Fairy Tales, Myths and Poetry: The Cinema of Patricia Rozema

Mansfield Park
Saturday, November 7 at 7:00PM
Introduced by Patricia Rozema and with Q & A hosted by Brenda Austin Smith

I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing
Introduced by Patricia Rozema
Sunday, November 8 at 4:00PM
Winnipeg Cinematheque

Also, Patricia Rozema will introduce Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter on Friday, November 6 at 7:00PM. This screening is FREE.

The Winnipeg Film Group welcomes to Winnipeg the acclaimed Canadian director Patricia Rozema, one of Canada’s most accomplished and internationally recognized filmmakers. At the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing won the coveted Prix de la jeunesse making Rozema one of Canada’s first female filmmakers to win serious international acclaim.

Rozema has created a large body of feature and television work including I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing, White Room, When Night is Falling and Mansfield Park. More recently Patricia directed Kit Kittredge: An American Girl and was nominated for an Emmy Award for co-writing on the TV movie Grey Gardens, which won an Outstanding Emmy Award as a made for television movie. In Grey Gardens (named after the Maysles’ documentary Grey Gardens), Drew Barrymore plays Edith ‘Little Edie’ Beale.

Saturday, November 7 at 7:00PM
Mansfield Park
“Patricia Rozema’s daring, gorgeous interpretation of Jane Austen’s MANSFIELD PARK shuns vapors and swooning in favour of the author’s satirical commentary upon class and her times. What Rozema has done is alter the nature of the book’s insufferable protagonist, Fanny Price, by pulling from Austen’s journals and writings and injecting some conviction, chutzpah and outspoken rebelliousness into a heroine who has been termed “a monster of complacency. Fanny is, as a child called to Mansfield Park by her aunt, Lady Bertram to work as a servant in the huge ramshackle estate. Sir Thomas Bertram owns Mansfield Park and, over time, he and his large brood look upon Fanny as one of their own. They watch her grow into a sturdy young woman who has a keen imagination, a wilful spirit and a secret love for her cousin, Edmund Bertram. Mansfield Park is a more daring, radically darker, and even naughtier version than the 1983 miniseries.” – Paula Nechak (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

“Intelligence and beauty –and teasing romance –shape Mansfield Park into a gorgeous, enchanting experience. This may be the first film that truly captures Jane Austen’s characters in flesh and bone.” – Peter Stack (San Francisco Chronicle)

Sunday, November 8 at 4:00PM
I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing
Patricia Rozema’s feature film debut was invited to the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes and won the coveted “Prix de la Jeunesse” at Cannes in 1987 where it received a lengthy ten minute standing ovation. Winner of dozens of awards around the world it was also voted “Top Ten Canadian Films of All Time” by a group of international critics. A critical and commercial success, the film features a terrific performance by actress Sheila McCarthy as a socially inept temporary secretary named Polly and the tale of her fascination with the church gallery’s worldly art curator Gabrielle St. Peres and her girlfriend Mary Joseph (played by novelist/actress/playwright Anne Marie MacDonald) – a maker of magically glowing paintings. Polly’s story is told in the form of a self confession, taped on video. The film’s title is drawn from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing is a serious comedy about a socially inept Girl Friday, completed for only $350,000.

EUROCRIME! needs your help via Kickstart Fundraising platform!

Hey everyone,

We just launched a Kickstarter fundraising platform for our feature-length documentary Eurocrime! The Italian Cop And Gangster Films That Ruled The 70’s and we really need YOUR HELP in making the project successful. There are several levels of donations ($5 – $5000) and rewards, but if we don’t get pledged the amount we’re shooting for, we don’t get ANY of the pledged dough. So it’s an all-or-nothing type of program, as a means of guaranteeing the funders that we’ll be able to deliver what we promise.

The movie is almost complete, but PLEASE consider donating some money to this project, so that we can start licensing our film clips and get the movie out there! Below is the link to the Kickstart page, please pass it on to EVERYONE you think might be interested!! Thanks!

Click here to donate!

Kier-La Janisse
BIG SMASH! Productions
Cel: (204) 998-5578
bigsmashproductions@gmail.com
www.big-smash.com
STREETS OF FIRE FOREVER!YOU

Winnipeg Film Group’s 90 Second Quickie Film Contest

• RULES: Create a 90 second (or less) film between October 14 & November 24.
• NOTE: This contest is open to everyone! You do not have to be a WFG member nor do you have to live in Winnipeg.
• DEADLINE: All completed films must arrive at the WFG office (304-100 Arthur St. Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3) by 5pm on Tuesday, November 24. (no extensions)
• FORMATS: a 16mm or 35mm film print or a playable DVD and file of your film/video on DVD (.mov, .avi)
• SCREENING: Friday, December 4 at 7pm at the Cinematheque. Admission is $5.00.
• PRIZES: 1/3 of the door will go to the makers of the film awarded the special jury prize!
• PARTY: Immediately following the contest we will be having a rockin’ x-mas party in the WFG studio! Come one, come all!
• INFO: distribution@winnipegiflmgroup.com or (204) 925-3452
• ENTRY FORM: Entry Form

