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International Shorts I

The International Shorts I program at the Atlantic Film Festival was great. It’s one of the reasons that I love going to festivals as shorter work is hard to see outside of the festival context. The program started off with the quirky mocumentary “Walking with Walken” about an obsessed British Christopher Walken fan who doesn’t do an impression of Walken so much as channel him. “Der Er En Ybdig Mand” (This Charming Man) is a Danish film about a man who is unemployed and has a somewhat farcical experience of being mistaken for an immigrant. At times I was a bit uneasy with directions that the film was going in, but it turned out to be a clever look at prejudices that are hidden and not so hidden. “Gravel” is about a single mom who takes her teenage daughter and a friend to meet an ex-convict she may be interested in. Beautifully shot on HD, it suggests rather than tells and leaves things ambiguous in a good way. “10 Again” is a nice series of 3 stories packaged up into one where adults in voice-over tell stories of their childhood while we see young actors portray what we are hearing. My favourite though was “El Elegante” which is a very quirky 16mm short about a man and woman in a decaying (but interesting) old hotel. Very strange characters, great art direction, music and some dancing – I loved it!

September 16, 2003 10again, aff2003, elegante, film, gravel, shorts, thischarmingman, walkingwithwalken

John Greyson Master Class

I’m so glad that I saw Proteus and then was able to take John Greyson‘s Directing Master Class. It was a lot of fun and was packed with clips and great stories from the soft-spoken and genuinely nice guy that he is. I don’t know what I expected, but it was an engaging way to spend my Sunday afternoon. His background is in video art and while many try to categorize him, I think that he embodies the spirit of the independent filmmaker. All of his work is challenging and crams a dizzying range of ideas into beautiful structures. Seeing clips from his body of work along with his commentary revealed patterns, concerns and a wealth of information about telling a story through the media of film and video. A highlight for me was a short produced by Greyson as part of the 25th Anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival that encapsulated the love that we have for film and festivals.

There were fascinating glimpses into the process that he has followed and the challenges that he has overcome. He is one of the many filmmakers who grew out of the coop scene which is the backbone of media arts production in Canada. His diverse experience was shared as he talked about his video art, feature filmmaking and episodic tv (“Made in Canada”, and “Queer as Folk”). I took pages of notes and here are some gems that I took from the session: “three is so nice”, Movies of the Week – “interesting ways to talk about our lives”, “lunches are good”, documentary – “an immersion in ideas and not emotions”, and directing is “finding what feels right.”

September 16, 2003 aff2003, johngreyson, proteus, workshop

Proteus

John Greyson’s latest feature film is the hauntingly beautiful Proteus, which, on the surface, tells the story of love triangle set in 1725 in a prison garden in Cape Town. Greyson doesn’t like things to be too simple and it’s amazing to watch how all the diverse elements unfold together. While it is a historical drama it is full of wonderful anachronisms and is constructed in a such a way that makes you realize that you are watching someone tell a story, even though you still become emotionally involved. The film took 6 years to make and is the blossoming of a collaboration between John Greyson and Jack Lewis. The production is a coproduction between Canada and South Africa and effectively uses the South African locations. The careful crafting of the script and the ideas tells a story that works across time and combines themes that you wouldn’t think possible in a way that is both visceral and intellectual.

September 16, 2003 aff2003, film, johngreyson, proteus, review

Frame x Frame I

The first animated shorts program of the Atlantic Film Festival, Frame x Frame, was a diverse and entertaining mixture of styles, technique, and stories. Some of the highlights of the program was a 3-D animation called, “The Freak” which told the story of a … freak … who wanders around a city. It had a great soundtrack and a neat use of shallow focus, which you don’t see all the time in 3-D animation. The highlight of the program was another 3-D animation called “Blink” which tells the story of the challenge that a family of worms face when their home is threatened. There was also some more traditional animation with an Irish adaptation of an Inuit legend, “From Darkness“, and the NFB’s “Penguins Behind Bars” which was a slightly long take on the girls gone bad noirish drama with penguins. At another stylistic end was the evocative sand-animation of “Rehy Fox” which featured a beautiful soundtrack of an Irish man telling the story of a canny fox.

September 16, 2003 aff2003, blink, film, fromdarkness, penguinsbehindbars, rehyfox, shorts, thefreak

International Shorts I

John Greyson Master Class

Proteus

Frame x Frame I

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