I have been lucky enough to see quite a few film that have emerged from Quebec this year at TIFF - Charlebois resignates with me deepest. Why? She takes the bull by the horns. There is no hesitation, no fear and no fluffing of Kiki Labrèche's tale of woe - it is in your face.

When you open up the chest of this film, you find it is filled with a bleeding heart  that echoes meloncholy. The complexity of the film never once looses your attention, and you in fact can't help but empathize with Kiki's destain and what seems as pre-destined, unfortunate fate.

Charlebois explained to the audience at the Q & A following the film, Borderline this was very much a labour of love. She shares the story is fiction and non-fiction, based 50% on a pair of novels, 25% based on her life and 25% of pure fiction. A viewer asked her, "why this film?" Charlebois laughed and answered, "we thought we have something to say." Did they ever have something to say.

There is such a sensitivity this film places around the topics of childhood isolation, mental illness in the family, substance abuse and the quest to find true love. The performace by Isabelle Blais is nothing short of phenominal. Each angle, each shoot, the attention to detailing, makes this film alive in texture and message.

What sits with me is Charlebois words. "This movie is about the most important love...the love of yourself."

Borderline screens next on Friday, September 12th at 6:30pm, and again on Saturday, September 13th at 12 noon.

Toronto the good needs a rude awakening.  Toronto Stories clearly illustrates that Toronto's promise is stuck in the past.  Toronto is no longer a hog town, it's a happening city. Everywhere you go something is happening. Toronto is a beautiful vibrant city. You would never know it talking to some of the people living here. 

I arrived at the AMC theatre with all kinds of presumptions and expectations only to be treated to a brilliant depiction of a Toronto that flips, twists and defies pre-conceived notions.

In a brief conversation with Co-producer David Weaver, he revealed that when he was throwing around ideas for the title of the film, some of his friends and associates told him not to use Toronto in the title.  Stories like that make this film provocative. David goes on to say "Toronto has been swept under the rug and hidden for far too long, it doesn't play a strong character in films."  How can anyone live in a city they're ashamed of?

Toronto Stories begins with a powerful and poetic introduction from Pearson International Airport, where many people who call Toronto home started their journey into the unknown avenues of a major metropolitan city.

The creators of Toronto Stories cleverly weave iconic elements of Toronto landmarks and locations into an action packed comedy adventure horror love story.  Using interesting camera angles, soft lighting and sharp eyes, four short and sassy vignettes take you on a strange and beautiful tour of the city. 

 

I can't be happier about seeing these films. They just added to the buzz that TIFF 08 has placed in my system this year. I have been lucky and excited to be exposed to a variety of films that document both abstract and directly, the uncertain path of a woman in this world today, the jaded intentions she will face, and the love she will realize. Fate brought me to this theater. I ate it up and I came out full.

I love looking at people as they watch movies. Only for short periods of time when I can sneak a peak in a shy glance and not loose track of the pictures and sounds protruding from the beam on-screen. I admit that I can't help but look intently and wonder what someone is thinking when they are watching a movie. I can tell you that every woman in this cloaked dark room had an antenna up to taste, smell, listen and feel the heroism of all these female characters.

The problem with the Midnight Madness programme at TIFF is that there is only one movie per day, and there are only ten days of the Festival. Now, let's see...carry the six, add four, minus seven....That's only ten films!

Which means that from the truckload of off-the-wall cinema that programmer Colin Geddes has to sift through every year, certainly the vast majority don't make the cut for midnight.

That's, of course, not to say that the ones that don't make it aren't good or even great films. So sometimes Colin will put some of the ones that didn't make the cut into other programmes, ready to be unleashed onto an audience that is sometimes completely unprepared for them! Here are three such selections:

VINYAN ? Did you see Calvaire? The batshit, off-the-wall nightmare set in rural France that screened at Midnight Madness in 2004? Well director Fabrice Du Welz is back with an even more surreal thriller set in the dense, menacing jungles of Burma. When Paul (Dark City's Rufus Sewell) and Jeanne (Mission Impossible's Emanuelle Beart) glimpse what they think is their lost son Joshua in a video, they travel to Burma in a desperate search for him. What ensues is one of the most gripping, horrifying cinematic experiences of this year's Festival. The last images will stay with you for a long, long time. I can sum it up in 7 words: someone puked during the screening at Scotia.

