Cinema Canada (Mar 1979)

AAORT FILM REVIEWS ly creates both a sense of intimacy with the audience through direct address, and a sense of distancing the audience from engagement within a flow of narrative. The complex blending of intimacy and dispassionate analysis is the tension within Dunmovin, creating slightly disturbing variations of pace and mood that give a fine edge to the experience of viewing the film. Shirley and Zeal Van Voast: 1908 There are several recurring themes and motifs within Dunmovin, including that referred to by the title itself: motion and stasis. The orchestration of moving and still camera-work, and lifedeath symbologies, subtly conveys a tone of urgency underlying the surface level of ordinary rhythms and patterns explored, an urgency connected with the inexorable passing of time. It is as though the filmmaker’s exploration of the familial, cyclic nature of time cannot avoid the knowledge that time is also linear, and all things must pass. This urgency is carefully echoed in the filmmaker’s own self-questioning about his role, his intervening presence, his somehow arbitrary selection of what to shoot and how, his concerns about “getting a performance” or not being able to convey the feel of this milieu or these unique individuals. Like a variation on a theme, these concerns are again echoed by the revelation of Kelly’s great-grand 40/Cinema Canada mother’s photographic interests and role in preserving local history through this medium. At times Dunmovin becomes a celebration or “homage” to photographic reproduction itself, including a filmwithin-the-film and hundreds of old stills from the great-grand-mother’s work. This attention to photographic reproduction is a perceptive and intriguing irony ina film addressed to and made “for you children yet unborn, and for yours.” It is an irony which Kelly elaborates and plays with throughout the film, and it is, for me, one of the most interesting elements in the work. The larger historical framework referred to in the film is the influence of the railroad on society, which we see reflected in microcosm in the lives of this family. A train is a lovely metaphor for the passage of linear time, and Kelly uses it in this way, associating changes in the larger community because of the rise and decline of the railway, with the familial rhythms of birth, growth, maturation,‘and old age. “I longed to make a film expressing personal concerns to specific, knowable people. I wanted to deal with ordinariness privately,” says Kelly. Dunmovin has already been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of a series of “autobiographical” films. It’s a work which reminds us of the beauty and pain in family history, and of the possibilities for using film as a tool of personal revelation. Joyce Nelson PAINTING WITH LIGHT d. David Leach, ph. Philip Eavnshaw, Robin Miller, ed. David Leach, m. Robert Armes, Kit Johnson, Narr. Robert Jerkyll, stained glass: Robert Jerkyll, p. David Leach, p.c. Black Elk Films, Toronto, (year) 1978, running time 14 minutes, 35 seconds, dist. Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, Available in both French & English version. LL David Leach’s Painting with Light celebrates the art and craftsmanship of stained glass making, and the stained glass artist, through the works and personage of Robert Jekyll. The opening image of a whimsical profile of a face in one of Jekyll’s stained glass designs slowly filling with light, capsulizes Jekyll’s philosophy of using the art of stained glass to manipulate light, a natural source of energy. What is unique in Leach’s Painting with Light is that the film circumvents the typical problems that arise when defining a three dimensional artform within a two dimensional medium. The film never falls prey to flattening out the artform, nor does it overwhelm the audience with continuous flashes of brightly colored finished products. Instead, Leach’s film is a muted celebration of both the process and the product, a sensitive and highly sensory exploration into the textures of light, sound and colored glass. By shooting extreme closeups and by layering images through a conscious arrangement of depth and space, Leach successfully explores the sense of touch as well as of sight and sound. Extreme closeups of sheets of slightly opaque colored glass with its air bubbles and imperfections or, for example, one outstanding soft image of fire, molten lead and glass mingling together, allows one to differentiate between and almost feel the various textures, colors, solids and liquids. One wants to reach out and touch the oozing, newly formed lead and the thick treacle used. to cement the glass together. Not only does the film explore the textures of glass, but of sound as well. The music fills and cements the cracks between the artist’s voiceover and the silences. The percussive music blends with the rhythms, sounds and scraping of the craftsman cutting glass; the guitars and flute add the element of light to the glass and energy to the film. Leach bridges the distance between the viewer and the finished product of a beautiful work of art, by demystifying and clarifying the process of the art of stained glass making, thus inviting one to participate in every layer of creation, from the workroom where