DOXA will screen its roster of crucial and thought-provoking documentaries in theatrical venues across the city, bringing filmmakers and audiences together for a communal cinema experience.
The 23rd annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival will showcase a total of 48 features and mid-lengths, 34 short films, as well as Industry events and multiple opportunities for filmmakers, audiences and industry professionals to connect. Screenings will take place at The Vancouver Playhouse (Opening), The Cinematheque, VIFF Centre and SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, with industry events held at SFU’s World Art Centre and The Post at 750.
DOXA is proud to present Shannon Walsh’s Adrianne & the Castle as this year’s Opening presentation, screening on Saturday, May 4th at The Vancouver Playhouse. Inventive and whimsical, Adrianne & The Castle is the story of Alan St-Georges and the ornate castle he built by hand with his beloved late wife Adrianne, which now stands as a “temple” to their transcendent love. Our Mid-week Gala film is nanekawâsis, directed by Conor McNally, which chronicles the life and work of celebrated and beloved Nêhiyaw (Cree) artist George Littlechild, who at 65 years of age shares his wisdom, perspectives on social issues and Indigenous history, and artistic insights. A proud Two Spirit person, Littlechild has channeled his desire for healing into the bold and colourful works of art that characterize his unique artistic vision. This World Premiere screening will take place on Wednesday, May 8th at VIFF Centre. Closing the festival is Michael Mabbott, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, a mesmerizing journey from the R&B of 1950s Nashville to the nightlife of Toronto in the ‘60s, following trailblazing transgender performer Jackie Shane as she fearlessly navigates music and life. The Closing presentation will screen on Saturday, May 11th at SFU’s Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema.
This year, DOXA is excited to feature a guest curated program from Dennis Lim, a New York-based film curator and writer. Currently the Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival, he is the author of Tale of Cinema (2022), a monograph on the filmmaker Hong Sangsoo, and The Man from Another Place (2015), a critical biography of David Lynch that has been translated into three languages. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Cinema Scope, and Film Comment, and he has taught at Harvard and New York University. Dennis Lim has selected the film Anna (Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli, 1975), a film virtually unseen outside Italy until its restoration in 2011. In Lim’s words: “The film is an extraordinarily precise record of a particular time and place: the mythical tinder box of militancy, rage, repression, paranoia, and nihilism that was Italy in the 1970s. It’s also a movie that overflows its bounds at every turn… Anna seems to hold all the possibilities of cinema—even as it acknowledges its limits.”
The festival program will also feature a retrospective of the work of Cedric Dupire and Gaspard Kuentz, whose documentary works are intensely sensorial, diving deep into music, performance, ritual and art. The films in this retrospective are: The Real Superstar (2023), about the famed Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan; Prends, Seigneur, Prends (2017), a portrait of the temple of Panchwa in India, which is overtaken by crowds from the Kalbeliya tribe of Rajasthan every year in celebration; Journal Afghan (2015), a short film constructed from mid-century travel footage of the Near and Middle East; Kings of the Wind & Electric Queens (2014) which depicts the Sonepur Cattle Fair in India and its carnival activities as they draw spectators from across the country; and We Don’t Care About Music Anyway… (2009), a captivating exploration of Tokyo’s avant-garde underground music scene.
Beyond the festival’s cornerstone Justice Forum and Rated Y for Youth programs, DOXA 2024 will include four Spotlight programming streams: Paint Me a Film, featuring works that engage critically with the camera’s role as both disruptor and co-creator, examining the mediums of film and photography in and of themselves; True Lies, a selection of experimental and hybrid films that blur the lines between narrative and documentary forms; The Devil Stole Our Laughter, which takes its name from a quote by Mexican land defender Isela González Díaz and features films that follow individuals and communities living in the aftermath of change and disruption, as they search for meaning in the landscape; and Children of the Sun, titled after the late Lebanese painter and poet Etel Adnan’s work of the same name, featuring a collection of films from both Lebanon and Palestine, two places which are deeply and historically intertwined. Films in these four Spotlights include: Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias, Saber Zammouri’s The Wasp and the Orchid, Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s A Man Imagined, Pablo Alvarez-Mesa’s La Laguna del Soldado, Anand Patwardhan’s The World is Family, and Lisa Jackson’s Wilfred Buck, among others.
Several Canadian filmmakers will launch their world premieres at DOXA 2024. Conor McNally’s nanekawâsis is among the list of films that will screen for the very first time at DOXA, as well as Ryan Dickie’s film Tea Creek, which chronicles the Indigenous food sovereignty work of activist Jacob Beaton. The Originals (directed by Niall Patrick McNeil and Mike McKinlay), about the history of BC’s Caravan Farm Theatre—a legendary outdoor theatre company established in 1978—will also have its world premiere at DOXA 2024. Finally, short films Cake and Death (William Brown), Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Natalie Baird and Toby Gillies), and Twig (Claire Sanford) enjoy world premieres during this year’s festival as well. These Canadian films and more are exciting titles in DOXA’s 2024 festival program.
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Committed to cultivating curiosity and critical thought, DOXA 2024 delivers some of the very best in contemporary documentary cinema over 11 days. DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs May 2-12, 2024, offering an exceptional selection of films, filmmaker Q+A’s and Industry events. Select screenings will include live and pre-recorded filmmaker Q+As and extended discussions. Festival tickets and passes will be available starting Wednesday, April 3rd; for details, check www.doxafestival.ca. For further information, call the DOXA office at 604.646.3200.
DOXA is presented by The Documentary Media society, a Vancouver-based non-profit, charitable society. DOXA is presented on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) territory.
