Day Eleven - Sunday, August 31st

Lay Down in This World
Pim Braeckevelt - Belgium - 6 min.
English
Animated. A guardian angel tries to dissuade a man ready to jump off the roof of a building.

Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes
Peter Rosen - United States - 86 min.
English
For over thirty years, Keillor’s been doing a live show, the Prairie Home Companion, on NPR (for those who *don’t know, the U.S. public radio network, similar to our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). [A side note: Stewart McClean and The Vinyl Café is a Canadian writer and show version of Keillor Canada]. Centered around his ongoing stories about characters from Lake Wobegon, a mythical town constructed around his childhood memories growing up Lutheran Norwegian in Minnesota. The show features live radio plays, a concept he gleaned from the great radio shows of the late 1940’s and 50’s, before I Love Lucy grabbed peoples attention away from radio to TV. There’s a complete cast of regulars who travel with him: actors, sound effects people, a band, and the associated production staff. Each show has hand-picked roots style folk music guest performers. He starred in a dramatic film about his show, made by Robert Altman in 2006. This documentary, finished just a few weeks ago, follows Keillor as he travels between shows and his homes in Minneapolis, and New York. Not really a biography, but more of love affair with America, the kindler, gentler one that Keillor seeks out in his audiences across the U.S. I think some of the patriotism rubs my Canadian self-effacing character the wrong way, feeling almost jingoistic, but as Keillor says in the documentary, he feels there’s some good character in the American people, something that’s been lost in the takeover of American politics by “angry people yelling at each other”. I don’t know if Keillor is merely living in the past and choosing to ignore the realities of how social dialogue has changed in the States, or he’s really got a link to a more friendlier side to the American people. 5 million people may tune into his show every Saturday night. How many of those are small town Americans and how many are urban dwellers who find comfort in the stories from the countryside would be an interesting demographic to know. His humour is gentle, witty, and cutting at turns, and regularly turns to the sentimental. Who was it who said that sentimentality is the sediment of emotion? I like Keillor’s work as I’d like a good rhubarb pie (a metaphor that’s in the film), it’s honest, and plain, as a nice change from writing that is all “haute cuisine”. What saves it for me is that he is honestly self-aware of the artifice that he weaves, even in his plain style of story-telling, and he doesn’t hide from it.

El pollo, el pez y el cangrejo real (The Chicken, the Fish, and the King Crab)
José Luis López-Linares - Spain - 86 min.
Spanish, French, eng. sub.
After watching this film (and seeing wonderful homemade paella being made), we went on a quest to find some – I haven’t had a good one in about 25 years, and Jonathan’s never tried it. Montreal is apparently not an easy city to find good paella. Tapas is all the rage now, and is a lot easier to do. A crazy, rollercoaster ride of a documentary that follows the Spanish team entered into the Bocuse d‘Or , the bi-annual French culinary competition that chefs worldwide aspire to win. Named after the legendary Paul Bocuse The title comes from the three ingredients chosen for the 2007 competition – Norwegian halibut and king crab and Bresse chicken (the famous free-range French fowl). I could feel myself getting stressed watching Jesus Alberto Almagro Morales perfecting his timing and technique to deliver exactly identical portions perfectly prepared.