How To Let Cinema Change Your Life, Pt 1
A conversation with Hussain Currimbhoy, the Artistic Director Of HotDocs Film Festival
I am trying something new today for HopeForFilm. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did doing it. Hope’s hope is to bring you conversations with folks from all the various aspects of the film ecosystem. Hussain Currimbhoy however covers many of them in one fell swoop, and thus he’s a great place to start. Hussain recently became the Artistic Director of the premiere documentary festival in North America, HotDocs, and he is a producer, consultant, filmmaker, big thinker on top of that. Just another filmworker like the rest of us! We go long, so sit yourself down and enjoy the ride. This will be Part One of Two.
Ted: Let’s start big – but keep it simple. Hussain, why do we need movies or festivals, anyway?
Hussain: Keeping our humanity these days seems to be … hard. Movies, film festivals are a gut check. That is why films are still relevant. It taps the drawbridges within us that connect us to strangers.
Ted: So true! Was there a specific moment when you fell in love with art and knew that you would find a way to work in the arts, or even more precisely this field of festivals?
Hussain: I had that feeling the moment I saw STAR WARS in the cinema in the late 70s in a small cinema in Canada. Ted, I was hooked on movies. It was like nothing I had ever seen, and I had an inkling that this was a medium that not just be a part of my life but would guide my life. I began to realize that film was, in many ways, everything. And could be anything. I was an avid writer and reader when I was young and wanted to be a journalist. That was it. Write for a living. But after studying journalism at University the limits of journalism, and the media machine that operates it was revealed. The realization left a big, dark, disappointing hole in my heart. I traveled for 2 years. I came across Close Up by Abbas Kiarostami and Gummo by Harmony Korine in the same week thanks to a very astute video store clerk in Amsterdam where I was living. My outlook on cinema and its possibilities were never the same again. I could not resist being a part of the world of film any more.
Ted: Those two films are so different, but each true art; they access humanity, and our pursuit of that something – creativity, expression, connection – so well. I remember my experiences of seeing each of those films so distinctly. What a pair! Where’d you go from there?
Hussain: I studied filmmaking at Curtin University in Perth Australia and did a post grad in writing and directing at the VCA at University of Melbourne. Film school was hugely transformative for me. I have made about seven short films and have a feature in the works. It was when I became a card carrying member of the Melbourne Cinematheque that I tapped into international stories and became so excited by the different philosophies and states of being that film delivered. I started calling the movies ‘cinema’. Stories can be in any shape, they just have to maintain humanity and emotion and it can lock you into its world and change you.
Ted: I’m with you. I love the term “cinema”. I don’t want to complicate things, or be elitist or snobby, but “cinema” elevates everything. I think it was the same thing for me, once I knew that was what I had to do, the films I loved were now “cinema” and not just movies.
After school, I worked in production for years in Melbourne and worked in a cinema but there was a day when I volunteered at the Melbourne Int Film Festival as a publicity intern and it changed my direction again. I stepped into that office and I fell for the environment, the awesome people discussing films all day, the energy of festivals was addictive. The people were there because they loved movies. They were smart, engaged people from every sector of the community and they could work anywhere really, but they chose festivals. At MIFF 2003 I watched 40 films in that festival and they realized I was serious and made me pre-screener for the 2004 festival. I then started my own short film festival that toured Australia with student works, and I loved every moment of getting into the details of logistics, curating for a wide audience, surprising audiences, and seeing how cinemas were core to communities, to cultural life.
I took up work with the Brisbane and Adelaide film festivals and never looked back. I loved the life of it: I would work seasonally for a festival, do my own projects in the downtime, travel, read as much as I could when I was on a plane, and get to connect with such inspiring people. Many characters I have met in festivals have become life long friends. (So many great people mentored me and supported my work: Clare Stewart, Steve Roth, Anne Demy Geroe, Katrina Sedgewick, James Hewison, Heather Croall, John Cooper, Anita Rehr, Steve Cohen, Paula Froehle, Marie Nelson, I would not be here without them).