SAUNA ? This movie jumps out at me as being  the only ultraviolent Eli Roth-esque period piece at the Festival this year (if you don't count The Duchess, of course). Director Antti-Jussi Annila creates a dark, foreboding  atmostphere around the Finnish/Russian setting. Expect lots of demons and even more decapitation in this one!

What better way to cap off a festival filled with Canadian brilliance than a Michel Brault double bill?  Pour la suite du monde paired with the seminal Les Raquetteurs for starters, followed by a glorious new print of Les Bons Débarras.

 

Pour la suite du monde, as André Loiselle writes - ?weaves an intricate web of relationships between reality and fiction, past and present, tradition and modernity, and word and image. Brault and (co-director Pierre) Perrault?s approach seeks to actualize that which no longer exists: the whale hunt is revived not in the hope of modernizing an ancient practice, but rather of making present what is irrevocably past.? 

 

Hailed as an important fixture in the cinéma-vérité movement, it was the first Canadian film to compete at Cannes.  It?s a well-deserved distinction.  Brault shares the belief of John Ford that the most interesting thing you can put on film is the human face.  The enthusiasms and eccentricities of town elders joyously reviving the whale hunts of their younger years evokes a stronger emotional response than any slickly produced ?feel good? movie could hope to accomplish.

 

Speaking of slick looking productions, last night was the first screening of a brand new print of Les Bons Débarras, Francis Mankiewicz?s layered tale of a daughter?s all-encompassing love for her mother.  Shot with stunning intimacy by Brault, this was named as the best Quebec film ever made by La Presse.

 

?It was a newly struck print, we cooperated with Cinematheque Quebecois.  It?s a gorgeous looking print.  Michel Brault was involved, so the colour coordination was great.  It?s a gorgeous print and a great movie, and we were lucky to have Charlotte Laurier (seen above) there and Michel Brault, not only one of the great Canadian filmmakers but one of the great cinematographers in the world,? said Steve Gravestock, Associate Director Canadian Programming.

Some documentaries have found a home in the Visions program; one of them is the film Night by Lawrence Johnston (pictured here).  This film offers an interesting look at people's views about night; its meaning and effect on the human experience.

After the film, Thom Powers (RTR programmer) asked: How do you construct a film like this? Johnston said he was inspired by his love of photography.  He wanted to make a cinematic film, which had photographic vision.  Johnston shot the film continuously over a year. What is an amazing aspect of this film is that it was shot all with available light; no computer generated images (CGI) were used.  The images are quite beautiful; a sentiment shared by the audience: "an amazing film;" "the transition from mood to mood was also amazing" were some of their comments.

 The musical score of the film also added to the cinematic experience.  Although Johnston included interviews with several people, he wanted the score to be very present and the sound minimal.  "It is emotional... the music gets to you," Johnston said.  In terms of technical aspects of the film, the director uses time lapse shots also.  There were certain scenes that worked well with time lapse photography; for example, shots of clouds or that at the opera house.

Everyone in the theatre left with a new perspective on the meaning of Night. Someone said, "I'd see it again."  There is still a chance to see this film again or experience it for the first time: Thursday, Sept 13 at 8:45pm. 

One of the most visually arresting Canadian films at TIFF07 is the documentary The Wild Horse Redmeption. Directed by John Zaritsky, the film is chronicles 90 days in the lives of some wild stallions and a group of inmates (Picture on right: This is some of the trainers) at the Canon City Correctional Facility in Colorado.  This unique rehabilitation program is the only of its kind to team horse and man together.  The breathtaking location is vivdly captured by Zaritsky and cinematographers Ian Kerr and John Collins.  Check out some of the screen shots.

                                                             

The movie is filled with images like this one. (Pictured on left)

Picture:  Inmate Anthony Edwards (on right)

It has been almost seven years since I landed on the shores of "the free world" in my rickety boat and now we all find that the torch the lady on the Hudson holds has never burnt more feebly. As a Muslim filmmaker from India I have been honored to have the current US regime re-classify me ?an alien with extraordinary abilities.? This is a real Department of Homeland Security category also known as the O-1 visa.

Interestingly, I was entering fairest Halifax in Canada on the day that Toronto announced A Jihad for Love as part of its official documentary line-up. I was there in the middle of a very hectic post-production schedule, hoping to get the US consular office to stamp my one-year  US visa renewal. As I was sent for ?secondary inspection? (as I always am), a wholesome and buxom Nova Scotia border agent asked me what my film was about. This time I told her that it was about Islam and homosexuality and that Toronto had selected it. She smiled and told me that she had just read about it in the Globe newspaper and hoped to see it. She waved me on. Only in Canada!

