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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man"
So runs the motto of "The Up Series" - a documentary that follows the lives of 14 children at 7 year intervals.
Beginning in Britain in 1964, the films documents the lives and attitudes of the children - a mixed group from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, at 7, 14, 21, and every 7 years thereafter. It's an ongoing project still in production. In the first film we are introduced to the characters, 3 wealthy boys who claim in turn - "I read the Financial Times" to "I read the Observer and the Financial Times" and so on, a young man from the Yorkshire Dales who resents being asked if he has a girlfriend (and in no uncertain terms tells the interviewer), and 10 others of mixed class and backgrounds. The stage is set. Each of them is observed in their own environment, is interviewed about various things, and the story continues. Especially notable is the change in attitudes not only of the subjects, but of society and the filmmaker.
Very worthwhile. You can rent it at Bird Dog Video.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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This weekend past I took the children to the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival. On Friday night, just me and the boy (the girl at a Brownies sleepover), we went to see "Sand and Sorrow" - a documentary narrated by George Clooney on the civil war in Darfur. OK, informative, but not a great documentary.
On Saturday we attended 2 more - one a CBC documentary on the Alberta Tarsands, incredibly boring. Television brought to the big screen, but I wanted the boy to see it. Our "local" ethical commitment. And then one on Chernobyl - a very well paced, informative and enlightening documentary on the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 in the Ukraine. An enjoyable film, which more than made up for the afternoon's presentation.
For those of you not familiar, the Film Festival is used to highlight topical social issues both in the world at large, and nearer to home in our communities. The format is a selected film is shown, then followed by a brief (3 or 4 question) discussion with "experts" present on the issues raised in the film. The "real" discussion is held in the lobby afterwards. Overall the films are chosen to overlap themes - for example the Saturday film on the Tar Sands raises the possibility of a Nuclear Power plant in Alberta's north to fuel the tar sands, and the following film on Chernobyl explores what happens when Nuclear Power goes wrong. This was my/our first time attending.
The festival was modestly well attended, slightly more than half full, good for the event, but a disinterested showing for a city of a million people. Noteworthy was the fact that in the last 2 films we saw we recognized most of the audience as people who were at the previous film(s), so one might generalize that those interested in social issues are very interested. Probably we should have stayed and chatted with some of them in the lobby afterwards to learn more, but 3 documentaries in a weekend was enough punishment for the boy...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I'll start with a master. Many of you may be familiar with his "Red", "White" and "Blue" trilogy, but Krzysztof Kieślowski has done more than just that. In specific, "The Double life of Veronica" - a film about a set of spiritually cojoined twins who can only intuit one anothers existences.
And the other, his "Decalogue" series, 10 short films made for Polish television based upon the 10 commandments. Not that he was religious (not that I am), but if something were to convert you it would be these works - each very simply done, muted colors, simple themes, all filmed on the same location [A bleak Warsaw apartment block], with the same actors in various roles, but God is in the details, and these films have everything, in small gestures and nuances he explores various facets of human existence, dissects the ordinary, imbues it with meaning, and reassembles, reanimates it, exploring overlapped and missed coincidences, synchronicities, triumph and tragedy, all on a microscopic, human scale.
Both films available at Bird Dog Video (in Calgary), if you live elsewhere try your independant movie vendor first. It's time well spent.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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My patronage of the Calgary International Film Festival not quite what I'd like it to be, there's only so much time, but last night I made it to "An Animator's World Shorts". Now I quite like animation, I'm thinking here of the Brothers Quay "Street of Crocodiles" (Rent their DVD's at Bird Dog Video), or Jan Svankmajer 's "Faust ", (again, Bird Dog. Most of these can be rented there. . ), but there was nothing here in that league. The opening film, "Saint Feast Day", is an amusing mix of animation styles, and this seems to be the hallmark of the show. Mixed styles of animation, some beautiful (see "Hungu "), others disturbing ("My Town"), some old school and even a CGI offering, "Perpetuum Mobile", which, while very professionally done, comes across as more of a student offering to Pixar than an award winning animation. (Humourously enough, the credits for it were as long as most feature films, and if you took the time to watch you would have been treated to the author crediting and thanking everyone born since Leonardo DaVinci [included] as a source of inspiration. . .). "Operator" is another such clip, a well animated, clever short about a man who calls God with a question. . .
My favorite, "Machine with Wishbone", showed delicate wire machines walking across dream landscapes populated with other machines, the kind of dreams Theo Jansen must have.
Overall, while there was merit in each piece the quality was more that of a graduating class of film school students than a worldwide festival.
Rating: 2/5
Note: If you're an animation fan, try viewing some of the early masters. Who can be found here: http://www.darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html