In the Shadow of the Company curated by Kevin Nikkel

In the Shadow of the Company: Films of the Hudson’s Bay Company
Multiple screenings curated by Kevin Nikkel
Friday, February 5 to Sunday, February 7
Winnipeg Cinematheque

The stories of the Hudson’s Bay are vast, the history is long and the territory is massive. There are also many voices that tell the stories of this place.

How do we interpret these histories to make meaning or to make entertainment? How do different filmmakers make sense of the topic in different ways?

In the end, the fragmentary views of this history amount to different versions of the Hudson’s Bay, from documentary realism to dramatic recreation, mythologizing and satire, or a hybrid of film genres.

Friday, February 5 at 7:00
Richard Stringer’s The Bishop Who Ate His Boots
Introduced by Bob Lower

Arctic missionary Bishop Isaac O. Stringer was once so desperately hungry during a northern canoe trip that he was forced to eat his moccasins to stay alive. This famous incident later became the inspiration for the “boot eating scene” in Charlie Chaplin’s film The Gold Rush. The Bishop Who Ate His Boots is a remarkable new film from by former Winnipegger and pioneer Canadian cinematographer, Richard Stringer. Prior his sudden passing in 2007, Stringer was working on a new film about his grandfather, Bishop Isaac O. Stringer; an adventurous missionary who worked and lived in the Arctic from 1905-1930. Packed with rare photos and archival footage from the 1920’s and 30’s the film explores the history of the Anglican missionary in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Northwest. Despite his illness, Richard was able to get the film to a rough cut with Kelly Saxberg. After his death, editor Zo and producer David Springbett completed this version of the film in Victoria.

Friday, February 5 at 8:30PM
Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North
(with live score by Nathan Reimer, Mark Penner (of Moses Mayes), Kurt Youngblood and Inuit throat singer Nikki Komaksiutiksak.)

Robert Flaherty’s silent documentary, Nanook of the North, was a landmark film of its genre about Inuit hunter Nanook as he struggles to survive with his family in the severe conditions of the Hudson’s Bay territory. This special presentation will feature live instrumentation with an original score by Nathan Reimer and provides a classically ambient and folky arrangement, marked by traditional Inuit music and other sounds of the north.

Saturday, February 6 at 3:30
Adventures on the Bay
(+ panel discussion with filmmaker Kevin Nikkel, City of Winnipeg Archivist and Records Manager Jody Baltesaan, author Peter Geller (Northern Exposures: Photographing and Filming the Canadian North 1920-1945) and filmmaker Paula Kelly (Souvenirs. There will also be an original ambient score by Nathan Reimer and Mark Penner of Moses Mayes. )

This silent archival footage from the vaults of the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives dates back to the 1930s. It includes footage of Governor Cooper’s 1934 journey on the mighty Nascopie steam ship to the Hudson’s Bay Company outposts across the north, for fur trade meetings with aboriginal trappers.

Using this archival footage as a spring board for discussion this panel will explore current issues facing filmmakers and historians. Moderator Kevin Nikkel and several panelists will discuss the use of archival footage and its meaning. Who ended up in front of the camera, and who is missing? What story was captured for posterity and what might have been left out? Can these disparities be rectified? How can archival collections find new audiences in age of new media?

Saturday, February 6 at 7PM
John Walker’s Passage (introduced by John Walker)

It was news that shook the English-speaking world. Celebrated British explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men had perished in the Arctic ice during an ill-fated attempt to discover the Northwest Passage. More shocking though, they had descended into madness and cannibalism. A Scottish doctor John Rae had discovered what six years of searching by British, Americans, French and Russian had failed to.

With the film Passage, filmmaker John Walker employs an innovative approach to structuring the John Rae’s incredible multi-layered story by bringing its vibrancy to life through the use of a unique blend of dramatic action, and behind-the-scenes documentary footage. Passage is a story of incredible sacrifice, stunning distortion of the truth and single-minded obsession that challenges the way we look at history.

Sunday, February 7 at 7:00 PM
Shorts from the North

Man of the Northwest by Matt Holm
An ironic re-working of oddball American depictions of Canada laced with the pop culture kitsch of Dudley Do-Right, the clownish machismo of Robert Goulet and the Gonzo Canadiana to be found in early Hollywood adventure romances like Nomads of the North and The 49th Parallel.

