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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

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

23rd Atlantic Film Festival

Today the latest installment of the Atlantic Film Festival starts in Halifax. It’s a great festival that is big enough to have a wide range of films, but small enough to be able to know more of the people involved with it. The timing is just about perfect as my Screen Arts students have to go to a number of films as part of school, which also means that I get to go to the festival. It’s a great time to network, meet new people, talk about films and actually see some too. It looks like there is a great lineup of films and I’ll be writing about them shortly.

September 12, 2003 aff2003

3 / 3

Proteus

Frame x Frame I

On The Corner

23rd Atlantic Film Festival

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