2013

Georgetown, Guyana. Muscle is a busy man. Striving to pull his family up into the middle class, he ekes out a living raising fighting cocks and songbirds. And he’s trying, not very successfully, to get his mother, Mary Smith, off the booze. At 75, she’s still able to recite poems that she wrote years ago to her family who listen with love and admiration, but she also has a troublesome tendency to head off down the road to get drunk on “high wine.” Mary drinks to forget, in particular to drown out the night, which she has good reason to dread.

Thin, doughy folds encasing a savoury filling of meat and vegetables: The recipe for dal puri travelled with indentured workers from India’s Gangetic plain to British and Dutch Caribbean colonies in the 19th Century. In the 1960s, the wrapped roti migrated from Trinidad to North America, where it is known as West Indian roti. As the dish moved from home fire to street stall to restaurant chain, and from festival to fast food, the flatbread was transformed in ingredients, cooking method, ways of eating and identity.

Stan Hunt is a red cedar wood carver, an art he learned from his father, Henry Hunt, and grandfather, Mungo Martin - master sculptors from the Kwakiutl First Nation from the northern side of Vancouver island. Stan is now working on the most significant piece of his life, a 42-foot totem pole carved from a 1500-year-old, 5-ton cedar tree, a project commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Public Spaces of the City of Buenos Aires. Once completed, his totem pole will travel 15,000 km by boat to reach Río de la Plata, Argentina.

Winter in Québec. Blinding snow. Freezing fingers. Endless complaining. Why endure wind chill factors and six hours of daylight when you can escape to a dream vacation in the sun at an all-inclusive resort? The warm, turquoise ocean of Cuba is just a plane ride away. By putting to the test the tenacious paradigm of salutary tourism, Playa Coloniale is a grinding look at an industry that, along with its users, rarely questions itself.

The ruggedly beautiful Fogo Island lies off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. In this remote corner of Canada, traces of Elizabethan English and Old Irish dialects may still be heard, and remnants of ancient folk customs shape the lives of its inhabitants. However, in recent years, economic hardship has taken a toll, forcing many to leave. Homes once full of fiddle music, are now decaying, becoming part of the tundra landscape.

The ruggedly beautiful Fogo Island lies off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. In this remote corner of Canada, traces of Elizabethan English and Old Irish dialects may still be heard, and remnants of ancient folk customs shape the lives of its inhabitants. However, in recent years, economic hardship has taken a toll, forcing many to leave. Homes once full of fiddle music, are now decaying, becoming part of the tundra landscape.

Pachuca, 1956. Brothers Arturo and Gustavo Martínez leave their hometown in central Mexico with the desire to cross the continent on bicycles. Eighty-two days and 5,600 km later, they arrive in Toronto, not knowing that this journey will change the entire route of their lives. Ever since director Andrea Martínez Crowther can remember, stories of her father and uncle’s trip have formed part of her family’s folklore. Over half a century later, Arturo and Gustavo - now in their 70s - retrace that epic path, in an exploration of memory, the cycles of life and the unavoidable passage of time.