Just three years ago, when I still had the re-drawn map of North America, as my screen saver (the post US election one - which showed the ?red? states as ?Jesusland? and everything else as ?The United States of Canada?), I was leaving Canadian soil triumphant with my first O-1 visa stamped. I was taken for secondary inspection (this time by the US border agents stationed in Toronto) and asked what kind of ?filmmaker? I was. All I could muster was ?a documentary filmmaker doing a film on gays in minority communities.? I have come a long way and so has this film in the last three years.

The film started when I was a student shooting on borrowed two chip Sony cameras in Washington DC. It was only after my remarkable producer, Sandi DuBowski (who has legendary skills in documentary fund raising and outreach) came in a few years ago that I found the resources to film in countries like Egypt or Bangladesh. Visible and invisible forces, thoughtfully supplied by autocratic regimes have watched my every move. In Bangladesh, I had to depart hastily once state security ransacked my hotel room.

As many of us independent documentarians already know, filming without government permissions is a remarkable risk.  I have discovered that the thrill of landing wherever home or "safe" might be - with those tiny mini DV tapes intact in your checked baggage - is an indescribable reward. As a ?Jihadi?  filmmaker I also know that the democratization of the industry with digital technology and smaller cameras has created a revolution in the stories we dare to tell. My advice: try to look like a tourist and no tripods EVER! This means you better work on those handheld skills.

I still have a film to finish so that you can all see it in a few weeks and I promise to return with more musings from the frontlines of this, our love Jihad. Watch this space for my own blog: http://www.ajihadforlove.com/

So I have been a long time fan of Hong Kong action films and one of the names that often gets slipped when talking about  heavy hitters like Jackie Chan and Jet Li is Donnie Yen, the star and action director of FLASH POINT directed by Wilson Yip. Sure there are other dudes who look good with the fists on camera like Sammo Hung (a true heavy hitter!), Yuen Biao, Billy Chow and others, but over the past few years, Donnie Yen has been working back and forth as both star and action choreographer. Prime example was SPL (now avail on dvd as, ack... "KILLZONE") which we screened for Midnight Madness 2005. It had to have been the highlight of my job at the Fest when I was able to usher Sammo Hung on stage to a standing ovation from a packed house. Thanks to all who were there to make that happen!


So the man behind the action in SPL? Boston born Donnie Yen! If you've only seen him in SHANGHAI KNIGHTS, BLADE 2 or HERO (where he fought Jet Li), you have only seen just a sample of his ability. I decided to post a few clips from some of his previous films to provide novices with a bit of history. Also check out his official website. Also check back because I have got some behind the scenes stuff to post for FLASH POINT.

First up is Donnie's fight against Michael Woods in TIGER CAGE 2, directed by Yuen Wo-ping, one of the masters of movie martial artistry. Wo-ping directed Jackie Chan in his first breakthrough film SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW in 1978 and has directed other classics like IRON MONKEY and MIRACLE FIGHTER.



Next is his fight against Jet Li in ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA PART 2, again, under the watchful eye of Yuen Wo-ping who handled the fight direction.



And finally a vid of a skill that will surprised many - he trades his furious fighting fists in for delicate fingers at the piano! This is from the premiere of Tsui Hark's SEVEN SWORDS in China.

Most docs at TIFF play in Real to Reel. But a few turn up in other sections. The Festival's recent announcement of its Visions line-up includes the doc Night from the acclaimed Australian director Lawrence Johnston. He's attended TIFF before with the doc Eternity (1994) and the fiction feature Life (1996) which won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize. In Night, he combines dazzling imagery with interviews reflecting on the wonder and mystery that occurs between sunset and sunrise.

Blindsight has its world premiere today at TIFF, garnering possibly the loudest and longest applause of any Real to Reel film so far at the festival. The film's director, Lucy Walker (background), documented the amazing story of six blind Tibetan children attempting to climb a 22,000 foot peak near mount Everest in 2004. The children were led by their teacher, Sabriye Tenberken, who is also visually impaired, and Erik Weihenmayer, a blind man who climbed to the top of Mount Everest.