Star Wars Uncut: The Biggest Fan Recreation in the Universe

Star Wars Uncut was created by Vimeo Staff Member, Casey Pugh. It divides Star Wars: A New Hope into 473 separate, 15-second segments for fans to re-create in the style of their choice. Once you choose your scene on starwarsuncut.com, you are given exactly 30 days to finish it. If you are a Winnipeg filmmaker who loves to make crap-tastic cinema in a short period of time, this project is for you. It would be nice to see a Winnipeg presence in the final version of Star Wars Uncut.

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Apparently, there is already a feature length Star Wars fan film made entirely in Winnipeg, Manitoba titled Star Wars: The Evil Within. Here is a synopsis:

The story follows 4 Jedi Knights as they strive to protect an endangered Empress from a mysterious Sith Assassin. The action becomes intense as the Jedi face this threat and help the Empress get her information to the center of the newly formed Galactic Republic, Coruscant. Eventually our heroes must face The Evil Sith Lord Darth Animus and they uncover a plot to destroy the Republic forever. The subtitle The Evil Within is revealed in a stunning plot twist at the end of the movie.

Director Clayton T. Stewart describes the filmmaking process on the Jedi Council Forums:

Although this project was a grueling 3 year process with nearly 100 volunteer cast and crew members and we faced many adversities, the end result will be well worth the many headaches and hassles. Filmed at many locations here in Winnipeg and the surrounding areas and on several custom built sets and green screens we have accomplished the unthinkable.

Finally, here is a trailer for the film:

I am very interested in seeing it. If anyone has a copy let me know.

- Clint Enns

Only the Hand – A Solo Animation Performance by Pierre Hebert

Only the Hand (in English, French & Ojibway)
Friday, October 30 at 7 PM
Free Admission
Winnipeg Film Group Studio
3rd floor in the Artspace Building, 100 Arthur
(same building as the Winnipeg Cinematheque)

Legendary pioneer Quebec animator Pierre Hebert will give a live projected animation performance of two separate animated works: the incredibly imaginative Only the Hand which he has performed around the world and the premiere of his brand new work Animation Exercises. Hebert works with dry erase markers on a small light table (a process of constantly drawing and erasing). Through this process Hebert will animate the sentence “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing,” which is then projected into three separate images in the language of Ojibway, French and English.

Hebert travels around the world giving performances of this work translated into the languages of each region he visits. Only the Hand features a soundtrack by Vancouver based composer and musician Stefan Smulovitz. Pierre’s second performance Animation Exercises, which features a soundtrack by San Francisco based composer and musician Bob Ostertag.

Cropsey: the Winnipeg premiere of the terrifying new documentary ops

Friday, October 30 at 8:00pm
3rd Floor Warehouse upstairs from Ace Art + Urban Shaman (290 McDermot Avenue)
Admission: $7 (includes FREE drink)
DOOR PRIZES!!!

Cropsey is a creepy documentary that explores how fact and fiction intersect in a real-life murder case in Staten Island, New York. Like many kids that grew up in the area, directors Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio were told the story of Cropsey, a lunatic child-killer that escaped from the Willowbrook Mental Institution. Cropsey was treated as just another urban myth until Jennifer Schweiger, a young girl with Down’s syndrome, disappeared from her Staten Island home in 1987. After Jennifer’s disappearance, three more kids — all of whom suffered from a mental or physical disability — also turned up missing. Jennifer’s corpse was eventually found near the site of the abandoned Willowbrook campus. Andre Rand, a disturbed transient who worked at Willowbrook until it was shut down, was quickly identified as the main suspect. The evidence against Rand was circumstantial at best, but he was convicted and locked away. Twenty-two years after his initial conviction, Rand was convicted of the murder of one of the three remaining missing kids despite the fact that her body was never found.

