Cinema Canada (Dec 1974-Jan 1975)

How did you become involved in the Co-op originally? Lionel: I was auditing a course given by Robert Frank at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design — I was acting here that summer so I went along to the course. Up until then, I had done some work in Super-8 but had no experience in 16mm. Anyway, one day Chuck came into the class with Stefan (Wodoslawsky) and Don (Duchene of the NFB) to try to get people to write letters in support of the establishment of an Atlantic Film Maker’s Co-op. And that’s how I met them. John: I wasn’t in on things from the beginning — I’d wandered back into Halifax last spring after a year of studying film at Sheridan College in Toronto. I came back to the Maritimes wanting to make a film and I needed the money to make it. I went to the Board and showed them some of my work. Rex Tasker couldn’t give me any money but he sent me over to the Co-op. I wrote up a proposal, shot about 500 feet and on the strength of my rushes, they gave me the budget I needed. What has made you stay? John: It’s rather pragmatic. I do like the Maritimes, but a further incentive to stay here is the current infusion of federal money into the area. The chances of getting a grant here are better as compared to Toronto where there are more filmmakers. How did you get involved in making your current film, Voices from the Landscape? John: I originally became familiar with the area near Yarmouth four or five years ago when I bought some land and built a cabin there. Then I went away to school and was there only intermittently until this year. I’ve always been interested in the area and I did some research and discovered that despite the fact that it is one of the wildest, most gaunt and forlorn landscapes imaginable, it was settled as early as 1620 by Latour and the French and has been continuously inhabited since then. As a place, it is a paradox: people have been living there for several hundred years but they have not conquered the land. Only within the last forty years has life begun to change — up until that point there was a continuity of landscape and lifestyle. For example, there is the old man from whom we bought our property. His children have all the modern amenities but he was a homesteader in the old manner, with oxen, very self-sufficient subsistence farming. The film uses this old man although it’s not about him. There are many objects in the film — trees, old foundations, posts rotting in the marsh, the old man’s broken-down house where he used to live, and his face itself. All these things are worn. They change through time. Against these things are juxtaposed photographs of the old people when they were young and of the house when it was a house and not a pile of rubble. Time is a very special consideration in the film. For example, in time the house should be part of a linear progression. Instead it exists in a series of parallel lines. This is because the people in the film speak of the house as it is in the photograph, when, at the same time, it is visibly in ruins. I want the film to express my feelings about the nature of time, about how people and places change through it, about how people become incorporated into the landscape without being able to mold it. Do you feel yours is a traditional documentary? John: Not really, because it doesn’t have a traditional continuity. The scenes are not episodic, there’s no deliberate organization to produce a “‘day in the life’’ effect. There is a basic core to which all the scenes are related. They all take place in the same area and they’re all involved in the simultaneous process of life and deterioration. For example, a sequence dealing with the old man’s birthday is followed by some shots of the calvary hill at the cemetery. Is this a specifically regional film? John: Well it is and it isn’t. Given certain elements, one could do it anywhere. It would be a great film to do in Greeenland — did you know there was a thriving colony there in the middle ages which died out because it started to get colder? What the film really depends upon is the gaunt dramatic quality of the landscape. Does the source of grant money make you feel you’re under some obligation to deal with regional subjects? Lionel: It’s entirely dependent upon the individual filmmaker’s programme. I suppose that to some extent all filmmakers are subject to some influence of place, but that is not to say that any co-op member feels that he or she has to go make a film about, say, Fisherman’s Market. Sometimes a particular place is suitable for the film you want to make, like the one John is working on just now. But my film, for example, has no dependency upon locale — it takes place in the future. Could you talk about how that idea started? Lionel: Initially I just wanted to write a script because when the Co-op was first formed there seemed to be a lot of people around but there was a definite lack of scripted ideas. So I wrote down every idea that occurred to me and then tried to follow through on one. Part of Masterpiece takes place in the future. To date, I’ve shot 2,500 feet, mainly dream sequences, spy footage, surveillance footage — which take place not in the past but in parallel time. I wrote an almost-story with an actor friend, Peter Elliot, in mind. He’s the main character. Niki Lipman, Peter Elliot, Lionel Simmons and John Brett shooting ““Masterpiece”’ Has doing such a complicated feature-style film been good for you and the other co-op members? Lionel: It’s definitely a good film for me to do now, personally. I’ve got an optical printer and I’m really fascinated by the reworking of images. The scripted film is taking me right through the whole process — shooting, directing, set-building, getting space, etc. And it’s good for everybody else, too. I don’t think any other film done this year will be using sets, so working on this will be helpful in teaching people some things. Masterpiece is bigger than I thought it would be — it has turned into a really collaborative affair. Are you working within traditional narrative conventions? Lionel: You might say that there is sort of a story. One reason Cinema Canada 27