I was really only attending these films to see Gorin speak. These films were presented as part of the Cinematheque’s series on the so-called “Essay Film” (works which hardly resemble the essay form at all apart from having no protagonist and often dealing with non-fiction). I think movies like Sans Soliel and Letter to Jane would be better termed ( Read more... )

Weary with no (inhabitable) apartment of my own to go to and after a rather alarming talk with the Super, I decided to go to the movies. I picked up my freshly dry cleaned coat, hopped on my bike, and made out into the night. Approaching Koreatown the cold wind blowing across Christie Pits Park froze me to the bone. As I pressed on through the ( Read more... )

I got there twently minutes before the inaugural film of the ImagiNative Film Festival. I got in line which wrapped around the block down Albany Avenue. I love that feeling of not know if I'm gonna get into the film or not. That feeling of not knowing if people I know will meet me in time and the feeling of being caught in the energy of strangers' ( Read more... )

I have never seen bell hooks before. I've only ever read her. Her contribution was that academics and nostalgic film buffs project a lot of revolutionary meaning onto Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) after the fact, but that it was really just about money plain and simple. Someone once told me that what was brilliant and revolutionary about ( Read more... )

16mm film documentaries have a certain something that hasn't been recreated since the 50s when they were introduced. There's something sneaky and magical about the format that I can't quite put my finger on. It may be visual cues that I pick up from the vérité movement's *style* but there's also something in the constant focusing, lens flares, and ( Read more... )

I can't stand all this rain. It's neverending. I mean it's nice to have a day inside and just listen to music, but when you start to feel the seasonal blues set in at the end of July it's not a good sign. Between the garbage strike, the neverending cloud and rain, and the fact that I havn't had any time off yet I am basically ready to hulk out at ( Read more... )

Probably the first film I've written about with a title so long it didn't fit in the Subject line: Between Resistance and Community: The Long Island Do It Yourself Punk Scene. It's remarkable how much raw enthusiasm and earnest idealism their video cameras captured. There were some really well spoken sequences. Was it a visionary choice or ( Read more... )

I hope it's not a sign of aging that I find the frenetic, cinephile Godard more of a revolutionary than the revolutionary Godard. It bothered me when he dissed Antonioni. But as he walked the group through the notebook that would one day become Ici et ailleurs I was pretty stoked. His drawings and handwriting I recognise from Pierrot le fou. Very ( Read more... )

Lyndall came over and showed us an early cut of her upcoming doc about Toronto's legendary old collectively run space, Who's Emma?, that served as a book & record store, an all-ages venue, an activist space, and, perhaps unintentionally, a social experiment ( Read more... )

It was a free screening of short docs made mostly in Toronto last march. In particular I was there to see a documentary called Ghost Bike. Ghost Bikes are public monuments, basically in which members of the community strip down a bike, paint it completely white, and then lock it up at the site of a fatal bike accident in the city. The film is short ( Read more... )