Obomsawin: Trick or Treaty? DOC-MAKING IN 360 DEGREES Art of the Real in NYC THE WANTED 18

Let It Rain Sturla Gunnarsson’s Monsoon captures the power of nature

FALL 2014 | $8.95 | POVMAGAZINE.COMFALL 2014 | ISSUEPOV 95 195

NO. 95 FALL 2014

FESTIVAL DOCS 36 DEPARTMENTS 8 I’ll Take the Rain: Sturla Gunnarsson’s 2 Editorial BY MARC GLASSMAN Monsoon BY ADAM NAYMAN 5 Policy Matters BY BARRI COHEN A look into Gunnarsson’s poetic essay on Disrupt or Be Disrupted India’s climatic game-changer 46 Pointed View BY ROB KING 12 Trick or Treaty? BY KIVA REARDON Regulate Netflix Examining icon Alanis Obomsawin and her tough new film 48 Freeze Frame BY THOMAS WALLNER Documenting a scene in 360 degrees 16 Where’s the Beef? BY MATTHEW HAYS The Wanted 18? Cows? Hays explores a unique documentary-animation mashup CARLY CLARKE PERSONAL ACCOUNTS 20 Documentaries in VR BY THOMAS WALLNER Look out: 360-degree cinema is about to surround us 28 Twisted Roots BY STEPHANIE BOYD 8 Twenty years of doc-making in Peru

33 Lost Atlantis BY MOZE MOSSANEN Remembering the golden age of art films in Canada

DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY INTUITIVE PICTURES INC. 36 Remember Me BY CARLY CLARKE A personal view of the denizens of ’s Downtown Eastside

OPINIONS 40 The Art of the Real BY CHRISTINA CLARKE Reviewing the Lincoln Center’s new hybrid-doc festival From top: Roberto (photo by Carly 44 An Interview with Thom Andersen 40 Clarke); Monsoon BY CHRISTINA CLARKE (dir. Sturla Clarke discusses hybrid cinema with auteur Gunnarsson, 2014); and scholar Andersen during Art of the Real Eadweard Muybridge,

COURTESY FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER Zoopraxographer (dir. Thom Andersen, 1975)

On the cover: Monsoon (dir. Sturla Gunnarsson, 2014), courtesy Intuitive Pictures Inc.

FALL 2014 POV 95 1 POINT OF VIEW MAGAZINE EDITORIAL BY MARC GLASSMAN

Publisher Judy Wolfe Editor Marc Glassman Art Director Dave Donald Production & Marketing Manager Brian St. Denis Copy Editor Deanna Wong Sales Director Marsha Cummings Photo Researcher Nicholas Gergesha Communications Assistant Zoë Robertson Intern Sonya Suraci Contributing Editors James Buffin, Daniel Cockburn, Janis Cole, Blake Fitzpatrick, Matthew Hays, Tom McSorley, Adam Nayman, Ezra Winton, Jessica Duffin Wolfe Editors Emeritus Manfred Becker, Geoff Bowie, Katherine Dodds, Noelle Elia, Laurence Green, Barbara Mainguy THE FALL IS THE SEASON of city festivals in Canada. From Halifax to Guiding Light Peter Wintonick to to Calgary to Vancouver, celebrations of documentaries, new narrative Board of Directors Melissa Shin (chair), films and animation take place to rapturous crowds, who rarely seem to show up Nadine Sharon Anglin, David Craig (treasurer), in exceptional numbers the rest of the year. Premieres always incite audiences to Sean Farnel, Barry Greenwald, Perry King, Michaelin McDermott (vice-chair), Michael McNamara rapt attention and there seems to be something delightfully piquant about expe- riencing something eagerly anticipated for the first time. Subscriptions rates within Canada, $20/yr ($50 institutions; $15 students); to US, $30 CDN ($65 This fall, Canadian audiences will get a chance to view, appreciate and debate institutions); and overseas, $35 CDN ($80 institutions). three new feature documentaries: The Wanted 18, Trick or Treaty? and Monsoon. All taxes and delivery included. Single issues within They’re by veteran Canadian directors Paul Cowan (with an assist by the talented Canada, $8.95 Amer Shomali), Alanis Obomsawin and Sturla Gunnarsson, all of whom were ini- Point of View acknowledges the support of the tially trained by the NFB. Each film has strong visual and narrative appeal and is set for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1-million in writing and publishing throughout in a fascinating (and contentious) area of the world: Palestine (in The Wanted 18), Canada. Canada’s First Nation reserves and environs (Trick or Treaty?) and India (Monsoon). It’s a pleasure to lead off this issue with articles on all three films and filmmakers. We at POV pride ourselves on getting filmmakers involved in writing pieces for Point of View acknowledges the financial support of the magazine. It’s important to have their voices heard in the only documentary the Ontario Arts Council. magazine in this country dedicated to them and their issues. In a section entitled Point of View is available at major bookstores and Personal Accounts, we invite readers to experience the diverse perspectives newsstands across Canada. Point of View is indexed in of Moze Mossanen, Stephanie Boyd and Thomas Wallner. In “Lost Atlantis,” the Canadian Periodicals Index. Send articles, letters Mossanen, who first came to prominence as a documentary filmmaker dedicated and notices to: to dance, writes about a time in Canada’s recent past when arts broadcasters were Point of View Magazine far more responsive to performance-art docs than they are today. Stephanie Boyd, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 392 Toronto ON M5V 3A8 a courageous Oshawa-raised doc-maker who makes her home in Peru, evokes the Telephone: 647-639-0653 romantic, difficult life of radical filmmakers in her adopted land in “Twisted Roots.” E-mail: [email protected] In a more forward trajectory Wallner describes working with (and experiencing povmagazine.com the effects of ) 360-degree equipment, which may utterly transform the way we twitter.com/POVmagazine experience cinema in the future. facebook.com/POVmag youtube.com/PointOfViewMagazine POV’s expanded mandate is to explore documentary culture in all of its forms. Wallner’s expanded cinema, Cowan & Shomali’s The Wanted 18, with its mixture Please contact Marsha Cummings at 416-556-5302 or e-mail [email protected] of animation and documentary, and Carly Clarke’s “Remember Me” push our for all inquiries related to advertising in boundaries beyond “simply” docs. “Remember Me” is classic street photography, Point of View. with its radical, humanist agenda. It’s a pleasure to welcome Clarke to POV with If you are interested in either working for Point of View her remarkable shots of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and its dwellers. or contributing to the next issue, please contact us at Also looking at expanded definitions of documentary are the programmers of [email protected]. Art of the Real, a new festival dedicated to hybrid cinema in Manhattan. Christina Clarke reviews the first edition forPOV . We hope you enjoy this issue of POV, the new season of festival docs—and life in autumnal Canada.

Point of View was founded by the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, now the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC)

Printed in Canada. ISSUE 95 Fall 2014 Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40012284 ISSN 1198-5666

2 POV 95 FALL 2014 FALL 2014 POV 95 3 4 POV 95 FALL 2014 POLICY MATTERS BY BARRI COHEN Disrupt or Be Disrupted Can the CBC “disrupt” its abysmal decline into irrelevance?

IN ALL THE YEARS of doing this policy column, I’ve written so many pieces on the CBC that I’ve lost count and vowed I wouldn’t venture down that tedious path again. In part, that’s because there’s a sense that nothing ever fundamentally changes with the “Corp(se)” except more loss: of vision, shelf space for documentary and edgy scripted programs, staff and money. Even common good manners seems to have gone if you’re a producer—they’re appalling at getting back to people in a timely way, which leads one to the distinct and unpleasant conclusion that they just don’t give a damn. But since my last column in the spring, the CBC has rolled out a succession of new shocks and with each one, the parade of usual suspects has valiantly shambled forth to opine on “whither the CBC” one more bloody time. So what the heck? It’s a national pastime and I might as well shinny down the rink. As for the CBC shocks, we all grimly know them: more layoffs both immediate and planned (possibly 1,500 by 2020); less space and money for programming owing to $130 million in cuts; and a spin document issued to cauterize it all. Called “A Space for Us All,” it was issued in played in all of this—to wit, policy folks are now using Netflix as a verb: June by the Harperite president, Hubert Lacroix. If you missed it over to get Netflixedis to be truly disrupted, i.e., to see your traditional TV the rousing din of CBC staffers braying for Lacroix’s resignation, you business and advertising model go irretrievably south. are well forgiven. (He refused to go, of course.) Amongst Lacroix’s other “disruptive” ideas are finally some that So what is this “space” and who are the “us” implied here? In a word, policy wonks and critics have wanted for a very long time: selling it’s the Internet, and the “us” are the few staffers left and the millions hardware and real estate assets and outmoded technologies, and of Canadians who, um, use the Internet. In other words, they want outsourcing more content to independent producers, save for news, to “disrupt” (Lacroix’s words) what a public broadcaster traditionally current affairs and the jewel in its crown, radio. does—make content for radio and TV—in favour of making content Yet, the problem, as Simon Houpt noted in The Globe & Mail on for mobile and digital platforms. By riffing (badly) on the au courant June 28, 2014, is that it’s been a long time since English-language business start-up language of “disruption,” Lacroix et al. are just trying TV, at least, has played a significant role in our culture. (Don Cherry to migrate to where the eyeballs are or are going—just as every other doesn’t count, and thankfully he has been disrupted.) Moreover, if broadcaster in the world is doing right now (and which, to be fair, the you’re involved in any way in consuming or contemplating the pro- CBC already started to do very well some years ago). duction of stories for mobile devices or the net, you know they’re not But disruptive? Nope, not at all. And even if it were, according to exactly rich offerings. Not yet anyway. Indeed, what the CBC should Jill Lepore’s bracing deconstruction of the cult of disruption in the have done, and still could, is create a service to rival Netflix’s, with a June 23rd issue of The New Yorker, the history of business disruption platform that could allow for rich content above and beyond eight- is not as smooth and golly-gee progressive as we may think, since a minute mobisodes. Now that would be disruptive. good deal of disruptors actually fail. In any case, what is disruptive is the role wildly successful platforms like YouTube and Netflix have Barri Cohen is a Toronto-based producer and writer.

FALL 2014 POV 95 5 UPCOMING CANADIAN FESTIVALS

6 POV 95 FALL 2014 FALL 2014 POV 95 7 FESTIVAL DOCS

Sturla Gunnarsson’s Monsoon I’ll Take the Rain

By Adam Nayman

S A RULE, IT’S A LAST RESORT to talk about the weather, but Sturla Gunnarsson thinks it’s very interesting. The Emmy- A and Genie-award-winning filmmaker has revelled in extreme climates since his childhood in and says that he’s at his happiest when contending with the elements. “I like weather,” says Gunnarsson over lunch in downtown Toronto. “My comfort zone is just not in a moderate place. I like it to be really cold, really hot, really rainy or really windy. There’s no such thing as bad weather. There are only bad clothes.” So you won’t get any sob stories about a film crew getting soaked in this story about Monsoon, a majestic new documentary shot on location in India and beneath torrents of relentless rain. (The film will touch down this fall at the Toronto International Film Festival.) If Gunnarsson’s previous doc, Force of Nature, was a wary meditation on climate change, Monsoon is an awestruck homage to a meteorological force that has continued unabated for thousands of years. “I think that [Monsoon] has a pagan soul in the same way that Force of Nature does,” says Gunnarsson. “It speaks to the same idea that Suzuki has about the ‘invisible tendrils of attraction,’ which is what some people call love. There is that same sense of intuition, and COURTESY INTUITIVE PICTURES INC. of something numinous within nature.” Certainly some of the imagery in Monsoon touches on the supernatu- ral: the repeated images of gathering clouds and drenched land- and cityscapes have an eerie beauty pitched somewhere between ancient paintings and CGI. “I wanted to do something really cinematic and which would play on a big screen,” explains Gunnarsson, who shot Monsoon (dir. Sturla Gunnarsson, 2014) Monsoon using high-definition 4K Red Epic cameras—the same ones used for some sequences in Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky’s similarly stunning Watermark. He says that what he was after in producer Ina Fichman, who pitched him the project shortly after the Monsoon was a combination of epic scale and intimacy, and that he release of Force of Nature. But it wasn’t the first time that the direc- wasn’t about to sacrifice one for the other. Still, the most lingering tor had considered making a movie on the topic. “I’d been thinking images in the film are those that go big, and he’s proud of them. “There about it for a really long time, probably since I first heard the word is a shot near the end that overlooks the Bangladesh flood plains, and ‘monsoon,’ which was just so romantic,” he says. “When I made Such you’re talking about thousands of kilometres [inside the frame]. You a Long Journey, I was [in India] just before the monsoon arrived. It can see the curvature of the Earth.” was so trippy and druggy and interesting that it just got into my head.” Monsoon took shape after a meeting between Gunnarsson and Although it’s a Canadian-French co-production directed by an

8 POV 95 FALL 2014 Icelandic filmmaker,Monsoon doesn’t feel like the work of outsiders. can just do one task a day. In Bombay, you just try to drive to town and Starting with the shoot for Such a Long Journey, his award-winning that’s it for the day. In India, the three things you need to drive are adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s Mumbai-based character drama, good brakes, a good horn and good luck. But there is also something Gunnarsson is very familiar with India. “For whatever reason, I’m very that transcends all that, and you just let things go.” comfortable there,” he says. “I have photos from the set when I was That’s a healthy philosophy for a film shoot that was designed to directing Such a Long Journey, and while that was a very challenging be at the mercy of the weather. Where other film shoots might try to production, I have this big shit-eating grin on my face in every single shoot around rainfall, Gunnarsson was tracking overcast skies with one. It’s not an easy place to get things done: Sometimes, it’s like you the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. “It was just so capricious,” he

