On the making of GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts: All in all, making this film has been a return to my roots as a filmmaker - pursuing an idea of personal passion, living it by the skin of your teeth, figuring out the financing and maintaining the persistence of vision you need to realise the dream.  I've enjoyed returning to the documentary form of story telling after more than a decade away from it - with all its unexpected developments, frustrations and delights.

On the making of GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts: Finance remained a pressing issue but ultimately, the full budget was raised from a small group of private investors in my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. And there were others who became enthused with my vision for this film, enabling it to happen.  Oasis Post has hosted the editing of three of my movies. They devised a post-production path that allowed the film to be pulled together efficiently with the best technology, despite being shot on multiple formats across three continents over two years. My son Scott Heysen, who had first turned me on to Glass some 23 years earlier, now applied his invaluable creative computer genius to the film.

On the making of GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts: As the material accumulated - more than 120 hours of it - the pressing question for me became "How on earth am I going to edit this thing?" Enter Steve Jess - a fine editor I had worked with in New York on various commercials. Steve offered to give up his day-job at post-production company Whitehouse for seven months (and they generously agreed) and applied his extraordinary energy to this project.  Using cineSync software created in Adelaide by Rising Sun, we would lock our computers together and screen sessions of cuts across the globe - usually very early in my morning, which was late in the day for Steve.  We also had face to face editing sessions when I was in New York, and then he came to Adelaide for a month of fine cutting. Steve proved to be a marvellous collaborator.

The LA Times has a nice feature up on Argento's Mother of Tears in their special section, The Envelope: The Awards Insider.

The article looks at Argento's work habits, his return to films about witches and his relationship with daughter Asia Argento.

While the article makes no mention of possible kudos, the fact that it's mentioned in The Envelope site itself bodes well for Argento's hopes for recognition with this film.

Who knows?  After Borat's success last year, maybe Midnight Madness will become the new launch pad for the major awards season.  Hey... we can dream, can't we?

[Picture: Image courtesy of thelatimes.com]

The festival's only a day away and one of the events people are starting to buzz about is the Doc Talk between Michel Brault and Denys Arcand taking place on Sept. 13 at the ROM.  Do I even need to say that tickets are on sale now?

This is another great shot from Les Ordes.

Peter Goddard wrote a very interesting article on Brault in this morning's Toronto Star. 

You can check it out here:

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/FilmFest/article/250452

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Goddard also wrote a great article on Brault (http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/FilmFest/article/250452) this morning.  We're only a day away folks!

 

 

Islam has the fundamental concept of the greater "Jihad", an "inner struggle" - one often ignored in the narrow interpretation of the word as "holy war", beamed into your home daily-courtesy the friendly folk at Fox and friends.

As the gay and Muslim director/producer of a A Jihad for Love I am faced with the choice that all Muslims must make today. Are we going to allow our own communities' volatile bigots (definitely a minority) define our religion for us? Or are we going to really embrace the Islam that our Prophet had revealed to him a little more than fourteen centuries ago? That was an Islam that held a promise of women's rights which had not been seen before; an Islam that empowered sexuality and took it out of the bounds of procreation; an Islam that was able to unite first a few warring tribes in the desert and then entire nations and civilizations.

All Muslims also face the profound choice of either allowing themselves to become apologists for their faith (easy enough to do in the West) or speak with conviction about their very own Islam's-with all of their diversity and centuries of independent reasoning (Ijtihad). I know the Islam I have chosen, which is pretty much the same Islam the subjects of A Jihad for Love bring to Canada this autumn.

As a Muslim filmmaker, mine is the "Jihad" of the camera. I humbly suggest that filmmakers like myself follow in the footsteps of scholars through centuries who had chosen "the Jihad of the pen". In making this film it has been profound to realize that I am called upon to be a defender of my faith. I can think of no place better than Toronto to begin a discussion that is as vital to continuing discussions and debate within Islam, as the many others that surround us today.

It's time that we reclaimed Jihad and it's about time that all those voices within Islam that have been silenced for too long - and believe me there are many- speak out. I certainly have the humility to realize I am not the only to start speaking out loud and out proud. As gays and lesbians we are now ready to lay equal claim to our profoundly held faith and no one can stop us.

Let's make this Jihad digital and take it into the twenty first century with the tools that our ancestors did not have. You all are invited to join us to witness for what is a hopeful beginning on September 9th, 11th and 15th.

You will meet some of the subjects of the film. I am told the 'buzz' around the film is getting louder and indeed this is excellent news.

Our website and my own blog with all of the information for the screenings
has now gone live at www.ajihadforlove.com

In 1997, while I was editing ?Snow Falling On Cedars? I used a track of Philip?s music as ?temp? (what filmmaker hasn?t?) for a powerful sequence we were working on.  I made contact with his publishing company Dunvagen to enquire about licensing the track, and formed a connection with his manager Jim Keller.  It was Jim who encouraged the start of a relationship between Philip and myself, and over the next few years I enjoyed a number of his performances from Los Angeles to Sydney, taking both my sons to see Philip and his Ensemble play live to screenings of movies.

On the making of My Kid Could Paint That:
Next week I'll be in Toronto to present, My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary about Marla Olmstead, an internationally acclaimed four-year-old painter. Marla's abstract paintings sold for as much as $25,000 a piece, but when her father was accused of secretly authoring the paintings, their value plummeted overnight.

"Isn't it the same painting whether a four-year-old or a 40-year-old made
it?"

It's an interesting question. If a collector spends thousands of dollars on, say, the typewriter with which Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road, and it turns out later that this typewriter was never used by Kerouac, we would all agree that the collector has been conned -- even if the typewriter is precisely the same model Kerouac used. We understand that there isn't something inherently valuable in the object of the typewriter itself, but in the story of the typewriter. This seems intuitive to us -- but not so in the case of painting. With paintings, the general public expects the story to be contained on the canvas, and nowhere else.

This is also, perhaps, one of the reasons we're uncomfortable with non-representational painting -- it doesn't seem to tell a story. Picture frames look like windows, and it makes sense to peer through a window and see a landscape, or a figure. Why not just make a mountain look like a mountain, and a person look like a person? What story could a painting possibly be telling when inside the frame is only splattered paint?

I myself never really understood what was all the fuss about painters like Jackson Pollock. So when I first heard that a four-year-old's paintings were being compared to his, it sounded to me like strong evidence that the emperor wears no clothes. If a four-year-old can do it, can it truly be such an earth shattering achievement? As New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman says in My Kid Could Paint That, "It's the ultimate joke: a chimp could do it, an elephant could do it. People just think you have to be crazy to pay that amount for what looks like something anybody could do." As our cameras rolled, media frenzy and feverish collectors drove Marla's prices from $250 dollars to $25,000 dollars. It seemed to me I was filming what was truly behind the perceived value of Jackson Pollock's paintings.

But a funny thing happened while I was trying to make a documentary skeptical of abstract art.

I was never able to film satisfactory footage of Marla Olmstead painting. When I wasn't around, she completed remarkable canvases larger than herself, with sweeping paint splashes and elaborate flourishes. But every time I tried to film her painting, Marla was distracted or unwilling.

At first, it made sense to me that a four-year-old wouldn't slip into a creative reverie with a group of strange adults gathered around her. Was my documentary crew interrupting the very process it was supposed to be capturing? Or was something more sinister going on? And how should I depict the Olmstead family if I didn't know for sure whether Marla did the paintings? I had 100 hours of tape I needed to cull down into a 90-minute film. The inclusion of a possibly cagey facial expression, the exclusion of a peculiar off camera aside, these cuts would point my audience toward conclusions, and these conclusions would have real world consequences for the Olmsteads. What should guide my editorial decision making process? And further, after six months of visits with this little girl and her family, was I really evaluating these questions with sober journalistic detachment, or was my perspective colored by my feelings of friendship -- or, for that matter, my desire to make a dramatic movie?

The recent and unprecedented popularity of non-fiction films has led many to call this a "golden age" for documentaries. The cinema-going public has discovered that a theatrical documentary shares what we like and expect from scripted films; a three act dramatic arc and larger than life characters -- with the extra voyeuristic enjoyment of "real life." The documentary screen appears to us a lot like the picture frame must have seemed to audiences of representational paintings one hundred years ago: a window into another reality.

But is the screen really a window, and are the things it seems to show us the real world, or constructions? The more I struggled with my own "canvas," the more truthful it felt to draw attention, at least in a small way, to the act of depicting itself. To pretend My Kid Could Paint That is simply a window into the life of a family would be like pretending that a painted mountain was a mountain, and a painted figure a person.

Maybe Jackson Pollock was on to something after all.

