Between May 2 and 11, the 2014 DOXA Documentary Film Festival will screen 90 nonfiction films from all over the globe. Sabrina Furminger lays out her top three festival picks.
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden
The year is 1929. A German couple arrives on Floreana, an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. All they want is to be left alone. To their horror, they’re soon joined by a handful of other society-shirking Germans, including a bawdy Baroness who threatens Floreana’s status quo with her plans to build a hotel. Within five years, half of Floreana’s adult inhabitants are missing or dead under mysterious circumstances. The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden plants haunting questions about the true price of paradise. May 6, Rio.
To Be Takei
For baby boomers and sci-fi fans, George Takei will always be Hikaru Sulu, helmsmen of the original USS Enterprise. For millennials, he’s Uncle George, hip and savvy social media guru and founder of the “Oh, Myyy” movement. But Takei, 77, is also a survivor of a World War II internment camp, a gay rights activist, a resonant voice on The Howard Stern Show, and husband to non-showbiz type Brad Altman. To Be Takei rounds out our understanding of the trailblazing – and enduring – icon. May 8, Playhouse.
Freak Out
The American hippies of the 1960s weren’t the first to grow long beards and sing about love and peace. They can actually trace their beginnings to German cultural radicals who established communes throughout Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Freak Out is the story of one such commune established on a Swiss mountaintop in 1900. They dance nude, love freely, grow their hair long, and eat only what they grow. Alas, the influence of the outside world is not to be avoided, and the idyllic commune and its founders fall prey to a variety of grim fates. May 5, The Cinematheque; May 10, Vancity Theatre.
• Full schedule and tickets at DOXAFestival.ca
