Cinema Canada (Apr-May 1974)

oving Art Take two successful ideas and combine them and you get four packages of short Canadian films. These, distributed by the Canadian Filmmaker’s Distribution Centre (cfdc) for the National Gallery of Ottawa’s Extension Program, will be viewed in cooperating galleries and institutions all across Canada this year, from May to December. Idea One is simply that art films, experimental films, or what is called Underground Films, find their hottest, happiest audience among those people who already like art, visual experiments and challenges. The Art Gallery of Ontario’s runaway success last year with their evenings of Underground Films confirms that there is the fascinated, faithful audience that explorative filmmakers always knew existed. Idea Two is simply that Packages sell. The success of the POCA Package, an arrangement of 13 films on four reels put together by the cfdc from films sponsored by POCA (the Province of Ontario Council for the Arts) has shown that the most satisfactory way to popularize Canadian shorts, experimental and art films is in a carefully selected program arrangement. And Idea One plus Idea Two simply means that the cfdc has once again organized shorts by Canadian independent filmmakers into packages, but that this time the films were selected by the National Gallery of Ottawa and will be promoted by them along with the other art exhibitions offered almost 100 galleries and art centres in Canada through the National Program of extension services. The National Gallery has purchased the use of these twenty films for the May to December period of this year for distribution in their extension program only; afterwards the films will be retired to the National’s archives where they will rest in peace until future doctoral dissertations disturb their dreams. The films in fact cannot be considered in the same category of permanent National Gallery ‘‘purchase”’ as art objects and paintings; the Gallery has actually paid for only distribution rights and a somewhat dubious archival investment. Dubious because, as Frederik Manter of the cfdc explains, a 16mm print has only about 40 good showings in it, and the National Program has already almost guaranteed twenty of these. However you look at it though, everybody benefits. Some independent Canadian filmmakers will get a little money, publicity and audience reaction; the National Gallery will further its interest in film-as-art; the cfdc will get a lot of work, contacts, promotional aid and their expenses, and the Canadian public across the country will finally get a chance to see some of the work of our most adventuresome filmmakers. None of these films fall into the feeble, the amateurish or the super-self-indulgent category. According to the National Gallery’s press release the films represent ‘“... the Canadian filmmaker at his best over the last four years...” and are “Of a very experimental nature, exploring the diversity of the film medium ... a combination of narrative films, collage films, optical-effect films, animated films, films processed to achieve vivid colour effects, films made from video tape, from 8mm footage or from slides (and) films utilizing unusual sound tracks, or having no sound at all.”’ For the kind of person who is trained to look and to perceive, who is aware of film as a medium and excited by the possibilities of its use to express ideas, emotions, fields of color, shifts of light and concepts of time, the packages are full of delights and may inspire many heavy discussions and arguments on the uses of film. They range from crowd-pleasers to demanding, antagonizing manipulations of the viewer, and in each package there’s at least one that challenges former ideas or astonishes with the strength of its personal penetration. The programs are as follows: 54 Cinema Canada ONE: Eurynome (1970) by John Straiton; Steam Ballet (1967-68) by John Straiton; Migration (1969) by David Rimmer; Solidarity (1973) by Joyce Wieland; Le loup Blanc by Brigitte Sauriol; Fountain (1972) by Leon Marr; Les Etoiles et Autres Corps by Gillies Gagné. TWO: Mirror, Mirror (1972) by Michael Asti-Rose; Next to Me (1971) by Rick Hancox; A House Movie (1972) by Rick Hancox; Rhapsody on a Theme from a House Movie (1972) by Lorne Marin; How the Hell Are You? (1972) by Veronika Soul; Software by Al Razutis; The Rocco Bros. (1973) by Peter Bryant. THREE: Vortex (1973) by Al Razutis; Factories (1973) by Kim Ondaatje; Blue Movie (1970) by David Rimmer; Animals in Motion (1968) by John Straiton; Thanksgiving (1972) by Ken Wallace; Rat Life and Diet in North America (1968) by Joyce Wieland; Watercolours (1973) by Mike Collier; Earth Song (1969) by Bob Cowan. FOUR: Essai a la Mille (1970) by Jean-Claude Labrecque; Le Premier Auto Accident de Auto (1971) by Jean-Michel Labrosse; Standard Time (1967) by Michael Snow; Real Italian Pizza (1971-73) by David Rimmer; Yonge St. (1972) by Jim Anderson; Blow Job (1973) by Psychomedia; R.O.M. (1972) by Jim Anderson; Sons of Captain Poetry (1970) by Michael Ondaatje. Rather than attempt a film by film review of these twenty works, a look at the content of one of the total programs will give a better idea of the scope and originality of the project. Individual reviews will appear periodically in the Review section of this magazine anyway. Program Two is my favourite, containing three films I love, two I find interesting, and two I don’t know. Mirror, Mirror by Michael Asti-Rose was reviewed enthusiastically by Attila Magor in Cinema Canada No. 4, the October-November 1972 issue. To me the film is like 11 minutes inside a Gothic, Freud-and-Jung-infested head, poking about among cultural memories, the subconscious, literary and Christian symbolism and pubescent fears and fancies. It has everything but the Primal Scream. The circling camera observes a boy who has descended to a basement where he investigates an old trunk, boxes, a desk, jewelry, photographs and a dressmakers’ dummy, liberating or inspiring some unusual scenes and occurrences. Such a deliberate effort to evoke ponderous thoughts, sinister memories, and enchanting mysteries leaves me as Satisfied as reading a gourmet menu. I feel the talented Asti-Rose may have watched too much Bergman at an early age, or perhaps too much Roger Corman. At any rate he’s an energetic and inventive person who himself bears watching. The second film is Next to Me, by Rick Hancox (1971) described by him as “‘About my life in New York City, and the people in my life, using sounds and images in brief fragments. A kind of poem.” The film is cued as an emotional autobiography by a streetcorner sign commanding DON’T WALK, which stops the protagonist practically mid-stride and effectively creates an arrested moment in which he recapitulates and reassesses parts of his life. A moment in time may be long with crammed thoughts or emotional impact, but a moment in film time may be theoretically endless and still acceptable aesthetically. Resnais-like, Hancox discovers the plastic qualities of time, the involving power of fragmentation, the strength of repetition, in which an act is forced to comment on itself, and the bedeviling fascination of the space in time, and of the time that creates space. The work is inventive and fresh with a spontaneous approach neatly manicured and made meaningful by some remarkably fine-edged cutting. He uses visual images