While perusing the TIFF07 website, perhaps you stumbled into this blog. It's a good thing you did cuz you're in for some interesting insights and relevations from a few short film's makers. Most of these folks will be in town for the festival, anxious to introduce their films to a large audience for the first time. In the meantime, here's a brief introduction to the filmmaker's themselves. And if your question doesn't get answered here (like "what's their favourite: clouds or skies?"), don't be afraid to ask that question following our scheduled screenings begining Friday, September 7 at 8PM with Short Cuts 1.


SARAH GALEA-DAVIS, Director, Can You Wave Bye Bye?

1. Where do you come from?
I have Maltese blood coursing through my veins.

2. What influenced your film?
My film is based on a short story written by Elyse Gasco.

3. Why filmmaking?
I wasn't smart enough for nuclear physics.

4. Who is your creative hero?
The children of the future.

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
Sleeping my way to the top.


CAM CHRISTIANSEN, Director,
I Have Seen The Future

1. Where do you come from?  
Calgary,  Alberta,  Canada

2. What influenced your film? 
The desire to have fun was the main influence for me. It was made like this:  "you are an AWESOME musician! ...  lets DO something!"

3. Why filmmaking? 
Well its more animation than straight on filmmaking but mainly animation allows me to dive deep into the far reaches of my creative spirit and basically play around till something pops out and I say "cool !!". Then I gain consciousness and realize 3 months have gone by... (its the most fun you can have without substance abuse).

4. Who is your creative hero? 
Kris Demeanor,  ABBA

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF? 
I look forward to seeing films BEFORE everyone else so we can say casually at dinner parties that we "saw that already."  Also we look forward to meeting people and hanging out with other filmmakers and being Star Struck!  We promise to try and be cool about seeing celebrities but not sure it will work out so well.


TREVOR CAWOOD, Director, Terminus

1. Where do you come from?
I was born in Regina Saskatchewan. Have lived in Calgary, as well as San Francisco. Currently, I call Vancouver home.

2. What influenced your film?
From an artistic standpoint: I grew up watching a lot of 1970's Canadian media. As a result, I developed an interest in brutalist design and architecture. That influence prevails throughout the film.
From a conceptual standpoint: I'm fascinated by how the mind adapts and evolves through stress. Both my need for stress, and my need to get rid of stress have played a large role in the shaping of my character. The characters in Terminus are metaphors for anxiety.

3. Why filmmaking?
As a kid, it was pencil crayons, lots of them. As an adolescent, it was photography. As an adult, it's films and commercials.

4. Who is your creative hero?
A British filmmaker/comedian named Chris Morris. The guy's years ahead of his time. James Cameron and Ricky Gervais deserve mention as well.

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
It's funny, there's about 20 people I know who where involved with films in this years TIFF... and ironically we're all going to be in Toronto. Should make for a great entourage.


CASSANDRA NICOLAOU, Director,
Congratulations Daisy Graham

1. Where do you come from?
Toronto

2. What influenced your film?
Seeing some people close to me struggling with disease, despair and devotion.

3. Why filmmaking?
I like all the different voices coming together to tell a story.

4. Who is your creative hero?
Spike Lee, Claire Denis and a dozen others.

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
Seeing some films.


TROY NIXEY, Director, Latchkey's Lament

1. Where do you come from?
Born in Lethbridge Alberta, grew up in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, live in Vancouver BC

2. What influenced your film?
Music, books, art and of course movies. The things that influence all my work.

3. Why filmmaking?
Movies are the greatest storytelling medium ever created.

4. Who is your creative hero?
Tom Waits, Charlie Chaplin, Guillermo Del Toro, Johnny Cash, Arthur Rackham, Dr. Seuss

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
The movies of course.

In the forward to André Loiselle's fabulous new book Cinema as History: Michel Brault and Modern Quebec, TIFF Director and CEO Piers Handling begins by writing, "Among all the aignificant personalities of the Canadian cinema, Michel Brault stands alone."  Brault, who is the subject of this year's Canadian Retrospective (available in the Canadian Retrospective Package), is certainly one of the towering figures of Canadian film.

Brault directed some of this country's greatest movies, first documentaries, and then features, including the landmark film of Canadian political cinema, Les Ordes.                         

Brault is also a superb cinematographer, working with director's such as Claude Jutra, Anne Claire Poirier and Francis Mankiewicz, with whom he made the astounding, Les Bons Débarras.            

Brault will be in attendance at this year's festival to introduce his films, a rare chance to see a master reflect on his art.

On the making of Surfwise: Damn! It?s too late to change the title of my film, isn?t it? The masters are done, the graphics are in, the Festival catalog is printed. The date for my first-ever world premiere at Toronto is set and locked. 9/11? But looking over the list of profound and political doc titles that are premiering at TIFF?they all look so incredibly powerful? I kind of feel like a little bag of Cheetos sitting in the organic produce aisle at Whole Foods. Title envy.
 
I shouldn?t feel this way. After all, my movie is about a guy who, just a week ago had feature news stories about him in the New York Times, CBS News, Al Jazeera, Yahoo, and dozens of other international outlets for his symbolic act of bringing surfboards to Gaza. This news event had nothing to do with my film, it was just something my subject, Dorian ?Doc? Paskowitz, did on his own. He?s like that. I can?t control him. 
 
But even if moviegoers have heard of Paskowitz, nobody will know what ?SURFWISE? is about! It?s not even a word. And because I?ve portrayed other youth-oriented subcultures, like my movie ?Scratch,? people will probably figure it?s just a portrait of the surfing scene. They?ll ask me if I interviewed the latest big-wave rider they once met at a party. Or, they?ll lump it in with the dozens of ?Endless Summer? rip-offs where privileged beatniks visit impoverished beach villages, surf their waves, and make feature-length travelogues with hip titles. So I?ll tell them: ?Look, it?s set in the surfing world, but it?s not a surf film. It?s more about diet, sex, home schooling, fatherhood, breastfeeding, the holocaust, wild animals, cults, over-consumption, family? and surfing? you know??  Or, I?ll just say, ?It?s an intimate and emotional portrait of the most amazing American family I?ve ever encountered.?
 
Like the cramped, 24-foot camper that was home for the nine Paskowitz children, the title of my documentary isn?t a big enough vessel to contain all the diverse personalities and themes within it. I have never in my life had such difficulty naming a movie! Over five years, my producers and I came up with hundreds of ideas; literally, I have ten single-spaced pages of failed names. And some were all right:
 
?Fish Out of Water? was dropped because it?s too sit-com cliché, even though it perfectly describes Dorian ?Doc? Paskowitz?s life: a Texas-born Jewish surfer who never fit into normal society and decided to home school and raise his nine kids on the beach. It also conveys how those nine children felt after they grew up and left the camper and tried to fit back into the society their father had shunned.
 
?Blood and Water? was a great title because it sounded biblical and combined the family blood concept with the sea. It also referred to a quote in the movie where the eldest son shows us a smiling family portrait of them all posed in the ocean for an LA Times photo shoot, but then tells us that two of them were bleeding in the water from being coerced out there. But putting the word ?blood? in the title means horror movie to most audiences, so we dropped it.
 
?Half Naked? was a final contender? it was provocative and fits in with how frank and outspoken 86-year old Doc and his wife Juliette are about sex (which they still brag about having at least 4 times a week). It came from a quote by Navah (the only daughter), where she says they were raised ??like little monkeys in a weird little monkey cage, just half-naked all the time.? But the title was dropped because on its own, it could be construed as a cheesy porn-thriller.
 
Other titles dealt with Doc?s life-long pursuit of preventive health such as ?A Supreme State of Well Being? (too cerebral, too long). ?The Dr. Paskowitz Experiment? (without Vincent Price?). ?Barefoot Odyssey? (fun, but nobody can spell the word odyssey, even if they can spell ?Koyaanisqatsi?). And ?Wild Wave?, ?Doc?s Wave?, ?Doc?s Wild Ride? all sounded like rides at a lawsuit-prone amusement park in Indiana. ?Camper Van Paskowitz?? (never mind). My favorite was just simply ?Wild Life?: a film about a guy who insisted that his children have the same diet and lifestyle as animals in the wild. ?But people will think it?s just a wildlife special.? Gone.
 
In the end, our movie is called ?SURFWISE? a catch-all, kind-of-generic concept that I invented back in 2003 to slap onto the ten-minute promo I made to help us raise funds for the film. I don?t hate it, I don?t love it, but I hope it works in a simple sort of way. I?ll try not to lose any more sleep over it.
 
What I AM excited about is the fact that this family is real, their story is incredible, and that, unless Izzy changes his mind at the last minute, all eleven family members are actually coming to Toronto for the world premiere. Alone or in a group, they have such boundless energy, genuine charisma and such a crazy presence (Toronto beware!), that I probably could have named my film ?Film? and it wouldn?t have made one bit of difference. 
 
Can?t wait for 9/11.