Filled with emotion, struggle, triumph and a rousing rendintion of "Happy Together", Blindsight instantly became a festival favourite. After the screening, Walker wasted no time inviting up Tenberken and Weihenmayer to address the crowd and answer questions. The crowd was also told to wait for one very special guest who was being rushed from the airport. After a few more questions, Kalyi (foreground), one of the Tibetan children, made one more descent, but this time it was down the aisle to the cheers of hundreds of fans. Kalyi thanked everyone for coming to see the film and was still quite energetic after a long flight straight from Beijing.

Great cinematography combined with a complex journey of self-discovery and teamwork will have many festival goers talking about Blindsight.

Please feel free to comment on the film by submitting your thoughts to the Doc Blog...

Ghosts of Cite Soleil (right) didn´t have months or years of pre-production behind it when we started shooting. There was no production company. There was no extensive preparing for the great mission an undertaking like this film could be. There was the prepared desire to do a certain kind of film in the right setting and there was the sudden unraveling of historic events in Haiti that invited filming and immediate action. There was a clear dramatic line of events waiting to happen.  And then there was the invaluable access to the slums of Haiti through co-director Milos Loncarevic and Eleonore Senlis, a French relief worker.

The shooting of the film was financed on loans from my bank and excessive swiping of the credit card. I borrowed an Aaton Minima that?s easy to run around with shooting riots and so on, and some late date film stock from a very open minded and friendly camera rental company. I had three dv-cameras myself and the basic sound gear and that was it.

Milos Loncarevic, grew up in Belgrade during the war so fear is not really in his vocabulary. He has a way of just being there. And he was very much present in the slum taking hundreds of still-photos that clearly defined his talent. He had only recently tried his hands on an older video camera and needed just a little coaching and a newer camera before he could transplant his talent in capturing intense situations and we were on our way.

As the story progressed and I knew what we had and what we didn´t have I brought in Frederik Jacobi as the third cinematographer besides Milos and myself to satisfy the need for a different feel in some of the material. A special texture that would take our heavy load of material one step further. A step further towards the cinematic storytelling I wanted to achieve with this film. I knew Frederik Jacobi in advance as a rock-steady cinematographer capable of shooting eerily beautiful shots under very difficult circumstances. Milos and I have our excuses for exposing us to the dangers of Haiti at the time, but for Frederik it was a leap of faith on the promise of little-to-no salary. Luckily he didn´t hesitate and even managed to hustle an old old Aaton 16 for him to shoot on and some more stock.

 In my world there is almost nothing you can´t do in post as far as the look and feel goes ? provided the material is there. I am atuned to the world of manipulating digital images. Color grading some here, tweaking something there, reframing something here to make it match a cut. I want complete control over this process and insist on doing it in the editing. Luckily my editor Adam Nielsen is a virtuoso in these matters and every bit as much a control freak as me, so that was no problem. No scenes are edited into the film without prior grading.  All the film stock is transferred to dv tapes and loaded together with all the dv footage and it will never see film again. That?s the way we want it. Leave nothing to chance!

 When I hand the film to the lab on a hard disk it is color graded and run through magic bullet and frame by frame a finished film. I love the capable people at the lab with their color correctors and so on, but I need to know how the film looks while I edit. The tones of the shots have help me dictate the feeling and I can´t edit a film without knowing as we move along how it feels. Not that this process in any way takes the load of the skilled people at the lab ? on the contrary ? I can´t imagine anything more stressing than having to satisfy a nit-picking director who has the look of the film already settled wanting nothing less on film than what was handed to the lab....only better. Every step of the way making the film one better. Persuading people with sheer enthusiasm to stay after hours striving for perfection in telling a deep and important story.

I love cinema verite, and Blindsight called for combining verite with interview, a rich mix. For verite scenes it's a sine qua non that the cinematographer needs to have as much patience as I do to let things unfurl in front of the camera.

[Right: Sabriye Tenberken in Blindsight]

Some DPs think it's a set-it-up- and-shoot-it-quick-and- go-for-a-beer deal, and how much do I wish it were that easy, but alas anything I've ever directed that was worth watching has required a more painstaking approach. Real life is like wildlife, and you have to stake it out accordingly. The interesting things happen when people aren't on best behavior for a quick posing shot, when you've rendered yourself such a natural, boring even, part of the scenery that everyone's censor switches off and something closer to reality ensues. So in many ways my visual style follows from this need to be unobtrusive, quiet, restrained, observant.

