Invisible City (film)

Last updated
Invisible City
Directed by Hubert Davis
Written by Sondra Kelly
Hubert Davis
Mehernaz Lentin
Produced byMehernaz Lentin
Gerry Flahive
Hubert Davis
Cinematography Chris Romeike
Edited byHubert Davis
Music byFraser MacDougall
Michael White
Distributed by National Film Board of Canada
Release date
  • May 2, 2009 (2009-05-02)(HotDocs Film Festival)
Running time
76 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

Invisible City is a 2009 documentary film by Hubert Davis about young Black Canadian men at risk in Toronto's Regent Park district. Davis spent three years filming two boys in their final years of high school. [1]

Contents

The primary subjects of the film are Kendell and Mikey, students at Nelson Mandela Park Public School. [2] Invisible City follows their struggles with academic and behavioral issues, and their sense of futility. [3]

Invisible City is produced by Industry Pictures/Shine Films in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada. [4]

Reception

Invisible City received the Best Canadian Feature Documentary award at the 2009 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. [2] [5] In announcing its decision, the Hot Docs festival jury stated:

The Award goes to a film that weds form and content with extraordinary grace and intelligence. It is no small feat to maintain a focus on the raw material of real human experience while honouring the documentary as a cinematic art form. Because it does all these things, and because it maintains the dignity of its subjects’ lives while asking difficult questions about the conditions under which those lives are lived, the jury has chosen Hubert Davis’s Invisible City as the best Canadian feature. [6]

The film opened theatrically at the Royal Theatre in Toronto in February 2010, before premiering on TVOntario. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Frei</span> Swiss filmmaker and film producer

Christian Frei is a Swiss filmmaker and film producer. He is mostly known for his films War Photographer (2001), The Giant Buddhas (2005) and Space Tourists (2009).

The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June 2020. In addition to the annual festival, Hot Docs owns and operates the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, administers multiple production funds, and runs year-round screening programs including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase.

Hubert Davis is a Canadian filmmaker who was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming for his directorial debut in Hardwood, a short documentary exploring the life of his father, former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis. Davis was the first Afro-Canadian to be nominated for an Oscar.

Maureen Judge is a Canadian Screen Awards (CSA) winning filmmaker and television producer. Much of her work is documentary and explores themes of love, betrayal and acceptance in the context of the modern family, with the most recent films focusing on the dreams and challenges of contemporary youth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Raymont</span> Canadian filmmaker

Peter Raymont is a Canadian filmmaker and producer and the president of White Pine Pictures, an independent film, television and new media production company based in Toronto. Among his films are Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005), A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (2007), The World Stopped Watching (2003) and The World Is Watching (1988). The 2011 feature documentary West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson and 2009's Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould were co-directed with Michèle Hozer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Officer</span> Canadian writer, filmmaker, and ice hockey player (1975–2023)

Charles Officer was a Canadian film and television director, writer, actor, and professional hockey player.

Nik Sheehan is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, who established an international reputation with No Sad Songs (1985), the first major documentary on AIDS. The film cited by world-renowned specialist Dr. Balfour Mount as "the best film on the planet this year".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mahboubeh Honarian</span> Iranian-Canadian Film Director

Mahboubeh Honarian is an Iranian-Canadian film director and film producer. She was awarded her MSc in engineering multimedia and BA in Humanities with a media and cultural studies bias in the United Kingdom.

Waterlife is a 2009 documentary film and web documentary about the state of the Great Lakes. It was directed by Kevin McMahon.

Leave Them Laughing: A Musical Comedy About Dying is a 2010 documentary film directed by Academy-Award-winning director John Zaritsky. It follows the life of singer and comedian Carla Zilber-Smith, after she is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, as she blogs and jokes her way through a disease that carries a certain death sentence. The film premiered at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on May 6, 2010, winning the Special Jury Prize for best Canadian Documentary. It was nominated for Best Documentary at the 31st Genie Awards.

Alan Zweig is a Canadian documentary filmmaker known for often using film to explore his own life.

A Hard Name is a 2009 documentary film by Alan Zweig that explores the lives of ex-convicts.

<i>Highrise</i> (documentary) Multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises

Highrise is a multi-year, multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises, directed by Katerina Cizek and produced by Gerry Flahive for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The project, which began in 2009, includes five web documentaries—The Thousandth Tower, Out My Window, One Millionth Tower, A Short History of the Highrise and Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise—as well as more than 20 derivative projects such as public art exhibits and live performances.

John Kastner was a four-time Emmy Award-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker whose later work focused on the Canadian criminal justice system. His films included the documentaries Out of Mind, Out of Sight (2014), a film about patients at the Brockville Mental Health Centre, named best Canadian feature documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; NCR: Not Criminally Responsible (2013), exploring the personal impact of the mental disorder defence in Canada; Life with Murder (2010), The Lifer and the Lady and Parole Dance, and the 1986 made-for-television drama Turning to Stone, set in the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario.

<i>The Delian Mode</i> 2009 Canadian film

The Delian Mode is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Kara Blake and released in 2009. The film is a profile of Delia Derbyshire, a British composer best known for arranging the theme music to Doctor Who. It takes its name from the title of a piece of incidental music that Derbyshire wrote in the 1960s.

Michael Del Monte is a Canadian documentary filmmaker best known for writing and directing the 2017 film Transformer.

The Lindalee Tracey Award is an annual film award, presented in memory of Canadian documentary filmmaker Lindalee Tracey to emerging filmmakers whose works reflect values of social justice and a strong personal point of view. Created by Peter Raymont, Tracey's widower and former filmmaking partner, through his production studio White Pine Pictures, the award is presented annually at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; however, the award is not limited to documentary films, but may be awarded to films in any genre, and films do not have to have been screened as part of the Hot Docs program to be eligible.

Geographies of Solitude is a Canadian documentary film by Jacquelyn Mills that was released in 2022. The film is guided by Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who lives on Nova Scotia's Sable Island, where she catalogues the island's wild Sable Island horses, and endeavours to preserve its unique ecosystem.

The Hot Docs Award for Best Canadian Feature Documentary is an annual Canadian film award, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to the film selected by jury members as the year's best Canadian feature film in the festival program. The award was presented for the first time in 1998; prior to that year, awards were presented in various genre categories, but no special distinction for Canadian films was presented. The award is sponsored by the Documentary Organization of Canada and Telefilm Canada, and carries a cash prize of $10,000.

The Don Haig Award is an annual award, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival for distinguished achievement by a Canadian independent documentary film producer with a film in that year's festival program. Despite the requirement to have a film in that year's festival lineup, however, the award is not presented for that specific film, but in consideration of the recipient's overall body of work.

References

  1. 1 2 Brown, Phil (February 3, 2010). "Invisible City: A story of Regent Park as told by two of its own". Metro News . Toronto: Free Daily News Group Inc. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  2. 1 2 Bracken, Kasandra (February 4, 2010). "Black and White and Invisible All Over". Torontoist . Gothamist LLC. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  3. Cranston, Michael (February 3, 2010). "Invisible City". Eye Weekly . Retrieved 4 February 2010.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. "Invisible City". Film website. National Film Board of Canada. Archived from the original on 7 February 2010. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  5. "Film about Toronto's Regent Park earns Hot Docs award". CBC News. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. May 8, 2009. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  6. Knegt, Peter (May 9, 2009). "From a "Village" to a "City": Hot Docs Awards Their Best". indieWire . Retrieved 5 February 2010.