Offscreen Notes
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Mapping Cinematographic Territories: A Cybercartographic Atlas of Canadian Cinema
GPE Departmental Seminar Series Presents on Friday December 5th, 2008 at 11 am in H1252:
“The overall goal of this atlas is to better understand the influence of cinema in the construction and dissemination of geographic identities. To reach this goal, this atlas maps Canadian cinematographic territories, including the territories of film production (e.g. shooting location), of film audience (e.g. revenues of films and socio-demographic profiles), and of film action. Simultaneously, this atlas serves as a laboratory to explore new forms of cartographic techniques inspired by cinema, including jump cut framing, and audio-visual mapping.”
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Time and Place: The Films of Ernie Gehr
In collaboration with the Cinémathèque québécoise, the Web Journal Hors champ will be presenting a cycle of films by New York experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr on the evenings of Octover 30, 31, and November 1, 2008: a rare occasion to discover the work of a true pioneer of the American Avant-Garde. Ernie Gehr will be in Montreal to present the three evenings of screenings (9 16mm gems) and a « Master Class » (in English) on the relationship between experimental cinema and early cinema.
Ernie Gehr and André Habib (organizer of the event and co-editor of Hors champ) will be also available for interviews.
“Ernie Gehr is, alongside Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow and Peter Kubelka, one of the pillars of experimental cinema. His films, and more recently his video and installation works, reveal a fascination for urban landscapes, sites of memory (Passage, Signal-Germany on the Air), perspective and the limits of perception (Serene Velocity), as well as optic toys (Cotton Candy), the origins of cinema (Eureka) or simply the tracing of light on film (Wait, Mirage). The conceptual rigor and the visual power of his films seem to operate a reduction of cinema to its fundamental elements, as if starting anew, each time, and rediscovering the destabilizing shock of the origins of cinema as well as its radical transformation of the visible. His films, that we could wrongly consider “minimalist”, are on the contrary the site of profound interior experiences. Made up of light, space, duration, movement, Ernie Gehr’s films also bare a documentary trace, always at the precise intersection of a specific time and place, whether it be a street in New York in 1971 (Shift), of San Francisco at the turn of the XXth Century (Eureka) or in the early 90’s (Side/Walk/Shuttle), or of Berlin in 1989, right before the fall of the Wall (This Side of Paradise). Although it is quoted in all the anthologies of avant-garde cinema, has been regularly written about by the most important scholars (Sitney, Gunning, Skoller, Michelsson, etc.) and praised by critics and film historians, the films of Ernie Gehr are proverbially hard to see. Hors champ has tried to modestly remedy this situation, by presenting, for the first time in Montreal, some essential “moments” of his vast filmography. Ernie Gehr will be in Montreal to present to programs and take part in a ‘Master Class.” (Double Negative Collective)
Hors champ receives the support of the Canada Arts Council and the Montreal Arts Council. This specific programme was made possible thanks to a contribution by the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of Concordia University, as well as the Département d’Histoire de l’art et d’études cinématographiques of the Université de Montréal.
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Madison Horror Film Festival
One day (October 25, 2008) horror film festival taking place at Madison, Wisconsin.
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FNC 2008 –Mid-Festival Round-Up
It’s autumn in Montreal, and with it comes so many of my favourite things in life, not the least of which being the Festival de Nouveau Cinema (October 8-19, 2008). Locals know that this is the city’s premiere showcase for the best in international cinema across all genres and styles, and this year has not disappointed. Beginning with a bang, the first film I saw was Steve McQueen’s Hunger, plunging viewers into the plight of imprisoned IRA terrorists struggling against a violent administration to have their rights as political activists recognized within the penitentiary system. Rather than a moralizing tale seeking to justify any particular side of the conflict, the film unfolds as a brutal exercise in cause and effect. We live in the squalor of the feces infested cells of inmates refusing to clean themselves or their quarters, only to then witness their forced bathing at the hands of the prison guards. When the inmates destroy their few bits of furniture in a contained riot, the riot squad is called in to administer beatings to each and every IRA inmate as they get tossed down a corridor lined with shielded club-toting cops. Finally, Bobby Sands initiates a hunger strike, and in a remarkable shift in tone the final third of the film follows him to the hospital ward as he gently fades to nothingness. Difficult though it may sound, the film is brilliantly executed, and is well deserving of the Camera D’Or it won at Cannes this year.