The trick is to be low-key and competent and quick while being as tuned-in as possible to what's going on -- then sometimes, like the Zen archer who only has to let go of the arrow to hit the target, you automatically get those magic moments when it's completely effortless that you and the camera person are all set up and rolling just when the most amazing thing happens "unexpectedly". As our DP Petr Cikhart says "I'm always proud when I realize the subjects are completely oblivious to the presence of the camera" - and that takes time, and that's why he got the job, and that's why he did a great job. Initially I wondered whether filming blind people would be easier in the sense that they wouldn't be so aware of the camera, but I quickly learned that they were just as aware as sighted people of exactly where we were and what we were doing, even if they couldn't see us - but Erik and Sabriye, our two main protagonists, are wonderfully unself-conscious, which always makes my job easier.

It's hard work shooting, and for all the challenges I faced trying to direct while slogging up a mountain at extreme altitude, I didn't have to worry about competently operating a camera while up there (I operated a tiny bit on this, but no way could I have done that up the mountain, only when I was comfortably down at 12,000' in Lhasa). My hat (and balaclava and bandana) is off to Petr and Keith Partridge who operated up on Everest, often hand-held. It's hard to convey to you lucky people at sea level how much effort is involved in lifting a heavy object when there is less than half as much oxygen as you are used to - let alone having intelligent thoughts while you are doing so - let alone synchronizing what's available of mind and body to capture beautiful, lyrical, correctly-focussed- and-exposed shots. It was also hard to use a viewfinder when you are at extreme altitude and extreme brightness - I was sometimes amazed that the guys could even see through that viewfinder, and that we didn't have exposure problems. Keith was a pro in the mountains (previously he's shot the mountain sequences in TOUCHING THE VOID and ALIEN VS PREDATOR) and was the only person who I can say was truly a joy to be with at altitude (which famously makes people irritable). Petr, our main DP, has done a lot of wildlife and high-adventure work but was new to the mountains - fortunately he took to it like a true yak. We were also lucky to have terrific contributions from other talented cinematographers including on the first trip Mahyad Tousi and Michael Brown, who has summited Everest three times and is a regular member of Erik's team. It was quite a camera dream team.

We chose the Panasonic AJ-HDC27 VariCam because it was full-on sumptuous High Def, while still being relatively portable and light - but that's only when you're comparing it to a cumbersome and labor-intensive 35mm film rig. It was about four times bigger than your average mini-DV-pro type camera, for example. It was brand-new at that time and so something of a shot in the dark - but all our research suggested this was the technology we needed, even if it had only just come along in time for us.  And the image quality is stunning - as Petr says "I was particularly impressed with the colors, depth of film possibilities and the film-like look" - and I agree whole-heartedly. It gives me goose-bumps, actually. And I challenge all but the geekiest of techheads to spot that it wasn't shot on 35mm after our beautiful blow-up (courtesy of St. Anne's Post in London).

Tibet is so photographically stunning that to get too jiggy with the look of the film would have detracted more than it could add - we looked at some heavier filter options but I wanted to keep it pretty clean, so we used just a Haze 2A and polarizer where necessary. Occasional ND grads but only when inconspicuous. Mostly just one wide lens for the verite scenes, although we had alternatives on hand for specific shots, and we used mostly available light - we only brought one light with us as well as an invaluable box of tricks including bright bulbs, hand-held lights, booster practicals, chinese lantern shades, gel scraps and flex-fills. Trying to light the interiors of dark Tibetan homes with tiny filthy windows was often about persuading everyone to sit as close as possible to the window and face in the right direction, while all their friends and relatives hold the flex-fills, and I dangled from the ceiling holding a blue-gelled flashlight. Not so inconspicuous.

So for all that I've said above about wanting to be inconspicuous, there's a balance - there's no use being low-key when it's too dark or if you missed the moment. Sometimes my job involved persuading Tibetan people to do things they found pretty surprising. Learning a few key Tibetan phrases was the key to directing, especially in the villages, where Westerners had never visited before - let alone tried to shoot a Hi-Def movie about the blind kid they've previously written off as useless. So one thing I prepared that really paid off bigtime was that I memorized some handy-dandy Tibetan phrases for various common in-the-field situations, such as: "very good, but now we do it again, one more time, right now", and "please wait one minute", and "yes I know you have to go feed the cow, but five minutes more please I am very happy". I once shocked the life out of a marvelously-coral-bedecked nomad who was staring at the lens and ruining our shot, when I ran up to him and said in my atrocious accent "hello, please could you look at that mountain, not at the camera, just for a minute, thanks". He did too, and that shot made the cut. Hey, whatever it takes, is my motto.