The Chronicler by Ruth deGraves
Fred Ford inherited a family legacy and a Canadian legacy. His grandfather was a fur trader and photographed the Caribou Inuit in the early 1900s and their first contact with European culture. Fred’s mission is to share this story and continue to chronicle the world in the tradition of his forefathers. Fred is not only a self-confessed photographer but is in possession of the rarest photo archive of a time in Canadian history that changed the landscape of the northern culture. Fred’s family history is rich in images of the Canadian North, the Inuit, their art, the European settlers and their impact.

Adventures on the Bay – Archival Footage
This silent archival footage from the vaults of the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives dates back to the 1930s.

The Other Side of the Ledger: An Indian View of the Hudson’s Bay Company by Willie Dunn & Martin Defalco
The Hudson’s Bay Company’s 300th Anniversary celebration was no occasion for joy among the people whose lives were tied to the trading stores. This film, narrated by George Manuel, president of the National Indian Brotherhood, presents the view of spokespersons for Canadian Aboriginal groups. There is a sharp contrast between the official celebrations, with Queen Elizabeth II among the guests, and what Aboriginal peoples have to say about their lot in the Company’s operations.

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From Uptown Magazine February 4, 2010:

Charting new territory
See the North like you’ve never seen it before with Cinemathque’s In the Shadow of the Company: Films of the Hudson’s Bay Company

Call it screening films the new-fashioned way.

For years, Cinematheque has offered an infrequent but completely unique series of silent film screenings – accompanied, as they were in their day, by live musical performance.

But sometimes it’s done with a twist. Take the upcoming screening of the classic silent documentary Nanook of the North: the live collaboration will feature Winnipeg funk/dance group Moses Mayes’ Nathan Reimer on harmonium, bandmate Mark Penner on guitar, cellist Kurt Youngblood and Inuit throat singer Nikki Komaksiutiksak.

“I prefer a more experimental approach,” says Dave Barber, Cinematheque’s programming coordinator. “This kind of approach is totally open to creativity and, artistically, it’s much more interesting.

“It totally enhances a silent film.”

The first such screenings began in the late ’80s, according to Barber, when Cinematheque first moved into the Artspace building at 100 Albert St.

Some of the earliest presentations featured piano music by one Addeline Johnson, in her 80s at the time, a woman who performed the same function for a living in Winnipeg’s silent theatres. She even had her original sheet music.

Yet even from the beginning, experimentation was prized. An early highlight was a screening of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, featuring a performance on amplified pipe organ that Barber says, “shook the rafters.”

Another standout was part of send + receive: a festival of sound; that was a screening of Russian director Sergei Eisenstein’s classic Battleship Potemkin, scored by Steve Bates and Christine Fellows. The score resembled an audio art soundscape, with sounds evoking the grindings of a real ship.

The upcoming screening of Nanook of the North is the result of a process that began when local filmmaker Kevin Nikkel discovered some “amazing” footage of the North in the HBC archives.

“Not enough people have seen this great footage, and it’s just sitting in the vaults,” Nikkel says. He subsequently proposed a program at Cinematheque that would showcase his findings; this became the upcoming series In the Shadow of the Company: Films of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The idea of showing Nanook came to mind almost immediately. While the film has been criticized over the years for the staging of some scenes, Nikkel says the images of igloo building and seal hunting remain “riveting.”

For the score, Nikkel wanted something fresh, as opposed to Western-style music. After an initial collaborator dropped out, Nikkel approached Reimer in early January.

Using both Komaksiutiksak’s live performance and voice samples as a base, Reimer’s score will experiment with rhythms and tones, and use the dynamics of the room for ambient effects.

“I wanted to capture the tone and feeling of the North,” Reimer says, explaining that his aim is to try to create a sound environment that will give the 2D film an additional dimension.

For the audience, Barber says the presentation provides both a fresh take on a classic of cinema, as well as a trip into the past. “There’s an attraction along the lines of, ‘How often do you see that kind of thing?’”

- Kenton Smith

11 on the 12th: New Shorts From the WFG Catalogue

11 on the 12th: New Shorts From the WFG Catalogue
Friday, February 12 at 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 13 at 7:00 PM
Admission $5
Cinematheque

Twice a year the Cinematheque is host to a membership screening featuring a selection of the newest short films and videos in distribution at the Winnipeg Film Group. All are welcome!