Ted: I can see it, that whole picture. You, the slightly younger you, getting the bug, getting hooked, finding a place, a tribe, all of it lifting you up, inspiring you. I am inspired. I love the origin tale. How you got here. How did we all get here. And where do we go next. So,let’s look at the big picture.
How do you think film culture has changed in the last 5 years and where is it all heading? What do film festivals and filmmakers need to do to adapt?
Hussain: Christ. What a great question. Film culture is still one of the most exciting places to understand greater culture. For me it remains the form that thrives when it operates as a place of freedom, a place of resistance, while being a place for discovery and for understanding current social issues.
For the documentary community the changes are clear: the gradual shift from distributor appetites to favor pop-oriented films, and less truth-to-power stories has meant a diminished global platform for journalism and impact driven film experiences. And it hurts.
Ted: I feel it. It really hurts.
Hussain: But documentary filmmakers will always adapt, and there are many new filmmakers I have connected with who are creating works that display astonishing filmmaking skill and emotive storytelling on small budgets, very small budgets, that will entice and excite an audience. The films that excite me right now keep integrity and humanity at their core. That is a value proposition you can not put a price on.
Ted: At times, I almost think it is the opposite. I have been watching movies every night because it is Awards Season and the AMPAS site has so much I want to watch, but there are all these bloated budget films made some of the filmmakers who have most inspired me, but I don’t know if it is the subject or the approach, but I feel the films are compromised. They become an excuse to spend money and show power. The films I am falling in love with though are these smaller films, made on tight budgets. The documentaries are really astonishing. Apolonia, Apolonia. Eternal Memory. Four Daughters. The Mother Of All Lies. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood. To Kill A Tiger. All documentaries. All films made on the cheap. All made by women. Often from smaller filmmaking communities or territories. It’s incredible what’s getting made and how they are making it.
Hussain: Filmmakers are not shying away from delving into social issues, they are just being creative about it. I saw a film yesterday that was set in a part of the world I know little about, but it shared these endless, breathtaking landscapes, focusing on how desertification is hitting farming communities hard. The filmmaking was incredible, the centering on characters was delicate and dignified and by the end I was in tears. Those films will continue to be delivered despite all sense of dismay in the funding landscape right now, and those films will find a space in festivals where a distributor can see with their own eyes that such stories do have a genuine audience for them.
This moment in the film landscape is part of a cycle. We have been here before in the 2000s and all kinds of revolutions sprouted out of those couple of years when the doc landscape felt dire.
Hussain: you go to so many festivals, and have had such an impact on the film landscape for so long. How have festivals served your work?
Ted: There’s so much that gets done at festivals, even if all you do is watch movies, and that is rarely what one gets to do. All festivals are a reflection of the state of the art and craft. Who are new voices? What subjects and styles are people interested in? Where are people pushing back, trying to advance the dialogue and form? We get to see this at a festival. And with the larger ones, it is not just an assessment of the art, but also the business. It is really a thermometer as to the temperature of the world from the creative class and an assessment of that from the business side. Frankly though, it is not like anyone ever gets it right; I find it fascinating how we miss things or go to far in some direction. I look to look at it all as a puzzle over a time. What were we thinking and why were thinking that.
But festivals aren’t just the curation, but for me that is the draw. It is also the act of watching films with an audience. I love that. I love the reaction, even when I disagree. I suppose I really find a joy in loving something that others walk out of – or feeling I have to walk out of something I know others enjoy. Festivals offer both, that remarkable feeling when you and the audience have a shared emotional response in the dark, as well as those moments where your taste and the audiences do not align, I love both.
When it comes to festivals though, I am a gorger, not a toe-dipper. I love going all in. Five films a day. I like the delirium one finds having so much quality work wash over you and carry you away. It’s dizzying but one of my favorite sensations in the world. And its when you combine that with seeing only friends, making new ones, maybe finding someone who digs a new project of yours, a couple of good meals, an interesting place you may not have been before or an old one you have sweet memories of, it becomes something altogether.