Things lightened up a bit the following day with the Bruce Connor retrospective featuring 11 films by the acclaimed avant-garde filmmaker known best for his repurposing of appropriated material as epitomized by A Movie and Report. Indeed, seeing these films as they were meant to be seen was a rare treat, and kicked off what is turning out to be a rich festival for lovers of found footage, including Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City, Luc Bourdon’s La Memoire des Anges, and various short films – including Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost’s Gravity exploring Hollywood kissing scenes through a new lens; and Fontage, a notable entry from Mike Hoolboom and Fred Pilon continuing in Hoolboom’s tradition of processing his identity through the processing of exposed film stock. But for me, the highlights of the Connor programme were his later films. Looking for Mushrooms and Easter Morning are both relatively recent re-workings of material Connor shot himself in the 60s, and both are structured as series of still images passing quickly enough to suggest movement without succumbing to the illusion of motion that begins somewhere around 16 frames per second. Both set to the music of Terry Riley, these films gesture in a psychedelic direction fostered by his interest in Peyote at the time the images were captured. Easter Monday, finished just before he died this year, is a probing journey through an unrecognizable San Francisco consisting of abstracted bits of garden flowers and other corners of experience ordinarily neglected by the average passers-by. With their careful attention to the relationships between the formal qualities of all the fragments brought together here, Mushrooms and Monday demonstrates how Connor’s understanding of montage – demonstrated so wonderfully in his found footage films – can be applied to more personal material seeking to craft an experience of interiority rather than restructuring the world as projected through the media.
Though Connor’s San Francisco likely won’t end up in any tourist videos for its lack of recognizable landmarks, this year’s festival is a pleasure ground for lovers of city films that pay as much tribute to the world’s great urban centers as to whatever action might be taking place within them. The aforementioned Of Time and the City and La Memoire des Anges are loving film poems dedicated to London and Montreal respectively, constructed from archival materials featuring these two wonderful cities. Though I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, James Marsh’s Man on the Wire promises to be a similarly beautiful portrait of New York City in the 70s as captured by the team documenting Philippe Petit’s tight-rope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Nicolas Provost’s short film Plot Point is a methodical study of street-level security on the island of Manhattan. First capturing shots of various police and security guards around the Times Square area, the film builds increasing tension through editing strategies that points to a major event brewing, with creative use of dubbing to suggest communication between disparate factions. The film culminates in an epic parade of police vehicles streaming out of the central station towards a catastrophe that remains unspoken but one that 21st Century New Yorkers can sadly imagine all to well. As such, the film develops a portrait of the intensity of police presence on the streets of New York City as part of the daily routine of life on the island. And Tokyo is also well represented this year. Though you might not expect it from an anime film featuring a mini-donkey bent on disrupting a young couple’s budding romance, Tokyo Marble Chocolate from Japan’s famed IG studios turns out to be a wonderful homage to the unrepresentable city. Known for it’s unfathomable density and general lack of holistic coherence, Tokyo is here rendered almost quaint with a focus on parks and cafes in which the bulk of the action takes place. What is most striking is that the city takes on an air of definitive manageability through the grounding effect of Tokyo Tower, the central point where the narrative begins and ends and around which the story of two social misfits trying to find love revolves. Frequently visible in the background, the film maintains a consistent orientation with respect to the tower throughout. Because of the tower’s importance to the development of the plot, its omnipresence serves as a spatial device that drives the narrative forward while creating a sense of core for a city so often described as being without center. And so Tokyo becomes a place where people might find love and companionship within the context of urban sprawl, rather than a bewildering environment that fosters a fragmentation of experience and attendant deterioration of social relationships.