Cropsey is built around Zeman and Brancaccio’s detailed investigation of the Rand case. The film presents interviews with family and friends of the victims, police officers who investigated the case, Rand’s associates, and people who claimed to have been witnesses or potential victims to his crimes. The filmmakers also weave the Andre Rand case into the weird, secret underbelly of Staten Island. Through newsreels and new footage, the filmmakers examine the history of Willowbrook, which was famously exposed by Geraldo Rivera as New York City’s dumping ground for the mentally ill. The weed-covered Willowbrook campus was once rumored to be the stomping grounds for transient child-abusing cultists led by Andre Rand. Now, teenagers enticed by rumors of satanic sacrifices visit Willowbrook at night for scary thrills. The film also details the unsolved disappearances of dozens of kids all over Staten Island, and many people believe that Andre Rand was somehow involved. Cropsey asks a lot of questions, and the answers (or lack of thereof) are very disturbing. (Rodney Perkins)

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From The Manitoban October 26, 2009:
Friday night frights
Acclaimed horror doc gets “devil’s night” Winnipeg premiere

Ever wonder if there’s any truth behind urban legends? Documentary filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio did. Growing up on Staten Island, NY, rumors circulated of a psychotic murderer, maybe with a hook for a hand, named “Cropsey,” who was said to roam the woods around the ruins of Willowbrook Hospital. In its prime, the institution was the world’s largest insane asylum, but was later shut down after the brutal living conditions of its patients were exposed to the public.

The legend became a starting point for the new documentary, Cropsey, which co-director Zeman says “is about ‘legend tripping,’ that is, a thing younger kids do. You go to a local haunted house and it’s everyone’s test for their mental resolve, their fear factor. You go out, sit in your car and see if you can see the ghost.”

The documentary, which has begun screening at festivals worldwide to much acclaim, is set to have its Winnipeg premiere on Oct. 30 at a special “Devil’s Night Screening.” It should also represent something of a “fear factor” test for audiences in itself, with its unsettling atmosphere and lack of clear answers. The film investigates the rumors surrounding the figure of Cropsey, and connects it with actual abductions and murders of handicapped children that occurred on Staten Island during the filmmakers’ youth. Andre Rand, who lived in the woods around Willowbrook, was eventually convicted for some of the crimes.

Zeman claims that “a lot of what happened was scapegoated on Andre Rand. For me, in the film, his innocence or guilt is not in question. The film is about the urban legend and other people’s experiences [ . . . ]. Just by releasing the film, rumors about Andre Rand have taken off. The newer generation had forgotten Cropsey, so now we’ve almost strengthened it by bringing all of these strands together.”

Local filmmaker Kier-La Janisse, whose Big Smash! Productions is presenting the documentary along with CineMuerte, first saw the film at the 2009 Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX and was struck by how it worked more as a “whole movie instead of just a doc.”

“It’s about a true crime but it raises so many other questions, angles and perspectives on the myth.” Janisse said, “Satanists, ex-patients returning to the mental hospital — all these creepy elements. It’s so crazy that I had never heard about them.”

Although the film focuses on an urban legend, it also represents a larger examination of socio-cultural problems in Staten Island at the time. Indeed, it has been, at various times, home to the largest dump in the world, the largest mental institution in the world, and largest sanitorium in the world and once had the largest quarantine in the world, for sick immigrants coming into the country through New York City. As Zeman observes, “These politics, intentional or not, can’t not have an effect on people. It’s logical [ . . . ]. One by one these things were put down by the residents of Staten Island, pitchforks-in-hand in kind of a Frankenstein, not-in-my-backyard-type scenario. Andre Rand was a just Frankenstein, too, the culmination of an embattled communities’ fears and guilt.”

- Ryan Simmons

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From UPTOWN Magazine October 29, 2009:
What if the boogeyman is real?
Cropsey explores the true story of child-killer Andre Rand – and ends up with more questions than answers

On this upcoming Devil’s Night, the titular urban legend that plagued the children of upstate New York will be given a face and a name – and it doesn’t look anything like the fictional Cropsey found in the 1981 slasher, The Burning.

Cropsey, a disturbingly dark documentary that picked up honours at this past year’s Tribeca Film Festival, turns a reopened murder trial of an alleged Staten Island child killer into a fast-moving, if exploitative, quest for the truth. Ultimately unsuccessful at digging up any new information on the already-incarcerated individual, filmmakers Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman must rely on an exploration into this particular boogeyman’s myth.

Opening with a recollection from the now-grown residents of the dumping ground known as Staten Island, these former youths recall the eerie details from long dowsed-out campfires and overnight sleepovers where killers with hooks for hands and strange masked men with sinister motives reigned over their nightmares.

After the 10-minute mark, Cropsey begins to delve further into the serious subject of vagabond Andre Rand, the man held accountable for the 1987 murder of a little girl with Down syndrome. Rand is about to stand trial for the 1981 disappearance of another young girl, and the filmmakers capture on-the-street interviews with the many eyewitnesses who swear they saw him interact with the girl shortly before she was reported missing. (Despite what Law & Order might suggest, it’s strictly forbidden to shoot film inside courtrooms in New York State.)

