KinoSmith Six Island Productions
The Manor Hot Docs World Premiere | Theatrical Premiere GAT PR Press Summary
Interviews completed TV
CBC Live Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
CHCH Interviewed: Shawney Cohen CTV Kitchener – The Scene Interviewed: Shawney Cohen Radio
680 News Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
CBC -‐ Q Interviewed: Shawney Cohen 570 News Interviewed: Shawney Cohen CFRU-‐FM (Guelph Campus Radio) Interviewed: Shawney Cohen Print/Online
The Canadian Press Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Indiewire Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Independent Film Channel Interviewed: Shawney Cohen The Toronto Star Interviewed: Shawney Cohen and Sammy Cohen
NOW Interviewed: Shawney Cohen, Roger Cohen, and Brend Cohen
National Post Interviewed: Shawney Cohen Playback Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Realscreen Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
The Times of Israel Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Filmmaker M agazine Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
POV M agazine Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Guelph Tribune Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Guelph M ercury Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
The Ontarian Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Hot Docs Live Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Jspace Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Dorkshelf Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Toronto Film Scene Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
The Documentary Channel Interviewed: Shawney Cohen Lip TV’s Bring Your Own Doc Interviewed: Shawney Cohen
Shawney Cohen’s ‘The Manor’ to Open Hot Docs Canadian Film Fest Etan Vlessing http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/shawney-‐cohens-‐manor-‐open-‐hot-‐429693 TORONTO – A Canadian documentary about a strip club run by the filmmaker’s 400-‐pound father and his 84-‐pound anorexic mother who cooks all day is to open the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday. First-‐time director Shawney Cohen’s The Manor, a dysfunctional family film pitched at the IDFA Forum, will receive a world premiere to launch the 20th edition on April 25 in Toronto. Hot Docs programmers, revealing their upcoming documentary lineup in Toronto, also booked into the festival's Canadian Spectrum program Michelle Latimer’s Alias, about Toronto’s street hip-‐hop scene, John Kastner’s NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, which weighs the rights of the mentally ill and the safety of others, and Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke. Other Canadian titles bound for Hot Docs include Hans Olson’s The Auctioneer, Anne Wheeler’sChi, Liz Marshall’s The Ghosts in Our Machine and Nimisha Mukerji’s Blood Relative, about a man’s fight to secure life-‐saving medical treatment for young people in India. First-‐time director Shawney Cohen’s The Manor, a dysfunctional family film pitched at the IDFA Forum, will receive a world premiere to launch the 20th edition on April 25 in Toronto. Hot Docs programmers, revealing their upcoming documentary lineup in Toronto, also booked into the festival's Canadian Spectrum program Michelle Latimer’s Alias, about Toronto’s street hip-‐hop scene, John Kastner’s NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, which weighs the rights of the mentally ill and the safety of others, and Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke. Other Canadian titles bound for Hot Docs include Hans Olson’s The Auctioneer, Anne Wheeler’sChi, Liz Marshall’s The Ghosts in Our Machine and Nimisha Mukerji’s Blood Relative, about a man’s fight to secure life-‐saving medical treatment for young people in India. The International Spectrum program will feature Lotfy Nathan’s 12 O’Clock Boys, Matt Wolf’sTeenage, Inigo Westmeier’s Dragon Girls, set in a kung fu school outside Beijing, and JessicaOreck’s Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys, about reindeer herders in Lapland. Also booked into the competitive sidebar is Jon Bang Carlsen’s Just the Right Amount of Violence,Chinese director Zhu Yu’s Cloudy Mountains, a film about miners that screened in Shanghai and Leipzig, and Ran Tal’s Garden of Eden, about vacationers in an Israeli national park. Elsewhere, the World Showcase program has booked Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina’s The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, about an 81-‐ year-‐old jewel thief, Laura Checkoway’s Lucky,Nebojsa Slijepcevic’s Gangster of Love, and Rena Mundo Croshere and Nadine Mundo’sAmerican Commune. The Canadian documentary festival also plans a Focus On program to showcase the works of Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler and a retrospective program to honor filmmaker Les Blank.
Kinosmith Takes Canadian Rights to Sundance Title 'BlackFish' By Etan Vlessing http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kinosmith-‐takes-‐canadian-‐rights-‐sundance-‐446481 TORONTO – Canadian distributor Kinosmith has picked up from Magnolia Pictures the Sundance titleBlackfish, American writer/director Gabriela Cowperthwaite's killer whale documentary. Kinosmith also acquired the Canadian rights to the Hot Docs opener The Manor, Shawney Cohen's debut theatrical film about his family running a strip club in southern Ontario. The Manor was initially pitched at the IDFA Forum and will receive a world premiere to launch the 20th edition of Hot Docs on Thursday night. Magnolia and CNN Films earlier grabbed the North American rights to Blackfish at Sundance. Magnolia plans a summer theatrical release for Blackfish, followed by a domestic broadcast debut on CNN later this year.
KinoSmith acquires at Hot Docs Jeremy Kay http://www.screendaily.com/news/distribution/kinosmith-‐in-‐action-‐at-‐hot-‐docs/5054292.article Canadian distributor KinoSmith has acquired two titles out of Hot Docs on opening day, company fonder Rob Smith announced on Thursday [25]. Festival opener The Manor by Shawney Cohen centres on the filmmaker’s family, owners of a strip joint in Guelph, Ontario. KinoSmith has set a May 10 release date for Toronto followed by other markets. Smith has also taken Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfishfollowing a deal with Magnolia Pictures. Blackfish will open on Jul 19 in Toronto at Tiff Bell Lightbox.
The Manor to open Hot Docs Ian Sandwell http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/the-‐manor-‐to-‐open-‐hot-‐docs/5053127.article
World premiere of Shawney Cohen’s intimate family portrait [pictured] to kick off 20th edition of the festival, which runs April 25-‐May 5. Shawney Cohen’s The Manor will receive its world premiere as the opening film of the 20th Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which runs April 25-‐May 5. Cohen’s intimate family portrait, set in the world of his family’s strip club, is one of 205 titles to be screened at this year’s festival, from 43 countries across 11 screening programs. Other films in the Special Presentations program include Lucy Walker’s The Crash Reel, Gus Holwerda’s The Unbelievers and Penny Lane’s Our Nixon. Other programs at this year’s edition are the Canadian Spectrum (screening films such as Michelle Latimer’sAlias and Liz Marshall’s The Ghosts in our Machine), World Showcase (films including Matthew Pond & Kirk Marcolina’s The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne and Nebojsa Slijepcevic’s Gangster of Love) and Nightvision (showing Jeanie Finlay’s The Great Hip Hop Hoax and Michal Marzak’s Fuck for Forest, among others). The 2013 Hot Docs will also present two retropspective programs: a mid-‐career focus on Peter Mettler and a retropspective honouring the work of Les Blank. Over 2,000 industry delegates will be attending this year’s festival for its range of industry events and services, such as Hot Docs Deal Maker, The Doc Shop and the Hot Docs Forum, which runs May 1-‐2.
Film Review: ‘The Manor’ John Anderson http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/film-‐review-‐the-‐manor-‐1200412107/ There's more than a faint echo of 'Grey Gardens' in this Canadian-‐gothic portrait of an unusual family business There’s more than a faint echo of “Grey Gardens” resonating within “The Manor,” documaker Shawney Cohen’s Canadian-‐gothic portrait of his family business: a struggling strip joint and hotel in a suburb outside Toronto. Self-‐delusion and denial are as plentiful as the bare flesh undulating inside the Cohen clan’s showcase of pole dancing, oil wrestling and “foxy boxing,” but the director himself, who narrates, provides a healthy dose of skepticism, expressing misgivings about not just the club but the whole family dynamic. Theatrical exposure seems uncertain, but the Hot Docs opener could flourish as a VOD title. It’s hard not to sympathize with a narrator who recalls how he asked for hockey pads for his bar mitzvah and got a lap dance instead. The thirtysomething helmer has grown up with the Manor, which his father, Roger, bought 30 years earlier. Roger, too, has grown: Now in his 60s, he is unhealthily obese, and his battle with his weight becomes one of the docu’s key subtexts. Providing a violent contrast is Brenda Cohen, Roger’s wife and Shawney’s mother; any viewer can see, from the first time she appears onscreen, that the birdlike women has an eating disorder. While there’s a certain metaphoric resonance to the Cohens’ dueling physiques, the viewer also feels a more literal sense of urgency about the woman’s health, especially after her cache of purgatives is found in a kitchen cabinet. In many other ways, “The Manor” is a sitcom: Dad is dictatorial and cheap, Mom has checked out, and son Sammy is the hustler in the family, the type that flourishes inside a club catering to a sometimes sketchy clientele with a dubious workforce. Shawney would rather be off making films. In anyone else’s hands, the documentary could have been a mere exercise in exploitation, but the director’s emotional investment in the place and the people who run it soften the film’s critical edge without sparing the audience any of the all-‐too-‐evident dysfunction. The question the film ultimately asks is whether the Cohens are much different from any other family. Yes, they run an unusual business, one that exists on the margins of “respectable” society, but their problems are basically ones of disposition and character: Roger has gastric-‐bypass surgery, but never loses his appetite; Brenda tries one session of therapy and never goes back. The brothers have a remarkably candid conversation while hitting a bucket of balls at a local driving range, but the upshot is stasis. The Manor itself is selling naked flesh; “The Manor” is selling a very naked kind of portraiture, sometimes uncomfortable to watch but ultimately thought-‐provoking. Production values generally meet the demands of the subject matter, and the use of music is particularly smart.
Kinosmith Kicks Off Hot Docs Sales Jennie Punter http://variety.com/2013/film/international/kinosmith-‐kicks-‐off-‐hot-‐docs-‐sales-‐1200414168/ TORONTO — On the eve of the 20th edition of Hot Docs, Kinosmith has sparked sales action nabbing Canuck rights to world-‐preeming opener “The Manor” and to Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Sundance hit “Blackfish,” which is distribbed by Magnolia in the U.S. North America’s largest doc fest, mart and confab kicks off in Toronto Thursday with Shawney Cohen’s voyeuristic soul-‐searching debut feature “The Manor,” which confronts the odd dynamic behind his family’s Ontario strip club. Kinosmith opens “Manor” at Hot Docs’ year-‐round docu cinema hub The Bloor on May 10, with other Canuck cities to follow, while “Blackfish” opens at the TIFF Lightbox July 19. Over 11 days Hot Docs will unspool 205 docs (44 world preems) from 43 countries, including 75 U.S. pics, with Toronto’s doc-‐savvy auds eager to take in non-‐fiction features that go deeper than daily news feeds, and buyers searching for potential evergreen fare. With an expected 2,000-‐plus international delegate roster, Hot Docs is set to continue international sales activity for docs with Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca momentum, like Steve Hoover’s “Blood Brother,” Ben Nabors’ “William and the Windmill” and Tom Berninger’s “Mistaken for Strangers.” Buyer buzz should ignite for world-‐preeming U.S. doc features like Gus Holwerda’s “The Unbelievers” (featuring Twitter-‐star and the world’s most famous atheist, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins), Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina’s “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne” (about the international jewel thief with a six-‐decade track record), and “Caucus,” a behind-‐the-‐scenes look at Republican leadership hopefuls at the 2012 Iowa caucus, directed by A.J. Schnack, who does double Hot Docs duty as co-‐director with David Wilson of internationally preeming “We Always Lie to Strangers.” Considering the awareness jolt Malik Bendjelloul’s Oscar-‐winning “Searching for Sugar Man” has given to Nordic filmmakers pursuing American themes, all eyes will be on world preems of Danish helmers Jon Bang Carlsen’s Utah reform-‐school head-‐turner “Just the Right Amount of Violence” and Peter Anthony’s “The Man Who Saved the World,” about the Russian colonel who disobeyed orders to respond to an apparent American missile attack in 1983, as well as Finnish helmer Mika Mattila’s “Chimeras,” a portrait of prominent Chinese artists wrestling against Western influence.
Riveting Strip Club-‐Set Family Saga 'The Manor' Opens Hot Docs In Style Peter Knegt http://www.indiewire.com/article/the-‐manor-‐hot-‐docs After spending a decade as a film animator, Shawney Cohen got burnt out and decided it was time to take a break from his career to spend some time working at the family business. It just so happens that business was The Manor, a strip club located 40 miles west of Toronto, Canada. "I reached a point in my early thirties where I was just kind of trying to figure out what to do," Cohen said. "But I always kind of avoided the strip club. It was part of my life, but I just reached a point where my parents were in their sixties and I didn't spend much time with my brother, so it seemed like a good idea to try working there. In retrospect, just jumping into that business was a bit naive because I had no experience. I thought it would be an easy gig, but it wasn't. It was tricky." The first week Cohen worked there he tried to break up a fight in the champagne room and got pushed through a plate glass window. "It occurred to me then that maybe this was a mistake," he said. But Cohen persisted, and in the process decided to start taking out his camera and shooting ongoings at the club as well as his family and their relationship to the business and to each other. "The first thing I shot was my father," Cohen said. "He was sitting in his office, 400 pounds, smoking a cigar and swearing in Hebrew. I had no intention at that point of making a documentary but I started filming him and he just jumped into the lens." Slowly but surely, Cohen decided to start actively pursuing the idea of turning the footage into a film. "I think once I built trust with my family and the employees at the club it got more serious," he said. "It's important to know that I didn't decide to make a film immediately." Over three years of shooting (culminating in 200+ hours of footage) and 15 months in the editing room, "The Manor" came together. And last night it opened the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival -‐-‐ the first debut film from a Canadian filmmaker to do so in the festival's 20 year history. And with good reason. "The Manor" is a fascinating, respectful depiction of a very dysfunctional family that will likely be a major highlight on this summer film festival circuit. The film could have easily come across as exploitative or slight, but Cohen's focus on his family over the hijinks at the strip club allows "The Manor" to rise to the ranks of some of the best family portrait documentaries. "The core of the film is really about my parents' relationship," Cohen said. "It wasn't until I began filming my mother that I knew that there was an important story here. She struggles with addictions and eating disorders and I felt that she rarely talked about it in public. She didn't talk about it with us. She was very private about it. The second I started filming her, it was amazing. She
just opened up to the camera in a way I didn't expect. I thought that was important for her. She began to use the camera as a therapeutic tool to tell us how she felt about her life and her relationship with my father and the strip club. The film is really about their relationship and everything else -‐-‐ the bar, my brother and I -‐-‐ are just a dimension of that." Cohen said his family grew to really trust his project and he felt a responsibility to make "The Manor" as honest a documentary as possible. "There are a lot of films I watch that are very constructed," he explained. "Great films, but I felt the only way this would work is if we let the story arcs unfold naturally and be as truthful as possible." That approach was helpful in many ways. When Cohen showed it to his parents for the first time, he was very nervous because he'd thought maybe he'd pushed the limits too much and the act of him filming could have caused damage to their relationship. Be he was wrong. "Really, I think they appreciated the truthfulness of it," he said. "Right after the screening, my mother looked at my father and said 'Roger, that's exactly how you are' and then she laughed. It occurred to me then that I don't really understand my parents' relationship. It's funny to say that but I think some kids just don't understand that. And that's okay. Shortly after that they went on a trip to the Bahamas together. Despite all this dysfunction and verbal abuse and co-‐dependence and craziness, they persevere. And I find that amazing." Despite already gaining considerable attention for "The Manor" (with surely much more to come), Cohen said he'll continue to work at the bar. "I think people find that unusual, I don't find that unusual," he said. "I work Sundays and Mondays. But I am planning a new film. I want to think long and hard about what the perfect fit will be so I don't like to talk about it. When you work on a film for four or five years you want to make sure you commit to it. But I want to continue making documentaries for sure. I feel like filmmaking is in my blood."
10 Films You Must See From This Year’s Hot Docs Peter Knegt, Basil Tsiokis, and Bryce J. Renninger http://www.indiewire.com/article/10-‐films-‐you-‐must-‐see-‐from-‐this-‐years-‐hot-‐docs?page=1#articleHeaderPanel After spending a decade as a film animator, Shawney Cohen got burnt out and decided it was time to take a break from his career to spend some time working at the family business. It just so happens that business was The Manor, a strip club located 40 miles west of Toronto, Canada. After three years of shooting (culminating in 200+ hours of footage) and 15 months in the editing room, "The Manor" came together, opening Hot Docs last week -‐-‐ the first debut film from a Canadian filmmaker to do so in the festival's 20 year history. And with good reason. "The Manor" is a fascinating, respectful depiction of a very dysfunctional family that will likely be a major highlight on this summer film festival circuit. The film could have easily come across as exploitative or slight, but Cohen's focus on his family over the hijinks at the strip club allows "The Manor" to rise to the ranks of some of the best family portrait documentaries.
Hot Docs Sets Full Lineup For 20th Anniversary Fest Peter Knegt http://www.indiewire.com/article/hot-‐docs-‐sets-‐full-‐lineup-‐for-‐20th-‐anniversary-‐fest Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has announced the full film line-‐up for its 20th edition -‐-‐ running April 25 to May 5 in Toronto, Canada -‐-‐ at a press conference yesterday at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. From 2,386 film submissions, this year’s slate will present a whopping 205 titles from 43 countries in 11 screening programs. "This year’s festival is about looking back and celebrating our 20th anniversary, and also looking forward,” said Hot Docs director of programming Charlotte Cook. “This year we are celebrating, big ideas, innovation and the future. We will have many new and exciting experiences at the festival to give back to the local, and filmmaking, community that have supported us for two decades. This festival is for them." The festival will open with the world premiere of Shawney Cohen’s "The Manor," a first-‐time filmmaker’s intimate tragi-‐comic family portrait. Cohen was a strip club manager before taking on the film. As described by Hot Docs: "When he was six years old his father bought 'The Manor,' a strip club attached to a seedy 32-‐room motel in Guelph, Ontario. Years later, his father has seen his weight balloon to 400 pounds, while his mother struggles to survive at 85 pounds. Hoping to understand what happened to his once-‐recognizable family, Shawney spends three years filming in a shadowy world of sex, drugs and family feuds. His role as filmmaker and son provides an astonishingly intimate and rarely seen perspective on a family facing the consequences of their livelihood, dependence and love." “I could not be more thrilled that we are opening the Festival with 'The Manor,'” said Cook. “This is an incredible story and a stunning film. To be able to open the Festival with a film by a new talent in Canadian filmmaking, Shawney Cohen, is a real joy.” Other films in the program include: Gus Holwerda’s "The Unbelievers," which follows renowned scientists Richard Dawkins and
Strip club tale to open Hot Docs Festival Cassandra Szklarski
TORONTO – A cinematic look at an unconventional family business — a strip club — is the opening night film for this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. But “The Manor” is not a strip-‐club story, says first-‐time director Shawney Cohen, who trains the camera on his dysfunctional parents. “I think the film is very much about love and addiction,” said the 37-‐year-‐old Cohen, whose own conflicted feelings about the Guelph, Ont., business are also examined. “My mother is anorexic, my father is close to 400 pounds and I find that juxtaposition quite amazing. So for me that’s always kind of been the underlying theme and that really developed more and more as I was filming my parents.” “The Manor” — one of 205 docs from 43 countries that will screen at the fest — joins a substantial Canadian contingent that also includes Michelle Latimer’s hip-‐hop portrait “Alias,” Liz Marshall’s animal-‐focused “The Ghosts in Our Machine,” Ric Bienstock’s expose “Tales from the Organ Trade” and Charles Wilkinson’s look at oil sands workers in “Oil Sands Karaoke.” They join previously announced projects including Barry Avrich’s portrait of Canadian comic David Steinberg in “Quality Balls – The David Steinberg Story” and John Kastner’s look at violent mental patients in “NCR: Not Criminally Responsible.” Program director Charlotte Cook says Canadian entries — which make up just over 25 per cent of the slate — are particularly notable. “There’s a huge rise in the amount of Canadian films at the festival this year and that’s due to the amazing array of films that we saw, we were absolutely blown away,” Cook said at a news conference held at the festival’s headquarters — a century-‐old downtown theatre. Kastner, a self-‐described “old doc dog” who’s been making non-‐fiction films for more than 30 years, said he’s driven by the chance to humanize people who’ve been demonized in some way or another. While past projects have examined breast cancer sufferers and pedophiles, his new film “NCR” is a two-‐part project that weighs the rights of the mentally ill against the safety of others.
“You can actually come to care about somebody by getting to know them on film in a way that is impossible if you just read about them in print. This is a power and it’s a great privilege to have,” said Kastner, whose film “Life With Murder” earned an International Emmy Award for best doc. “There’s a human being behind this label that you’ve stuck on these people. I’m going to show you this human being and I’m even going to try to make you incredibly feel for this person. That’s what film can do, that’s what documentaries can do.” International titles headed to Hot Docs include Lucy Walker’s “The Crash Reel,” about snowboarder Kevin Pearce; Lofty Nathan’s “12 o’clock Boys,” about a dirt-‐bike gang; and Matt Wolf’s look at teenage culture in “Teenage.” Star subjects include Romeo Dallaire in “Fight Like Soldiers Die Like Children”; Gael Garcia Bernal in “Who Is Dayani Cristal?” and Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Bono in “Muscle Shoals.” Meanwhile, James Franco co-‐directs “Interior. Leather Bar.,” which imagines what was contained in 40 minutes of gay S&M footage rumoured to have been cut from the 1980 film “Cruising.” Cohen said his film offers its own dose of star power — he described his father as a compelling “cross between Woody Allen and Tony Soprano.” “He’s just an incredible kind of person to watch and I really got addicted to filming him,” he said, noting he collected nearly 90 days’ worth of footage over three years. “Like good verite docs it takes a lot of footage to reveal these personal moments and I think it took a lot of patience. And after a while people started opening up.” He said the process has been especially therapeutic for his mother, who bought the strip club with his father nearly 30 years ago. “It’s certainly brought me closer to my family and kind of made me more interested in working there,” admitted Cohen, who works as a manager at The Manor. “I was more uncomfortable in the beginning but the more I got to know my family and started working there I began to appreciate what the business is and it was quite different than what I anticipated in the beginning.” “The Manor” will open in Toronto on May 10 and later expands to other Canadian cities. A special section of the Hot Docs festival will celebrate works from Poland while a mid-‐career retrospective program will celebrate filmmaker Peter Mettler. An outstanding achievement award retrospective will honour Les Blank. The documentary festival, North America’s largest, runs April 25 through May 5 at Toronto’s Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. This year’s marks the 20th anniversary of the Toronto showcase.
This story ran in the following outlets:
http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/600981/strip-‐club-‐tale-‐to-‐open-‐hot-‐docs-‐festival/
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-‐ guide/Docs+festival+open+with+film+about+strip+club/8120202/story.html http://www.driving.ca/story.html?id=8120202 http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-‐ guide/Docs+festival+open+with+film+about+strip+club/8120202/story.html http://thechronicleherald.ca/artslife/1075570-‐strip-‐club-‐film-‐exposes-‐family-‐affair
http://m.680news.com/2013/03/19/film-‐about-‐strip-‐club-‐family-‐business-‐to-‐open-‐hot-‐docs-‐ festival/ http://www.cp24.com/entertainment-‐news/film-‐about-‐family-‐run-‐strip-‐club-‐to-‐open-‐hot-‐docs-‐ 1.1201762
http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/strip-‐club-‐expose-‐to-‐open-‐this-‐year-‐s-‐hot-‐docs-‐film-‐fest-‐ 1.1201785
The Manor | Jane Goodall | Afghan historian Jian Gomeshi http://www.cbc.ca/q/2013/04/25/jane-‐goodall-‐karim-‐rashid/
They run a strip club, but is this family that different? http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/arts-‐video/video-‐sure-‐they-‐run-‐a-‐strip-‐club-‐but-‐is-‐this-‐family-‐really-‐that-‐ different-‐from-‐yours/article11596185/
Hot Docs: The Manor chronicles man’s life growing up in Guelph strip club Linda Barnard http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2013/04/25/hot_docs_the_manor_chronicles_mans_life_growing_ up_in_guelph_strip_club.html
GUELPH—The carved oak trim and high ceilings give the grand staircase at The Manor motel a baronial look; the reek of stale cigarettes and thin, buckling carpet, stained with you don’t want to know, brings the atmosphere down a few pegs. One floor below, in “Canada’s premier gentleman’s club,” a clutch of guys sit at the bar, sip $4 beer and watch a stripper who looks like a young version of 30 Rock ’s Liz Lemon peel off her underwear to music from satellite radio. At 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, it’s quiet. Things won’t get busy until after 11. It’s amateur night and that always draws a crowd. Strip club manager-‐turned-‐filmmaker Shawney Cohen , 38, grew up around The Manor, a peeler bar and rundown 32-‐room motel housed in a once-‐grand 19th-‐century mansion built for legendary Ontario beer baron George Sleeman . Cohen’s father, Roger, now 62, bought the Guelph business, about an hour’s drive west of Toronto, more than 30 years ago.
It has defined and shaped the Cohen family, for better and often worse, ever since. Example? Cohen celebrated his 13th birthday with a lap dance, a bar mitzvah gift from the old man. The boy had wanted goalie pads. The Manor , Cohen’s first feature-‐length documentary, opens the 20th edition of Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival on Thursday, the result of three years filming his family at home and work. It’s his quest to figure out what happened to his once-‐typical suburban family and the role the club had in the transformation. Shawney Cohen’s tough-‐talking father Roger, whose bombast only seems to soften when it comes to helping strangers, has seen his weight soar to nearly 400 pounds and compulsively mows through food. His anxious and anorexic mother, Brenda, trembles and frets yet won’t eat. Gentle and sweet-‐natured, she weighs less than 85 pounds and her struggles are heartbreaking to watch. A family Passover seder is like a Greek tragedy. The Manor is an unblinking, often sad look at the family’s lives and their struggles to change, and Cohen says making the film forced him to strike a balance between “the ethics of filmmaking and the ethics of family.” Younger brother Sammy, 34, also seen in the film, is a York University business graduate who has worked at The Manor since he was 18. He loves the place and the people, and sees no future in getting out. “This is his passion,” says Cohen, who quit his own successful career as a film animator in Toronto six years ago to work as a manager at The Manor. “I was so burned out from animating, I couldn’t stand it,” Cohen says. Initially “judgmental” about his family’s business, he decided t was time to come back to help. His first night on the job was almost his last. Cohen was tossed through a glass door when tempers flared among a bunch of guys there for a stag party. Sammy and his dad envision condos and development on the land, moving the strip bar to a new location. Cohen, who is clearly outnumbered, would like nothing better than to see the business sold.
