It's that time of year again -- the celebrated documentary festival runs in Toronto from April 28 to May 8.
![June Chua](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/june_chua_small.jpg "Toronto
June Chua is a Malaysian-born Canadian journalist who has worked as a writer, reporter and producer -- spending a dozen years with the CBC, where she worked in radio, television and online.
She is currently a freelance writer and filmmaker and completed her first independent documentary, Twin Trek, in 2007, about Bengali-Norwegian twin brothers from Canada who uncover a surprising piece of Norwegian history when they head to a family reunion in Northern Norway with their mother. The film was screened at Oslo Documentary Cinema and was purchased and archived by the University Library of Tromsø and the Vadsø Kvenmuseum as well as the Open Society Archives of Budapest.
She was a regular columnist on CBC.ca (Café Chat) and her commentaries have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Canadian Living. Her essay, "I Am Canadian," was also published in the anthology Strangers in the Mirror (Tsar Books 2004), musings about minorities in Canada. She is also the Asian Cuisine columnist for Suite101.com.
An avid traveller, she has visited about three dozen countries and hopes to keep adding to this list!
June counts food, film, flamenco and faraway places as her primary passions.")
June Chua
Toronto June Chua is a Malaysian-born Canadian journalist who has worked as a writer, reporter and producer -- spending a dozen years with the CBC, where she worked in radio, television and online. She is currently a freelance writer and filmmaker and completed her first independent documentary, Twin Trek, in 2007, about Bengali-Norwegian twin brothers from Canada who uncover a surprising piece of Norwegian history when they head to a family reunion in Northern Norway with their mother. The film was screened at Oslo Documentary Cinema and was purchased and archived by the University Library of Tromsø and the Vadsø Kvenmuseum as well as the Open Society Archives of Budapest. She was a regular columnist on CBC.ca (Café Chat) and her commentaries have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Canadian Living. Her essay, "I Am Canadian," was also published in the anthology Strangers in the Mirror (Tsar Books 2004), musings about minorities in Canada. She is also the Asian Cuisine columnist for Suite101.com. An avid traveller, she has visited about three dozen countries and hopes to keep adding to this list! June counts food, film, flamenco and faraway places as her primary passions.El Salvador documentary digs into country's pain and hope
Return to El Salvador is essentially a call to arms, in the best sense.
Related rabble.ca story:
El Salvador documentary digs into country's pain and hope
Return to El Salvador is essentially a call to arms, in the best sense, to the world to not forget this hard-scrabble Central American nation whose civil war, seemingly continued long after peace was negotiated in 1992.
The film, created with the One Horizon Foundation, is well-shot and contains some searing elements that will keep your eyes on the screen. It is more of a community activist film than a documentary. Of note is that it bears occasional narration by the peerless Martin Sheen -- long a union activist and all-round humanist. (When Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez were in Toronto for the film festival in September, they walked the picket lines with striking hotel workers).
‘A Different Path’ charts creative ways to ditch cars
Every year at Toronto's Hot Docs International Documentary Festival, I get blown away by one film -- usually a documentary that hasn't gotten much attention and when I watch it, it's like being under a spell.
Such is the case this time with A Different Path -- an inventive and illuminating documentary made by American artist and musician Monteith McCollum. I don't have enough adjectives to describe the immersive, mesmerizing and magical ride the director brings you on in highlighting the efforts of activists in four locales, challenging our car-centric culture.
Coca-Cola doc chronicles a bitter battle
A stunning documentary chronicles the efforts of American lawyers trying to take the soft drink giant to court over the killings of 10 union leaders in Columbia.
Related rabble.ca story:
Coca-Cola doc chronicles a bitter battle
"As soon as the union was formed, the trouble started," intones the brother of murdered Columbian union leader Isidro Gil ominously at the start of The Coca-Cola Case, a documentary co-production by the NFB and Argus Films.
The 86-minute film chronicles the relentless efforts of American lawyers trying to take the soft drink giant to court over the killings of 10 union leaders, who represented workers at Coke bottling plant s in Colombia.
The documentary splits its time nicely between two battles: the court fight waged by Daniel Kovalik, lawyer for the United Steelworkers union, on behalf of Columbian union members and the public awareness crusade of Ray Rogers, who directed the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke.
Six to see at Hot Docs
It's that time of year again -- as Canadians search in vain for signs of spring, the Hot Docs International Festival sprouts in Toronto. Running from April 28 to May 8, North America's largest documentary celebration will unspool 200 films from 43 countries.
This time around, it comes during a dire period in the Canadian documentary landscape. Don't be fooled by the big announcements by our feds or the NFB. If you check out the recent report released by the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), you'll get the whole picture.
Take a hike through The National Parks Project
Having just experienced the mountain wonders of Patagonia (in Chile and Argentina), I came home in March and was immediately reminded of the awesomeness lying in my own backyard: Canada's wonderland of parks.
Toronto's first Nepal film festival features female fare
Just before the Christmas holidays in 2008, I was amazed to be sitting in an auditorium in Nepal screening my documentary Twin Trek at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival. It was also there that I was privileged to view -- or rather, experience -- The Sari Soldiers among a rowdy, animated crowd of 1,000 Nepalis.
Sheema Khan stick-handles Muslim misconceptions
Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman
(TSAR Publications,
2009;
$25.95)
As I was interviewing Sheema Khan about the debut of her collection of essays Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman (TSAR Publications), The Globe and Mail columnist shared a truly Canadian moment with me.
"In 2002, my husband was making the Hajj in Mecca and I hadn't heard from him in a couple days," recalls Khan, a patent agent living in Ottawa, who is also a hockey mom and a Habs fan.
"He called me, and this was during the Olympics, and I told him the men's and women's hockey teams had won gold. He was so happy and he told his fellow Hajji's because they had no news. Well, he returned home after two weeks and the first thing he asks me is: 'who did we beat?'"