On the making of GLASS: Philip being Philip, there was never a dull moment. Every day there was something new: a fresh collaboration, renewal of an old friendship, rehearsals for a world premiere of a new work, recordings of film scores (including my own ?No Reservations?), sessions with other film directors, time out with his infant sons. Gradually pieces of his rich and varied life revealed themselves as Philip generously opened the doors into his family and friendships, as well as the extraordinary tapestry of his evolution from early days in Paris and the downtown New York art scene of the 60?s and 70?s.

Oi, Toronto! That nice dream between Everest, where we shot
BLINDSIGHT, and the largest garbage dump in the world, where I am currently working. Just when you get used to the smell they find a human body, or mention a leprosy epidemic, and the sound man passes out. But at least it's at sea level - after the hell of 23,000' for BLINDSIGHT I'm relieved to look across at the ocean at all times.
Across the bay you can see Christ The Redeemer reaching his arms out to the wealthy in Rio's south zone - Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon.  They say even Christ turns his back on the north of Rio, where we are.

Don't worry, we have kidnap insurance, the producers tell me -- from their desks on Ipanema beach. But seriously, everyone is wonderful. O2 Filmes, and Vik Muniz, the fantastico Brazillian artist who got me into all this, and our crew - our sound man's dad wrote PIXOTE, one of my favorite movies. It's the most enjoyable shoot, notwithstanding the garbage.

Vik describes Rio as St. Tropez surrounded by Mogadishu. The garbage is the only place in Rio where the social extremes get mixed in together. The posh rubbish from the south zone with the cheap trash from the favelas. Garbage is the negative of consumer culture, it's everything that nobody wants, and when it disappears from everyone's lives, rich or poor, it doesn't dissappear at all, it appears here, like a conjuring trick gone wrong.

Garbage is a matter of opinion, say the catadores who work here, sifting through. Tread carefully, because you are treading on money. On a bad day they make twice minimum wage salvaging cans, bottles, plastics, paper. Then somebody finds R$30,000 cash -- while somebody else finds two headless bodies. After Carnival they pick out the discarded costumes and wear them as they work. When the airline Varig did a dump everyone dressed up in the air steward outfits and served each other recycled drink bottles.

That's the most striking thing, the good humor, the sheer fun. These people are having a good time. When we film The Governor, a grinning old-timer with a boombox strapped to his belly - he calls out "I'm gonna be on TV". "Yeah, the animal channel", comes right back.

And they are honest. They don't touch each other's piles of pickings. Many catadores had limited career choices: prostitution, drug traffic, or garbage, and they chose garbage, where the only person you hurt is yourself. There is a lot of pride.

Zumbi is the resident intellectual. We hear about him before we see him - we hear that when he sees a book, he doesn't see just recycling paper. He has kept every book he's ever found on the landfill, and he has a lending library in his shack. He's handsome, like a young Sam Jackson, with a white towel tied around his head and a paperback bulging in his shorts.

Half of the catadores sleep in the garbage, risking being run over by trucks, and the other half sleep in the worst favela in town. Their garbage-clad open-sewer favela makes the other favelas look like the Amalfi coast, with their brightly-colored two-story buildings with twinkling christmas lights piled up the hillside.

Evenings we return to the south zone. I sulk as I head to a delicious dinner in a bulletproof car, I'd rather be with the catadores than these billionaires moaning about the price of contemporary art. How competitive the current art market is, because there is just so much money, you have to interview and practically beg for the chance to buy insanely overpriced art works by totally unestablished artists.  

These are the people who are going to buy the art work that Vik is making in the garbage in our charity auction at Phillips. And these are the people whose garbage will be part of the piece. We're going to trace all these comings-and-goings of things.

When we ask the catadores what they want to do with the money from the auction, they say they're not sure, their first thought is that they don't really need anything, They have everything they need. Richer people are much quicker to tell you what they need money for. I guess the catadores know exactly where most things that people spend money on wind up.

This year's festival is packed with cinematic versions of some beloved Canadian books, including this year's opening and closing night films, Jeremy Podeswa's moving Fugitive Pieces and Paolo Barzman'sstirring Emotional Arithmetic.  Beyond the galas is a screen adaptation of Margaret Laurence's classic story The Stone Angel.  Starring Ellen Burstyn as the legendary Hagar The Stone Angel is an ambitious and assured adaptation, with some great performances and beautiful visuals. 

  That's Christine Horne and Cole Hauser pictured. 

Here's an interview with director Kari Skogland about bringing The Stone Angel to the big screen.

JESSE:  The Stone Angel is one of the more famous Canadian literary works.  How do you approach adapting something like that for the screen?

KARI:  Carefully, but without making it too precious. As we all know, the literary experience is vastly different from the theatrical experience so, you have to choose which master your are going to serve. As daunting as the idea was, I analyzed and went at the adaptation from story first - then character.  I also found the ideas I felt were buried in her writing -the bubbling passion, the secrets of a small town and it's proud lineages - and bring them to the surface so there was a fresh perspective .  I hope I shook it up a bit!  I also decided early on that I was writing this to be a great epic story, but not a literary document so I allowed myself to stray from underlying material if I felt necessary for the sake of what would make a great theatrical experience. And lastly, I wanted to make sure the landscape was a character in the film so, it was important to pay attention to the visuals - they had to be provocative and ruggedly beautiful - thankfully the weather in Manitoba was spectacular for our entire shoot.

JESSE:  How do you see Hagar Shipley?

KARI: She is all woman. She struggles with her heart verses her head - and spends her life making tragic mistakes.  She was brought up to revere social status, very British rules as if it was the secret to success.  Yet she chose to rebel against that ideal and ended up spending her life at odds with that decision.  She finally discovers that love is pure and simple and that's what life is about.  It's a bittersweeet packed moment and one we can all learn from.

JESSE:  Ellen Burstyn gives a remarkable performance as Hagar.  What did she bring to the role?

KARI:  Ellen is the real deal and very much an actor's actor. She understood Hagar from the moment she read the script. Ellen had done the broadway play "Trip to Bountiful" which resonated similarities so I think that helped her to add the layer of vulnerability Hagar has under the surface. We had to like Hagar even when she was being a pain to deal with and Ellen understood the nuance of Hagar's fear and how she hides behind her caustic wit.  Ellen is also a filmmaker in her own right and that made her my partner in telling this story.  I can't tell you how important that is to me because if everyone is making the same movie we can't help but get it right. She also brought her tremendous proffessionalism. She raised the bar, particularly for the younger actors. She was there to do the work and her focus and process is simple yet spectacular which makes everyone's world on set so great, we all felt tremendous respect.
She's a real leader.

JESSE:  Two generations of Hausers are also in the movie, Wings Hauser and his son Cole, who play the old and young Bram respectively.  How did having a real father and son affect those roles?

KARI:  Wow, was that a treat. And there had been a rift between the two, so it became part of a healing process. I was very thankful to Wings for jumping on board.  Strangely, the story paralleled some of his own life so he really connected with the role which brought a tragedy that is heartwrenching to watch.  And the bonus was, they looked alike!

JESSE:  If you were to make a movie adapted from another Canadian novel next, what novel would you most like to adapt?

KARI:  oooohhhhh - tough question.  I'm on the hunt now....

 

San Francisco Chinatown movie houses were my early childhood film schools. They offered up a steady stream of Chinese language films from overseas and seeing Chinese on the big screen was no big deal. But then I started venturing outside the neighborhood and haunted now-defunct repertory theaters, and I remember seeing Luise Rainer in the 1937 MGM Epic, The Good Earth. It was something else to watch this German actress portray a self-sacrificing Chinese peasant in yellow-face, leading a cast of thousands of real-life Chinese extras and bit players, not to mention millions of locusts. I don?t recall if I was delighted or offended, but if anything, I was intrigued. And, oh, the set design was pretty authentic and the camera work gorgeous. It was, and still is, a great piece of classic Hollywood moviemaking.

Flash forward some forty years later to 2003. It was the 75th anniversary of the Oscars® and the Academy gathered as many living winners of the acting awards as possible to appear in that year?s broadcast. I attended a post-rehearsals reception for them and it was a pretty private affair; there we were, having drinks and joking around with the likes of Olivia de Havilland and Celeste Holm ? we could?ve been at the Brown Derby. And then I spotted her, yes her: Luise Rainer, the first actor to win back-to-back Oscars® for The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth. She was still alive ? all 93 years of her!

By 2003, I had already been in development on Hollywood Chinese for about five years but hadn?t shot a single frame of footage yet. Now there was no excuse. Luise Rainer was a surviving connection to an era of Hollywood when white actors playing Asians was the norm, when yellow-face spoke volumes about race relations in the industry. I had to get her.

But Luise Rainer had been around the block a few times and wasn?t an easy interview to get. After all, she was once married to playwright Clifford Odets and she had a notorious reputation for talking back to Louis B. Mayer before dumping Hollywood altogether. And flattery was a lost cause. Long story short: it was about all connections and perseverance. A flurry of phone calls and a few months later, I found myself in Luise Rainer?s London apartment on the city?s hottest day in history. Remember that summer of 2003? When all the Brits melted? I was there.