On a personal notes, I am (legally) blind in my right eye - I can see enough to flinch if something's coming towards it, but I could never read or recognize anyone because the vision in it was so bad when I was born that my brain didn't bother wiring up to it. My good eye is not that good either, minus 15 and astigmatic - which is worse than anybody I've ever met who isn't blind - but it corrects well. I'm wary to even use "blind in one eye" because my experiences don't compare with someone who has to cope with being blind in two eyes. But perhaps partly as a result of my unusual vision, and the discrepancy between what each of my eyes sees, I have always been obsessed with optical effects, and photography, and visual arts in general. My vision is monocular ? like a camera - and I see things flatly  - more like a movie screen - not in the three dimensions of stereo vision. In my first cinematography class, the professor talked about painting with light to create the illusion of 3-D on a flat surface, and it was only then that I realized that this may be the reason why all my paintings and photography had always been very heavy on sculpting with light, modeling objects and their relationships in 3-D on the page/canvas using the wrap of shade and light, and the blueing of the distance. Maybe that's why I'm particularly fond of strongly directional and source-y lighting (think Rembrandt, Vermeer, early Van Gogh), and I love scenes where this is in full effect, such as when Sonam Bongso is trying to watch the movie with the rest of the village kids and we get the play of the intense sources of the naked projector bulb and light beam and screen - and that was also Petr's favorite scene to shoot. My poor vision may be another reason why I don't like to put too much extra stuff in between the lens and the subject - I just want to see what's out there as fully as possible, with as little scratched-up junk in-between me and it as possible.

We took two of the VariCams up on the mountain - because we didn't know if one would break, or the team would split, or if it would be too much work for one team at that altitude. Each cinematographer had two specially-appointed camera-Sherpas, one of whom would carry the camera, and the other the tripod, and they got fantastically nifty with all the high-tech gear. It was a luxury for me for there to be two teams, and also to have a large crew including sound recordists as well as researchers and producers and editors and translators and Chinese officials and mountain-safety experts and Sherpas and cooks - previously I've often worked with just one other person in the field, and either operated or recorded sound myself. And sometimes I found myself wishing that we didn't have all the rigamarole and bunfight of a whole flotilla of people and vehicles, sometimes you can be more creative when you are lighter on your feet - and the lonely moody majesty of the mountains is not quite the same in such a large group - however, when I first saw the finished print up on a big screen, WOW. I drooled. All that palaver had been worthwhile.

I first met Wyatt Troll,  my director of photography on Kurt Cobain  About A Son, more than a decade ago when we were both starting out in production.  We were both making music videos - I was an Executive Producer at a company that made low budget clips for indie rock bands and Wyatt was a DP and photographer just starting to make a name for himself.

Flash forward to last spring as I was thinking about who should shoot this film and I got in touch with an old friend asking for advice.  ?I need someone who can shoot really beautiful portraits and landscapes/cityscapes but can also work with a small crew and move really, really quickly.?  When Wyatt?s name came back to me, I knew almost instantly that it was the right choice.

Almost a year ago, Wyatt and I got together for drinks at the Edendale Grill
in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles to plot out our approach to making the film.  We knew it was an unconvential for nonfiction filmmaking in that we would shoot on 35mm film, we?d have extensive storyboards and photographic references, we?d have a crew of about 8-12 people with us throughout the 18-day shoot.  It was more like a low-budget narrative than any of the documentary stuff either of us had done previously.

This week, Wyatt and I returned to the Edendale to have some more scotch and reflect on the experience:

AJ:  So, we were here about a year ago and just starting to talk about the film and how we would shoot it.  Did the process turn out the way you thought it would?

Wyatt:  We are.  We are litarally in the same exact place a year latter, same Talisker, same beer, same bar.  We are a year the better, yes, yes...  Did it turn out the way I thought it would...?  Of course not or else I wouldn?t have bothered doing it.

