The 16th Annual Gimme Some Truth Documentary Festival kicks off November 6-9 with new world documentaries, local and Canadian shorts programs and the Gimme 10 in 30! Documentary Challenge.
This year’s edition moves between the essayistic and the observational, the visionary and the handmade, where modes of seeing become acts of care, critique, and imagination. Collectively these films interrogate the threshold between documentation and dream, survival and spirit, reminding us that documentary is an act of reimagining the world as it might yet become.
Opening this year’s festival are A Life (1987) and Life Without Death (2000) by the late visionary Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole. His meditative and mythic explorations of endurance and mortality, and his uncompromising vision we felt the need to revisit.
We’re incredibly excited to welcome filmmaker and guest curator Mike Hoolboom to present two short film programs as part of his ongoing Capitalisms project, Capitalisms 1: Unlearning Lessons and Capitalisms 2: The Family You Choose, followed by a discussion and book launch for Mike Hoolboom: Work, moderated by Meganelizabeth Diamond.
This year’s shorts programs foreground documentary’s capacity to think through images with animation, choreography, found memory, critical observation, and meditations on place. These films inhabit the liminal space between testimony and imagination, redefining how truth is both seen and felt.
Shorts Program #1: “pastoral nocturnes” features films by Toby Gillies and Natalie Baird,Noa Blanche Beschorner, Mike Rollo, Sandy McLennan, James Dixon, and Kate Solar.
Shorts Program #2: “The Index Reframed” features films by Ebunoluwa Akinbo, Lina Saïdani,Marc-Olivier Huard, Ibrahim Shuaib, Justice Rutikara Jack Parker, Darcy Tara McDiarmid and Chantal Rousseau, and Caroline Monnet.
Join us on the closing night of the festival for our annual documentary challenge Gimme 10 in 30!, featuring 10 new short documentaries created by local filmmakers made in the 30 days prior to the festival. DOC Manitoba will be presenting a cash prize of $500 for the audience favourite.
Lastly, we’re proud to present a collection of thoughtful and challenging documentary films throughout the festival, including the 10th anniversary screening of Jesse Green’s Brown Town Muddy Water; Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens’ essay film about the mysteries of consciousness, John Lilly and The Earth Coincidence Control Office; Amalie Atkins’ Agatha’s Almanac, a powerful conduit for often-overlooked stories, amplifying voices and rural perspectives; Kamal Aljafari’s homage to Gaza and its people, With Hasan in Gaza; Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk offers an intimate, first-hand perspective on life under siege in Gaza; Christopher Morris’ durational A Year In A Field tells the story of one Cornish field told over one climatic year.
We can’t wait to welcome you all back to the Dave Barber Cinematheque this November for our 16th Annual Gimme Some Truth Documentary Festival!
Gimme Some Truth was started by film writer, publisher, producer, and filmmaker Kier-La Janisse during her tenure as staff at the WFG in 2008.