Luise Rainer was true to form and continued to be the diva that she deserved to be. Limo service, approval of the make up artist, lighting, a definite time limit. But there was sweetness about her too. She showed me her pair of Oscars® and lamented how they had tarnished, but lit up when I told her it was possible to have them re-finished. And she made sure the cookies and tea where out, and that I accompanied her to dinner with a group of artists in a private dining club where you gained entry through an unmarked door ? very speakeasy and very Dorothy Parker. She proudly announced to her guests that I had traveled all the way from LA to interview her.

On the night before the shoot, we went through her closet to pick out an outfit and then pondered over what to do with her hair. We both agreed a beret was the best look. Then on location the next day, I melted, the crew melted ? everyone melted ? but Luise Rainer was a pro. When she came into the room it was like a scene from Sunset Blvd.: Yes, she was ready for her close-up. With each documentary I make there comes a time when I know I have a film. This was that moment.

Thank you, Ms. Rainer.

Director of Profit motive and the whispering wind: I am writing this from my office at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts where I teach film production and history and where, in a few hours time, all power to the building is to be shut off for some major maintenance operation. This only means that I can't further procrastinate or belabor work on this blog entry,(and, that I better not leave anything in the refrigerator over the weekend). As I try to reflect on what I might tell you, I am looking opposite my desk at a photo of Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha and the words, "Sou um artista. Não me exijam coerencia" (I am an artist. Don't expect me to be coherent.).

   In a few weeks time I will be screening in Toronto my new film (& first documentary) "Profit motive and the whispering wind". Given that its focus is on traces of progressive U.S. history, much of it (sadly and tellingly) little known to many U.S. citizens, I will be curious to get a sense of what kind of resonance the film may have for those north of the border and beyond. Given obvious speculations over the just-concluded "Three Amigos" summit in Ottawa, and continued maneuvers by power elites to exclude public involvement in the shaping of our future, it behooves us to know as much about our histories as we can, and to take a close look at what incidents and which people tend to be ommitted from these histories and why. In my own modest way, it is this which my film seeks to provoke reflection upon. My approach to this topic is a rather unorthodox one as my film is an accumulation of three years of wandering, on and off, across the United States, mostly frequenting out of the way cemeteries and small town roads in search of evidence of this past. Ironically, given how much time I spent in front of gravesites, it proved an avenue for bringing this history to life for me. Despite the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, and the fact that I am indeed proud of my work, it would make me happier if more people became acquainted with the writings of historian and activist Howard Zinn, the mystic mainspring of my film, than the film itself. That said, I leave you with a link to the wonderful opening essay from Zinn's latest book, "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress". Hope some of you check it out: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11585

Nothing could beat the first screening of THE U.S. vs. JOHN LENNON at TIFF 06. Starting with the line outside The Ryerson Theatre snaking around three city blocks...to crossing the red carpet bordered by dozens of TV cameras, lights, reporters and microphones...to the SRO crowd responding in all the right places (hearing laughter ripple through that large an audience was an indescribable feeling)...from sitting next to Yoko and experiencing her powerful response to what she saw on screen...to the standing ovations at film's end and as the credits rolled...the Toronto experience is something I will never, ever forget. This and the other TIFF 06 screenings jump started a wild 3-month roller coaster ride of private screenings, meeting the press from around the world, interacting with other filmmakers whose work I admire and playing in 67 theaters across the country. The film subsequently opened in numerous  international markets, with Japan still to come later this year.

It was all enormously rewarding, thrilling and positively validated the long
hours/days/weeks spent in the small, dark, windowless editing room without a
clue how people would respond to our work. And speaking of work...I just
finished a new film, HEAVEN, exploring how the world's 5 foremost religions
conceive of Heaven and how certain people/groups within those religions live
their life to get there. And more to come including, I hope, a return to
TIFF in 08!

On the making of REBELLION: THE LITVINENKO CASE -
In Russia some people call me a traitor because of my ?positive? portrayal of the ex-spy Litvinenko who was subjected to an incredible three week long execution in London last November. I made a point of not replying to such accusations. Others, among them friends and colleagues, are wondering why my producer Olga Konskaya and I took the risk and trouble of infuriating our government if we used to make films about artists, composers and poets,about love and other beautiful things,and could have admittedly continued to do so. That wondering is genuine and therefore deserves an answer.    

When I, at the beginning of my active life, met Andrei Tarkovsky who was at the end of his, I thought I wanted to be like him: an uncompromising Artist, determined to express his acutely personal vision regardless of the dominating collectivist ideology and the collective of the ?Soviet People? in whose name he was accused of elitism and arrogance. Tarkovsky was not arrogant, but it was okay to be elitist, if it meant being on the wrong side of the totalitarian ideology. Tarkovsky died not to see those very masses of Soviet people voting overwhelmingly for Yeltsin who wanted to ban the communist party. Now after fifteen years of capitalism Russia is again the country of the rich and the poor, the boyars and the ?degraded and hurt?, best described by Dostoyevsky and Chekhov, it was before the 1917 revolution. And in this Russia it is not okay to be elitist, in my view at least. It?s not okay, for me at least, to be the pure apolitical artist because it feels like turning the blind eye to crime, that very ?Wegschauen? which has brought various forms of fascism to power time and time again throughout history. And as far as the Litvinenko affair goes turning the blind eye, for me, means cowardice. Because if your pal is killed, what do you do? You find out who did it, and go after them.

As for Tarkovsky, I take the liberty to suggest he would have been doing anti-fascist films today, something of a far cry from the pure art his comfy epigones turn out.    

For years people have tried to stretch the boundaires of cinema by attempting to make the expereince more "interactive", from "Smell-O-Vision" to William Castle's Percepto.  At this years festival two Canadian movies usher the "interactive film" into the modern age.  "Late Fragment" and "The Soft Revolution" both approach cinema in a new way, allowing the viewer to determine their own experience.  Both point to a future form of cinema, one that melds film, video games and new media into a new style of narrative.

Here's an interview with one of the creators of "The Soft Revolution", Anthony Roberts (pictured with co-creator Brian Johnson).  

Jesse: Where did the idea for The Soft Revolution come from?

 

Anthony: I had this idea about Charlie,

a 1970?s social revolutionary who had a fantastic eco-utopian vision, and then disappeared, leaving behind this beautiful unfinished manifesto called The Soft Revolution that if properly interpreted, could transform the world. Even though he?s been gone for over two decades, Charlie?s presence and his Taoist, Fuller-esque ideas continue to resonate with his family and friends. I thought it would be interesting to make a vignette-based movie with a randomized structure about the key experiences of a year in the life of this fairly ordinary Gulf-Island family whose members are all, in their own ways, searching for some kind of transcendence. Using the I Ching as a game interface was seen as a way that would allow audience members some control to advance or digress the narrative, leading the viewer deeper into the lives of these characters while simultaneously drawing them into closer contact with themselves.

 

 

Jesse: How did the I Ching influence your approach to the film?

 

Anthony: The Taoist I-Ching (also known as the Book of Changes) provided a cohesive structure to frame the story and characters within the four seasons of nature. It?s a metaphor for natural processes, and the way those are reflected in human social interactions.  As everything is in a process of change, and is constantly evolving, I thought it would be visually stimulating and thematically accurate to the I-Ching to frame pivotal experiences of the characters? lives within the seasons of nature over the course of a year.

 

I felt the natural metaphors of Taoism fit brilliantly with the visionary ideas of the disappeared revolutionary character Charlie. The guiding principles of his soft revolution were to establish local economies of eco-technologies, free education, renewable energy, and self-managed organically planned communities in harmony with nature. Charlie was known to associate with the Cascadian Liberation Front (CLF), a bio-regionalist group opposing a homogeneous global economy and consumer culture because that culture ignored a dependency on the natural world.

 

The I-Ching is an ancient form of divination and a randomness-generating mechanism that can be played by throwing three coins six times to generate one of its 64 parables. For thousands of years it has inspired thoughts about the nature of chaos and causality and was often a way that Brian and I generated ideas for what a scene was to be about.

I wanted the experience of interacting with the movie to solicit a similar type of ?divine guidance? as in consulting the I Ching oracle. Thus the randomly generated parable-scenes could be seen as a tool for analyzing the randomness of both human interaction and natural phenomena.

  

The I-Ching has always had the reputation of an oracle that has the power to unlock doors to the inner self ? I thought it would be a useful experiment to see if a user playing The Soft Revolution could feel a similar kind of reflective inner satisfaction after choosing a parable-scene.

 

Jesse: While using The Soft Revolution it reminded me a little bit of the interface for video games, and there's a feeling of challenge to the act of using it.  How do you see the intersection of video games and movies?

