Queer City Cinema screening, 2012

On June 7, the 9th Queer City Cinema festival opened in Regina. Run every two years, this festival was created by curator Gary Varro and is named after this city's nickname, "the Queen City". This year's events take place at Neutral Ground, an artist-run centre art gallery in the heart of downtown. These are some of my observations on the dozen videos shown in the first screening on  opening night.

Tashina by Caroline Monnet contained many strong visuals. She juxtaposed the rigid domineering man-made structures such as escalators, bridges, rows of book shelves, and hallways filled with pipes against less dominant background scenery; water and snow.  The story, told in voice over, discusses home as a place of sanity, and the journey away from it is punctuated by foreboding music.  Education is not an end but a means to bring an end to the poverty stricken reserve life. A phone call to her grandfather, ending in a disconnect, is a perfect metaphor for the frustration and anxiety of her urban transition.

Kyisha Williams video Red Lips mixes straight forward interviews with a number of women, each audibly identifying themselves as black and queer (along with other individual specifics) with text and extreme close ups of red lips which act as the narrator. Stories revolve around unfair incarceration of black or aboriginal women and declarations of the oppressive nature of the prison institution. The close up lips simultaneously fragment/dehumanize the body while making the voice universal, individual, and specific.

"You're just not what we were looking for" is a repeated sentiment in How to Stop a Revolution by Kenji Tokawa. Again, fragmentation seemed a dominant motif as bits of story are either told in voice over or demonstrated in re-enactments.  With each story interrupted and left incomplete, the  overall sense of her universe is one of animosity or indifference. When she finally declares that "The walls are crumbling in" we share the feeling of being an outsider, of the world simply not being big enough to fit everyone's individuality into.

The Dance by Bandit Queen was the only example in this screening of what was once a dominant trope at queer festivals, the graphic and often violent depiction of sex. These re-enactments of Afghan prison camps are chilling, not so much from their realism but for the symbolic absence of identity of the aggressors. Even the camera sits alone on a chair, having no witness to hold their eye to it.  

Filmmaker and artist Allyson Mitchell is the subject of Lesley Loksi Chan and Dilia Narduzzi's video Making Ladies. While this is basically a traditional documentary format program (interview with b-roll of the artwork being discussed), the subject matter was highly engaging, thought provoking, and humorous. Mitchell is passionate and articulate as she discusses her views on the need for her sensual nine foot high lesbian sasquatches to attract and confront the viewer, her championing of the honor of (feminine) craft in a world which prioritizes (masculine) Art. and her interest in the emotions imbued into hand-made objects which she reuses in her work.

Candy Fox, a local film student, was in attendance with her first festival entry, Being Two Spirited. It features interviews with a number of people discussing their childhoods and coming to discover their strengths of being two spirited. It is a call to all of them to take on the obligations this brings, to be proud, to be leaders. Fox answered questions about her video, describing it as being motivated by her desire to answer questions she posed to herself about her culture, her identity, and her past. Discussion after the screening was enthusiastic, focussing primarily on the many connotations of being "two spirited".

Seeking Single White Male by Vivek Shraya is a visually interesting study of the self identity as oversized text questions and criticizes the various photos of the filmmaker as changing hair, lighting, and makeup alters who he seems to be to an outsider's eyes. This is certainly a question for everyone today as our image to the outside world shrinks to a one inch frame on your social media page.

Farrah Khan uses pixelation to create a frenetic and comical journey in her video Cab Ride. The mixture of approaches, animation, live action (feet washing) and voice over text evokes the early works of Ann Marie Fleming as Khan weaves a tale about being questioned by a traditional Pakistani driver about her views on arranged marriage (to which she relies that she" believes in love").  The most touching moment comes at the end when she is  finally free of the cab driver's interrogation with her sexuality and true opinions remaining safely guarded.  The image of the  animated moss and paper cab is obliterated by hands filled with turmeric which stain the tabletop and leaving a stronger signifier of her heritage than the one she was trying to erase. Only then does she reveal to us the true trouble in her heart; "I know being a lesbian is not a sin. I'm just a Muslim daughter who wishes her father would call".

