slice of life

I recently had the opportunity to attend a sneak preview of Shannon Walsh's collective documentary À St.-Henri le 26 août, which will have it's première at Hot Docs next month. Loosely based on the NFB classic, À St.-Henri le 5 septembre (made almost 50 years ago), the film is a lovely, many-sided portrait of a Montreal neighborhood and the characters who inhabit it.

There is nothing better than a good documentary. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is just as entertaining. Some of the people we see in docs are so over the top that if they were fictional characters, no one would believe them. As a seasoned NFB veteran once told me, good characters are what make good documentaries.

The so-called "slice-of-life" genre reminds us of what life really is. Pursuing goals, chasing desires and battling antagonists takes up only a small percentage of real life, and yet these are the driving forces to which most fiction is chained. Real life is about minutiae: going to the convenience store, washing your car, getting ready for school or work. Our lives slip away unnoticed if we don't get enjoyment out of these moments. When we take the time to attune ourselves, we can get immense pleasure from the in-between times that would otherwise be forgotten.