FALL 2014 POV 95 9 Monsoon (dir. Sturla Gunnarsson, 2014) says. “You have a crew and the meter is running. There’s only so much Gunnarsson carefully handpicked his cast one year before rolling money and so much time. You’re reading the reports and saying ‘It cameras during a visit to India with his son. “Over the course of two should be raining here now, but it isn’t.’ You wonder if you should get weeks, we travelled the whole route,” he says. “I looked at the path of on a plane and go to the next place. Or you get to the next place and the monsoon and at the places where it was going to have the most the rain has stopped. Every night, we’d go to bed studying satellite dramatic impact, like the backwaters and the locations below sea level. images. And so we were like everyone else in India during monsoon And in Bombay, of course. The arrival of the monsoon in Bombay is season. We’re subject to the rain gods.” always a mythological thing. We were looking for people whose lives This feeling of deference to the elements is a major theme in would intersect with the monsoon in some way.” Monsoon, which focusses on a wide cross-section of human char- One of the most interesting things about Monsoon is that while acters to complement its ephemeral, eponymous subject. The first the people onscreen are charming, they’re also oddly passive; even character we meet is Akhila Prasad, a 12-year-old girl living with the ones with big personalities, like the Calcutta bookie, radiate—but her family by the riverside in Kerala; they’re well accustomed to the with ambivalence. Gunnarsson says that this shared sensation of being effect that the monsoon will have on their immediate surroundings, acted-upon is the access point to a larger philosophical truth. “I’ve been but the film makes it clear that their preparations before the start of to places where the weather is big, like Iceland. But the monsoon is the rainy season are at best provisional. But then the same goes for something that happens every year, since the beginning of time. There Mr. Santosh, the director of an observatory dedicated to tracking the are stalactites in caves that can tell you how big the monsoons were monsoon and predicting its severity from year to year. And then there thousands and thousands of years ago. You still don’t know, though, is Bishnu Shastri, a Calcutta bookie who takes bets (and occasionally, how big it will be. Or where it’s going to move. That defines the fatalism a bath) on where the rain is going to start or stop next. that you feel in India, I think. One year, a farmer will get all the rain he

10 POV 95 FALL 2014 however long it takes. This is a basic, fundamental rule. Have you ever talked to a filmmaker who got a movie made in the amount of time it was supposed to take?” He says that it was this same quality of stamina that led him to select the relatively unheralded cinematographer Van Royko for the project. “He’s really gifted, a Montreal boy. I thought he could match my stamina. Most people can’t, and I’m fucking old. But I knew he was going to go toe-to-toe with me. A Red Epic isn’t typically something you shoot a documentary on, but he had this amazing rig.... He had stripped it down so it was just this computer and a bunch of lenses. His muscle memory and facility with the camera is just incredible.” That ability to think and work on the fly is key to Gunnarsson, who has moved back and forth between documentaries and feature films for the last 20 years and admits to having a restless sensibility. “Robert Altman is sort of my hero,” he says. “He had a lot of stamina. And all of his work is rooted in the real world. He didn’t formally make documentaries, but I think his work has a documentary spirit. And you know, I’m not as political as I should be, and I’ve paid for it. So [with Altman] it’s nice to see that there were other people who were that way and who survived and managed to have a career.” With Monsoon, Gunnarsson was determined not to compromise his vision even when it came to securing funding. “Both of us [Ina Fichman and I] have had experiences in the past where we’ve done films for broadcasters and tried to shoot the gap between television and a more cinematic vision. This time, we chose to make something cinematic and then there will be other things and commissions that come out of that later.” Gunnarsson believes that Monsoon is one of his most personal films, and while the filmmaker doesn’t appear on camera, he’s a defi- nite presence via his voice-over, which is mostly unobtrusive but occasionally lets us know what’s going on inside his head. Perhaps the key line in this film about the sheer power of Mother Nature is an aside dropped early on: “I am in a land of believers, but I am not one myself.” It’s less a case of a secular director in a religious country trying to draw a line in the sand than an artist trying to find some continuity between his subjects and himself—and finding it in the enormity of the monsoon itself. “For me, the idea of faith is very intriguing. I went to a temple in India with my wife, who is a secular Sikh, and I found it so deeply moving. I was trying to explore this in the film. What is it about faith

COURTESY INTUITIVE PICTURES INC. COURTESY that touches me even though I’m not willing to become a believer? Before really thinking hard on it, I would have described myself as needs for his crops and thirty kilometres away, another guy will get an atheist. After more reflection, though, I’d say I’m more agnostic. nothing. And then the next year, it’s totally reversed. The monsoon I’m willing to accept this feeling of mystery, even if whatever that is is defines the conditions of existence in India.” never going to be something that I’ll be able to explain or reason out.” It also defines many aspects of the culture, and while Monsoon is It’s this humility that finally makesMonsoon an emotionally engag- first and foremost a piece of reportage—it begins before the rainfall and ing experience underneath its slick, accomplished surface textures. continues on to its end—it has its reflective aspects as well. In perhaps Gunnarsson is a seasoned filmmaker, and his wide and well-honed the loveliest interlude, Gunnarsson interviews Moushumi Chatterjee, skill-set is evident in the film’s visual and journalistic facility. At the the star of the 1979 Bollywood classic Manzil. The film was famous for same time, Monsoon has a spaciousness at its core, a sense of open- the participation of star Amitabh Bachchan, but as the sexagenarian ness that shouldn’t (and hopefully won’t) be confused for a lack of actress explains, it was also unique for being filmed in the streets of intellectual rigor. There are no twists in Monsoon: its title is not a Bombay rather than in a studio, and in the middle of the monsoon metaphor, and the rains come more or less on schedule, and with the as well, which led to a lovers-in-the-deluge sequence (excerpted in requisite effect (which is devastating in places). And yet it’s a powerful Monsoon) that suggests a subcontinental gloss on Singin’ in the Rain. film, not in spite of its inexorability, but because of it. Maybe it’s that Gunnarsson says that he admires the guerilla ethos of Manzil and Gunnarsson knows that in the end, talking about the weather really that he was inspired to know that shooting in the midst of such extreme is sort of boring. The drama lies in just sitting back and watching (and conditions was possible. “You have to have stamina,” he insists. “You feeling) it happen. As if we had any say in the matter. have to keep going. When you’re making a documentary, if you’ve been out there filming for 10 hours and then something amazing comes Adam Nayman teaches film at U of T and Ryerson. His first book,It Doesn’t along, you can’t stop. You have to shoot for another three hours or Suck: Showgirls (ECW Press), was recently published.

FALL 2014 POV 95 11 Alanis Obomsawin COURTESY NFB

12 POV 95 FALL 2014 FESTIVAL DOCS Trick or Treaty? Canada’s preeminent First Nations filmmaker creates a stunning new documentary

By Kiva Reardon

ELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF,” says an off-screen Alanis production landscape, such a long-term partnership seems utterly Obomsawin to Randy Horne, the subject of her short docu- unimaginable—these days, emerging filmmakers are more likely to “Tmentary Spudwrench: Man (1997). This type of see their features get crowd-funded than Crown-funded. Plus, there inquiry is, of course, essential to any documentary practice—it’s the was the risk that such deep ties to the NFB might have resulted in a kind of curiosity that inspires filmmakers to engage with, and ultimately stymied creative output or a shackling of subject matter, given the represent, worlds outside of their own. But in the work of Obomsawin, projects were (and still are) government-funded. But in the case of such probing into the personal takes on a greater meaning. Obomsawin, her life-long dedication to education has made her rela- Since she began working with the National Film Board (NFB) in tionship with the NFB a perfect fit—and, importantly, one that she has 1967, Obomsawin has not only made more than 20 short and feature had an active voice in shaping. length documentaries about First Nations peoples, but has also made it Obomsawin came to the attention of the NFB not for her work her mission to fight for their rights in Canada. As her latest film, which behind the camera, but in front it. In the mid-1960s, she began a will have its international premiere at the 2014 Toronto International campaign to build a pool for youths in her own community after Film Festival, Trick or Treaty?, proves, her work is not done: Aboriginal they were excluded from swimming at one in the neighbouring rights north of the 49th parallel and around the world remain at best town. (Obomsawin remembers whites telling kids from the reserve, unresolved, at worst, frequently abused. This has meant turning her “No savages here.”) Her efforts caught the eye of director Ron Kelly, camera on marginalized people and communities, and asking them to who made a film for CBC’s Telescope about her activism and work talk about their lives. Simple, perhaps, but as her body of work proves, as a singer. After the doc aired, NFB producers and Bob also revolutionary. Verrall invited Obomsawin to the Board’s studios. Obomsawin’s creative career began as an oral storyteller. Born in 1932 Obomsawin was brought into a small screening room, seated on in Lebanon, , she grew up in as a member of a stage and asked to “tell stories like you do in the classroom.” (Her the Nation on the reserve and then in Trois-Rivières. roots as a storyteller become evident as she recalls this and other By the age of 16, she had become recognized as an accomplished singer decades-old tales as if they happened mere days ago.) The producers and was performing in folk festivals and classrooms across Canada. were won over by her eloquence and vitality, two traits she exudes to Looking back now, she calls this period “a great learning time,” as this day, and she was asked to consult on a film set on a reserve near through touring she saw first-hand the socio-economic disparities that Regina. She agreed, but this project didn’t turn out to be the collab- existed between white Canadians and Indigenous peoples. Through her orative effort she was hoping for: “I quickly realized I was just being work in classrooms on and off reserves, Obomsawin further observed used to enter the community,” she says. Already keenly aware of the the power of pedagogy as a tool of colonization. “I feel that the teach- power of film as a tool of representation, she knew this wasn’t right. ing of the history of Canada was designed to propagate hate towards As she explains: “If the film came out and the community didn’t like our people,” she says over the phone from Montreal. “It was necessary it, they would blame me.” So, she made a decision that is emblematic for us to take control.” And for Obomsawin documentaries were the of her steadfast determination to this day: “I did this once, but I never answer: “Film is the only way I could take a stand and get the children would do it again.” But of course, she also wasn’t about to give up. to learn something about themselves other than what we were taught This experience of being a mere “token Indian” drove Obomsawin in the classroom—that’s how it started.” to create her own works on her own terms and that centred on her In many ways, Obomsawin represents a different—arguably nearly own interests: indigenous culture and education. At the time, the defunct—form of Canadian filmmaker. She has built her 40-year-plus NFB had a programme called Multi Media, which created docs to be career at the National Film Board, which has developed, funded and used in classroom settings. “I got very excited over this,” Obomsawin distributed the vast majority of her films. In today’s precarious film recalls, and she began working with filmstrips and eventually 16mm to

FALL 2014 POV 95 13 create and share First Nations stories with school kids. “Students were movement and 16-year-old David Kawapit’s 1,600-kilometre walk going to hear the voices of people from various Nations talking about to the Canadian Parliament in solidarity with Chief Teresa Spence’s their history, their games,” she recollects; decades on, the pedagogical hunger strike in 2012, Trick or Treaty? traces the very real and present- power of this fact still clearly excites her. Despite the challenges of day implications of the James Bay Treaty, or Treaty Number 9. Signed working in three languages and in an unfamiliar medium, Obomsawin in 1905, Crees and Ojibways from Ontario and Manitoba entered into quickly found her footing and soon after made her first NFB project, an agreement with the British Crown and the Canadian government Christmas At Moose Factory (1971). (While this was shot in the late regarding land ownership and rights to resources. But as history has 1960s, it took a few more years of cajoling the NFB for funding to demonstrated, the legalities of the treaty were not observed, mainly finally get the project finished.) due to misunderstandings (or outright deceit on the part of the British) In this short doc, she interviewed children from the small Cree and discrepancies between the written document and what was com- village on James Bay, coupling their stories with their hand-drawn municated verbally to the First Nations chiefs. pictures. Far from being a sentimentalized portrait of kids saying the While many of Obomsawin’s works point to the role of history, here darndest things, Christmas at Moose Factory is filled with poignant it feels the most pressing, as the film traces the current-day implica- observations that when woven together create a sense of the daily and tions of the over 100-year-old document. “People laugh and say the inner lives of the youth living in Moose Factory. Indeed, Obomsawin’s treaty doesn’t exist anymore; that’s wrong,” says Obomsawin. In fact, first film still represents how she approaches doc-making: giving a she sees Treaty Number 9 as a crucial part of contemporary Canadian platform to marginalized, often dismissed voices. and First Nations history: “All my films have a continuity: We’re still In 1977, she made her first feature, Mother of Many Children (another talking about the treaty.” project that proved difficult to fund), and continued to document First As always, with this film Obomsawin’s aim is to educate and have as Nations issues on film throughout the 1980s. But it wasKanehsatake: many people as possible see the film. She points out, “It’s not just our 270 Years of Resistance (1993) that brought her to wider atten- tion. Winning the Best Canadian Feature Film Award at TIFF, 270 Years of Resistance cemented Obomsawin’s reputation of blending documentary filmmaking and political activism. Shot over the period of 78 days, Obomsawin’s film chronicles the “People say ‘When are the Indians 1990 military siege of Oka (or as the media dubbed it, the “Oka Crisis”), where Mohawk warriors, with whom Obomsawin going to shut up?’ When they was encamped, came head-to-head with the Canadian mili- tary. Re-watching Kanehsatake two decades later, I found the learn the real story, they’ll feel warriors’ frustration and righteous anger to be palpable still. This is largely due to the fact that while Obomsawin’s work is differently about their neighbours observational in style, her documentaries are steeped in a First Nations point of view. Indeed, this, as Jerry White wrote in on reserves.” —ALANIS OBOMSAWIN Cine Action, is the cornerstone of Obomsawin’s documentary work: She “assert[s] a very specific cultural identity rather than hi[ding] behind a faceless false objectivity.” people; all people should learn what the treaty was supposed to mean.” The critical acclaim that Kanehsatake earned brought further And that’s why she says she was so happy to have the film selected attention to Obomsawin, and it also launched a highly productive to premiere at TIFF, especially the year after her last documentary, period for the filmmaker. Having shot 250 hours of 16mm footage, Hi-Ho Mistahey! (2013). “It was a wonderful surprise,” she says with Obomsawin drew from what was left on the cutting-room floor to genuine delight, “since I didn’t think they would take this film as I create two of her most powerful works: Spudwrench and My Name was there last year.” When asked if she thinks being programmed is Kanentiiosta (1995). In these portrait docs, Obomsawin returns two years in a row speaks to her status as a filmmaker, she quickly to two of the central subjects in 270 Years of Resistance, Horne and dismisses the point: “I never think like that. My mind is always on Kanentiiosta, respectively, to see how Oka continued to affect their how these films can be seen, how I can shift attitudes on our people, lives. By any other director, these films might have come off as mere and how great it is for the people in the film to be recognized and behind-the-scenes DVD extras, but with both shorts the return only treated with dignity. This is what is important to me.” emphasizes Obomsawin’s investment in the communities she profiles. As for what’s next, Obomsawin is currently working on three Those who cross her camera’s lens are never just objects in a docu- projects. One centres on the rights of First Nations children, but she mentary; they are people. This becomes all the more powerful given can’t yet speak about the other two. It’s an ambitious schedule, but the subject matter at hand. As Kanentiiosta says while discussing the her energy seems limitless: “I’m 81 years old; I’ll be 82 next month. media’s coverage of the Oka uprising: “Killing a few Indians won’t make I feel like I witnessed so many incredible changes, so much history. the news.” In this context, Spudwrench and My Name is Kanentiiosta I want, as much as I know and more, to transfer this to the people. speak to Obomsawin’s aim of changing public perceptions of First That’s what it’s all about.” The octogenarian’s outlook is inspiring, Nations peoples through interaction. Put another way: It’s easy to but more importantly recalls something First Nations activist Clayton dismiss a person in the abstract, but in a face-to-face encounter one Cheechoo says in Trick or Treaty?: “If you don’t speak and give it life, cannot deny their humanity. In each of her films, Obomsawin creates the story stops.” Through her work, Obomsawin is ensuring the story such conditions of humanistic proximity. won’t be stopping any time soon. This type of rapprochement is also the intent of her latest film, Trick or Treaty? (In her own words: “People say ‘When are the Indians Kiva Reardon is the founding editor of cléo, a journal of film and feminism. going to shut up?’ When they learn the real story, they’ll feel differently Her film writing has been published inThe Globe and Mail, Cineaste, Cinema about their neighbours on reserves.”) Following the Idle No More Scope, Maisonneuve and others.

