It’s a big documentary week in the city and on the blog. GVFF & HOT DOCS are back with the April edition of the documentary series.  Ted Kerr wrote a little note on the old Facebook and I think, as always, he’s done something beautiful. Read it and see the film for yourself.

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by Ted Kerr

“I hate this town in the Summer” she says. It begins. From the get go this trailer has me. It grips my heart and squeezes. First it just hits on my love / hate relationship with Edmonton, then digs deeper.

The trailer for OCTOBER COUNTRY is a little over 2 minutes but it took me over 5 minutes to watch it. I kept on pausing the You Tube clip to check in with myself, to question if I had to keep watching, convincing myself that as the local promoter for the DOC SOUP series it is my job to watch the film that we are bringing in, know what it is about and convince people to go.

But still.

My North American, pop culture, knee jerk reaction to be entertained rather than be engaged, enlightened or moved in general was getting the most of me. Alas I pushed through, pushed past the tyranny of happy ending films and easy to reconcile narratives that fill my unquestioned desires.

And I am better for it.

Its not like OCTOBER COUNTRY is violent, gory, scary or even sexually explicit. But for anyone that grew up middle class, in a blue collar home, in a mid sized city and has maybe attempted to distance themselves from the heartbreak of it all, the film hits home, kicks up the rug under which maybe much has been swept.

Rather than jolting or punching you with emotion or action the film is something else- it is unflinching, real, and close in its everydayness. It is like flipping through Nan Goldin photos from the late 80’s, watching Roseanne with out the laugh track.

Hot Tub Time Machine it is not.

Co-Directed by photographer Donal Mosher and filmmaker Michael Palmieri, the official description provides a frank and poetic synopsis usually not found within the film world:

OCTOBER COUNTRY is a haunting multi-generational story of a working-class family coping with poverty, teen pregnancy, foster care and the ineffable horrors of child molestation and war. A co-directing effort by filmmaker Michael Palmieri and photographer and writer Donal Mosher, it follows Donal’s family in Herkimer, New York from one Halloween to the next, resulting in a beautifully crafted film remarkable for its intimacy, sensitivity and textured portrait of a family in crisis that has become all too familiar, if not representative, of America’s poor.

After watching I read up on the film. Read that someone at the Huffington Post categorized the film as an example of ” Reality Televisions for Smart People” (maybe a populist way of saying Cinema Vertie), that it won the grand prize for a U.S. feature at the AFI/Discovery Silverdocs festival, that Palmieri met Mosher at a Drag bar in the US- conversations ensued, a project was born.

As someone who cares about moving images and worries that in the future all movies will contain a CGI’d Johnny Deep I am often very lazy and hypocritical in my film choices. OCTOBER COUNTRY at once reminded me to remember myself, but also that what I watch matters, that at times it is good to be challenged, good to walk away with question, a queery, a reason to call home.

OCTOBER COUNTRY

Thursday, April 1 @ 7:00 pm

Metro Cinema, Zeidler Hall in the Citadel Theatre, 9828 – 101A Avenue

Admission with Doc Soup subscription

Single tickets: $10 at door

Watch the trailer at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Mm69Bs_5Q

Learn more about the film at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tribeca-film/visiting-family-ghosts-in_b_459321.html

http://www.octobercountryfilm.com/

See Donal’s work at:

http://www.donalmosher.com/

After the film visit the blog, it will land more soft punches to your brutalized heart:

http://ghosttype.blogspot.com/