Rand had been an employee of Willowbrook State School, a degrading mental institution that was an early exposé for television journalist Geraldo Rivera in 1974. And Rand certainly fits the part of a horror villain: as he drools on the courtroom steps, clearly out of it, audience members will be prone to believe he’s guilty of these despicable crimes. The theory that he’s simply being used as a scapegoat by law enforcement is given lip service by Brancaccio and Zeman, but it’s never pursued beyond a cursory suggestion.

Instead, the filmmakers investigate far more sinister implications: is Rand a part of a cadre of Satan-worshippers along the Hudson River? Or, is he the mastermind behind a collective of degenerate homeless men who use the now-deserted Willowbrook to pass around abducted children? Was his time spent as an orderly in a disturbing workplace to blame for his mental incapacities?

Late in the film, after describing their sincere intent in many letters addressed to Rand, Brancaccio and Zeman finally make contact with their subject. It’s a bit of a letdown in the end, but the many manipulations by Rand make for a startling peek into the mind of at least a partially deranged man.

The allusions in the many newspaper headlines to Hannibal Lecter never seem more accurate than they are in those moments.

— Aaron Graham

Utopia-In-Progress: Documentary strives toward new and better filmmaking process

From The Manitoban October 19, 2009:
Utopia in Four Movements
Saturday October 24, 2009 at 9:00PM
Winnipeg Cinematheque

Academy Award-nominated documentary director Sam Green (The Weather Underground) is coming to Winnipeg to show his nearly completed film, Utopia In Four Movements, as part of The Winnipeg Film Group’s Gimme Some Truth this week. The director will be presenting his film, piece by piece, while providing narration with live music performed by San Francisco musician Dave Cerf.

The film presents four topical vignettes, including segments on Esperanto (a universal language invented at the turn of the 19th century), an exiled American radical and the world’s largest shopping mall in China. Green, who has made films primarily about radicals of the ’60s, said, “in one way or another all of my work is about the tension between idealism, hope and human nature. I’m saddened that, now, on a societal level we have very little hope and imagination for the future. We used to think about robots who would work for us, space exploration and saving the world. The film is an experimental meditation on our not having utopian dreams anymore.”

Mike Maryniuk, a programmer for Gimme Some Truth thinks “it’s a privilege to see this work in progress. That never happens in this city. We’re always the last to see anything.” Oddly enough, the interactive form of the presentation has some local roots. Indeed, it was partially inspired by Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon The Brain, which was presented at select screenings with live narration, music and sound effects.

“Seeing Brand Upon The Brain was a sublime experience that was lovely and moving especially because of the live experience,” Green said. “Utopia is about being part of a community, like cinema should be.”

Utopia In Four Movements represent a unique film experience because it demolishes the clearly-defined process of “finishing” a film, and then “releasing” it.

“The kind of form it is taking is odd; it’s a live documentary, queuing images and short movies with a live laptop score. [It] started off as a way to show the movie to people, but now I love the form, especially from the point of view of an audience member. It’s the best way to learn what works with an audience,” said Green.

The director also said that this unique process enables changes to be made after every screening, based on audience reaction. In essence, it is an interactive editing process.

“If I see people shifting in their seats I know something’s not working,” Green said. “Cinema is at a crossroads right now, you either embrace people watching cinema on tiny devices or you can make it special.”

One segment of the film has already played numerous festivals — it is about the world’s largest mall, located in a modest Chinese city that sits almost completely unoccupied, but is not closed because the Chinese government can’t let such a gigantic endeavor fail. It was released as a stand alone short because, Green said, “it was timely as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the collapse of capitalism.”

Green is looking forward to attending Gimme Some Truth. “It seems like a great event. I love docs, lots of people turn off when they’re brought up, and I kind of can’t blame them. There are lots of bad ones, like the ones you see on the History Channel or PBS. But there are so many more things that can be done with the form with some creativity. There’s so much potential — it’s a powerful thing. Gimme Some Truth seems to be approaching documentary from a creative perspective, trying to open it up.”

- Ryan Simmons

John Price: Second Childhood

Second Childhood, a curated program of John Price’s films shown at WNDX this year, consisted mainly of works from Price’s AD (after dependents) era (2004-2009). Only two works were shown from his BC (before children) era (1992-2004), namely, fire #3 and eve. fire #3 is a psychedelic “hymn to the warmth of the sun” made on a cold winter evening using expired film stock and a candle. Through a rich palette of hues we watch a silent artificial sun traverse a handmade sky. In eve, a girl under the influence of crack is watched soliciting prostitution. This scene is common to anyone who has lived in (or been to) East Van. Living in this area of Vancouver you bear witness to people on crack performing a ritualistic dance pejoratively referred to as the Hasting Shuffle. Most of the time people overt their eyes and cross the street in order to avoid becoming a part of this ceremonial ritual. Price forces us to watch this tragic situation.