Tattoo Step by Mike Maryniuk
Temporary Tattoos applied to 35mm for eternity. An energetic conjuring of Manitoban spirits.

Loving the Bomb by Alison Davis
Atomic positive propaganda and historical accounts of nuclear explosions infiltrate the daily existence of a family living in a town supported by atomic bomb production.

Belt Buckle / Quonset Hut by Terry Mialkowsky
A picture and sound love poem to Saskatchewan. Standing firm against the harsh prairie wind and sun, determined and proud: the belt buckle and the quonset hut.

Static by Tyler Funk
A tortured musician trying to cope with the need to create.

Fragments by Kevin Nikkel
An aspiring stained glass apprentice struggles to end her relationship with the master artist of the studio. As she works alone in his absence on a stained glass window, she finds the means to finally provoke a conversation. The conflict forces him to bring closure to their relationship.

Sitka by Olga Zikrata
Memories are awash in a haptic eroticism of film grain.

The Snowbank: a Winnipeg Story by Cindy Murdoch
The Snowbank: a Winnipeg Story tells the tale of a young man’s struggle to make it home safe and sound after a long winter’s night of drinking at the pub.

Maintenance Man by Roger Boyer
A man is released from incarceration and seeks peace working as a maintenance man where he meets a girl who touches his soul.

Lazer Ghosts 2: Return to Laser Cove by Steven Kostanski
In this spectacular sci-fi sequel, the emotionally fractured Trance (Matthew Kennedy) must overcome the demons of his past and once again wage war on the evil spirit of Einstein (Sir Jeremy Gillespie) and his army of laser-wielding ghosts. Together with the ghost of his dead comrade (Conor Sweeney) a rogue cop (Adam Brooks) and a sultry scientist (Meredith Sweeney), Trance must return to Laser Cove and make a final stand against the technologically advanced forces of evil.

IKWÉ by Caroline Monnet
IKWÉ is an experimental film that weaves the narrative of one woman’s intimate thoughts with the teachings of her grandmother, the Moon, creating a surreal narrative experience that communicates the power of thoughts and personal reflection.

Truce by Cam Patterson
A Canadian Captain and a German General come face to face…Both are alone. One has a gun.

Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year with Andre Williams

Big Smash! Music Scene presents:
Tricia Todd & Eric Matthies’ Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year with Andre Williams
With DJ Dane “Birdapres” Goulet DJ, door prizes, art raffle + more!
Thursday, February 11 at 9:00PM
Royal Albert Arms at 48 Albert St.

Andre Williams has written and recorded a number of landmark hit songs and has worked with legends of the industry: Berry Gordy, Ike Turner and Stevie Wonder to name just a few. He’s also struggled throughout his life with addiction, poverty, homelessness and the legal system. The doc’s star says, “I’m going to show you the right way, because I’ve gone so many wrong ways”. With this statement the man known as “Mr. Rhythm” takes us along a fascinating, funny and distressing journey. Andre doesn’t always go “the right way” and this leads to tenuous relationships with friends, family and business partners, time in jail, eviction from his “old folks home” and subsequent struggle to pay for his room at the “Hotel 6″ where he lives between tours. The filmmakers follow the charismatic underground recording artist through his day-to-day existence. For Andre, this could mean rehearsing for a show in Chicago, recording with Jon Spencer in Michigan, performing for enthusiastic fans in Croatia, doing a radio interview in Serbia or marching in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. Throughout his 72 years, Andre has never stopped driving his creative visions forward, regardless of cost or consequence. The consequences turn out to be severe as Andre’s addictive history catches up with him.

Ultimately doing the right thing could be the choice between life and death for a musician who is perpetually on the cusp of new found success.

Yasmina’s Yatra

Ryan Klatt’s Yasmina’s Yatra
Thursday, February 11 at 8pm
Winnipeg Art Gallery

Ryan Klatt’s featurette is a timeless pilgrimage towards the divine in seven movements. The film follows Yasmina (Sarra Deane) as she journeys through the high altitude deserts of Central Asia. The lone inhabitants of the landscape are sages, rakshas, and fortunetellers. The film is in Hindi, Ladaki and Spitian (with English subtitles) and contains an original choral score by Andy Rudolph.

Zooey and Adam

Sean Garrity’s Zooey & Adam
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 7:00 & 9:00PM (Introduced by Sean Garrity)
Saturday, January 30 till Thursday, February 4 at 7:00PM
Winnipeg Cinematheque

One of Canada’s most imaginative independent filmmakers, Sean Garrity (Lucid, Inertia) has created a controversial new feature which will split audiences everywhere.