Having been around for as long as I have, I am often asked to speak or advise at festivals. I like talking about the business or the system and how it affects our work and our disposition. I find I often have a different sort of way of looking at things than others, and that can be really fun. I like to push against the status quo and try to imagine a more utopian way of viewing things — and festivals allow me to actually have a conversation about such things.
Hussain : When was the last time you were surprised at a festival?
Ted: Ha, And I thought I was interviewing you! I am generally surprised, and not just at festivals. I don’t want to grow jaded – seen that, done that, there’s nothing new – so I work hard to both examine work from what I think is the artist’s intent as well as from what is often called “beginner’s eyes”. I try to do this in my overall approach to the world, but I can’t help at times to see it with my own bias, you know, the “see, it is just as I suspected!”, but want to be surprised as much as I want to find the secret connections between things. So for instance at this year’s Sundance, so at the in person I saw about ten films and then on the virtual, I saw five more. I went the second half so it was more peaceful, and I really selected films just based on what was available at the time I was seeing things. What was surprising to me was how hard all the films worked to “please”. They deliver “pleasures”. I am sure this wasn’t the curators’ goal and it has a lot to do with the filmmakers themselves, but it speaks volumes of the power of a market and the self-censoring artists do both intentionally and otherwise. I don’t think the audiences there object in the slightest. It is pretty much a “feel good” festival. And I am pretty sure there were many jolts and punches to the gut that I missed, but it was a strange sensation to experience.
The challenge I find is having had the experience of seeing a movie that changed everything for you – for instance like the first time I saw “In The Mood For Love” at TIFF, I want to repeat that. I want to see a film and not know what it is about and have all the rules rewritten. I so hunger for that, but it is often too high a bar. I may see a film that will grow in importance to me but didn’t truly rock my world on the first viewing and as a result I may discount it a bit. I try to keep the films alive in my consciousness for a long time after the festival viewing so they can fester and ferment. Sometimes the surprise comes much later.
We will continue this conversation on the next post. Stay tuned!
Hussain Currimbhoy is a film producer, director and film curator with works spanning documentary and fiction film since 2002. In November 2023, Hussain was appointed Artistic Director of HotDocs Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, Canada.
Through Hussain’s film company, Master Mechanic Films, Hussain was executive producer for feature documentaries such as And, Towards Happy Alleys (Berlinale/CPH DOX), Praying For Armageddon (CPH DOX), Tomorrow’s Freedom (Sheffield Docfest) and The Beloved (Melbourne International Film Festival). As a filmmaker, Hussain shared the Breakthrough Prize to direct and produce two short films about groundbreaking scientists. A passion for science related storytelling led Hussain to produce The Faraway Nearby, a feauture documentary about famed scientist, Joesph Weber (Launching in Q1 2024).
Hussain has worked with the Chicago Media Project (CMP) as their director of investment and global strategy, bringing the best of independant documentary films to life through granting and investment. Hussain also led CMP’s Shifting Voices Film Fund, a mentorship program designed to elevate and support feature documentary works by marginalized filmmakers.
In 2021 Hussain received support from Boost for research in AI and screenwriting. The city of Helsingborg also collaborated with Hussain to initiave a program dedicated to mentoring young filmmakers from marginalised backgrounds to produce their first short films. Hussain is also a mentor for the 2023 Cuban Migrant Artists Resilience Fellowship and for Screen Australia.
An extensive track record as a film programmer and curator, Hussain has worked for film and industry events around the world including Sundance Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Melbourne Int. Film Festival, Nordisk Panorama, Doc 10, Red Sea Int. Film Festival and FoodxFilm Festival. In March, 2023 Hussain created and launched the Gaseback Film Festival, an independant film event in Helsingborg, Sweden that is dedicated to showcasing international cinema, regional short films and masterclasses with filmmakers.
Inspired- thank you!
Such a great interview. The theme of inspiration and epiphany so powerful.