while many Chileans ‘disappeared.’

On his return, the writer meets old friends, tours Pinochet’s sinister secret service headquarters, recalls soldiers burning books, thanks a woman who provided a safe house, and explains how the Argentine embassy kept hundreds safe, including himself.

Perhaps most compelling, however, is the sequence in which Dorfman hears Pinochet has had a heart attack and encounters many of the general’s supporters outside the hospital. Although Dorfman had wanted Pinochet to face a trial and look into the faces of ‘the women of the disappeared,’ he tells one supporter he understands her passion. He says as many as 30% of Chileans are still grateful the dictator took power.

Dorfman says this doc – partly based on his memoir Heading South, Looking North – allows him to keep his promise to speak for the dead. Lots of Canadians, says Raymont, have ‘connections with people in that part of the world. I hope [the film] helps people understand what happened.’ www.whitepinepictures.com

THE WILD HORSE REDEMPTION
Director: John Zaritsky
Producer: Terence McKeown
Writers: Bob McKeown, John Zaritsky

How will it end, when Anthony, a black man raised in the slums of Dallas and Denver and ‘deathly afraid of horses’ has to break and train a wild mustang as part of a controversial Colorado prison program?

It ends with hope, according to Oscar-winning director John Zaritsky, hoping that this convicted criminal will follow a law-abiding path once he’s out.

Zaritsky – who brought home a best feature documentary Academy Award in 1983 for Just Another Missing Kid – says that this unusual rehabilitation process helps the convicts learn ‘important life lessons,’ such as patience, perseverance, anger management and how to relate to horses in ways they’ve never managed with people.

Shortly after Anthony left jail, he got a job training thoroughbreds and quarter horses on a private ranch, and got married.

About 90% of the men in the program have never ridden a horse before. ‘Horse whisperers’ train the convicts, who then have 90 days to train their charges. The program also helps prevent mustang overpopulation, taking in about 6,000 of the 30,000 roaming America’s west.

With the quest for redemption at its heart and the grand desert vistas as its backdrop, Zaritsky is optimistic the film will find theatrical distribution in Canada and the U.S. via TIFF. It’s presold to CBC. www.pointgreypictures.com

HERE IS WHAT IS
Directors: Adam Vollick, Daniel Lanois, Adam Samuels

Musician Daniel Lanois, famed for his own work and for producing such acts as U2, Brian Eno and Emmylou Harris, thinks that in the last 15 years, the music biz has become ‘more about the crib than about listening to the music…that is the pornography of the music world.’

So when a friend asked him why he has no footage of ‘interesting’ recording sessions, of making music, he bought equipment, hired crew and worked with them on a self-financed $600,000-plus documentary that encourages slowing down and listening. ‘Greatness exists at the moment,’ he says, and is found ‘at the altar of commitment.’

This musical journey follows Lanois through five cities. Mixing grainy black and white with surreal neon color, close-ups of hands playing with a salsa dancer’s sexy moves, the film opens with a four-minute sequence of The Band multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson on guitar, shot in Lanois’ Toronto studio.

In the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport, LA., Brady Blade Sr. does a mesmerizing, bluesy take on the Negro spiritual This May Be the Last Time.

There will be scenes of Lanois and Brian Eno working with U2 in Fez, Morocco and philosophizing about how beauty can come ‘from shit.’

We’ll catch up with Sinead O’Connor ‘rebuilding her career’ in Dublin and there are also guest appearances by Willie Nelson, Carolina Cerisola, Emmylou Harris, Aaron Neville and Billy Bob Thornton, who stops by in L.A. www.daniellanois.com

MY WINNIPEG
Director: Guy Maddin,
Producers: Jody Shapiro, Phyllis Laing

If there can be anything simple about a Guy Maddin film, coproducer Jody Shapiro’s synopsis of this film is it: ‘It’s Guy questioning why he’s had trouble leaving Winnipeg.’

Shot ‘99% in black and white’ during the past two Februarys, My Winnipeg is Maddin’s $600,000 journey through the city that’s been his muse for decades. He revisits favorite spots – some where a building or landmark is still present and others that are no longer – and tells some stories.

He directs family members, mostly his mom, and has actors recreate moments from his childhood. He remembers where the Winnipeg Arena stood when it housed the Winnipeg Maroons, the Happyland amusement park, The Forks, the railway station and the Wolseley Elm, plus Eaton’s, The Bay and, of course, the Red River.

If you start with the notion that Maddin will narrate this ‘docu-fantasia’ live at TIFF, adding his poetic, surreal sensibility, factor in his humor and his consciousness of Winnipeg as a ‘city of sleepwalkers’ that reveals itself as magical and mystical ‘under layers of snow,’ we’d never mistake this town as anyone else’s Winnipeg.

The Documentary Channel’s Michael Burns wouldn’t want anyone else’s Winnipeg, and he commissioned the film.

HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD
Directors: Eddy Moretti, Suroosh Alvi
Producers: Monica Hampton, Suroosh Alvi, Eddy Moretti

After New York-based Vice magazine ran an article, just after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, about the only heavy metal band in Iraq, Vice Films decided to try to put the story of Acrassicauda in motion. After false starts trying to get to Baghdad, and after having arranged for a colleague in the Iraqi capital to shoot one concert, codirectors Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi finally made it to Baghdad last year, buttressed by security.

By then, only two of the band’s original five members were still in Iraq, one having left for Canada and two others for a safer Arabic country.

The film, says Moretti, is about the filmmakers’ winding journey to Iraq, about hanging with the remaining players in what proves, literally, to be an explosive place, about the logistical obstacles war zones throw at people who come bearing cameras, and about what happens next in the band’s chaotic existence.