Zooey and Adam have been trying to have a baby for several months, only to end up pregnant after a rape. Unsure of the patronage of their child, they decide to have the baby anyway. Haunting and emotionally devastating, some festivals have refused to screen the film on the grounds that it is too contentious, yet it has sparked an incredible debate everywhere it has played.

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From The Manitoban January 26, 2010:
Local filmmaker courts controversy with Zooey and Adam

When asked if he anticipated the controversy surrounding his new film, Zooey and Adam, filmmaker Sean Garrity’s answer was fairly clear: “I had no idea!”

Zooey and Adam is the local filmmaker’s third feature, and some film festivals have actually refused to screen it, citing it as too controversial. The film, focuses on the titular couple, who have been trying to have a baby for several months. After Zooey ends up pregnant following a shocking rape, they decide to have the child, even though they are unsure of paternity.

But next to the numerous sexual assaults and murders shown daily on primetime television, what makes Garrity’s film particularly controversial?

“The sexual assaults on television are, in my opinion, for entertainment value — they’re quick and done in a highly dramatic way and I have ethical issues with that,” Garrity explains. “The rape in Zooey and Adam is filmed in such a way that there is nothing even remotely entertaining about it; it’s harsh and difficult to endure, and I feel that’s the only responsible way to portray something like that.”

Fundamentally, Garrity believes that the film is about people dealing with smaller traumas.

“My main character [Adam] has trauma that seems secondary to the trauma that his wife goes through,” he says. “So it never gets looked at or addressed, and he’s expected to just swallow it. So it festers and eventually eats at him.”

And because most of the rape’s emotional debris belongs to a third-party male character, even more debates have been prompted. Garrity explains, “The film has now spurred divisive gender political debates — the kind of controversy a lot of people don’t like — because we focus on how Adam deals with his wife being assaulted and the fact that he was forced to watch.”

Looking at the film now, a year and a half after he wrote it, Garrity realizes that the idea stems from the trauma he dealt with surrounding the difficult birth of his child (thankfully, both Garrity’s wife and daughter are fine).

“With child birth, especially when things go wrong, as the husband, you’re forced to watch — my wife was cut open with blood everywhere,” he explains. “I wanted to protect her, but my job was to sit there and watch, totally emasculated and helpless.”

Once he came up with the initial concept, Garrity didn’t necessarily plan to make it into a film.

“I came up with a basic outline and asked the Manitoba Arts Council if they’d give me money to develop it into a screenplay,” he says. “I told them I was going to get actors, shoot improvised scenes and use the videotapes to write the screenplay.”

Tom Keenan and Daria Putteart were cast as the main characters and did a fair amount of brainstorming, working under the premise that they would develop ideas for what would later become a screenplay. Since the actors knew nothing about the story beforehand, Garrity had the opportunity to manipulate character creation.

“I was designing these characters so that, given a certain situation, they would be forced to make choices that I had already written in my story,” he explains.

Because the actors didn’t know what to expect while shooting, they were constantly surprised with on-camera events — the rape scene, in particular, was challenging.

“It was a difficult scene for the actors, but because of the approach we took, we used that sense of enormity of an event like that to push them.”

Garrity shot Zooey and Adam chronologically — with some scenes filmed immediately after one another — which allowed the actors to work off the emotion of the previous day’s scenes while it was still fresh in their mind. “There were a lot of authentic, emotional performances that I look at and say ‘I could have never written that,’” he said.

When compared to his first two features, Inertia and Lucid, Garrity feels much more confident this time around in his filmmaking skills.

“For my first movie, I storyboarded every shot and wrote tons of ideas — I had about 1,000 pages of notes on my 90-page script,” he explains. “With Zooey and Adam, I had the emotional through-line in terms of the rise and fall of the story, and I trusted the collaboration with the actors, plus I didn’t think it was a movie, so the pressure was off.”

Garrity also took on a lot of responsibility this time around — writing, shooting, producing and editing the film.

“I won’t do that again!” he says. “I wanted to explore the single artist art form, but I ended up spending too much time with sound, renting gear, organizing shoots, getting locations set up, that sort of thing.”

For his next feature, which he already has in the works, Garrity plans on keeping the same idea, but hopes to change the methodology slightly by bringing on a small crew.