He didn’t start to film his family until he’d been working at The Manor for about a year. “I was very cautious,” Cohen says, adding that what he chose not to shoot — a suicide attempt, a fight involving a hearing-‐impaired patron — was just as important to him as what he did.
“I really tried hard not to make the film exploitive,” Cohen says as he and Sammy sit in his father’s cramped office, a portrait of his dad with a beloved golden retriever on the wall behind the desk. “It kind of comes through and I think in many ways people in the film, especially my parents, appreciated it because there’s a level of truthfulness to it. It’s still raw, but I think when you grow up in that situation, it’s normal.” His parents, who are on vacation in the Bahamas and will be back for The Manor ’s premiere, have seen the film. Cohen rented the private screening room at Toronto’s swank Thompson Hotel to show it to them, an expense he feels was worth it to let them “experience it alone in a theatrical setting,” he says. “It was the longest 80 minutes of my life,” Cohen admits. “I got worried my mother would freak out, but they both liked it. They were OK with it. At the end my mother turned to my father and said: ‘Roger, that’s exactly who you are,’ and that told me I was truthful in the editing.” Sammy calls The Manor “a family portrait.” “It’s nothing new,” he says. “I see this every day. For other people to see it, for some reason there’s an appetite . . . which I find a little weird.” Both Cohen sons are protective of their mother and respect their father. “He has a big heart and he loves helping people,” says Sammy. As for his mother, Sammy hopes seeing herself onscreen — including a half-‐hearted attempt at counselling — will encourage her to get help for her anorexia. “For me, it’s my mother. She’s the one who is not eating and not well, so now we’re showcasing that,” he says. The editing process took 18 months. “I made the hard realization about two months in (editing) how tragic some of the footage was,” Cohen admits. “But for me, I saw it as vulnerable and beautiful, and I love what I’ve shot. But you have to realize there’s a responsibility with this stuff.” Still, it was emotionally wrenching. He cried the first time he watched the footage of his mother. “She rarely talked about her issues. But when the camera was on it was almost like a tool that let her talk about this stuff,” says Cohen. “We accepted it, but I began to really feel for her. When the camera came on, she really opened up.” Cohen also isn’t shy about turning the camera on his own life, including filming an onscreen breakup with a girlfriend. Relationships are tough because of the business. “I find something beautiful in it, almost poetic,” says the soft-‐spoken Cohen of life at The Manor. “Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a Bukowski novel. There’s something beautiful in the vulnerability of people here.” Cohen may be talking about the strippers, some of whom live in a pair of crummy rooms downstairs from the bar and who flirt with him in the change room (he was babysat by a generation previous as a kid). Or maybe it’s the motel’s transient residents, the down-‐and-‐outs his father wants to help get off drugs or off the streets — or both — with cheap room rates. The Manor , which was voted Best Round Table Pitch by the 2011 IDFA Forum Pitch in Amsterdam and is one of 12 films at Hot Docs chosen for funding from the Tribeca Film Institute, has been picked up by indie film distributor KinoSmith , and will be in Canadian theatres soon. Cohen plans to start work on a new film project this summer. And Sunday, he’ll be back at work at The Manor, changing bottles in the liquor room, mediating fights between strippers and making sure all goes smoothly at Canada’s premier gentleman’s club.
Shawney Cohen: In the Hot Docs opener, Shawney Cohen discovers that operating Guelph’s premier strip club is nothing compared to the family drama behind the scenes Norman Wilner http://www.nowtoronto.com/movies/story.cfm?content=192214
Some filmmakers start out waiting tables. Shawney Cohen supervised table dances. His father, Roger, and Shawney’s younger brother, Sammy, run Guelph strip club the Manor. (“Canada’s premier Gentleman’s Club, located just 40 miles west of Toronto,” according to the decidedly NSFW website.)
For the last six years, Shawney – a confident, self-‐possessed guy in his late 30s who flirted with a career in animation – has helped run the place while he figures out what to do with his life. At some point he picked up his camera, started shooting footage of his father at work and never really stopped. After two years of shooting and six months of editing, the result is The Manor, which opens this year’s Hot Docs. But it’s not just about the nightclub; the business serves as a springboard into the Cohens’ complicated family dynamic, which puts the opinionated, inflexible Roger forever at loggerheads with his sons and their mother, Brenda – who has plenty of issues of her own. “They didn’t quite know what I was doing, or why I was doing it,” Cohen laughs over a smoked meat sandwich and salad at Caplansky’s earlier this month. “They just thought I was, like, this film student who was just futzing around with a camera. Now that I look back, I think that was probably my best asset, cuz they let their guard down: ‘Whatever. Just let Shawney do whatever he’s doing – it doesn’t matter.’ You get this remarkable access.” As you might imagine, a strip club is an emotional and visual gold mine for an aspiring documentarian. In addition to the expected scenes of barely dressed dancers, The Manor captures Roger’s paternal relationship with another of his employees, a tattooed recovering addict named Bobby who lives in one of The Manor’s motel rooms. “At times you feel like you’re living in a Bukowski novel,” Shawney says, “and for somebody who’s artistic, that’s very, very intriguing. I worked a desk job for a while, [but] I prefer working at the Manor because every day something’s different. You just see a side of life you’re not used to seeing. It sounds a bit romantic – in a weird way, you feel like you’re living.” He can say that now, mind you. It wasn’t always so romantic. “The first week I worked there, I almost quit,” he recalls. “I tried to break up a fight over a girl in the Champagne Room. Two guys were arguing and I got involved, and I was thrown through the glass door. I wasn’t hurt, but I could have been, and I was thinking to myself, ‘This is insane! What am I doing here?’ But I felt like I needed to stick it out. The bouncers said, ‘Ah, you had your first altercation!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah?’
“Now it’s almost routine,” he says. “Once every few weeks you deal with a situation. It’s forced me to become a bit more assertive, which I like. I still don’t think I’m very good at my job; for the most part I sit in the back office and watch Netflix.” As a result, Shawney doesn’t give himself a lot of screen time, preferring to focus on his parents and the visual contrast between the morbidly obese Roger, whose attempts to lose weight give the movie its structure, and the dangerously thin Brenda, whom Shawney and Sammy spend most of the movie trying to nudge into therapy for her eating disorder. “I’m in the film because I have to be,” he admits. “It would have been unfair for me not to be in it – I wanted to take this journey with them – but I didn’t want to put myself in it too much. I think it may have been a different story had I done that. But I like the direction it [took], because I think it’s very much a story about my parents’ relationship. And addiction.” There was also the challenge of figuring out how to present the staff and clientele of the Manor. “If someone doesn’t wanna be in it, or they say something – or even if they say they wanna be in it but their parents don’t necessarily know or aren’t cool with it – then I [didn’t] put them in,” he says. “I was very careful about that. You really want someone to be in the film if they’re into it. It’s later when it becomes a problem: ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was going to be a big film.’” Did he run into any resistance from his family? “That happened with my brother,” he admits. “He was the hardest person to film. And in the end, when he saw the film, he was like, ‘Wow, I would have been in it more if I knew.’” Much to Shawney’s surprise, the whole family liked it. Even his father approved of the final cut. “I think it’s because his convictions in life and in the film don’t change, you know?” Shawney muses. “He thought he was absolutely right in every single situation... [and] I watch the film again and sometimes I think, ‘Maybe he was right.’ When it comes to drugs, not paying for my mother’s therapy, all those things – he was right, in his weird, conservative way.” “I’ve done this film for Shawney,” the elder Cohen says on the phone from his office. “I wanted to bond with him – something we never had in the past. For me, that was very important, to bond with my kid, at any cost. Even at the cost of the movie, even at the cost of bringing all my skeletons out of the closet, even at the cost of showing how dysfunctional this business is – although it’s been very good to my family. And to show him, forget the past. I can’t bring the past [back] together. I can’t drive the car looking at the rear-‐view mirror. That’s past; that’s done with. Where do we go from here? I’m your father, I want to help.” Roger’s drive to help others extends beyond his family, as we see in the film. Over the last few years, he’s turned the motel attached to the strip club into a rooming house for people trying to rebuild their lives. “He just had this profound idea that he wanted to start helping lower-‐income people,” Shawney explains. “That’s what I found really interesting about the process when I was filming, how [few] options there are for people who want to rent something under $500. It’s actually near-‐impossible. So for him to just open his doors [to] people who
were a step up from literally being on the street… doing something like that was, I think, a bit more than he thought it would be. Sometimes he’ll be acting like a social worker, but I’ll look at him and think, ‘You’re not trained for this!’” Shawney’s ambivalence about his father’s outreach program creeps into the film, which gives the scenes of Roger lecturing his tenants about cleaning up and living well a strange tension. “Sometimes I think he’s doing a great thing; sometimes I think it’s a bit naive,” Shawney admits. “[But] where else are these people gonna go?” For his part, Roger has no intention of stopping his community work. “My grand scheme in the future is to downsize the club,” he says, “and to start working [more aggressively] with the homeless. I find it very rewarding. It’s curing my soul, if you will. I’m giving something back, you know what I mean? Piece by piece, I’m putting it together.” Shawney’s philosophical about the next steps for the Manor. (The movie implies that his dad’s ambitious redevelopment plans for the property are always a few miles down the road, rather than an immediate concern.) He’s just happy to have spent the time with his family, and gotten a little more insight into his dad. “I think being in the strip club business for 30 years, you know, you grow a thick skin and realize that people aren’t gonna change,” he says, his speech taking on Roger’s world-‐weary bluntness. “If you’re a drug dealer you’re a drug dealer; if you have an addiction you’re an addict. That’s part of the beauty of the film as well; nothing really changes. After this entire experience, I look back and what did we actually learn? We may learn more about each other and we feel more comfortable with each other, but you know, we’re still in a very similar position to where we started two years ago.”
Hot Docs ’13: In a “Manor” of speaking… Adam Benzine http://realscreen.com/2013/04/25/hot-‐docs-‐13-‐in-‐a-‐manor-‐of-‐speaking/
Shawney Cohen (pictured, right) talks to realscreen about his debut feature doc The Manor , which follows his family’s strip club business and kicks off the Hot Docs festival in Toronto today (April 25). For the first time in four years – and perhaps fittingly as it celebrates its 20th anniversary – Hot Docs is kicking off proceedings by opening with a film from a Canadian filmmaker. The Manor is the debut feature documentary from filmmaker Shawney Cohen, and focuses on the director’s family business: a strip club in Guelph, Ontario.
While the subject matter may seem risqué for the Canadian documentary festival’s opening night, Cohen says the film is more of an insight into the nature of family dynamic than peeler joint vérité, with his father (“a cross between Tony Soprano and Woody Allen”) being the key character. The film has been picked up theatrically by KinoSmith, which will release it in Canadian theatres next month, starting with the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on May 10. It will then go on to play across Canada, before having its TV premiere on TVO in the fall. How did you end up making a film about your family’s strip club? I think there’s a misconception from a lot of people that I just went there to make a film. The decision didn’t come lightly; I’d been a manager there for five or six years, and I was a manager there for over a year before I decided to film. How did the project begin? To be quite candid, the first thing I shot was my father in his office, talking to his friend in Israel about how to bribe cops on the streets of Israel. You have to understand, my father is a cross between Tony Soprano and Woody Allen. He’s a big figure, and it was so much fun filming him – I became addicted to filming him. He just jumped into the lens. Instantly I knew I had something, I just didn’t know that it was going to be a film. I started filming him and following him around, and it wasn’t until I had about 80 or 90, possibly 100 hours, that the theme of a film started to develop. I then approached him and decided to make this film, and by then they were kind of used to me being around with cameras, so it kind of manifested into a story, really about my parents. What kind of issues do you address in the film? I actually find it interesting because a lot of people think it’s a film about a strip club, but it’s very little to do with a strip club – it’s more a film about my family and us struggling to run the strip club; family dynamics, the human condition, and very much, addiction: my father is close to 400lbs and my mother is anorexic at 85lbs.
So I found that fascinating, that they have these body issues while they’re running a business that’s all about the body and sex. What can audiences expect from the film stylistically? It’s a dark comedy. They’ll laugh; they’ll be shocked by its honesty and candor, and the love in it too. It’s quite amazing – people watch it and they don’t really come out with the idea that it’s a strip club doc. It’s really about my family. And, I’d like to think it’s really about how we love each other, and how that shines through. How did you fund the project? TVO was our main broadcaster, the Tribeca Film Institute put in a bunch of money – we got an amazing grant from them. And the Hot Docs Shaw Media Funds put in money. Were you working at the club while making the film? Yeah, and I still continue to work there. I’m a manager twice a week – I don’t think I’ll ever stop working there. I think that has given me some amazing access, and with my parents, I’m really proud of them for opening up and letting me into their world. How long did you film for? I filmed for the better part of three years, and it took me about a year to edit it, so about four years. This is your first feature documentary – the first of many? Yeah, absolutely. I consider myself a filmmaker and a strip club manager, and that’ll continue to be the case. I’m researching a new idea that’s just as crazy, and I hope to start that this summer. I love filmmaking; it’s in my blood, and I will continue to do that for as long as I can.
This interview also ran in the following outlet:
http://playbackonline.ca/2013/04/25/hot-‐docs-‐13-‐in-‐a-‐manor-‐of-‐speaking/
http://thelip.tv/hot-‐docs-‐fest-‐william-‐and-‐the-‐windmill-‐the-‐manor-‐life-‐and-‐crimes-‐of-‐doris-‐payne/ BYOD visits the Hot Docs festival to share three of the most talked-‐about films that are coming out. We speak to WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL maker Ben Nabors and see footage of the African story of invention and self-‐ determination. Next, THE MANOR shows the story of filmmaker Shawney Cohen’s family strip club located in a 32 room motel in Canada. THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF DORIS PAYNE is the unbelievable true story of a septuagenarian jewel thief, told by makers Kirk Marcolina and Matthew Pond. THE MANOR: Shawney Cohen considers himself a filmmaker, but he’s actually been a strip club manager for longer. When he was six years old his father bought “The Manor,” a small-‐town strip club attached to a seedy 32-‐ room motel. Thirty years after the purchase, the family’s extravagant lifestyle has got the better of this family. His father has seen his weight balloon to 400 pounds, while Shawney’s anorexic mother struggles to survive at 85 pounds. Hoping to understand what happened to his once-‐recognizable family, Shawney spends three years filming in a murky world of strippers, drugs and family feuds. Told with humour and frankness, “The Manor” is an intimate portrait of a family struggling to understand the ties that bind.
Hot Docs 2013 Interview: Shawney Cohen on Fest Opener ‘The Manor’ And Why It’s More Than a Film About a Strip Club Christopher Campbell http://documentarychannel.com/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐interview-‐shawney-‐cohen-‐on-‐fest-‐opener-‐the-‐manor-‐and-‐why-‐its-‐ more-‐than-‐just-‐a-‐film-‐about-‐a-‐strip-‐club/
The 2013 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival opens tonight with a fresh new voice in nonfiction filmmaking. My initial reaction to Shawney Cohen‘s feature debut, titled The Manor, is that it’s like Crazy Horse as made by Ross McElwee. But while it is a personal film about Cohen’s family and the strip club they own and work at, it’s stylistically and thematically unlike either of those comparisons. The doc primarily tells the story of Cohen’s obese father and anorexic mother, putting himself in only as a supporting character who is also the narrator. And the strip club merely serves as a setting, where naked women walking around is just a normal part of the background.
I talked to Cohen earlier this week as he was finishing up a shift as bar manager of the club, and the conversation went a lot longer than I’d expected. He’s not just some novice documentarian who took an easy in by filming his family. He knows documentaries, he’s conscious of his technical choices as a filmmaker and he’s open to discussing the process at length. I could have guessed all this from the way he speaks in the film’s narration. So, I invite you to read this long interview, even if you haven’t seen the film. It’s a pretty great bunch of answers for and from a relative newcomer, and I do believe we’ll be hearing about and from him a lot in the future. Documentary Channel: What did your family think of you filming them all the time? Did they expect it to turn into a legitimate feature like this? Shawney Cohen: In the beginning I’m not sure what they expected. This was my first feature, and they knew I was involved a bit in film before. But I think their expectation, to be quite frank, was low. I look back now and think that was one of my best assets, because if they knew it would be in a bunch of festivals and have critical acclaim and open theatrically in Canada nationwide they probably would have reacted quite differently. I didn’t just show up one day and say I’m making a film. I’d worked here for quite a long time before I decided to pick up a camera. I showed some footage to a producer friend in New York and she was amazed by it. For me it didn’t seem like the biggest deal because I grew up with this. It was very normally to me, getting a lap dance when I was 13. I was so immersed in it at such a young age. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in this material. I kinda got addicted to filming my father for other reasons. One of the first times I shot him he was on the phone talking to a friend in Israel. I couldn’t understand quite what they were saying, but he was so unaware of the camera he literally just jumped into the lens. I didn’t know I was going to make a documentary at that point. I just liked filming my father. So for months I just did that. I acquired quite a bunch of footage before we got a production company involved and went to broadcasters. It wasn’t until I filmed my mother where things started to change. It was interesting because we never really talked about her disorder, but for some reason when I pointed a camera at her she kinda used it as a tool and opened up and said things to me I wasn’t expecting. It slowly just manifested into what it is. It wasn’t a big decision to make the film off the bat. What do they think now that it’s done and getting a lot of notice? Are they still okay with it? They are. Surprisingly. I thought they would have more of a problem. I was really worried. I showed it to them four or five months ago and it was the longest 80 minutes of my life. I didn’t know how they’d react. I was a little nervous. I didn’t know if my mother or my father would freak out. It is truthful, but they liked it. One of the things my mother said immediately after the screening was, she looked at my father and said, “Roger, that’s you.” That made me feel a lot better. I think the reason they liked it is because I went to great lengths to tell the truth and not make an overly crafted documentary. I don’t mind some of these documentaries that come out that have a lot of craft and techniques to make you more interested in the story, but for this I thought when it comes to my family it’s only going to work if I just let their stories really be their stories and not change anything and let the chips fall where they may. So when they watched it, there’s not much they could say. My father was pleasantly surprised. He thought it would be a lot harder to watch. He said he wished he could see more. Did you set out knowing you wanted to focus on your parents’ eating disorders? No. I filmed everything. I filmed like 200 hours of footage. Everything from crazy stripper stories to some of the life of The Manor. There’s crazy history, like it was owned by one of biggest beer moguls in the country. It was his house, and he bought it in the late 1800s. During Prohibition, the rumor was that Al Capone would stay here because of its location to Detroit. What I found interesting about the building itself and this complex is it’s
always had some deviant history. It became obvious what the story needed to be when I was filming my parents, because they were the heart and soul of the film. I knew that it was very much about addiction at a certain point, probably halfway through, because my father was completely obsessed with his health, his mortality, his weight. My mother, the same. I found that their images were completely opposite, and I found that fascinating against the backdrop of a business that is completely dependent on image. For me, that was the only story. I focused on them. Out of that it just became about their relationship. People ask me what it’s about and I’m hesitant to say it’s about a strip club. It’s about my parents’ relationship and human nature and addiction. Saying it’s about a strip club, though, will get more people to see it. For sure. I’ve been arguing with people who really want to push the strip club angle. I’m curious to see what people will think of it. A lot of the press in the write ups about it really push this idea that it’s a film about a strip club. And there’s very little of the actual strip club in the film when you think about it. Hopefully it will be a pleasant surprise and people won’t be shocked. I like that you start out more expositional than you wind up being throughout. Can you talk about the narration and how much you wanted to say and comment on and where you decided not to? That was a crazy process. There was more narration in the original cut. It was a lot about my story. But it became obvious that my problems and my approach and my issues paled in comparison to my father and mother. I felt like, for lack of a better word, the normal one in the family. When I tried to include more narration about my problems, they fell flat and were almost narcissistic. I switched the narration to be more about me telling the audience how I felt about what they’re seeing. That felt inappropriate as well, because the images did a lot of the talking for us. I don’t like overly narrated films. In the end, it felt most appropriate to get in with me because I’m a storyteller and that’s what I do. I’m part of the story but I really set up the film in the first two minutes, give you some context in the first eight or nine minutes, and then the story gets going. Once we know what the first act is and who these people are and we get an idea of what we’re watching, the film takes over and really tells the story itself. You can make an argument that it’s lacking in narration in the middle, but I think there’s enough of me in it. We tested the film with a few audiences and a lot of people required more narration and wanted more and more. I was really surprised. You need to pay attention to the film and watch it and let the film unfold. You get kind of lazy when you’re over-‐describing things. I guess people just have short attention spans.
It’s interesting that you allow yourself to be so in front of the camera so much. A lot of personal documentarians shoot everything themselves so it’s more first-‐person and they’re sort of hidden. What made you choose to do it this way?
I did shoot a lot of it myself, but I had a good team around me filming as well. It just needed to be like that. I needed to be part of the journey, because I am a part of this journey. Without me in it, it would have felt a lot more absent. It was done for reasons of balance. It would be awkward to film my family and just be behind the camera. It would be a completely different film. I wanted it to be a family story about the four of us. In many ways it’s also about me and my issues. I haven’t seen too many films done like this before. There’s a film that really inspired me, John Maringouin‘s Running Stumbled. He also filmed his family. He’s this Hollywood guy who comes back to Louisiana to visit his parents for the first time in like 20 years. And when he gets to the house, he finds the family are drug addicts. I love how he put himself in the film. He had one of his friends filming him. That he was involved was really fascinating because he directed but it was his family and he was a part of it and he wanted to see his reaction on camera not behind the camera. In a very similar structure, he was in it quite a bit in the beginning to set up the story, and then was in and out of the film after that. It was a big inspiration because I felt like it would be okay to approach a film like this. And ironically enough, for those who do hide behind the camera, the film ends up being more about them anyway. There are no set rules to making docs. One interesting thing, as well, is what I didn’t shoot. When not to shoot is just as important as what you shoot. There are moments that were fascinating but I thought inappropriate to put in the film. You take criticism as a director for doing that, but you reach a certain point while filming your family where you have to answer the question of whether you’re going to follow common guidelines of film ethics or family ethics. Film ethics is to tell the complete story of them, and by the end of it family ethics trump all. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to tell the truth, but there are boundaries with people’s privacy that you should respect. I think family ethics prevailed and it was more important to follow those guidelines than the opposite. I wasn’t entirely clear, did you live with your parents while you were shooting? I live in Toronto. When I was shooting the film I moved out of my apartment for a bit, and to save money I actually moved into the manor. I lived with Bobby, one of the characters you see in the film. That was interesting. For six or seven months I lived upstairs with him. That was fun. That was the point in the film when I got my best footage, because I was always around here. There’s a scene with my father yelling at Bobby for selling heroin. Access like that came about because I was living here. My father woke me up at 9 o’clock in the morning, and he was pissed. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I have to talk to Bobby about drugs.” I just grabbed my camera and ran downstairs and shot that scene. That would never have happened if I hadn’t been staying here. It was an amazing experience. For me it felt like I was living in a Bukowski novel for a bit. It was nuts but it was great. There was something quite amazing about the people and their stories here. From my conversations with documentary filmmakers I’ve noticed a lot of the ones who get the best material are those who move in either with the subjects or nearby, as opposed to those who just come around occasionally to see if anything is happening with the story. The best documentaries I’ve seen in the last while, the filmmakers really immersed themselves in the subject. One of my favorite films of the last few years was Undefeated. It was a football movie, not terribly a subject I was interested in, but it was such a good doc. I saw an interview with the director and he literally immersed himself with the football team for three years. He said he hadn’t really talked to his family much. He missed weddings and birthdays. And after three years he came out of a bubble. But it was a testament to how good the film was and the footage he got. Films like these are all about access and how close you get to the material and how often you’re able to film. He got the moment where the football coach tells the kid for the first time he got a scholarship and the fight in the locker room. You can only get these moments when you’re this close to the subjects and you’re shooting all the time. It’s really tough to give yourself a two
month deadline and say you have to be done by a certain date. Especially these verite films. But they’re exhausting. People ask me what my next film is, and I want to think hard about that. I have some ideas, but it’s really important to find a subject you’re going to fall in love with and be able to spend two or three years of your life with, because that’s how long they take to make. This film took three years to shoot and a year and a half to edit. I can’t imagine how it could have been any other way. That’s just how it needed it to be. You’re not a co-‐editor of the film, as some documentarians are. Were you mostly hands off? I was hands off in the beginning and then I became more hands on towards the end of the edit. Once I saw the direction it was going there were artistic decisions that I thought I could comment on as a director. We had a very talented editor, Seth Poulin. He did The Bodybuilder and I, which I really like. That’s kinda why I chose him, because of the approach he had with that film. I imagine it’s very hard in the beginning to be objective and also difficult to re-‐watch some of that material. It’s hard to watch the footage. I had to organize it all before we got the editor, so for me the toughest process was watching the footage. It took me four months to go through it all. It was difficult, especially with my mother. When you’re filming it you’re kind of removed a little bit. Because I’m in a lot of the shots I hadn’t actually seen what it looked like. It seemed like a more fun process in the beginning, and the context seemed more playful, but when I watched it and started cataloging it, it was very obvious that it was going to be more of a tragedy. That surprised me. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about how everything seemed normal in my life. But when you watch and analyze all the footage you realize the topics are very serious. That was one of the most difficult times in my life going through that footage. I really like the music, and I never really ask filmmakers about the score. What can you tell me about yours? It was done by Jim Guthrie. He’s quite talented. He’s a composer in Toronto. What I like about Jim is you’ll give him an idea and he’ll work with you and give you an option and if you don’t like it he’ll give you two or three more options in the next two or three days. I like composers that are really versatile and will find what you’re looking for and don’t necessarily fall in love with every piece of music they use. For me that’s really important with music. It’s so subjective. He’s so willing to give you different takes and tones and viewing and doesn’t just stick to his guns and say, “I need this scene to be like this.” Tell me about the honor of opening Hot Docs. It’s pretty awesome for a brand new voice to get that slot I’m sure. It surprised me. If you look back at the type of films that opened the festival, last year was the Ai Weiwei film, the year before was Morgan Spurlock. Quite a long line of social issue documentaries and documentaries that are quite different than this film. I was really grateful. I think it’s a very brave decision for Hot Docs to do that. Then it just became a whirlwind. Tons of press and everyone wanting to know about the film and my family. It just happened kind of recently so I’m still digesting what the film means and how it will be received. It feels like a great honor. It was stressful, but now it feels more rewarding. Especially when the reviews come out and are positive. People seem to like the film. That for me was the most important thing, legitimizing it. Have you contemplated the possibility of this being a success that could take you out of The Manor for good and into a career? It’s funny, people ask me that, and I kinda want to continue working here. I don’t think there’s a problem in that. I consider myself a strip club manager and a filmmaker. I don’t know why that’s so unusual for people to understand. It’s okay to have these two jobs. I hope to start a new film this summer but I don’t want to give up my shifts at The Manor. It’s still a part of my life and will be a part of my life. I don’t think it’s unusual, but I felt like at least in the beginning of the film you seemed like you wanted to get out. Something changed. I became closer to my family through this process. I became less judgmental of the business. Over the past few years it’s just been more fun. I’ve accepted it more. I found it interesting that I wanted to continue to work here. That’s what’s changed most in my journey. The Manor debuts as a world premiere at Hot Docs this evening and then screens again Monday (4/29) at noon. The film is also playing after the fest at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema May 10-‐16. For info on all these and to get tickets, visit the Hot Docs listing.
