CINEMA C AN A D A •

The Averted Eye Memory, lies and videotape at TFF's Perspective

BY TOM PERLMUTTER

t began six years ago with a massive process, assert its future. The success of the film-going public. Those were the' good years' seemed totaUy impervious to it. The retrospec­ retrospective that had everybodycheering. retrospective firmly anchored Perspective everybody talks about. " He carried on to speak tive brought the ghosts out -like Larry Kent who The jaunt (actually wi th 2S0-plus films it Canada as a fixture at Toronto's Festival of of an optimism based on aretum to the past; an hadn't been heard of in almost 20 yea rs. They was more like an arduous hike) down Festivals and as the leading showcase for new excision of the history that foUo wed, th ose rattled their chains, cried out to be remembered Icinematic memory lane validated Canaclian Canaclian cinema . But tha t moment of euphoria horror days of the tax shelter boom and the more like the lost souls in Hades to Aeneas, and cinema through the very fac t of its existence and, was shortlived . Niggling doubts began to creep subtle horror of being consumed by video by continued to walk the moors of Canadian perhaps more importantly, through its reception in . way of the Broadcast Fund . cinema, unseen. by an eager audience. Canadians, it seemed, If, on the one hand, the 1983 retrospective For others, the celebration of the past was an In reviewing the foUowing year's Perspective had come to reclaim their film past and, in the affirmed Canadian cinema; it also opened the occasion for lamenting a present dominated by Canada, Michael Dorland spoke of the terrible doors ona kind of fatal nostalgia for the late '60s money and television, co-productions, and belatedness of Canadian cinema; of its working Tom Perlmutter is acontributing editor to Cinema when we had it and then lost it. Pa ul Almond perverse government policy. Gilles Carle under the burden of a past which it can never Canada. He is CIIrrently working with John Walker told Cinema Canada, "Our films were as good as bitterly noted that" writers and artists are qui te grasp, and feeling bewildered in the face of on Distress Signals, adOClimentary film whose Australian cinema, as any European cinema ; forgotten people in this field . " Canaclian cinema the present-day Scylla of international cinema su bject is the intenUltional television revolution . they offered a wide, rich experience for the at present, when superimposed on the past, and the Charybiclis of television . He noted that

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Canadian cinema is "burdened by the necessity concerns illuminated Perspective Canada's erasure of the past. Subversion of the past is the landscape as his central point of reference of restoring a past from which we have been screens, this year saw the return of the dead agenda of the patriarch/producer as he aims to emerging into the film as its conscience presence severed" and followed the trail of the past in that father and a renewed assumption of the burden beget his successor, Lance, in 's in the scrub land of New Mexico. Then Walker's year's crop of Canadian films from My Americall of the past. In White Lnke, Colin Browne's exercise in video, memory and catatonia, moment of truth comes, not in confrontation COllsill to Samuel LOlillt and COllado's Sweetheart. innova tive home movie documentary, the Speakillg Parts. with Strand or his images, but in the peatscape The ghosts, the cinematic fathers, at the absent patriarch is the black hole at the centre of In 1985, the patriarch came to Canada in of the Hebrides when he plays out his wish retrospective had faded wi thout being wrestled the film. If the actual father in Anne Wheeler's 's My American Cousin; this year fulfillment of playing the lather and literally to the ground; if their legacy remained it was as Bye Bye Bili es is fee ble in the face of his daughter's the child has grown enough to venture into the emerges from under the dark cloth. much in their howling Lear-like negativity, that rebellion, he is only a surrogate for the real heart of patriarchy in Wilson's memory within a In Phil Hoffman's River, landscape is memory, awful " nothing" which launches the madness of patriarch, the husband whose absence fills the memory, American Boyfriellds - the film itself a but the memory he invests in the river is so Lear; that dark centre which Canadian cinema as screen. Gordon Pinsent is the dead father and remembrance of an earlier film success. In Trois hermetic as to be inaccessible in other than a a whole seemed both fa tally attracted to and the ghost in the machine of Termini Station, a title Pommes the male no longer sits on the patriarchal generalized notion of a river adventure whose incognizant of. that echos a different homicidal patriarch, Klaus throne; but neither is he ready to give it up. greatest