 

Anthony: By engaging in multiple character narratives by choosing scenes or generating them randomly, The Soft Revolution allows viewers to take control of the viewing of a movie narrative. Using the I-Ching as an interface would probably qualify The Soft Revolution as an interactive game, although I see it?s ?payoff? as reflective and psychological rather than simply action-driven. You don?t actually enter into a virtual environment and start poking around in it with your controller as in a videogame. With The Soft Revolution we don?t ask our audience to become a character, but to look at the character and her actions to compare and examine themselves with an inquiry:  i.e. ? ?would I have done that or not?? The usefulness of narrative is when you understand and empathize with a character you see you begin to examine yourself. When you?re so close to the action in a videogame you?re not carefully observing yourself.

 

Jesse: In all the times you have interacted with The Soft Revolution, what has surprised you the most?

 

Anthony: What has surprised me the most is the way that the story feels different every time. Because of the software program underlying the piece, a particular combination of parable-scenes and abstract sequences will never occur the same way twice - and the amount of time it has taken for the movie to play the essential scenes and reach its conclusion has ranged between an hour and twenty minutes to over four hours long. Some people get exasperated by all the different narrative pathways and would rather just charge straight ahead into a linear telling of the story, while a surprisingly large number of other viewers appear to want to experience as much digression and randomness as possible. It?s interesting to note that there will always be people in the audience that abstain from playing the piece and let others determine where the story goes. Perhaps these people are accustomed to watching traditional linear movies, or they?re too shy to interact with our movie, or they would rather observe how The Soft Revolution changes without their input ? and that?s completely valid.

 

Jesse: Finally, how do you see the future of interactive cinema experiences like The Soft Revolution?

 

Anthony: I see a growing and exciting future for interactive cinema. The increasing sophistication of technology and the special interests of individuals suggest hybridized forms of cinema that use concepts derived from video games and other forms of interactivity. The Internet is a compelling arena for experiments in user interaction. The swift growth of websites like Second Life that allow users to explore virtual environments with other participants will probably yield experiences and perceptions that we?ve only dreamed of before. Or maybe we haven?t imagined it yet. I think these new forms will continue to influence and compliment traditional cinema and yet I hope these structures will never replace it. I feel that there will always be something humanly appealing to the experience of watching a movie in a theatre environment with a massive screen and great sound. We have a deeply engrained human need to engage with and try to understand narrative and the collective film-going experience can be extremely satisfying in meeting these requirements. When a lot of people are in the same room watching a movie together the film can generate a lot of emotion and this emotion is contagious. As well, the warm, reflective quality of film remains far superior visually to the emissions from a video screen. But no matter the medium, a good story will always find an audience.

 

This is and "Late FRagment" are both must sees at this year's festival

http://tiff07.ca/filmsandschedules/futureprojections/  

 

By my count there are three films in this year's Real to Reel that have their roots in my trip to Iraq after the invasion in 2003. At the time, I had basically given up trying to make feature docs and   was focussing on making socially positive doc episodes for television. I went to Iraq to make two shows for MTV:  True Life: I'm in Iraq, a verite and interview hour about American and Iraqi young people in the post-war period, and Gideon's Diary in Iraq, a half hour hosted by correspondent Gideon Yago. For Gideon's diary, we shot a profile of the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda, and later Gideon wrote a piece about them for Vice Magazine. These, I'm told, were the seeds of Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti's Heavy Metal in Baghdad . I haven't seen it -- I'm dying to -- but I'm told you can hear my voice in the film on some of the early footage of the band in Baghdad that I shot.

Muthana Mudher was a friend of the Acrassicauda's, and a young film student, whose story of trying to get a film education in the rubble of the city I told in the True Life.  Liev Shreiver saw the show on TV, and wanted to help Muthana with his film education by bringing him from Baghdad to intern on the set of his next film, and wanted me to make a doc about it.  It would be a film about a filmmaker reaching out to a filmmaker while making a film -- perfect material to direct for Nina Davenport, whose wonderful first person films are always, in my view, about a filmmaker, Nina herself, in a collision between the palliative dreams of story and the messy demands of the real world.    The result is Operation Filmmaker, in my view -- and I am biased as I produced -- it is Nina's best work to date.

MTV liked our Iraq shows, and a previous show I had done for them on Israel/Palestine, so they asked Gideon and me to create a series about young people in war zones.  We brought on Priya Swaminathan and Nina Alvarez to help make the pilot, about young people caught up in the civil war in Colombia.   The pilot wasn't picked up-- it was always a longshot for MTV to devote a half hour weekly to young people in war zones -- but in the course of researching more episodes for the series, we looked into international sex trafficking, and found that trafficking in young girls was going on not just in Cambodia, but just a few blocks north of our office in New York City, right under the eyes of the police, and the media, and the city. We found that if a woman is coerced into prostitution and brought to New York City from the Ukraine, and she is caught, the US will give her housing, and legal help, and help getting home.  But if she is trafficked to New York City from Yonkers, and she is caught, she will go to jail.  Likewise, if a forty year old man in Utah has sex with a fourteen year old girl and gets caught, he's going to jail and the girl is getting treatment.   But if the man has sex with the girl in the Bronx and gives the girl sixty dollars, and they are caught, then the girl is going to jail and the man is going free.  This is how we met Rachel Lloyd and began to make Very Young Girls.

Rachel survived sexual exploitation as a teenager, and as an adult  began working to help young girls find their way out of "the life." Rachel is a healer, and she brings out the amazing and immense potential of the beautiful, traumatized girls in her care.  She helps them through empathy and therapy to overcome their victimization, return to a normal life, and come to a place where they can talk about what happened to them in the bracingly brave, honest, and insightful way they do in the film. I had interviewed young people who had survived trauma in war zones around the world and I had never heard anyone with such powerful voices and stories as these young women of New York City. I modeled my working relationship with Rachel on how I observed, as a young assistant, my old boss Errol Morris work with physicist Stephen Hawking during the making of A Brief History of Time.  Both films would be a profile of a great innovator with an amazing human story, and an explanation of that leader's complex and counterintuitive insights.  So, like Stephen, Rachel would be a key creative collaborator in all phases of the work, from pre-production to score.  I did not worry about empowering Rachel, as she had the intelligence and wisdom to step into our medium armed with great authority and to make the choices that would lead to a powerful, honest, unsparing film that has the possibility of changing the way people see commercial sexual exploitation in our society today. It's remarkable to me, and sobering, that my journey to Baghdad, with all its horrors, would lead back to the more or less unnoticed, but equally terrible horrors on the streets of my own city.

Pictured: Rachel Lloyd tries to talk Ebony out of returning to "the life" in 
Very Young Girls.

On the making of  POOL - I'm writing to you from Kuala Lumpur, within the autocratic state of Malaysia, currently celebrating it's 50 years of on-again off-again independence.  While in my time in the big city, I was fortunate enough to have been able to join a researcher on her trip to the province of Aceh, one of the hardest hit areas during the 2004 tsunami that devasted parts of South and South-East Asia. Eighteen months after tragedy, we took a plane from Kuala Lumpur to Medan, Indonesia, and was taken on an 9 hour car ride through the province to the outer tip of the Aceh province where we would end up at a place in the small village of Lampu'uk.  Throughout the trip, markers of 'help' were seen all the way through the province. Whether it be about HELSINKI  where the Memorandum of Understanding was signed, or the presence of the international NGO's, 'help' was definitely here and there was no sparing of signs to show it.

This film was an accident.  I was ignorant of the situation in Aceh but wanted to gain some small insight into a state that had been in a state of war for the past three decades and further punctuated by the diaster of the tsunami.  I packed my camera to help my researcher with recording interviews of Gerekan Acheh Merdeka (GAM) / freedom fighters and the government leaders during and after the war.  But one of the most striking events for me actually was not the rebuilding of the communities, nor the after-life of the freedom fighters who had returned back down from the mountains and began to merge into the greater Aceh community.

The most striking event was the impact of the international aid agencies.

Humanitarian diaster capitalism was a reality that I had never seen face to face.  Why did World Vision and UNDP need to have a logo on the back of every rickshaw?  Why did each community that was 'built' needed to be clearly marked by the country/countries that had given the funds.  Why did each door of each new home need to be clearly marked by the international NGO that gave the money to do so?

Is this proof of help?  Why are we staking territory within diaster/conflict areas?

And finally, why was there a USAID pool being built at the village of Lampu'uk - a beach side village that was 1st hit by the tsunami?  I was temporarily staying in Lampu'uk for almost a month with my researcher, and the pool was built at the back.  What was the purpose of the pool?  And what was the purpose of the oversized tiled branding of USAID that covered the floor of the entire length of the pool?

Morning after morning, I placed my camera on the porch, and watched, as all foreigners do, as the kids in the village use and transform what is made available to them.

From the perspective of the international agency, to the perspective of the village, to the perspective of the filmmaker, everything seemed to have lacked real purpose.  No one knew the purpose of anything.  We all seemed to have just used what was there for our own purpose.