One of this year’s most anticipated films also features the legendary Japanese metropolis: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata. Known for his masterful contributions to the J-Horror phenomenon and a favourite son of Montreal’s Fantasia genre-film festival, this year his absence from Fantasia was keenly felt. After seeing the new film, it is clear that it wouldn’t have been as appropriate in a fantastical setting as previous outings like Cure or Séance, for here Kurosawa takes a couple steps back from the supernatural in order to focus on a family disintegrating at the hands of Japan’s social and economic difficulties. But make no mistake: there is real magic here, enough to warrant its inclusion as part of the Temps Zero programming by Fantasia alumnus Julien Fonfrede. The film sets up a family being pulled apart at the seams by a father’s job-loss, a mother’s increasing frustration with home-life, and children whose needs aren’t being met by their parents. Then about three-quarters of the way through, a bit of mayhem is injected which forces the family apart, only to bring them back together under slightly suspicious circumstances. Whatever one makes of the film’s ending, it is clear that Kurosawa’s downplay of the overtly supernatural here serves only to emphasize the strangeness that the cold reality of urban life can engender. Fans will recognize approaches to mise-en-scène, montage, and sound that are characteristic of Kurosawa’s previous work, set here a bit more simply than usual so that the richness of the film’s understatement might be elevated to a new level. And amidst all this the film manages an acute critique of certain contradictions inherent to Japanese culture as made manifest by recent engagement with the US on matters of foreign policy. Though I love his genre work, I was not at all disappointed by the turn Kurosawa has taken here. Great stuff.
Much as I love city films, my pick of the festival is set far from any hint of civilization. I cannot overstate the level of my anticipation for Philippe Grandrieux’s Un Lac. His first two films, Sombre and La Vie Nouvelle – both of which have played this festival in the past – are amoung the strongest cinematic works of the past decade. Grandrieux has developed an aesthetic that is more genuine and visceral than can be said of most filmmakers, and the experience of his films leaves me breathless every time. Like Kurosawa, however, in the new film Grandrieux takes a step back from certain of his characteristic strategies. Where Kurosawa has toned down the supernatural elements he has become known for, here Grandrieux moves away from the intensity of corporeal violence that has been such a dominating force in his previous works. Those who find the breast roping and forced coiffure of his previous works difficult can here breath a sigh of relief without worrying that the director has lost his edge. While devoid of the urban environments that allowed for his signature use of incredible outbursts of nightclub sound, environments which fostered the festering misogyny at work in his last two films, here the forests of Lapland provide a subtlety that renders the simple act of chopping wood into an experience equally moving in its intensity as anything he’s achieved in the past. The film unfolds like an onion revealing an ever-increasing cast of characters, each bringing their own potential for agitation and violence to the table. Yet amazingly, the film withholds the eruptions of its predecessors while developing a remarkable tenderness that would be stripped of its effectiveness if presented outside of this environment. In this film Grandrieux proves that the good, the bad and the ugly don’t always need to be represented in equal measure in order to create the tone he has mastered across his three feature films. Un Lac is a real achievement, and if I had to make one recommendation for the festival’s final weekend it would be to get your ticket for Saturday’s screening of the film before it’s too late. I’ll be there again without question. (Randolph Jordan)
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Festival of Nouveau Cinema: Choice Picks
