Bittersweet: the Carnival Life

Carny captures the fading glory of sideshows

By Marc Glassman
Photographs by Virginia Lee Hunter

The heartland of North America, its agricultural communities and small town dwellers, continues to look forward to yearly visits from carnivals. The whirling rides, sideshow hucksters, freaks and midway operators offer a brand of live entertainment that satisfies audiences in provinces and states across the US and Canada. Carny, a new feature documentary by filmmaker Alison Murray, producer Kathleen M. Smith and photographer Virginia Lee Hunter provides an inside look into this historical pastime and the people who labour to make it a beloved annual event.
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Five Questions for Carny's Alison Murray

Scott Macaulay for Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film

Throughout her career, Alison Murray has excelled in the filmic exploration of subculture. Her films, both docs and a narrative feature, burrow deep inside groups situated outside of mainstream culture and capture not only their social dynamics but also the very human stories contained within them.
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Hot Docs 2008

Metro Movies Archive

Finally, Carny a completely engrossing, and surprisingly heartwarming look at the people who run the traveling carnivals that pop up during the summer. They are the somewhat expected band of misfits, from those struggling with demons like addiction, to those born into the carny life, for which there really is no other choice.
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Reality bites

Numerous festival films find fertile ground in bittersweet tales of failed artists

Philip Marchand

A particularly sad instance of artistic failure is portrayed in Alison Murray's Carny, about fairground workers. One of these workers is known as "Bozo Dave," a "cut-up clown," whose act is taunting passersby into throwing balls at a circle on a canvas beside him. If they hit the circle, Bozo Dave falls into a water-filled tank.
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Gorge on Hot Docs All-You-Can-Eat Late Night Films

by Danielle D'Ornellas

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Carny is a film that is not what it seems, documenting the lives of carnival workers or 'carnies' as they travel from town to town. While the film not only exposes the toll that living on the road takes on their social lives, it explains why many of the carnies prefer living that way. Considering that the first screening of this film has already gone rush, this may be one of the only guaranteed ways to see this film.

Hot Docs 2008

Festival highlights

by Philip Marchand

This moving account by Alison Murray of life among fairground workers begins with a beautiful shot of a pre-dawn moon over a Ferris wheel. Enjoying a cigarette in the quiet of night, a lesbian cotton candy seller reflects: "People who had childhoods that didn't allow them to be children, they had to grow up real fast. That's part of the appeal to being here. It's like a fantasyland. As much as they gripe and moan and complain, when the Ferris wheel goes up, it's like a different place. Everyone gets to pretend it's a good time – and sometimes pretending is enough."
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