Safety, they say, comes from traveling in a pack. But that’s a tactic for the timid, the uncertain, the isolated. This year’s packed Moving Pictures line-up suggests that the eleven-year-old traveling festival of Canadian film may no longer be absolutely necessary, although it’s undoubtedly welcome. Nearly two dozen of the films listed have already played or are playing in Edmonton, many of them warmly received by critics and audiences. The reels of the Occupiers still glut the multiplexes, but the strength and the confidence of the homegrown cinematic resistance seem to be growing.

Of the six entries visiting the Metro Cinema this weekend, one (Denys Arcand’s Decline of the American Empire) is a certifiable Canadian classic, making a timely visit after the success of its sequel, The Barbarian Invasions. The remaining film were all released last year and include Rage Against the Darkness, which earned director John Kaster the Best Canadian Documentary Feature Award at Hot Docs. Completely captivating, the film records the separation of septuagenarian sisters whose relationship transforms dramatically as each goes to a different institution after they’ve spent decades living together.

Though its cast is sometimes a trifle unsteady, On the Corner ought to be required viewing for all those who drive past inner city hotels with disdain. A look into the life of a Vancouver street prostitute and drug addict, On the Corner is disheartening and alarming without being lurid. Moreover, unlike so many films of grander means, the film convincingly portrays warmth in an environment that many would consider ill-suited to community.

The two remaining films tease the expectation organs but leave them somehow unsatisfied. The Surreality Shorts are described as "fantastical short films that celebrate the strange," but they’re not quite fantastical or strange enough. The entry that comes closest to being truly head-bending, Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner, is a grim but brightly coloured head scratcher–like a nearly contemporary suburban version of a story by Edward Gorey. Three of the remaining shorts are varieties of a shaggy dog story and include a shaggy head story, a shaggy maid story, and a (literally) shaggy lip story, all of which have more style than stuff, although all are more or less diverting.

Stupidity is not entirely as stupidity does, but Albert Nerenberg’s documentary about our most widespread and dangerous problem isn’t as smart as it might be. Stupidity is certainly amusing (particular insofar as it creates a witty fast-cut visual narrative behind the narration), but the movie’s pursuit of the roots and branches of the tree of density lacks a certain... scholarly discipline... intellectual rigour... depth of insight. The film’s meandering path eventually leads to the proposition that the current President of the United States may cunningly be acting dumb to gain some sort of strategic lever with the dim. After all, how could someone so apparently stupid become President? But anyone who’s seen Bush the Lesser’s recent works will want to call to mind Hal Holbrook (as Deep Throat) admonishing Robert Redford (as Bob Woodward) not to overestimate the sagacity of the Nixon Whitehouse: "Remember: these aren’t very smart guys."

As soon as we accept that our leaders are idiots, the explanation of how they got to be our leaders becomes transparent.