Hot Docs 2013: The Manor James Buffin http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐the-‐manor
How do you make sense of the world after growing up in a strip club, The Manor, where your parents are at opposite ends of the eating disorder spectrum, your closest non-‐family mentor is a heroin dealer and the future likely includes inheriting the empire? If you’re Shawney Cohen, you make a film about it. The first time Cohen rolled with a DSLR camera in his father’s office, his dad was on the phone to a friend in Israel who was discussing bribing police officers. “And he just jumped into the lens,” recalls Cohen. “I had been a photographer and when I started filming him, he was just this amazing presence. [At the time,] I had no intention of making a documentary film.” But something drew him into making a film about the family business. Perhaps it was the contrast between the graphic neon beauty of the strip club and the static tragedy of its denizens. From the minimalist design of the individual signs to their judicious placement inside and out of The Manor, there’s a sensibility that seems to be reflected in Cohen’s cinematography and editing that aligns to the artistic style called negative space. On the surface, nothing much seems to happen in The Manor, Hot Docs 2013’s opening night film. And yet at the same time it does—it’s just that nobody is terribly reactive to it. And that’s at least half of documentary cinema, to show life unadorned. It would have been easy to exploit the strippers or staff at The Manor. The strippers and staff were, after all, in a doubly vulnerable situation, since the owner’s son was documenting them. But they seemed to want to be in the film, and Shawney Cohen smartly included them only as much as was necessary to paint his hyper-‐realistic picture. The film evolved slowly. Cohen became “addicted” to filming his larger-‐than-‐life father, the patriarch of The Manor. After shooting 70 to 80 hours, he realised that his footage was worthy of a doc. At that point he easily obtained consent to continue shooting material. The family was already accustomed to the process, so it was then a matter of bringing in and acclimatizing additional crew, as needed. The Manor is a classic portrait of a family in crisis. Cohen Sr. is a hard-‐bitten man with little tolerance for weakness.
He’s developed a tough skin after running a strip club for 30 years. On the other hand, his wife appears to be wasting away into a void of nothingness and despair. Early on in the film, Shawney Cohen shows his perilously skinny mother bowling in a moment of self-‐deprecation: “Here goes a gutter ball… See? I told you.” After seeing the film, Cohen’s mother indicated that the way his father had been represented was accurate. Of his mother, Cohen said, “In many ways, I think the filmmaking process has been therapeutic for her. The things she shared in the film are not things she usually talks about. For some reason, when I turned the camera on, she really opened up.” Putting himself in the film was only done by necessity. Shawney Cohen believes that his own problems pale in comparison to others. He believes that The Manor is really his parents’ story and that putting more of himself in it would have been pretentious. Showing his parents a cut of the film felt like the longest 80 minutes of Cohen’s life. He was afraid that they would react adversely to the honest way that they had been portrayed. Turns out his fears, which took a couple of days to calm, were unfounded. “In many ways, this film has brought us closer together.”
The best little Jewish strip joint in Canada Jordan Hoffman http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-‐best-‐little-‐jewish-‐strip-‐joint-‐in-‐canada/
‘The Manor” is making its premiere at the prestigious Hot Docs festival in Toronto this week and, quite frankly, I’m not sure if it is “good for the Jews.” I can say, however, that it is a fascinating and quite sad first-‐person documentary about a one-‐of-‐a-‐kind family that, once you’ve seen it, you can’t get out of your head. The film is directed by Shawney Cohen who is “to the Manor born,” as it were, of a successful Canadian strip club. His father, a tough but fair businessman who works diligently to keep his operation on the right side of the law, has a somewhat cold exterior. To outsiders, his cigar-‐chomping, cash register-‐counting demeanor and profound obesity may call to mind anti-‐Semitic cartoons. When we meet Dad he is 400 lbs. Mom, on the other hand, is at around 85 lbs., and at a point where her eating disorder is seriously threatening her life. Also in the family is a younger brother, who is eager to join the family business, despite Shawney’s insistence that its exploitative nature is what’s tearing the family apart. It may sound like a reality television train wreck, but that isn’t Cohen’s style. It is a well-‐observed, nuanced cinema verité that leaves an indelible impression. Most striking is how everyone in the family seems quite aware and willing to discuss their unhappiness, but is unable to do anything to change it.
had the good fortune to talk with director (and co-‐star) Shawney Cohen a few days prior to the film’s world premiere. An edited transcript of that conversation is below. Before anything, how is your family now? Any changes? Not really. I mean, we went through this incredible journey and I’m proud of my family for doing it. People ask how my mother is and how she’s coping, but people forget is that she’s kinda been like this for thirty years, so for me it’s normal. It’s April 2013 now. When did you start shooting? From the end of 2008/beginning of 2009, and I shot for three years. I got about 200 hours of footage before I started editing. It’s really a film about access. No one else could get these moments. It’s lovely that my parents let me into their lives. For them to open up as much is quite special. I didn’t just show up and decide to make a film. I just had my DSLR and started filming my father. He was having a conversation with a friend of his in Israel and I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but he just popped into the lens and I got addicted to filming him. I shot a ton of footage before I knew what this would be. I started filming my mother and my brother and slowly an idea came about. When they finally saw the footage it was probably the longest 80 minutes of my life, I wasn’t sure how they would respond. But I think they really liked it. They said as much, that they didn’t want it to end. I think it’s because it is truthful. There are a lot of docs out there that are more about the craft, and I wanted this to just be a very truthful movie, about the characters and the scene and just tell a story and that’s it. There is a surprising amount of openness. Is this because you are their son, or because you shot so much footage? Or both? The best documentaries are long verité documentaries that take years to shoot. One of my favorite docs is “Undefeated,” it won the Academy Award, it was about a football team in Louisiana — the director spent years shooting. You only get moments like that when you spend that much time — the kid getting the scholarship or the father yelling at the son. You have to wait for those moments. And living with my family and being there you begin to understand when the explosions are about to happen and when you should start to shoot, so, yeah, it was just a matter of time. I feel like you really captured moments where you family just didn’t know or didn’t care that there were cameras there. Yeah, I think about after 60 or 70 hours of footage people just kinda forget. In my mother’s case it was a little different. With her it became a little therapeutic because she has this disorder and never really talks about it. It’s something we’ve approached her about before, but she was reluctant to even acknowledge that she had an issue. But once we turned the camera she opened up in this wonderful way. The camera became a tool for her to speak out. That was something that I didn’t expect. When you started did you know that this was going to touch upon the topic of eating disorders? Did you know that would be the crux of the
film or did that just unravel naturally? It was a discovery. I knew she had an eating disorder, but, for me, I think she became the soul of the film, and I related to her issues more as we were shooting. I felt like her weight issues, and my father’s weight issues, were such an interesting juxtaposition based on a business that’s all about image. That’s what I became addicted to shooting. I grew up there, and had been working at the club, so it began to feel normal, but when you start showing it to people and analyzing the footage you realize that it is quite unusual and not a normal family. It really became two processes for me — the shooting was more an addiction and fun, but in the edit it became a real film. Not to psychoanalyze your mother too much, and forgive me if I’m out of line — you mention that she is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and in the film she becomes so thin that one immediately flashes on the images of people in concentration camps. Do you think this, in some way, a root of her problem? Absolutely. I was raised partially by my grandparents. My grandmother was a famous Auschwitz survivor, she was in Auschwitz for five years. My grandfather fought the Nazis in the forest. For me, their neurotic behavior definitely exists in my mom — it would be naive to think that didn’t have an effect. You say a “famous” survivor, what do you mean? She wrote about it? She spoke about it a great deal in Toronto. My grandfather never wanted to talk about it. My grandmother talked about it constantly. She had a famous story where she was in the ghetto in Warsaw and she watched her sister get executed right in front of her. They were walking together and her sister had a really cute dog. And as they were walking an SS soldier said “I want that dog for my daughter” and he pulled out a luger shot her in the head and took the dog and left my grandmother there. Stories like that resonate. I don’t think you can forget these things and they become part of the fabric of who you are and… I don’t know that this is the cause of my mother’s anorexia, but… you know. How much did you prep your parents before you showed them the film? There are moments where, let’s face it, you don’t exactly paint them in the best light. If you have hundreds of hours of footage they may have had a totally different conception of what the movie is going to be. It was tough. I don’t show footage to the people in the film prior to it being done, because they start acting differently. I talk to them on a daily basis. I say “this is what you said, this what we talked about.” So they’re aware. But there was a LOT of trepidation going into the screening. In my father’s case, I think he thought he was right. He felt that it proved a lot of his vindications correct, so he sees no problem with it. With my mother it was tougher, but I think she sees the value in it. I actually thought they’d have a different reaction — I thought they wouldn’t like it, so I’m relieved. There are many conversations in your film where it is just stated, “oh, we know we’re unhappy.” In many families it goes undiscussed. In your family it is discussed… so you’re halfway there… but it appears knowing the problem isn’t enough in this case. Do you see change on the horizon? It’s very much a fact of life. The movie did bring us closer together, which is nice. And the idea that my father may sell the bar is interesting and new. I think he realizes what the business has done and made us unhappy, but it has also held us together — and I think that that’s the irony. You can be trapped in a life when you are unhappy but what do you do? It’s hard to change. It’s hard to sell the bar, right? So much of the film is about human nature and addiction.
You can admit you have problems but what can you really do to change that? I mean, it’s not that we’re unhappy now, but we accept our circumstance and we live on. When you were growing up were you outcasts? Quite the opposite in high school. I was the most popular kid. For me it was more complicated. My brother accepted the life earlier and started working there as a teen. He didn’t see a moral or ethical problem, he saw it as a place to have fun and make money. I had a problem with it when I entered university and dating girls more seriously. In high school it is fun, as you get older it is less impressive and more embarrassing. For me I didn’t shun it, I just didn’t spend too much time there. I worked other jobs in the city related to film. I just reached a point where my parents are getting frail and I just don’t want to judge them anymore. Was it rough going through puberty having access to a strip club? [laughs] I think it somehow contributed to my creative spark, but, you know, getting a lap dance for your bar mitzvah is a little unusual, but it becomes normal. As you go through life and your parents take you there you don’t realize that there’s the rest of the world where this would be considered strange. Some parents have furniture stores or pharmacies. Only later you think, wow, this isn’t what most kids grow up around. You’ve worked in special effects for a number of high profile films, but this is your first feature. You have something lined up next? I did a short a few years ago about people who surgically implanted themselves with microchips so they could be tracked around. It was also very much about body and addiction — so I think my next film will also touch on these themes. But I still do two nights a week at the bar. It’s a job, I don’t mind it. The times I’m at a bar, it’s like a Bukowski novel. My first week there I had to break up a fight. A guy got thrown through a glass window in the Flamingo Room. I was going to quit, but I’ll say that every day I stay there something different happens. And they get burned into your mind. So… in a weird way it’s poetic and romantic. Some of the vulnerability you see on display is quite beautiful.
Interview with Shawney Cohen, director of The Manor Trista DeVries http://thetfs.ca/2013/04/29/interview-‐with-‐shawney-‐cohen-‐director-‐of-‐the-‐manor/
I am not a particularly imposing person. I’ve been told I have a warm smile and people just seem to be able to open up and talk to me. So when Shawney Cohen stepped into the Hot Docs industry lounge for our interview it was a surprise to me that he seemed to be a bit unsettled by my presence. It wasn’t actually me, of course, but the idea of talking to a journalist about his film, The Manor, which is an intimate portrait of his family who also happens to own a strip club (the titular “manor”) in Guelph, Ontario. As he sits down and we get started he very shyly says, “I have my notes here just as a crutch.” I assure him that’s no problem. The Manor is a very personal film I liked very much, so I plug in my recorders and ask him why he decided to make a film about his admittedly very dysfunctional family. “The first thing I shot was my father,” Cohen says, “He was 400 pounds sitting in his office, smoking a cigar, speaking in Hebrew, swearing and I had my camera and I just started filming him. I had no intention of making a film. He just jumped into the lens.” There’s more to that story, of course. What the film doesn’t show is that Cohen didn’t simply appear one day and start making a movie. He had been living in Guelph and working at the club for almost a year when he first began filming his father, and then it just became a habit. “I just kind of got addicted to shooting him.”
“I just showed up there and we didn’t have much of a relationship prior to me working there. So when I was filming I think they just thought I was this film student running around with a camera, like, no one’s going to see this, so what’s the big deal? And in the end I look back and I think that was probably my best asset because it gave me this incredible access which was nice.” It becomes obvious to me very quickly that the story of why and how this film got made is almost as interesting as the film itself. The film is a very unvarnished look at a dysfunctional family, so I ask the question I’ve been burning to ask since I saw The Manor: what did his family think of it? “When I first showed my parents the film I was really nervous because I thought that I may have done a little bit more damage [with] just the act of filming them and do they need to see what I thought. In the end they were cool with it and it surprised me,” Cohen says. “I think they were cool with it for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t want to make a story that was overly crafted. There’s a lot of documentaries I like that take a lot of liberties and play with timelines and do things that would make it a better film but aren’t necessarily truthful in terms of how things happened, so I made a decision early on that if I’m going to do this, I’m just going to tell the truth and I’m going to film them as they are and let the chips fall where they may and let this be a vérité film about our lives. But in doing that you have to be completely honest with yourself and what you’re shooting and not hold back. That’s the only way this could work. I think they appreciated that. What could they say? This was a truthful depiction of us.” The second, and possibly most important, reason for his family’s reaction is that they really are quite thick skinned. After being in the strip bar business for 30 years, Cohen’s father is certainly used to being called names and judged by his cover. “My mother? Well, my mother, the first thing she said she looked at my father after the screening and said “Roger that’s exactly you!” and then she started to laugh.” Right. But when your film is opening the largest documentary film festival in North America, are you not concerned that it will be open season on your family? Yes, it certainly seems that he is. “I am a little worried. I didn’t quite expect it to blow up like this,” he says. “We’ll see what happens, it’s quite early. I think my parents can take care of themselves and answer questions, but I don’t know if we’re prepared for a lot of the scrutiny. I hope we are. I hope that a lesson can be learned from us and people will take something away from it and maybe apply that to their own families. But it’s a bit nerve-‐wracking.” There are lots of lessons in The Manor – about communication, about transparency, about being honest with ourselves, about addiction, about what it means to be a son – and Cohen really hopes that the film can help viewers in relationships with their own family. For me, however, it’s clear that the lessons learned best from this film were for Cohen himself. “After all this co-‐dependence and verbal abuse and addiction and problems I think what I realized was I have no idea what my parents relationship is really about. And as a son, I think that’s okay, you know? They’ve been married for 40 years and sometimes kids just don’t get what their parents are about,” Cohen says. When it came time to edit the film and he was faced with watching everything he had shot, he went through a bit of a depression. “I began to realize halfway through the edit that this is quite a tragedy. When you grow up in a scenario like this you think it’s quite normal, but when you’re looking at the footage and you’re making serious decisions you realize this is a tragedy
and that became very, very difficult. I probably wasn’t the most friendly guy during the edit process because you’re trying to get it right and it’s your family and it’s hard to abandon. It was definitely the hardest part of making this film.” “I think I went through a profound journey. I’m definitely closer with my family, they’re closer to me. I guess I was naive a little bit thinking that I could change them by making this film because not much has changed and that’s what I found fascinating. But we’re still together. Families do what they do. People don’t change.” Once Cohen discovered he probably had the makings of a film, he began looking for funding. He pitched the film at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and won out over films about large-‐scale political issues like the Egyptian revolution. The film then received a grant from the Tribeca Film Institute and the Shaw Media-‐Hot Docs Completion Fund. With that cash in hand, Cohen hired a spectacular editor, a well known producer and a great composer. He wanted the production values to be really high and once he was satisfied with his team he began approaching broadcasters. Without question The Manor has been a success, and one that Cohen is proud of. KinoSmith acquired distribution rights to the film just last week, which guarantees Canadians will get a chance to see this film. I ask Cohen what’s next and he’s a bit coy. It seems he doesn’t like talking too much about what’s coming next until things are final and well underway, but he acknowledges that he’s going to stay with documentaries for now. “I will say this,” he begins, “I think working on a film for four and a half years you want to be very very selective about what you do next. A lot of filmmakers just jump into an idea that they thought up in a week and two years in it’s like what am I doing? So I really want to take my time and find a project that fits for me.” Well, whatever it is, it’s going to be great. I thank Cohen for making such a wonderful and deeply personal film and pack up my things. And as I’m leaving, I realize: he didn’t use his notes once.
Director Examines Jewishness and Family’s Strip Club in New Documentary Leslie Stonebraker http://www.jspace.com/news/articles/director-‐examines-‐jewishness-‐and-‐family-‐s-‐strip-‐club-‐in-‐new-‐documentary-‐video/13797
The Cohen’s are as typical a Jewish family as their name except for one catch—they own a strip club. Shawney Cohenturns immigrant-‐does-‐good tale on its head with his examination of the effect of the business on his nice Jewish family. “The Manor,” screening at Canada’s Hot Docs film festival this week, is so painfully honest that the strippers aren’t the only one’s getting naked. Jspace caught up with the director to find out more about the intersection of Jewishness, family values, and suburban stripping. Jspace: What is your documentary about, in a nutshell? Shawney Cohen: It’s about a Jewish family, my family, running a strip club, and the consequences of our livelihood. I think a lot of people have this interpretation before seeing the film that it’s primarily about a strip club but it’s more about my family than anything else. How did you walk the line between shooting in a typically sexualized environment and trying to make an intimate family drama?
I grew up there. My parents would take me there on the weekends and I wasn’t allowed in the bar as a kid but a stripper would be babysitting me. For me, it wasn’t unusual. When I started shooting I didn’t have a concept of what this would be. I didn’t actually think that I wanted to make a film, I just really got addicted to filming my father. One of the first things I filmed was him on the phone with his friend in Israel. I can’t speak Hebrew but its sounded like they were talking about bribing cops or something. I found that fascinating but more to the point, he jumped into the lens and became an amazing figure to film. I fell in love with filming him and from there I started filming other characters, other patrons of the bar. It went in different directions, at one point was more about strippers but in the end I found that my father’s problems with his addictions, his demons, and my mother’s issues became the most important part of the film. Would you say you saw them more clearly through the lens of your camera than you did before? Absolutely, especially with my mother. She deals with anorexia and weight issues, and she’s had it for over 25 years, but she never really talked about it. We knew this was an issue, growing up mom was really skinny, but during filming she opened up to the camera in a way that I didn’t expect. She began to use the camera as a tool to tell us how she felt. In many ways it became very therapeutic for her. As her son and her director, you’re both a character and an observing presence. How did you choose where to just observe and where to interact? I’m in it because I have to be in it. I wasn’t about to make a film about my family without being in it so it became something that I needed to do and it helped propel the story. It was a fine balance. I think I’m in it just enough. I felt that if people are going to show their warts and have their problems on tape, I should probably do the same. It’s a new style of filming. A lot of people think that ethically documentarians should not appear in their own films, but I think its totally fine and I think it becomes about access, it becomes about me being a character in the film. It was difficult, but we had a lot of really, really amazing people helping with the film, so when I was not able to shoot, I just tried to be myself. I think a lot of this manifested by the shear number of hours I shot, it was uncomfortable in the beginning but we got up to 200 hours in 80, 90 plus days of shooting. So it just became natural. There are intimate moments where I shot myself, like the heroin argument that just happened because I just saw it happen. At times I’d let a stripper or bartender hold the camera. I felt it needed to be about access, it needed to be about getting the best moments possible. In the end I think it paid off. There are ethical questions that came about in terms of what not to film and I think that was important for me too. In the beginning I was more of a filmmaker with this filmmaker ideology, being ethical and making the film based on what you learn in school—to tell every piece of the story no matter what.
In the end, I began to balance family ethics and filmmaker ethics. By the time it was all said and done, I felt like family ethics were more important. And it didn’t affect the story, surprisingly. The film is brutally honest about the challenges your family faced both personally and as a unit. Was it difficult to be so honest with people you’re tied to for the rest of your life? The style of filmmaking I like is not sugar coated. I said, “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to be out there and put myself out there.” In the end I think it makes for better film and I think that’s why it’s receiving critical acclaim. In many ways I think that’s why my family was able to watch it and not hate it. I was very nervous about them watching it. It was the longest 80 minutes of my life. But the first thing my mother said to my father after watching it was, “Wow Roger, that’s really you.” They appreciated the honesty, and I think it surprised them that nothing was sugar coated. This is us, this is how we are, and this is as honest as we can make it. How do you think Jewish values influence the story or your approach to the ethics of filmmaking? I really wanted this to be a Jewish film. I’m not religious but my father is. One of my favorite scenes of the film is Passover. It is so telling of our family dynamic and the dinner table is like a battleground. My mother’s parents were survivors of the Holocaust. I was raised by them when I was a kid, and they influenced her as well. I think there’s a strong underground Jewish element that really is who were are and reflects what the film is about. Jewishness was an important part of the filmmaking; I didn’t want to avoid it. My other favorite scene is when my father is talking to my brother and he’s holding the camera and he’s saying, “I like Shawney better,” and starts throwing around Yiddish lines. There are a couple of cues in there that people are like, “What does that mean?” But that’s the way we speak and it was really important to keep that in there.
Documentary on Guelph strip club to open international film festival http://www.guelphmercury.com/news-‐story/2785238-‐documentary-‐on-‐guelph-‐strip-‐club-‐to-‐open-‐international-‐film-‐festival/
TORONTO– A documentary by a Guelph strip club manager-‐turned filmmaker about his family’s life in the peeler business and the truth behind the tassels will open the 20th edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, on April 25. Shawney Cohen’s The Manor kicks off the festival, which will screen 205 documentaries from 43 countries in 11 screening programs from April 25 to May 5 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and other venues. The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival announced its full film lineup at a media conference Tuesday morning. Cohen was six when his father Roger bought The Manor. “Thirty years later,” reads a press release from Shawney Cohen’s publicist, “his father has ballooned to 400 pounds, while his mother, at 85 pounds, ironically struggles with anorexia. And Shawney? He’s been a strip club manager for longer than he’s been a filmmaker.” The film explores the relationships between Roger, his wife Brenda, Shawney and his brother Sammy. “Add in Roger’s right hand man Bobby – a French Canadian criminal with over 50 convictions on his rap sheet – along with a motley crew of patrons, staff, drug-‐addled tenants, strippers and extended family members, and you have the full cast of The Manor,” reads the press release. “I don’t consider this a film about a strip club,” Shawney Cohen says in the release. “It’s a film about my family. “The Manor aims to be an examination of human nature and addiction,” he adds. “And as a film I believe it will open a lot of eyes and hearts by making the viewer see a little piece of themselves in all the dysfunction.”
Documentary on The Manor required courage Editorial http://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-‐story/2796813-‐documentary-‐on-‐the-‐manor-‐required-‐courage/ The Cohen family of Guelph has shown a lot of courage in allowing the documentary film The Manor to be produced and publicly screened. The fact that a second-‐generation Cohen is behind the film takes nothing away from this. To delve deeply by way of a documentary into any family with members suffering from personal demons such as eating disorders or brushes with myriad controversies takes some backbone. To have that family also be one that has stewarded perhaps Guelph’s most controversial business for the past 30 years ramps things up a few notches. By reviewer accounts, this film also offers a raw and often unflattering look at the strip club business and what running one has done to Guelph’s first-‐family of burlesque entertainment. Shawney Cohen describes the film he made as a tragic piece, in interviews he offered about The Manor before it opened recently at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival. There could be a presumption that this effort is a much-‐sanitized insider’s version. No doubt a lot of compelling material that would have revealed much more about the characters and life of The Manor and its key stakeholders never made it into the production. But if the reviews are to be relied upon, it’s impossible to consider this a glowing portrayal of the filmmaker, his family or the business they’re all connected to. This film and its story will not hold appeal for viewing by many in Guelph. But it’s important and valuable that it’s soon to be screened here. We expect it to easily sell out when it’s played at a Canadian film festival event at The Bookshelf on May 31. Like it or not, The Manor is a significant institution in this community and has been for many years. The club and the family behind it influence many things. This documentary provides a unique and rather courageous peep at this subject matter. Those who take advantage of viewing it will likely be glad they did, and come away with a sense that they were exposed to something that required some bravery to bring to the screen at all.
Guelph strip club story to open Hot Docs Tom Beedham http://www.theontarion.com/wp-‐content/uploads/2013/03/170.11.pdf
If you’re heading to Toronto this April for the 20th edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, don’t be surprised to catch a naked portrayal of Guelph strip club The Manor. With The Manor, strip club manager-‐turned filmmaker Shawney Cohen offers viewers an inside glimpse at what goes on at the film’s family-‐owned and -‐operated namesake in a directorial debut that focuses a lens on a cast including a “motley crew of patrons, staff, drug-‐addled tenants, strippers, and extended family members,” according to a press release. The documentary will open the festival of over 205 films from 43 countries on April 25. But it probably won’t be what you expect. “Very little of the ‘strip club movie’ takes place in a strip club,” Cohen told The Ontarion in an interview following a Hot Docs media release that saw widespread media attention given to the idea of the documentary as a film about a strip club. “I think that frankly a film about a strip club would be a little boring.” Rather, Cohen insists his film is about his family. “It’s an intimate portrait of my family running a strip club and the consequences of our livelihoods,” said Cohen.
