Since
1994, Ontario filmmaker Phil Hoffman has been hosting filmmaker retreats at his
farm near the town of Mount Forest where each year a dozen or so artists and
filmmakers converge to drink in the cool well water, share communal meals, and
run a few hundred feet through their cameras. Films created during this week
tend towards the highly personal, as these participants throw off their urban
armor and run wildly down a gravel road of self discovery. I knew of the these films before I knew of
the Independent Imaging Retreat itself. In my viewing of hundreds of
experimental films during my MFA research, I began to see patterns and themes
arise. I was very excited about these fresh personal stories and their
hand-made approach, but the source of influence was not yet clear. All I knew was
that a new aesthetic was taking shape and having a significant impact on the
national avant garde movement.
One may easily suggest that there is
something about going to a farm, away from the noise of the city, away from the
continuous interaction with computers and phones and schedules, that brings out
stories in people. Perhaps the open air is a vacuum, drawing your words and
thoughts from us, forcing us to share them with the world. Perhaps this is
true, at least for big city dwellers, but from someone who has spent sufficient
hours standing amid blowing fields of grain, wandering past decrepit wooden
farm structures, and climbing over inconveniently placed barbed wire fences, my
intuition makes me doubt this analogy.
I would suggest that it is not solely
Phil Hoffman’s farm which inspires
the nature of work created there, but it is Phil himself who is the key. I attended
the “imaging retreat” (or “film farm” as we all called it) in 2002. Margaret
and William (age 10 months) came with me as my perpetual muses, but home is
always left behind when one reaches the Hoffman farm. It is certainly quiet and
peaceful, but that can be said for any of a million other hunks of land in this
country. More significantly, it is welcoming. This is almost entirely to the
credit of Phil and his hand-picked team of workshop leaders, like life coaches
who can load Bolexes. Each participant is treated as an invited guest, never
like a paying consumer. In turn, every one of them seems inclined to
reciprocate by embracing all of the hosts and attending filmmakers with warmth
and respect.
Central to the film farm is the barn
which houses darkrooms to develop film, open spaces to hang film to dry,
screening areas, and relaxation spots to talk, think, or read. No modern
complex could be as versatile or accommodating. The so-called enemies of filmmaking; dust, wind, light
leaks, and noise, are all acceptable commodities in this environment. To fight
the flaws is to fight again nature itself. To accept nature as an external
force helps to open the door to express your inner nature (while being a vegan
and utilizing meditation crystals remains strictly optional).
After a week of getting your hands
dirty, you emerge with the raw materials of a film. This is more than just
images on emulsion, it is ideas and inspirations. The direct process of
creating, contemplating, exhibiting, and critiquing, is crucial to the film
retreat. You find yourself able to respond to comments, rework the project
multiple times, and shape it into something you can truly be proud of.
The films created at the film farm deny
the necessity of the film industry infrastructure by allowing a single
filmmaker to personally control a maximum number of technical processes. Since
the early nineties when the retreats began, the 16mm form has been in rapid
decline. Laboratories have been reducing the number of services available; optical
sound tracks, reversal processing, work printing, negative cutting, and answer
printing are all considered too specialized for most labs to even consider
offering anymore. Making at least some of these techniques part of the
filmmaker's tool belt not only ensures some continuation of the art form, it
also empowers those filmmakers, making them more confident to continue working
with this, or any other media form. But there remains a precarious balance for pure
film artists. As much as they desire to separate themselves from industry, they
remain tethered to it through certain manufactured items. Most notably, Kodak
has become the only supplier on this continent for black and white film stock.
They continuously change and remove stocks from their inventory as they become
less profitable to market. When this supply-line is severed, so too will the
ability for filmmakers to practice this art. Furthermore, it has been over five
years since the last 16mm projector came off the assembly line, and in the past
year, the very last film cameras have been built with none of the key companies
intending to return to that market. The art of celluloid filmmaking survives at
the whim of tinkerers who may or may not be able to keep the existing equipment
functioning.
Creating under this shadow, it is no
wonder that the filmmakers become philosophical and introspective when using
it. With every roll shot, one finds him or herself asking "is this the
last time I do this?". The comparison between "film-farm"
filmmakers and "farm-farm" farmers begs to be made. Not only is
sustainability an issue, but the process also has parallels. Images need to be
carefully cultivated, gathered, processed, and delivered to the hungry
consumer. The final product never reflects how much personal investment was put
into it; the time and sweat and pain. Farmers and filmmakers, each working in
their fields, isolated, driven by single-minded passion certainly must live in
hope that what they are doing is good and necessary and that recognition will
eventually come. The belief that the outcome has value must outweigh the futility
that comes with being aware of the inevitable demise of this way of working.