14 POV 95 FALL 2014

FESTIVAL DOCS Where’s the Beef? The documentary-animation mash-up The Wanted 18 tells the absurd story of how some Palestinian cattle became a threat to Israel’s national security

By Matthew Hays

ATCHING THE WANTED 18 made for one of those moments were hiding them in various homes and garages throughout the suburb. when timing becomes downright eerie. I got the assign- The IDF arrested several of the Palestinian novice farmers, demand- Wment to write this story in early July and watched the ing to know the whereabouts of the “Wanted 18.” They organised a film just as the current war in Gaza began. As of press time the war military operation, which included two helicopters, to track down the continues, with casualties climbing on both sides. The losses are much cattle and confiscate them. higher on the Palestinian side, as it is far outmatched by Israel’s military It’s as crazy as it sounds. But the story has come to life via a stylistic might. There is of course a ferocious debate about who is to blame. fusion brought about by Montreal-based producer Ina Fichman. She But while behind The Wanted 18 argue their film came across the story when she met Palestinian artist Amer Shomali is more about a specific story and the people involved in it, it’s impos- at a pitch session in Ramallah some six years ago. sible not to read the documentary as a microcosmic reflection of the Shomali, a Palestinian filmmaker, animator and artist, had long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and why peace appears to be so distant. been struck by the story of these cows, who were wanted criminals. It’s a film that’s profound and simple simultaneously, and one that “Amazingly, the story of the cows had not been documented anywhere,” leaves a lingering aftereffect.The Wanted 18 will make you laugh, but he says from his West Bank home. “Because of the bloodshed and it will also haunt you. demonstrations, there were other things the media focused on at the The Wanted 18, which will premiere at the 2014 Toronto International time. In a sense it’s a simple story, but it’s very symbolic, and at times Film Festival, takes us back to the first Intifada of 1988. This initial hard to believe—it sounds like a George Orwell story.” uprising was more about a set of Palestinians’ demands for greater “When we first met, the idea for the film was at a very embryonic self-governance than it was about violence. In Beit Sahour, a Palestinian stage,” recalls Fichman. “Amer wanted to do a short animated film about suburb of Bethlehem, several Palestinians decided it would be a good the Wanted 18. I thought it was a very rich, interesting story. The cows idea to have some cattle, as then they could provide their own milk and are innocents who are caught up in the Intifada. The animation would dairy products, making their community more self-sufficient. They make it very whimsical, but it’s also a serious story. And I liked that it found some lefty Israelis who sold them 18 cows from their kibbutz was a different perspective from either the Israelis or Palestinians. It and had them trucked over to the West Bank. was absurd and ironic.” And this is where things got strange. The Palestinians knew next Then Fichman was struck with the question “Do we have a feature to nothing about farming or how to deal with cattle, but they learned. film here?” The veteran producer had worked on hybrid documen- And soon enough, they were providing milk and cheese to the local tary projects that involved dramatic re-creations before, and this population. But when the Israeli government learned of the operation, story certainly seemed rife with possibilities, but the question was they balked, suggesting the Palestinians should continue to buy Israeli still there. She asked writer-director Paul Cowan, a filmmaker who dairy products and give up the cattle. has tackled such diverse and controversial topics as abortion activist The Israel Defense Force (IDF) arrived at the stable, took photos of Henry Morgentaler, billionaire Robert Campeau and WWI hero Billy the cows and then declared them a threat to Israel’s national security. Bishop, to write up a treatment. The Palestinians refused to give up the cattle. When IDF officers arrived “It was so complicated, but Paul wrote an excellent script,” says to confiscate the cows, they found they were gone. The Palestinians Fichman. “Then there’s the reality. How would we pull together

16 POV 95 FALL 2014 Stop motion animation sequences from The Wanted 18 (dirs. Paul Cowan and Amer Shomali, 2014) COURTESY INTUITIVE PICTURES INC. COURTESY funding and get the film made? We felt like Amer’s drawings could the French side of the NFB came on board, buttressed by an online pull the story together.” crowdfunding campaign. The three agreed that Shomali and Cowan would co-direct. Shomali Cowan and Shomali concede that sharing the director credit was decided upon stop-motion animation, an expensive, labour-intensive a complicated process—at least initially. “I have been to Israel, but I and time-consuming form. Fichman approached two animation instruc- revealed my ignorance to Amer right away,” says Cowan. “I know a tors at ’s film school, Shira Avni and Eric Goulet, thing or two about filmmaking, but not [much about] Palestine. In 1983, who recommended recent graduates of the animation stream of the I made a documentary for the NFB series War, so I spent two months film production programme who might be willing to collaborate. “The there just as war was breaking out between Israel and Lebanon.” work they did was amazing,” Fichman says. “The short they animated Cowan had experience making docudramas before, “and I love helped us to get early funding.” making hybrid films. But I knew nothing about animation or stop- Gathering funding proved one of the biggest challenges, with pro- motion animation. We had a lot of confidence in Amer, which helped. duction of The Wanted 18 halted for months-long gaps due to financial But when we started, Amer was set to make a film that was 100 per dry spells (a narrative that will read as familiar to most documentary cent animated, while I was set to make a film that was 100 per cent filmmakers working today). Ultimately, SODEC, Radio-Canada and documentary. There was a gap to bridge.”

FALL 2014 POV 95 17 to talk, but he clearly doesn’t really want to. At the same time, he doesn’t really see what the problem is, or was.” “I was obsessed with getting [the] perspec- tives [of the military officials],” says Fichman. “We had the anecdotes from the Palestinians. Now we needed the Israeli military to describe what they were doing. This was 20 years ago, so it was tricky, but I think it really gives another dimension to the film. The thing that strikes me is, the Israeli military were not prepared for what they met at that point. They were expecting some kids throwing rocks at them. Instead, they got this group of educated Palestinians who were involved with peaceful resistance. All they wanted was basic human rights. I mean, they wanted to have some cows so they could make their own dairy products.

COURTESY INTUITIVE PICTURES INC. How do you challenge that militarily?” “We wanted to put the story into context,” says Shomali. “We wanted it to be on a human level or an animal level, not told through poli- ticians. I think the story of what is going on is so often told about fanatics killing fanat- ics. The Palestinians we see in the media are either dead or in masks. It’s often very difficult for people to relate to those stories or to the The Wanted 18 directors Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan on location in the people in them. We wanted to show what’s happening in a more subtle West Bank. way—to find a place where people can care.” While there was no one film that served as a model, Shomali says he did think about Animal Farm, the 1954 animated adaptation of Cowan adds that “my concerns were also about tone, consider- Orwell’s dystopic novel, and Waltz with Bashir, the 2008 animated ing the topic: What’s going to happen when we have a scene of a documentary that featured interviews with Israeli soldiers involved Palestinian having his bones broken, and then cutting to an animated in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. “Mainly, we wanted audiences to see cow that’s funny? From the awful reality to a funny cow—that was the the occupation from a different point of view—in this case, from the biggest question mark in the filmmaking process. We had these differ- cows’ perspective. Most of the audience will relate to the cows more ent stylistic approaches going on, but there had to be a fundamental than the humans in the film.” homogeneity to the film.” For Cowan, making The Wanted 18 led to a personal revelation. “At first it was perhaps a bit difficult,” Shomali says of co-directing. “I became far more understanding of the Palestinian perspective “We come from very different backgrounds. Paul’s a documentary on the conflict. This film serves as one aspect of what might make filmmaker, so his main goal is for the story to be clear. For me, it’s Palestinian lives so difficult. Each taken on their own, perhaps none about fantasy and being funny. Our ideas went back and forth, like a of them are things you’d go to the UN over. But taken together, they ping-pong game. That added with a seven-hour time difference meant make life miserable.” arranging a meeting was always tricky.” Working in the media in North America, says Cowan, “means you’re The Wanted 18 does indeed show the signs of divergent creative going to know and have worked with Jewish people. And they will impulses, but in a good way. It’s a mash-up of ideas and styles, but all probably have been to or have relatives in Israel. I think that means around one coherent theme. And while the film shares nothing in we tend to feel much more connected to the Israeli side of things. I’ve common with the style of a Michael Moore film, the sheer absurdity certainly known Arabs, and I must have met Palestinians before, but of a military cow hunt can’t help but evoke the surreal streak that runs prior to this film I don’t think I’d ever sat down and heard a Palestinian through Bowling for Columbine or Capitalism: A Love Story. discuss the situation from their perspective. I think that’s why often “We were mixing many different levels and styles of reality-based it’s much easier for North Americans to have a sense of community filmmaking,” says Shomali. “Interviews, re-creations, archival footage, with Israel than with Palestine. I just hope this film allows audiences comics and animation—how do we make this look like one film? We to see the conflict differently.” were using five different ways of representing reality.” “I really didn’t want to make a film that was simply preaching to the The other crucial gap to bridge was to make sure they had the voices converted,” says Fichman. “What I’d like to see is The Wanted 18 helping of Israeli military officers who were involved in the search for cattle. to broaden the audience. And hopefully, broaden the conversation.” n After all, the tale at the centre of The Wanted 18 is so strange, if only Palestinian voices were to be heard in the film, some might simply Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based journalist who has contributed to The dismiss the entire thing as a hallucinogenic conspiracy theory. “Fiction Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Vice, has to make sense; reality doesn’t,” Shomali notes. “We struggled for Maclean’s and Cineaste. A contributing editor to POV, he teaches courses in two years to find a way to reach one of the commanders. We got him film studies at Marianopolis College and Concordia University.

18 POV 95 FALL 2014 FALL 2014 POV 95 19 PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Documentaries in VR A new kind of immersive cinema

Above right: The author with his “spherical camera” that will shoot 360-degree dioramas.

Greenland. It is our first stop in a 30-day journey that will continue By Thomas Wallner on by ship along the western coast of Greenland across the ice-filled expanse of Baffin Bay to Pond Inlet, an Inuit community at the north “We’re never going to be totally immersive as long as we’re looking at a end of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. square, whether it’s a movie screen or whether it’s a computer screen.… In our luggage we are carrying 40 GoPro cameras. Our mission: We’ve got to put the player inside the experience, where no matter where to create the world’s first narrative 360-degree video documentary. you look you’re surrounded by a three-dimensional experience. That’s It’s a big experiment and a complete step into the unknown for all of the future.” —Steven Spielberg us. As the plane makes its final approach, over the breathtaking and hostile-looking 1.7 million square-kilometre ice expanse that covers MAGINE STEPPING INSIDE A MOVIE, being able to turn your head 80 per cent of Greenland, we pass over the Russell Glacier, where we and seeing the scenes all around you as if you were there. Imagine will go the day after tomorrow to launch our drones; their payload Ithis cinematic experience reacting to you in a way that makes it feel is a 900-gram spherical camera that will allow us, for the first time ALL PHOTOS COURTESY THOMAS WALLNER AND PRIMITIVE ENTERTAINMENT as if the unfolding scenes are influenced by your presence. A door opens ever, to shoot airborne 360-degree HD video panoramas in the Arctic. when you turn towards it. A detail comes into focus in full stereoscopic There has been a quiet revolution going on in imaging technology view when you turn your attention to it. When your eyes shift from a that is taking monumental steps towards a completely different form nearby object, the focus shifts so naturally that you don’t even notice. of cinema, which will fundamentally change our relationship to the This kind of truly immersive cinema that goes beyond the boundary screen and cinema-based arts. There is an astounding amount of of the static frame and gives way to a truly new kind of experience has research going on worldwide at companies and research institutions been a longtime dream. Aldous Huxley described something like it in from Paris to Silicon Valley working on imaging solutions in areas his 1931 novel Brave New World. He called it “the feelies.” Our modern where even the terms are unfamiliar to most filmmakers. Who has pop-culture equivalent is Star Trek’s “holodeck”; a medium that can ever heard of video stitching, spherical imaging, 360-degree camera take us out of our reality and take us somewhere else completely. Both arrays and Virtual Reality Cinema? These terms define a new frontier represent our deep desire to merge with images and step through in imaging technology that is the result of the emergence of fresh the frame, like Mia Farrow in Woody Allen’s 1985 The Purple Rose of ideas, new technologies and the ever increasing miniaturization Cairo, and be in the world conjured up on the screen. and computational power of everyday computers, smart phones Fast-forward to 2013. I am on a plane with a documentary crew and cameras. headed for Kangerlussuaq airport situated in central-western At the heart of immersive cinema is the ability to film the world