The other works shown in this program consisted of films from Price’s AD era. Although, many artists’ careers end after they have children, it seems that Price’s has just began. Price is often described as filmmaker who makes home movies and some explicit examples include party #4, naissance, gun/play and Camp #2 .

party #4, gun/play and Camp #2 are examples of films that capture the innocence of childhood. party #4, is the documentation of Price’s son enjoying one of the simple pleasures of life, eating cake and ice cream. gun/play, starts off with a boy innocently playing with a toy gun and ends with a boy playing by himself in a lake. Camp #2 mixes hunting iconography with the documentation of his son’s first attempts at understanding death. In naissance, Price documents his fully pregnant wife and the after mass of birth, namely his newly born daughter and the placenta, an organ that he is clearly fascinated by. Price has described this film as “the act of seeing with one’s own heart” and this act appears to apply to most of his home made films.

With children, Price has also started questioning the future of the world that his children will grow up in. This is particularly evident in Making Pictures and the sound lines are obsolete. Making movies was shot in China when Price was assisting Peter Mettler on Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes. Price observes the film crew observing in a country socially devastated by industrial revolution. Shots of the film crew waiting for the “action” are cut together with shots of the building of the Gorges Dam, the daily activities of Cankun Aluminum Recycling Facility and people living in atrocious conditions. This film raises questions about the act of making and the ecological future of our planet.

the sounding lines are obsolete consists of different sections, the title referring to the sparse, perfectly composed shots of people dangling in space on thin lines of rope. For me, these shots would have been enough to complete the work. Price describes the piece as:

An irradiated time capsule of home movies and human rituals… dark global forecasts refracting through the light of my sons eyes… a hand processed science fiction documentary…

The other sections of this work seem slightly out of place and appear to be tied to the piece only through the synopsis. However, these sections could easily stand on their own and include shots of a world where his son playful swims in the same fountain where men in post-apocalyptic body suits dump chemicals and shots of his son playing with other children at a playground in a homemade spacesuit complete with two litre bottle jet pack. This costume (a costume that would make Mike Marynuik proud) paints a cute portrait of alienation. Recently, in an interview with Mike Hoolboom, Price has claimed “at the moment I am less interested in ‘finishing’ work than in exploring the process of how the dialogue between the photographic texture of the material and the subject of the frame can communicate something essential about humanity”. This film appears to be an example of such an exploration.

It is easy to see why Price’s film View of the Falls from the Canadian Side has been described by Hoolboom as “his reigning masterpiece (so far)”. The film begins in colour with a pot bellied tourist going through the motions of photographing his family in front of the Niagara Falls. This seems like the perfect distinction between Price’s “home movies” and the tourists; that is, one is actively observing and the other is passively performing the ritual of observing. The Falls themselves are revealed through “long drifts of focus”. These slow focus pulls provide us with a moment where the Falls becomes truly in focus. This provides us with a brief glimpse into the true beauty of the Falls and with a realization about much we are missing by not truly focusing on the world around us.

If the images and content of this film aren’t enough to push it into the Canadian fringe film canon then the fact that this film has already been mythologized should. Genevieve Yue claims that Price shot the film “using a camera built to the same specifications as the one used in 1896 by William Heise” and Hoolboom has claimed that Price shot the film on “his small wooden box of a camera, entirely blind (there is no way to see ‘through’ the ‘camera’, rather it is pointed towards the subject in wide-angled hope), steadily cranking film through the device after looking and looking again”. Price is quick to demystify these claims, stating that the film was shot on an “anamorphic gate, 4 perforation 35mm arri 3 with a25-250HR angenieux zoom lens fitted with a rear mount anamorphic adapter”; however, he did once shoot at the Falls with Hoolboom using “a 1926 Devry lunchbox”. This footage was used in another film, namely, intermittent movement.

In 1896, William Heise shot the Niagra Falls using a camera system designed and built by Thomas Edison and William K. Dickson. Edison’s camera was 4 perforation spherical 35mm, however, the physical specifications of the film were identical to the film that Price used to shoot the falls. So in essence, Price is using “the same essential technology” as he claims in the synopsis of this work.

If this package is curated again, I would recommend adding more films and breaking it into two screenings. The films seem to fit naturally into two sections, First Childhood, a collection of works for Price’s BC era (1992-2004) and Second Childhood, a collection of works from Price’s AD era (2004-present). After hearing Price talk about future projects at WNDX, one including a glimpse at an isolated northern community and their rituals, I am eagerly awaiting Price’s future hand processed cinematic visions.