Cohen was six years old when his father bought The Manor, though he spent ten years working as a computer animator following undergraduate studies before becoming a part of his family’s business five years ago. “I was way more on the fence about [working at The Manor] at the beginning,” Cohen admitted. “I think it was eye-‐opening for me because it was a life I wasn’t used to and now – five years later – I kind of love it.” “For me it almost feels like living in a Bukowski novel,” Cohen added. “I kind of appreciated the lifestyle and I think a lot of the stories that come out of there were kind of vulnerable and beautiful, and I found that in many ways just as beautiful as stories you see in literature and film today.” Cohen says his film is more about those vulnerabilities – specifically those relating to his family. Upon returning home to Guelph after working in Toronto, he found his father grossly overweight at 400 pounds and about to undergo stomach reduction surgery, while at the same time, his 85-‐pound mother was refusing to acknowledge her relationship with food. As a result, Cohen says his film has a lot to do with “body image, weight, and addiction.” To him, The Manor is more of an intriguing setting than an actual subject in his documentary. “I found that to be an interesting juxtaposition.” In the midst of all this, his younger brother Sammy was struggling to run the club. The entire project required between two and three years of filming, a process Cohen says involved close to 80 or 90 days of shooting. “I think films of this nature… you really need to film a lot,” said Cohen. “You also wanna get people comfortable with the camera, so it’s important to film a lot and eventually have the camera be a fly on the wall so that when you’re in your hundredth hour of footage people aren’t aware of it.” It’s a film about Guelph, but don’t expect to see much of the Royal City in The Manor, Cohen says. “[There’s] a sign that says ‘Guelph.’ That’s the only indication that you know you’re in Guelph. For me it was important to stick to two locations: The Manor, and my parents’ house. And maybe the hospital.” said Cohen. The Manor will not receive a theatrical release in Canada until May 10, and has only so far been showcased at film festivals around the world. As a result, the film has yet to receive a rating. Among many more, other films announced on the Hot Docs docket include Gus Holwerda’s The Unbelievers, a film following the studies of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss; Marta Cunningham’s Valentine Road, about an eighth-‐grader that fatally shoots an LGBTQ classmate; Penny Lane’s Our Nixon, toted as a “revealing look at one of the most controversial presidencies in US history”; and Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke, a story of oil sands workers that kill time off at their local karaoke bar.
All in the Family: Shawney Cohen on Hot Docs Opener The Manor Lauren Wissot http://filmmakermagazine.com/69244-‐all-‐in-‐the-‐family-‐shawney-‐cohen-‐on-‐hot-‐docs-‐opener-‐the-‐manor/
The titular subject referred to in Shawney Cohen’s debut feature has nothing to do with ladies and lords, but with the Cohen family business – a combo strip club/motel in a small Canadian town. And The Manor has nothing to do with in the ins and outs of the sex industry, so to speak, but with the inner workings of the Cohen family, which includes Shawney’s 400-‐pound father (who bought the place when the director was only six) and 85-‐pound anorexic mother. Ultimately, the doc’s not so much north-‐ of-‐the-‐border, reality TV than a nuanced portrait of a loving yet dysfunctional family, more in the vein of Capturing the Friedmans and Crazy Love. Filmmaker spoke with the director/son/strip club manager prior to the film’s world premiere today as the opening night feature of this year’s Hot Docs. Filmmaker: So this must feel quite amazing for a first-‐time filmmaker to open such a big, prestigious film festival. What was the production journey to Hot Docs like? I read somewhere that you pitched at IDFA Forum. Cohen: The journey was unconventional, to say the least. Over the last few years I have been wearing two hats: one of son and strip club manager, and the other of filmmaker. In 2011, we pitched the film at IDFA and it was the first time I showed my footage in any type of public forum. There were a lot of important issue docs being pitched – from global warming to the Egyptian revolution. I remember thinking, “What the hell am I doing here with a family film about a strip club?” I had no idea
what to expect, but we ended up winning an award for best roundtable forum pitch and, shortly after, (awarded financing) from the Tribeca Film Institute Documentary Fund. I think it was because The Manor was a refreshing departure from the type of social issue docs broadcasters were expecting. Filmmaker: As someone who’s experienced the sex industry firsthand I’m always delighted to see it depicted authentically, sans the sensationalist bullshit, to get to the more mundane aspects of what is, at heart, a business – or, in your case, a family business. Indeed, this film could have followed a number of storylines. What prompted your decision to remain so narrowly focused on the family and its dynamics, giving very little screen time to the strippers or to the dynamics of the Manor itself? Cohen: I remember the first time I filmed my father. At the time he was close to 400 pounds, smoking a cigar and swearing in Hebrew on the phone in his office. I could barely understand a word he was saying, but he just jumped into the lens. I experimented with shooting other storylines related to the club – strippers, pimps, customers, etc. – but to be honest, their stories just bored the shit out me. For a while I felt directionless, until I filmed my mother. She’s been struggling with anorexia for years and her addiction was something she would rarely speak about in person. However, the second the camera was pointed in her direction she just opened up – especially about her relationship to my father and her feelings about the strip club. The heart of the film is about my parents. All other story arcs, including the strip club itself, are just a dimension of their relationship. Filmmaker: Watching your parents onscreen I was reminded of Burt and Linda, the eccentric subjects of the documentary Crazy Love. Obviously your father never went to the extreme of blinding and scarring your mother with lye, yet one could read that his emotional abuse is similarly, insidiously increasing her dependence on him (while driving her to a slow suicide). And yet, like with Burt and Linda, it’s nearly impossible to think of one partner existing without the other – either both heal together or neither will. Was turning your lens on your parents at all an attempt to probe the mystery of this complex relationship? Cohen: Good question. During the process of making the film, what I found most interesting is how well my parents actually know each other. When I screened the film for them for the first time, my biggest fear was thinking I may have pushed the boundaries too far and created an extra layer of anger that might be seriously detrimental to their relationship. I was wrong. The first thing my mother said to my father immediately after the screening was, “Roger, that’s exactly how you are,” and then she started to laugh. Despite the emotional abuse, codependence, and all their dysfunctional craziness and addictions, I’ve come to accept they understand each other in a way I never will. They’re currently on an intimate two-‐week vacation in the Bahamas together. Filmmaker: Another aspect that makes your strip club story quite unique is that it’s told from the male employer’s point of view rather than from the female employee’s. You, your father and brother feature most prominently in the film. Was it a conscious choice to cast the women in minor roles, so to speak? Cohen: While I help propel the story with my voiceover, this film is told from the perspective of the core nuclear family – a family running a strip club. I often get comments from people who watch the film like, “My family’s been running a bakery for years… I understand where you’re coming from.” Casting The Manor and all characters related to it in a secondary role was a conscious decision. They are the backdrop to the four of us. I will say my mother’s voice is quite prominent in the film, especially in the second and third act. My mother and I spend the least amount of time at the strip club, so some scenes at the Manor may appear to be dominated by my father and brother who are there all the time. Filmmaker: Any future projects currently on your plate? I can see Hollywood come knocking to turn your doc into a reality TV series, though that doesn’t strike me as something a Canadian director would jump at the chance to do. Cohen: I have some ideas in the oven. It’s been a long road and took almost five years to complete The Manor. I want to be absolutely certain my next project is the right fit for me. Funny you mention reality TV… I’ve had a few opportunities to go in that direction. I like Storage Wars as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure I could do that to my family. (Although my dad is addicted toPawn Stars.)
What’s hot at Hot Docs Brian D. Johnson http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/04/24/whats-‐hot-‐at-‐hot-‐docs-‐4/#more-‐376405
5. The Manor It’s the opening night film at Hot Docs, and bound to be a crowd-‐pleaser. The Manor is a family Gothic tale from Ontario filmmaker Shawney Cohen, who is stuck in Guelph, helping his obese bully of a father run a strip club while fretting about his sad, anorexic mother starving herself to death. As a family portrait of epic bad taste, the film is reminiscent of The Queen of Versailles, another portrait of a grotesquely dysfunctional family. Except in this case the filmmaker cannot escape it. While Cohen’s family life is a mess, it has provided him with amazing material. He’s torn between a 400-‐pound father who eagerly volunteers to have fat-‐reduction surgery and an 85-‐pound mother who refuses to undergo therapy for her eating disorder. Then there’s the extended family, the picaresque demimonde of the strip club, which includes a drug-‐addicted hotel manager, an unstable ex-‐con—and Shawney’s brother, who also helps manage the club but seems more at home there, and has taken up with an ex-‐stripper. The term “white trash” comes to mind. But director Shawney, who’s not about to crudely exploit his own family, treats them with a sensitive touch, and more patience than they deserve. Mixing humour and pathos, he’s found backhanded redemption by turning his strip-‐club hell into a compelling piece of filmmaking.
Hot Docs returns for its 20th year. Here's what's in store (so far) James Adams http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/hot-‐docs-‐returns-‐for-‐its-‐20th-‐year-‐heres-‐whats-‐in-‐store-‐so-‐far/article9940703/
The world premiere of Shawney Cohen’s much-‐anticipated feature The Manor kicks off the 20th annual Hot Docs festival in Toronto on April 25, it was announced Tuesday morning at a media conference. The film, named after the strip club/motel in Guelph, Ont., that Cohen’s father and mother owned, is just one of 205 titles from 43 countries to be screened at this year’s event, which has grown into North America’s largest documentary festival. It’s the first feature-‐length documentary for the Toronto-‐based Cohen who, as Sean Cohen, has an international reputation for his special effects and animation work in films such as A History of Violence and Dawn of the Dead. The Manor will be included in Hot Docs’ Special Presentations, one of 11 program categories for this year’s festival, which concludes May 5. Among other films being presented this year: Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke, James Marsh’s The Burger and the King (about Elvis Presley’s diet), Jessica Oreck’s Aatsinki (about reindeer herders in Lapland), Sini Anderson’s The Punk Singer (about feminist icon/singer Kathleen Hanna), Inigo Westmeier’s Dragon Girls (about young female warriors-‐in-‐training at a kung fu school near Beijing), Ben Nabors’ William and the Windmill (about a Malawian teenager who builds a windmill and saves his family) and Our Nixon,Penny Lane’s anatomy of the disgraced 37th president of the United States. Two-‐time Oscar nominee Lucy Walker appears with The Crash Reel, a feature about the attempted comeback of U.S. snowboarder Kevin Pearce after a career-‐derailing accident in 2009.
Another world premiere from a Canadian is Alias,Michelle Latimer’s look at the life, music and dreams of five Toronto hip-‐ hoppers. New this year is the Scotiabank Big Ideas series. It features three long-‐form documentaries, premieres all, followed by in-‐ person appearances by the subjects of each film. The inaugural presentation, on April 26, is Anita, Freida Mock’s examination of the life, travails and accomplishments of Anita Hill, the lawyer whose allegations of sexual misconduct against Clarence Thomas nearly derailed his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991. April 27 marks the debut of Fight Like Soldiers Die Like Children, Patrick Reed’s documentary about the efforts of Canada’s Roméo Dallaire to ban the often forced recruitment of children into warring armies. Noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss are scheduled to appear April 29, following the screening of Gus Holwerda’s The Unbelievers, which traces Dawkins and Krauss’s treks across the world to promulgate their religion-‐over-‐reason cause. This year’s festival features two retrospectives, one a mid-‐career look at Canada’s Peter Mettler ( Picture of Light, The End of Time, Eastern Avenue),the other dedicated to U.S. veteran Les Blank, 77, whose credits includeBurden of Dreams and Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers. More than 2,000 industry delegates are expected to attend Hot Docs this year.
The Manor: When the heart of the family is a strip club James Adams http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/film-‐reviews/the-‐manor-‐when-‐the-‐heart-‐of-‐the-‐family-‐is-‐a-‐strip-‐ club/article11428638/?cmpid=rss1 Dad’s been running a strip club in Guelph, Ont., for 30 years and weighs a killer 400 pounds. Mom’s the daughter of Holocaust survivors, anorexic, 85 pounds of denial. Younger brother’s been working at the club for 15 years and is dating one of the strippers. What can a poor son do but make a documentary about the great dysfunctionality of it all? Which is just what Shawney (a.k.a. Sean) Cohen has done here, assisted by fellow Torontonian Mike Gallay. The Manor is opening Hot Docs 2013, the first Canuck film so honoured in at least a decade. It’s easy to see why – its 78 minutes are rich with character (especially Dad), incident, friction, deadpan humour and voyeuristic thrills. It also feels quite tidy, orchestrated even, so viewers may occasionally wonder if they’re seeing a feature-‐length documentary or a documentary-‐style feature.
Hot Docs 2013 opens with Canadian strip club tale The Manor Linda Barnard http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2013/03/19/hot_docs_2013_opens_with_canadian_strip_club_tale_the_manor.html
An eye-‐opening documentary by a Guelph strip club manager-‐turned filmmaker about his family’s damaged lives after decades in the peeler business will open the 20th edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, on April 25. Shawney Cohen’s The Manor, a story of “sex, drugs and family feuds,” kicks off the fest — the first time a debut feature by a Canadian filmmaker has opened Hot Docs in a decade. The ever-‐expanding festival will screen a record 205 documentaries from 43 countries in 11 screening programs from April 25 to May 5 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and other venues. Cohen said his first feature-‐length film is more a story of his family’s struggles and shocking transformations over 30 years since buying The Manor and its adjacent motel than what goes on in the club. Hot Docs has also announced a new program to showcase filmmakers and their subjects in conversation onstage after screenings. Among those featured in theScotiabank Big Ideas series is law professor Anita Hill, appearing with Anitadirector Freida Mock and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, both outspoken authors and subjects ofThe Unbelievers. Among the other films announced for the Hot Docs roster are Malcolm Ingram’sContinental, about the storied New York City gay bathhouse; Lucy Walker’s thrilling Sundance hit The Crash Reel, about snowboarder Kevin Pearce; Penny Lane’s presidential exploration Our Nixon; and Raoul Peck’s Fatal Assistance, about the ways in which billions of dollars donated to Haiti were lost or stolen due to corruption and mismanagement. Homegrown movies competing in the Canadian Spectrum program include Michelle Latimer’s Alias, a look at five Toronto street rappers, and Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke, about how amateur songbirds working in boomtown Fort McMurray, Alta., blow off steam and ease loneliness. There are films about urban dirt-‐bike gangs (Lotfy Nathan’s 12 O’Clock Boys), Lapland reindeer herders (Jessica Oreck’s Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys), Elvis Presley’s eating habits (James Marsh’s The Burger and the King) and an unapologetic 81-‐year-‐old jewel thief (Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina’s The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne). More than 2,000 industry delegates will be shopping for unsold films at Hot Docs, along with attending industry events, conferences, forums and, of course, parties.
Hot Docs 2013: Ten recommended titles Linda Barnard http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2013/04/22/hot_docs_2013_ten_recommended_titles.html The Manor: Hot Docs opens with stripclub manager-‐turned-‐filmmaker Shawney Cohen’s shockingly honest look at how his father’s decision to buy The Manor, a peeler bar and motel in Guelph, some 25 years ago has been a ruinous decision for his family. While his bullying father is morbidly obese, his perpetually anxious mother is an 85-‐ pound anorexic and his brother, who seems happiest with the business, refuses to face what The Manor is doing to his family. Case in point: Cohen wanted hockey pads for his bar mitzvah when he turned 13. His dad got him a lap dance.
Hot Docs 2013 Daily: Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer, The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, and Interior, Leather Bar. Kiva Reardon http://torontoist.com/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐daily-‐pussy-‐riot-‐a-‐punk-‐prayer-‐the-‐life-‐and-‐crimes-‐of-‐doris-‐payne-‐ and-‐interior-‐leather-‐bar/ And we’re off! Last night, Hot Docs 2013 opened with The Manor (3/5 stars) director Shawney Cohen’s personal portrait of his family and their strip club in Guelph, Ontario. The film, Cohen’s feature debut, has been well received, and it added a local feel to the festival’s opening night. Today, viewers have the option of going a bit further afield, with docs about Russian feminist punks and octogenarian jewellery thieves. But we suggest staying away from James Franco.
Hot Docs 2013 Program Features ‘Huge Rise’ in Canadian Films, Including Titles Headed to CBC Leah Collins http://www.cbc.ca/live/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐program-‐features-‐huge-‐rise-‐in-‐canadian-‐films-‐including-‐titles-‐headed-‐to-‐cbc.html
th When the 20 annual Hot Docs festival takes over Toronto April 25 -‐ May 5, moviegoers will be able to choose from 205 films, a slate which was revealed in full on Tuesday. What's remarkable about that program, according to the festival's director of programming, Charlotte Cook, is just how many of those titles came from within the country. "There was a huge rise in the amount of Canadian films in the festival this year, and that's due to the amazing array of films that we saw," Cook said from the stage of the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Tuesday, addressing the theatre as part of the festival's kick-‐off press conference. "A Canadian co-‐production even snuck its way into the international programme this year!" Among them is Shawnee Cohen's The Manor , the festival's opening night selection. Cohen's first feature documentary, the film -‐ on which the CBC's documentary channel is a production partner -‐ turns the camera on his family, who've been running a Guelph strip club since he was six.
Hot Docs draws high-‐profile guests Anita Hill, Roméo Dallaire CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/04/24/hot-‐docs-‐opener.html Hot Docs, North America’s largest festival of documentary films, opens Thursday with The Manor, Canadian filmmaker Shawney Cohen’s story about his family’s Guelph, Ont., strip club. Cohen will attend the opening night screening – one of 160 filmmakers who will be at the festival to answer questions and witness reaction to their films.
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1 time filmmaker earns Hot Docs opening slot CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/03/19/hot-‐docs-‐festival-‐lineup.html
A story of family life by the owners of a strip club, created by a first-‐time filmmaker from Guelph, Ont., will open the 2013 edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary film festival. Shawney Cohen’s The Manor follows the journey of his parents, who bought The Manor, a strip club attached to a seedy 32-‐ room motel when he was just six years old. He examines his father, whose weight has ballooned over the years to 400 pounds and his mother, who struggles to survive at 85 pounds, over a three-‐year period in an attempt to see what became of their dreams. “I think my father is just an incredible character,” Cohen told CBC News. “And, I think in many ways an audience can learn from our dysfunction and our family life and see a little bit of themselves and who we are. And I think there's a lot of love in the film as well, so. I think it'll surprise people. It's not really a film about a strip club, it's a film about a family struggling to run a strip club.” Cohen, who still manages the strip club a couple of days a week, earned a grant from the Shaw Media-‐Hot Docs Fund grant (2011), and the Tribeca Film Institute Documentary Fund to complete the Manor, which Hot Docs director of programming Charlotte Cook calls an “incredible story and a stunning film.” It’s one of 205 titles from 43 countries to screen at the Hot Docs festival, to run April 25 to May 5 in Toronto.
Hot Docs festival opens Thursday with ‘The Manor’ Erin Criger http://www.citynews.ca/2013/04/25/hot-‐docs-‐festival-‐opens-‐thursday-‐with-‐the-‐manor/ The 20th annual Hot Docs festival will open Thursday with the world premiere of The Manor, a documentary about a Jewish family running a Guelph strip club. Maclean’s film critic Brian D. Johnson called the movie “a family portrait of epic bad taste,” adding it was “bound to be a crowd pleaser.” The Manor, from first-‐time Canadian director Shawney Cohen, follows Cohen as he helps his father run the struggling family business. His father, who weighs 400 pounds, is eager for his upcoming fat-‐reduction surgery, while his mother is 85 pounds and refusing treatment. There’s an industry-‐only screening at 7 p.m. at the Bloor Cinema, followed by the 9:30 p.m. premiere. Cohen will attend both screenings. Hot Docs will showcase 205 titles – whittled down from 2,386 submissions – in 11 screening programs during the 11-‐day festival. The films come from 43 countries, including Poland, Russia, Uunited Arab Emirates, Haiti, Iran, Georgia, South Africa and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. There will be 44 world, 51 international, 31 North American, 46 Canadian and 14 Toronto premieres. The Hot Docs festival runs April 25 to May 5.
Hot Docs 2013: bold home movie ‘The Manor’ opens festival Lynn Fenske http://www.examiner.com/article/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐bold-‐home-‐movie-‐the-‐manor-‐opens-‐festival Guelph, Ontario's well-‐known strip club, "The Manor", is a place known for titillation, libations and sexually charged entertainment. For Canadian director Shawney Cohen it plays a very different role in his life; a role that is far from anything sexual or perverse. As an aspiring filmmaker, he examines how the business has changed the course of his family in his debut documentary The Manor. Cohen's family has owned "The Manor" since he was 6-‐years-‐old, which has afforded his family a comfortable lifestyle due to the financial gains a successful strip club has to offer. Now in his mid-‐30s, Shawney has returned home to help his family at a time of peril. His father weighs in excess of 400 pounds while his aging mother is fading away from anorexia. Meanwhile, his younger brother has become so heavily entwined in the business that he is dating one of the exotic dancers and slipping deeper into morally conflicted territory. Filmed over the span of four years, Cohen explores how his father's decision to purchase a strip club 30 years prior has changed his family's lives. The documentarian struggles with being associated to the club and being sucked into the routine and familiarity of running the business, while his brother Sammy enjoys the recognition and ego boost he receives from his involvement. Most shocking are the implications the strip club has had on the marriage of parents Roger and Brenda. Unspoken issues in the relationship have physically manifested in vastly different ways, leading to denial and arguments. Oddly, and possibly due to the director's personal ties with his subjects, there aren't many revelations, which is ultimately what makes The Manor intriguing. This isn't the Kardashian family but a Jewish-‐Canadian family that has built its own humble empire of sorts. Upon the conclusion, it's hard not to wonder what the point of it all was, yet the memorable characters leave a lasting impression that is hard to shake off. Compelling for the duration of its 78-‐minute runtime, The Manorplays in a similar "car crash on the highway" way that 2012's The Queen of Versailles did. Anyone looking for a seedy exposé of the nightlife and comely nude women will walk away disappointed, as Cohen's focus shies away from the club itself and focuses more so on the struggles of a truly dysfunctional famil
Hot Docs takes on Toronto: Four documentary picks Will Perkins http://ca.movies.yahoo.com/blogs/wide-‐screen/hot-‐docs-‐takes-‐toronto-‐four-‐documentary-‐picks-‐195601779.html
Canadian doc "The Manor," which opened the festival on Thursday night, follows the Cohens, a fairly typical small town Ontario family with a very unique family business: a strip club! The youngest family member Shawney (also the film's director), returns home to help his ailing parents and older brother run the club, which has been a part of his life since he was just six years old. Shockingly, it turns out that running a "gentlemen's club" can put a bit of a strain normal family life. Lawrence Krauss advancing the importance of science and reason; AJ Schnack’s "Caucus," a behind-‐the-‐scenes look at the 2012 Iowa Caucus; Malcom Ingram’s "Continental," a stylish portrait of the legendary NYC gay bathhouse; Lucy Walker’s "The Crash Reel," a high adrenaline look at snowboarder Kevin Pearce’s fighting for his life; Penny Lane’s "Our Nixon," a revealing look at one of the most controversial presidencies in US history; Marta Cunningham’s "Valentine Road," depicting a heartbreaking tragedy in which at an eighth-‐grader fatally shoots his LGBTQ classmate; and Raoul Peck’s "Fatal Assistance," a portrayal of the failure and corruption behind international aid post-‐disaster.
Hot Docs Film Festival | Day 3 By Sarah Boslaugh http://playbackstl.com/fest-‐reviews/12396-‐hot-‐docs-‐film-‐festival-‐day-‐3
Shawney Cohen and his younger brother Sammy are dutiful sons working in the family business, bought by their hardworking Jewish parents when Shawney was six. Nothing unusual there, except that the family business is running The Manor, a strip club and motel in Guelph, Ontario. The strip club business has provided the Cohens with an upper-‐middle-‐class life style, but Shawney is conflicted about what he believes it’s doing to his family, and that’s the principal subject of The Manor, Cohen’s first feature-‐length film. From a technical point of view, The Manor is a well put-‐together documentary, but it never makes a case for why you should be interested in the Cohens. They mostly have first-‐world problems—the father is so overweight he needs surgery, the mother is apparently anorexic, Shawney’s not sure what he wants to do with his life—and The Manor is content to remain on the surface, offering no particular insight into anyone’s life. Perhaps more
disappointing, it also fails to capitalize on the opportunity to present an insider’s view of what it’s like to run a strip club. In 2012, women were first allowed to compete in boxing at the Olympics, although of course some women have been training and competing in the sport for years. Last Woman Standing, directed by Lorraine Price and Juliet Lammers, follows two of those women, Ariane Fortin and Mary Spencer, as they prepare to compete for the Olympics. Friends since they traveled together as part of the Canadian national team, they’re both fierce warriors who have always competed in different weight classes—but since the Olympics recognizes only 3 weight classes for women (as opposed to 10 for men), in 2010 they find themselves competing against each other for the same spot on the national team. Last Woman Standing offers plenty of boxing action, but it also gives you insight into these women’s lives, exploring what it’s like for them to make the change from teammates to rivals. Last Woman Standing also gives you a sense of the psychology of boxing, and of the hard work that goes on outside the ring: Both women are trained by older men who spent most of their careers working with male boxers but are absolutely supportive of these women and their place in the ring. The testosterone rush of combat seems to be a theme at Hot Docs this year—first in Which Way is the Front Line from Here?, where it was offered as part of the explanation for why many young find military service to be a formative experience, and then in Fight Like Soldiers Die Like Children, where retired Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire mentions it as part of the problem in helping former child soldiers return to normal lives in society. The adrenaline high of pointing an AK-‐47 at an adult when you’re only 10 years old, Dallaire notes, is something that can be really difficult for kids to give up. He’s not blaming the kids, of course, but the adults who use them as what he calls “the ultimate low-‐tech approach to war.” Fight Like Soldiers Die Like Children is directed by Patrick Reed, who was a researcher and producer on Shake Hands with the Devil, a 2007 documentary about Dallaire’s experiences as Force Commander of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Rwanda. Fight Like Soldiers follows Dallaire on his mission to eliminate the exploitation of children as soldiers, and it’s a thoughtful film, exploring the process rather than offering an easy solution to a reality more complex than might be imagined from a safe vantage point in the West. Finally, I saw The Unbelievers at the Bloor Theatre, one of the few movie theaters in the world dedicated to screening documentaries. Directed by Gus Holwerda, The Unbelievers is part road trip and part philosophical and scientific discussion. It features theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, both distinguished scientists, as well entertaining speakers who have become leading advocates for the value of scientific thought. They’re also strong and convincing advocates for atheism in a world where religion keeps encroaching into areas where it has no business (science education, for instance). The Unbelievers is thoroughly entertaining and a great bonding experience for those who value rational thought, although I suppose if you’re a strongly religious person you might find it less enjoyable. Its closing thought—there are no scientific authorities, only scientific experts, because anything a scientist says can be proven wrong by better evidence—is the difference between science and faith in a nutshell. The Unbelievers was presented as part of the Scotiabank Big Ideas series, and was followed by a Q&A with Dawkins and Krauss.