There was no clear purpose.  Just a pool, as it filled and emptied everyday.

I wanted to create a story where the participants were the narrators with
the sense that the audience was invited into the room to share in these
lives of Philip, his friends and family. I always felt the film would be a
kind of ?mosaic portrait?, like a Chuck Close portrait, where an arrangement
of fragments form an overall picture.

Picture: Director Scott Hicks (center) films artist Chuck Close (left) in
conversation with Philip Glass (right) in New York, as part of "GLASS : a
portrait of Philip in twelve parts" (photo by L. Skutch)

Premiering in Short Cuts Canada program five, Jeff Barnaby's film, The Colony, is a prime example of filmmaking that pushes boundaries, cinematically and socially.

A film better seen than described, I asked Jeff a few questions about The Colony, his influences, and his take on the issues his films explore.

Jeff's answers are as honest and authentic as his film.

What were your reasons to start filmmaking? 

A ton of things, I grew up in front of the television: watching Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Kung Fu classics on CBC, Shock Theater on ASN, when beta came out that?s when my older brother?s started bring Romero Movies home, my Step Dad was huge John Ford and Sergio Leone Fan, watched a lot of black and white gangster movies, a ton of horror movies, I think we watched every horror movie we could get our hands on, of course none of us knew the names of any of the directors, just you know, zombies gangster cowboys and murder.  And when I got to college and took a film class just to fill out my schedule it turned out I had a real aptitude for remembering the movies that I watched.  What I found interesting later when I learned who the directors were of some of my favorites movies, the same names just kept popping up.  Cronenberg, Kubrick, Scott, Kurowsawa.  What really really blows my fucking mind is how this stuff matriculated down to the reserve I was living on. How the fuck does a 6 year old kid get to see Yojimbo on a midnight madness show called Kung Fu classics when it was during a time when some places were just starting to get running water.  My family on my mom?s side grew up with an outhouse with shit flies the size of crows and a laundry mangler that left rust stains on your clothes.  The other things I was doing really helped: I was an avid reader and I had already started writing by the time I was 7; was heavily into comic books so I was drawing since I could remember, I eventually started playing music and getting into serious art, just expressing myself creatively any way I could.  So when in college, the switch to making films and reading images was actually pretty easy, it already felt like I?d been studying my entire life.  I think the most important thing though was the idea that an Indian can do something like directing.  Watching Alanis Obomsawin?s film Incident at Restigouche, shot on my reserve, went a long way in reinforcing that idea; that and it seemed to focus my already rebellious nature, and when I got to college just having a natural aptitude for the arts and be surrounded by people who supported you.  Not that I didn?t get support from my family, it?s just ARTIST wasn?t really a real job type job back then, most reserve men are wicked blue collar and their sons follow suit.  There?s a real huge shift in that paradigm now, thank god, there are already kids running around back home saying ?I wanna be a filmmaker!?  And I think that?s the real big reason I became a filmmaker, so crazy white people don?t put us in movies as rapists dog eaters anymore - warping the brains of little native kids.  Film has gone a loooooong way to consciously add to the fuckupedness of a culture that already has to deal with myriad of 21 century social problems.  Never mind the murderers in police outfits, relegified sodomites, deracination, starvation and all the other fucked up fun we had in the former century courteous of the Canadian government.  And to think that all of that grief is just water under the bridge or more to the point: not still going on, is totally fucking retarded, and the non native filmmakers at large still have us running around in loin cloths shaking feathers at people, haha, it?s insane? I?m actually kinda speechless trying to find a way to articulate how insane it is.  But if I have one purpose as an artist - it?s to undo some of that damage and to inflict some of my own; hence, the colony. 

The Colony is a film without a 'hero', yet all of the characters draw you in to their lives. What was the inspiration to develop dynamic characters, that we don't often see in cinema? 

Well first off lemme just say I love my culture, I love being Mi?gMaq, if I were beside God while he was slapping me together, and he was going through his rolodex of races I would stop him at Indian and point out Mi?gMaqs, that very reserve, those very people, this very time. Right Now.  Contemporary.  And it?s really that love affair, that fascination that drives a lot of my characterizations.  Contemporary Mi?gMaqs from Listuguj, the reserve I grew up on, that?s character central.  Just the diction in the way people talk is a huge influence, if there?s one thing you can say about Listuguj is that it?s full of characters.  The film itself is like a homage to all those people: my uncles, cousins, friends, all of them.  Every time I go down there I always hear the same thing: ?you should fucking make a movie about this place man? people wouldn?t fucking believe it? want a beer??  And it?s true, people wouldn?t believe it.  It?s kinda funny, there?s a huge resistance to these characters when I first put them out in rotation to all the funding outfits, with the exception of SODEC, who just loved the script, the original script too, not the pussified version that we ended up resubmitting and shooting.  And most of that static came form native selection committees who basically shit all over it, something I?m really still bitter about, really I couldn?t believe it, mostly because I was an arrogant asshole after cherry [From Cherry English ed.] who thought I could smear jam on a page and get it made, but I think it was a bit more than that.  There?s been so many negative connotations and misrepresentations of native people in our culture I can understand the reluctance to show native characters that are that lost, tragic, self destructive, fucked up, but if these stereotypes and racist outlooks begin to dictate how we define ourselves as a native artists in ANY way shape or form how is that different then some white man from IA telling you ?you can?t make this movie, the Indians are too real.?  It?s like we?ve been brainwashed not to show the conditions of the native spirit because it might dishearten people or provide hillbillies with a reason to say:   ?see I told you they were savages.?  As if the poverty, lack of social programs, general apathy, and abounding hillbillies don?t already do that.  But what I think the Colony does is show the reasons why without being preachy or predictable, it?s not like ?oh we're drunk and fucked up because they used to make plates out of buffalo.?   I didn?t want anyone to come off as a victim, and I definitely wanted Maytag and Myriam?s personality to have a lot to do with their downfall.  These people are first and foremost human, just people, not representing anything on the surface to anyone who simply dismisses them as uncouth, which is easy to do, they?re vulgar, racist, sexist, coincidentally which is how a great number of people STILL perceive First Nations, yet when you listen to Maytag?s character, all notions of regarding the man as ignorant are completely and utterly dispelled and it just becomes tragic, and the reasons are given in the film, and I think what separates Maytag from a lot of other native characters that have come down the pike is that he?s unaware of them, and they?re not the central issue of the story, the destruction of his relationship with his Myriam is, he?s not a guy with a political agenda.  Which is a bit out of sorts for a native character.  Really at the end of the day it was simple inspiration, put the people I grew up with in a hyperbolic situation and see how they react, inspiration for every one of my movies really. 

What role does your identity play in the films you create, and what do you hope audiences take from your work? 

Well I?m a bit of a dichotomy, on one hand I?m a formally trained artist and on the other a blue collar backwoods indian, my art slams together in the middle somewhere and splatters all over the screen; and when the audience walks away from any of my movies, I want them to think authenticity, I want them to come away with understanding and empathy. 

Your film is extremely graphic (without giving things away). How did you know where to draw the line, or did you try to push things are far as possible? 

I have no limits or boundaries. I come from a artistic background more then a cinematic one, so I?m reading stuff and looking at stuff that?s way more graphic then anything you see in cinema, which is light years behind almost every other art form out there in terms of what you can say or get away with and still have mass appeal.  Of course they don?t have MPAA rating system or the thankfully defunct Hays code to fuck them up.  Imagine, this painting is rated NC 17 for violence, sexuality, and mature subject matter, and it?s a fucking Hieronymus Bosch or something.  Nude Descending a Staircase, ?arrrgh one of those paint strokes looks like a penis burn! burn!?  Ha Ha? Anyway, I don?t think there is such a thing as going too far, more just bad taste, or without any kind spiritual resonance to back up whatever?s ugly on screen.  And for the most part I try to limit a lot of the vulgarity to the dialogue as opposed to violent images.  The most important thing, above all else, is that these things are a part of everyday human life, and how do you acknowledge the beauty of said life without acknowledging the ugly - it?s a life half lived.  And at the end of the day that?s literally what?s killing us, the total and utter lack of acknowledgement of the things in our lives that are hurtful.  So there is no line to be drawn, I just let things play out as they may for the characters and try to temper it as much as I can with aesthetic, which to me is the great equalizer of art, if you make a beautiful piece of art via the written word or image or music or as in film, an amalgam of all art, you can slip any message you want in there.  Which at time can become a double edged sword.  And the idea of pushing things as far as they can go doesn?t necessarily mean having blood and guts flying all over the place, again it goes back to aesthetic, the scene that would immediately come to everyone?s mind is when that cop gets his ear lopped off in reservoir dogs, you don?t see it but it?s extremely disturbing because you don?t see it. I try to compose violent scenes that embed themselves into the viewer and transcend the visceral shock value of violence to focus more on the reasons behind it.  More so then ever with this film. 