AJ:  I like that ?cause it was a total discovery.  I feel like, in some ways, we knew it was going to be this new way of working.  It wasn?t a traditional documentary shoot at all, in terms of interviews or verite shooting style.  It was more structured, but yet we also had, I think, a real freedom to discover as we were going.

Wyatt:  I have to say you may be right (which, by the way, is what WC Feilds said to all his fan letters, good or bad) but really some of the most exciting things are things that happened because we were there and open, but the structure got us there and allowed us that leniency.

Was there something that happened that was unexpected (camera wise) that changed your perspective of lensing or even your process?

AJ:  I?m really glad that we had the chance to go up and shoot for a few days last September in a non-pressure environment.  [Note: This was a scout/test shoot with Wyatt and my producer Shirley Moyers.]  I really think that that experience gave me a good idea what was working and what could change.  For example, just trying out different film stocks on that trip made me realize that each city really needed its own look.  But even when we got into shooting, I felt that it only took until the 2nd or 3rd day for us - both you and I and the rest of the crew - to get a handle on how we were working.  From then on, I felt like we were operating in a really comfortable place.  

I have to say, that it was one of the happiest work experiences I ever had.  I was describing it recently to someone and they interupted me and said, ?wow, you really love what you do.?  And while that?s true, I also feel that it was part of how everything worked from both from a production and also a shooting perspective.  Our crew really bought into this ?structured guerilla? form of working.  The overall experience completely changed how I want to approach nonfiction filmmaking in the future.

Wyatt:  I was constructivly nervous before we went up the first time as to what overall perspective to take.  As I read Michael (Azerrad)?s book I came to this realization that Kurt never solidified the lyrics to a song until 5 minutes before recording them.  FUCK! Thats amazing.  I thought, what if I took this total zen/anarchist will to create and just let it happen...so I approached the shoot in this manner.  In a way it?s so ballsy, but it seemed the way to approach it.  Really, you gave such an open view into this world to give us the opportunity to go out on this raw limb.  It truly was a rad open creative time, maybe we can do some re-shoots....

AJ:  Definitely.  We?re premiering in, like, 10 days, so we should definitely shoot some new stuff.

Wyatt:  Good, good, my agent will be pleased....
 
Did the spirit of Kurt?s story affect affect the way we shot the film?  And, subsequently, did you notice any change in our styles as we progressed furher into our journey?

AJ:  Well, I think the decision to divide the film into three acts allowed us to make the third act more dream-like in a way - more use of camera movement, time-lapse, slow-motion - because we know that when we get to the third act that the story, Kurt?s story, is coming to an end.  I think that how we viewed the three towns differently - not just the decision to shoot each city with different film stocks, but also recognizing that there was a huge change in color palette as we journeyed from Aberdeen (grays and greens and browns) to Olympia (pastels and weathered colors) to Seattle (primary colors and steel and black) - this definitely was something that was reinforced as we went along.

On one level, I always knew that I wanted more of the third act to take place at dark, but just being in Seattle, this also seemed like the right choice aesthetically for what we were experiencing.  Actually, that - the ability to experience the environment and change certain approaches as we moved forward - was one of my favorite things of shooting.


For more of this conversation and photos from the film, visit my blog - All these wonderful things.

The slippery fields that are documentary and experimental film have been flooded?dare I say littered? with theoretical posturings, both having been debated ad infinitum.

Bypassing those tired arguments altogether, I will simply list the remarkable (amount of) documentaries in this year?s Wavelengths programme. In the traditional sense, the avant-garde has always formed to rebel against mainstream structure, inertia (societal or stylistic), and conservative and extremist politics. And sometimes the politics of the image alone were (and are in face of preposterous ?film is dead? current Debord-derived lamentations) the source of rabid urgency. After all, art and poetry are well worth fighting for? All to say that it should come as no surprise that experimental and avant-garde film and video makers continue to question the authenticity of the image and to use their art-making to render stylistically beautiful realities not gamely observed, or to fashion insightful and often risky portraits of today?s fervent disorder and trespasses.

Their tenor needn?t be grave, however, as evidenced by Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari?s witty IN THIS HOUSE, a split-screen meditation on absurd situations arising out of conflict. Having learned of a soldier?s unorthodox (and utterly human) gesture, Zaatari set out to uncover a letter which lay hidden away in a family?s garden, unbeknownst to them. Buried in a mortar casing, the note of gratitude was written by a member of a resistance army who had occupied their house for 6 years while Israeli soldiers occupied the adjacent hills in a town not far from Beirut. Zaatari?s approach to the subject is light and playful; he creates a witty diagrammatic schema in response to many of the subjects? refusal to be on camera. Deeply intelligent, In This House is a rare combination of comical and grave, where humanism triumphs.