Still Hot after 20 years Adam Benzine http://realscreen.com/2013/04/24/still-‐hot-‐after-‐20-‐years/
As North America’s biggest documentary festival celebrates its 20th anniversary, the team behind Hot Docs – which kicks off tomorrow in Toronto – talks to realscreen about the Canadian event’s growth and the secrets of its success. This year’s festival will feature Canadian premieres for buzzy docs such as Steve Hoover’s Blood Brother, Lucy Walker’s The Crash Reel, Jason Osder’s Let The Fire Burn, and Freida Mock’s Anita, and will kick off tomorrow (April 25) with the world premiere of The Manor, the feature doc debut from Shawney Cohen. “We have to respond to the fact that a lot of people are watching things online now, so the question of what the festival
Hot Docs to open with Cohen’s “Manor” Adam Benzine http://realscreen.com/2013/03/19/hot-‐docs-‐to-‐open-‐with-‐cohens-‐manor/
Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, has unveiled its full line up for 2013, selecting Shawney Cohen’s debut documentary The Manor (pictured) to be its opening night film. The doc is billed as an “intimate tragi-‐comic family portrait” looking at the Canadian director’s family-‐owned strip club in Ontario. It is co-‐directed by Mike Gallay and produced by Paul Scherzer, and will receive its world premiere at the festival on April 25.
“This is an incredible story and a stunning film,” said Hot Docs director of programming Charlotte Cook in a statement. “To be able to open the festival with a film by a new talent in Canadian filmmaking, Shawney Cohen, is a real joy.” The film will spearhead a 20th anniversary program of 205 films from 43 countries screening across 11 programs, culled from 2,386 film submissions. In the Canadian Spectrum program, four-‐time Emmy winner John Kastner will premiere his doc NCR: Not Criminally Responsible (pictured below), the first part of a two-‐part project billed as being “a compassionate portrayal of the dilemma between the rights of the mentally ill and the safety of others.” Canadian pubcaster the CBC will air the doc on TV later in the year. Other Canadian films selected for Hot Docs include Michelle Latimer’s Alias, which “illuminates the lives, music, and dreams of five rappers in Toronto’s street hip-‐hop scene,” according to the festival; Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke, which tells the story of oil sands workers “easing their loneliness at their local karaoke bar;” and Nimisha Mukerji’s Blood Relative, which looks at a man’s fight to obtain life-‐saving medical treatment for young people in India. Elsewhere, notable films getting their Canadian premieres at the Toronto fest include Jeanie Finlay’s anticipated, BBC-‐backed doc The Great Hip Hop Hoax; Morgan Matthews’ story of Bigfoot hunters, Shooting Bigfoot; Ben Nabors’ SXSW Award-‐winner William and the Windmill; and Sini Anderson’s film on feminist icon and Bikini Kill vocalist Kathleen Hanna,The Punk Singer. In addition to unveiling its film screenings, Hot Docs is also launching a “Big Ideas Series,” sponsored by Scotiabank, which will feature conversations with some of the high-‐profile subjects appearing in this year’s films. The inaugural event will present evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, subjects of The Unbelievers; as well as Roméo Dallaire, the subject of Fight Like Soldiers Die Like Children; and Anita Hill, the subject of Anita. “Hot Docs’ audiences have always embraced the idea that great documentaries should be a starting point for great conversations,” said Hot Docs MD Brett Hendrie, adding that the initiative “provides Toronto audiences a special opportunity to hear from leading thinkers who are shaping our shared dialogue on important social, scientific and cultural topics. “We expect lively and thought-‐provoking conversations that hold true to the festival’s motto of being outspoken and outstanding.” As previously reported, Hot Docs will this year honor filmmakers Les Blank and Peter Mettler with retrospectives. And as reported earlier this month, Special Presentations selected to play at this year’s festival include Blood Brother, The Crash Reel, Gideon’s Army (pictured below), Let the Fire Burn, Our Nixon, Salma, Valentine Road and The War Room.
This year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival runs for 11 days from April 25 to May 5.
Hot Docs 2013 Review: THE MANOR is the GODFATHER of Jewish Strip-‐Club Owning Family Films Jason Gorber http://twitchfilm.com/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐review-‐the-‐manor-‐is-‐the-‐godfather-‐of-‐jewish-‐strip-‐club-‐owning-‐family-‐films.html
About an hour West of Toronto lies Guelph, Ontario. It's a college town, known for its slightly hippie vibe, strong connection with all things agricultural, and a quaint downtown. Attractions include a local brewery and a nearby Antique Festival that's open on Sundays during the summer. What it's not especially known for is The Manor, a strip club built in the mansion built in 1896 by John Sleeman, the namesake of that local brewery. It's probably like almost every strip club you can think of, with cheap beer nights and Amateur events, oil wrestling and loads of (mostly) men coming in to unwind while fake-‐tittied women gesticulate and writhe about on poles.
This was what I was expecting The Manor to be about, the strange, sordid, likely comical life of running a small town strip club. Instead, we get something much more interesting. At its heart, this is a film about appetites. Director Shawney Cohen has crafted an autobiographical doc that chronicles his family to a far greater extent than he chronicles his family business. His father, the club's owner, is a giant of a man, all rolls of flesh. We find him eating constantly, and his battles with weight and consumption occupy much of the film. In contrast, his mother is taking the opposite tack, she's a frail, almost spectre like, wasting her way before our eyes. Shawney's brother, on the other hand, is made to seem born to do the job, finding himself embracing the lifestyle one would almost expect from making a living from lasciviousness, complete with preposterously portentous automobile purchase. Finally, there's Shawney himself, the introspective, almost philosophical son, seemingly stuck in a rut of helping to run the club, but doing so with melancholic reticence. In other words, beyond the boobs and bombast, this is a family drama caught on film. Shawney is like a young Corleone, "trying to get out but being pulled back in" by the sheer gravity, both virtual and actual, of his father's presence. Shawney's brother has all the trappings of success, but it's clear that he's just the family Fredo trying way too hard to make a good impression. The film demonstrates some things unique to this particular demographic -‐ the horror of the Holocaust looms over the family, for example, serving as an excuse for the father never wanting to go hungry again. The scene where the younger brother bringing his stripper/girlfriend to a Passover Seder, as the patriarch patiently explains that they were once slaves in Egypt, has obvious comedic value. Yet the story of this family is far more universal than that -‐ the father's concern about that same girlfriend finding bigger and better things in time proves as prescient and obvious as it is to the viewer sitting in the comfort of the theatre. Choice after choice made by members of the family are both understandable from one's own life decisions, yet clearly doomed to fail in the way they're shown in the film. It's a doc that both mythologizes this family's concerns and shows them as being a brittle and human as all of us. The club itself is mirrored by the family's own mansion, complete with lions at the gate, and the twinning of these two worlds is what makes the film so effective. There's some fabulous scenes of awkwardness, yet there's rarely a time when you're not in some ways empathizing with the main characters. To Shawney's credit, he never comes across as "better than" the rest of what he's capturing on screen, even when he's very much part of the story. If anything, his own ambivalence comes across often as either sullen bordering on the petulant. Almost all of us, whatever our age, behave somewhat badly around our parents, the smallest incident causing a rise, the aggravation that only those that have known you since birth can with a quick remark inflict. Yet there's also a clear indication of love and concern beneath it all. This is a candid film free of churlishness or sarcasm, and it's all the better for it. Cohen has showcased a veritable menagerie of interesting characters, from the French Canadian manage to the zaftig eating disorder counselor. The film almost plays like some strange Jim Jaramusch or David Lynch world, but without ever feeling forced or artificial. I think Errol Morris would like this family very much. I think it a tremendous thing that the Hot Docs Festival decided to open their 20th season with this film -‐ it's both challenging and engaging, and completely differs from the winking, sarcastic film I had fully expected it to be. Moving, memorable, it's an extremely strong debut film from Cohen.
Jewel Thiefs! Reindeer Herding! Sex for Trees! HotDocs Celebrates Its 20th In Style Kurt Halfyard http://twitchfilm.com/2013/03/hotdocs-‐2013-‐announcement.html The opening night film The Manor chronicles the strange family of documentary filmmaker (and strip club owner) Shawney Cohen. When he was six years old, his father bought "The Manor", a small town strip club attached to a seedy 32-‐room motel. Thirty years after the purchase, the family's extravagant lifestyle has got the better of this Jewish family. His self-‐indulgent father has seen his weight balloon to 400 pounds, while Shawney's anorexic mother struggles to survive at 85 pounds. Hoping to understand what happened to his once-‐recognizable family, Shawney spends three years filming in a shadowy world of sex, drugs and family feuds.
10 films getting the biggest advance-‐buzz at Hot Docs Blake Williams http://www.blogto.com/film/2013/04/10_films_getting_the_biggest_advance-‐buzz_at_hot_docs/ Well, for one, it's the Opening Night film, which no matter what it is will always be much-‐talked about and difficult to get a ticket to. Yet nothing much else about this doc, at the moment, would seem to indicate buzz-‐worthiness. Give it a week. We'll have another Hot Docs preview post in a few days on our favourite films in the festival that we've had a chance to take a peek at, which will expound on this, but The Manor is going to be one of the best word-‐of-‐mouth successes of the festival this year, without question. It's set in and around Guelph, the title refers to a strip club, and there are some very unlikeable and pathologically unkempt individuals on display. More later on why this all adds up to one of the most emotional films of the year.
The Manor Review by Terri Coles http://torontoist.com/2013/04/the-‐manor/
The Manor is ostensibly about director Shawney Cohen’s family business: a strip club in Guelph. Viewers may come looking for titillation, but the focus here isn’t on the flesh. Instead, Cohen manages to use the club as a platform for a documentary about himself, his younger brother, and his parents. Cohen’s parents have run The Manor, a strip joint with an attached hotel, for 30 years. The seedy sides of the business haven’t affected the family in any of the worst ways: they don’t have drug issues or criminal backgrounds. But they aren’t unscathed. Cohen’s mother has an eating disorder, his father has a weight problem, and the director himself is deeply ambivalent about his job as club manager. Much of the film centres on Cohen’s charismatic and difficult father Roger, who puts his energy into helping his ex-‐con assistant Bobby stay straight while his wife Brenda starves herself. Cohen’s younger brother Sammy has embraced the family business, while the director walks an uncomfortable line between working at the club and resenting it. There’s humour in this family’s dysfunction, but there’s also heart. The Manor is an interesting look at the some real people behind a controversial industry. It’s also a quietly powerful examination of what makes a family.
Hot Docs 2013: bold home movie ‘The Manor’ opens festival Lynn Fenske http://www.examiner.com/article/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐bold-‐home-‐movie-‐the-‐manor-‐opens-‐festival
Something tells me that after Thursday Shawney Cohen won’t be a struggling filmmaker anymore. That’s when his first feature-‐length documentary “The Manor” opens the 20th annual Hot DocsCanadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto. In the film Cohen turns a camera on himself and his family as they struggle through daily operations of The Manor, their family-‐owned strip club in Guelph, Ontario. There’s Roger, Cohen’s gruff, overweight dad; his anorexic mother Brenda; and younger brother Sammy. Together they form a familial bond based more on the stress and embarrassment of running a titty bar than on love and mutual respect. With a bold heart and focused lens Cohen captures the family’s daily dramas of poor health, financial pressures and shattered aspirations. Empathy abounds. As their painful, unconventional story unfolds, an audience can’t help but fixate on individual family members and their collective destiny. “This is an incredible story and a stunning film,” comments Charlotte Cook, Hot Docs director of programming. “To be able to open the Festival with a film by a new talent in Canadian filmmaking, Shawney Cohen, is a real joy.” The Hot Docs world premiere of “The Manor” takes place at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. Cohen will be present to introduce the film and participate in post-‐screening audience discussions. An additional Hot Docs screening takes place April 29, 12 p.m. at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Review: ‘The Manor’ opens its doors to Hot Docs Sarah Gopaul http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/348764
‘The Manor’ will have its world premiere at Hot Docs tonight. It is an intimate portrait of a small town Jewish family struggling to maintain a strip club. In The Manor, filmmaker Shawney Cohen explores the effect owning a gentlemen's club has had on his family. Roger Cohen had 14 jobs before finally buying The Manor and the attached hotel. His Barbie doll wife, Brenda Cohen, had given him two sons, both of whom are employed at the club. Both parents have severe eating disorders, though they suffer from opposite extremes: she's wasting away and he's ballooning. It sort of begins with the day in the life of a strip club owner: managing the scantily clad or naked, girls; paying bills; and mingling with customers. Maybe because the man behind the camera is their blood, they are relatively candid about their feelings – though getting Brenda to have a serious discussion is like pulling teeth. Shawney generally employs an interview format, though he sometimes sets up a camera to the side to eavesdrop on a discussion. Because the subjects are his family, his involvement in the film doesn't seem intrusive or inappropriate. Even though The Manor is an inescapable cloud over the family's existence, the documentary isn't about the strip club; it's about a family's desire to become physically and emotionally healthy again. The Manor is screening during Hot Docs, the largest documentary film festival in North America, which runs April 25 to May 5 in Toronto.
Hot Docs 2013: ‘The Manor' Shows The Life Of A Strip Club Family Mark Wigmore http://news.moviefone.ca/2013/04/24/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐the-‐manor-‐review_n_3138734.html
The opening night film for this year's Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival is an intimate look at family life... in a strip club. "The Manor" is the story of the Cohen family, chronicling their lives with each other while also operating one of Ontario's longest-‐running gentlemen's clubs. As titillating as this doc may initially seem, don't expect a raucous romp of sex and booze. Instead, "The Manor" takes a hard look at marriage, money, dependence, severe obesity, addiction and eating disorders; the actual stripping takes a back seat to a frank depiction of a family's struggle. Hot Docs is no stranger to international interest; in fact, the opening night films in recent years have featured some major international talent. This year the festival has boldly decided to get behind first-‐time Canadian filmmaker Shawney Cohen and "The Manor," his very strong autobiographical debut. Now in his mid-‐30s, Shawney is a manager at The Manor, the strip club business that has been in his family since he was 6.
However, Shawney splits the focus of his film across the other members of his family. Amongst the bare bottoms and bosoms, the most striking character in "The Manor" is Shawney's father, Roger. A child of holocaust survivors, Roger is archetypical television dad of the 20th century: overbearing, loving, a little racist and, at 400 pounds, he struggles with obesity. In the end, he's a caring family man. Roger is no doubt a patriarch, paying salaries to his two boys to help run the strip club, which is attached to a 32-‐room motel. He smokes, eats at a constant rate and barks out orders and advice, regardless of whether anyone wants to hear it. Brenda is Roger's wife, and very much the Peggy Bundy to his Al. She has been a housewife for most of her adult life, supporting her family, but clearly unhappy with her proximity to the family business. Brenda copes by being the antithesis to her husband; she doesn't eat, and weighs a scant 85 pounds because of it. Rounding out the family is brother Sammy, who has embraced the strip club culture, spending the cash he makes on nice cars and dating one of the dancers who works for The Manor; a business policy no-‐no. Other important characters in the film are former stripper Susan, who now runs the attached hotel, and assistant Bobby, an ex-‐con who has problems with drugs and women and has trouble colouring within the lines when it comes to legal business practices. This is an interesting group with lots of character and plenty of troubles. To put it simply: at their core, the Cohens are a family like any other. This intimate look at the Cohens is what really shines in "The Manor," and what I imagine drew the attention of the Hot Docs curators. Sure, there are the blush-‐worthy scenes of strippers dropping off dollar-‐filled envelopes in the middle of important family meetings and crises, and one scene demonstrates how a dancer is prepped to deal with grabby customers. It takes a big personality to handle that kind of work, and Roger is more than up to the task. Going into "The Manor," I was sure that the salacious subject matter was going to do all the heavy lifting in this doc. Fortunately, Shawney Cohen had some heady material to work with, so all he had to do was keep the camera rolling. I was delighted with his great sense of professionalism when it came to shooting, editing and scoring his film. Cohen clearly knows where his priorities are as a filmmaker. When it comes to showing the naked truth about life and family, "The Manor" is anything but shy. It deserves its opening night spot at Hot Docs 2013.
The Manor Marc Glassman http://www.classical963fm.com/blog/arts-‐review/the-‐manor/
Shawney Cohen was born into an unhappy family. His father, Roger, a Russian Jewish immigrant, couldn’t get a successful business going in Canada until he bought The Manor, a strip club attached to a small motel. It proved to be a Faustian bargain. Thirty years later, The Manor is still flourishing in staid, conservative Guelph, Ontario. It’s a place of outlawry, expensive beer and prurient sexual fantasies, available to all in one of Ontario’s quietly polite small towns. Of course, The Manor has been a huge financial success. The Cohens live in a palatial estate, with a garden and a duck pond. But there’s been a price. You’ve heard of Jack Sprat, who could eat no fat and
whose wife could eat no lean? Reverse them and you have Roger, now 400 pounds and Brenda, his 85-‐ pound anorexic wife. It’s as if a curse of Biblical proportions has been visited upon them. Sammy, their younger son, has come to embrace the family business. Defying his dad’s many edicts, he has a stripper girlfriend, a sports car and a “who cares?” attitude to anyone who confronts him. Shawney, the older son, the family’s artist, has made this film. The Manor is an intimate portrait of a family gone desperately, tragically awry. Made over a period of years, with intimate access thanks to Shawney, The Manor shows us lives led in the margins, whether it’s the “girls,” the managers or the owners. Like most fine docs, The Manor has one major figure, who dominates every scene he’s in. That’s Roger, the flawed patriarch, whose arrogance extends to his nearly nude employees, his children and his sad, neglected wife. Over the course of the film, Shawney examines his father as he deals with his weight, his wife and a mounting crisis as the club experiences its first financial downturn. Through it all, Roger remains tough and self-‐assured, willing to take on all comers. The camera embraces Roger, pre and post-‐ op, as his weight goes down after surgery but the man remains as imposing as ever. Just as fascinating is Brenda, the mysterious matriarch, who spends her days empowering her husband and sons. Endlessly cooking for her family, she fights every attempt by Shawney—and occasionally Roger—to get her to eat. Quietly withering away, Brenda is the conscience of this film. One evening during Hot Docs, I ran into Shawney at a party. We joked that the film would have never made its opening night slot if the family were in the deli business. But the truth is that The Manor is a compelling, human tale, not dependent on shots of naked women. It’s a true family drama—and compulsively viewable.
Meet the family behind the poles when The Manor opens Hot Docs Emer Schlosser http://www.weraddicted.com/meet-‐the-‐family-‐behind-‐the-‐poles-‐when-‐the-‐manor-‐opens-‐hot-‐docs/
Although entitled The Manor, the focus of the film is centered on the dysfunctional family rather than the family business. Eldest son and director, Shawney Cohen, turns the lens on his family, seemingly to make find some sense in them all. While his younger brother seems to enjoy, and fit right into, the strip-‐club lifestyle, Shawney seems more hesitant and conflicted. The parents are each afflicted with eating disorders on extreme opposite ends of the spectrum. During the film the 400-‐pound father faces his size and undergoes surgery to reduce his stomach as a solution. The frail 85-‐pound mother is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and it was unnerving to see her skeletal silhouette and movements, which were eerily reminiscent of imagery from concentration camps. There are humorous moments, though they seem to stem inadvertently from ridiculousness spewed by the bizarre, bordering on absurd, unawarity of what was coming out of their mouths. A paraphrasing example is when the father, wondering aloud why people think he has anger management problems, states: “Sure I’m aggressive and violent, but that doesn’t mean I have anger issues.” To its credit, it was quite interesting how intimate a portrait was painted as no guards seemed to be up with anyone interviewed, however that didn’t alleviate the reality-‐TV edge. When I see documentaries I like at least one of these two objectives met: Learn something, be entertained While overall I was moderately entertained, I didn’t feel it fully hit either target. Rather it was a bite of a sad slice of self-‐ centered life.
Hot Docs Review: The Manor Trista DeVries http://thetfs.ca/2013/04/22/hot-‐docs-‐review-‐the-‐manor/
The Manor is the story of the Cohen family, owners of the Guelph strip club “The Manor”, bought when director Shawney Cohen was six-‐years-‐old. Now in his mid-‐30s Shawney has returned home to lend a hand while his family is in crisis. His father weighs 400 lbs and desperately needs stomach reduction surgery. His mother is achingly thin, obsessively overcooking for her family while they suspect her anorexia is getting dangerously worse. His younger brother is breaking the rules and dating a dancer from the club, while losing his cool with the rest of the staff. Cohen tries to sort out some of the issues while also trying to maintain an identity outside of the club, which is proving to be a difficult task. Shawney Cohen has done something very brave: he has created a film that shows the unvarnished crazy of a truly dysfunctional family – his own family. While The Manor manages to dodge the topic almost in full, it does nothing to disprove the idea that owning a strip club doesn’t make for a stable family unit. It is refreshing that Cohen doesn’t shy away from this story – even when things get rough – but also doesn’t seem to recognize that recording his family seems to be adding an additional layer of dysfunction that might be seriously detrimental. Most interesting is the effect this film is likely to have on Canadian viewers. Typically we watch films of this nature at arm’s length (they’re usually about Americans), but there’s no buffer this time. This is homegrown crazy. We have to own this one. Is The Manor essential Hot Docs viewing? The Manor is not only a great film, but it’s a great Canadian film. It is opening this year’s festival for a reason: it’s a great movie you should absolutely see.
Hot Docs 2013 Preview Pt. 1 Anthony Marcusa http://scenecreek.com/hot-‐docs/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐preview-‐pt-‐1/
The opening night film is not feel-‐good, but surely interesting and very hard to forget; whether you want to remember or not. A colourful cast of characters make up the people of The Manor, a hotel and strip club in Guelph, and those colors are pretty unattractive ones. As narrated by the indecisive, apprehensive, and quixotic son of the club’s owner, The Manor is no commentary or quest, simply presentation and amazement. Shawney Cohen, an idealistic Jewish family man in his mid 30’s questions the Cohen business while tending to a few familial issues in his uneventful southern Ontario town. The lives of those associated with The Manor, a historic Guelph institute, are anything but ordinary. Shawney’s father is dangerously obese, clocking in at around 400 pounds before his stomach surgery. His mother, on the other hand, is scarily underweight, and looks as if she were to fall, something would break. His brother, who enjoys the business, is dating a blond woman who works at the club, and the two live in his parent’s basement. The hotel manager has a problem with drugs, and another coworker, who is treated like a son, has trouble with everything else. It’s a powerful portrait for sure, and Shawney gives the viewer incredibly intimate access over the course of three years in trying to deal with a tough, single-‐minded father, a feeble mother, and a carefree brother. Shawney for his part seems to want to be compelling, but his inaction is just as frustrating as the unhealthy and aggressive decisions made by others. At times funny, mostly tragic, and always engrossing (or just gross), The Manor is a curious choice for opening night, a well-‐made film, and calls for a shower after viewing.
20th Hot Docs Line-‐Up Features World Premieres, Top Docs, Speaker Series http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/news/20th-‐hot-‐docs-‐line-‐up-‐features-‐world-‐premieres-‐top-‐docs-‐speaker-‐ series/1002153627/ Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has announced its full film line-‐up for the upcoming 20th edition, featuringmore than 200 titles from 43 countries in 11 screening programs. The world premiere of Canadian director Shawney Cohen’s THE MANOR (Canada, 78 min) will open the 2013 Festival with an industry-‐only screening on Thursday, April 25, at 7:00 p.m. The film will have an public opening night screening immediately following at 9:30 p.m. Director Shawney Cohen will be in attendance at both screenings at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 506 Bloor Street West, to introduce the film and participate in post-‐ screening audience discussions. Hot Docs 2013 will also see the launch of the Scotiabank Big Ideas Series, a new speaker series featuring some of the high-‐profile subjects appearing in this year’s films. The Scotiabank Big Ideas Series will offer audiences the opportunity to experience three thought-‐provoking documentaries on big issues such as science, human rights and gender equality, and then hear first-‐hand from the brave and outspoken individuals featured in the films. "This year’s festival is about looking back and celebrating our 20th anniversary, and also looking forward,” says Hot Docs director of programming Charlotte Cook. “This year we are celebrating, big ideas, innovation and the future. We will have many new and exciting experiences at the festival to give back to the local, and filmmaking, community that have supported us for two decades. This festival is for them." In addition to the opening night World premiere of Shawney Cohen’s THE MANOR, a first-‐time filmmaker’s intimate tragi-‐comic family portrait, other notable films in the Special Presentations program include: Gus Holwerda’s THE UNBELIEVERS, which follows renowned scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss advancing the importance of science and reason; AJ Schnack’s CAUCUS, a behind-‐the-‐scenes look at the 2012 Iowa Caucus; Malcom Ingram’s CONTINENTAL, a stylish portrait of the legendary NYC gay bathhouse; Lucy Walker’s THE CRASH REEL, a high adrenaline look at snowboarder Kevin Pearce’s fighting for his life; Penny Lane’s OUR NIXON, a revealing look at one of the most controversial presidencies in US history; Marta Cunningham’s VALENTINE ROAD, depicting a heartbreaking tragedy in which at an eighth-‐grader fatally shoots his LGBTQ classmate; and Raoul Peck’s FATAL ASSISTANCE, a portrayal of the failure and corruption behind international aid post-‐disaster.