At Winnipeg Cinematheque 7/17/09

The works selected, introduced and projected by John Price were:
remembrance day parade
fire #3
eve
naissance
party #4
Making Pictures
gun/play
Camp #2
the boy who died
View of the Falls from the Canadian Side
intermittent movement
the sounding lines are obsolete

- Clint Enns

Hailing Hoffman: Legendary experimental filmmaker a focus of local WNDX Festival

From The Manitoban October 5, 2009:
All Fall Down
Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 7PM
Winnipeg Cinematheque

Philip Hoffman, one of Canada’s most critically respected filmmakers, is coming to Winnipeg to attend a retrospective of his short works and a screening of his first feature. Known for his distinctly personal approach, Hoffman has made over 18 short films, has had more than a dozen retrospectives of his work across the world, teaches film production at York University and is the founder of the Film Farm, an experimental filmmakers retreat. He will be screening his new film, All Fall Down, which recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to terrific reviews, at WNDX (Winnipeg’s festival of film and video art) this week.

All Fall Down is an ambitious work that combines multiple narratives, the chief two focusing on the rootless father of Hoffman’s stepdaughter and an aboriginal land rights activist. Hoffman, speaking over the phone from Toronto, said, “It was this thing of weaving two stories together. I found this stone house in Southern Ontario and I’ve been thinking about doing a film on it for a while. The stones of the house made me think about who had been living there when it was built, and I found out about the native woman who had owned the house. It made me think about the history of the land and how I was now a part of it.”

Indeed, as the project developed it began to adopt Hoffman’s signature personal approach. “I am a diarist filmmaker and at the same time I was starting a new family in this house, and the figure of my stepdaughter’s father was hovering over the farm,” Hoffman said. “Ultimately, it’s about how we’re all connected to the land and it’s history, and finding other ways of looking at the land other than as a commodity.”

Hoffman admits that it’s the kind of movie audiences “might not know how to approach,” but he was pleased with its premiere at TIFF, where people tried to engage it, recognizing it as “the kind of film that’s open to free association.”

When asked what he believes is the importance of an experimental film festival in Winnipeg, Hoffman was quick to reply.

“Isn’t Winnipeg the heart of Canadian experimental film, what with Guy Maddin and John Paizs?” he asked rhetorically. “The Winnipeg Film Group is kind of a wonderful place and so well-respected all over the world. It’s great that there’s a community for independent filmmakers, a place where they don’t need to feel that going commercial is the way up.” That’s high praise for a humble prairie town. Especially from the founder of The Film Farm, the legendary not-for-profit retreat located in a rural Ontario barn that encourages an artisanal form of filmmaking.

“Participants come [to The Film Farm] with no script, and react to the place and people,” Hoffman said of his primary enterprise. “Then they learn how to hand process, tint and tone film. It’s a way for independent filmmakers to control the medium and affordably work with film.“

Hoffman will give WNDX patrons a rare glimpse into his film making process when he delivers a Master Lecture on Wednesday night. Ultimately, the festival is the kind invitation to artistic exchange that Hoffman relishes.

“There’s been a nice exchange between Winnipeg and The Film Farm.” Hoffman said, “I look forward to coming to Winnipeg to show my film and meet people.”

- Ryan Simmons

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From UPTOWN Magazine October 8, 2009:
Beyond the blockbuster
WNDX film and video festival focuses its lens on experimental cinema and the work of influential Canadian filmmaker Philip Hoffman

The minds behind WNDX, Winnipeg’s annual experimental film festival that showcases everyone from burgeoning local artists to established international filmmakers, are understandably enthusiastic about the guest of honour this year: filmmaker Philip Hoffman (and no, he’s not the guy from Capote).

Fervent admirers of this highly personal artisan were treated to a double-header retrospective on Oct. 7, featuring Kitchener-Berlin (1990), passing through/torn formations (1988), ?O, Zoo! (1986) and What these ashes wanted (2001).

Those who missed out on last night’s screening can still check out Hoffman’s master lecture at 5 p.m. on Oct. 8 at Cinematheque.

Hoffman spoke to me from his home in Normanby Township, Ont., about what Winnipeggers can expect from his first feature-length film, All Fall Down, a 2009 Toronto International Film Festival selection that screens on Saturday, Oct. 10.

“I moved in the early ’90s to a farmhouse in Southern Ontario, not far from where I came from originally. It was an old stone house and I started thinking about what had come before I began living there. So, after doing research, I found out about Nah-Nee-Bahwee-Qua (also known as Catherine Sutton), a 19th-century Aboriginal fighter of land rights, and all of her tireless work,” Hoffman says.

“Rubbing up against this was what was currently going on in my own life, with my stepdaughter’s father, a man named George Lachlan Brown. Those two strands initially formed All Fall Down for me.”