expression is American: Huck Finn on Barbie of Hotel Termill!l s. In John Walker's the Mississippi. During the third year of Perspective Canada, Dispossessed, he reminds himself of his past by Strand , the photographer!filmmaker searches for Dorland noted the very conscious attempt of marking the landscape where he killed a his spiritual father who eludes him, leaving In Dark Island, Turnbull, unable to escape the Guy Maddin to nail the father into his coffin in woman. The deranged promoter! patriarch of behind iruagistic tracks and gestures. landscape, attempts to tunnel through it, laying his short set tellingly in the Roadkill redeems the damage of liberating The Dead Father, Abou t those images, Les Matins lnfideIes tells down in the woods a cloth tunnel for his Dominion of Forgetfulness. (Many of us still woman by appearing out 01nowhere and protagonist at his critical experiential turning us that fathers lie, and their images lie too. The shooting everyone. De/lied is the story of remember living in a similar place, the Dominion fusti ce point. patriarch dominates in Cold COllifort and white dominant male culture deeming what is of Canada, to whose forgetfulness we, as In turning to the landscape what is it they are attempts to do so in Foreign Nights in memory of truth and is the other side of the coin of Wllere the immigrants, readily acquiesced because this was turning away from? That old patriarch's a past alien to the rebelling daughter. The Spirit Lives. Ha ving erased an indigenous past, the land's chief resource, a place where one handbook, the Bible, suggest one answer. In a patriarch almost wins amid the beautiful images this culture superinlposes a new one: alcoholic, could forget. ) crucial episode in Genesis, Noah curses Canaan of Where The Spirit Lives, a film in which the violent, murderous. An attempt to redress the for having looked on his nakedness while he lay If, during the succeeding two years, other patriarchal project is most bluntly stated: balance is made in Black Motlier Black Daughter, asleep in a drunken stupor. Seeing the father and Goddess Remembered gently reminds us of the exposed subjects Canaan to becoming the slave once beneficial primacy of the matriarchy. of slaves of brothers. It's the naked lather that Ha ve I stretched the point? Perhaps, but not the eye avoids. To remain focused is to confront overmuch. That thread of past, memory, and the sexuality, the dominance, the violence, and, ONTARIO patriarchy seems inescapable. As interesting is in th e end, to subvert it . In Wheeler's Bye Bye the manner in which the films choose to deal Blues landscape fills in for the sexual conflict that with it. Often the remembering is not a search never climaxes. In Cold Comfort we build up to ARTS for the past, but a fumbling around it. At the the father's violent consummation, and it COUNCIL critical moment of seeing, the mechanism fogs. doesn't happen. Unable to see the story through We veer away from the dark centre and the to its natural conclusion, the fi lmmaker replaces image becomes the lie that it is inMat insirlfideJes. The Ontario Arts Council offers grants to the real ending with a fair)' tale, the ubiquitous professional artists who are residents of Ontario, The averted eye is the central device of Wllite Canadian fairy tale that we are masters in our working in the following disciplines: Lake. Ase ries of interviews unfolds an Oedipal own home. The truth of our colonization is story, not so much in content but in structure: unbearable to see. SCREENWRITING that slow, relentless revelation of the truth that The most conspicuous absence from the gnaws like a worm in the ro se. The difference screen is the life at this country. Five years of to assist with the development of feature-length here is that the point of knowing is never Muironeyism and four years of acrimonious dramatic screenplays. consummated; th e truth neve r acknowledged. debate on free trade and Meech Lake, have left Deadline: February 1 At critical points the women, descendents of no Cinematic Traces. To Britain's My Beautiftd FILM Herbert Guernse y, a dead man dominating their Launderette, we oppose Foreigll Nig hts , a bland lives by his absence, who mainly tell the story bow to official multiculturalism, Weicollle to towards the production costs of documentary, look into the camera and stop dead in their Callada stops exactly where the story begins to dramatic, animated or experimental films. tracks. The camera averts its eye. And where contradict the notion of an open society. Trois Deadlines: April 1, November 1 does it look? Where else but the landscape, Pomm es and Matins Infideles are testimonies of a seeking relief from history in images of the confused and weary ; the technique of VIDEO terrain . the Bourassa regime has, in the end, over­ to assist with the production of original video art. The landscape