20 POV 95 FALL 2014 Wallner releasing his remote-controlled helicopter carrying the spherical camera. by capturing a full sphere. The resulting 360-degree video is just like no examples of an innovative narrative use of this new medium. It conventional film that plays in full motion and audio with one revo- was quite clear that the high cost of 360-degree production had kept lutionary difference: Because 360-degree camera systems capture a the necessary tools out of the hands of independent filmmakers and full sphere, the screen has no boundaries and the audience can shift interactive creators, stifling the creative and narrative evolution of their perspective in any direction in real time while viewing the film. the medium for years. As a filmmaker and interactive creator I was astounded the first Fortunately this was about to change with the emergence of two time I saw an example of 360-degree video in early 2012. Anyone revolutionary new technologies, 3-D printing and the ubiquitously interacting with 360-degree video footage immediately grasps the available GoPro camera. A number of pioneers, such as Michael Kintner enormous creative promise and potential of seeing reality in this of 360 Heros and Joergen Geerds of NY-based Freedom 360, created completely new way. 3-D printed rigs that hold multiple GoPro cameras in spherical arrays, Not long after that initial viewing, my company DEEP was allowing relatively low-cost production of HD spherical video for the approached by ARTE CEO Wolfgang Bergmann to conceive of an first time. Because of their light weight and the fact that they do not interactive component to complement a 10-part TV series that explores need to be tethered to a computer, which made their predecessors so the mythical North West Passage and the profound changes that climate cumbersome, they can be mounted on drones and other remote-con- change has brought to the Arctic. It seemed like the ideal project to trolled devices, greatly expanding their cinematic potential in the field. undertake a groundbreaking experiment in immersive filmmaking. When we arrived at the foot of the Kangerlussuaq Glacier in August Rather than just showing the Arctic on traditional film, we could use 2013 to shoot our 360-degree flyover, we had just received the first 3-D 360-degree video to do something that TV can’t do: we could literally printed GoPro holders. Up until then we had strapped our GoPros to take our viewers to the Arctic and let them look around for themselves. broom poles with rubber bands to shoot our spherical test footage. A Our preliminary research was sobering. There were a handful of week before our Arctic expedition, GoPro released a firmware update companies like Yellow Bird that provided solutions and services for the that kept the cameras from crashing regularly, something that had filled capture of 360-degree video. They charged $15,000 a day for produc- us with fear and dread during our testing phase. Individual cameras tion services and exorbitant sums for their proprietary camera systems. would randomly shut down in the middle of a take and when you are As a consequence, the first pioneering examples of 360-degree video shooting in 360 degrees, if any one of the six cameras fails, the result- were used as highly effective marketing gimmicks to sell products, ing shot is unusable. applied to scenes of spectacle in well-worn genres such as extreme Had our shoot been a week earlier the results would have been sporting, supported by wealthy sponsors such as Red Bull. There were disastrous. This is what it means to be riding the bleeding edge. I

FALL 2014 POV 95 21 Full 360-degree dioramas from the Arctic

have never undertaken a project with so many unknowns stacked on cuts, close-ups and parallel action, had to evolve over decades through top of each other. the incessant experimentation of filmmakers trying to tell a story. As the drone pilot and I stood facing the glacier, with its shimmering 360-degree video is in the same place. It is an aesthetic possibility blue and white walls that protrude 75 metres into the air, I wondered that has come about through the simultaneous emergence of a number whether utilising this technology for the first time in the remoteness of key technologies. The visual language conventions to tell a story in of the Arctic was such a great idea. 360 degrees still needs to be discovered and evolved. There are cur- Our Greenlandic guide indicates an imaginary line that we rently no narrative examples that attempt to tell a human story with should stay behind situated a hundred metres from the glacier. The depth and complexity. Our spherical Arctic documentary is a first 20,000-year-old ice cracks without warning with a thunderous sound humble step in that direction. that sends apartment-building-sized boulders and debris rolling ahead What we did not realize at the time was that our journey to cre- of the glacier for hundreds of metres. If our drone were to come down ate immersive narrative experiences utilising 360-degree video was too close to the glacier, it would be unwise to retrieve it. about to take an unforeseen and very exciting turn with the arrival of One of the biggest challenge in shooting 360-degree video is that a package at our Toronto office in November 2013. the camera sees everything in all directions, which means that the Inside was the Oculus Rift, the first prototype of affordable virtual- crew has to find some place to hide. The terrain at the base of the reality goggles. The device streams stereoscopic 360-degree images glacier is so completely flat that the only way for us to do so is to wear that shift in sync with the head movement of the viewer, making them camouflage suits that blend into the landscape as the drone flies over feel as if they are physically in the environment they are seeing. the wall of ice. The Oculus Rift was an innovation driven by gamers who dreamt This establishes a familiar shooting pattern. Roll camera…HIDE! It of being immersed in the elaborate computer-generated worlds of is odd to shoot scenes while hiding and there are presently no remote first-person shooters. Using the Rift to display real-life cinematic monitoring systems. Even worse, when you return after a long day of scenes was not yet part of the agenda and so we were curious to see shooting you can’t view your rushes because it takes days to render the what 360-degree videos would look and feel like in virtual reality. 360-degree footage through an elaborate process. You have to work There was no immediate way to find out. We first had to build a on faith and it makes you feel a real kinship with the early pioneers of viewer using a gaming engine to play back our footage in the Rift. cinema, who were also essentially shooting completely blind. The first time we immersed ourselves in the footage we had shot In 1885 the Lumière Brothers captured footage of a group of women at the Kangerlussuaq Glacier was an unforgettable moment. It felt leaving a factory entrance. This 46-second fragment is considered the like no other experience we had ever had; it felt like “being there.” first piece of film ever shot. It exists because of an earlier revolution Standing on the carpet in our office we were looking up at walls of in imaging technology: the movie camera. Like 360-degree video, it ice as if we were standing there right in front of them. When we took was a technical innovation that allowed the photographic capture of our VR goggles off we were left with a distinct feeling that we had just a moment in full motion. At the moment of its birth, cinema was not been somewhere else. yet an art—it was a technical novelty. The language of film, including At first it was hard to describe what made this experience so special,

22 POV 95 FALL 2014 but then it sunk in: Something momentous had occurred. In our little Wagner’s effort to abolish the borderline between object and office in Toronto, we had stepped across a threshold that no previous observer, stage and audience, artwork and spectator 10 years before media could cross. We had broken the fourth wall. the advent of cinema, foreshadowed the experience of virtual reality Like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo, we had stepped into the by 140 years. movie. As adventurers, we had passed through the separating barrier Back in our Toronto office, we exposed nearly 100 people of all between art and life, a threshold that has fascinated and challenged ages and backgrounds to our VR experience and interviewed them artists since the beginning of time. right afterward to gauge their reactions. Their fervent enthusiasm One of the first modern efforts to consciously break down the took us by surprise. We did not come across a single subject who was fourth wall was undertaken by Richard Wagner, who believed in what not touched or amazed by the experience. We gained some vital insights into this medium by talking to our test subjects. Nearly all reported that it felt odd that they could not see their own body. At first we concentrated on this As adventurers, we had passed statement of the missing body as a shortcoming to address in future experiments and research. Then we realized that this through the separating barrier observation was expressing something much more profound and important. between art and life, a threshold Subconsciously our test subjects felt that the experience was that has fascinated and challenged so real that their mind “expected” their bodies to be “there.” This hints at the fact that cinematic VR experiences affect artists since the beginning of time. people on a much deeper level than merely watching a film. Their sensory inputs, their ears and eyes, are not reading the input of the VR cinema experience as a codified language that “describes” a moment as traditional film does, but as direct he called Gesamtkunstwerk, a concept that foresaw the fusion of all sensory input of a place and time that tricks the brain into feeling that arts into one powerful medium that encompassed everything: sound, it is “there.” Watching a cinematic VR experience seemingly stimulates voice, light, image, mind and body sensation. the perceptual systems of the brain making the immersion into the To realise his dream Wagner had a festival house constructed in content an experiential instead of an intellectual process. Our test Bayreuth, Germany, in 1876 where he applied new theatrical innova- subjects described this state as a “sense of presence.” One 70-year-old tions—surround-sound reverberance, the isolation of the individual subject told us that he felt like he was “pure spirit.” through total darkening of the house and the revitalization of the This statement reminds me of one of the core ideas of romanticism, Greek amphitheatrical seating to focus audience attention—to create, the transcendence of the confines of the body through the spirit. Wagner if one is to judge by the accounts of the day, near delirious immersion. had a real distaste for the corporeal, the gross vulgarity and fallibility of

FALL 2014 POV 95 23 24 POV 95 FALL 2014 FALL 2014 POV 95 25 Full 360-degree dioramas from the Arctic

the body, and the Romantic zeitgeist revolved around the immersion they discovered a person standing behind them. They were also clearly and dissolution of the human body into the unfathomable mystery of affected when they were put in a scene that was shot from the pon- nature that surrounds us; Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk sought to take toons of a helicopter flying over icebergs in the Arctic. No matter how this to an extreme by creating the perfect communion with art by much they told themselves that this was not real and that they were controlling all the senses of the body, including sight, sound, time and standing on a carpet in our office, their subconscious brain overruled space. It was something that was never going to be possible in his time. their intellectual assessment. They were trying to suspend their belief This feeling of “presence” cannot be created by any previous in a stark reversal of how traditional media works. medium and is unique to VR. It is the great unifying medium of the Hollywood is taking notice. Jaunt VR, a company whose sole focus future that Wagner was trying to find, his Gesamtkunstwerk brought is developing hardware for the creation of VR-based cinema, raised back to life by the magic of modern technology. $6.8 million in VC financing in April 2014. Jaunt’s board of advisers is All previous media is able to create immersion, through symbolic- recruited from the ranks of Netflix, Dolby,IMAX and RED. magical thinking, wherein the codified narrative of a book, a verbal Spike Jonze recently announced that he plans to make a Rift-based storyteller, the theatre or film, evokes a place and time and moment in film. the audience’s brain through description. To transcend it, audiences What this indicates more than anything is that immersive VR cinema temporarily suspend their disbelief, taking the visual and aural cues is being taken seriously by prominent American production executives to create a reality that lives solely in their imagination, borne out of and that we are witnessing a phase change in media. descriptive metaphor. On March 25, 2014, a month before the public launch of Jaunt, When we gaze on a painting, it is a pictorial representation of a Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion. The acquisition will fund the moment. It is not the moment itself. When we read the description of rapid further development of VR technology at a critical time and a moment in a book, it isn’t the moment itself. When we watch a film, will subsidize the final product to keep it affordable when it hits the its highly codified visual language allows us to suspend our belief, so consumer market in 2015. that we can take the description of the moment for the moment itself. Sony and Samsung are expected to launch consumer VR products In VR cinema this principle is turned on its head. In VR, images in the same time frame. Apple and Microsoft have filed for a number enter the brain through sensory input in the same way that we perceive of patents for VR headsets and are quickly making up for lost time. reality and so it is astounding to see that even at low resolution, that More importantly, since Facebook sees the Oculus Rift and VR as sense of experience and presence is immediately instilled because it a platform akin to mobile and plans to bring their 1.3 billion users into instantly triggers deep-rooted sensory and cognitive mechanisms by this experience, it has catalyzed the industry into understanding that which we perceive the world not through descriptive information but what we are witnessing is the birth of a new mass medium. directly through our senses. So VR-based cinema, which is a subset of all the possible uses of A clear indication of how strongly the subconscious brain perceives virtual reality, will likely have a mass audience in the not-so-distant our demo as reality is the fact that more than half our test subjects future. But what will that experience be like? How will cinematic stories waved involuntarily and said ‘hello’ when they were in a scene where be told in VR that utilise its unique attribute of presence?

26 POV 95 FALL 2014 The power of film lies in the juxtaposition of a dream-like stream of and dream by way of a mirror. images into a narrative where time and space are condensed through Utilising the Oculus Rift to step into another world reminded me the magic of editing. In film the moment is not a true moment but a of Cocteau’s mirror journeys into a parallel universe. metaphor of a moment. The audience connects the rapidly edited Filmmakers like Cocteau, Murnau and Bunuel were quite con- fragments of disconnected moments into a coherent reality through scious of the fact that film has a trance-like quality and owes a great their capacity for symbolic-magical thinking. debt to the narrative structure of our dreams. It is the artform closest VR breaks the fourth wall and communicates directly with our to language of dreams, most likely because it is mapped to how our senses. Time is time and space is space, each of these dimensions narrative brain works. necessitating a cognitive continuity around the way Modern cognitive psychologists believe that our we perceive reality. The Polar Sea 360° convergent perception of reality is like a dream imposed upon the It could very well be that the importance of uphold- documentary series (ARTE, TVO, world and that our way of perception and narrative ing a coherent sense of reality in VR that an audi- Knowledge Network) will launch processing of reality is dreamlike. ence can relate to will end up being the fundamental on TV and online in December When we dream of a precipice we have the organizing principle that will shape the narrative 2014. same reaction as standing on a precipice. Dream, aesthetics of VR. life, virtual reality: There is a powerful connection Film requires the suspension of disbelief to accept the reality con- between the three. jured up on the screen. In VR the intellect does not even have the My hunch is that VR cinema will have to find an aesthetic that capacity to overrule our hijacked senses from which our brain con- upholds a sense of presence that connects the viewers gaze to memories structs reality because this process happens before we can formulate a and associations in a dream authored by the creator of the experience. thought about what we are seeing. Being takes precedent over thinking. In this way filmmakers and interactive creators working with VR in When we stand at the edge of a precipice in a VR experience, our its first hour will have to use trial and error to find the necessary nar- mind and body react as if we are standing at the edge of a precipice in rative conventions that work, just like the early pioneers of film did. real life. The reaction to sensory input is primal and non-intellectual. The final form is likely to feel familiar to us, but unlike anything Using the fragmentary language of film could very well feel schizo- that we have ever seen before. n phrenic precisely because it ignores the dimension of real time and space, dimensions that are at the core of “presence” in VR. Thomas Wallner is a multiple-Emmy-award-winning producer, writer, The key to finding a narrative aesthetic for VR most likely lies in director and game designer working in feature film, television, games and the realm of dreams. Dreams, while not being reality, have a sense of interactive media. His company DEEP (www.deep-inc.com) is pioneering presence that we accept as reality while they occur and yet they are 360-degree video technologies to create new, immersive forms of laden with emotions, meaning and a narrative beyond our control. storytelling. DEEP is currently developing LIQUID CINEMA, a software In an unforgettable scene from Cocteau’s first film,Blood of a platform for VR cinema in partnership with the Ryerson Transmedia Centre, Poet, he passes through the threshold between art and life, reality The Fraunhofer Institute and ARTE.

