Toronto International Film Festival: (9/4-14/03)

• Published in: Take 1 (Toronto. 1992) Vol. 12; no. 44
• Main Author: Cummins, Kathleen
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto Wyndham Wise 01.12.2003
• Subjects: Motion picture festivals
• ISSN: 1192-5507

This year, two Canadian documentaries were honoured by the AGF People's Choice Award; Ron Mann's Go Further and Mark Achbar's and Jennifer Abbott's The Corporation. As first runner-up, Go Further is an entertaining and fun film about a very serious topic: environmental sustainability. The publicity surrounding Go Further made much of Woody Harrelson's presence, but the film never falters off its course, deploying Woody as more of a device to promote its message about alternative living and our mainstream drive toward the death of the planet. The second runner-up, The Corporation, is a dense exploration into the meaning, the power and the future of corporations. Based on the book by the same title, the film is a damning investigation into how and why corporations function the way they do. Everyone has blood on their hands in this film, especially us, as Achbar and Abbot reveal how we are all entangled in a codependent, nefarious relationship with the corporate economy. To Achbar's and Abbott's credit, the film doesn't just point its finger and walk away; it manages to offer some answers to the complex set of questions it poses about our economy, our environment and our legacy as human beings.