Other directors’ completed films – Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints

Screening ‘Over My Dead Body’

David St-Pierre, Choreographer

I recently saw a documentary which I consider to be one of the best I’ve ever seen, OVER MY DEAD BODY (trailer). It follows renowned Quebec choreographer Dave St. Pierre during the several year period when he waits for a lung transplant – the only way to save his life from cystic fibrosis. The filmmaker is St. Pierre’s friend and creative partner Brigitte Poupart, and this is her first film.

Brigitte Poupart, Actress, Dancer & Filmmaker

Several things make this film exceptional. St. Pierre is totally vulnerable. We follow him through the trials and tribulations of the high-risk operation, several times cancelled as the deadline for survival by surgery draws nearer. Poupart’s commentary is personal, intimate and honest. Her creative vision is remarkably layered and textured, drawing on footage of St. Pierre’s work as well as his health predicament. One has the impression Poupart is a seasoned documentarian who has developed a visual signature over a period of a few decades. But no – she is a performance artist, involved in theatre and dance shows. To top it all off, this film was made on a very small budget, with the support mainly of the Quebec Arts Council and an artist’s centre called PRIM.

Ten years ago I ran a series of screenings called the Lundis du Doc/Docu-Mondays. It was in collaboration with the Quebec Director’s Association (ARRQ), the French program of the NFB and the Rencontres du Documentaire. It was a lot of work, and I stopped doing it in 2005 at the same time as I started this blog. Now, a group of filmmaker friends want to pick up where I left off. My health doesn’t allow me to continue, but I wish them the best of luck. They gave me a carte blanche for the first evening, that’s why we’ll be screening Poupart’s film. For those of you who live in Montreal, it’s at the ARRQ, MONDAY AUG 6TH, 19 HRS, 5154 ST.HUBERT.

Thank you to Sally Rylett for help with this blog post.

Real Estate Development Gone Wild

Montreal documentary filmmaker Martin Frigon recently released a film called La Grande Invasion (The Great Invasion, produced by Productions Multi-Monde) on a subject which is very close to my heart: the impact of out-of-control real estate development on local communities.My father who was an artist and art school director in Sweden spent a good part of his life fighting for the respect of the character of the landscape and local communities where he lived on the Atlantic coast north of Gothenburg. But I don’t think in his wildest nightmares he could have imagined the kind of development which is now transforming the Laurentians, a beautiful area north of Montreal where I have some land and spend a lot of my time paddling and hiking.

I saw the film at the Parc Cinema, which allowed time for a substantial panel discussion after the screening. As Martin’s film shows, the development of mega-shopping-centres (‘Power Centres’) and giant housing developments is literally ruining local communities,even forcing many local residents to become refugees. I asked Martin a few questions.

Continue reading Real Estate Development Gone Wild

Jacques Leduc and Memories of a Different Era

Jacques Leduc

This past weekend I went to some screenings at the annual Rendez-vous du cinéma québecois and caught up with some documentaries I missed last year. The RVCQ offers a dazzling combination of riches: fiction and docs, animation and multi-media experiences, screenings, workshops, panels and round tables. My friend and constant co-worker Martin Duckworth was impressed by a workshop with Montreal filmmaker Jacques Leduc.

Jacques Leduc began working as a cinematographer and director in 1965. His debut as a director was with the short Documentary Chantal en vrac (1965). Leduc followed this with his first feature fiction film two years later, Nominigue… depuis qu’il existe (1967) and then his first feature documentary film Cap d’espoir (1969). For the next two decades in the 70’s and 80’s, Jacques Leduc continued to work films with the NFB. During this time he collaborated on the NFB film Chronique de la vie quotidienne(1978), a series of 8 films. These varied in length from 10 to 82 minutes, in a cinema vérité style of observing the lives of ordinary people. He left in 1990 to become a freelance filmmaker, soon making the film La vie fantôme (1992) that won the Best Canadian Film at the Montreal World Film Festival. Since then he has been collaborating with other filmmakers both as a director and a cinematographer.

