Cinema Canada (Jul-Aug 1975)

guarantee; it’s nothing except a strong input to a person who has the potential to work in the medium.’’ Rick Patton, who had studied filmina work-study program at Antioch College in Ohio, found in Bennett’s workshop his first ever opportunity to work with a ‘‘teacher who was a professional.’’ Like Ron Orieux, a part of his experience is with NFB documentaries, as an assistant cameraman. Patton remarks, as does Orieux, that the opportunity to work on documentary films is an educational experience which cannot be imagined if one attempts, as occurs in most cases in university education, to approach the same subject through reading about it. ‘‘That’s something I would certainly recommend film students to think about,’ says Patton. ‘‘Because it’s probably easy to get discouraged as a film student. There are so many obstacles, it’s so expensive to get experience. But the fact is that there is this definite spiritual payoff, in terms of expanding your horizons. In terms of human experiencing. You know, it has its cynical aspects. You can get cynical about it, but you don’t necessarily have to. You can just be there and enjoy meeting peopie and relate however you have to.’’ Luke Bennett was followed, in 1972, by Vincent Vaitiekunas, a Lithuanian-born Canadian director and editor who has made over 200 films. Among the students in Vaitiekunas’ Workshop who have continued as filmmakers are, among others, Michael Chechik, Chris Windsor, C.R. Wrench, Georges Payrastre, Tim Sale, Lawrence Keane, Harlan Dorfman, Fred Easton, Rick Amaro, Danice MacLeod, Ron Precious, Bob Kearney, Mario Barendregt, Bob Ellis, Mary Anne McEwen, Marilyn Kansky, Richard Barazzuol, and Peg Campbell. Eugene Boyko, a veteran Film Board cameraman, recalls the films of Vaitiekunas’ first Workshop: ‘‘It was a revelation,’’ says Boyko. ‘‘It was the best I'd seen in college produced films. I had a reluctance against college films for a long time because I always found that the kind of people that were attracted to it were generally those who couldn’t communicate. But here was a school that was here in Vancouver and it seemed to work.”’ It might be interesting to consider the two Film Workshop group films which, during Vaitiekunas’ two-year residency, brought to SFU the McLaren Award for best film at the Canadian Student Film Festival for two years running. Chris Aikenhead, director of the 1973 Festival award winner Ivory Founts, came to the Workshop with the experience of having worked in a variety of capacities on several 16mm films during two years at the first high school in Ontario to have an accredited course in film-making. (The high school was in London, Ontario, and the course started by Frank Boas, who had taken a summer course in film at UCLA.) In addition, Aikenhead had participated for two summers in a high school film program instituted by the Ontario Arts Council. During the first half of Vaitiekunas’ first eight month program at SFU, Aikenhead tried unsuccessfully to come up with a script for a film. Finally, the viewing of a film made in a previous Workshop triggered the idea of a satire on student films and student film-makers. During the Christmas break in December 1972, Aikenhead returned to Ontario, and while there, put together the basic script for Ivory Founts. It was, says Aikenhead, ‘‘kind of a parody of that previous Workshop film I’d seen, and of this guy making the film, which I guess just evolved out of my own incapacity to come up with a real script. I’d tried for three years in high school to come up with something original and I never had, so I knew pretty well what it was like not to be able to make a film.”’ The film was made quickly, being shot in January of 1973 and edited by March of 1973 in time for the annual April showings of the Vaitiekunas Workshop. From the beginning Aikenhead felt the film did not deserve the acclaim it had achieved. He did not return to the Workshop the next year but travelled instead to Europe, and then returned to SFU to continue his study of English -literature. ‘‘I wanted to drop out of that whole scene,’ ’remarks Aikenhead, ‘‘and retreat and get my bearings again, or I’d start actually being like the director in the film.’’ Since then, Aikenhead prefers not to be classified as a film-maker. In the meantime, his pursuit of English literature may be just the thing to enable him to be an excellent film-maker, if he ever decides to return. That is so, at any rate, if one takes the perspective of Mark Slade, of the Vancouver NFB office, who observes that, ‘‘What would good for film-makers would be to find some area of rest, and really explore it in depth. It might be some aspect of technology. It might be some area of anthropology. It might be poetry or music. It could be wine-making. Some area in which they would be very exciting and would find a complete kind of structure operating.’ Chris Windsor, director of the 1974 McLaren Award winner Trapper Dan, another Workshop group project. got the idea for the film while working as a projectionist at a ‘*sleazy downtown theatre’ in Vancouver. He wrote down the ideas for the film on backs of envelopes and stuck them on his door and then one day wrote a rough draft. Danice MacLeod shooting ‘‘Rawstock’’ Like Aikenhead’s script, the reading of the script to the Workshop was enthusiastically received. Once again, the film was shot and edited in time for the April 1974 showings of the Vaitiekunas Workshop. In both cases, it was a first 16mm film for each. Windsor had worked on previous Workshop films, including Ivory Founts, where he acted the part of the student editor. He’d concluded that the important thing in every previous Workshop film he’d seen was the quality of the script. Of his own script, Windsor remarks, ‘‘It was basically a solid script. I read it to people in the Workshop and they all liked it. So it meant you could throw in all these other things on top of it, as you got new ideas. You could put them in, because you had something to fall back on. And if you don’t have that, then it’s very hard.” Danice MacLeod’s script for Rawstock, her first 16mm film grew out of the experience of an academic course in production at UBC which consisted of lectures on how a film turns from ‘‘rawstock’’ into the finished film. ‘I was taking this terribly serious academic course at UBC”’ says MacLeod. ‘“Introduction to Film and Television Production.’ And it was so terrible. It was all Cinema Canada 37