2009 Spring
Table of Contents
Are you ready to spend three years of your life for something that will not bring you too much money and a lot of pain?
Rene Rozon, FIFA's Founding Director
The pared-down functionality of the filmmaking allows for [Georg] Baselitz's work to seem all the more vibrant and dramatic.
Adam Nayman
Recurring themes of order and anarchy did emerge. In Zone B both were presented with shifting contextual values and meanings that constitute the nature of politics, power relations, the creative spirit and sex on a day-to-day basis.
Wayne Baerwaldt
It's hard to imagine a spectacle more awesome and strangely dead than what Chaos Computer Club achieved at City Hall. Entitled Stereoscope or Blinkenlights, the CCC turned the curvileniear City Hall windows into a huge Pong game board.
Wayne Baerwaldt
Video is really about sound whereas still photography- if it doesn’t have movement, it’s a dead picture. Still photography is about freezing time. Photographs that I like have a lot of movement, emotion and drama. It captures the decisive moment in time, the 1/100th of a second.
Larry Towell
As the lone Canadian at the esteemed photography agency Magnum, Towell used a small camcorder that Sony gave to some of the company’s shooters as a proposed experiment. “I wouldn’t have made a film unless someone gave me a camera.”
Allan Tong
[The Making of Monsters] was a zany, subversive, occasionally screwball and constantly thought-provoking short, about the clash of artistic practices and mass media realities. And its central casting was genius: [Bertolt] Brecht was played by a talking fish.
Matthew Hays
I think the suburban dream has turned out to be a nightmare.
Christopher Hume
I don’t want people to like [the film]. I want them to be angry, and I want them to be provoked into taking some kind of stance and demanding more and insisting on more than what we’ve got so far.
Christopher Hume
Stories can be resolved, films can be resolved, but mine aren’t resolved. I’m making conditions that are not final.
Stan Douglas
[Stan] Douglas’ visually complex works aren’t just mechanically and stylistically clever, they offer constellations of carefully researched historical references, and poetic and rigorous intellectualism.
Nancy Lanthier
The big question in making a film biography of an artist is finding the balance between the man and the work. Where is that balance?
John Walker
I started seeing that in my own life, I moved from photography to cinematography, in order to escape that isolation of the camera. You know, my girlfriends all complained when I was a teenager: “You’re spending all your time in the darkroom. What’s wrong?” I could see parallels there between [Paul] Strand and me.
John Walker
The longer you hold a shot, the more intensity a scene has because you’re there. You’re present. And that’s the scene that both makes and breaks the film.
John Walker
Some people that there is some kind of narrative element in my films, even though it's largely inadvertent. So I thought, well I never have tried telling a story in my films, maybe I should try.
Michael Snow

One thing is certain: we can't keep looking at cable companies to be the saviour of broadcast assets. The CRTC know they've got to come up with a less monopolistic map of our broadcast and new media world and create conditions for new players to enter the field.

Barri Cohen

POV INTERVIEW

Art and the Documentary - John Walker

An interview by editor Marc Glassman

The director-cinematographer-writer discusses his innovative doc, Passage, the award-winning portrait Strand: Under the Dark Cloth, his film on the painter Jack Chambers, Tracks and Gestures, the drama A Winter Tan and his youthful career as a photographer in Montréal.

ART FILM FESTIVALS

FIFA: Triumph of the Art Doc

by Maurie Alioff

Montréal’s Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) has grown from a niche event in 1981 into a ten-day showcase of 300 films from 30 countries. Alioff previews the latest edition of the festival.

Reel Artists Festival Comes of Age by Adam Nayman Toronto’s Reel Artists is a curated festival- not a spectacle. Nayman examines a special- and specialized- event.

PROFILES

Stan Douglas produces films that don’t begin or end- they are in process

by Nancy Lanthier

Douglas is an internationally acclaimed artist, who uses film, photography and installation art in his work. Lanthier looks at the man and the artist.

Larry Towell: Sound and Vision

by Allan Tong

Canada’s only member of the famous Magnum photo group, Larry Towell’s work bridges the gap between great photo-journalism and documentary. Tong investigates.

CULTURE OF CITIES

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2008 Zone B: Reflections on Art and Artists in the Financial District by Wayne Baerwaldt. One of Nuit Blanche 2008’s curators, Baerwaldt reflects on the art he chose- and its reception during a night of high jinx- and high visibility.

Living City: An Investigation

by Jonathan Goldsbie

Goldsbie examines cityscapes as sites for art and cultural renewal through the prism of a new doc by Hadley Obodiac about Canada’s urban centres.

COLUMNS

Soundscaping: The Art of Snow

by Heidi McKenzie

McKenzie profiles Michael Snow, a great Canadian icon, who has made music, film and art for more than 50 years.

Legends

by Matthew Hays

Hays fondly recalls a banned art piece, the notorious short, John Greyson’s The Making of Monsters.

Policy Matters: The Balance Sheet Does Not Hold

by Barri Cohen

Cover: John Walker, photo: Simone Sinclair Walker