The Manor Review My TV Media http://myetvmedia.com/film-‐review/the-‐manor-‐review/
The 20th Hotdocs Film Festival in Toronto will open with the world premiere of The Manor, Shawney Cohen’s intimate doc about growing up in the family business of running a strip club. Toronto-‐based Shawney Cohen, under the name Sean Cohen, has an international reputation for his special effects and animation work in films such as Dead Silence (2007), A History of Violence (2005), Resident evil: Apocalypse (2004) and Dawn of the Dead (2004). The Manor is Cohen’s first feature-‐length documentary and he reveals that filmmaking is where his heart lies although he has managed the family Strip Club in Guelph, Ontario for many years. This very personal story features the tragi-‐comic portrait of his family’s struggles and their shocking transformations over 30 years since his father bought the strip club and the motel next door. His first feature confirms Cohen’s maturing talent and reinforces his emerging status as a filmmaker. I was disappointed that he missed the opportunity to add an important layer to his narrative by providing more insight into the more mysterious side of strip clubs, the shadowy world of sex, drugs and family grudges and the potential double lives of owners, customers and stripers. Deep down Shawney has always known the family business is not his gig, “My brother is more comfortable here than I am, everyone likes being at The Manor, I know my brother does and I know my father loves his bar…I am on the fence.” Shot over the course of three years, The Manor focuses on the ups and downs of Shawney Cohen’s dysfunctional family including his 400-‐pound father awaiting stomach reduction surgery and his 85-‐pound, anorexic mother. His role as filmmaker and son provides an astonishingly intimate and rarely seen perspective on a family values, livelihood, dependence and love. The documentary portrays Shawney’s unease with his environment: “At 13, I asked for hockey passes for my Bar Mitzvah. Instead I got a lap dance.” The Manor is co-‐directed by Mike Gallay and produced by Paul Scherzer. It is touching, honest, and sprinkled with humor. The Manor is the recipient of a Shaw Media-‐Hot Docs Completion Fund Grant (2011), and a grant from the Tribeca Film Institute Documentary Fund (2012). It has also been recognized as the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) Forum Round-‐Table Pitch Winner (2011).
THE MANOR plays Hot Docs 2013 Ryan McNeil http://www.thematinee.ca/hotdocs2013manor/ Every family comes with a legacy. Some are defined by talent, others are defined by prosperity. As years pass these legacies have an unusual way of defining a family’s relationship with its community, and the family members’ relationship with one-‐another. Some legacies can be a source of pride, others a source of shame. So what should one expect from a family whose legacy is running a strip club, and what effect can such a lifeblood have on the family who prospers from it? THE MANOR is director Shawn Cohen’s attempt to make sense of his immediate family dynamic. The family calls Guelph, Ontario home, a town of approximately 125,000 people. At the centre of this family’s universe is The Manor; the strip club and motel they have owned and operated for more than twenty years. The strip club has allowed them to live somewhat large in this small town, but is, strangely, only peripheral to the central problems the family faces. In his mid-‐30′s, Shawn is returning home to help out at The Manor during a tough time for his family. The troubles begin with Roger, the overbearing patriarch about to undergo stomach surgery in an effort to get his weight under control. The troubles extend to Brenda, the matriarch who has nothing to do with the family business, and comes with her own complicated attitude towards food. It’s all rounded out by Sammy, Shawn’s younger brother who has taken to the family business to the extent that he is now dating a former dancer. What’s fascinating about The Manor is the way it is less about a family running a strip club, and more about a family trying to get a grip on its identity now that everyone is grown. Relationships are redefined and continually tested, having progressed to a point where oddity has given way to disfunction. Running a strip club is a business that inherently comes with dishonesty and deceit, so should we be surprised when that trickles over into the family’s relationship with one-‐another? Just look at their big house and fancy cars – the family seems to be living the high life. It’s easy to forget that they are in fact just living large in a very small circle. That sort of self-‐deception can be infectious. Considering the downer of the situation, it could have been easy for Cohen to have painted his family portrait with a bleak brush. Happily though, THE MANOR plays out with doses of wry humour that help carry the audience through. The film’s wit is obviously an extension of Cohen’s understanding of the absurdity of the situation. After all, many of us grow up around a family business; not many of those family businesses involve needing to settle disputes between scantily clad women. One suspects that such moments eventually became “just another day at the office” for Cohen, and knowing just how weird that is is palpable in his film. THE MANOR reminds us that strip clubs are supposed to offer illusions and escapes…for a price. Anyone who frequents them can get a few drinks into their system, and lust over women they can’t have. The price on these escapes is deceptively high, but that is true for both the clientele and the proprietors. Sooner or later, everything comes due, and for The Cohens that time has come. This film is clearly Shawn Cohen’s attempt at settling accounts.
Hot Docs 2013: Growing Up With Strippers and Hippies in ‘The Manor’ and ‘American Commune’ Christopher Campbell http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/film-‐festivals/hot-‐docs/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐growing-‐up-‐with-‐strippers-‐and-‐hippies-‐in-‐ the-‐manor-‐and-‐american-‐commune.php
For his 13th birthday, Shawney Cohen received a lap dance. Gifted to him by his father. It didn’t seem that abnormal for a kid who grew up around strippers. His family owns and operates a gentleman’s club outside of Toronto, and as a kid Cohen often stayed at its adjoining hotel. If he awoke in the middle of the night and needed a glass of water, he would head to the bar like it was no big deal. Decades later, he has now made an irresistible film about the family business, where he also works part time. Named after the club, The Manor presents the place like any of us might share our own childhood backdrop. In a way it’s merely a common setting in the context of Cohen’s life, yet it’s also quite significant to the story of his parents, both of whom have an eating disorder. Over the course of multiple years of coverage, as his obese father has bariatric surgery and his mother is pushed to get help for anorexia, this dynamic is where the documentary maintains its focus. In a similar manner, American Commune is a personal film co-‐directed by sisters Nadine Mundo and Rena Mundo Croshere about the famous commune where they grew up, The Farm. And while they provide an insider’s perspective on what it was like to live there, the majority of their documentary is centered on a broader history of
this place, its rise and fall as a post-‐‘60s utopia for hardcore hippies guided by spiritual teacher Stephen Gaskin. Nadine and Rena’s parents were founding members, so of course a lot is chronicled through their experience, details of which wind up mirroring the fate of The Farm as well. Both docs feature first-‐person narration, but neither is exemplary of the self-‐indulgent sort filling most of the personal film genre these days. Cohen and the Mundo sisters are more like supporting characters, opening the door for us and showing us around, only offering exposition wherever necessary (that’s a bit more for American Commune, of course, because so much of it is a chronicle of the past). Unlike many documentary storytellers, they also enter the stage and are part of what unfolds. This puts them out in the open and in doing so buffers their importance in relation to everyone else. Still, these are also clearly forms of therapy for the filmmakers. And they won’t deny it. Making The Manor allowed Cohen to confront his past and present issues with the business and his family’s dramas, and it ultimately brought them closer. In American Commune, the Mundo sisters visit The Farm for the first time since leaving with their mother in the mid ’80s (a huge culture shock, to be sure). They interview their parents as well as fellow grown-‐up children of the commune, plus Gaskin and his more famous significant other, midwife Ina May Gaskin. Some of the time they’re looking for an account of the Farm’s beginnings, other times they seek something more specific to their own early years. Fortunately, the films are not about their own function as tools for healing. It’s surprising how many films like these are, and the simple way Cohen and the Mundo sisters avoid doing that is by not stating such. Even at their most present and detailed, the filmmakers’ voiceovers always let what we’re seeing, whether in a individual scene or the bigger picture, speak for itself. Cohen never has to address, let alone stress, how his mother’s unhealthy need to be thin relates to his father’s work with strippers and how he treats them. We barely even need the short moment where his father is talking about getting rid of a girl for being “too fat,” but even there the point is emphasized without being at all direct. Even if The Manor and American Commune were primarily made for the directors’ own benefit, they’d still be tremendously captivating for audiences. In the case of The Manor, the outspoken and unapologetic Roger Cohen is hereby added to the list of most magnetic nonfiction film characters of all time (and if anyone wants to make him a fictionalized character, too, he’ll have to be played by Albert Finney, Alan Ford or Brian Cox). His potential to lead this doc to great notoriety through his appearance on screen and off (he’s been a hit at screenings and made the cover of a local weekly paper in Canada for the film’s Hot Docs premiere) may only be hindered by the fact some critics are labeling him an unlikable human being. Meanwhile, his counterpart, Brenda Cohen, is a hugely sympathetic and fragile subject who tips the scale for us in the other direction. American Commune does not have as strong an ensemble, but while The Manor is a story of the present and needs all that character, the Mundo sisters’ film is concerned more with what happened back when. We become absorbed in its world thanks to a surplus of home movies shot from the start of the community as a cross-‐country convoy of buses through to Nadine and Rena’s adolescence, as they attempt to assimilate into the MTV generation in addition to society in general. Their film also concludes with a turn of events that comes out of nowhere (seemingly unrelated too) and sort of affirms how commanding the story has been up until then, as it leaves the invested viewer with a sudden inflection of emotions. Much of what we find compelling in docs like The Manor and American Commune is in their strangeness. The curiosity and fascination with lives different than ours, particularly in terms of upbringing, will always drive us to stories like these. But our interest in seeing people grow up in a strip club or on a hippy commune or wherever also wouldn’t be as strong if we couldn’t use the opportunity to reflect on our own lives, how and where we grew up and the ways the environment shaped us as people. In a way, Cohen’s thinking that his childhood was no big deal is correct, in as much as none of our backstories are big deals. And yet, with great storytellers involved, i.e. Cohen and the Mundo sisters, they may support terrific films that are themselves definitely big deals.
Hot Docs 2013: The Manor Kindah Mardam Bay http://www.pressplus1.com/hot-‐docs/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐the-‐manor SYNOPSIS: Shawney calls himself a filmmaker, but he's been a strip-‐club manager for longer. When he was six his father bought “The Manor”, a small-‐town strip club. Thirty years later, the family's lifestyle has got the better of them. While his 400-‐pound father prepares for stomach-‐reduction surgery, his 85-‐pound mother has her own complicated relationship with food. Shawney's role as struggling filmmaker and outcast son provides a rare glimpse into a family facing the consequences of their livelihood and dependence. Told with humor and frankness, THE MANOR is an intimate portrait of people struggling to call themselves a family. THOUGHTS: The Manor is a fantastic choice to open Hot Docs. A Canadian doc – from Guelph no less – that is quiet and reflective. What seems particularly delicious about this film is that it isn’t remotely salacious. The strip club is a façade for the inner works of this story about a man who owns it who is gluttony personified and his anorexic wife, who is depravity personified. How apt that these two with eating disorders should own a strip club which is a business that survives off gluttony and depravity. I hope this doesn’t sound indignant – it isn’t meant to. The Manor is a painful and sad look at an overbearing father, a meek mother and their two sons – one who loves the strip club business (he fits the ample amount of “guido” attitude for such a profession) and the filmmaker who throws a light on his own ineptitude to help his parents. Shawney has done a profound job of framing his story around extremes and personal struggles. Gray areas leap off the screen in all the human depths it truly lives in. The father is truly wicked at times, like when he won’t pay for his wife’s therapy sessions even though it has taken her years to agree to go, and then he will do a truly altruistic act in developing a halfway house out of “Sue’s Inn” – the hotel part attached to the strip club. The Manor is brightly directed and desires the audience to search the framing for themselves – it is in the details that you see so much of this story. The endless amounts of cooking the Mother does and yet does not take a bite. Heaps of food everywhere that seems to be the bane of this family’s existence, and yet never mentioned, no slow moving food-‐porn shots over what she is cooking, or narrative about the bounty she cooks every day. Shawney tells a story about when he is nine years old and goes down to the strip club to get a drink in the middle of the night, like any kid would do in any home. Where you think sex might be the issue of this family, it really isn’t. Shawney’s family business could be a mechanic shop, or a flower shop, or building condos; it isn’t “the family business” that is so much being revealed in The Manor for shock value, but truly the weight it has laid on each individual that make up this Cohen clan. Cohen does a spectacular job for his feature debut and for telling a story so deeply personal. It is his ability to step back and be a part of the documentary, with little sway or personal glorification that makes The Manor an outstanding first effort. The Manor is a strong, vibrant, dynamic and sad story about gluttony and deprivation within a family, who just happen to own a strip club.
Hot Docs 2013 Preview: Canadian Edition Phil Brown http://dorkshelf.com/2013/04/25/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐preview-‐canadian-‐edition/ Recommend: Yes, yes, a million times yes. Documentaries that mix delicate observation, genuine family insight, cringe comedy, and full frontal nudity are all too rare. Shawney Cohen pointed his camera at his family for his first feature length documentary and thankfully his subjects were worth the effort. When he was six, Cohen’s father purchased a strip club in Guelph called The Manor that remains the family business. His father runs the club from a throne built of gastric bypass-‐inducing high calorie food, his brother works the club and commits the cardinal sin of dating the staff, his 85-‐pound mother is suffers from an eating disorder she’s had since (surprise, surprise) strippers entered her life, and even Shawney works the bar against his best wishes. Then there’s extended family like a French Canadian ne’er do-‐well the father semi-‐adopted who works the club whenever he isn’t incarcerated and an ex-‐stripper who runs the motel attached to The Manor when she isn’t dealing with drug problems. So it’s a strange family, but a warm one that Cohen films unflinchingly. The Manor could have easily been a mean-‐spirited freak show comedy if made by a cynical outsider; however Cohen invites the audience into his family so openly that it’s hard not to fall for the collection of lovable outsiders. Stripping is simply business for the Cohens and it’s amazing how quickly the director makes all the naked flesh feel mundane. The family drama never feels forced either, playing more like the inevitable tragically funny series of uncomfortable events that would befall any close-‐knit family over a year with cameras rolling. Granted not every son goes through the experience of having an already awkward girlfriend/father introduction interrupted by a drunken naked woman clutching a fistful of sweaty 20s. I suppose that’s what makes The Manor a compelling film and not a slickly edited home movie. (Phil Brown)
Hot Docs 2013: Full Lineup By Interest Adam Patterson http://filmpulse.net/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐full-‐lineup-‐by-‐interest/
The full lineup for Hot Docs 2013 has been officially announced today, and North America’s largest documentary film festival doesn’t disappoint with another massive slate of amazing looking docs. The fest will take place April 25th – May 5th in Toronto, CA and more information can be found at Hotdocs.ca. Hit the jump for the full list of films by interest and stay tuned for more coverage. GENDER & SEXUALITY Buying Sex; Continental; Fuck for Forest; Interior. Leather Bar.; Manor, The; Punk Singer, The; Second Class PERSONAL HISTORIES Alphée of the Stars; American Commune; Bà nội; Before the Revolution; Elena; Here One Day; Manor, The; Mistaken for Strangers; New Life of a Family Album; River; Sick Birds Die Easy; Softening; Tiny: A Story About Living Small WOMEN & WOMEN’S ISSUES After Tiller; American Commune; Anita; Ballerina; Buying Sex; Chi; Defector: Escape from North; Korea, The; Dragon Girls ; Eufrosina’s Revolution; Exhibition, The; Free the Butterfly; Galumphing; Gangster of Love; Gap-‐Toothed Women; Good Ol’ Freda; Julie: Old Time Tales of the Blue Ridge; Last Woman Standing; Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, The; Lucky; Maidentrip; Manor, The; Menstrual Man; New Life of a Family Album; Other Shore, The; Punk Singer, The; Pussy Riot—A; Punk Prayer; Salma; Softening; Wildwood, NJ; Women and the Passenger
Hot Docs 2013 Preview Pt. 3: The Manor, ALIAS, and The Devil’s Lair Andrew Parker http://www.criticizethis.ca/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐preview-‐pt-‐3-‐the-‐manor-‐alias-‐and-‐the-‐devils-‐lair.html
A first time filmmaker chronicles the life of his out of the ordinary family in this year’s hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking opening night film. Director Shawney Cohen’s look at his family’s three decade long ownership of the titular Guelph area strip club balances the funny and uncomfortably awkward through the lens of a man trying to understand the madness around him a little better. Cohen has to be admired for the warts and all look at his family beyond just their salacious profession. His father is grotesquely obese, potentially to the point of immense suffering, His dad’s brain trust is his lovesick brother who’s dating the talent and a longtime friend that might be doing some illegal junk behind his back. Back at home, his mother suffers in silence with an eating disorder the rest of the family is pretty blind to see. It’s bracing stuff with a healthy dose of dark humour, but Cohen shows just how much he loves the people around him no matter how conflicted he feels about their lifestyles. It’s just as much a film about him as it is everyone else. Rating (out of five stars): ****
The Manor: Raw without the Raunch Terra Borody http://canadaartsconnect.com/magazine/2013/05/the-‐manor-‐raw-‐without-‐the-‐raunch/ Shawney Cohen’s highly anticipated film The Manor kicked off the Hot Docs Festival at Bloor Cinema last Thursday night. The film paints a humble picture of Shawney’s personal life in Guelph, Ontario, where he helps with his family’s business: The Manor strip club and motel. The film begins something like a home video, with innocent experimentation filming his father and the day-‐to-‐day life at The Manor. Shawney tells the audience he became “addicted” to filming and quickly found himself painting a raw portrait of his family’s dysfunctional relationships and how they’re rooted in the family business. For the excited audience, comprising of what seemed like more University of Guelph students than an alumni reunion, the bleak suburban landscape hit close to home, and the neon-‐lit club conjured memories of legends told by those who braved the Tuesday Amateur nights. For the most part, the film stays close to its four main characters: Shawney, his brother Sammy and his parents Roger and Brenda. Those wanting a peepshow into the scandalous life of a stripper, however, will be disappointed, yet this is what makes Cohen’s story so strong, because he keeps scandal secondary (despite having more than enough to work with!). Still, the intimacy the viewer shares with the characters is sometimes unnerving and the film’s blunt honesty can border on exposé. Shawney’s mother, easily the most affective character, is also the quietest and admittedly needs to be coaxed into opening up in front of the camera. An unusual technical slip-‐up near the end of the film made an already tense moment all the more real. During what may have been Shawney’s mother’s most vulnerable moment onscreen, an accidental hit of a switch caused the back curtain of the theatre to slowly open. I turned my head to the glass room behind me, and to my surprise, Brenda Cohen was gazing back at me in the flesh. Her eyes then shifted to view the screen, a moment of self-‐recognition that only documentary film can create.
What to See at Hot Docs 2013 http://www.torontostandard.com/culture/what-‐to-‐see-‐at-‐hot-‐docs-‐2013
Hot Docs’ opening night film is not-‐so coincidentally one of the fest’s best. The film is VFX artist Shawney Cohen’s directorial debut and a candid portrait of his family. Before you hit the snooze button, I should also mention that Cohen’s family business is a massive strip club/hotel in Guelph called The Manor. So, you can’t exactly say it’s a conventional family portrait, but it is a funny and surprisingly heartfelt one. In a lesser filmmaker’s hands the tale of a 400-‐lb strip club-‐owning father, his anorexic wife, his understandably confused sons, and an loosely adopted French Canadian who is regularly in and out of prison (despite his constant insistence that he has “no anger problems”) could be a cynical freak show doc that sneeringly mocks its subjects. However, Cohen’s personal connection ensures that he never loses his compassion for the delightful gang of misfits that he calls family-‐-‐ the three-‐year journey he documents is filled with as many poignant moments as hilarious asides. The film never feels forced, it just plays out with all the messy entertainment of life.
The Manor | Hot Docs 2013 Review Jordan Hoffman http://www.ioncinema.com/reviews/the-‐manor-‐review
Having flown the coop over a decade ago to work in the film industry as a digital effects artist, first time feature director Shawney Cohen decided to return to his Jewish roost to help out with the family owned strip joint and motel in times of turmoil. It seems his parents, a life long couple who now seem to share nothing in common except an incendiary relationship with food, are now slaves to their sustenance. Presently 400 pounds, his kingpin father can do little but delegate from behind his desk, while his mother, only a mere 85 pounds, can barely stomach more than a few bites in a sitting. Within Cohen’s deeply personal, thematically complex docu debut, The Manor , their contradictory comestible issues turn out to be deeply seeded in the dirty business they’ve built their lavish lives upon. Long before the Cohens started living behind iron gates and gaudy statuary, Mr. Cohen purchased The Manor, a small town strip club in close proximity to Toronto. With his wife reluctantly on board, he’s managed the bar and 32-‐ room motel for over three decades with the pontificating pompous of a low-‐brow high-‐roller. Unfortunately, as his age grows higher, so does his weight, which has become a major hindrance in not only running the family business, but also his daily routine. Dead set against dieting and woebegone over the thought of working out, he’s decided to have his stomach stapled. If successful, the pricey surgery should alter his ruinous eating habits, forcing him to lose weight with little effort. Meanwhile, it becomes obvious that Mrs. Cohen has a serious eating problem herself.
Horrifyingly skinny, she nibbles on food only when badgered into doing so, and though she won’t admit it, we are led to believe she takes liquid laxatives to limit weight gain. Amidst all this, Shawney is found both on screen awkwardly helping out at the bar or squabbling with his argumentative parents (with help from co-‐director Mike Gallay), and off screen, in apprehensive, highly honest voice over. Slightly ashamed of the business he literally grew up in, Shawney introduces us to the ex-‐convict who works the bar, the pill popping ex-‐stripper who manages the hotel, and his antipodal brother who embraces his occupation for what it is and the luxuries that come with the lifestyle. Their colorful bouts with lingering demons line the film with often hilarious ancillary character, but also call into question Mr. Cohen’s soft spot for deliverance and the perception of charity. Though succinctly fascinating, Cohen’s main concern is the health of his stubborn parents and the heritage his father hopes to leave behind. Much of the film is spent observing the routines of his parents, their shallow interactions and the loneliness that seems to fill each room of their massive home. When Shawney finds himself in the frame, he’s usually trying his best to coax his parents into acknowledging their health issues (often through humorous parental quarks), but it takes a hard fall for his mother to admit that she needs help. Sadly, even then, her husband fails to be supportive in getting her the help she needs. Though her obsession with maintaining a slim figure stems from her husband’s involvement in the business of naked bodies, he accepts no responsibility for her deterioration and fails to exude even the slightest bit of sympathy despite her continued support. Unless there is a direct benefit to him, he sees no use in pouring money into therapy for his ailing wife, even after his own exorbitant attempt at health. Instead, he’d rather reinvest the money in the future of The Manor. Shawney’s altruistic attempts to save his parents from themselves ultimately prove to be just another bump in the road of perceived normalcy. Despite its darkly serious subject matter, the film ultimately proves to be a surprisingly funny, ultimately tragic composite that abides by the language of video memoir and the semi-‐constructed aesthetics of reality TV with strikingly personal sincerity. While exploring the dangers of overeating and anorexia, Cohen delves into what it means to be charitable, as well as how heredity can predefine lives while habitual backsliding can stifle them. Much more than just a family in the spires of eating issues and the grotesqueries of running a strip club, The Manor is a disheartening depiction of modern upper-‐middle class that sadly proves a little late life support can’t always settle life long disputes.
HotDocs – Premier Documentary Festival Opens Today with “The Manor” Marina Mann http://marinamann.com/blog/2013/04/25/hotdocs-‐premier-‐documentary-‐festival-‐opens-‐today-‐with-‐the-‐manor/
Sometimes you need to get out from under work and see some culture. HotDocs is a good excuse for me to get to the movies. The most prestigious and largest documentary film festival HotDocs opens today with the film “The Manor”. First time feature director, Shawney Cohen, asks the question “What happened to a nice Jewish family and their family business”. Running a startup is akin to running a family business. The business can take over your life. This story is about a family running their business: The Manor Strip Club in Guelph, Ontario. HotDocs starts tonight
The Manor Jim Guthrie http://www.jimguthrie.org/news/2013/4/22/the-‐manor.html I recently worked on a pretty amazing doc about a family that owns and runs a strip club in my hometown of Guelph, ON. It's a dark and funny film with a lot of heart to say the least. It managed to catch the attention of the HotDocs film fest and it's snagged opening night. That's huge for a first-‐time, Canadian filmmaker (Shawney Cohen). I've never seen a film quite like it and you can now see the trailer over on the film's website HERE.
2013 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, April 25-‐May5 http://www.chinokino.com/2013/04/2013-‐hot-‐docs-‐canadian-‐international.html th Tonight, the 20 annual Hot Docs International Documentary Festival kicks off with the world premiere screening of Shawney Cohen’s The Manor, about the filmmaker’s family-‐run strip club in Guelph, Ontario.
The Manor opens Hot Docs Festival Steve McLean http://stevemclean.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-‐manor-‐opens-‐hot-‐docs-‐festival.html
The Manor seems like a bit of an odd choice to open the 20th edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Sure, it's Canadian and a world premiere, but I would have expected the curators to come up with something with a bigger impact to commemorate this milestone year. The Manor touches on several societal issues, but it leaves little lasting impression at the end of its 78 minutes. The film is based around the dysfunctional Cohen family and its business, a Guelph, Ont. strip joint and low-‐budget, 32-‐room hotel that in better days was the home of early 20th century beer barons of the Sleeman family. Thirty-‐ something director Shawney Cohen says (though far from boastfully) at the beginning of the film that his father bought him a lap dance for his 13th birthday and he's been on the fence about the place ever since he was a kid -‐-‐ even though he's worked as a manager there for years. The father, Roger, is a cigar-‐smoking, 400-‐pound Israeli immigrant who realizes his weight his negatively affecting his health. But instead of dieting or trying to exercise, he opts for stomach reduction surgery (shown briefly in graphic detail) which eventually gets him down to a far from svelte 300 pounds. But it's hard to lose weight when your wife is constantly pushing large trays of food your way, even though Brenda weighs a mere 85 pounds and finally admits that she has an eating disorder toward the end of the film after her frail body can't withstand a fall and she breaks a hip.
