‘Endless Cookie’ Review – Boundless Delights And The Eternal Story
Endless Cookie , a family documentary 9 years in the making by filmmaker and animator Seth Scriver. It’s rooted in Toronto culture from the 80s and 90s, but pays special attention to Seth’s half-brother Pete and his life in Shamattawa, a First Nations community in Manitoba. As Seth says himself in the film’s opening to the anthropomorphized square ruler from the film board, there to deliver the good news that his grant has been approved, “the goal is to make something funny, beautiful, spiritual, political, complex, simple and true.” What Scriver creates is less a documentary in the way today’s audiences understand them, but a patchwork of a multigenerational family’s personal stories by way of oral tradition, embellished by a continually tongue-in-cheek visual treatment via Seth’s unique art style. Each person in the feature is represented by some visual manifestation of their persona or name, like Cookie (whom the film is partially named after), who has a giant chocolate chip c...