FALL 2014 POV 95 27 PERSONAL ACCOUNTS SUSANA PASTOR COURTESY GUARANGO/QUISCA SUSANA PASTOR

“A country without documentaries is like a family without a photo album.” —Patricio Guzman

WENTY YEARS AGO, Peru was a no-man’s-land for homespun documentaries, a country reeling from an internal civil war, Teconomic meltdown and a dictatorship that resembled a cross between a drug cartel, the agents in The Matrix and Mr. Bean. The president was clumsy and liked to dress up in funny outfits with silly hats, but he also had a penchant for corruption and secret death squads and turned the country’s media into his own personal PR team. In this climate of fear and censorship, a handful of 20-somethings decided to form an association of independent filmmakers. They Twisted Roots had no formal education, little training and no equipment or funds; people said they were either crazy or brave (they were both). Surviving 20 years The troupe was encouraged by Stefan Kaspar, a Swiss filmmaker who had been living in Peru since the late ’70s and was even crazier of doc-making in Peru and braver than his protegés. Stefan gave the young dreamers a room in his house, lent them equipment and provided advice and training. He had a good deal of knowledge to impart; Stefan was one of the founding members of Grupo Chaski, a Peruvian film collective formed By Stephanie Boyd in the early ’80s that had developed its own revolutionary style. Chaski’s subject matter and treatment were radical for the time. Their first film, Ms Universe in Peru (1982), juxtaposes glitzy scenes of international beauty contestants with the harsh reality facing poor urban women and peasant farmers. It is the stuff of dark comedy: a line of buxom white “Misses,” smiles aglow in bathing suits outside Lima’s sombre colonial government palace, contrasted with potato farmers from the mountains carrying toddlers wrapped in bright

28 POV 95 FALL 2014 From far left: The cast and crew of Gregorio (Grupo Chaski, 1982); Child workers who became actors in Juliana (dirs. Fernando Espinoza and Alejandro Legaspi, 1989); Negotiating a ceasefire in The Devil Operation (dir. Stephanie Boyd, 2010); Farmers from Tambogrande protesting

COURTESY GUARANGO CINE Y VIDEO GUARANGO COURTESY in Peru brandishing mangos and limes in Tambogrande, Mangos, Murder, Mining (dirs. Stephanie Boyd and Ernesto Cabellos, 2007) shawls on their backs. pockets, flat broke, bumming cigarettes. But Chaski didn’t portray their Peruvian farmers as victims; the Everyone wanted to direct, but no one wanted the inglorious task faces on the screen are determined, questioning, often angry, and of finding the money—no one except Ernesto (Tito) Cabellos, a pain- their impassioned declarations show they are more than aware of fully shy young man who didn’t consider himself an artist but stepped the pageant’s hypocrisy. forward to be the group’s producer. Stefan taught Tito how to write a Other Chaski films include Gregorio (1984) and Juliana (1989), two budget and he began getting small projects: music videos for Peruvian features about street kids that blend documentary and fiction, using bands, video workshops with kids and short promos for companies children from poor neighbourhoods as actors. Both movies did well and non-profits. on the international scene—Juliana won the UNICEF award at the Budgets were tight, profits were nil and the work wasn’t going to Berlinale—but their success at home was the real surprise. For the land them a slot at Cannes in the near future. One by one, the gang first time Peruvians stood in line en masse to watch films about their dropped out until only Tito was left. own reality, with more than a million theatregoers for Gregorio, and When crisis hits in Latin America, your family steps in to help. 7.5 million viewers on national television. Tito and his brother Rafo drove their father’s old Volkswagen Beetle “Film doesn’t change reality,” said Stefan, “but it has the potential around the chaotic streets of Lima as a cab to raise money for basic to include the excluded, to visualize the invisible, to remember the equipment, and their younger brother, Ricardo, taught himself how forgotten, to give images and words to those who do not have them.” to edit and build computers out of second-hand parts. With Chaski dormant, Stefan was in serious economic trouble, and SADLY, CHASKI BROKE UP IN 1991 and remained dormant for over a Guarango moved from his house by the sea into an apartment in an decade. But in those dark times before YouTube and pirated DVDs, ocean of concrete blocks designed by a somber East German architect. Chaski’s archives served as inspiration and training for the young The Cabellos brothers were behind in rent, the phone was often cut Guarangos. off, and if Mom hadn’t stepped in to make lunch every day, they would There was also an organic link between the groups. Marino Leon, have been hungry as well. the kid who played Gregorio in the movie, left the streets to grow up Around this time, one day in 1997, a bright-eyed young Canadian under Stefan’s roof and became one of the founding members of the new girl named Stephanie showed up to do an English voice-over for a association. It was Marino who gave the group its name, “Guarango,” a Guarango video. She had just arrived in Peru to work at a human-rights native tree from Peru’s coastal desert that survives on scarce resources publication. Every day she sat at her desk in a posh colonial house by digging its roots deep into the soil and remaining small but tough. and edited articles about thrilling, often dangerous happenings that It would take some time, however, for the group to develop those seemed very far away: the Zapatistas in Mexico, the peace movement deep roots. in Colombia, the mothers and grandmothers of disappeared children Their greatest obstacle was a lack of funds. ‘Funding trouble’ in Peru in Argentina. Her job was safe, the pay was reasonable with health has a much more pervasive meaning than it does for most Canadian benefits and good contacts; she was invited to a lot of embassy parties filmmakers. It means borrowing bus fare from your sister to make it to with Very Important People. the office, not having a cent to your name and no access to credit—empty After she finished her voice-over, Tito told her about his dream to

FALL 2014 POV 95 29 make independent documentaries about what was really happening our mining series into their roaming film project, travelling around in Peru, outside the upper-class neighbourhoods of Lima; or, in the the country with a portable theatre. words of Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman, to add a page to the Peru is a haven for cheap, pirated DVDs so we made more than country’s photo album. She looked at Tito’s bare office with its faded 3,000 copies of our films and gave them to educators, activists and paint, the patched-up computer and dented microphone and thought anyone willing to get a bunch of people together to watch. We also his cause was hopeless and perhaps even insane. gave master copies and posters to our favourite black market stalls in So she did what any idealistic young woman would do in her place. Lima so they’d list us beside Hollywood blockbusters and other titles. She (that would be “I”) fell in love with the dream and the dreamer Don’t get me wrong, I’m against piracy in countries where people and joined the crew. can pay for original DVDs. But when we started, poverty was running We decided to make a series about Peruvians standing up to for- at 50 per cent in Peru, and this sizeable group happened to be one of eign mining companies. It seemed a perfect combination: a Canadian, our target audiences. So we made the controversial decision to make angry and embarrassed at the way her countrymen were exploiting piracy part of our distribution plan. Peru’s natural resources, and a Peruvian who wanted development, We were overwhelmed by requests from people in other mining but how and at what cost? communities who wanted us to film their struggles. Faced with the annoying human shortcoming of only being able to be in one place at a time, we looked around for more partners. Our sound designer and editorial consultant, Jose Balado, was forming a new group called DocuPeru. If we were idealistic and crazy, they were off the map. Jose, a charismatic film professor from Puerto Rico, and his small army of Peruvian film school graduates were travelling to isolated parts of the country, giving free production workshops to ordinary people who had never used film. They called this wild circus the “Documentary Caravan.” Workshop groups produced their own short docs, which were screened in their communities and at a yearly festival in Lima.

COURTESY GUARANGO CINE Y VIDEO Jose’s goal was to make film accessible to all Peruvians. This was DocuPeru’s activism, and it was admirable. But what if they took their Caravan to communities standing up to powerful foreign mining corporations and became eco-film warriors? Luckily Jose was bold and political enough to take the risk. We sent DocuPeru off to work with farmers and activists who were standing up to South America’s largest gold mine, owned by a U.S. company. After the training, some of the participants realised they were the victims Ernesto Cabellos and the author of a spy operation: strangers were photographing and filming their every move. They devised a counter-espionage operation, turning No one was talking about mining issues back then. Human rights the cameras on their aggressors. You film me; I film you filming me. groups said it was an “environmental issue” and wouldn’t get involved, It may sound comic, but the soundtrack was chilling. The activ- perhaps forgetting that humans need a clean, safe environment to ists and their families received threatening phone calls—a female survive, and the media ignored anything critical of business interests. lawyer was told she would be raped and killed, her body cut into But on the ground the situation was about to boil over—people were pieces and eaten by dogs. fed up and angry; they wanted to tell their story. When one of their allies was assassinated, the activists’ leader, a We wrote up a modest proposal. The series would take 18 months, Peruvian priest, upped the stakes and caught one of the spies, along six months per film. The year was 1999. We had no funds, no equip- with a copy of his computer hard drive containing hundreds of reports, ment, no experience directing or making independent films and no photos and video footage of the activists. The spies had given the idea what we were getting into. activists nicknames that read like a bad parody of a Hollywood thriller: Eleven years later, we finished the third film in the series.... Okay, “Four-Eyes,” “Roadrunner,” “Yoda” and “Goose.” Their main target, it took a bit longer than planned, but the three films have been seen the priest, was simply “The Devil.” around the world in over 150 film festivals, on television in North I was giving a filmmaking workshop with the activists when Father America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East and have Marco captured the spy and remember working alone in his office late won more than 30 awards and recognitions. at night and jumping every time the phone rang or someone knocked I hope it’s a case of the tortoise winning the race in the end, or at at the door. The filmmaker had become a subject, and the protagonists least having a hell of a ride along the way. had become filmmakers; we used the activists’ footage to make The Influenced by Chaski’s experience in the ’80s, we carted the films Devil Operation, the final movie in our mining series, which opened around Peru with a digital projector, a large swath of heavy fabric for at Hot Docs in 2010. a screen and speakers. Sometimes we had to hunt down fuel to get the Now Tito is about to release the fourth film in the ever-expanding local generator up and running in places without electricity. trilogy, about women farmers struggling to protect their sacred lakes Shortly after our first film came out, Stefan resuscitated Chaski and from mining. With such a lengthy series, new faces have had to step launched a Micro Cine project that helped expand our reach. Our ally in to fill big gaps. Tito’s long-time mentor Stefan Kaspar passed away screened the films in more than 50 community-run theatres in rural suddenly last October while filming in Colombia. A month later, areas and poor urban neighbourhoods in Peru and eventually in Bolivia another key supporter and advisor left this world: Canadian doc giant and Ecuador as well. Another group, called “Nomads,” incorporated Peter Wintonick.

30 POV 95 FALL 2014 When you’re thrown up against the fragility of life twice in one failed to capture on film: You know it’s important, but you just don’t month, and two great influences are suddenly and painfully gone, you have the material to include it in the final cut. grieve, you mourn, you pay homage. And once the pain starts to lessen, At the closing party, in the elegant cultural centre run by the Spanish you realise that maybe it’s time to celebrate making it to 20 years and government, the wine ran out too soon and the food even sooner, so get everyone left together while you still can. we ended up at an old canteen in Lima’s run-down centre. So, this past May, Guarango held six nights of free screenings, panel Queirolo is stark and dusty, lit by bare fluorescent bulbs and crammed discussions and workshops in Lima, opening with an evening devoted with small wooden tables and hard chairs. Cracked tiles cover the floor to Stefan and Grupo Chaski’s films. and bottles of cheap pisco, rum, beer and wine line the brown shelves The panel discussions leaned toward storytelling. Tito remembered running up the walls to the ceiling. how a volunteer from Stefan’s Micro Cines project in the southern The décor hasn’t changed in at least 50 years; neither have the wait- Andes complained about the length of our second film. ers, crinkled and wizened, still rushing through the drunken crowd “It’s a good movie but the screenings take more than three hours,” with trays of ham and cheese sandwiches, pig’s feet and fried bull tes- he said. ticles and other coastal delicacies. The place “Three hours?” said Tito. “But the film is smells of booze and sweat, pickled olives and only 86 minutes long.” See for yourself cheese. Tender Criollo ballads play beneath “Yes, but every 10 minutes I have to For more information or to purchase DVDs the crowd’s heated talk and laughter. press ‘pause’ and explain what happened in from Guarango’s Seated on a Bench of Gold This is where I first met Peruvians resisting Quechua,” said the volunteer. series: corruption and abuse of power. Tito thanked the translator for his patience, Choropampa, The Price of Gold Seventeen years ago, students, activists and from then on we included “Quechua dub- www.guarango.org/choropampa and even regular citizens began to rise up bing” into our budgets. against Alberto Fujimori, the homicidal Mr. Tambogrande, Mangos, Murder, Mining This turned into an unexpected adventure Bean president mentioned at the beginning www.guarango.org/tambogrande of its own. Despite the fact that Quechua is of this article. Street protests were met with spoken by millions of Peruvians, especially The Devil Operation violent repression. Clouds of tear gas, police in the southern mountains, there are no www.guarango.org/diablo batons and heavy riot shields would scatter professional dubbing operations and for our Guarango on Facebook: the crowd, but the keeners would meet up last film we had to train radio actors from a https://www.facebook.com/guarangofilms afterward at Queirolo, red-eyed and dizzy nonprofit to do the translation and voice- Grupo Chaski’s films online: from the fumes, brandishing torn posters and overs. One incredible young woman pulled http://goo.gl/8U94VX placards, comparing scrapes and wounds and off every secondary female character, from a planning the next campaign. Grupo Chaski’s Web site frightened activist to an angry lawyer and an We drank beer from the same glass, passing www.grupochaski.org elderly grandmother in mourning, with tears it around the table in a kind of solidarity of streaming down her face in the sound booth. saliva, and the windowless place filled up with Not all our memories were so positive. Godofredo Garcia, a mango smoke (you could still poison yourself and others in public back then). farmer who led the opposition against a Canadian mining company in Later, when the place closed for the night, we’d move to an empty his lush valley, was assassinated before we’d filmed a good interview room across the road, instruments would come out and there was with him. This was a grim lesson. Never wait to film an environmental singing and dancing. defender in Peru; you can’t count on them being around tomorrow. Now, looking around the crowded tavern, the place is so unchanged There were also parts of our history that were edited out, deemed I can almost see the ghosts of those idealistic youth. It could be unsightly for the public. We didn’t mention that our own devils nearly 1982, with a young Stefan Kaspar and the rest of Grupo Chaski in a derailed the last film in our mining series. Tito and I separated while corner, debating how to sneak their cameras into the Miss Universe finishing the second film, but our breakup was so amicable, attending contest. Or 1994, with Tito, Marino and the other young Guarangos, festivals and press events together, we thought we could still co-direct. dreaming about the films they want to make. Even my younger self Tensions erupted once production got under way on the new film. is here, with Tito and his brother Rafo, plotting how to get our first Without getting into the mean and nasty, we both said and did things film past the Peruvian censors. we’d rather forget. It seemed we were human, after all. The project was But tonight is 2014, and I’m here with Tito, his wife Susana and the at risk of spontaneously combusting when Peter Wintonick convinced small production team for his new film. There’s also Malu, Tito’s sister us that the film—and the serious human rights abuses it exposed—was and filmmaker, and Fabricio, the editor of my last film and co-founder more important than our squabbles. Tito decided to concentrate on of Quisca, our film collective in the mountains. Cooking Up Dreams, a solo project, which was nearing completion, and After 20 years of struggling, learning, screwing up, laughing, I directed The Devil Operation alone, with Tito as executive producer fighting, winning, losing and waking up in the middle of the night and consulting editor. with the cold sweat of fear, we’re still here, ordering tamales and Both films went on to win international awards and play at top bottles of warm beer, remembering the past and stumbling along festivals, and we healed our friendship by proving we could direct on with new projects. our own and move on with our lives. That twisted little tree from Peru’s desert coast doesn’t grow very This hidden story, of overcoming pride and jealousy and putting the big, but it’s a survivor. cause of justice before our own egos, is as real and vital to Guarango’s And that in itself seems worth celebrating. n story as the official timeline painted on the wall outside the anniversary screenings. But perhaps it’s too complicated to explain in point-form Stephanie Boyd is a documentary filmmaker and writer based in deepest, bullets or during a panel discussion in front of an audience of strangers. darkest Peru. She hasn’t been invited to an embassy party in a very long So it became like one of those key events the cinematographer time.