With so many excellent films and programs on offer at the FNC (which runs from October 8-19) some guidance is always helpful to make best use of one’s time. With this in mind, here are some recommendations based on advance notice, intuition, or previous track records. One of my most eagerly anticipated films is Gomorra by Matteo Garrone. Gomorra is confirmation that one of Italy’s most trusted and popular 1970s genres, the gangster film, is back with a vengeance. These films, made during what was called “Anni di Piombo” (“years of lead”), reflected one of the most troubling and violent periods in recent Italian history, with both far-left and far-right political groups terrorizing urban centers with bombings, kidnappings, and murders. There have been many recent Italian films dealing with this period, roughly from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, including La Scorta (Ricky Tognazzi, 1993), Michele Soavi’s masterpiece Arrividerce Amore, Ciao, 2006 (which played at the FNC two years ago) and his made-for-television epic, Uno Bianca, 2000, Romanzo Criminale (2007, Michele Placido), I Cento Passi, 2000, La Meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth), 2003, and Sanguepazzo, 2008, the final three all directed by Marco Tullio Giordana. Gomarra deals with the mafia in Naples, and comes with great advance notice from other film festivals. I was impressed by Garrone’s earlier film L’Imbalsamatore (2002), which played at the Montreal World Film Festival, and I described as follows in my brief discussion of the film in my festival report of that year: “The Embalmer presents a vision of Italy far removed from tourist pamphlets: dark, tenebrous, foggy, overcast, lonely, and dreary are the tones of the day. Director Garrone’s use of architecture and space, the lonely beaches, block-styled project tenements, and desolate border towns, coupled with a restless camera, recalls the great Michelangelo Antonioni.” Another hotly awaited film with an Italian link is the Korean The Good, the Bad, the Weird by the director of the excellent J-horror A Tale of Two Sisters and Quiet Family, Kim Ji-Woon. Kim’s film is the second recent high profile Asian film to cast an admiring wink at popular Italian cinema, along with Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Django Western (the latter referencing Sergio Corbucci’s masterpiece Django and the former referencing, obviously, Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). Italy is also involved in longtime FNC festival fave Wim Wenders’ return to his existentialist road-movie roots with Palermo Shooting. Fans of the avant-garde should not miss the special homage screening (October 10, 7:20pm) of the short films of Bruce Conner, one of the most important US found footage film artists. For those who appreciate technical challenges, the Brazilian Still Orangutans (Gustavo Spolidoro) should be worth a (long, stared) look, as it is described as a sequence shot of 81 minutes, recalling other single, real time long take films as The Russian Ark (2002, Alexander Sokurov), Time Code (2000, Mike Figgis), Rope (1948, Hitchcock), and Running Time (1997, Josh Becker). Terence Davies casts his reflective, poetic eye on his hometown of Liverpool, England in the documentary Of Time and the City. J-horror master and Fantasia Festival regular Kiyoshi Kurosawa turns up with a change of pace drama entitled Tokyo Sonata, which sounds closer to Ozu than Nakata. These are but a few choice selections from the bountiful programming at this year’s FNC. Happy hunting.
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Ken Ogata (1937-2008)
Japanese actor Ken Ogata passed away on October 5, 2008, after battling with liver cancer. Ogata was a mainstay in Japanese cinema since the 1960s, working in both modern and period dramas and action films. Ogata worked with some of the most idiosyncratic Japanese directors of his time (Shohei Imamura, Takashi Ishii, Kaneto Shindo, Kinji Fukasaku, Kenji Misumi) also had a successful though limited crossover career working with international directors Paul Schrader (Mishima) and Peter Greenaway (Pillow Book).
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The Time Machine
Festival grouping together films that in different ways reflect the omnipotence of time as a central element of cinema.
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Humbero Solas: 1941-2008
One of the greatest Cuban directors of the post-revolution era passed away on September 17, 2008. Solas’s best known film, and perhaps masterpiece, was Lucia (1968), a tour de force, nearly three hour film divided into three stories covering important points in Cuban history: 1895, 1933, and 196?. Solas employs a different visual style for each section, leading some film critics to read the visual style as a reflection/commentary on the famous Solanas/Getino essay “Towards a Third Cinema.”
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Manny Farber (1917-2008)
One of the greatest American film critics, known for his originality and eclectic interests, passed away on August 18, 2008, at age 91.
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Fantasia International Film Festival
The irrepressible Fantasia International Film Festival returns for nearly three weeks (July 3-21, 2008) of varied genre programming, from action, horror, science fiction to fantasy, from Asia to Europe to North American.