Brown, a British expatriate who fell on hard times, can be heard throughout All Fall Down. He grapples with reality and rambles on Hoffman’s answering machine, apologizing for his inconsistencies as a father. Hoffman had never met the man and yet, here he was – appearing at a time when Hoffman’s research on the fearless Nah-Nee-Bahwee-Qua was just beginning.

These two seemingly unrelated people and their past actions were given Hoffman’s unmitigated attention, and their stories make All Fall Down a sort of diary of the filmmaker’s headspace at that time.

A third tongue-in-cheek tale also weaves itself through Hoffman’s unconventional film: footage from his unpaid work on a commissioned project about 19th-century Scottish and Irish settlers in Ontario.

“I just wanted to shed light onto these three threads. I know it’s not exactly the three-act structure that people have been conditioned to, but I would argue that you can gain a new way of seeing by depicting all of them in one film. Even though they may appear to be different, there are similarities, (such as) Brown and Sutton both maintaining a certain outsider status.”

Hoffman’s work isn’t the only focus of WNDX.

Thursday Oct. 8 will feature New Prairie Cinema, a collection of short films and videos by Prairie artists, including the world premiere of a five-minute short by Winnipeg filmmaker Sean Garrity entitled Intuition, and Caroline Monnet’s IKWÉ, another TIFF selection that was originally made as part of the Woman’s Mosaic Film Project, a collaboration of the Winnipeg Film Group and MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art). Screenings start at 7 p.m. at Cinematheque.

The action moves offscreen on Friday, Oct. 9, when Cinematheque hosts a panel discussion about short film distribution for new and emerging filmmakers. (You can get ideas for your own five-minute mini masterpiece at that evening’s Canada Avant Garde, a screening of shorts from across the country.)

In addition to All Fall Down, local cinephiles can also catch Video Alchemy on Oct. 10 at 9 p.m. at Winnipeg Film Group Studio. Billed as a “live video showdown,” the event will showcase Toronto’s Tasman Richardson and Paris’ RKO as they use found media to create “a non-language based video performance.”

The highlight of Sunday, Oct. 11 is sure to be The One Take Super 8 Event Screening. Now in its fourth year, this audience favourite features over three dozen new short works by Manitoba filmmakers from Winnipeg, Lac du Bonnet and The Pas. As its name implies, all the films were shot on Super 8 in one take.

Details on WNDX screenings, venues and ticket information are available at www.wndx.org. To find out more about Hoffman, his films and his Independent Imaging Retreat in Ontario, visit www.philiphoffman.ca.

- Aaron Graham

8X8: A Projection of the Surrealist Vision into Cinema by Clint Enns

8X8: A Film Sonata in 8 Movements (Hans Richter, 1957) opened in New York at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in 1957 after some mild controversy and a compromise with the New York State Censor Board. The license to show the film was granted “on the condition that a nude in the background of two sequences be shown on the screen out of focus.”ⁱ Originally, the sensor demanded that the sequence be deleted entirely.ⁱⁱ

The 8 short sections (+ prelude) that make up 8X8 are as follows:

1. Prelude: Improvisations on Chess (with Jean Arp)
2. Black Schemes (with Jacqueline Matisse, Yves Tanguy, Julien Levy, Marcel Duchamp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Enrico Donati & Nicolas Calas)
3. Melody (by John Latouche)
4. A New Twist (with Alexander Calder)
5. Venetian Episode (with Ceal Bryson & Eugene Pellegrini)
6. The Self Imposed Obstacle (by Willem de Vogel in cooperation with Hans Richter & W. Sandberg)
7. Middle Game (after an idea by Dorothea Tanning-Ernst with Max & Dorothea Ernst)
8. Queening of the Pawn (produced & enacted by Jean Cocteau)
9. The Fatal Move (features Paul Bowles & Ahmed ben Dris el Yacoubi)

These short artistic visions are based around the game of chess. According to the New York Times, Richter viewed “life itself is a comparable game played out consciously and subconsciously.”ⁱⁱⁱ Despite this now passé metaphor, this film remains a projection of the surrealist vision, with Richter himself describing the film as “part Lewis Carroll, part Frued.”^iv Psychoanalyzing this film may prove to be fruitful. For instance, it might be amusing to find out which of these world renowned artists suffered from Oedipus complex^v; however, what is more relevant is the playfulness that emanates from these visions and the insight these visions provide into what these acclaimed artists considered to be “playful” or “fun” at the time. In fact, the film opens with the text:

This film deals with the world of fantasy. It is a fairy tale for grown-ups. It explores the realm behind the magic mirror which served Lewis Carroll 100 years ago to stimulate our imagination.^vi

Richter believes, “the avant-garde expresses the visions, the dreams, the playfulness, or the whims of the artists”^vii and 8X8 is a demonstration of this belief. Furthermore, the treatment of this piece deviates from the Hollywood narrative films which dominated the film market in that era.

