Vancouver International Film Festival

Gilbert’s TIFF hat trick

Bron Studios has won multiple awards for its work. (bronstudios.com screenshot)

Aaron L. Gilbert had every reason to be smiling broadly at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The Burnaby-based producer had three film screenings: Welcome to Me (starring Kristen Wiig and Tim Robbins); Kill Me Three Times (starring Simon Pegg) and Miss Julie (starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell).

“This is one of the top three most prestigious film festivals in the world, rivaling Cannes in terms of its importance to our industry,” Gilbert said. “Having three there was pretty exciting. It’s tough to get in, it’s an honor to be there and it’s a wonderful launching ground to create awareness of your film.”

As a result of the TIFF screenings, all three of Gilbert’s films are closing deals with American distributors. Welcome to Me (which also screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival to rave reviews) will be released in March, and the other two are also likely to be on the big screen in the United States and Canada over the next year, he said.

photo - Aaron L. Gilbert (photo from bronstudios.com) — Aaron L. Gilbert *(photo from bronstudios.com)*

The 42-year-old from London, Ont., was studying at McMaster University when he had an opportunity to work in the music industry in 1993. That changed his life track, and Gilbert found himself moving between Vancouver and Los Angeles doing music management, managing artists and handling the international licensing of music. He credits his passion for the arts to his parents, Gloria and Joseph Gilbert.

“We’ve always been a family where the arts was important,” he reflected. “My parents introduced me and my siblings to theatre and music and gave us an opportunity to see and do a lot of things. Today, my brother and sister are also active in theatre and arts, and our love for it comes from the introduction our parents gave us as kids.”

Today, Gilbert is managing director of Bron Studios in Burnaby, which he co-founded with his wife Brenda in 2010, and where he wears many different hats. “Financially, I’m involved in putting the different pieces together for our films and with production partners, but I’m also very involved in all creative elements, such as finding a script, working on it and developing it, and selecting editors, directors of photography, talent agents, managers, casting directors and marketing people,” he explained.

Bron Studios specializes in live action and animation, and the tremendous talent pool in Vancouver’s animation industry makes this an excellent place to be, he said. “There’s a very mature film and TV industry here, and tremendous incentives for tax and government support for the animation industry in Vancouver, but it’s also about quality of life. I love the proximity to L.A. that Vancouver gives me and I often fly into L.A. for the day. This is as close to L.A. as I want to be!”

In the last few years, Gilbert has worked with Olivia Wilde, Will Ferrell, Helen Hunt, Jennifer Hudson and Julianne Moore, among many other Hollywood actors. “I’ve met such incredible, talented people, and to watch them perform just blows my mind,” he admitted. “I’m often astonished by how down-to-earth the actors are and, in many cases, we become friends. Will Ferrell, for example, is an incredible guy in addition to being crazy talented.”

Gilbert is actively working on several projects, one of them based on an original play about the inner workings of a Jewish family. Being Jewish certainly influences his decisions and the kinds of material he’s attracted to, he said. “My parents have always been so active in the Jewish community and that’s part of who I am and how I live my life, overall. I’m not in synagogue every Saturday, but I’m Jewish and culturally aware, and I know my roots. I’m definitely attracted to real-life stories about how Jews live in our existing world.”

Gilbert is also particularly attracted to films containing serious thematic material. “A lot of films I’ve done cover difficult subject matters in ways that can be accepted by wider audiences,” he explained. Welcome to Me, for example, is about a woman who is bipolar, while Decoding Annie Parker (2013) deals with breast cancer and heredity. “We want to approach difficult subject matters in a way that can be entertaining, but never preachy, to our audiences.”

Recently, he partnered with Niv Fichman of Rhombus Media on the psychological drama Into the Forest, from Canadian writer/director Patricia Rozema. And, in October, he was in Shreveport, La., working on I Saw the Light, a Hank Williams biopic, in partnership with Brett Ratner.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article was originally published on cjnews.com.

Small sample of VIFF

Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher raises some interesting ideas, but is lacklustre overall. (photo from VIFF)

The rollercoaster ride of emotions continued this week, as the Jewish Independent reviewed another set of films that will be featured at the Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 25-Oct. 10.