“I’ll gladly do all the writing, directing and editing, but the coordinating was stressful; my brain doesn’t work like that.”

And don’t be surprised if you recognize some of the music in the film — Garrity used all local musicians for the soundtrack. Expect to hear songs from the likes of The Liptonians, The Details and Flying Fox and The Hunter Gatherers.

- Sabrina Carnevale

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From Uptown Magazine January 28, 2010:
Tackling the tough stuff
Zooey & Adam, the latest feature from local filmmaker Sean Garrity, is stirring up controversy

Zooey & Adam is Winnipeg filmmaker Sean Garrity’s third feature and, at various festival screenings across North America – in particular, at the Atlantic Film Fest – it has courted controversy for a relentless opening that introduces us to a vacationing young couple just before a gang of violent offenders assault them in the woods.

But Garrity’s quick to dispel any notions that his film is just about rape.

“It’s a film about dealing with trauma, and about how that trauma affects relationships,” he says. “There’s a change that people undergo when they become a family, and I was interested in how that trauma would affect a new unit. The rape is just the trigger to the rest of the film.

“I mean, I swore I’d never shoot a scene featuring violence against women, but then I did one anyway,” he continues. “Going in, I felt that it shouldn’t be entertaining, and it must be hard to endure and difficult to sit through. It should make you uncomfortable and even a little bit sick. It’s something that’ll always be controversial – and rightfully so – but I don’t think our film is quite Irreversible (a 2002 French film by Gaspar Noé).”

Local actor Tom Keenan, who stars alongside onscreen love interest Daria Puttaert, feels the same way.

“It’s a sensitive issue. A lot of people, after they find out what the film is about, their backs go up – they’re already on edge without having seen it.”

The film’s three-page outline emerged out of an unlikely place in Garrity’s psyche, one in which he’s only come to realize after the film was completed.

“You never know what you’re writing until you’ve written it and, similarly, I didn’t understand where any of this was coming from,” he says. “Looking back, I would say that some of it dealt with personal issues surrounding the birth of my first daughter. She was born caesarian, and my wife was cut open, with blood everywhere. And you have a sense – not only as a male, as I think women have it, too – that as a partner, you have to protect them.

“If someone’s walking down the street, and a scary-looking guy comes in the other direction, you have to prepare yourself. If this goes wrong, I’m ready to protect my mate. So, I was kind of emasculated during that birth, watching my wife go through this pain, and my job was to just sit there and not do anything. And I think that event was unconsciously behind this whole film.”

Though the director’s first project – 2001’s Inertia – was largely improvised with the actors, Garrity took Zooey & Adam one step further: he took advantage of discreet digital camera equipment to allow the performers into their character’s headspace, shooting numerous scenes that took place prior to the events seen in the film.

“Tom, Daria and I started with the background, planning for the stuff that would eventually pay off,” Garrity says. “It was like trying on a pair of shoes and getting comfortable with the characters and this style of handheld shooting. I was getting them accustomed to having me in their face, and get rid of that nervousness.”

For Keenan, working this way was instrumental.

“I think Daria and I were both kind of awkward for a lot of the background stuff. Especially at first, as we had to pretend to not know each other. And then pretend that we were in love. As we were already close friends, we had to get over it.

“I think with any character, there’s a huge amount of overlap. Even in the final scene, you have to find it in yourself to make those decisions. That’s the great thing about acting: It enables you to see how close to failing you really are, and how close to awful decisions we really can be.”

Asked if he anticipates any walk-outs, Garrity expresses some concern, even though the reception to the subject matter has been different city to city.

“Who knows? Maybe,” he says. “If there are enough people. There were already several in Halifax, but I’ve found – in the festival experience – for whatever reason, the further west we went, the more laidback the people were. At Vancouver, people told me they had no problems, even after I asked.

“They were asking me why I thought there would be any problems!”

- Aaron Graham

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From Uptown Magazine January 28, 2010:
A gripping and moral tale
Winnipeg’s Sean Garrity examines violence, fear and mental deterioration

Armed with a truly minuscule budget and a one-man crew that consisted of himself, Winnipeg director Sean Garrity (Inertia, Lucid) presents a thoughtful look, with no easy moralizations, at a young couple struggling in the aftermath of a rape.