What are you most looking forward to at the festival? 

I've never been to TIFF so I have no idea, as a matter of fact I?ve barely been to Toronto.  I think knowing that the film is finally done and for better or for worse it?s out there circulating and I can finally start really focusing on the next project.  Seeing it makes its premiere at one of the biggest film festivals in the world is really going to be great, at least there, to some extent, you feel all the work and grief has paid off.  That and seeing how short and shiny celebrities are in real life. 

In an interview about your film From Cherry English, I read a quote that said "I wrote this piece because I was so pissed off at my own generation". How does The Colony reflect your present outlook? Better phrased, what do you think it will take to change the conditions you present in your films. 

Cherry was a funny movie, because it didn?t really reflect my artistic ideology so much so much as my aesthetic.  The poem it was based on encompassed more of how I thought at the time.  I kind of looked at it as a commissioned piece and an opportunity to do a calling card on somebody else?s dime.  Plus it was for television so my normal heathen approach to filmmaking had to curbed in lieu of no nudity, minimal violence, and a lead that wasn?t a total fucking train wreck which was fine since I knew what I was getting myself into. And I had also just finished shooting red right hand, which is in the same spirit of the colony, except the characters aren?t quite as jovial and sunny in RRH as they are in this one, and I really laid off imposing any real style on RRH.  So when I did cherry I wanted to do something that wasn?t so heavy on characterizations and told more of the story through allegory: the allegory revolving around the loss of language and culture to an ever-growing non-native presence.  Which I think got lost in that quote, to elaborate I think my anger came from what seemed like my generation's penchant to wait around for an invitation to take a more active role in the preservation of our culture in exchange for modern material delights.  So with the colony I really wanted to hurt people and make them take it personal, as with red right hand, to give them something that can?t so easily ignore, in that respect my outlook hasn?t changed at all nor has my approach because the situation and conditions are still the same.  And the funny thing is, I think the audience is going to look at the way Maytag lives and say ?oh my god how deplorable,? not really realizing that by Indian standards he?s kinda middle class.  He has a job and a place to stay, right there he?s already doing better then a huge chunk of the native populace, not counting the ones in jail of course.  There?s families living in tents never mind trailers, a trailer would be a step up.  And for the life of me and I wouldn?t even be able to begin giving a coherent approach to how to change those conditions, it?s more of the insanity that engulfs our culture.  We?re living in one of the best countries in the world with an awesome standard of living yet with all the information about the current conditions of First Nations? repulsive standard of living, health reports, sociological data you would need to know to understand just how heinous and utterly disgusting the treatment of the people whose corpses this country was built on actual is, in present day Canada, right now not 100 years ago, nothing, NOTHING, is being done about it.  It?s as if the Canadian people are nodding and saying ?yeah without you one of the greatest free cultures in the world wouldn?t exist but you know that whole food shelter clean water stuff TOTALLY overrated, aren?t you people supposed to be out doorsy anyway??  So I think a collective trip to the proctologist for a headectemy would be a good start.  Otherwise how many violent confrontations and loss of life does it take for people to just fucking listen.  This is a confrontation that has been pretty one side and going for hundreds of years.  And if you will just for a moment, imagine the enormity of the loss of native life from the first case of TB and small pox to that boy left for dead out in Saskatchewan, there would be a mountain of dead skin to rival the holocaust, that would block out the sun.  Again being a sane rational person I marvel at the madness of the question even being asked what do you think needs to be done.  Finding a new planet and starting over comes to mind, but given that our space program isn?t up to snuff I think people in a position to make changes have to understand that these are people - who love and laugh and who just want to live - on the other end of these policies.  A normal person who sees his neighbor kick his dog gets incensed, angry, to point of action, calls the police to tell the dog kicker to settle down.  A country collectively kicks an entire race of people, and we get non native politicians and tv personalities belly aching for all to hear about how much the Canadian people have paid already and how much longer are they going to be made and that their feet are sore from all the kicking etc etc. So the question truly becomes not what do I think should be done about it, but what do you as rational human beings think should be done about it. 

If you could meet any filmmaker at TIFF, who would it be and why? 

Cronenberg.  He?s been an inspiration to me since the Scanners cranium explosion.  That really screwed with my head, I think I was like 5 years old when I saw that.  Dood?s head came apart like a watermelon.  In my first ever review from a local paper I got compared to Cronenberg for the tongue scene in Cherry.  I considered it one of the best compliments I have ever received as a filmmaker. 

A Conversation about "Schindlers Houses" as featured in Wavelengths

Marc Ries: What was your first encounter with Schindler like?

Heinz Emigholz: In 1975, I happened to pass the Lovell  House in Newport Beach. At first sight, the building struck me as simultaneously  strange and well-conceived.  But at that time, as a filmmaker I was working on extremely  time-analytical compositions with no ideas on architecture outside the medium of time. Only later did my film work expand to issues and depictions of space. And I had  forgotten my encounter with the house until I saw it again on our shooting trip in May 2006. Not until the end of the  1980s did I consciously notice a house or two by him in  Los Angeles. A few years later, I developed the plan for the film series "Photography and beyond". After Louis Sullivan and Robert Maillart, Rudolph Schindler, together with Adolf Loos, Bruce Goff, and Frederick Kiesler, were the missing links to  the present ? at least as far as my feeling for space is  concerned. The International Style and its expressionistic High-Tech sections never interested me.

Ries: How do you prepare for a shooting like this one  ? from the catalog to field research?

Emigholz: I don?t work on commission, so I am independent and can pursue what interests me. The decision to ?encyclopedically? explore the work of a specific architect always  began with an intimate experience of space. At least one room he built has to trigger an intense fondness in me; otherwise I can?t do any research. A certain kinship in  spirit in regard to grasping, designing, and experiencing  space is the starting point. From there, I research and extrapolate until I decide to open myself to the work of a  specific person. Then we seek contacts and try to find allies  for the project and to raise production money. In the end we plan a travel route that covers the accessible constructions. It all takes years.

Ries: Does your first on-site visit suffice to find ?the? image?

Emigholz: I believe in first impressions and the analytical power  of the first encounter. It just depends on how concentratedly you work. And with me, shootings are the time when my brain is 100 percent present in the real world. And the point isn?t ?the? image ? some single, representative image ? but a cinematic context, a sequence of individual  images that the editing and the viewer?s memory turn into  a spatial situation.

Ries: Can it be that the Schindler houses display a kind of inner montage that meets the films halfway? The interior space is not divided into separate units, but is usually a larger, convoluted room that presents a wide range of perspectives and thus accommodates the cinematic way of seeing in montage.

Emigholz: It so happened that last spring, around the time of the Schindler shooting, that I filmed almost all still-existing constructions by Adolf Loos. The film is titled LOOS ORNAMENTAL and will be finished soon, 74 minutes long. Of course, the idea  of his ?spatial plan? is also evident in Schindler. The floor  plan no longer plays a big role. What counts is the sphere in which our head moves freely in the space. Planned was  a complex spatiality that interlocks on various levels and  that really can?t be conceived and carried out except on  site. That presupposes an extreme culture of craftsmanship, on which Loos, Schindler, and Goff could still count  in their life-times. Incidentally, Loos? "Villa Müller" in Prague, which is the most elaborated project in this regard, is stuated on a steep slope ? like most of Schindler?s houses, as well.  Views and perspectives of and from the house are built on the foundation of a complex natural situation. This is the opposite of formula architecture. The two films together will show how Schindler could carry out and further develop in freedom what Loos had conceived so consistently and the degree to which Loos had to land in a dead end here in Europe.  Of course, with both I?m fascinated by the complex spatial  situations, which open up countless perspectives. I work in  this same direction as a cameraman ? away from the falsely postulated clarity of space.

Ries: Was it difficult to film all the houses you found?  Do you gain access everywhere?

Emigholz: There are good and different reasons not to let film teams into your home. Especially in Hollywood, where everyone knows that film teams destroy every place they enter. Or the residents are ill or on a long trip. Or a star doesn?t want people to know where he lives. Or a punk band doesn?t want it to be known how luxuriously their members live. And for many people in show biz,  social contacts carry the risk that one might end up with  the ?wrong?, rather than the ?right? people. House-hopping and up-scale mobility on the real estate market are  primary activities there. I respect that. A home is something very private. When we filmed, there were only three of us. May Rigler spent months in Los Angeles building  relationships of trust with the people living in the houses.  Where we shot, we were received with a warmth that is  probably possible only in America. But I must say, with Schindler I  reached a limit in an area that I don?t want to expose myself to anymore: in connection with shooting permissions and the idiosyncrasies of those who decide whether  you can film or not. The reaction of certain architecture theorists was interesting. They acted as if our filming and documenting the houses was stealing their academic life theme.  Faculty wars in the real 3-D world ? it was almost funny. The deplorable custom in these circles of trying to make  ?representative? views mandatory had not, however, spread to the residents we got to know. Almost all the original owners were part of the artistic or scientific bohemia of Los Angeles. They wanted affordable, but still highly individualistically designed houses. Fortunately, that made  these houses ? though they are meanwhile legendary ? too  small to be interesting for a certain exclusive clientele. John Lautner is there for them. And fortunately, I have meanwhile filmed almost everything I ever wanted to of the so-called famous architects. And no one yet pays any attention to the anonymous architectonic sites that don?t  have any name and that now interest me much more.

