Documentary film is the star of the month at the Dave Barber Cinematheque.

Starting today and running through Nov. 8, Cinematheque and the Winnipeg Film Group play host to the 18th edition of the Gimme Some Truth festival, an annual event devoted to sharing new and restored local, Canadian and international documentaries.

Artist and curator Christina Oyawale — a recent graduate of the University of Manitoba’s master of fine arts program — is the festival’s short-film programming assistant.

Oyawale, who uses they/them pronouns, says the goal of the festival “feels like the opportunity to sit in our collective humanity,” by presenting films about some of the “most human topics affecting us as a society.

“We are constantly inundated with information on a daily basis, from our phones to advertising, so it feels refreshing to screen films that are made with a real sense of care and curiosity for our inner and outer worlds,” Oyawale said in email interview.

In their role curating Connective Unravelling, an 18A-rated program of documentary short films that runs Saturday at 5 p.m., Oyawale had to narrow the field from over 80 submissions down to five.

“I was really interested in finding films that allowed viewers to peer behind the curtain of our collective anxieties, desires and joys,” they say. “There are films that navigate the complexities of sex work, post-partum depression and addiction in a manner that fills the gaps of many of our common preconceived notions of what we see as ‘suffering.’”

Connective Unravelling features films about a nude dancer in Mexico supporting his mother financially (Eli Jean Tahchi’s 0004NGEL); a time-hopping road journey about the medical system, vehicles and memory (Yuula Benivolski’s why I never became a driver); an unflinching look at friendship in the throes of addiction (Theodore Collatos’ Is Gang Stalking Real); and a mother’s sensory connection to her son after losing her sight (Sarah Seené’s Orbites).

Also featured in the program is Quebecois artist Emilie Baillargeon’s I Had an Obvious Idea and I’m Waiting for it to Come Back. An experimental portrait of post-partum self-isolation, it was well-received at last summer’s Gimli International Film Festival, where it made its Manitoba première.

Among the features programmed, Oyawale is most excited by Wildwood, NJ, directed by Ruth Leitman and Carol Weaks Cassidy, which screens Friday at 9:15 p.m. The film, made in 1994, is shot in and around “the last great American carnival town,” featuring touching and honest depictions of the working lives of everyone from go-go dancers to haunted house vampires.

“The film is such a beautiful depiction of a documentary made by women for women,” says Oyawale. “I say this because the co-directors really made their interviewees feel listened to in a manner that does not feel patronizing but truly genuine. The film has an air of curiosity, longing and care, where women and girls are able to discuss summer flings, friendship and their intimate relationship to the carnival boardwalk of Wildwood, N.J. This feels particularly radical to me as the media has historically misrepresented women in a misogynistic manner.”

Wildwood, NJ will screen alongside Canadian director Mark Loeser’s El Ring and Winnipegger Colby Richardson’s Take a Look Around. Oyawale calls that short, which screened at the most recent Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, “an experimental data-mosh film” shot at the Red River Exhibition by a camera hooked up to a power-drill.

Loeser will introduce his film, while Leitman will be on hand for a virtual post-screening question-and-answer session.

The festival ends Sunday with the screening of the finished films from participants in the Gimme 10 in 30 challenge. Filmmakers were chosen by lottery on Oct. 5 and tasked with completing a new documentary film in 30 days, with the only restriction being a seven-minute maximum. Their projects will screen at 7 p.m.

Throughout November, non-fiction and verité films set to screen at downtown Winnipeg’s only active movie theatre include Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham’s Tel Aviv-set military exposé NAZA on Nov. 13; Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man, Sinakson Trevor Solway’s award-winning portrait of Blackfoot masculinity, on Nov. 18; and the 25th anniversary re-release of Toronto director Alan Zweig’s, Vinyl.

On Nov. 19, sketch-comedy legend and Winnipeg resident Kevin McDonald (Kids in the Hall) will showcase a feat of capitalist endurance when he hosts a screening of Hands on a Hardbody, a 1997 documentary about 24 Texans who lay their palms on a Nissan pickup truck for a chance to drive away in style.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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