Hot Docs: Highlights from North America's Biggest Documentary Film Festival

Carol Channing: Larger Than Life dir. Dori Berinstein (USA)

http://www.traileraddict.com/emd/39371

Another inspirational-female film. Carol Channing is a Broadway legend, best known for starring, over a thousand times, in the original production of Hello, Dolly! I didn’t know anything about her except that she looks hot at 90, which was enough reason for me to see a documentary about her life. I was joined by many gay men and old ladies (one of whom, sitting behind me, ate fish and vegetables from a dinner plate as the movie began). Well, we all loved it, this reverent but mostly unsentimental profile of a woman who is maybe better than Tina Fey and wears fake eyelashes everywhere. I’m jealous that director Dori Berenstein got to spend two years hanging out with her. After the film—which got three rounds of applause—the audience took advantage of the Q&A period with Berenstein to ask personal questions about Channing: “How are Carol and her husband now?” “Does she have any children?” “Has she fully recovered from the cancer?” (The answers, respectively: like teenagers in love; yes, a cartoonist son; and yes, she wouldn’t let that stop her!).