The films I selected for this
screening are some of the more recent works to emerge from the farm, most of
which are by filmmakers I was previously unfamiliar. They each feel like they
are walking a delicate line, the elements and the content both fragile, as the
filmmaker struggles with mortality on some level. The cycle of the seasons is
always apparent, illuminating both the nature of film as art as well as life
itself. Within each, either spoke or unspoken, you can sense the Hoffman's
subtle hand urging the filmmaker to be brave, to reach deep within themselves,
to work beyond the pain and harvest moments of truth.
Goodbye - 3.5 min., by Daniel McIntyre (2011)
McIntyre
has created a montage of images, some positive and others negative, which waft
over us like the a perfume, surrounding you without touching you. The blending
between positive and negative, from people to animals, from water to air, all
act to evoke a semi-waking, dreamlike state; the pleasure of the inexplicable.
The title seems to suggest an ending or departure as perhaps the viewer is led
into a dream from which there is no waking.
Lot 22, Concession 5 – 4 min., by Penny McCann (2009)
As
we listen to an old man’s voice talking about growing up on a farm, we see a
crack in time and watch the story like an echo, never quite as distinct as we'd
hoped. The farm and the tales are both fragmented, crackling in and out of
view, incomplete. Imagination fills in details but in the end we realize that
each of us has experienced a different story, as fleeting as the wind.
Towards Everyday Lightning – silent, 9 min., by James Gillespie
(2003)
The
world within this film is like lightning, beautiful but fleeting, existing for
longer in your eye and your mind than it does in reality. Gillespie uses
extensive solarization (shifts from positive to negative, randomly created
through light being introduced in the middle of film development) to suggest a
life as a series of memories ravaged by a storm. In silence, the storm creates
a tumultuous atmosphere in ironic contrast to the lethargic faceless farm
labourer featured on screen.
Anamnesis – 3 min., by Scott Miller Berry (2009)
The
camera seem agitated as it struggles to discover meaning below the layers of
paper, some being wasp nests, others being photographs collaged onto a human
face. Colour and moments of clarity don't satisfy us as the images, and the
history held within them, seems too shrouded in secrecy to ever decode. Amid
all the images, the man is blinded by history and paralyzed into inaction.
Once – 5 min., by Barbara Sternberg (2007)
"Once"
conjures up a sensation of seeing the world for the first time, awakening in a
forest and knowing only the flashes of light, trees like a veil against the
sky. Sternberg posits that life is brief but important, that every moment of it
is of value if we believe it to be. She begs us to open our eyes and to really
see.
Destroying Angel -
32 min., by Phil Hoffman and Wayne Salazar (1998)
"Destroying
Angle" is a collaboration between Hoffman and Salazar and is not, strictly
speaking, made at the film farm. It represents the methods and approaches that
Hoffman takes in creating a film and the legacy he has established. The
structure is loose, moving fluidly between black and white and colour, sync
sound and voice over, abstract and representation, metaphor and informational
and most importantly between the filmmaker as maker and as subject. It is a
film about dualities. There are two primary stories, that of Salazar's
struggles with AIDS and his coming to terms with his father, and the story of
Hoffman's wife Marion McMahon and her tragic death from cancer in 1996. The
film was shot over an extended period of time, partially at the farm, partially
off of it. It is about memory, how photographic images evoke feelings but often
tell a different story. When Salazar's photos of his father and his dog
contradict his memory of them, we realize that we cannot trust the plastic
arts, that all of what we are watching is subjective. For every right there is
a wrong, for every failure there is a success and this is not represented in
either memory nor in photography.
This
film is the metaphoric harvesting of Phil Hoffman, turning inspiration into
seeds, growing them into courage for the filmmakers he touches. The film poses
many questions about the nature of memory. Should we share our stories,
releasing them into the world, or hold them close to our hearts? What will do
more good, what will do more harm? In a
world overshadowed by memory, how can we let go?
8:00 pm, Friday November 25, 2011
Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-operative
1822 Scarth Street, Regina, SK
Featuring
a selection of short lyrical films
created
during the legendary Independent Imaging Retreats
hosted
by Ontario filmmaker Phil Hoffman over the past twenty years.