Shawney's younger brother Sammy started working at The Manor right out of high school. He seems to enjoy the lifestyle and invites a stripper to move in with him in his parents' basement -‐-‐ breaking two of his father's rules: you're not supposed to date staff or non-‐Jews. Sammy breaks up with her, even though she seems to be the most well-‐adjusted person on the screen, before the film is over. Two other non-‐family members also play supporting roles, and they have their own problems. Bobby is Roger's assistant and has been in and out of prison all his life. He admits to his boss that he's selling drugs and then he's jailed for assaulting his ex-‐wife. We learn at the end that the charges were dropped and he was released after a year, but he no longer works at The Manor. Then there's Susan, the hotel manager who also lives there, who's rushed to hospital after what we're told is either a suicide attempt or drug overdose. Roger clears all of her stuff from her room the next day, but she's allowed to move back in a few weeks later after she recovers. Roger is very anti-‐drug and converts the hotel to a halfway house for addicts and homeless people called Sue's Inn Support Centre. Meanwhile, he's shown insulting an overweight peeler that he's watching on a security camera at the club. Business isn't as good as it used to be, which further stresses Roger and -‐-‐ although the family seems to live comfortably in a large rural home with a gated driveway and backyard pond -‐-‐ he refuses to pay for Brenda's counselling once she finally admits she needs help. Brenda attends one session, but doesn't return for more, citing a lack of funds. Roger admits that he's grown apart from his wife because of The Manor, and Sammy says he resents his old man for treating her "like a piece of shit." While The Manor is still going, Roger shows Shawney his plans to redevelop it into a condominium complex as the movie nears completion. The film was shot over two years and, while real life seldom ties plot lines together neatly, The Manor leaves the viewer hanging in too many places without a resolution to any of them. That's the documentary's downfall. It leaves you wanting to know more, but not enough to warrant a sequel. I wish the Cohens, Bobby and Susan well. They need all the support they can get.
Hot Docs 2013 Overview Basil Tsiokis http://whatnottodoc.com/2013/04/19/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐overview/
In less than one week, Toronto’s Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, kicks off its twentieth edition, which will run through Sunday, May 5. An essential stop on the doc fest circuit, I’ve been fortunate to attend for the past several years, and will be covering the event for Indiewire once again. Like Amsterdam’s IDFA, what’s especially notable about Hot Docs is its ability not only to draw a huge general public audience, but to attract the participation of nonfiction industry players, especially decision makers for key international broadcasters and funds. The latter annually take meetings and hear pitches in the accompanying Hot Docs Forum, for which I was honored to serve on the selection committee this year, and which I plan to include in my coverage as I have done in the past. That said, my main focus will be on the films – as many of the 205 titles appearing in the lineup as I can see during my time there. Director of Programming Charlotte Cook and her team culled this year’s selections, representing 43 countries, from 2386 submissions, organizing them into eleven different sections. The following spotlights the feature docs I’m most looking forward to, going section-‐by-‐section: Hot Docs launches its anniversary edition with director Shawney Cohen and co-‐director Mike Gallay’s THE MANOR(pictured), a personal look at Cohen’s dysfunctional family and the strip club that they run. This opening night film appears as one of the fest’s Special Presentations, which beyond featuring an impressive curation of some of the highlights of Sundance and SXSW, also include: Gus Holwerda’s THE UNBELIEVERS, about evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss’ attempts to stimulate meaningful public discussions around science and logic as an antidote to the divisiveness of religion; Raoul Peck’s FATAL ASSISTANCE, a damning exposé of the failure of international aid to post-‐earthquake Haiti; AJ Schnack’s CAUCUS, following the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls in the leadup to Iowa; and Julia Ivanova’s HIGH FIVE: A SUBURBAN ADOPTION SAGA, about the cross-‐ cultural complications that result when a Canadian couple adopts five Ukrainian siblings.
THE MANOR -‐ Review By Greg Klymkiw: Klymkiw HOT DOCS 2013 HOT PICK Greg Klymkiw http://klymkiwfilmcorner.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-‐manor-‐review-‐by-‐greg-‐klymkiw.html
So you're a six-‐year-‐old red-‐blooded male and your Dad buys a strip club attached to a dive hotel and it becomes the family business wherein you, your little brother and Mom pitch in. Sounds like a good deal to me. Even better is that during the first few years the business was operating, your family lived in a suite above the finest Gentleman's Club in Southern Ontario (Le meilleur club pour les messieurs dans le sud de l'Ontario). Sorry, bro', but this is sounding mighty win-‐win to me. I'll admit, though, that time and maturity play nasty tricks on us and in your case, a quarter of a century later, those halcyon days don't seem so golden -‐ if, in fact, they ever were. For example, as a kid, you'd wake up thirsty in the middle of the night, pad down to the bar and pour yourself a Coke from the taps. You remember that during this time, you didn't, for even a second think there was anything "weird" about this.
Hey, bud, why should you? Sounds like some kind of crazy living wet dream to me. But no, not to you. These days you look around and see your patriarchal 400-‐pound Dad brashly bullying his way through life, your gentle subservient 85-‐pound Mom hiding further and further within herself, your baby brother dreaming of owning his own strip club and dating the "help" and you think, is there something wrong with this picture? Is there something wrong with me? Then you gaze in the mirror and see someone who has not lived up to his potential. Well, maybe it's not all peaches and cream. What I see, however, is the kind of filmmaker I dreamed about getting my mitts on during the 13 years I was the Senior Creative Consultant and Producer-‐in-‐Residence at Uncle Norm Jewison's Canadian Film Centre. You know why? You've done what many of them couldn't even dream of doing. You just made one hell of a terrific movie and frankly, your life experience and the talent you display suggests to me that we're going to see some totally amazing work from you in the future. Director Shawney Cohen, the aforementioned young whippersnapper I was addressing above, clearly needed to explore this situation -‐ if only for himself -‐ but in reality, this process of exploration has yielded something very, very special for all of us. He shot The Manor over a three year period with unfettered access to his parents and their world. What he's crafted here for his first feature is a lovely picture about family, love, loyalty, caring and conflict against the backdrop of a (for some) unconventional setting. This is one corker of an entertaining movie. Shawney himself guides us on the journey. His initially dour and vaguely judgemental attitude rubbed me the wrong way, but as the movie progressed, my perception shifted to genuine admiration as the more sour aspects of his character (once he gets a girlfriend, actually) transform into a very moving display of love and caring. Besides, in both life and art, someone's got to have a voice of reason. What Cohen does here is pretty damn extraordinary. He exposes a slice of his family's (to some) strange life and makes it completely relatable to everyone. I love how I came to love this family -‐ especially his Dad -‐ a no nonsense, stubborn and unapologetically irascible old curmudgeon who might not always do things the right way, but in his own way, he thinks he's doing the right thing. One of my best friends remarked how frighteningly similar Shawney's Dad was to both my own Dad and, uh, ME. I took it as a compliment. And yes, it was meant as one. There is, always, a lot of talk about dysfunctional families and there's been much of that in relation to The Manor -‐ even within the film and its promo bumph. I hate that expression. I especially don't believe in how people spread it around like cow shit on the lawn. Unless a family is identical to the fucking Cleavers on Leave it to Beaver, ALL families are dysfunctional -‐ it's simply a matter of degrees. What I see when I watch Cohen's film is a genuine patriarch presiding over his wife, sons, home and business -‐ old school, for sure -‐ but he is a REAL MAN who LOVES his family. He might not always be choosing the best way to express it, but express it he does. The Manor, as a slice of life, delivers a great story that's finally all about love. And why not? Love is the ultimate unifying force and though many things threaten to split it apart, love -‐ as always -‐ has the last laugh
Hot Docs Announces Festival Guest List The Cinemablographer http://www.cinemablographer.com/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐announces-‐festival-‐guest-‐list.html Folks wanting to plan their Hot Docs schedules should take note of the names cited on the list released today by the festival. Hot Docs announced an impressive set of names of guests—including Roméo Dallaire, Anita Hill, and Matt Berninger—who will attend the festival and be on hand for Q&As following their films. The festival also announced that a whopping number of directors—160—will be present as well. Guests may be present for multiple screenings, but it’s best to catch the first screening of a film if you want to see the talent. Roger Cohen, Brenda Cohen, and Sammy Cohen from The Manor (D: Shawney Cohen (Director), Mike Gallay (Co-‐ Director) | Canada | 2013 | 78 min) – Roger, Brenda, and Sammy Cohen are at the heart of director Shawney Cohen’s intimate tragi-‐comic family portrait.
Hot Docs 2013 -‐ April 25 to May 4, 2013: Six More Picks Anya Wassenberg http://www.artandculturemaven.com/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐april-‐25-‐to-‐may-‐4-‐2013.html Folks wanting to plan their Hot Docs schedules should take note of the names cited on the list released today by the festival. Hot Docs announced an impressive set of names of guests—including Roméo Dallaire, Anita Hill, and Matt Berninger—who will attend the festival and be on hand for Q&As following their films. The festival also announced that a whopping number of directors—160—will be present as well. Guests may be present for multiple screenings, but it’s best to catch the first screening of a film if you want to see the talent.
Hot Docs Review: The Manor Courtney Small http://www.bigthoughtsfromasmallmind.com/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐review-‐manor.html
For its patrons, The Manor represents a place of titillation and entertainment, but the establishment holds a different meaning for director Shawney Cohen. An aspiring filmmaker, Cohen has been working as the manager of The Manor strip club for over five years. However, his affiliation to the club does not end once his shift is over. Cohen has been tied to The Manor since he was six years old as his father, Roger, bought both The Manor and the motel attached to it. As the son of Jewish immigrants, Roger seems like an unlikely person to be in the strip club business. The decision clearly did not sit well with his wife Brenda, a stay at home mother, at the time of purchase. Thirty years later the
entire family is reaping the benefits as the business has allowed them to live a very comfortable lifestyle. For all the financial gains The Manor has brought the Cohen clan, it has done considerable damage to the family dynamics. Four years in the making, Shawney Cohen’s documentary is an exploration of how one decision changed the course of a family forever. It should come as no surprise that many of the unresolved issues in the family all stem back to the moment that the strip club came into their lives. What is shocking though is the way that each family member is impacted by the ramifications of Roger’s purchase. Shawney wrestles with his desire to aspire to something greater for his life, but gets sucked into the routine and the familiarity of running the strip club. The association with the club also seems to be detrimental to Shawney’s love life. His younger brother Sammy, on the other hand, loves the business but breaks his father’s cardinal rule about dating the strippers who work for him. He is also easily irked when his father points out that Shawney has a closer connection to their mother than Sammy does. The inner turmoil that Shawney and Sammy face is nothing compared to how the business has altered Roger and Brenda’s marriage. This is where The Manor is at its most engaging. The stress and unspoken issues in their relationship manifest in both Roger and Brenda physically but in vastly different ways. At 400 pounds Roger’s weight and food addiction is a source of concern. As Roger continually struggles with his fluctuating weight, Brenda’s weight drops to 85 pounds although she is in constant denial that her weight is an issue. Despite being the link that binds the film together, Cohen wisely makes both the strip club and the motel secondary characters in the film. Those looking for a seedy look at the inner workings of a strip club/motel will have to look elsewhere. The family aspect is what makesThe Manor such a captivating film. This is not to say that Cohen does not provide insight into the club, it is just that he does it with a certain level of humour. The humour, and overall honesty, is what makes The Manor such an unlikely and charming crowd-‐pleaser. Cohen is able to highlight both the silly and serious aspects that come with the strip club business. He shows everything from his father’s harsh comments on the portliness of one of the dancers to the inner bickering amongst the strippers. Cohen also touches on how the nature of the business forces them to be extra vigilant in staying on the right side of the law. As far as debut features go, Shawney Cohen shows a lot of promises as a director. He crafts a film that is both entertaining and insightful. The Manor is a film that provides a unique take on the traditional notions of “the family business.” Although family may not be a word that comes to mind when you hear the term “strip club,” Cohen’s film shows that regardless of the profession, family bonds are both important and complicated.
Hot Docs 2013: The Manor…and the Royal Cohen Family Lizz Hodgson http://www.blog.filmarmy.ca/2013/04/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐the-‐manor-‐and-‐the-‐royal-‐cohen-‐family/
The Manor , by filmmaker and part-‐time strip club managerShawney Cohen, is in the truest meaning of the word “portrait”. The film ignites feelings of hopelessness for the present state of the family and then absolute optimism for the change you want so badly to come. The Manor truly enables the viewer to invest in the business and the innate issues that have imbedded themselves into the Cohen family. In addition, any viewer who has experienced family–blood-‐related or not–can ultimately understand the dynamics of this family. We are exposed to myriad experiences–pain, revelation, betterment and illness–through this journey. Cohen was quoted as telling his crew this film would be finished within a year, which incidentally turned into four. This is felt within the changing of seasons, the imagery of the ice melting and the never-‐ending yard work the family submits to, furthering feelings of hopelessness as little changes in the family. Each new season brings along with it a fine dance from denial to growth, all wavering between baby steps and exponential giant strides. Within its inherent dysfunction and its teetering members The Manor is riddled with truths of family and the ongoing struggles that gnaw at our souls. A true homage to the modern business of living and taking care of those who we love, The Manor is a joy to experience. Cinematically we are privy to so many elements of the Cohen’s lives. This fly on the wall filming becomes some of the most fluid I have viewed. Perhaps this can be attributed to the Cohen’s having a filmmaker as a member. This of course being the result of a family who have been followed, examined and intruded upon, as so many of our families have experienced throughout our budding interests. Hot Docs continues from April 25 – May 5, 2013. Please visit www.hotdocs.ca for all screening information and how you might view many of the amazing filmsoffered this year. Pickup your free festival schedule at the Bloor Hot Docs cinema.
Hot Docs 2013 – The Manor Jason Poynton http://www.spotlighttoronto.com/hotdocs2013-‐themanor/
The Manor directed by Shawney Cohen kicked off the 20th anniversary of Toronto’s Hot Docs Documentary film festival and it certainly is a unique choice. The festival is full of films of weighty international issues from war, the environment and everything in-‐between so it is an interesting choice to start things off with a film made by a first time director telling the story of his own family. Everyone’s family is unique yet the Cohen family takes such a statement to the next level. The name of the film is taken from the family business, a hotel and strip club in Guelph. Shawney filmed his family for over 3 years and captured a very moving family drama, his Father is battling his own mortality in regards to his food addiction at the same time his Mother is slowly killing herself as she slips further into anorexia. A younger brother who is fully committed to the life style that comes with operating a strip club and of
course Shawney himself who doesn’t know what to think of the family business but finds himself continually fighting for his family and the business. The hook of course is that the family owns a strip club and you will see a few naked ladies, however this quickly becomes secondary as you find yourself deeply engrossed in a very poignant and touching family drama. Shawney now in his thirties and still working in the family business, Is facing his own crisis to find his own way in life, however the unique nature of his family has overtaken this quest and his own wishes take a backseat. As I watched the film I began to see that this was his way of carving out a life and identity for himself while still being the one to hold his family together.
The nature of how this film was made does present a few problems as compared to a film made over a shorter period of time or one where the director was not also the protagonist. A few characters come in quickly and then disappear and a few moments that you feel will lead to a pay off at a later point never come back around, including one where the Mothers large collection of laxatives are found but quickly put away and never mentioned again. Yet for all this Shawney Cohen has put himself and his family on screen for all to see worts and all and you feel by the end of the film that they might all be better off for it.
THE MANOR Review: Not The Jewish Strip Club Doc You Expected Jordan Hoffman http://badassdigest.com/2013/04/25/the-‐manor-‐review/
Who wants to see another documentary that goes inside the world of stripping? Absolutely no one. Luckily, that isn't what The Manor is actually about. The manor in question in The Manor is a run-‐of-‐the-‐mill strip club off a highway not too far from Toronto. It is owned by a cigar-‐chomping, nickel-‐counting, 400 lb man with an indeterminate accent and the last name Cohen. He is the very essence of what my persecuted grandparents would call a shanda fur die goyim*, a representative that is “not good for the Jews.” “To the manor born” is Shawney, the film's director and would-‐be heir to the throne. In his late 20s/early 30s he still works at the bar two nights a week and he has an artist's yearning to break free. With no specific goal in mind, he begins filming the world around him. While there are amusing moments at The Manor, where the allure of fantasy sex is ruined under the harsh light of scrubby offices and locker rooms, the real Manor of the film is the Cohens' McMansion. While Shawney doesn't live there, his
younger brother Sammy, who has no misgivings about working in the strip club field, does. So does his girlfriend, a non-‐ Jew outsider and also, ironically, a nutritionist. The Cohen home doesn't just feature Roger, the morbidly obese father, but an anorexic mother named Brenda. Scenes of this 85 lb woman preparing a Passover meal for her vacuum cleaner-‐like 400 lb husband while coming up with any excuse to avoid eating herself may seem, on paper, like a typical reality television freak show. But it isn't. Instead, it's just really, really sad. The thing that makes the film fascinating is that everyone is aware of the problem. It lays there, quite literally on the table. But between acknowledgment and action there lies a host of psychological boundaries that even clearly educated and reasonable people just can't seem to cross. Early in the film Roger decides to take some action, and gets a stomach-‐stapling surgery. While he does lose some weight (he gets down to a comparatively svelte 300 lbs) this does nothing to address the root issue of non-‐communication between him and his wife. As a means of avoiding an actual rapprochement, he turns to some vague charity work, turning the gross hotel attached to the strip club into a halfway house. This will come back to bite him in the ass when a worker and “adopted son,” a longhair French Canadian named Bobby, is caught selling drugs. There aren't too many sweeping revelations, plot twists or (sadly) dam-‐bursting emotional resolutions in The Manor . That is part of what makes it so striking. One could also remark, as my wife did when we screened the film, “Interesting. . .but what was the point of that?” Indeed, The Manor is an odd duck, because the family isn't a Kardashian-‐level train wreck. . . they are just slowly chugging along to their eventual terminus of doom. I couldn't answer my wife's question – what was the point of the movie – but the “characters” lingered with me for days. Brenda Cohen, daughter of Holocaust survivors, is as thin as the images we've seen of liberated concentration camp victims. When confronted about her problem – even when convalescing from a preventable broken hip – it's always “yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do it.” These are the voices of addition, made all the more painful when the son with the camera crew is repeating the lines back to you. The elephant in the room, of course, is The Manor – the legal, somewhat socially sanctioned place of business, where for decades Roger, one can argue, has been exploiting young women for their sex appeal and, one can further argue, exploiting confused and lonely men. “I'm not saying she's broken because of this,” Roger says of his wife, referring to the club. “I'm saying she's broken because the relationship grew apart.” “Because of this.” Shawney bluntly fires back. “Well, of course it's because of this.” And that's The Manor in a nutshell. A family destroyed by the easy money in sleaze, emotionally hollowed out by offering up cheap thrills to strangers. Yet the movie doesn't feel like it is funded by any puritan church group. It's not that easy. It's not like the girls are sobbing up there on the stage, nor are they cursing the Patriarchy. As brother Sammy looks to one day take over the family business, one must ask what they would do in the same situation. (I mean, some feminists can and do think of stripping as empowering. I've seen that in a bunch of boring documentaries that I'll completely forget while I'm still thinking about The Manor .) The Manor , with all of its unnerving family moments and no easy answers (and, according to my wife, no clear cut questions) makes its debut this week at Hot Docs. I suspect it will continue a good festival life from there.
Hot Docs 2013: Manor Kurt Halfyard http://www.rowthree.com/2013/04/25/hot-‐docs-‐2013-‐the-‐manor/
Prior to the screening, I must admit that it was a bit eyebrow raising that the Hot Docs Film Festival planned on opening with a film about a strip club, and the dysfunctional Jewish family that runs it, in rural Guelph, a tiny University town just outside Toronto. Was the festival going for titillating, or as the programme intimated, a bit of character driven slice-‐of-‐life, in lieu of the usual activism, art and social issues with their opener. A film from a first-‐time director, no less. Of course, now having seen the film, indeed, it is a great choice for an opener, which relies less on showing gyrating strippers and the peeler bar itself, and far more about the effect of putting a family unit (and business) in that environment for so long a time. While not a social finger wagging type of film at all, it does demonstrate the rather profound effect that the breadwinning business has on each family member appetites and values, both literally and figuratively. Slotting The Manor as the kick-‐off film shows a festival gleefully breaking with tradition, just as it hits its 20th year, and delivering something subversively crowd pleasing, at least for those with a twisted sense of humour. The Manor is a castle-‐like structure with large stone lions and a barren parking lot out front sandwiched between a low-‐ rise housing building, a Bible Chapel and a nondescript stretch of Ontario Highway 6. On the inside is the usual fluorescent den of sin in line with expectations of a typical adult entertainment establishment. Attached to the bar is Sue’s Inn, a collection 32 hotel rooms where many of the strippers live, and whose manager (Sue, naturally) indicates that drug addicts are not welcome to stay there. Of course, Sue has a drug habit herself, and at one point exits both employment and residence due to an overdose. Such is the dodgy nature of running this type of operation. Nevertheless, this makes the night club and Hotel owner, Roger Cohen fairly irate, as he is used to getting his own way both at work and at home. Roger’s son Shawney is the filmmaker behind the film that is loaded to the gills with moments from his strange family in their strange line of business, something he grew up with for all of his conscious life; the past 30 years the Cohen’s have occupied the premises and put lady-‐flesh on display for paying customers.
And yet The Manor as a film title, is less about the strip club that bears its name, and far more about the Cohen family domicile which in probably no coincidentally, also features grand stone-‐lions at the end of the driveway. As the heavy-‐set patriarch, Roger looks like Ocean’s Eleven era Elliot Gould if the actor REALLY let himself go, and carries himself with the flat-‐out authority of Harvey Weinstein. In his office there is a photo of himself kissing his dog, at home, I think I spotted a painting of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Roger’s wife of many years, Brenda, couldn’t be more different, visually, she is reminiscent of Joan Rivers, that is, if Ms. Rivers were timid, flighty and uncomfortable performing in front of the camera. The younger son, Sammy lives in the basement with his trophy girlfriend (one of the clubs employees) and moussed coiffure. Within 15 seconds of seeing him, I already realized that I wouldn’t like him as a human being and I wasn’t cured of this notion by films end. My guess is that early into shooting, Sam may have realized that the camera (or his brother, the director) isn’t going to capture his good side so stays out of the frame for much of the picture, despite living on the premises. Shawney narrates the picture with the droll humour of Steve Buscemi or Mark Ruffalo, and while is doesn’t spend as much time under the unforgiving lens of his own camera, one might argue that filming all of this as his own on-‐camera therapy session is the douche-‐iest move of all. Particularly when you see his fragile and anorexic mom ice-‐ skating for the camera, what you think is going to happen, is going to happen. And yet the film is frightfully entertaining and full of heart. Folks is Folks – that is to say, aren’t we all just full of contradictions. Roger over-‐eats, whereas his wife Brenda, doesn’t eat anything at all, content fuss over preparing far too much food for everyone else in the house. She keeps stashed a secret supply of laxatives for what one is left to assume, is her own personal purging on occasion. On screen we only see her eat a couple of bread crumbs and imbibe mainly Coke Zeros. Roger has his stomach stapled at one point in the film, while Brenda is dragged by Shawney (kicking and denying) to a therapy session on anorexia with a therapist that is just a tad over-‐weight – I guess she is good. Instead of continuing with the therapy, Brenda, citing cash flow as the primary issue, instead buys a new stainless-‐steel fridge. Sammy frets over whether or not to buy a Jaguar or a Range Rover. Meanwhile at the strip club, characters such as the greasy haired Québécois bank-‐robber-‐slash-‐assistant manager starts dealing heroin and gets chewed out by his boss and eventually we see him in prison-‐orange. There is a parking lot car-‐fire extinguished by the local authorities that constitutes one of the most beautiful shots of the year. That it looks like a man ejaculating on the smoking wreck may be co-‐incidence, but maybe not as this is pretty much the state of adult entertainment these days. The Manor certainly has its doses of kitsch and vulgarity, it goes with the territory. But there is also an odd sense of endearment to the whole thing, often a laugh to prevent from crying kind of vibe. Roger and Brenda may not talk to each other, but like the swans in their back-‐yard, have mated for life and their own precarious way to keeping things wobbling along. Cohen has a wicked sense of (deadpan) comic timing, and it is tinged with more than a slice of empathy. Even as we watch Roger mock an overweight stripper in one scene to be followed by his own fat spilling over a John Deere riding mower as he cuts his own grass. We get to watch his son Shawney, in a manner, cut his own grass.
Hot Docs’ Bloor Cinema Continues to Hit Box Office High Notes With Strip Club Saga ‘The Manor’ Peter Knegt http://www.indiewire.com/article/hot-‐docs-‐bloor-‐cinema-‐continues-‐to-‐hit-‐box-‐office-‐high-‐notes-‐with-‐strip-‐club-‐saga-‐the-‐manor
It's been over a year since Toronto's historic Bloor Cinema was renovated and revamped as a year round cinema for Hot Docs -‐-‐ North America's largest documentary film festival. Playing nonfiction films almost exclusively, the cinema has proven in the 14 months since it's opened that there is indeed a market for this sort of specifically branded art house. And in it's in the midst of having one of it's greatest success stories.