When watching 8X8, it is apparent that this project was made between friends purely out of love. Richter remains true to his sentiment, “I should not worry about who gets what out of experimental film, as long as it is made out of love and conviction.”^viii In the scene Black Schemes, Matisse plays a white Queen and Duchamp plays a black King. Although the theatrical nature of this scene makes it appear dated, it still portrays a sense of playfulness. Jaccqueline Matisse Monnier claimed, “it was very amusing to do it – it was more about adults having lots of fun than anything else.”^ix It is enjoyable to watch a film made in an era where the artists do not take themselves too seriously.

Throughout the film, chess pieces become personified. In Cocteau’s scene, Queening of a Pawn, he demonstrates a poetic ritual through which a Pawn transforms into a “queen.”^x This same style of wordplay and punning is used in Ernst’s work, The Middle Game, where a Queen wishes to mate the King and the King is kept in check by the Queen. This power dynamic between man and woman is used throughout the work but especially in Venetian Episode where a woman is determined to get and control the King of her dreams using any means possible. In The Self-Imposed Obstacle, a man’s obsession with a coat rack results in him not being able to move his Knight to complete the perfect move. By the time he is finally able to clear the board of the coat rack, a new obstacle appears, namely, a blurry nude woman in the background.

Two of the more interesting works are A New Twist and The Fatal Move, although it is impossible to tell their connection with the game of chess. In A New Twist, Alexander Calder puts his found object mobiles into motion using various cinematic devices such as stop motion, reverse motion, the kaleidoscopic and optical printing. Calder’s section is probably the most visually interesting of the group. The Fatal Move is a literal interpretation of some of the ideas expressed in the opening text:

The heavy stone, which the man hands to the woman, the woman hands back to the man and so forth, are the daily burden, they both have to carry. The telephone which the musician-poet does not want to answer is the demanding world of reality, he refuses to accept…… he prefers to listen instead to the soothing flute of his inner voice…… and his suitcases, stolen one after the other, are more than that, they are all his earthly possessions.^xi

In addition to being playful, these works blatantly refused to obey the aesthetic traditions laid down by Hollywood at the time. By using jarring, dissonant, off kilter music (by Hans Richter, John Latouche, Douglas Townsend, Robert Abramson, John Gruen, singer Oscar Brand and the forgotten pioneers of electronic music, Bebe & Louis Barron) and low budget “ragged looking technical patchwork”^xii this work was created with a freedom not allowed by studio pictures at the time. This freedom allowed for the authors to explore a truly creative vision, and ultimately allowed the authors to create a work of art. Richter believed that the experimental film should not be “prejudiced by production clichés, nor by the necessity of rational interpretation, nor by financial obligations”^xiii and followed these guidelines when making this film.

Although this experimental film is a product of its time, let us consider the context in which it was originally shown, namely, Fifth Avenue Theater in the late 50s. It was a film made at a time when anti-Hollywood films could compete with films made in the studio system. Today, this film should provide both the independent filmmaker and the cinephile with hope. That is, in the future there may again exist a time when films made out of love can compete with the Hollywood system, despite having lower production value, simply by providing something different, unique and original.

i“Censors License ‘8X8′”, Box Office, March 16, 1957, E-1.
iiIbid.
iiiH.H.T., “Richter’s Chessboard”, The New York Times, March 16, 1957, p. 16.
ivIbid.
vIf I were to make an uneducated guess, it would probably be Jean Arp do to the fact that when Arp spoke in German he referred to himself as “Hans”.
viOpening text of 8X8: A Film Sonata in 8 Movements (Hans Richter, 1957).
viiHans Richter, “The Avant-Garde Film Seen From Within”, Hollywood Quarterly, Vol IV, No. I, Fall 1949, p. 35.
viiiIbid., p. 41.
ixJacqueline Matisse Monnier et al., “Appreciations on Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia by Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, TJ Demos, George Baker and Kim Knowles”, Tate Ect., Issue 12, Spring 2008.
xFor those unfamiliar with chess, a Pawn can transform into a Queen, Rook, Bishop, or Knight of the same color once it reaches the opposite end of the board. The usage of queen in this case is obviously wordplay. Jean Cocteau was openly gay and in American slang, a queen is a flamboyant or effeminate gay man. The term can either be pejorative, or celebrated as a type of self-identification. In this case, it is clearly the latter.
xiOpening text of 8X8: A Film Sonata in 8 Movements (Hans Richter, 1957).
xiiH.H.T., “Richter’s Chessboard”, The New York Times, March 16, 1957, p. 16.
xiiiiHans Richter, “The Film as Original Art Form”, College Art Journal, Vol. X, No. 2, Winter 1951, p. 159.