Here is what Martin has to say about the workshop:

Rendez-vous with Jacques Leduc was an hour of nostalgia for the end of a golden era (late seventies) when it was possible to get a film programmed at l’ONF with a proposal of a page and a half, and then take a year to make it. A time when there was a collective conscience among Quebec film-makers of a culture to celebrate. A time when the candid-camera style that started with Lonely Boy had reached its peak in the films of Gilles Groulx and Pierre Perrault, leaving room for blending it in with some of the more controlled “cinematic” style then being introduced in Quebec features–dollies, cranes, long takes. A time when documentary film crews could easily blend with crowds, free of the fear and suspicion that has tied documentary crews these days to the laborious task of getting people to sign release forms. The collectively signed films that were shown prior to the discussion (“Chronique de la vie quotidienne”) were born in the tavern where Film Board personnel went for lunch. Jacques Leduc coordinated ideas, crews, locations and editing, and was grateful for the support given by producer Jacques Bobet to a production without a script or completion schedule. One of our most original directors, Robert Morin (Requiem pour un beau sans-coeur (1992),Quiconque meurt, meurt a douleur (1997), Operation Cobra (2001)), credited the series with inspiring him to start up a video cooperative which has been important to many Quebec filmmakers. Fiction director Louis Bélanger (Nightlight (2003), The Timekeeper (2007), Route 132 (2010)) talked of how moved he was by the respect that Leduc obviously had for his characters. And DOP Pierre Letarte who worked for many years at the NFB stressed that it was not the equipment or the shooting style that gave the series its humane quality, but the close relationships that the crew established with the characters.

Rober Morin

Louis Bélanger

Black Power Mix Tape 1967-1975 at Cinema Politica

Angela Davis interviewed by Swedish Television. ( SVT)

Last week I went to another excellent screening at Cinema Politica’s home base at Concordia University, now only one of their 75 chapters on campuses across this continent and in Europe. I saw a terrific film, The Black Power Mix Tape 1967-75 which screened last year at Sundance and Hot Docs. And I had a different experience from all the other 600 people in the audience.

The Black Power Mix Tape 1967-1975 is made with archives from Swedish Television’s reports from the United States from 1967 to 1975. At the time, Sweden was a very progressive country. The Social Democrats were in power, Olof Palme was prime minister. Sweden officially opposed the war in Vietnam and supported justice for the Palestinians. Swedish television’s reporting from the U.S. was focused on poverty, the movement against the war and the emergence of the Black Power movement – to such an extent that U.S. some U.S. media spokesmen denounced the coverage as ‘anti-american.’ The reporters investigated the Black Power movement, obtaining behind-the-scenes footage with larger-than-life characters like Elridge Cleaver and Angela Davis, as well as rare footage of internal activities in the movement.

For the fist three years that these stories were broadcast, I was living in Stockholm. I was active in the mobilisations against the Vietnam war and generally involved with the student movement. Seeing the footage and hearing the voices of the Swedish reporters the other night was like a time travel experience for me, rediscovering something I experienced 45 years ago. The names of the journalists wouldn’t mean anything to people outside Sweden, but to me they were household items.

The filmmaker, Hugo Göran Olsson, made a very interesting choice – which justifies the ‘mixtape’ part of the title. He asked some current-day hip hop artists and song writers and a few other cultural activists to comment on the footage, the Black Power experience and its relevance to black people and others in the U.S. today. You don’t see them, you only hear their voices. The choice of interviewees was not obvious – he could have asked university professors or journalists – but it adds a very interesting layer to the film, bringing it up to date in a socially critical way while letting the archives remain the main attraction. Excellent !

Thank you to Sally Rylett for helping with this blog.