FALL 2014 POV 95 31 COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS / COURTESY TIFF

From top: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (dir. Guy Maddin, 2002); Long Day’s Journey Into Night (dir. David Wellington, 1996)

32 POV 95 FALL 2014 PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Lost Atlantis The Golden Age of TV Arts in Canada

By Moze Mossanen

REMEMBER IT QUITE WELL. There were great singers, dancers, hard because everyone I contacted seemed just as concerned as I was musicians and artists of all stripes creating breathtakingly beauti- in resuscitating one of the most unique parts of our broadcast culture. I ful things. There was Dracula winding his way through a world My first chat is with Robert Sherrin. He is sitting in a booth at the of dance and silent movies; Teresa Stratas, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello Senator restaurant in downtown Toronto as I arrive and waves me over. and William S. Burroughs singing Kurt Weill like you’ve never heard As the executive director of CBC’s flagship weekly arts programme before; and Greta Hodgkinson, the great classical ballet dancer, writhing Opening Night, he oversaw the development and production of more erotically on a satin sheet with four lovers. There was also Yo-Yo Ma than 50 arts-related films over the course of a seven-year period (2000- accompanying the great ice-dancing couple Torville and Dean, and 07). Four of those films, I’m proud to say, were mine. But aside from Mary Margaret O’Hara and Sarah Slean in a musical about a severed that, he was one of the best executive directors or commissioning head. These images were all part of a remarkable period that produced editors I’ve worked with, a sentiment that is shared by other directors some of the most original and imaginative works for TV. The films, and producers who crossed paths with him. Having been a director which included arts documentaries as well as scripted works that and producer himself, his comments and critiques were always right integrated performance and musical elements, were lauded by critics, on the money. Now, almost seven years after retiring completely from loved by audiences, won International Emmys, and were shown on the TV racket, he has slowed down a bit but his manner is as direct as networks all over the world. More importantly, they created a pool of ever. “It has to start from the top. From the very top”, he says. “The talent that made Canada the best producer of original arts program- entire reason ‘Opening Night’ started in 2000 was because Harold ming in the world. Redekop [the executive vice-president of CBC Television at the I was lucky enough to be a part of this community and got sev- time] liked the arts. He was keen on music, on performance. And he eral chances to write, produce and direct films that were primarily truly believed that it was in the interests of both the audience and shown on the CBC and Bravo!, two networks that were instrumental the public broadcaster itself to make room for the very best that the in commissioning this “golden age” of Canadian arts programming. world of arts could offer.” Don’t quote me exactly but the period I’m talking about is from the As I write down what Robert is saying, my mind quickly flips late 1980s to about 2007, a time that encompassed three various arts back to the late 1980s, when I made my first feature-doc for the CBC strands on the CBC: Music for a Sunday Afternoon, Adrienne Clarkson called Dance for Modern Times, a look at the work of five renowned Presents and Opening Night. But as the programming streams started Canadian choreographers. Acknowledged for its cinematic treatment disappearing, so did the films themselves, along with the opportunities of showing dance on screen, it was entirely the product of an earlier for countless artists. (The loss of the exclamation mark (!) at the end stream of arts programming which, in turn, had been put in place by of “Bravo” was more than just symbolic—it was symptomatic of the Pierre Juneau, the CBC president at the time. (Juneau, it should be disappearance of risk, daring and bold originality on broadcast TV.) noted, battled constantly with Mulroney’s Conservative government And if truth were told, audiences lost something as well, since TV over budget cuts and the reorganization of the CBC—sounds awfully was sometimes about as close as they could get to the artists whose familiar, doesn’t it?—and yet still managed to increase overall Canadian luminous performances were at the centre of these films. content on the network to 95 per cent of programming.) The same can So, what happened? Why did these great arts films disappear? also be said for the subsequent era in the mid-’90s, when Ivan Fecan And is there a hope in hell that we can see arts programming again on became director of programming for CBC Television. Knowing the Canadian TV? Who would help me in keeping the dialogue going about importance of arts programming, he created what eventually became the need to keep the arts alive on TV? Well, I didn’t have to look too one of the best-known TV arts streams in North America: “Adrienne

FALL 2014 POV 95 33 Clarkson Presents.” “Robert is right,” I say to myself. “It has to start see ranges of 175,000 to 350,000 for one of our performance or doc with the top dog. Otherwise, no matter how great the argument, it shows, and anywhere from 600,000 to 900,000 for a special movie ain’t going anywhere.” like Long Day’s Journey Into Night [which was originally staged at I’ve drifted, but Robert brings me down to earth: “The CBC is a the Stratford Festival]. Do you mean to tell me that Bravo wouldn’t public broadcaster and has a public function and mandate and arts kill for numbers like that today?” (Indeed, Bravo, now devoid of that must be a part of this. But there is nothing on TV to reflect that right cheerful exclamation mark, was a big player alongside CBC in the now.” The former executive director goes on to talk about the roster financing of arts films. In my own case, I was able to raise anywhere of extraordinary directors that made films for “Opening Night” and between 10 to 15 per cent of the budget for my films via the network’s I can’t help but recall Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, a master- BravoFACT stream, a tributary that’s been redirected toward more piece of performance, music and silent film–era techniques created by scripted or factual projects.) Guy Maddin in 2002. Originally staged by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, “But I have to say,” Sheena continues, “that no other country makes Dracula was transformed by Maddin into arts films or docs like us [Canadians]. In one of the most dynamic works for either Europe, the traditional arts program the small or big screen. Shot in high- looked like a straight doc or a direct taping contrast black and white, it brought out of a stage show like an opera or ballet. But all the passion, horror and pathos of the we Canadians do it completely differently. Dracula story. Some critics even thought it We reimagine the piece entirely so that equal to Coppola’s version. The film won it becomes like a movie unto itself. They a truckload of prizes, including Gemini are made for TV. That’s what makes our awards (Best Arts Program and Director), shows attractive for Europeans and other a DGC award and an International Emmy, countries around the world. At first, they amongst others. The accolades given to were not used to seeing arts films like that. Maddin’s Dracula were almost typical of They popped.” As Sheena talks, I’m remem- the praise the shows on “Opening Night” bering some of the great Rhombus shows received. that popped equally on our home screens. However, when it comes to awards, no I’m thinking about Le Dortoir, François other entity hauled as much award ton- Girard’s brilliant adaptation of Carbone nage than Rhombus Media, undoubtedly 14’s dance drama about the erotic and vio- Canada’s most prolific producer of arts lent memories set within a long-deserted programming. In talking about TV arts Catholic school. I’m also thinking about programming it’s simply impossible not Larry Weinstein’s unique biographical to mention Rhombus. It’d be like trying to take on the work of Kurt Weill (September Songs talk about the history of the NHL without COURTESY MOZE MOSSANEN ) and Barbara Willis Sweete’s gor- bringing up Gretzky. With Niv Fichman geously filmic presentation of the National at the producing helm, the company, Ballet of Canada’s The Four Seasons. All of which includes directors Barbara Willis these programmes contributed to setting Sweete and Larry Weinstein, worked hard the bar higher for what makes great TV to establish a long line of wonderful arts and to the strong reputation of Canadian programmes with an impressive network filmmakers, not only on TV screens around of international partners that included Black Widow (dir. David Mortin, 2006) the world but on home turf as well. NHK (Japan), BBC, Channel 4 (U.K.), George Anthony, the strikingly silver- ZDF (Germany), ARTE France and RTP (Portugal), amongst others. haired and debonair executive who was the head of CBC Arts and Sheena Macdonald, who ran the company’s distribution arm, Rhombus Entertainment during the midway point of the golden era, helped to International, played an instrumental role in that remarkable growth greenlight many of Rhombus’s productions. I’m sitting in his bright and contributed greatly to the company’s becoming one of the leading midtown kitchen as he pours me coffee and brings up an important producers and distributors of cultural and performing-arts program- point about the absence of the arts on TV: “What about the young people ming in the world. today? Think about all the experiences they’re missing. If someone The vivacious redhead is now chief operating officer at the Canadian missed out on seeing Edouard Locke and his La La La Human Steps Film Centre and echoes what Robert Sherrin had said to me earlier: company, they could see it on TV [as in the sensuous film Amelia, “The previous leaders of the CBC clearly saw the role of a public directed by Locke himself ]. If they wanted to see more about Nureyev— broadcaster. That’s what enabled the dollars to flow through so that shameless self-promotion coming up—they could watch the dance we could make these great films,” she explains over the phone. “People film by Moze Mossanen. And if they wanted to watch some of their were able to see their first Shakespeare or their first opera or their first favourite ice dancers in an eye-popping special like The Planets [directed dance or their first exposure to great artists. And this is what makes by Barbara Willis Sweete], they had that option as well. But how are public broadcasting so important. Because there has to be a place for kids or young people going to see a great dance work by Crystal Pite the arts. It’s the only thing that lives on. Everything else dies but art [one of the most dynamic and promising choreographers working always survives. It also gives people a feeling that they can dream… today], or a musical that can be seen only by people lucky enough to just like the way sports does.” go to Stratford or Shaw? Or a documentary about some of the great When I mention the accusation that arts don’t attract enough Canadian bands today? There’s something lost here.” viewers, Sheena counters with some startling facts: “Are you kidding? George pours me more coffee and I’m now thinking about the Our docs at times smoked out some of the dramas on the CBC. You’d docs, series or one-offs that young audiences might never hear about.

34 POV 95 FALL 2014 Films, for example, about the spectacularly promising new generation your head on the wall for so long. I’ve given up. I had to change what of dancers at the National Ballet; the colourful and burgeoning world I do in order to make a living.” He tells me about his current work of show choirs across Canada; adaptations of electrifying new musical producing MOWs for other production companies both in Toronto plays like Ride the Cyclone (currently being workshopped, aimed at and Vancouver. He pauses but then returns to the arts programming Broadway); and the very best that the world has to offer in terms of thing: “Hey, look, I’m so frigging proud of what I’ve done. I’ve made dance, music and performance. The weight of all this is compounded by good, interesting films that showcase artists and show the best of our thinking about all the films that would never have been made had there creativity and culture. Because deep down I will always believe that never been an arts strand on TV. I’m thinking in particular of David the arts do the best job in showing us who we are as a people. More Mortin’s clever Black Widow, an original musical drama based on the than anything else in this world.” Evelyn Dick murder case that aired on CBC’s Opening Night in 2006. A short while before my meeting with Neil, the audience numbers With a glorious cast that includes many outstanding Canadian talents for my most recent film, Unsung, are released to me. The doc is about like Mary Margaret O’Hara, Sarah Slean, two high school show choirs as they battle Tom McCamus and Gary Reinke, the film is time, nerves and each other while prepar- both a macabre and delicious look into the 10 recommended ing for the national championships held in worlds of desire and deceit. I mean, how the spring. Commissioned by TVOntario can you not love a film that begins with a arts docs and films the film pulled in in excess of 600,000 severed head sitting in a fiery coal furnace viewers, an astonishing fact given it was singing about the heartbreak of lost love? (alphabetically): only broadcast in Ontario. Combined with In some ways, the film foreshadowed some an aggressive marketing campaign by the FlicKeR (dir. Nik Sheehan, 2008) of the risky, unorthodox themes and film network and extensive support through techniques that are now somewhat de Floating Over Canada (dir. Peter Thurling, 1985) social media generated by the kids, their rigueur on shows like Boardwalk Empire Flamenco at 5:15 (dir. Cynthia Scot, 1983) families and friends across the province, or Breaking Bad. I can’t help but think what Lodela (dir. Philippe Baylaucq, 1996) the response reassures me that there is a loss it would’ve been had Mortin’s film an audience for arts programming—and Narcissus (dir. Norman McLaren, 1983) not seen the light of day. one that’s clearly underserved, given the “So, how come the arts have disap- Bach Cello Suite No. 6: Six Gestures (dir. Patricia response. peared from TV? What happened?” I’m Rozema, 1997) So, where do we go from here? Well, it’s now sitting across a café table from Neil Streetcar (dir. Nick de Pencier, 2004) clear that any strong initiative must come Bregman, the president and CEO of Sound Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (dirs. Scot McFadyen, from the top dog at the network. There has Venture, which once produced many pop- Sam Dunn and Jessica Joy Wise, 2005) to be a will and a commitment to create ular arts programs for the likes of CBC an ongoing platform on their schedules, The Young Romantic and Bravo! The tall, athletic producer was rather than paying lip service with a special (dir. Barbara Willis Sweete, 2008) behind such titles as The Toy Castle, the here and there. That way, with a continuing globally successful kids’ series that origi- Year of the Lion (dir. Moze Mossanen, 2003) presence and solid marketing support, the nally ran on Treehouse TV; Footnotes, a (I’m shameless, I know) programmes will at least have a chance to dance doc series; and many doc one-offs succeed. Of course, this is all predicated like Celia Franca: Tour de Force and The Dancer’s Story, both directed upon the need for the federal government—which lately has shown by acclaimed former ballerina and now filmmaker Veronica Tennant. nothing less than indifference or outright contempt for culture, cultural He ponders my question before laying it all out: “The loss of the arts institutions and the arts—to listen to the needs of Canadians in making on TV is an indictment of where the world is right now. In the past, they the arts a priority in the larger scheme of public policy. [the broadcasters] would not hold you to the numbers or ratings. They Broadcasters must also make it easier for corporations to sponsor did it because they loved it. But then broadcasters started to consolidate shows on their schedules. Given my own experience on this issue, there and get bigger and there was a greater pressure to make a profit. And is an appetite for corporations to act as sponsors, particularly high- now it’s purely commercial. It’s all about advertisers, eyeballs and profile arts programmes that can reach a broad range of audiences. But numbers. I think this had a huge impact on arts programmes because above all, we, as producers, have a continuing responsibility to make they are, in essence, specialty programmes.” He pauses but then goes our films in a way that engages the community while maintaining the for broke: “As for Rogers, Shaw, Bell and Corus...they are essentially excellent standards of production and storytelling that have made us distributors, not creative content producers, whereas in the past you stand out from the rest of the world pack. had executives like Moses Znaimer who, despite his massive ego, was It’s a tall order but it’s worth it. Because art is great. Art is valuable. primarily a creative guy. His company Citytv [CHUM Ltd.] changed Art moves, thrills and changes us. And we should never hesitate to completely when Bell Globe Media took over.” stand by those things when we make TV. n I proffer the idea that in order for the arts to survive on TV, the CBC has to stay in the game. As a public broadcaster, that is certainly Moze Mossanen is an independent and award winning filmmaker who, over their broadcast mandate, but practice has also shown that they are the the years, has created a body of popular and critically acclaimed work that important force that creates a domino effect in the financing of these have included a unique blend of drama, music and performance. These films. Once they’re in, everything else usually lines up. “Yeah, OK”, films include the award winning feature length doc,Dance for Modern Times Neil says, “but the CBC should be doing it on a regular basis because and six-part series, The Dancemakers, as well as numerous works created that’s how you achieve excellence and consistency. But above all, art especially for television: The Rings of Saturn; Year of the Lion, From Time is a powerful idea. It’s a powerful idea that needs to be served.” The to Time, Roxana and Nureyev, Love Lies Bleeding and Romeos & Juliets. His last line stays with me and I write it down. But when I look back up, most recent film,Unsung , a doc about the world of show choirs, aired for Neil shakes the dreamy notions out of my head: “But you can only bang TVO in 2013.