is vested wi th all the attributes whelmed passion and conviction. Cold COlllfort Deadlines: February 1, August 15 that elsewhere history claims. In Wllite Lnke the and Termilli Station cloak themselves in camera roams across th e hillside as if expecting American forms to peek at the margins of a Please note: all applications must be supported at any moment to lind the Whi te Horse of marginalized (rural) society; the former as a by examples of recent work. Berkshire or the Long Man of Sussex, those giant kind of true north Sam Shepard; the latter some neolithic figures carved into England's chalky curious revival of the gothic romance of deep For further information and application forms, soil. But Guernsey's imprint is branded on his south fiction. We scrape away at the past but contact: daughters and granddaughters, not in the refuse to define it, becoming like lance in Film, Photography and Video Office landscape. If the patriarch's project is erasure, Speaking Parts, alienated, on the verge of ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL the filmmaker has internalized it, using catatonia. Cinematically, we remain silent, 151 Bloor Street West, Suite 500 landscape as the eraser of memory . ruminating on hazy video memories, waiting for Toronto, Ontario M5S 1T6 (416) 961-1660 In Strand, the true protagonist 01 the film, the the Big Brother producer to emerge on the screen image - maker searching for Strand, uses and give us our speaking part . •

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McCALL, DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT board of the beleaguered public broadcasting nehvork. Gera rd OSBORN, DIRECTOR OF LEGAL AFFAIRS AT ALLIANCE Veilleux, a career civil servant and expert money manager, was AT ALLIANCE TORONTO -lael McCall has been named to the named president. TORONTO - Philippa Orsborn is the new Director of Legal newly-created position of Director of Development at Alliance "As chairman of the board, I will be responsible for the Affairs at Alliance Entertainment Corporation. Entertainment Corporation. Ms. McCall will seek new film development of policy," Watson said after his appointment Before joining Alliance, Ms. Osborn was an execu tive at th e and television projects as well as supervise Alliance's current was made public. "Veilleux's job as CEO will be wha t a CEO merchant bank, Rothschild Australia Ltd . where she was development slate. She will report to Steven DeNure, does, the day-to-day operating of the corporation. " Since responsible for the financing of independent Australian Vice-president of Development. Watson's position will not be formally created until a new productions. In the course of her career, Ms. Orsborn was a Prior to joining Alliance, Ms. McCall was a producing broadcasting act is passed by Parliament, he will head a corporate foreign exchange dealer in the treasury division of resident at the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies. sub-committee of CBC direc tors on strategy and planning. the merchant bank, DFC New Zealand Ltd. Ms. Orsborn Formerly Creative Affairs Executive at London's United British Reaction to the appointments was uniformly positive. "Pat obtained her law degree from Victoria University of Artists, she played a key role in developing projects for West Watson is a man with vision," said Peter Mortimer of the Wellington in 1985. End theatres as well as television and feature films , including ACFTP . "Veilleux is a strong administrator and manager. Nicholas Roeg's "Castaway," "The Lonely Passion of Judith Everything depends on how the job is decided, but together • Hearne " starring Maggie Smith, and "Windprints" starring they make a good team. " Sam Jephcott, spokesman for the John Hurt. Before Joining UBA, she was the editor of the CFTA, said, "Pat Watson has everybody's endorsement. PAYNE TO OFRB British industry trade journal" AlP & CO." (now "The There are few people in the country who have his reputation TORONTO -Toronto journalist and newscaster Robert Payne Producer " ). to run the board. The bureaucrat, nobody knows. Presumably has been appointed as Chairman of the Ontario Film Review he's been brought in to balance the books at the CBe. " Board (OFRB). The new chairman has spent more than two Denis Harvey, v-p of CBC's English services, was quoted as decades with the broadcast media in Ontario and Quebec. An • saying, "It's about time we had a broadcaster in that level of award-winning newspaper columnist, Payne has also been MARGO RAPORT VP OF SALES AT NORSTAR the corporation. (Watson) knows the CBC well, and involved in a number of community and charitable projects TORONTO - Norstar Entertainment Inc. has completed the personally supports the objectives of public broadcasting. " such as Easter Seals, United Way and Lung Association consolidation of the Company's international sales operations