Cinema Canada (Jun-Jul 1973)

photo: Baltazar/Koller around the dinner table encourage the filming crew to join them with “Put down the camera!” the invitation is an open one that includes the audience, suggesting: join us, it’s great. Reactions to the film have varied. Some find it incoherent, unfamiliar, they don’t understand the language; and some women find it maddeningly chauvinistic, refusing to see the artists as artists, but only as males whose cozy existence is made comfortable by the women quietly in the background. (Some) women have very negative reactions to the film because the men are such male chauvinists in a way. You really see it in the film. And in a sense that’s what they are. They make that work. It's a dream world; a perpetual party. And it’s hard to make it work, | went back to the NFB to make this film, and it’s a really funny thing, the film was shot and then, while | was cutting it, my whole life just kind of fell to pieces. My wife left, and | had the children, and to cut film, and cook, and it was the beginning of all that experience. Now | find it very easy, but then ..., porridge on the film.... Suzanne, who, as a dutiful daughter in a large French Canadian family had accepted a “motherly” role nearly all her life, now left Owen and the children, and travelled to India to follow her guru. Why shouldn't she do it. | think it’s the only thing to do. | think it’s what it’s all about, you know. Which is true, and he does, although somewhat wryly he comments: The thing is | feel like I’m one of the martyrs to women’s liberation. Concerning Women’s Lib he also says: | think the most exciting thing right now is Women’s Lib. Pn dite tetas Rosedale Lady 1973? | don’t want to tell you what it is. Briefly, though, it’s a film that attempts to examine some of the aspects of the new nationalism in Canada. Essentially, it’s a thriller involving the takeover of a Canadian company by a large American conglomerate. This also involves a portrait of a very Toronto family and in a way the American thing is used in a sense to define the Canadian thing. We may not know who we are but we’re beginning to know who we’re not. Norman Snyder is the writer. We're just completing the third draft of the script, which we hope to start shooting in the fall. The earlier attempt to mount the film on a low budget was a mistake, and we've now decided to do the film in a proper professional way, with stars and technicians experienced in feature film making. Sounds like an Owen film — contemporary, somewhat controversial, and Canadian, but not in a limiting sense. Owen doesn't feel he'll have any difficulty in acquiring renewed CFDC backing for part of the cost of the revised film. He is, however, on the lookout for a producer. NVieanwhile At present Don Owen lives quietly in the country near Green River, Ontario, with two sons, and a cat; alone. Here he writes poetry, shoots film, and meditates. There are times when | don’t do anything. Don’t even think. | just sit, or go for walks and my life is very empty and | love it. | think it’s a very hard thing to learn to acquire space in your life. | learned a lot this summer about that. Is he content? I’ve gradually been more and more pursuing possible ways of dealing with that question — of not so much happiness but, some ultimate solutions for my life, through meditation maybe, Cinema Canada 47 JoWUeW Ylepory :oyoyd