Last week, the JI was inspired by the documentary Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here (which the paper has sponsored), we enjoyed meeting the plucky street musicians on which Jalanan focused, and we were once again horrified by the banality of evil in learning more about Heinrich Himmler in the ironically-named The Decent One. This week, we went from mild boredom with Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher (Israel/France) to engaged interest with Nancy Kates’ documentary Regarding Susan Sontag (United States) to heart-racing dread with Alexandre Arcady’s 24 Days (France).

The Kindergarten Teacher raises some potentially thought-provoking questions about the origins of creativity, ie. what allows some people to craft magnificent works (in this case, poems) and others to never achieve anything above mediocrity. It does so through the relationship of kindergarten teacher and aspiring poet Nira and one of her students, five-year-old Yoav, who we’re supposed to believe is a poetic genius.

Understanding that this is a work of fiction, the bounds of believability are strained nonetheless on more than one occasion: for example, Yoav’s father fires Yoav’s nanny without pausing upon hearing Nira’s unsubstantiated accusations; and Yoav’s poems, while good for a child are hardly earth-shattering. What’s more frustrating is what passes for internal conflict – Nira staring, staring, staring – or genius at work – Yoav pacing, pacing, pacing. Ultimately, there’s nothing grossly wrong with the storytelling or filmmaking here, the movie just needed a better editing job and more focus. At an hour-and-a-half, The Kindergarten Teacher might have been stimulating; at almost two hours, it’s sleep-inducing.

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Nancy Kates’ Regarding Susan Sontag is an entertaining personality profile. (photo from VIFF)

Kates does a far better job at rousing curiosity, raising questions about the nature of art, culture, sexuality, happiness and other such topics. For those who already know a lot about Susan Sontag, Kates’ documentary likely won’t be that illuminating about her as a person or writer/critic/filmmaker, as the biographical and professional moments highlighted seem pretty basic. But, for those who know little of Sontag, this is a great introduction, which captures not only Sontag’s strengths but also her vulnerabilities. For both types of viewers, the excitement of intellectual, philosophical and personal discovery (and re-discovery) that Sontag felt and expressed is catching.

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photo - A scene from 24 Days: Ilan Halimi’s girlfriend and parents speak with the lead investigator on the case — A scene from *24 Days*: Ilan Halimi’s girlfriend and parents speak with the lead investigator on the case. *(photo from VIFF)*

We know how 24 Days will end. It’s based on the true, tragic, terrifying story of the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Ilan Halimi. Yet, Arcady manages to make us hope – throughout the entire film – that, somehow, Halimi will survive.

Overwhelming at times, between his family’s grief, the police’s desperation and his captors’ anger, 24 Days apparently sticks quite closely to the events as they happened in Paris in early 2006, as recorded by Halimi’s mother, Ruth, in the book 24 jours, la vérité sur la mort d’Ilan Halimi, which she co-wrote with Emilie Frèche.

Targeted for kidnapping because he was Jewish – the logic being all Jews have money and, therefore, could afford to pay a large ransom – Halimi was tortured, starved and, literally, left for dead when the negotiations for the ransom failed. His family was traumatized by ever-changing demands, graphic photos of their beaten son, expletive-filled threatening phone calls (more than 600 in 20 days) and false hope. The police are portrayed as genuinely trying to find and free Halimi, but as sadly ineffective – and completely insensitive to the antisemitic motivations of the criminals.

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Other films with Jewish content or creative talent include Zero Motivation (Israel), a black comedy by Israeli writer/director Talya Lavie about everyday life for a unit of young, female Israeli soldiers; and Welcome to Me (United States), a “dramedy” directed by Shira Piven, about a lottery winner (played by Kristen Wiig) who has borderline personality disorder and makes some questionable decisions about what to do with her windfall. For the full festival lineup, visit viff.org.

VIFF screens humanity’s best/worst

Ilya Kabakov is the subject of Amei Wallach’s lya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here. (photo from VIFF)

This year’s Vancouver International Film Festival (Sept. 25-Oct. 10) will take viewers on a rollercoaster ride, if the films reviewed by the Independent this week are any indication. We went from soaring heights of imagination and freedom with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here to the music-filled yet poverty-ridden streets of Jakarta in Jalanan to the horrifyingly shallow depths where evil is normal in The Decent One.