Apocalypse – Making history come alive

Colourized archive footage of Hitler from Apocalypse, Hitler series © CC&C / Nara

Colourized archival footage of Hitler from Apocalypse, Hitler series © CC&C / DR

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching the terrific French mini-series Apocalypse, Hitler on Télé-Québec. It chronicles the rise of Adolf Hitler until the outbreak of World War II using archival footage, providing some of the back-story to the previous five-part series Apocalypse, World War II, originally broadcast in 2009. One would be justified in saying ‘not another series on WW II or Hitler, please…’ but these series, by Producer/directors Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle (two veterans of historical filmmaking, working as CC&C for Clarke Costelle and Co.) are so well thought out and crafted that they reinvent the telling of history for television.

Daniel Costelle and Isabelle Clarke of CC&C

The archival research is exhaustive, and has been taken in directions not previously explored, including home movies and collections that used to find themselves behind the Iron Curtain. The narration, delivered by the multi-talented actor/director/producer Mathieu Kassovitz, is carefully fine-tuned to interact with the imagery in ways which bring home the meaning and impact of major historical developments for ordinary people. The images have been colourized in a very original way – in fact Daniel Costelle rejects the term “coulourized” and calls the technique “mise en couleurs”, a process which involves measuring grey tones and textures to achieve the right color and involves 3 days of work to process 1 minute of film. Some purists have disapproved of this treatment of archives. Personally I think the procedure is as much artistic license as science, and the result, supported by music by Kenji Kawai, is captivating. Now I’m looking forward to seeing their next effort, L’occupation Intime, on Télé-Québec starting Sunday.

Thanks to Sally Rylett for help with this blog post.

The paradoxes that define us

I’m an outdoors person, and the only thing that reconciles me to a gym is… podcasts! This time of the year, while waiting for more snow, I listen a lot to radio programs, from Radio-Canada, the BBC and Democracy Now in particular.

Over the last few weeks, I noted a few very interesting comments about what defines us: not our so-called characteristics as much as our contradictions.

On the excellent BBC Film Programme, I heard an interview with filmmaker Carol Morley, who previously made an autobiographical film called The Alcohol Years. She has just completed a film about a 38-year old woman who was found in her London flat in 2003, three years after she died. Morley said this about her subject, Joyce Carol Vincent, and her film Dreams of a Life:

“All lives are full of contradictions… if you look at Citizen Kane at the beginning, you look at this idea of the last word that someone uttered – which was obviously ‘Rosebud’ – and in Citizen Kane there are a series of interviews which contradict each other. You try to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of a man’s life through contradictory evidence… And I think all our lives are like that.

One: we present ourselves differently to different people and and, two: people are going to define us through their own eyes. I never wanted to ease out those differences, I wanted to make sure that these different views of Joyce were heard. I wanted to present the evidence that she had been in peoples lives and she had mattered.”

Quebec playright Michel Marc Bouchard, whose play ‘Les Félouettes’ was the basis for John Greyson’s film Lilies, is working on a play about Christina of Sweden, after finishing a screen play about her. Referred to just as Queen Christina in my native Sweden, she was very unorthodox and even non-conformist woman for her era, the 17th Century.

In an interview on Radio-Canada Bouchard said (my translation):

“I like characters who are paradoxical, because our paradoxes define us, they confront each other within ourselves every single day.”

I think this is a very profound statement, not just for understanding oneself, but also for making films.

And Bouchard added, again with reference to Queen Christina:

“Of course, for making a movie, the soul of the character has to touch us, not just make us feel like we’re watching a weird creature.”

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with the blog.

Dix fois dix, by Jennifer Alleyn

I’ve always been fascinated by paintings and music from Germany’s inter-war Weimar period. My friend Jennifer Alleyn has created a film on one of the most representative artists of that period, Otto Dix. (View the trailer here.) The film came out earlier this month in Montreal and Quebec City (see original post – in French – here.)