Other comments include: Doug Bassett, CEO, Baton campaigns. Previous to his appointment, he was a member of and appointed Margo Raport to the posi tion of Vice- President Broadcasting: "Watson is an excellent choice and Mr. Veilleux theOFRB. of Sales for the division, it was announced by Peter R. is known as a businessman who understands the balance Simpson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norstar between revenue and expenses. " ; Trina McQueen, director of • Entertainment Inc. CBC news and current affairs: " Abroadcaster in the top In a move that now makes Norstar Entertainment a position isa major breakthrough. Mr. Veilleux is committed to NEW FUND DIRECTORS fully-integrated production and distribution entity, the the CBe. "; Moses Znaimer, president of Ci tyTV and Much TORONTO - Two well-known Canadian producers have Company this month re-Iocated its foreign sales arm to its Music:" It's always such a nice surprise when the government joined the Board of Directors of FUND (Foundation to corporate headquarters in Toronto, from Los Angeles, where does the right thing. " Underwrite New Drama for Pay Television). They are Ian it has been operating under the inc of Simcom International for Veilleux, 47, a self-described "faceless bureaucrat", was McDougall, president of Abaton Pictures Inc., and Michael the last five years. The division, which handles all foreign born in Quebec and joined the government service in Donova n, partner in Salter Street Films of Halifax. McDougall theatrical, home video and television sales for the Company Manitoba's Department of Finance. He worked fo r the federal will replace Michael Spencer as the Canadian Film and will now operate under the corporate banner of Nors tar government in the Department of Finance and the Treasury Television nominee, while Donovan replaces Gordon Parsons International. Board before being appointed Secretary to the Cabinet fo r as the Atlantic representative on the FUND Board. John H. In her new post, Raport will be responsible for the Federal-Provincial Relations in 1982, then Secretary of the Kennedy, head of Development Arts, Music and Science for day-to-day sales and marketing operations of Norstar's foreign Treasury Board in 1986. He has been called a brilliant money CBC-TV, who also is leaving the Board, has not yet been division and will also oversee the acquisition of programming manager, a skillful administrator and a hard-nose negotiator. replaced. for overseas distribution, an area in which Simpson says the "I did not accept this job to preside over th e demise of the CBC," he said at the time of his appointment. Company plans to invest major financing. Patrick Watson, 61, is the first CBC insider to rise to the top • since Alphonse Ouimet became president in 1958. He is FORTIN AT CINEMA PLUS • independent, passionate and persuasive. He has worked not MONTREAL - Mario Fortin has been appointed Video LABELLE ACTING V·P AT CBC only as a producer, but also as an interviewer, host, and even Director at Cinema Plus Distribution Inc.. He will be OTTAWA - Marcel Labelle has been appointed Acting an actor. His most recent project was the 1D-part international re sponsible for the management, organization and promotion Vice-President, Communications by the CBe. He replaces coproduction The Stmggle for Democracy, which was telecast on of video. Also appointed was Mrs . Claudette Lapointe as Antonin Boisvert. Labelle will be responsible for developing the CBC earlier this year. He assumes his new job with the assistant to Fortin. and ensuring the application of CBC communications plans at corporation as of November 1. the national and regional levels. He will also chair Communi­ cations' Senior Planning Group composed of the directors of • Communications for the networks and regions. • TOM DARL YMPLE, HEAD OF FINANCE ATPRIMEDIA FORGET TO HEAD FRENCH PROGRAM AT NFB TORONTO - Tom Dalrymple is Primedia Production's first • MONTREAL - Robert Forget has been appointed as head of Head of Finance, effective immediatel y. He joins the company WATSON AND VEILLEUX TO HEAD CBC French-language programming at the National Film Board. He from Nelson Videovend Limited I Nelson Vending TORONTO - Twenty-three years ago, the CBC cancelled the replaces Georges Dufaux. Forget, who has been with the Technology Limited where he was Vice President, Operations groundbreaking current affairs program This HOllr Hn s Seven board since 1965, was a founder of the video production and and Finance. Tom Dalrymple joins other senior members of Dnys and accused co-host Patrick Watson of an anti-manage­ distribution co-op, Ie Videographe. Since 1978, Forget has the Primedia team Jonathan Harris, Gwen Iveson, and Simon ment bias. Last month Watson was named chairman of the headed up the French animation studio of the NFB. Barber.

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