Mary by Kent Monkman is a meticulously created film which features an evocatively dressed First Nations man in a sexy red dress and high heels. As he approaches and removes the shoe and sock from a wealthy white man, text panels question a forgotten promise. When finally the mascara tears run onto the man's foot, a final didactic spells out the metaphor, of the miscommunication of the treaties and the difficulties of the Indian Act. With such precision of lighting and design, the margin between love and fear seemed microscopic.  

Don't Ask Don't Tell GAY GAY GAY by Dayna McLeod is one of those videos where the idea and description (all the gay references in an episode of Boston Legal are extracted and cut together rapidly) is inadequate to express the savage humour, energy, and ridiculousness of this very short work.

Tina Takemoto's video Looking for Jiro  begins as a story about a man locked up during the internment of Japanese people in America in the 1940s but slowly creeps into being a performance. The white clad man, superimposed atop images of these camps or by early cinema images of body builders, is simply sweeping at first but eventually he begins to sculpt muscular arms for himself. In the end, the camp is not the prison, it is his desires and unachievable goals which keep him oppressed.

Last Kiss by Charles Lum is a study of graffiti on a memorial  for Oscar Wilde. As a bearded  man kisses the marble, we are told that the object will be covered with glass and will, therefore, be untouchable in the future.  Flashes of pop culture, including Wonder Woman, flash past at the midpoint, suggesting the far reaching impact of Wilde on who we all are today. History will now be guarded, safe and dead.

Fragile Harvest; a screening of films by Phil Hoffman and participants of the Film Farm (Independent Imaging Retreat)

         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.

Steamboat Willie and Simon of the Desert

Today at the monthly "Sofa Cinema" screening at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF) I curated the two films "Steamboat Willie" and "Simon of the Desert". I introduced with the idea that surrealism comes out of the difficulty we face when an artist presents contradictory ideas or colliding images. These films, one representing innocence and conformity of family-valued commercial cinema and the other representing depravity and radicalism of independent cinema are certainly in conflict and support this notion. However, there are no absolutes and in my essay below I point out a number of similarities between the two filmmakers and the approaches to these specific works.

Art in and out of Exile: facing the music.

CSIF Classic Film Series, June 8, 2010, curated by Gerald Saul

Steamboat Willie: Director Ub Iwerks, 1928, 8 minutes

Simon of the Desert: Director Luis Buñuel, 1965, 45 minutes

Two filmmakers, each sent into exile from their homes, one crushed from the experience and the other drawing renewed strength from it. In their challenge of conventions, each of these filmmakers sought to delve into the subconscious of the viewer, to draw upon hopes, dreams, fears, and regrets. The two films I have chosen will entertain and surprise you with their eccentricities and unpredictable storylines. Their characters, one sooner, one later, inevitably must face the music.

While we, as members of the general public, have a tendency to reward predicable entertainment with our ticket money, it is the groundbreaking events which remain in our cultural memories for decades. The first film tonight represents just such an event. The introduction of sound to the animation was just one of its important features. The development of Mickey Mouse into a fresh, aggressive, and anti-establishment character is less remembered but was of equal importance at the time. Head animator, brilliant technical innovator, and once significant shareholder of the Disney Studio, Ub Iwerks is the talent behind this short. Ub worked closely with Walt and single-handily drew every panel for the first Mickey cartoon, Plane Crazy, in secret while the company was still producing “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” for Universal Studios. While I rarely suggest that Walt Disney was an underdog in any business affairs, this is the exception. Mickey Mouse was constructed from the ashes of Disney’s fallen company and in its creation he pushed the limits of image, sound, and idea. Within five years, this character had become the emblem for his company which by then had a clear agenda to target children as their principle audience. In 1932 all of the edges were smoothed away with no more swinging cats, no more flatulents, and no more peaking under Minnie’s skirt. However, in 1928, Mickey Mouse was full of surprises and followed no predictable story structure. His past was suppressed so that Mickey would never again change. Steamboat Willie is a film that is so iconic that we think we know it but we really don’t. Its real nature has been buried under a history of iconography to ensure that Mickey (and his audience?) would remain modest, timid, and obedient.