Middle-class twenty-somethings Adam (Tom Keenan) and Zooey (Daria Puttaert) are desperate to make a baby. On a romantic country drive, the two make pit-stops and park at rest areas in attempts to conceive.

But one such moonlit nature walk turns into a waking nightmare when some violent, reckless types confront the two, restraining Adam as Zooey is aggressively sexually assaulted.

A few days later, after filing a police report and an unsuccessful lineup in which the assailants aren’t identified, the devastated Zooey announces to Adam that she’s pregnant and she plans on keeping the baby.

Adam is unable to suppress his worst fears, and his mental health soon deteriorates. He fears the child is not his and he can’t escape the helplessness he’s felt since the incident.

It’s at this point that Garrity begins to focus on Adam’s issues, allowing Zooey an unspoken rationalization that she must move on with her life as best she can. If Adam’s not there for support, she’ll look elsewhere.

By favouring Adam’s perspective – showing that it is also excruciating to deal with the rape from his point of view, Garrity is not naively downplaying Zooey’s personal horrors. He’s suggesting that a study of the emotional harm visited on Adam is worthy of investigation.

As Adam, Keenan delivers a mournful yet agitated performance. He’s a sympathetic character, at least, he is until he begins to act out wrong-headed – and dangerous – plans and decisions.

While the opening 10 minutes of this film are a harrowing brush with evil, the rest of the feature is an incisive exploration of the breakdown of a relationship – and a person – due to a wrenching encounter with violence that was wholly out of the couple’s control.

- Aaron Graham

Am I Losing My Mind? Curated by Jenny Bisch

Am I Losing My Mind?
A short film program curated by Jenny Bisch
Wednesday, January 27 at 7:00PM
Winnipeg Cinematheque
Free Admission

Funny, touching and profound, Jenny Bisch’s selection of independent Canadian short films for the series, Am I Losing My Mind?, explores the way different disorders manifest themselves in life and visual art through the works of independent film and video artists.

Rather than exploring mental illness through documentary-style reportage, the films in this program represent experiences of mental disorder, in an attempt to cut through the stigma and reach toward an empathetic acknowledgement of others’ inner lives. Because independent film and video is so often used to convey internal monologue in painstaking detail, the subject of psychological disorder is frequently touched upon, if not targeted outright in so many works.

Film Selections:

Mothers of Me by Alexandra Grimanis
“‘Mothers of Me is a visually glorious, abstract study in which the filmmaker explores, partly out of fear, the women in her family, their history of insanity and their response to a repressive environment. Through the use of close-ups and fragmented composition we are compelled to participate in her examination.” – Stacey Donen, Toronto International Film Festival

Thirst by Jessica Joy Wise
“Tammy Ballaban wants to leave her mark, to be remembered, to stay safe. So she stops eating. Thirst is an unconventional and beautifully structured meditation about eating disorders, hunger and desire, our need for identity, and control. A sumptuous collage of image and sound reflects the amorphous dialectic between conscious and unconscious drives.” – Lynne Fernie

Park by Leon Johnson
Comic Randy Woods shows how stress makes us stupid.

Argentina by Doug Davidson and Tom Morris
The dispassionate calm of a solitary man is captured with disturbing clarity. The sound and images of Argentina mirror the stoic calm of this lone man.

While you were gone… the sad and embarrassing co-dependent truth by Cam Bush
Pathos and melodrama intersect in this examination of emotional self-sufficiency gone horribly awry. Will our hapless protagonist triumph in his psychological battle with a giant kazoo?

Happiness by Johnson Apetagon
Young artist, Johnson Apetagon, lays bare the crushing inertia of personal depression. Imagery of a frozen road, the view from an apartment at twilight, and an ever-evolving drawing of a tree is layered with a blues soundtrack and the loneliest sound of all, a television left on in the background. Happiness… is an honest look at a young man’s emotional despair. In a looped, recurring voice-over, Apetagon frankly admits, “I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, you know.” Apetagon, who is based in the northern community of Norway House, created this videotape through Video Pool’s Aboriginal Video Scholarship Program.

How to be a Recluse (7 easy steps) by Laurel Swenson
This video depicts the slow process of alienating people until you become a recluse and the ‘benefits’ of reclusivity. A video about wanting to be alone and being lonely — a meditation of the cult of individuality and independence in our anxious world.

