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The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

Long Tack Sam poster Long Tack Sam was an acrobat, magician, performer and vaudevillian who was one of the most amazing performers of all time. He’s also Ann Marie Fleming‘s great-grandfather and the star of The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. Thanks to her search and travels around the world she pieces together the story of the man who performed around the world and influenced magicians and performers for decades, but he didn’t make the leap into film as he always believed that the portrayal of those of Asian heritage on the screen should be positive.
The film is a visual feast with a dizzying array of animation styles and approaches to tell the story. Presenting stills in an interesting way is a challenge, but Fleming rises to the occaision with subtle touches such as people in photographs blinking and animation of documents and comic books. It’s a wonderful journey that seems to combine just about every visual way of capturing an image from video to photography to drawing to painting to cinema.

The personal documentary is a tricky thing as what may be interesting to the filmmaker may not be interesting to the viewer. As it says in the end credits, “History is relatives.” Luckily in the skilled hands of Fleming the various stories of Long Tack Sam are revealed to us as she smoothly uses whichever technique works at any particular point in time. You can’t really categorize the film as it combines so many elements together in a skillful way that it’s just about everything you could hope for.

The film is distributed by the NFB and is screening at the Atlantic Film Festival on Sunday, September 14 at 7:05pm. There is also an NFB Master Class with Ann Marie Fleming on Monday that I’ll be enthusiastically attending.

September 13, 2003 animation, history, themagicallifeoflongtacksam

On The Corner

Nathaniel Geary‘s feature film debut is On the Corner, which tells the story of a brother and sister struggling to survive in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It’s a remarkable film that has an understated tone and subtle shooting style with an almost verité quality to it. While the subject matter is dark, it isn’t depressing. The cast is solid with Alex Rice as Angel and Simon Baker as Randy forming the brother and sister pair in performances that draw you in quickly. It’s the type of film that could easily fall into movie of the week territory or have a heavy-handed message, but Geary thankfully lets the story unfold and the characters live their lives as we watch them.
A great film gives you insight into a world that you haven’t seen before and On the Corner does that extremely well. While other films that deal with poverty and drug abuse tend toward melodrama or visual excess, what Geary does is focus on the relationships of the characters, how they fit into the community and the challenges of dealing with a broken family. A story – whether it is a documentary or drama – is about people and not issues and if the people are compelling we’ll think about them and understand a bit more about the choices that they make. There is no easy way out and the film provides a multidimensional and sensitive portrait of the characters so we can’t easily divide the characters between good and bad as everyone does what they need to do to survive.
Shot at the old Portland Hotel where Nathaniel Geary worked and on the streets of the Downtown Eastside the look of the film is dark. Brian Johnson‘s subtle compositions and smooth movements contribute to the documentary and observational atmosphere of the production.
The sad reality of film distribution in Canada is that it’s hard for independent films to be screened in theatres, so most people will see the film on television. It recently premiered in Toronto at the festival and is screening on Monday, September 15th at 9:25pm at Park Lane 7 in Halifax as part of the Atlantic Film Festival.

September 13, 2003 aff2003, drama, film, nathanielgeary, onthecorner, review

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

On The Corner

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