CINEMA | Questlove Remembers 'Summer of Soul' x DOXA 2021

"They call it freedom music, because it's what freedom feels like."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

The Roots drummer Questlove (aka Amir Thompson) makes his directorial debut remembering the landmark Harlem Cultural Festival, often called "Black Woodstock" because it took place the same summer in 1969 as the iconic music festival some hundred miles away, in the joyful music documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).

SCREEN | A Queer Circle – 'Someone Like Me' x DOXA 2021

"I moved to Vancouver from Toronto in order to be gay."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

NFB's queer documentary, Someone Like Me, follows a gay Ugandan asylum seeker (Drake) as he struggles to find a sense of freedom and independence within his new local community. Subjects include a varied assortment of eleven strangers (called "the circle") connected to Rainbow Refugee, a non-profit group matching LGBTQ+ asylum claimants with Canadian sponsors, as they try to help his resettlement.

SCREEN | Bad Economics – 'The Gig is Up' x DOXA 2021

"There is a cost to convenience."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

UBC professor and filmmaker Shannon Walsh personifies the many perils and bad economics of being a part of the ever-growing gig economy in her engaging global documentary about the new labour movement in The Gig is Up. Her film about contemporary capitalism excels in putting such a massive worldwide issue of where modern freelance work is moving while balancing it with the human cost of the people on the ground.

SCREEN | 'The Mitchells vs. the Machines' Saves the World

"It took a while to figure myself out."

Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Animation

The Mitchells vs. the Machines (aka Connected), written and directed by animators Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe (co-director), is a refreshing dysfunctional family comedy about the robot apocalypse. Framed through a cross-country road trip, the animated feature mixes comedic stylings for an entirely entertaining effort about our current sense of disconnection as a result of modern technology.

SCREEN | Splitting Apart – 'We Broke Up' Camps Out

"We're just playing house."

Vertical Entertainment

The very accurately titled We Broke Up is director Jeff Rosenberg's indie romantic comedy about a couple breaking up. Comic actors Aya Cash and William Jackson Harper play Lori and Doug, a long-term romantic pair, who awkwardly end (and then reignite) their flailing coupling before attending her sister's destination wedding. It's a fairly typical sitcom-y premise for a relationship dramedy featuring some heartfelt performances.

GETAWAY | Sea to Sky x Fergie's Cafe x Sunwolf x Squamish

Squamish—Late last summer on a somewhat random but much-needed mid-week break of a day trip, we travelled nearby to enjoy a scenic brunch meal from the popular but secluded Fergie's Cafe (reopened after a devastating fire) located on the Sunwolf Riverside Resort cabin grounds in the neighbouring town of Brackendale.

SCREEN | Sebastian Stan Parties Through 'Monday'

"Thank you for not being an asshole."

IFC Films

Greek filmmaker Argyris Papadimitropoulos channels a pure sense of destructive yet joyful energy in his sexy indie romance. Essentially a loose European party film, Monday chronicles the long-term aftermath of a seemingly random summer weekend of debaucherous partying across various Greek islands.

CABLE | Future Romance – Cristin Milioti Escapes 'Made for Love'

Paramount Television Studios

Author Alissa Nutting adapts her own near-future dark relationship comedy sci-fi novel into a television series alongside fellow novelists Dean Bakopoulos, Patrick Somerville, and showrunner Christina Lee for an odd but endearing semi-satire focused on personal catharsis. Starring an energetic Cristin Milioti as a sort of trophy wife to a maniacal tech CEO and controlling husband (an unhinged Billy Magnussen), Made for Love is filled with interesting ideas about contemporary society at the intersection of intimacy and intelligence.

CINEMA | Lost in Space Odyssey – Lord of the 'Voyagers'

Lionsgate

Writer/director Neil Burger turns his moody space odyssey Voyagers into the usual Lord of the Flies allegory with its main subjects replaced by overly hormonal (and very good-looking) teenagers. Set in 2063, the dystopian film tries to hammer the familiar sci-fi warnings of environmental harm and tribalist behaviour through a glossy sheen of melodrama.