This is a Song for Carol by Angie Dueck
Cut-felt animation. A small-town girl adjusts to her new life in the city. She struggles with the family patriarch, her depression, alienation and blossoming alcoholism. Along the way, she blows her student loan and has a musical awakening with the help of Much Music’s City Limits and a New Year’s party where she first hears The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa album. The long road from suburban nightmare to self-actualization begins… Part 1 of Everything Falls Apart.

Teen Rampage: Christiane F.

Teen Rampage: Juvenile Delinquents on Film
A series curated and hosted by Kier-La Janisse
Saturday, January 30th
Uli Edel’s Christiane F. (original subtitled version – not available on North American DVD!)
DJ RCA at 3:30pm
Screening at 4pm
Free Admission
Aqua Books – 274 Garry St.

Based on a true story about a bored 14-year-old girl who seeks excitement in the seamy drug scene of ’70s Berlin, Christiane F. is one of the most shocking and controversial films of our time. This visually adventurous, gripping story is enhanced by David Bowie’s soundtrack, including a live performance and such Bowie classics as Station to Station, Heroes, Boys Keep Swinging and others. Startling in its honesty, Christiane F. is a powerful, unforgettable look at youth and innocence seduced, and then imprisoned, by modern life’s compelling dark side.The shocking story of an alienated 14-year-old girl who, along with her boyfriend, becomes addicted to heroin and involved in prostitution to support their habit in the German metropolis of Berlin. Based on a true story, this gripping tale features a live performance by David Bowie, who also performs the theme song as well as many of his classic hits. An early effort from the director of Last Exit to Brooklyn and The Baader-Meinhof Complex.

Blue Pills, Big Plans: Diary of a Times Square Thief

Klaas Bense’s Diary of a Times Square Thief
Thursday, January 28th at 8:00pm
Ellice Theatre (587 Ellice)
Admission $5 / $2 DOC members + students w/ valid ID

An upper-middle-class Dutch collector pays $78 dollars on eBay for an old scrapbook, which turns out to be the diary of a man who moved to New York City in the 1980s with hopes of ‘making it’ but who slid down into the depths of Times Square life, each day documenting his decline in remarkably poetic, self-reflective text. The collector becomes transfixed, and decides to look for the author of the diary.

He leaves for New York, armed only the first names of the author and other secondary characters in the downtown melodrama. A place of employment is listed as the notorious Times Square Hotel. In those days, prompted by a housing crisis left over from the 70s, it was welfare central.

Guided by the words of the self-defeating bowery bard (“Concrete and phlegm. I was attracted to it all immediately.”), our amateur sleuth begins his journey, compelled to uncover the secrets of this anonymous hotel desk receptionist. Like the author before him, his journey is full of meetings with strange passengers, each one of them sad and sage-like in equal measure. He is obsessed with two questions: What is your greatest vice? What is your greatest regret? But all along it’s he who seems eager to confess something.

Times Square is one of the most famous (and most misunderstood) urban neighbourhoods in the world. It is immortalized in countless films and books that alternately romanticize and lament the area’s evolution, decline and corporatization, and what the ‘heyday’ is of Times Square depends on who you ask. For people of my generation, who associate Times Square with free cinema, the late 60s through the late 70s stand as the source of Times Square’s unique cultural imprint on the world.

While cinematically represented a hundredfold, those films that function as a bird’s eye view of Times Square nightlife – Lech Kowalski’s Gringo: The Story of a Junkie (in which the actors were actually paid in junk for appearing candidly in the film), Charlie Ahearn’s Doin’ Time in Times Square (footage from which is utilized in Diary…), and of course Richard Sandler’s Gods of Time Square (which played at Fantasia in 2004) – offer more than the freakshow myth propagated by those films that cater primarily to mainstream audiences. Violence and vice may be everywhere, but so are adopted family units, social codes, memories, pathos…and people. Says one interviewee: “When I was younger I used to view people as more disposable than I’ve come to realize they are.”

But Times Square has always been characterized as the last haven for ‘disposable’ people. And the myths build; they loom large over the real lives of real people who just happen to live in a shitty neighbourhood. Why are we so curious about the lives of petty thieves, junkies, prostitutes, those we perceive to be losers at life? Like the Dutch detective, we watch films, read books and day-trip. It’s nothing new; in the post-WWII era, pulp novels about drug-addicted jazz musicians proliferated (jazz in that time was equated exclusively with urbanity and deviancy), and of course these novels had their ‘educational’ counterparts – case studies and recorded first-person accounts of life on the street, life on the needle – compiled by psychologists, social workers and the clergy, that were hungrily gobbled up by upper-middle class readers.