“What interests me is where is the border between reality and the dream,” says artist Ilya Kabakov in Enter Here. With this film that the Jewish Independent has sponsored at VIFF, Amei Wallach follows Ilya and his wife and partner Emilia Kabakov in the months leading to a massive retrospective in Moscow in 2008. She captures the couple’s personalities: Ilya, with his mind anywhere but on earth, still traumatized by his life – and that of his mother, who led a very difficult existence – in the Soviet Union, which he escaped in 1987, and Emilia, the organizer, fearless. The exhibit marked his first return to Russia, and there is trepidation about how it will be received, and how he will handle his memories.

Kabakov’s paintings and installations are unbelievable. They inspire contemplation and awe at their scope and creativity. Most of the ones highlighted in the documentary critique what Russia would have been – and seemingly has become again – to live in: the surveillance, distrust, harshness, bureaucracy. His works are influenced by various events and people, including his mother who, at his behest, wrote a diary when she was in her 80s.

In his New York studio, Kabakov reflects on three types of losers: mankind in principle, his feelings about himself despite his self-acknowledged success, and his reaction to Russia. He describes Russia as “permanent rainy,” and speaks of life there as “two-faced,” the public front and the personal. As a non-state-sponsored artist, he created much work, but only exhibited twice in his home country. For Kabakov, for whom the museum is akin to the church, “The last haven of our history and our spirit,” this alone would have been reason to flee. For the many around the world who have glimpsed his great mind through his work, we’re very lucky he did.

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photo - Of the 12 million people living in Indonesia’s capital city, some 7,000 earn their living as buskers, according to the film, and Jalanan follows the lives of three of them – Boni, Ho and Tuti – over a five-year period. — Of the 12 million people living in Indonesia’s capital city, some 7,000 earn their living as buskers, according to the film, and Jalanan follows the lives of three of them – Boni, Ho and Tuti – over a five-year period. *(photo from VIFF)*

Director Daniel Ziv obviously fell in love with the street musicians he profiles in Jalanan. Their aspirations, energy, passion, kindness, and resilience – he communicates all of it, such that you almost don’t notice it’s a documentary about poverty, development, corruption, and the treatment of women, the place of art in society, and other such weighty subject matter.

Of the 12 million people living in Indonesia’s capital city, some 7,000 earn their living as buskers, according to the film, and Jalanan follows the lives of three of them – Boni, Ho and Tuti – over a five-year period. In the face of hardship, the troubadours remain optimistic and driven to create and share their music. Nothing gets them down: Boni and his family are evicted from their 10-year “home” under a bridge, Ho gets jailed for just being on the streets and Tuti is unable to live with any of her three children.

As writes Ziv in a director’s statement, “This isn’t the type of documentary that feeds off tragedy … this is not about thousands of lives being threatened … this isn’t even about the poorest of the poor. Rather, Jalanan traces the lives of a forgotten, marginalized community that slips through society’s cracks. The dilemmas and conflicts here represent a huge segment of urban population in the developing world…. This film is meant to give them a voice, to raise awareness for their conditions and struggle.”

Ziv takes the awareness beyond the film, with a campaign to raise money to buy homes for Boni, Ho and Tuti: fundrazr.com/campaigns/dgEM6.

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photo - Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One is based on personal letters, documents and photographs that were found in the Himmlers’ home by U.S. soldiers in 1945 — Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One is based on personal letters, documents and photographs that were found in the Himmlers’ home by U.S. soldiers in 1945. (photo from VIFF)

And then, there is a person like Heinrich Himmler, who could write home to his family with love and affection while on a trip visiting concentration camps. Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One is based on personal letters, documents and photographs that were found in the Himmlers’ home by U.S. soldiers in 1945, but which weren’t handed over to the military authorities. They became the property of Lapa’s father somehow, and she has used them to make this documentary.

The Decent One is very stylized. Voice actors read the letters, diary entries and documents from Himmler, his wife, daughter, mistress and others, archival footage has sound effects and/or music added, and benign-sounding excerpts from the writings are juxtaposed against brutal images. Viewers follow Himmler from a young age to his rise in the Nazi party and through much of the war. The cumulative effect is powerful. The most upsetting and scary conclusion is that understanding evil is nigh impossible.