FALL 2014 POV 95 35 DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY Remember Me Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

BARBARA By Carly Clarke

HE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE (DTES) in Vancouver is well known candidly, by creating something beautiful from the unexpected. for its crime, addiction, poverty, prostitution and homeless My work angle came from a compassionate and positive approach Tpeople. Most Vancouverites prefer to stay well away from it. to the individuals in the community. It was extremely important for Having lived near this part of Vancouver, I wanted to get to know some me to create relationships with people and spend time with them so of the residents individually. I saw an opportunity as a photographer they would feel comfortable in opening up about their personal lives; to collaborate and have a greater insight into their daily lives. I wanted the trust we built allowed me to create an honest portrayal about them to capture a different side of Vancouver’s DTES residents. within their everyday environment. My interest stood firmly in treating My approach meant spending many weeks in freezing tempera- the people I photographed without judgment. I wanted to represent tures during a harsh winter. I wanted to realise the project not just them as they were in that moment, not altering the truth. I wanted as a series of portraits, but also as a social documentary. The street to oppose stereotypes, learn about their particular avenue of life and photography aspect allowed a certain freedom, giving a voice to the raise awareness of the east-side dwellers to people within the city and people I talked to and photographed and a chance to see what an as far as possible. My most important desire was to use the power of outsider would not—a more authentic side to their lives. I believe photography as a tool for change for the people in this community. there is a spontaneity that needs to exist at the core within photo- When people view my photographs, I want viewers to see each indi- documentary work, which has always been to document reality, vidual as a reflection of themselves. Everybody wants to be understood.

36 POV 95 FALL 2014 ROB

Nobody wants to have a mental illness or a drug addiction. a thank-you, which I gratefully declined. The people I met in the DTES were often people who had fallen I was inspired by stories such as Clint’s, a man I met with his three- on hard times but they were friendly and willing to participate in my legged dog, Lucky. He doesn’t suffer any addictions but unfortunately project. Even the most threatening, insensitive people were willing Clint broke his back three years ago while working for a friend, pulling to listen to what I had to say, if it meant portraying them in a positive something too heavy for his frame to handle. He had to wait three years light rather than a negative one. For most if not all of the people I for a room in the East Hastings area through BC Housing, a corporation encountered, addiction played a major role in why they were there. that offers residences for low-income people. Clint found his dog in It not only got them into life on the street, it kept them there. a rescue shelter after she had lost a leg and been severely abused. He I met a lady named Angel, who was upset by the events from the called the dog Lucky. Clint told me with great sincerity that Lucky is night before, when she had been robbed and beaten by two men she his antidepressant in life. claims were friends, but who had turned against her. She told me she There were many interesting, larger-than-life characters that I came suffers from bipolar disorder and a big addiction to crack cocaine to meet often. One in particular stood out, not just for his charms and and other drugs. She has a degree and is a writer but her illness is a great personality but because you could hear him coming from blocks huge obstacle in her life. Though Angel had no money, she was so away! His name was Omar, a man who carried his boom box every- grateful I was photographing her that she offered me her watch as where, playing the greatest selection of tunes. Because he has such a

FALL 2014 POV 95 37 PINHEAD AND GARY

COREEN

38 POV 95 FALL 2014 CHRISTINE community face, nobody would dare to target him. He could leave his negative appearance to outsiders. I found that out myself. It is not boom box on the street and nobody would steal it, knowing it was his. just how the residents appear that is the subject of my work, but also Molly and Nicholas were a couple I met who wanted me to photo- the phenomenon of the subculture and how these people have been graph them kissing, because after many years together they were still moulded by their harsh conditions. The backdrop and urban settings in happy. They had just moved out of the Astoria Hotel where they had each photograph were just as important to me because this is a reflec- lived for seven years. They said the Astoria had 40 rooms per floor tion of who they are and where they spend their time. For instance, and one bathroom to share—not an easy place to be. I met Andy while he was collecting cans with a shopping trolley in There are plenty of ex–drug addicts finding a way to help the com- back alleys. By recycling cans that are littered around the city, he is munity and who become guiding lights for those in trouble, such as doing his fellow residents a favour by keeping the city clean. It gives Yvonne, who provides a regular service to feed the homeless. She is an him a purpose and keeps him eating every day. ex-addict and showed me the exact place she took drugs for six years Vancouver has been exposed to much positive press over the of her life, beside a doorway in one of the most dangerous alleyways years, particularly since it gained its title as ‘one of the most live- in Vancouver, where I was threatened to be killed (if I took photos of able cities in the world.’ But is this title creating pressure to discard dealers) just before walking down it. Vancouver’s DTES? If so, why should this title have the power to Here I was confronted by an angry woman who thought I was a drive people from their own homes? Aren’t people just afraid of what danger to her so she began to get aggressive with me. With Yvonne’s they don’t understand? Because eliminating the area will not make help I won over Leslie, a heroin addict who agreed to have me take her these people go away; turning a blind eye will only make matters portrait and open up to me about how she feels about the area. She told worse. I believe in the individuals living in the DTES as a collective me about the importance of the DTES. “Everyone is here for a reason; whole. It is an environment where people can and do relate to and we are a community, in it together. We all look out for each other and support one another. n love each other. If I didn’t have this community I’d rather die.” She wanted to show me her scars on her arms from injecting heroin and Carly Clarke is a British documentary and portrait photographer who works many other scars, one from an attempted suicide and another from a in medium-format photography. Documenting in a creative, cinematic style, recent cut to her hand. She gave me a big hug before I left. her work looks at social issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. Storytelling The DTES is a place full of vibrancy and inspiration beneath its through the voices of subjects she photographs is key to her work.

FALL 2014 POV 95 39 OPINIONS Art of the Real A Festival of Hybrid Docs

By Christina Clarke documentary (noun): A movie or a television or radio program that North (and especially since the advent of television), documentary has provides a factual record or report — Oxford Dictionaries (online) come to represent a more predictable art form—a category in which documentary (noun): A movie or television program that tells the facts the viewer may anticipate “real facts” and “real stories.” about actual people and events — Merriam-Webster All of the films presented inArt of the Real were technically non- fiction. But where reality/documentary ended and fictional narrative N INCREASING NUMBER of nonfiction filmmakers in recent began seemed deliberately yet enchantingly inconclusive, producing years have abandoned the confines of documentary as a a fascinating hybrid. A branch of journalism or filmed historic artifact to explore “I think the point of hybridity is that it resides between two poles; more adventurous modes of storytelling. it exists on a spectrum,” Lim said. “There are so many ways to define Recognizing this burgeoning trend, New York’s Film Society of hybrid. On the one end, you might have something that you could Lincoln Center (FSLC) launched Art of the Real this past spring. It’s an consider pure fiction or close to pure fiction and then on the other, ambitious annual film series devoted to freeing documentary from all narrative, structural and conceptual restrictions; a platform to showcase Time Goes By Like A Roaring Lion nonfiction film as an expansive, rebellious and evolving category as (dir. Philipp Hartmann, 2013) well as a complex, challenging and divisive art form. Held at the deluxe new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, the series joins an already impressive calendar of annual FSLC events that includes New Directors/New Films, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Dance on Camera, Human Rights Watch and The New York Film Festival. Curated by FSLC’s director of programming Dennis Lim, along with programmer-at-large Rachael Rakes, the first edition ofArt of the Real featured a carefully chosen sampling of 35 old and new titles, post-screening discussions with many of the filmmakers and introduc- tions by other special guests. The programme surveyed a dazzling array of nonfiction narrative and aesthetic imperatives including autobiography, agitprop, essay, travel diary, fictional hybrid and gallery installation. Several of the films resisted any classification. Most of the contemporary selections had previously been shown at other festivals, while some of the vintage titles like Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli’sAnna (Italy, 1972-75) and Thom Andersen’s Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (U.S., 1975) are rarely screened. ALL PHOTOS COURTESY FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER “We wanted to expand our idea of documentary cinema,” Lim complete documentary. But the moment you turn on a camera, there explained. “So it was not about applying criteria, but expanding the is an element of decision-making that goes into it, so there is always criteria that typically applied to these kinds of showcases. We wanted some aspect of manipulation. It’s not as clear-cut as documentary on to include films that dealt with the real in some way, whether they were one side and fiction on the other.” straight-ahead, complete documentaries or whether they were more The reality is that all nonfiction films are complicated by opinion hybrid films or even fiction films that had some relationship with the and point of view. Once you are an observer (even of your own life), real. Also, we wanted to move the emphasis away from documentary a natural bias or preference takes over. So in pursuit of “truth,” one as information, as journalism, and to really think about it as an art inevitably encounters fictions. Also a typical documentary tends to form—an art form with a very long history, an art that really is closely be structured to reveal a recognizable narrative and dramatic arc, connected to some of the most radical and important developments whether or not one actually existed. Yet the story is presented as in the history of cinema.” having been “real.” In film’s early days, nonfiction was a playground for experimenta- Philipp Hartmann’s Time Goes By Like A Roaring Lion (Germany, tion. Even Robert Flaherty, the so-called father of feature-length docu- 2013), Nicolas Provost’s Plot Point Trilogy (Belgium, 2012), Benjamin mentary, famously took generous liberties, mixing facts with fiction to Pearson’s Former Models (U.S., 2013) and Robert Greene’s Actress (U.S., create dramas for the camera. Yet in the decades since Nanook of the 2014) were among the films shown that messed with these notions in

40 POV 95 FALL 2014 Clockwise fron top: Plot Point Trilogy (dir. Nicolas Provost, 2012); Former Models (dir. Benjamin Pearson, 2013); San Clemente (dir. Raymond Depardon, 1982); Actress (dir. Robert Greene, 2014); To Singapore, With Love (dir. Tan Pin Pin, 2013)

FALL 2014 POV 95 41 especially artful ways. Each challenged the viewer to consider reality enlarge the conversation around the selection of new work. That was or truth as a function of imagination. fun and made it a bit different than a typical documentary festival. We Some of the other recent films screened were: Tan Pin Pin’sTo didn’t really need to have premieres. We just wanted to put together Singapore, With Love (Singapore, 2013), which answers the question work both new and old that was all strong, would all stand alone, but ‘What happens when you leave?’ in a tender portrait of elderly politi- when you put it together there was actually something more.” cal exiles who may never return home; The Second Game (Romania, Lim and Rakes included landmark genre-busting films by directors 2014) by Corneliu Porumbolu, which uses a deceptively static premise, such as Derek Jarman, Raymond Depardon and Paulo Rocha, as well a conversation between father and son recorded while reviewing a as work by two of nonfiction’s most ingenious outliers, James Benning video of a Soviet-era soccer match to expose some chilling beliefs; and Thom Andersen, who were present at their screenings. Harun Farocki’s A New Product (Germany, 2012), a sublimely subver- Depardon’s San Clemente (Italy, 1982) was especially riveting, a sive satire about managerial tactics, corporate culture and industrial poignant, droll yet relevant study of a psychiatric hospital in Venice design; and Bloody Beans (Algeria/France, 2013), Narimane Mari’s on the brink of closure. The camera seemed to depict the POV of an surrealist reenactment of the Algerian War of Independence, loosely occupant silently observing, following or giving chase to doctors, staged by a group of young children on and around a beach in Algiers. patients and visitors alike. It was direct cinema played as brutally The film concludes with the ensemble floating in the water, reciting honest and heartbreaking black comedy. a poem by radical French playwright Antonin Artaud that asks: “Is it “Some of the things I was most excited about were the older screen- Better to Be, Than to Obey?” ings,” Lim admitted. “At the screening of Anna, more than 100 people “In nonfiction writing we have so many ways to be creative; different came to see a 40-year-old Italian documentary shot on rather primitive classifications for essays and memoirs, which we don’t have so much video, but also a film I think is incredibly important in the history of for cinema,” Lim continued. “One thing we wanted to do was actually documentary. For me, that was one of the highlights of the series. Also ALL PHOTOS COURTESY FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER From left: Manakaman (dirs. Stephanie Spray and Pacho Valez, 2013); Bloody Beans (dir. Narimane Mari, 2013) acknowledge that a wide variety of films do in fact exist. They have to have Rachel Kushner [introduce the film], who has written a book made an impression. But in some cases they have been sidelined or [The Flamethrowers], a very carefully, brilliantly researched novel that forgotten, partly because of the popularity and the undeniable useful- is very much informed by history, by art and by cinema…it was really ness of documentary as an informational conduit, as an activist tool, as great to have [her] put it in context as well.” a way of educating people. All of which are very valid, but I think those Grifi and Sarchielli’s 225-minute Anna begins as a curiosity; a crudely things, especially in the last few years, have overshadowed the other shot black and white video time capsule of hippie-era Rome with a ways in which nonfiction cinema can be used, can be manipulated, radiantly attractive, pregnant teenager as its primary focus. About two can be meaningful to people.” hours in, it gets really intriguing, as the balance of power shifts from In just eight years, Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab creepy filmmaker to increasingly manipulative subject. The question (SEL) has earned a reputation for producing especially meaningful of who is using who is never quite resolved, yet it’s implied all sorts nonfiction cinema: rich, immersive films that are meant to be experi- of moral and ethical lines may have been crossed. Anna is still risky enced rather than simply viewed. SEL received a short retrospective and unnerving, a queasy precursor of reality TV. It was by far the most during the first week of the 17-day series. Included was Stephanie polemic film screened in the series. Spray’s and Pacho Valez’ entrancing Manakamana (U.S., 2013), which Sadly (and possibly sacrilege to say so), Jarman’s Blue seemed dated, went on to a successful two-month theatrical run at New York’s IFC overwhelmed by its melodramatic early-’90s soundtrack—though it Center. Titles that inspired SEL filmmakers were also screened: Jean did serve to remind one of the demise of 35mm film. The screen’s once Rouch’s Jaguar (France, 1954/1967), Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss intense blue colour field, its saturation weakened by time, the print (U.S./India, 1986) and Jana Sevcikova’s Jakub (Czech Republic, 1992). pitted and scratched by years of projection: Blue now represents not “We first thought of this series as a showcase for new films that only Jarman’s swan song, but that of film itself. n might fall between the cracks because they’re not easily defined, because they are somewhat documentary, somewhat experimental,” Christina Clarke has written about entertainment for The Washington Post, Lim explained. “Then very quickly the conversation evolved to ‘How The Globe & Mail and Elle Magazine. She is an adjunct instructor of public do we put these films into a meaningful context?’ relations at New ’s School of Continuing and Professional “That’s when we decided we would show older films as well, to Studies.

