Excellent Recent Discoveries

Totally compelling and weird--the stunning photography from The Hellstrom Chronicle  broke ground way before the BBC's Planet Earth--but be prepared to be equally captivated and creeped out!

A Serious Man, Dir: Ethan & Joel Coen, 2009
Tokyo Olympiad, Dir: Kon Ichikawa, 1965
A Chronicle of Summer, Dir: Edgar Morin & Jean Rouch, 1960
Cleo from 5 - 7, Dir: Agnes Varda, 1962
Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, Dir: Tomas Alfredson, 2011 (The original BBC series with Alec Guiness is superior, but I could not resist this recent version)
The Hellstrom Chronicle, Dir: Walon Green & Ed Spiegel, 1971
Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968
Another Country, Dir: Marek Kanievska, 1984
Another Year, Dir: Mike Leigh, 2010
Brief Encounter, Dir: David Lean, 1945
Nothing But A Man, Dir: Michael Roemer, 1964

Memories of Underdevelopment, Dir: Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968

Sergio at a loss, in the beautiful and complex Memories of Underdevelopment

Once again I have neglected this blog, although running commentaries, witty declarations, accolades and many "important" things have been said in my head. The core feelings remain the same, but soon, the firm shell harboring these fantastic ideas turns into a dusty husk and well, like all best intentions -but delayed actions- I want to translate what was true then.


Over the past several months I've had two unexpected but fascinating opportunities to travel to places that have passed my mind as curiosities, but never committed to as vacation destinations: Mexico and Cuba. Thousands of Canadians travel to these exotic lands and I understand why, they are warm, colourful, and (somewhat) affordable. I will say that I found both places very interesting, although both trips were fundamentally different. What struck me the most was my experiences in Cuba -- people kept telling me I should go for 'the experience' and 'before Castro dies'. I actually went as part of a graduate teaching residency from York University. This in part added relief to my purpose of being there. I was supposed to help and do things, as opposed to just aimlessly wandering around and 'experience' things. Immediately upon arrival in Cuba I realized I would not 'experience' things as others do.


My destination started with Varadero, a place I will never go again, and fascinating Havana, which I would go again, I think. For most tourists, the beaches and sunny destinations are a magnet, for me it was surprisingly annoying. I cannot sit around on a beach in the bleating hot sun, blistering my skin, nor hours and hours of walking peeping into the homes of strangers. In Havana, the streets are so narrow that you cannot help yourself. Havana is truly compelling, and I could dedicate a whole entry on just the city alone. But I could not help thinking how I would feel if hoards of wealthy tourists were constantly strolling down my street, gawking with stupid grins on their faces. Just imagine it, every time you left your home there would be a tourist taking a photo of your front door or confidently striding past shouting out Hello! Good Morning! Hello! Thank You!


(But to think of it, I have experienced this in a way--growing up in Victoria, BC, before the city was overtaken by Calgary-Kitsalano Yuppies, hoards of American tourists would flood the city from cruise ships, all acting as if Canadians were strange and exotic people with obscure accents and funny money. I hated them all as they waddled through our beautiful cobblestone streets...anyways--I will not digress into a rant about my lovely Victoria, another time).


I think my issues are really about contrivances. I do not like to feel I must participate in overly contrived environments, hence my distaste for shopping malls, mega-cineplexes, all-inclusive resorts, extended family gatherings. I realize now its because if you try to be 'yourself' you either end up exerting so much energy being grateful and nice (or in some cases a total asshole), that retreating to a cool darkened private room is all you can think about. In Cuba, I was often looking forward to a cool darkened room. However, there is nothing cool, dark or private about Cuba, and for this I was very curious, but deeply uncomfortable. I never felt I could truly rest or be myself, I could never collect my thoughts or feel I had gathered enough solitary time to endure in what would become endless, exhausting, overly sexualized gender roles. (Again this is another issue to discuss at length).


However, and more to my point, before I had left for Cuba I felt it was my duty to try and watch as much Cuban cinema as possible (to somehow make me different that other tourists) but to also prepare me for my residency at the film school. While watching Memories of Underdevelopment, I was deeply affected by its intelligent and personal cinematic realism. The film follows Sergio, a wealthy aspiring writer who stays in Cuba after his family and wife flee to Miami following the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. He goes on to have several girlfriends - some of who are represented as hysterical, dumb, doe-like, captivating conquests - but his running commentary about them is thoughtful and tender. It is not my intent to fully unpack this complex and sophisticated film, only to try and relate to it, and in one particular sequence I was quite struck. After driving around with his friend Pablo and watching his wife leave (most likely forever) Sergio quietly comments:

All the time I drove around with Pablo I felt like puking, throwing up all my family, my business; the mediocrity of my whole class that had been rammed into my stomach.

