art film vancouver work Film Work, September 9, 2009 3:34 PM 0 comments
Subtle forks
A tangential look at Canadians—who they are, what they like and how they got this way—though the lenses of their contemporary film narratives, settings and characters. A series of films I've curated for the Fall Screenings at the 221a Gallery in Vancouver.
September 22
Project Grizzly, 1996, 72min, Peter Lynch
A National Film Board of Canada documentary about the lifelong project of Troy Hurtubise, a man who has been obsessed with researching the Canadian grizzly bear up close in his homemade "grizzly-proof" suit of armour.
October 6
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, 1993, 98min, François Girard
A collection of vignettes highlighting different aspects of the life, work, and character of the acclaimed Canadian classical pianist.
October 20
ᐊᑕᓈᕐᔪᐊᑦ (Atanarjuat): The Fast Runner, 2001, 172min, Zacharias Kunuk
The telling of an Inuit legend of an evil spirit causing strife in the community and one warrior's endurance and battle of its menace. Atanarjuat was the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in Inuktitut, the language of Canada's Inuit people.
November 3
My Winnipeg, 2007, 80min, Guy Maddin
A surrealist-inflected pseudo-documentary about Winnipeg, Maddin's home town. Blending legend, history, and a biting critique of the city's treatment of its architectural past with fantasy and more personal matters, the film explores issues of local attachment, culminating in an explanation of why Maddin continues to live in the city of his birth.
Preview clip.
November 17
Les Invasions Barbares, 2003, 99min, Denys Arcand
The plot revolves around the character of Rémy and his battle with terminal cancer, and the efforts of Sébastien, his estranged son, to make his dying father more comfortable in his last days. A sequel to Arcand's 1986 The Decline of the American Empire, this movie centres on an exploration of the original characters, still largely socialist and proponents of Québécois nationalism, but both political and economic developments since the 1970s, as well as their own aging, make this stance seem somewhat anachronistic.
Premise
How would you describe a Canadian? What films get a new resident of Canada interested in the principal issues and discourses in contemporary Canadian culture? Films chosen are first and foremost entertaining, avoiding didacticism, historicism, aka boring-ism. None of the films, their characters, their stories overtly tackle a Canadian issue but contain brief forays that touch on a much larger Canadian experience. These little hooks--a side dialogue, a landscape, a producer or director--can offer doors to deeper Canadian questions. You might come away with a new way to describe a Canadian, or new questions about what it means to be one yourself.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.—George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Copyright © 2002–2009 Jeff Werner, Creative Commons (Some rights reserved), Login
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