Cinema Canada (Aug 1979)

‘October 17, 1978. Nineteen-year-old Denis Koufoudakis is finishing a few scenes for his Super 8 movie. He is a CEGEP student in Montreal. He wants to be a filmmaker, That day Denis came close to never making films again. His near-fatal scene involved a motorcycle and a camera. These elements were only potentially dangerous. A series of oversights made them almost lethal. Denis was lying on the ground with his Super 8 Nizo. The motorcycle was supposed to pass by him for a dynamic “action” shot. Instead the motorcycle landed on Denis’ face. The damage: Denis broke almost every bone in his face. He fractured his jaw, four bottom teeth fell out and the top front teeth were knocked loose. He smashed his cheekbone. He broke his nose. His right eye was pushed in: the orbit floors were broken. The retina had tears near the eyeball. The pupil was traumatized. The eyelid was badly lacerated. A tracheotomy was made in his neck to allow him to breathe. He suffered a broken arm and stretched ligaments in the wrist. Denis has already had three operations. The first one lasted 8 hours. “They were putting me back together,”’ Denis explains. But the pupil in his eye doesn’t work. It doesn’t adjust to light. Sometimes he sees silhouettes. One eye makes things appear smaller than they are. “‘It’s like looking through a gelatin or a dirty windshield.” He has double vision in both eyes. Glasses won’t correct the damage. Denis has 20-200 vision — only 10 percent remaining in his right eye. He is legally blind in this eye. But Denis is not a careless person. He is very aware of the dangers involved with machines. “I do stunts all the time. It is a matter of physics — knowing how things happen. But I had too much to do in one day. It was the 2nd to the last shot and I had to go downtown for a class.” Denis was worried about his film and about everything else he had to do. “IT was very careful, but the guy driving the motorcycle was a dirt rider not an experienced road rider. He was on one wheel coming toward me. I was lying on the street looking through the camera. When he finished the wheelie, he lost control of the bike, and then he panicked.” “After the accident I lost a lot of confidence in filmmaking. It is hard to do everything yourself. It brings me down because I’m not sure what | will do next. I was interested in the art of filmmaking. The accident has taken a lot of time — going to the hospital 1-2 times a week. But one thing it has done — it has made other students aware of the dangers of filmmaking. I found out that I should be sure the people I work with know what they are doing. The guy who hit me with the motorcycle was very shocked. I don’t think he has driven his bike since. “Originally I had planned to shoot from a tripod, but | changed my mind to get another angle — that is why I was lying on the ground. I was always worried about the Nizo — especially the eyepiece which juts out. It could always be knocked into your eye. It is a good idea to have a pessimist around as an assistant to watch what is going on when you are shooting and to warn you. The camera creates an-illusion — Lois Siegel writes, photographs, teaches and makes experimental films in Montreal. She attended university in Appalachia during the 1960’s. 26/Cinema Canada in telephoto it looked like the guy on the bike was far away, and he couldn’t see where | was when driving on one wheel. You are involved in an accident before it happens. You can not control it. The motorcycle driver had never been in that kind of situation — he didn’t know how to deal with the unplanned and he panicked. We didn’t realize the danger.” September, 1967. Hugh O’Connor is directing a small crew in Jeremiah, Kentucky. O’Connor is a professional filmmaker. He co-produced the Labyrinth show at Expo. He worked for years at The National Film Board as Head of the Science Film Unit. O’Connor was hired by Francis Thompson from New York to film some scenes of substandard housing and the people living on the poverty line. Hugh O’Connor’s filmmaking days ended with this assignment. O’Connor was not careless. He became the victim of circumstances. Appalachia country is notorious for unpredictable incidents. People fear outsiders and perhaps with good reason. Appalachia is a land where thousands live in poverty — where strip-mining ravaged the countryside, and the exploited former landowners were left to live off welfare in a vast wasteland. The people are mostly illiterate. They group together to protect themselves. It is not uncommon for a man to run a “foreigner” off his property with a gun. Hugh O’Connor was driving along a country road in Letcher County (near Harlan County) when he noticed a series of beat up old houses and some black folks. He stopped to talk and to ask permission to film them. Release forms were signed and a $10 token payment was settled with each individual involved. ($10 probably equalled one month’s rent.) The crew set up its camera and began shooting. Everything went smoothly and at the end of the afternoon, the crew began to pack up. As they were loading the equipment into their station wagon, a lady appeared and said that the man who owned the property was angry about their presence and was coming to throw them off his land. The crew continued to load the car. Suddenly an old man drove up yelling “Get off my property,” waving a .38 revolver. Hugh O’Connor, carrying a battery over his shoulder, was crossing the highway. The old man fired. One shot went over the camera, one went into the camera, the other hit Hugh O’Connor in the chest. He was killed instantly. Whether O’Connor was the victim of an accident a victim of chance remains to be seen. Hobart Ison, the old man, was eventually sentenced to 10 years in jail. The theories concerning the incident are many. In his book Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area, Harry M. Caudill explains, “... a million Americans in the Southern Appalachians live today in conditions of squalor, ignorance and ill health... the 1960 census disclosed that 19 percent of the adult population can neither read nor write... the mountaineer can present no enigma to a world which is interested enough to look with sympathy into the forces which have made him... the nation... cannot afford to leave huge islands of its own population behind...