These private comments are made as he watches his wife walk to the America-bound plane through a thick pane of glass (in well done symbolic framing) - and from here he sinks into a malaise through a series of unsatisfying relationships, (and one lost love), which seem to drive him down into a cultural and personal kind of drudgery. His profound sense of loss (and to some degree great relief), manifest themselves in confusion and lack of clarity to his life's purpose-severely limiting his ability to write. This creative castration of sorts, the inability to develop further, is in part the theme of the film, and to me most effective. I think many of us have wanted to expunge (or in Sergio's words 'throw up') some deep rooted cultural, familial, personal or class conscious burdens.


I keep making great strides to 'improve' and change my life for long term benefits. This often takes me far away from those I care for, but in the end it is the memories, the burdens of all things keeping me motivated that I'd like to expel. Can I keep starting over again?  I live in a country of opportunity, I am not faced with 'underdevelopment' in the way that Sergio was affected. But I feel as though I need to keep restarting my life, dramatically changing things, radical shifts. I am more than ready to be forever relieved of things rammed into my stomach (and heart and mind). As I prepare for graduation - (my thesis written and film is complete) - I now feel as though I am observing through that pane of glass.

Gertrud, Dir: Carl Th. Dreyer, 1964

Gertrud says goodbye.

Axel's exit.

I've been meaning to post this for a while. In the meantime the intention of what was written has been overridden by other intentions and interests. So this entry is long and a little outdated... but here goes.


2012.  There was something less foreboding about the numbers of 2011, the anti-climatic follow up to the well deformed and imposing '2010'. This new year begins and ends with the number 2, the sharp curve and pointed tips really give this years numerals advantage over last years svelte and delicate 1's. I can feel a sharpness in the air. All the students are back on campus. When I walked in the back and quieter entrance to the film building there was a young woman sitting on a bench, hunched over clutching a freshly opened box of tissue, tears streaming down her face. Later, I came across a loud and very pissed off student yelling in her cell phone giving her friend serious hell for "constantly crying and then getting back together with that loser!" She reminded me of me when I was around 21 and how good it felt to get that angry (of course to only to feel very bad later).  And then only a few minutes later walking across the commons, another young student with blood shot and puffy eyes, tears falling in solid streams, clutching her cell quietly murmuring soft words to it. These personal moments exposed in public are reminders that we share pain, that simple things can cause outrage or sorrow, regret. Its the New Year and it's not all fresh starts and fireworks.


I've been meaning to write more. But in fact I have written more in my life this past year than in many. Most recently I have written many emails to friends and family, however, to my surprise I only heard back from my brother. He is well but overworked running a successful landscaping business with his wife (and father of two). He rarely ever writes me personally and I was very happy to hear from him. However, there is a lingering odd feeling of disappointment that others have not taken the time to write me back. I manifest reasons, mostly, I imagine because all my friends have children or full time jobs or really, possibly, do not have or want to say anything. Perhaps it was my overly contrived and upbeat account of my lovely trip to Mexico that I just returned from. How did I expect my friends to follow up on that? Polite "good for you's" or "fuck you's"? I would gladly take either but this leaves me curious about how and why we try to stay connected, what are the best things to say, should we really bother at all? Why do so many take comfort in Facebook when its really just a forum for pandering, self promotion and posturing. Although, I do enjoy the rare self loathing one liners from a small handful of 'friends'.


Over the past several days I have continued to check myself for unwanted anxieties (which have become my specialty - although I blame my addiction to very strong coffee and often feel like Shannon Wheelers Too Much Coffee Man!) But I am taking on the new year with determination. I feel like I have a lot riding on my thesis film and the serious amount of time and choices I've made to be here.Today it was humorously highlighted in a lecture screening of Agnes Varda's The Gleaners & I, when in one scene she follows a former Teaching Assistant and Masters student as he lives out his unemployed life, selling magazines on the street corner, living in a homeless shelter and gleaning vegetables at outdoor markets for leftovers. I was sitting next to my fellow TA  and we both had to repress nervous laughter but a 'knowing-look'. Few things can compete with a shared-known-look. This form of wordless communication is abject in its precision. It lacks for nothing and only lasts an instant, but those experiencing 'it', know all. I'd like to experience more of them.