Ries:  Today we have two ways to receive ?auteur architecture?. First, via high-quality depictions in catalogs,  in which objects are dissected from their contexts and celebrated as unique items. The other way is by encountering them on-site, which is in part promoted by an excessive  architecture tourism. But between the two modes of reception a gap in experience often opens up that may imply an aesthetic gap, as well: the model in the catalog is ?overshadowed? by its lived existence in an environment and in  a history that leaves traces on the architecture, bringing  something else out of it, maybe what you describe as the ?originality of an authorship of the whole society?.

Emigholz: The aporias of architectural photography are well known. Limited space in the publication media leads to intensely staged condensations and limitations to the supposedly essential ? and to much use of wide-angle lenses,  so that everything is captured in one picture. A human  scale is thereby often lost. What is good for the architect?s  sales brochures need not have anything to do with what one can experience in or through these rooms. I find architecture tourism interesting because one?s own physical experience of a constructed space relativizes its media representation, even casting it into doubt and opening it to criticism. The prologue of my film proclaims the crime that I then commit: the relative isolation of an auteur architecture from the context of a whole society. Many films about architecture try to quote this context into being by providing essayistic commentary. For me, that?s the wrong path, because it avoids the basic experience with an object. It would be much better to depict this context itself, as in the first take of SCHINDLER?S HOUSES. Incidentally, some  of those who have seen the film say they constantly had the feeling of moving in a story or in rudiments of tales. And indeed, certain landscapes of the city of Los Angeles extend into the  images, and many of the houses the film shows are seen in other films shot in Los Angeles. But what is evident in SCHINDLER?S HOUSES is more the Los Angeles of Maya Deren, Thom Andersen, and David Lynch than that  of Alan Rudolph and Wes Anderson.

Ries: Is the ?aesthetic gap? a constituting one, perhaps an a priori component of your architecture-film work, or is it the result of what happens on site? It seems to me as if the milieu were less intensely present in SULLIVAN'S BANKS than in the other works.

Emigholz: The gap you describe is more fundamental to film  than to photography. The sound alone brings much into  the film that is not in the picture. And film images are  constantly ?turned around? and set in new relationships in the sequence of takes. Attributions of significance logically  cannot be as clear-cut in film as they can in photography, even if the director wanted to try. But I don?t have the aim  of isolating and presenting ideal states. In these films, I  don?t use historical footage, because I?m interested in the  current existence of the buildings shown; that is, at a very specific time. I thereby also document the respective present day. That was already the case with SULLIVAN'S BANKS.

Ries: The proliferation of green, of nature, is actually  also a ?subject? of the film. I had the impression that  SCHINDLER?S HOUSES is also a film about nature reconquering civilization ? through a strange affiliation of culture  and nature that the houses have.

Emigholz: But that is no opposition. Schindler had very realistic  visions of the effect the houses would have in an environment that would not grow back until later. With many houses, the landscape around them was part of the design. So he was also a landscape architect. He built in extreme places,  in the wild, almost inaccessible mountain landscape that separates the Los Angeles Basin from the San Fernando  Valley. Nature and its extreme conditions were always immediately a theme of his work. Many ?results? of his work he never experienced, because nature did not play its part  until decades after construction was completed. For example the "Elliot House" in Los Feliz: in the photos shot shortly after its completion in 1930, it stands visible from afar, like an abstract sculpture on a barren hill. Today it disappears in a bamboo forest, and only parts of the garage are still visible  from the street. But in its structures, the house takes up the forms of the bamboo forest ? which didn?t even exist at  the time of construction. The "Kings Road House", which was once way out in the sticks and now, unfortunately, is surrounded by block-like apartment buildings, was conceived  from the start as part of a large garden area. Schindler was downright obsessed with nature. He designed ?sleeping porches? for his houses, where one could sleep outside.  Nature was part of his thing.

Ries: How would you describe the state of (im)balance  between the two levels of experience that is important to  you: here the object, there history and society?

Emigholz: From the level of the viewer. We are damned to view only surfaces. Most media surfaces unfortunately try to copy the politics of words and to take part in their  supposed authority. But it is part of the logic of the threedimensional world that the greatest number of images or pictorial contexts possible in it have never been shown or arisen in consciousness. At any rate, I am aware of a class  of images that are yet to be made and that show the society and its respective ?nature? without clinging to words.

Marc Ries works as a media theorist in Leipzig and Vienna. More information on the films by Heinz Emigholz at:

www.pym.de
www.rudolph-schindler-film.com
www.bruce-goff-film.com
www.robert-maillart-film.com
www.louis-sullivan-film.com
www.annunzio-film.com
www.filmgalerie451.de
 
Picture: Kings Road House (1922) in West Hollywood

We asked some of the talented filmmakers behind the films in this year's Short Cuts Canada programme 5 short questions in order to get a quick introduction to them and some insight into their genius minds. Have a read through the first installment here and you'll see the madcap bunch we're dealing with. More to come!


SIMON ENNIS, Director, The Canadian Shield

1. Where do you come from?
I was born in Toronto, Ontario but came into my own in Drumheller, Alberta - the dinosaur capital of Canada.

2. What influenced your film?
The hard work and talent of everybody who worked on it.

3. Why filmmaking?
I'm a lousy baseball player, a lazy musician and, thanks to a thyroid condition, unable to qualify as a guinea pig for pharmaseudical research.

4. Who is your creative hero?
Having a 'hero' seems to me a little antithetical to being creative. That being said I'm a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, Marcel Duchamp and the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays.

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
The guest pass - I hope to see at least 30 films!


JULIA KWAN, Director, Smile

1. Where do you come from?
Born and raised in Vancouver, B.C.

2. What influenced your film?
Smile was one of the short stories I wrote while I was developing my feature, Eve & the Fire Horse.  I turned that story into a short script, which was meant to be my "calling card" film for my feature.  However, with finances in place for both, the production for the feature came together faster than the short so I ended up making my "calling card" after my feature!

3. Why filmmaking?
Filmmaking gives me a voice and allows me to connect with people on a personal level.  

4. Who is your creative hero?
Hirokazu Koreeda

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
Watching films! (Particularly excited about the new films by Ang Lee, Julie Taymor, Noah Baumbach, Auraeus Solito)


SHERRY WHITE, Director, Diamonds in a Bucket

1. Where do you come from?
I come from Stephenville, on the west coast of Newfoundland, a community of about 7 thousand people.

2. What influenced your film?
I think I was inspired by how much we will delude ourselves in relationships - so many people are so afraid to be alone that they will convince themselves that anything fits. But it's hard to go back to the delusion when someone blows the whistle on it.

3. Why filmmaking?
I really believe in stories, I think they help us feel connected  
to humanity.  With film, there is so much potential for rich and provocative story telling, because you have both words and pictures.

4. Who is your creative hero?
I don't really have one creative hero, but I have loads and loads of people how have influenced me.  From Mary Walsh to Lynne Ramsay to Bruce Springsteen - all tellers of great stories.

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
I'm looking forward to stumbling upon some gems that I wouldn't have otherwise stumbled upon.


DECO DAWSON, Director, The Last Moment

1. Where do you come from?
I was born and raised in Winnipeg the geographic asshole of Canada,  but now live in Detroit, the economic asshole of America.

2. What influenced your film?
100 years of film history, as my film depicts an on again off again relationship told through five periods of film history, Film Noir, Dogme95, Late-Era Hitchcock, Tarantino and French New Wave.

3. Why filmmaking?
It is my most recent obsession.

4. Who is your creative hero?
Tied, Kelsey Grammer and Jackie Joyner-Kersee

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
All those nifty AFG commercials before the films.


SEAN GARRITY, Director, ReOrder

1. Where do you come from?
Born in Winnipeg. Live in Winnipeg.

2. What influenced your film?
A dream I had. In the dream I was writing and writing and writing and never actually making a film? at least I wish it were a dream.

3. Why filmmaking?
My mom thought it would be more financially stable than being a musician.

4. Who is your creative hero?
Jaco Pastorius, Guy Maddin, Paul Klee, Iwai Shinji, Zadie Smith, Chris Marker

5. What are you most looking forward to at TIFF?
There are so many great films that won?t get distributed in Canada ? I have to see ?em at the TIFF or forever hold my peace.