Of course, this is a larger story than some moderately tweaked curiosity into fringe lifestyles. But we knew this when we set out on the journey – we knew that by going there, we would learn something about ourselves, and that’s what we really wanted all along.

- Kier-La Janisse

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From Uptown Magazine January 28, 2010:
In search of lost sleaze
Documentary tries to track down a survivor of old Times Square

Before Mayor Rudy Giuliani Disney-fied New York City’s Times Square in the early 1990s, the area was ascribed a legendarily decrepit and yet dangerously appealing cult status.

Even people who never stepped onto the wet pavement outside the peep booths and foul grindhouses knew of the area’s seedy reputation through books such as Josh Alan Friedman’s Tales of Times Square, movies such as Cruising and via a frenetic soundtrack created by New York-bred punk acts such as The Ramones.

Just ask Klaas Bense, a Dutch filmmaker who used the purchase of a $78 diary on eBay to seek out the mythological place inextricably linked to a moment in time that no longer exists.

As one interviewee says in the hour-long doc, you’re not a true New Yorker unless you can remember which archetypal buildings were torn down to make room for the newly sanitized, family-friendly version of NYC.

The diary itself is a Polaroid-embedded composition book, full of reflective, often pessimistic entries detailing the exploits and eventual thievery of ‘John,’ an aspiring writer who moved from the provincial United States to this universal artist mecca in the mid-1980s.

Bense was fascinated with the would-be author’s dismal existence, and became determined to track him down by uncovering the surviving fringe-dwellers who are name-checked in John’s chicken-scratches.

In what would make a great double-bill with Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks – a fevered and imaginative chronicle of the equally legendary NYC hotel – Bense gently prods the previous residents of a squalid Times Square flophouse, including an Italian-American crime-scene photographer and a former strip-show worker-turned- sex lecturer.

Despite some misgivings about whether John is still alive, Bense does track down the man whose quick-witted, off-the-cuff ramblings fascinated him for so long.

Just what John is up to should be kept a surprise, as it’s the very reason Times Square Thief compels for so much of its running time.

— Aaron Graham

Dave Barber T-Shirt

These limited edition Dave Barber T-shirts are part of a fund-raising effort at the Winnipeg Cinémathèque. For those of you unfamiliar with Dave Barber he is basically the Winnipeg Henri Langlois! One of the best Canadian programmers, a lover/supporter of independent cinema (both made in Winnipeg and those made nationwide) and a good friend. Dave has been programming for the Winnipeg Cinémathèque since 1982 and could easily write the official history of the Winnipeg Film Group as well as a Winnipeg Babylon. He has been a seminal figure in the Winnipeg film scene and he has truly made a difference for both Winnipeg filmmakers and Winnipeg audiences.

The shirts are $25 + shipping (parcel post). For an extra $5 Dave will sign the shirt! All proceeds from this sale will go to helping support Cinémathèque, Winnipeg’s only Artist-Run Cinema.

Place your orders here or send your size to jacquelyn (at) winnipegfilmgroup (dot) com.

From Dusty with Love: Dusty Springfield screening with live performance by Ingrid Gatin

From Dusty with Love
Exclusive Dusty Springfield screening
with live pre-screening performance by Ingrid Gatin
Friday, January 22 at 6:30
Into the Music
245 McDermot
Free Admission

Dusty Springfield, who was born 70 years ago this year, and died 10 years ago, had a volatile time on this earth. Her personal life was fraught with difficulty. She fought her manic depression with booze and drugs and had to be hospitalized on several occasions. Her love life was confused and unhappy – she had affairs with men and women alike, but preferred the company of her beloved cats. Professionally, her career had its ups and downs. She quit show business for several years because she couldn’t find her passion for performing anymore. When she made her comeback, a lot of her audience didn’t come back to her. It sounds like the sad story of so many great artists. But it wasn’t all in vain. She was able to communicate a level of emotion in her music that few others could even approach. When this blond Irishwoman sang soul music, she sang it like a woman whose heart had been ripped out, when she sang about love she made you see it the way she did, a beautiful dream forever disappearing over the horizon. This show brings you an assortment of music clips featuring Dusty Springfield at her best – and it goes beyond the hits to show her great versatility and power.