The looks in Carl Dreyer's Gertrud are not shared but precise. In fact for most of the film, the lengthy monologues are spoken by deeply pained characters facing away from each other. I found the contrite framing and lengthy monologues both intriguing and exasperating. The lead character Gertrud suffers constantly. She is convinced that she will never acquire shared passionate love, even by former lovers who have returned and profess their devotion to her - they also suffer greatly because of her constant but tender rejections. Everyone is in pain! But Gertrud's pain is most consuming and in one stunning moment, she is framed in the icy glare of a gilded mirror, her body disconnected from the frame of the room only to be held captive by her self absorbed reflection. I wonder if that may have been part of Dreyer's point, or implied meaning behind this famous shot. The whole film has her constantly reflecting on her life and it seems solves nothing.


I can't say that I liked this film. But the very final scene was so interesting for its design and effectiveness. The final goodbye's between now aged Gertrud and old friend Axel are tender in its soft focus lighting and quiet gestures. But when Axel finally leaves and the camera cuts to his departure, the set and framing for this shot is unlike anything else in the film. The whole frame is like a gutted skeleton and detritus of time - the remains of faded youth and love lost. I was captivated by this brief sequence. It visually captured the feelings I have had when I know I am saying a final goodbye to someone I love. This feeling has only happened to me a few times. It is a searing and  lonely feeling. Space seems to narrow and objects become undefined shapes as you focus on the physical body of the one you love. And in Gertrud, Dreyer has done it without tears and sentimentality. He has done it with careful design and framing, which like any memorable passing, is at once simple and complex.

Recent Excellent Discoveries

A devastating portrait of precise and calculated class revolt. Both master and servant get thoroughly maligned in Losey's brilliant psychological thriller, The Servant.

Brightness (Yeelen), Dir: Souleymane Cisse, 1987
Mishima: A Life in Four Parts, Dir: Paul Schrader, 1985
Elevator To The Gallows, Dir: Louis Malle, 1958
The Cow, Dir: Dariush Mehrjui, 1969
Last Year At Marienbad, Dir: Alain Resnais, 1961
Hedgehog In The Fog, Dir: Yuriy Norshteyn, 1975
My Dog Tulip, Dir: Paul & Sandra Fierlinger, 2009
Fisco Jenny, Dir: William A. Wellman, 1932
Baby Face, Dir: Alfred E.Green, 1933
Dinner At Eight, Dir: George Cukor, 1933
The Servant, Dir: Joseph Losey, 1963
Slingshot Hip Hop, Dir: Jackie Salloum, 2008
O'er The Land, Dir: Deborah Stratman, 2009
H2OhOh, Per Se, Dir: Deirdre Logue, 2000/2005
Godzilla (Gojira), Dir: Ishiro Honda, 1954
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dir: Tobe Hooper, 1974
Nosferatu the Vampyre, Dir: Werner Herzog, 1979
The Wages of Fear, Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953

My Dinner With Andre, Dir: Louis Malle, 1981

"I mean... what does that mean?"

I'm having a hard time writing. I feel consumed by thoughts and feelings that have been renewed by a class I'm taking. It's my last credit course and I'm glad that I got in on it when it was offered. Our first class started in a hallway. Since then I've been led blind by a stranger, listened to my own breath, and physically felt a room's energy shift while sitting in silence. And somehow it has everything to do with filmmaking.


But more, I am fascinated by what our instructor shares with us each class. Listening to him, I am taken to a deeply contemplative place by his very carefully considered and personal testimony. He is encouraging us to be aware. And what does that mean? What does it mean to enter a room? How do you approach a room, a frame, your own work? Are we present in this moment?


Today I made my grocery list and upon review had written "Sandwich Breach" instead of "Sandwich Bread". And there, in that moment, I felt very present. Yes, I thought, there has been a breach. It happened along time ago, but soggy splinters and fragments burst out every once in a while. I immediately became aware of the slumping weight of my body sitting the chair, the angle of my face, the hard edge of the desk creasing my arms. I saw for the first time how my handwriting has changed over the years. It is smaller. Breach. The h had a small flourish now. Hmm. The Breach had let in stories so old and ancient to me that I thought I had left them to crumble and blow away in some distant wind.