42 POV 95 FALL 2014 Clockwise from top: Forest of Bliss (dir. Robert Gardner, 1986); Jaguar (dir. Jean Rouch, 1954/1967); Anna (dirs. Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli, 1972-75); A New Product (dir. Harun Farocki, 2012)

FALL 2014 POV 95 43 OPINIONS An interview with Thom Andersen A discussion of hybrid docs with the eminent director and film theorist

By Christina Clarke

SINCE THE MID-’60s, Thom Andersen has made only a handful of of course the people who are part of this series: Jean Rouch, Robert films, yet all are nonfiction trailblazers. As a filmmaker, he is perhaps Gardner and Pierre Perrault in Canada. Another important film is best known for his 2003, 169-minute epic essay film,Los Angeles Plays Portrait of Jason by Shirley Clarke. Itself. It’s hypnotic, informative, captivating, a location-based explo- ration of the city’s film history divided into three sections: “The City CC: Where does documentary film end and narrative film or even art film as Background,” “The City as Character” and “The City as Subject.” begin? Artists like Bruce Conner come to mind and Mike Kelley, who was Andersen is also a film critic and historian. He teaches film theory and a graduate of Cal Arts. Robert Frank’s Cocksucker Blues, in which Frank history at the California Institute of the Arts. invented his own version of the Rolling Stones. We’ve come to believe that documentary is more truthful than narrative film, that the story is CC: Christina Clarke | TA: Thom Andersen more authentic under the rubric of documentary film.

TA: Pedro Costa, who could obviously be in this programme as well, CC: The definition of documentary seems to be changing. What’s your when people ask him what was documentary, what they were really take on hybrid nonfiction? interested in was, what was true. For him, true was not a matter of what was staged or reenacted in his films but the truth. Let’s say TA: For me it represents a return to something that really has existed documentary films have a certain kind of truth and fiction films have since the beginning of documentary as we call it: Nanook of the North or a certain kind of truth. a film I actually like better, In the Land of the Headhunters by Edward Curtis, made about 1914. [Shot] north of Vancouver, it’s a document CC: How do you define each? Is there a line? of the native people there and their ceremonies. It’s so impressive; footage of it turns up in a lot of films. For example, it’s in Oliver Stone’s TA: Sure. In a fiction film, it’s a matter of having a kind of privileged [1991 movie, The Doors, in which he re-creates Jim Morrison’s student access to the people in the film and creating a story that has some film,] the one he made at UCLA and was lost. It has footage from moral, an emotional truth, the possibility of a truth about society at a [Headhunters], which wouldn’t be possible because the movie hadn’t certain time and place. The last is also what we expect of documen- been rediscovered yet. tary but we don’t expect the same kind of access to the people in a My point is Curtis made up a story that the native people acted out. documentary film. It was based on their life but was also sensationalized. So from the very beginning of what we think of as documentary was hybrid film. CC: Access to their internal workings? To their spiritual lives? Their motivation? CC: Films were a new way of seeing; it was a new technology. Sensationalizing stories would draw more of an audience. And certainly in TA: That’s why [Krzysztof ] Kieslowski quit making documentaries and the teens, orientalism was popular; people were fascinated by the exotic. started making fiction films. He said in a documentary you couldn’t show people making love, you couldn’t show the most intimate scenes. TA: Godard said Méliès was the father of documentary because he He felt he had used up all he could do in documentary and started made The Coronation of Edward VII around 1902, which of course was making fiction films. But his first fiction films were sort of hybrids— staged. But it was the first film that proposed that it was documenta- Short Working Day—for example is quite a remarkable film, and the tion of an event rather than just a street scene as in the Lumière films. one after it [Blind Chance].

CC: Given the historic roots of documentary, it’s ironic that it became CC: I’m thinking even could be included in this defini- more and more assumed to be non-partisan and reality-based. tion of nonfiction. Visual artists have always been playing around with this and it seems we’re finally acknowledging that filmmakers have been TA: The Maysles don’t call their films documentaries; they call them doing this all along. And some of the films coming out right now are very fictions because they make a story out of something that’s real, which powerful because filmmakers are used to dealing with the through line they don’t manipulate except when they are editing the film. Johan of narrative. Visual artists seem to discover narrative later whereas film- van der Keuken is one of the great documentary filmmakers. He makers are looking for the narrative, for the inherent story, the inherent doesn’t call his work documentary because he has people reenact dramatic climax. things. It’s things that they do but he asks them to do them again so that he can film them, even if it’s just a matter of walking. And then TA: Also, if there are more films like this being made today it’s because

44 POV 95 FALL 2014 sparked your interest in the medium?

TA: As a child I didn’t go to the movies very much or even watch them on television. I remember a couple of movies I saw that I liked as a child: High Noon and another one that I still like is War of the Worlds. It scared me a lot, seeing it in a movie theatre. I got interested in movies when I was in high school. I suppose the movies that first inspired me were Ivan the Terrible and “The Apu Trilogy” by Satyajit Ray. After that, Breathless and Pickpocket and Last Year at Marienbad, those were the movies that inspired me to take an interest in working in film. Another Hollywood movie that impressed and scared me when I was young was Kiss Me Deadly. The only movies that I saw as a child that appear in Los Angeles Plays Itself were War of the Worlds and Kiss Me Deadly, both movies that I still like.

CC: I think as a kid, the things that are most memorable are the things that scare us. Being scared as a kid is kind of the same as being excited. DAVE PAPE DAVE TA: Yeah. There are movies that scare you, like Errol Morris’s The Fog of the ossification of the documentary form in U.S. filmmaking. Certain of War. Not so much the Rumsfeld movie. forms have become formulas. Obviously, if you want to talk about hybrid films, reality TV is an example where you have something real CC: The Fog of War is quite chilling. It does what a good narrative film and something made up. The Ken Burns form, Alex Gibney [Enron: does; it has a great arc. The fact it’s based on real stuff makes it that much The Smartest Guys in the Room]. Films that tell a story but it’s a story more terrifying. that’s also sometimes interrupted. Neither of these forms was involved with direct cinema, which seems to have kind of disappeared from TA: Scary movies today are documentaries. mainstream American documentaries since the ’60s and ’70s. Quite often the subject is political or quasi-political or pseudo-political, CC: You have several films inArt of the Real, including Eadweard like the Enron movie or Charles Ferguson’s movie about the stock Muybridge: Zoopraxographer and Red Hollywood. market crash [Inside Job] and his very good film about the Iraq war and occupation [No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq]. TA: Muybridge is in a way kind of a new movie. Finally, I can say, I’ve What these films have in common and what I don’t like about them been able to do what I intended to do with these movies but, because is the use of extragenic music. I might have started that in American of lack of resources, was unable to do. I’m sure [UCLA] spent more film with the Muybridge movie. Of course it had been done before in money on this restoration, which is more of a re-creation of Muybridge, a number of French documentaries, most notably in Night and Fog, than I spent on making it. It’s really wonderful. It’s now 35mm instead which has a great score by Hanns Eisler. of 16mm. It was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive: Ross CC: Now that everyone is documenting everything online, where do you Lipman and Sean Hewitt. In all their restorations, when they have a think personal narratives end and fictions begin? What’s your experience 16mm film they blow it up to 35. That’s what they did forKiller of Sheep at Cal Arts with your students? by Charles Burnett and Bless Their Little Hearts by Billy Woodberry, two films that were inLos Angeles Plays Itself. TA: James Benning [who was also featured in Art of the Real] teaches a class [at Cal Arts] where students make movies from material found CC: Are you planning to do some other films? on various Web sites like but not limited to YouTube. The availability of these images makes it possible to create different kinds of work, TA: I’d like to make a movie about D.J. Waldie, who wrote Holy Land, a to create strange juxtapositions. The films that he is presenting in book about Lakewood, one of the best books about Southern California. this series are some of his YouTube movies, made from materials he I’d like to make a movie about architecture in Los Angeles, early found on the Internet. modernist architecture. There are lots of other possibilities. I’d like to write a book that is an extension of Los Angeles Plays Itself. People have CC: Does that count as “found footage” since it’s identified as owned or talked about a book of collected writings or selected writings—things created by those posting online? that I’ve written that weren’t published or things that were published under other people’s names. And I’d also like to see the longer films TA: Maybe the term found footage is used too widely. For example: that I’ve made get wider distribution so that everyone who might be Los Angeles Plays Itself is not made from found footage. interested can see them.

CC: Highly curated footage! CC: Is there anyone you’ve especially admired?

TA: Some of it was found in a sense, but I searched for certain things. TA: I was a big fan of the Maysles, particularly their film about the I saw a movie and said this is something I want to talk about. Beatles in 1964. I thought when I got out of film school, I could get a job with them as an editor. But I think all their editors were women, CC: What sort of films did you respond to when growing up? What so I knew I didn’t stand much of a chance. n

FALL 2014 POV 95 45 POINTED VIEW BY ROB KING Regulate Netflix A Passionate Argument

AS A DOCUMENTARY and independent feature filmmaker, I have followed the many meagre paths to investment. I have laboured for years on projects, travelled great distances and hit up on every friend I have for as many favours as I could. I have even risked my life by standing on the edge of highly radioactive nuclear bomb craters in northeastern Kazakhstan, or by spending too much time in helicopters veering a few feet off the water down narrow river valleys. When I read Barri Cohen argue that Canadian filmmakers need to fight “any attempt to impose regulation on the Netflixes of the world” in the last issue of POV, I was immediately sympathetic, but I also flinched. I agree with Cohen’s view that we need more players interested in purchasing and showing Canadian content. But we also need them to invest in the making of that content. Here’s the thing about Netflix; when we knock on their door, the offer is staggeringly low. We are told this is what the marketplace can for the future of media consumption here and abroad. And even more afford. Themarketplace for Netflix includes 13.8 million subscribers funds would exist if a player like Netflix antes up. outside of the U.S. According to its CEO Reed Hastings, the subscriber I fully agree when Cohen notes that the Canadian system is a mess list is growing at 78 per cent, year over year. They are actively plan- because large, culturally unresponsive media giants like Rogers and ning further global expansion and in their last quarter reported $1.34 Bell find ways to circle around CRTC regulations and cry foul over billion in earnings. the invasion of Netflix. The networks are calling for Netflix to be Netflix apparently makes about $38 million in Canada. Because subjected to the same rules under which they operate, while simul- they do not publish or answer questions related to acquisitions, what taneously arguing that these rules should be loosened for everyone. Netflix pays to filmmakers is herein only gleaned anecdotally: the They cite the borderless nature of the Internet as the reason regula- number ranges between $1,500 and $12,000—a flat fee that is depen- tion no longer works, while finding ways to charge for content in dent on several variables. this borderless world. Put simply, our position should be: if it can be Netflix builds its success around gaining heaps of subscribers monetized, it can be regulated, and this is especially important in view who are drawn in by low fees, a few great self-produced series and of Canada’s broader cultural mission. a whole lot of commercial-free choices. By accepting a few dollars Netflix deserves regulating, an issue the company is now facing and increasing that number of choices, the filmmaker helps build the and attempting to sidestep in France. Of course, it will argue that Netflix brand and its large profits. paying more for content will make the company less profitable and This model asks that we resign ourselves to the often-quoted argu- therefore unable to compete. We can all imagine the possibilities if, ment that, since the great economic collapse of 2008, in a world of so in its last quarter, $340 million went toward the content makers and many choices on so many non-traditional platforms, there just isn’t Netflix kept the other $1 billion. the money to invest in the making of films. Never accept the argument that we artists should just be glad for But funds do already exist within our domestic system, though they what we are given. are presently directed to other interests. On that front, we should exhort the CRTC to move quickly in shifting its focus toward the production Rob King is a director of documentaries and narrative films. He is the chair, of feature films and feature documentaries in Canada, while planning National Director’s Division, of the Directors Guild of Canada.

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FALL 2014 POV 95 47 FREEZE FRAME

Documenting a scene in 360 degrees COURTESY THOMAS WALLNER AND PRIMITIVE ENTERTAINMENT Filmmaker Thomas Wallner captured by his GoPro camera on the Russell Glacier that covers 80 per cent of Greenland. Read his full account, “Documentaries in VR,” on page 20 of this issue.

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