PeterRaymont Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The Emmys aren't only for television shows -- they also give props to documentaries that air on TV, and this year, two films about the Rwandan genocide in 1994 received the award. Canadian filmmaker Peter Raymont was honored as the co-recipient of the 2007 Emmy Award for Best Documentary yesterday, for Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, along with Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman for God Sleeps in Rwanda, a documentary short narrated by Rosario Dawson. This is a great launch for the feature adapted from Raymont's doc, similarly-named Shake Hands with the Devil, which comes out at the end of the week.

It's been a bittersweet ride for the filmmaker. His partner, Lindalee Tracy, succumbed to breast cancer last year, and she's been spoken of often, both in his discussion of his new documentary, A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, which I reviewed at TIFF, and last night: "This film was a chronicle of one man standing up for justice, and the quest for justice for those who can't fight for themselves was the goal that inspired Lindalee. She would be proud tonight."

Where Devil is about Dallaire's attempts to stop the genocide in Rwanda, God Sleeps is about five women whose lives have been changed by that genocide (almost 1 million people in 100 days), which has left the country almost 70% female. This film is a little bit older, having premiered in 2005, and it was an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Short in 2006. It follows the women as they share stories of the atrocities as well as their current life, such as an HIV-positive woman who joined the police force, raises 4 kids on her own, and is attending school to become a lawyer.

"They'll have to admit I was loyal some day." Ariel Dorfman

One of the biggest challenges that faces a documentary filmmaker is balancing the pursuit of passion and emotion with the quest to inform. To dig too deep in one leaves the possibility of short-changing the other. With fiction, they can be created together so that both thrive. With a documentary, however, there isn't that luxury. For Peter Raymont's latest film, A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, one excels at the expense of the other. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Promise unfolds the life of writer and activist Ariel Dorfman, and how it intertwines with Augusto Pinochet's 1973 Chilean coup against then-president Salvador Allende. At the time, Dorfman was a Cultural Adviser and should have been called to the capitol building when it was under attack -- but he later learned his name was crossed off the list so that he'd survive to tell the story. And it is an incredible account -- one that discusses not only the life of a man in exile, but the drive of passion.