Five O'Clock Docs

Documentaries are hot! This series, curated by AFF Senior Programmer and DAG Film Curator Ron Foley Macdonald, presents some of the best documentaries of the last decade. Screenings are at 5:00 pm. every day during the Festival.

Friday 15 September, 5 pm:  One Day In September

Kevin Macdonald, USA, 1999, 92 minutes. The Oscar-winning documentary treatment of the same subject that supplied the story for Spielberg’s Munich, One Day In September is a far more concise and powerful retelling of the Olympic Crisis of 1972.

Saturday 16 September, 5 pm: The Gleaners And I

Agnes Varda, France, 2000, 82 minutes. The great French New Wave director, armed with a tiny DV camera, follows the people who pick over the fields and comb for the throwaways in our disposable culture.

Sunday 17 September, 5 pm: Winged Migration

J.Perrin, J.Cluzard, M.Debats, G.Jarry & F.Roux, 2001, 91 minutes, France/EU. The first of the major new naturalist documentaries, Winged Migration meditates on the aerial movement of avians, translating it into sheer motion picture poetry.

Monday 18 September: The Spirit Of Anna Mae

Catherine Anne Martin, NFB Canada, 2002, 74 minutes. The epic story of Anna Mae Aquash, the Mi’kmaw who was one of the key figures of the American Indian Movement’s armed protest at Wounded Knee in 1973; her subsequent murder has yet to be officially solved.

Tuesday 19 September: Capturing The Friedmans

Andrew Jarecki, USA, 2002, 107 minutes. The troubling story of an American family deeply enmeshed in a series of shocking allegations, made even more disturbing by the fact that its members left much videotaped material as potential evidence.

Wednesday 20 September: The Fog Of War

Errol Morris, USA, 2003, 107 minutes. One of the architects of America’s Vietnam policies admits it was all a mistake in one the greatest cinematic apologies ever made, directed with cool style and verve by Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History Of Time).

Thursday 21 September: Murderball

Henry Rubin, Dana Shapiro, USA/Canada, 85 minutes. The game of wheelchair rugby is played with ferocious precision and relentless energy by athletes who can barely be called ‘disabled’ in an edge-of-your-seat competition between Teams USA and Canada.

Friday 22 September: Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog, Canada/USA, 2005, 104 minutes. Veteran German director Werner Herzog’s astonishing portrait of a truly demented amateur American Grizzly enthusiast who is attacked by the very bears he’s sworn to live with and protect.