UN PONT SUR LE DRINA (above) by Xavier Lukomski is, in my opinion, one of the most important docs from the last year. Shot in sumptuous Cinema Scope on 35mm, the film offers exquisite compositions of an ancient bridge which crosses the Drina river at Visegrad. The stately, picture-perfect beauty is juxtaposed with the sound of a war trial testimony, casting horror upon the splendour of the scene?its impact beyond description. The jarring interplay between sound and image foregrounds the language of film and its unique ability to offer a spare but shocking portrait of the unfathomable ills of the world.

The alchemical possibilities of film are showcased in Nicolas Rey?s brazenly original, feature length essay documentary, SCHUSS!. Ostensibly about alpine skiing, the film unfolds mysteriously, making evident the complex relationships between the leisure industry, the manufacturing of aluminum and the history of the cinema, and culminates in a prescient, yet enigmatic take on global capitalism. As a sagacious chronicler of information, Rey, not unlike his French confrère Chris Marker, makes insightful observations whose connections are not always apparent from the outset. The look of the film is as compelling as the subject matter. With a successive use of filters the super 8mm and 16mm material has a distinctive cast to it which speaks to a meticulously hand-made work of art.

Iranian master, Abbas Kiarostami, with a commission from a young festival in Seoul, Korea called the Green festival, has made THE ROADS OF KIAROSTAMI (right), a low-budget documentary musing on his own art: his precisely composed, luscious black and white landscape photographs. He accepted the commission from this environmentally-themed festival, he said, because he is deeply interested in such issues, as evidenced by the recurring landscape in his films and photos. THE TASTE OF CHERRY, arguably, is one of the best landscape films in the history of the cinema. Kiarostami ruminates on why his landscapes depict winding roads, forged paths leading into the horizon, while a montage of those very photographs fills the screen. This deeply personal essay film references Persian poetry and history, ending on a prescient, shocking note, which leaves us pondering, as most of his works do.

While the four works mentioned above are indisputably (or perhaps more traditionally defined) documentaries, other films and videos in the Wavelengths programme approach a shadier area ?of lyricism drawn from reality. Jim Jennings?s SILK TIES renders a sumptuously black and white New York City, owing to the photographic tradition of William Klein and Robert Frank. Rose Lowder?s impressionistic and frenetic three minutes of film ?the final installments in her miniature BOUQUETS series, offers beautiful landscapes in mechanized fits and starts. 3 MINUTEN, an experiment in cinematic time compression by Austrian artist Christoph Brunner, documents the look and feel of a train platform in Passau, Germany, on three separate occasions for a duration of four hours each. During that time, reality has been compressed, its essence spectrally recorded by Brunner?s custom-made, time-lapse camera for which he has begun a series of short, experimental works examining the transformation of reality through time.

Acclaimed Italian photographer, Olivo Barbieri, has embarked on a new series of works, the first of which will be premiered at Wavelengths. SEASCAPE #1 NIGHT CHINA SHENZHEN 05 (right) is a high definition video portrait of a busy beach in Shenzhen, of its revelers, their movements and that of the waves. A multi-layered document of this real-life composition, this video is as much about the real as it is about the language of art.

A similar ethos is shared by SWIVEL, an impossible, obsessive and whimsical portrait of Shanghai created by Oliver Husain?s incessant panning camera. Digitally stitching together views of the city?s interior and exterior realities, SWIVEL is a far cry from cinéma-vérité, and yet, it shows us more of Shanghai in 15 minutes than do most feature-lengths portrayals.

And lastly, the wondrous THE ZONE OF TOTAL ECLIPSE by multi-talented, Helsinki-based Mika Taanila, who is known for both his experimental films and his documentaries, will be projected in dual 16mm to simulate a real-life solar eclipse. The images of sun and moon (and scientific instruments) were taken from cinematic footage documented by Finnish scientists in 1945. This raw matter, excavated from a Finnish archive, is resurrected by Taanila, who recognized its ability to conjure the sublime, as most celestial phenomena do.

Are these documentary impulses to be acknowledged or allowed? In some cases yes, in some no. I think it depends mostly on who you ask?