And then I immediately wanted to share all of this and have a great and bountiful conversation about life and time and - what the hell does it actually mean to be present? I wanted to be sitting with Shawn Wallace and Andre Gregory and rant and pontificate and espouse nonsense and weirdness about life, love, loneliness, altruistic acts, cheating partners, open hearts, flawed personal experiences, and all things existential for better or worse.


Please, someone, make it 1981 again.

Wide Awake, Dir: Alan Berliner, 2006

Alan Berliner is Wide Awake

I've had insomnia for close to 8 weeks now. The slow descent into slumber I used to know and love is hijacked. Everything from news bites, strange sounds, memories, future plans, editing choices, disappointments, political infuriates, kinds words, hard feelings, colours, textures, faces, ambitions, failures. They are all there and I've become a reluctant somnambulist.

This is no better demonstrated and explored than Alan Berliner's excellent documentary Wide Awake. For anyone that has suffered long (or even short term) insomnia you must see this film. Berliner makes personal films, and this one will not disappoint. It is extremely well done and often quite humorous. His insomnia stems from a lifelong struggle. In the film he examines early family years, his own obsessive art practice,  found film footage, sleep therapists, his relationship with his wife to the birth of his son, leaving him feeling “jet lagged in his own time zone". (Yes, exactly).


http://alanberliner.com

The Champ, Dir: Franco Zeffirelli, 1979

Tiny Ricky Schroder as T.J in The Champ

When I was young my Mom often let me an my younger brother stay up as late as we wanted on the weekends. We often watched movies on t.v. very late into the night. As the hours pressed on, more interesting films were shown, and soon the drama and mystery unfolding before us collapsed any sense of external space and time. Sometimes I would break out of the hypnotic trance from a film I was watching and scan our living room, which by this time took on an odd seriousness: the flat ash-like glow from the television illuminated the overstuffed sofas, lace curtains, funky antique furniture, making the space feel faded and fragile. I felt distant from everything except the intense emotions swirling and raging in my heart and mind thanks to some late night film programming. It is from these first 'film' experiences that began a lifelong fascination with cinematic space, (and spatial encounters in general). These early years also managed to form the pleasure I experience when watching very intense or sad movies alone. And I hold those first film impressions and feelings very close to me.

And now, almost 30 years later, there is something incredibly unsettling about being able to go to YouTube and the find these films immediately. My success rate at finding these Pre-Teen-Staying-Up-Way-To-Late-Films have been very high. But the disappointment that often follows after watching a much anticipated clip from those favorite films is so thorough I feel as though something is wrong. My memories have been usurped. What was once a cherished memory has been uploaded into a low-res moving postcard, a cheap rendering sent to me from the past, a murky representation of those moments. What the hell is going on? Hm. Huh. Right. I see. Ok. Fuck. I immediately sink into a strange reverie, starting with anticipation, affection, moving quickly into outright embarrassment (yes, you did go on and on about this film how amazing it was, what it meant to you not long ago!). These films are often not sad, just highly sentimental or just astonishingly bad! WTF?!!!

Case in point is when I recently went to write something brief about my shock and sadness at hearing that Jack Layton had  passed away from cancer. I was reminded of the final death scene in the film The Champ. It seemed appropriate, as I remember the tiny, adorable Ricky Schroder wailing over the body of his father and 'champ' (Jon Voight) and pleading for the other adults in the room to bring him back. I remember being so heartbroken by this scene when I first saw it those many years ago. If any one else remembers this scene  then you should be clenching your chest right now. Tiny Ricky Shroder! "The Champ", dead on the table! Gohd!

Fast forward to 2011, still late night, however I'm watching Tiny Ricky Schroder on a 4x6 window on my computer and he is still adorable. But the death scene is so over the top, saturated in sentimentality and mellow drama, (as I've come to learn in complete tradition of almost all of Zeffirelli's films) that I cant take it seriously, and stop it from playing out completely because I don't want this new-old memory distorting my old-old memories. I am once again made aware of the potency of film as a documentation of cinematic-time, not memory-time. I can watch a film a thousand times and each time my emotional experience will be different, but the mechanics of the film are exact, its just me, revolving around it, like a circling vulnerable earth to a brilliant perfect sun.

By denying a contemporary look at an old memory, I was able to keep my matured heart and critical eye from destroying old attachments (for better or worse). And for this I am unapologetic because it has allowed me to indulge and align Layton as a true champion, and he will be seriously missed.