First-‐time filmmaker Shawney Cohen's "The Manor" is a portrait of his own family, who just so happen to run the strip club noted in the film's title. "The Manor" opened Hot Docs' annual festival last month to strong reviews and packed theaters, and then started its theatrical run a week after Hot Docs ended, at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, as it is now called. Over just eight screenings, "The Manor" grossed $14,462 last week. That made for an average audience of more than 200 people per screening. Last Wednesday, the film made $2,343 in a single screening -‐-‐ a higher per theater average than the two highest grossing and most reported on docs screening in the United States,"One Track Heart," and "Stories We Tell." Impressively, that was also a higher average than both "The Great Gatsby" and "Iron Man 3." "We were so thrilled to be able to open 'The Manor' at The Bloor and the response has been incredible," Hot Docs Executive Director Chris McDonald told Indiewire. "The first year since the cinema has opened has gone beyond our wildest expectations. We've doubled all our projections and the audience is continually growing. We're seeing that it's become a special venue, and one that can truly open a film to big numbers." "'The Manor' is an incredible film, and it's a testament to that that it's opened so strongly at The Bloor," added Charlotte Cook, Hot Docs' Director of Programming. "We're often told that playing the festival minimizes the theatrical audience, but this shows that it can be a fantastic launching pad. Seeing 'The Manor' play so big is wonderful, the film deserves it and after this incredible launch I can't wait to see it begin its worldwide festival journey." The film is not an exception in its success. Hot Docs' Bloor Cinema has seen Canadian docs "The World Before Her" and "Coast Modern" prove quite profitable. The former grossed $13,521 in its opening week, while the latter took in $8,113 in its first weekend over just four screenings. In its non-‐exclusive runs, the theater has also done very well. Last year's "Marley" grossed $18,651 at the Bloor in its first week (over just 16 screenings). The average opening week gross across the U.S. and Canada was $8,497. Another recent doc hit -‐-‐ LCD Soundsystem doc "Shut Up and Play The Hits" -‐-‐ took in $7,345 from just two screenings at the Bloor. The average across Canada and the U.S. was $2,390. It makes clear that the theater is a vital destination to open a film, but also brings up an odd issue in box office reporting that should be noted. Every Sunday, Indiewire -‐-‐ like many, many other publications -‐-‐ report estimates for what many refer to the "North American box office." Outside of the issue that it should really read "U.S. and Canadian box office" (there's more to North America then its two most northern countries), there's an additional problem of exclusion. With regard to most films, receipts from Canada and the U.S. are indeed counted. The big opening weekends of recent studio offerings "Iron Man 3," "The Great Gatsby" and "Star Trek Into Darkness" all included Canadian numbers (which usually end up accounting for roughly 10%), as has totals for recent indie hits like "The Place Beyond The Pines" and "Mud." But this isn't always the case. "The Manor" was nowhere to be found in box office tracking last week, in the trades or on popular sites like boxofficemojo.com, despite its impressive numbers. Often if a film happens to open in Canada first, which happens with most Canadian productions and occasionally with films from outside markets, the numbers from Canada often don't get included when the film opens Stateside and seem to disappear from its final count. Sarah Polley's Canadian doc "Stories We Tell," for example, opened in Canada last fall (after having its international premiere at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, oddly enough). But the "North American box office" numbers being reported for the film's American debut two weeks ago have only included the money it's made in the United States (and it's Canadian numbers are nowhere to be found). It seems disrespectful to the films themselves to pretend like their origin country's box office receipts don't matter (or exist), and to the Canadian exhibitors -‐-‐ like The Bloor -‐-‐ that are clearly doing a very fine job at getting the films out there.
THE MANOR: Stripped bare Norman Wilner http://www.nowtoronto.com/movies/story.cfm?content=192458
A lot of documentarians get their start shooting footage of their own family. Shawney Cohen’s family just happens to run a legendary Guelph strip club, which maybe makes them a little more interesting than most. Arriving on the heels of its triumphant premiere at Hot Docs last month, The Manor uses the eponymous business to provide context for the Cohens’ simmering goulash of psychological issues – including but not limited to self-‐ denial, substance abuse and matters of body image, the latter of which is almost certainly related to the constant objectification in which the Manor traffics. A strip club is an emotional and visual gold mine for an aspiring documentarian. In addition to the expected scenes of barely dressed dancers, The Manor captures Roger Cohen’s paternal relationship with another of his employees, a tattooed recovering addict named Bobby who lives in one of the Manor’s motel rooms. The doc could easily have tipped into caricature or grotesquerie, but Cohen’s compassion for his subjects keeps the project steady and respectful, only coming up short in the awkward final movement, when the lack of any real drama leaves the film fumbling for an exit point.
The Manor Jason Anderson http://www.thegridto.com/culture/film/the-‐manor/
The opening-‐night selection for Hot Docs’ just-‐wrapped 20th edition, The Manor is a frank tale of familial dysfunction and $10 lap dances. Shot over three years, Shawney Cohen’s directorial debut is named after the Guelph strip club that has been the family business since he was six. While it’s not surprising that bodies should figure prominently in a doc that largely takes place in a peeler bar, they’re not the bodies you might expect. Instead, after delving into the grubby milieu of the titular establishment, the primary focus of Cohen’s film becomes the intertwined health struggles of his dangerously obese dad, Roger, and his worryingly thin mother, Brenda. As the former tries to solve his issues with surgery, the latter is seen coming to grips with a longtime eating disorder that the filmmaker suggests is another side effect of the means by which the Cohen clan earns its keep. Shawney clearly struggles over his own conflicting roles as concerned son, dutiful (if unenthusiastic) employee of the club, and clear-‐eyed chronicler of the pain and squalor that surrounds him. Perhaps as a result of those torn loyalties, some of the humour in The Manorcan have an uncomfortably cruel or caustic edge, as if he’s inviting ridicule for his loved ones or the damaged people who make a home out of the bar, like his father’s ex-‐con assistant Bobby. At other points, it’s harder to dispute the movie’s dramatic impact or its richness as a portrait of family ties and tensions with an unusually smutty backdrop.
After Hours with Mark Paine http://m.570news.com/2013/06/06/thursday-‐june-‐6th-‐2013-‐7pm-‐mark-‐paine/
The Scene with Nancy Richards http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=936714
The Manor Receives Theatrical Release May 10 http://www.cfccreates.com/our_people/alumni/news/news_item.php?id=item258
The sold out Hot Docs Opening Night film, The Manor will receive its theatrical release next week at the Bloor Cinema. The Manor is directed by Shawney Cohen, produced by CFC Producer's Lab alum, Paul Scherzer ('00) and edited by CFC Director's Lab alum, Seth Poulin ('01). The film follows Shawney, who calls himself a filmmaker, but he's been a strip-‐club manager for longer. When he was six his father bought “The Manor”, a small-‐town strip club. Thirty years later, the family's lifestyle has got the better of them. While his 400-‐pound father prepares for stomach-‐reduction surgery, his 85-‐pound mother has her own complicated relationship with food. Shawney's role as struggling filmmaker and outcast son provides a rare glimpse into a family facing the consequences of their livelihood and dependence. Told with humor and frankness, The Manor is an intimate portrait of people struggling to call themselves a family.
Documentary looks at life at the Manor Jessica Lovell http://www.guelphtribune.ca/whats-‐on/documentary-‐looks-‐at-‐life-‐at-‐the-‐manor/ The Manor is an iconic local building that almost all Guelph residents recognize, but most have never been inside. Soon though, they will have a chance to check it out from a unique insider’s perspective, when the documentary film named for Guelph’s only strip club opens at The Bookshelf. “I’m curious to see what people in Guelph think of it,” says director Shawney Cohen. Cohen’s father bought the strip club when the filmmaker was still a young child. It has been the backdrop of his life for almost as long as he can remember. “It felt quite normal,” he says, noting that as an eight-‐year-‐old he didn’t think there was anything unusual about being in a strip club or having strippers as babysitters. But he gradually came to understand that it was a little unusual and that other fathers didn’t get their sons lap dances for their bar mitzvahs. “It took me 30 years to realize that some of these stories were great and they needed to be told,” Cohen says. But the film’s story is not exactly a happy one. “The film is more tragic and darker than I expected it to be,” says Cohen. “I didn’t realize how tragic it was until I actually started watching the film.” Far from being about the Manor itself, the film actually tells the story of Cohen’s family. “The strip club is just the backdrop,” he says. It is his mother’s story that leads him to call the film tragic. She is anorexic, married to an overweight husband who runs a business that is all about body image. But far from being camera shy, Cohen found that his mother was a willing subject. “When the camera was rolling, she seemed to open up in a very therapeutic way,” he says. For Cohen, who had walked away from the family business in favour of pursuing a career in the film industry, making a film on the Manor was something he felt he needed to do, partly as a way to get to know his family better. “I worked there for over a year before I picked up a camera,” he says. The filming for the movie took place over three years.
“I didn’t like working there when I started, but I grew to appreciate the business on different levels,” says Cohen. “Every day that you work there, something different happens.” He acknowledges that the business is associated with some of the darker aspects of society – drug culture, for example – and he touches on these in the film. “In many ways, the film is about many addictions,” he says. “I didn’t shy away from the details of people’s lives.” As an insider, he had access and a level of trust that other filmmakers might not have had, but watching the film for the first time with his family came with a certain level of awkwardness. “One of the most nerve-‐wracking experiences for me was when they actually saw the film,” says Cohen. His family is his most important audience, he says. The film got their approval. “They really like the film. In fact, they’re all asking for reality shows now,” he laughs. The film has had public success, too, premiering to a sold-‐out audience at opening night of the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto in April. Cohen is hoping for sold-‐out crowds in Guelph, too. The film will play at the Bookshelf Cinema from May 31 to June 13, opening with two screenings on May 31 at 7 and 9 p.m. Cohen will be on hand for a Q and A following the opening night screenings. The crowd will then will be invited back to the Manor for Cohen’s own “red-‐carpet” event. “I’m hoping a lot of people that don’t normally come to strip clubs come out,” he says. He also admits to being a little anxious about the party, because it will bring together people from two different worlds – his family and friends at the Manor and those in his filmmaking circle. “I kind of feel like I’m living two lives,” Cohen says. But he has no plans to change that anytime soon. Cohen says he will probably continue working at the Manor a couple of days a week, while also working on making movies. “I like making films and that’s what I want to continue to do,” he says, noting that he will probably stick with documentaries, seeking stories that look at the darker side of the human condition. “These darker stories are as beautiful as anything you find in Hollywood,” he says. As for the future of the Manor, Cohen doesn’t want to spoil the ending of his own film by giving up too many details, but says there are plans in the works for redevelopment. As a strip club, “I don’t see it existing past 2015 or 2016,” he says.
Interview: Shawney Cohen Phil Brown http://dorkshelf.com/2013/05/06/interview-‐shawney-‐cohen/
Premiering a first movie is a stressful experience for anyone, but for Shawney Cohen the experience is sure to be particularly odd. His movie The Manor opened the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival and now has an exclusive run at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema before sliding into a Kinosmith theatrical release elsewhere. That’s an achievement any debut filmmaker can be proud of. But for Cohen, the experience is flavored by the fact that his film is about his family and a particularly eccentric one. As a child Shawney’s father Roger Cohen bought a strip club/motel in Guelph known as The Manor. It became the family business and flavored every aspect of their lives. When Shawney turned 13, he asked for hockey gear for his birthday and his father got him a lapdance instead. So it wasn’t a conventional upbringing, but it was a sweet one that Shawney decided to capture on camera. After a promising career as a visual effects artist working on titles like Dawn of the Dead and A History of Violence, Shawney quit to tend bar and make a documentary about life at The Manor. For three years he followed his family, capturing his obese father’s gastric bypass surgery, his mother’s ongoing battles with anorexia, his brother’s relationship
with a dancer, and his own struggles to form an eccentrically funny and surprisingly touching family portrait. It’s a wonderful little film that should put Shawney on the map as a documentary filmmaker and turn his family into reluctant doc celebrities whether they like it or not. We got a chance to chat with a rather shell-‐shocked (in a good way) Shawney Cohen on the day of The Manor’s Hot Docs opening night premiere to discuss his family, his film, and how they intertwine. Dork Shelf: Do you still do any computer animation? Shawney Cohen: No, I’m retired. DS: How was the experience of going from that to returning to The Manor? SC: It was great. I approached working at The Manor in a naïve way. It was something that I avoided while I was working as an animator. Then I got really bored of animation. It’s something that you jump into as a kid out of university and it’s really exciting at the time. But once you’re in your 30s…it was tough. Long hours. You spend four months animating a shot of Godzilla’s toe. I got burned out. It felt like a young man’s game and I couldn’t continue. So I was lost for a while. It didn’t occur to me to work at The Manor right away. I realized that my parents were getting older. They’re in their 60s now. I hadn’t spent much time with them and my brother. So I decided to take a leap. When I say it was naïve, that’s because it was a completely different world than what I was used to. In my first week working there I tried breaking up a fight and got pushed through a plate glass window in the champagne room. I just thought, “What am I doing here?” But that naivety was great. In many ways you feel like you’re living in a Bukowski novel, but it was living. In animation every day is the same. In a strip club, every day is different and there are always strange new problems to solve. DS: Have you told your family that they remind you of a Bukowski novel? SC: (Laughs) Yes, absolutely. They don’t know who Bukowski is, so they assume it’s a good thing because of the literary reference. DS: Was there a specific moment that made you think your family and The Manor could be a movie? SC: Well, it wasn’t like I showed up with a camera and said, “Hey, let’s do this.” I worked there for over a year before I started shooting. One of the first things that I filmed was my father. I’ll never forget this, he was in the office, his feet were up, he was smoking a cigar, and he was yelling in Hebrew. I didn’t understand a word he was saying, but he just jumped into the lens. I just got addicted to filming him and from there it expanded into a documentary. It was complicated because I was a manager there while making the film. But it got more serious as I filmed. I don’t think you need to come up with an idea and execute it right away. I’m much looser than that in my approach. I’ll film and if something comes out of it, then great. When filming your family, you can do that. They’re always going to be around. DS: Did they know it would be a film when you started filming? SC: No, nobody knew. DS: So when did that conversation happen? SC: Oh, probably about a year and 100 hours in. I look back now and I think one of my greatest assets was…it wasn’t that they didn’t know what I was doing, but they didn’t expect all this. They just saw some random film student running around with a camera and thought, “just let him film.” Because when you think about it, you wouldn’t expect it to go anywhere. They assumed no one would see it and really let their guard down. DS: So they were never self-‐conscious about the camera? SC: Well, there are certain scenes that are intense. But, keep in mind that I’d already worked there for a bit and there was a level of trust. I told them, “I’m not going to portray this in a way that will make anyone uncomfortable. It’s going to be truthful.” For me, that was the most important part. Especially in the edit, I needed it to be a truthful depiction. I’d seen a lot of documentaries that are very well crafted, but I say “crafted.” They play with timelines and can be manipulative. I
didn’t want The Manor to be that. I wanted there to be four natural story arcs – my brother, myself, my father, my mother – and let the timeline fall into place. You know, let this be a very traditional and honest vérité film. DS: Did you show any footage to your family as you were filming? SC: No, I thought that would be a bad idea. I’ve heard from a lot of filmmakers that when you do that people respond differently. So I didn’t show it to them until I was done and that was tough. It was the longest 80 minutes of my life. And I freaked out a little bit. I think what I was worried about was that I created an extra layer of tension and anger in the family. That hit me right before I showed it to them and I thought, “What did I do? Is this going to be damaging to our relationship?” I was wrong. They loved the film. The first thing my mother did was look at my father and say, “you know Roger, that’s exactly you.” And then she started to laugh. It made me feel better. It got me thinking, “This is a somewhat abusive co-‐dependent relationship, why are they together and ok with this movie?” It just made me realize that as their son I’ll never fully understand their relationship. DS: Was there anything that you were uncomfortable putting in the film or is it all in there? SC: Yeah, there’s a lot that I cut out, for different reasons. Sometimes people just don’t want to be in there even though they signed a waiver. You’ve got to balance that out later. You know, some dancers would come to me later and say, “my parents don’t know I dance.” And I’d just think, “then why did you sign the waiver for my documentary?” But I took them out. It’s tough, people came up to me later and complained, “I didn’t know this was going to be such a big thing.” In the end, I just realized you can’t show everything. If you did, you’ll offend people. So you want to pick your moments. Also, there were logistical issues. We shot 200 hours of footage. Most feature films shoot a 1:8 ratio, documentaries are about 1:15-‐1:20. We were at 1:200, which is a lot. When you’re editing and it takes you four and a half months just to watch everything you wonder, “why did we have to shoot my dad clipping his toenails for two hours?” DS: Was this a particularly eventful three years that you happened to shoot or would you say it was business as usual at The Manor?
SC: It was pretty normal, I guess (Laughs) When you grow up in this environment it all feels quite normal. Getting a lapdance for your bar mitzvah and having strippers babysit you seems normal. You don’t experience anything else, so that’s just how you live. When I started showing it to people for the first time, I realized not only was this a bit of a tragedy
because my family is a bit fucked up, but I wanted to make sure that it had integrity for that reason. Like I said before, I just wanted to make sure it was truthful and the only way for it to work was if it was truthful. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair to my family. So that’s how it was. DS: How does it feel watching it with an audience who doesn’t know you? Is it like projecting home movies in a theater? SC: (Laughs) I don’t think I know how to answer that one yet. It’s strange, for sure. DS: Has it been surprising how much people have been relating to it? SC: It’s nuts, it really is. I really only finished it a few weeks ago. So once the arcs were in place I spent weeks just crafting and polishing. Now people say that it almost feels like watching fiction and that’s because there’s a lot of effort to make it feel more like a feature film. I was so busy with that up until a week and a half ago, so when the movie broke in the media…it’s a lot to digest. You know, it’s my family so I’m still working through what audiences think of them, what they think of the film. It’s a process that hopefully I’ll come to terms with soon and realize that everything is ok. DS: How does your family feel about the big premiere and it getting a release? SC: It’s been great. I’m probably the least excited to tell you the truth (laughs). I just wanted to get it done. In many ways I still don’t feel like it’s done, I feel like I abandoned it. Hopefully that goes away. DS: Do you have any thoughts of what you’ll do next? SC: It’s funny you say that. My uncle owns a sex club in Parkdale. DS: I smell a sequel! SC: (Laughs) Yeah, I’m not going to shoot that. I just like to tell that to reporters for fun. It’s true though. I’m not sure what I’ll do next. I have some ideas, but don’t want to discuss them yet specifically. These docs take years to do and are a gigantic commitment. You don’t want to speak to soon. I’ve seen other filmmakers come up with an idea in a couple days and still be trapped in it two years later wondering why they did it. So I want to take my time and choose the right thing. I will say that I do like themes that have to do with addiction and grit. So hopefully it’ll fall along those lines. It might be too early to make that decision. But we’ll see. I want to take my time and find something that I care about. DS: Will you be in it again? SC: I hope not. I didn’t like it. That was the hardest part of the process. DS: I’m sure, but you probably had to be in this one for the sake of the rest of your family. SC: Yeah, for sure. But I doubt I’ll do it again. I had an interview with Vice Magazine for something. I’m not sure if I’ll do that though. A few months ago I would have said “never.” Now? Maybe, but probably not. DS: Do you plan on continuing to work at The Manor in the meantime? SC: Yeah, absolutely. (Laughs) I don’t see why it’s such a big deal to work there two nights a week and still make films. That’s the plan anyways. I do wonder what will happen after my father retires. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gone within five years, but we’ll see.
The Manor Review Andrew Parker http://dorkshelf.com/2013/05/09/the-‐manor-‐review/ Opening just a week after Hot Docs ended, it’s opening night film arrives back at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema for it’s proper theatrical run. First time feature filmmaker and Guelph, Ontario native Shawney Cohen’s The Manor documents his sometimes strained and tenuous relationship to his family. Who doesn’t want to strangle a family member every now and then? What makes it harder for Cohen is that he seems like the well adjusted almost black sheepish member of a family of strip club owners and operators. At the titular roadhouse and adjacent fleabag hotel that attracts mostly addicts and lowlifes, things have been on a bit of a downward spiral not just out in front – where fights and bizarre incidents like car fires have become sadly regular occurrences – but behind the scenes, as well. Shawney, a former computer design artist, tends bar and tries to hold his unstable family together simply by not doing anything stupid. He documents them and their imperfections with the loving detail that only a family member that truly cares about those around them can do. This isn’t a cynical film about hating your family. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It’s about loving until it absolutely hurts you seeing how they act. Father and owner Roger has an exceptionally dangerous and obvious obesity problem, while his sweet and literally withering mother suffers in relative silence with an eating disorder and depression issues of her own. Younger brother Sammy is a manager and dating one of the talents, much to his father’s chagrin. Also just around the periphery is his dad’s shady assistant Bobby, who might not have shaken his junkie and drug dealing past. Cohen isn’t afraid to capture his family looking like jerks, and refreshingly the results aren’t always played for comedy. It brings out the real essence of these people. Cohen’s closeness to his subject is the film’s true ace in the hole. This specific film couldn’t have been made by anyone else. In someone else’s hands none of these characters would have been understandable as people, not even Cohen himself who is clearly uncomfortable when he’s forced into being the subject of certain sections of the film. It does seem a bit like a long form pilot for a reality television show rather than a proper documentary at times. The almost complete lack of an ending kind of speaks to a project that really didn’t have too much on an idea where it was going when it started. Then again, that wonky ending still speaks to how much The Manor and the family behind it means to Cohen. It’s a part of his life that he doesn’t want to let go of just yet, and he might never want to no matter the awkwardness. The fact that the film even exists makes it likeable and at moments outright heartbreaking to watch.
Win run-‐of-‐engagement passes to see THE MANOR in Toronto at The Bloor Cinema! http://scenecreek.com/contests/the-‐manor-‐run-‐of-‐engagement-‐passes-‐toronto/
If you live in Toronto you can win run-‐of-‐engagement passes to see THE MANOR in Toronto at The Bloor Cinema! THE MANOR was the opening night film at Hot Docs 2013. Passes are good for run of engagement EXCEPT opening night. Click here to see the schedule for THE MANOR. http://bloorcinema.com/schedule/ To enter is simple. Fill out the form below and submit your info!
Movie Review: The Manor John C., Erin V., Nicole, Maureen, Tony http://onemoviefiveviews.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/movie-‐review-‐the-‐manor/
The Manor Review By John C. ***1/2 (out of 4) The opening night selection for the recently wrapped Hot Docs, The Manor is an intimate portrait of a uniquely dysfunctional family that was among my personal favourites of the festival. Now that it’s playing in limited release, the film is absolutely worth seeking out. When Shawney Cohen was six, his father Roger invested in the family business, a strip club in Guelph, Ontario where he was raised with his younger brother Sammy. Turning the camera on himself and his eccentric family, Shawney returns to the Manor as an adult, to tend the strip club while his severely overweight Dad goes in for stomach
surgery, and his severely underweight Mom struggles to finally confront her eating disorders. With the eccentric ex-‐ convict Bobby as their assistant, and a plethora of naked women in the background, the family struggles to finally overcome the challenges that come when a strip club is the one thing keeping them together. There are many wonderfully absurd moments of humour throughout The Manor, with lines of dialogue and situations that won’t soon be forgotten. But the film also plays as a compelling family drama, with real life characters who we genuinely hope will turn out okay, and moments of heartbreak as we get the sense that some of these problems won’t soon be resolved. These are real people who we glimpse in their actual lives, and this makes the film all the more satisfying. Because even as things keep taking a turn for the worse, we never get the sense that this Jewish family doesn’t love each other in their own ways. There is something immensely watchable about this film, right through to the perfect symbolism of the bittersweet final scene. As an incredibly entertaining documentary that seamlessly moves between comedy and tragedy, The Manor is priceless. The Manor Review by Erin V. ***1/2 (out of 4) Two weeks ago, The Manor played as the opening night film at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto. On the surface the documentary is about a small strip club and motel in Guelph, Ontario, but really it becomes more of a look into family that runs it. Directed by Shawn Cohen – son of the owners, and manager at the club two nights a week – the film is an intimate look into their family life, the club, and Shawn’s own story of trying to figure out what he really wants to do rather than just inherit the family business. The film is quiet and understated at times, but really succeeds in painting a portrait of this family – from Shawn’s mother who struggles with anorexia and his father with over-‐eating, to his relationship with his younger brother and the others in their lives. Due to the subject matter, there is some nudity (as expected) in the film, but for adults, The Manor is a well-‐made documentary worth seeing. The Manor Review by Nicole *** (out of 4) The Manor follows a dysfunctional family as they go about their business of running a strip club. Filmmaker and family member Shawney Cohen takes the viewer through his family’s lives. His father Roger runs a “gentleman’s club” called The Manor out of Guelph, Ontario. Roger is satisfied with his business and he wants his sons to take on the career. But Shawney wants to do other, more normal things, such as filmmaking. However, younger son Sammy is happy with the club, and would be quite willing to take it on.
His girlfriend Gillian, however, notices a problem with the Cohen family. The mother Brenda is dangerously thin due to a severe eating disorder. She refuses to eat much, and uses laxatives, leaving her emaciated. Brenda gets joy from the animals, both wild and tame, that share the Cohen home. Everyday, she remarks on the swan couple that reside at a nearby pond, and spends time with the family dog and cat that live with them. Roger has a different kind of problem. He overeats, and requires stomach surgery to curb his voracious appetite. The Manor provides an interesting look at the human condition. Roger’s assistant, Bobby, is an ex-‐con who is trying to get his life back on track. Sue, the manager of the adjacent motel Sue’s Inn, struggles with depression and drug addiction. And throughout the film, there are surreal shots of the strippers passing through the office naked, as if this were just their uniform. If you are interested in psychology, sociology or unique family dynamics, then The Manor is an interesting documentary to check out. The Manor Review by Maureen *** (out of 4) There aren’t too many families that would be comfortable having their personal challenges and family problems captured on camera for strangers to see. Fortunately, Shawney Cohen from Guelph, Ontario thought his experience of growing up around the family business, a strip club called The Manor, would be interesting to other people. He was right. His documentary called The Manor is a heartfelt look at a family who, despite their individual flaws, truly care about each other and the people they work with. Dad Roger Cohen owns and runs the strip club. He tries to run a no nonsense “gentleman’s club” and clearly believes in giving people a second chance. His assistant manager, an ex-‐convict named Bobby Ranger is like a third son to him. Roger’s health is an ongoing issue as he is an obese compulsive overeater. By contrast, Mom Brenda Cohen has an obvious eating disorder and is severely underweight. Her struggles are one of the most touching parts of the film. Helping run the club are oldest son Shawney and younger brother Sammy. Shawney has mixed feelings about the family business and would prefer to be a filmmaker. If The Manor is any indication of his abilities, then it looks like he’s finally found his calling. Sammy, it seems, likes the strip club industry and no matter what happens in the future will continue his father’s legacy. The Manor isn’t a judgement on the strip club and exotic dancing industry. Rather it’s an honest look at a family who try and look out for one another no matter what. There are many touching and humorous moments in the film that provide an entertaining 78 minutes. The Manor Review by Tony ***1/2 (out of 4) The Manor, a strip club in Guelph ON, is the Cohen family business. Filmmaker Shawney Cohen still works there two nights a week but lacks the commitment of his younger brother Sammy and parents Roger and Brenda, children of Holocaust survivors who founded the place. Outside the family a bilingual ex-‐con helps manage the club and a woman with substance issues runs the cheap hotel housing most of the entertainers that is attached to the club. The Manor provides an intimate view of a family that, aside from all the naked women in the background, is traditional in many ways, surviving serious challenges, particularly the strange combination of Roger’s morbid obesity and Brenda’s anorexia. Consensus: Directed by Shawney Cohen who turns the camera on his family and the strip club they run, The Manor is a documentary that is both entertaining and heartbreaking, providing an interesting look at a unique situation. ***1/4 (Out of 4)he M
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