Walt Disney is only open minded and forgiving when compared to Franco. Obsessed with loyalty, Disney treated employees who showed disrespect or who dared to take a job with another animation company ruthlessly, firing them and/or never re-hired them under any circumstances. After Ub Iwerks was given his own studio with ultimate control and authorship during the 1930s (with a contract with MGM), a major rift was driven between these two animation pioneers. However, for once, sentimentality won out and in the late 1930s Walt Disney hired back his old collaborator. Ub would never have creative control of a film again but headed up the Disney effects department to advance blue screen technologies and many other techniques. After three more decades working for the Disney Corporation, he died in 1971.

On the other hand, the brilliantly baffling Luis Buñuel , whom is known to members of the CSIF as the co-director of “Un Chien Andalou”, committed his career to challenging conventions and living un-safely. Spanish-born, Buñuel took the world stage as part of the Paris-based Surrealist movement. His work attacked all types of orthodoxy, not the least of which was the Catholic church. This led to Buñuel’s exile from his home country under the dictatorial Franco government. However, as more and more media attention was drawn to Buñuel, Franco decided to invite him back in 1961 to direct “Viridiana”. Buñuel left the country immediately after its completion with a master copy under his arm. Franco, outraged, attempted to destroy all copies of the film and promptly exiled Buñuel again. He returned to Mexico in 1961 where he continued to direct feature films including “Simon of the Desert”.

The presence of Hollywood was vast but surprisingly un- influential on Buñuel. After spending four years rewriting and dubbing foreign films for American release, Buñuel grew increasingly disappointed in the Hollywood system. He once presented the top screenwriters of the day with a chart which outlined the eight plots that every film they made fell into. Their attempts to debunk the patterns with the revealing of their new “surprising” films failed. The “surprise”, as they saw it, was simply an act of unusual casting, not unusual storytelling. For example, audience were surprised that Janet Leigh was killed so early in “Psycho”, not because of turn of events but because she was a starlet. So embedded were Hollywood studios in this star system that they had a difficult time recognising the rut they are in. Today there are even subroutines within screenwriting programs which tell you if you are writing your script correctly.

In his autobiography, Buñuel admits that he accepted contracts on a first come first serve basis which didn’t always situate his career in the most optimal ways but he felt that his honest approach to things was of greater value that maximizing personal gain. Buñuel continued to create notorious films in Mexico and France, often expressing his contempt for the Catholic Church, until his death in Mexico in 1983.

"Zip" by Tyler Banadyga

This weekend at the RPL Theatre, Tyler Banadyga's feature film "Zip" is playing to its first commercial audience. I previewed the film a couple of years ago and this to say in my regular blog: Tyler certainly takes the notion of "rough around the edges" to its extreme with this loosely knit super-8 drama. The cast consists almost entirely of Tyler's friend and collaborator Jason Hipfner (and two short cameos including one by Tyler himself) as the film follows Jason as the title character on a road trip without destination around Saskatchewan while reading passages from novels. The camera work is usually shaky, giving the film a nervous and uncertain tone. Focus, when it occurs, seems unintentional. In that, I refer to both the working of the lens as well as the clarity of the character's motivation and the connections between the voice-over and the image on screen. The character/audience connection is further jeopardized by the consciously dispassionate readings of the texts. We are presented with a character that, even after two hours (less three minutes) of solo screen time, we do not know. It is a highly challenging film but one that offers some interesting rewards for the work a viewer is asked to put into it. A sequence near the beginning of a back-hoe tearing down a house was fascinating; I always see something alive in these machines as they destroy as well as caress the wood and brick. An image of the wasp trapped in a jar near the end of the film, a shortened version of the film Tyler made for last year's One Take Super-8 Event, is a poignant metaphor, perhaps of how we blind ourselves of the traps we are in and of the pointlessness of our lives in favour of simply continuing to move forward.