Jennifer is the daughter of painter Edmund Alleyn, the subject of her excellent film, L’Atelier de mon père. In her latest film, Jennifer uses a Dix painting rediscovered in Montreal as a starting point to explore the artist’s work. Inspired by Nietzsche and his experiences as a soldier in the First World War, as well as the economic and political crisis that would lead to the rise of Nazism, Dix did not shy away from depicting harsh realities such as war and prostitution. In Jennifer’s words:

“After L’Atelier de mon père, I was looking for a compelling topic. I really wondered what I could work on next. I wanted to feel the same certainty, the same strong connection with a subject. In the world of Otto Dix, I found difficult realities that are still all-too present, but I also found elements of mystery that completely fascinated me.

“It was during an art history class that I discovered Otto Dix’s Portrait of the Lawyer Hugo Simons, 1925, which is part of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts collection. The painting had a strong effect on me. I found it at once unsettling and captivating. It was that paradoxical sense of horror and beauty, terror and attraction that made me want to explore further.

“I then found out that the MMFA was planning a major exhibition of Dix’s work. I figured if I got the go-ahead to film the paintings, the preparations for the exhibition and the hanging of his works, it would make for a dynamic and interesting introduction to a film. The project expanded beyond the exhibition when I decided to include episodes from Dix’s life, and visited the family home in Hemmenhoffen and a Berlin gallery.

“The story behind the Portrait of Lawyer Hugo Simons, 1925 was like something out of a novel: the Jewish lawyer’s trial and escape to Canada, his regular correspondence for more than 20 years with Otto Dix . . . I felt the work had a strong emotional charge. Like an archaeologist, I headed off in search of the fertile soil that gives works their aura of mystery, the layers of history and human life that are laid down over time.

“It was challenging to trace the path of a man who had killed (Dix was a soldier in 1914 and again in 1945). His work reflects traumatic experiences that were to haunt him for the rest of his life. I was attracted by his strength and courage. Branded a degenerate artist by the Nazis, he never stopped painting or portraying the horrors he’d witnessed. In my research, I came across this phrase by Nietzsche: “Art is given to us to prevent us dying of truth.” I knew that Dix was very fond of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and this phrase kept coming back to me, guiding my film. I believe it’s key to understanding Dix’s work.

“I think I needed to shift my focus, to experience a more raw and shocking type of painting.

ABOUT THE FILM: “It’s very powerful. Rhythmic. Unexpected. Profound. Moving. Surprising.” Nancy Huston

Dix fois Dix de Jennifer Alleyn

J’ai toujours été fasciné par la peinture et la musique de la République de Weimar, la période d’entre les deux guerres mondiales en Allemagne. Mon amie Jennifer Alleyn a un film sur un des artistes le plus représentatifs de cette période, Otto Dix, et le film prend l’affiche cette semaine à Montréal et à Québec. C’est un film en dix tableaus, d’où le titre Dix fois Dix.

Jennifer est la fille du peintre Edmund Alleyn sur lequel elle a fait un excellent film, ‘L’Atelier de mon père’. Après la sortie de ce film, l’histoire d’un tableau de Dix retrouvé à Montréal l’a mis sur la piste de ce nouveau film. Inspiré par Nietszche et par sa propre expérience en tant que soldat dans la première guerre mondiale, et par ce contexte de crise économique et politique qui allait mener à la montée du nazisme, Dix confronte les sujets les plus durs : la guerre, la prostitution.

Jennifer raconte :

Après ‘L’atelier de mon père’, il me fallait un sujet fort. En fait, je me demandais vraiment ce que je pouvais faire après. J’attendais de retrouver la même certitude, un lien très fort au sujet. L’univers d’Otto Dix, en plus de dépeindre des réalités dures et malheureusement criantes d’actualité (la guerre, la prostitution), comportait des aspects de mystère qui m’ont happée complètement. Pour me distraire, je suivais un cours d’histoire de l’art et c’est là que j’ai découvert le Portrait de l’avocat Hugo Simons,1925 d’ Otto Dix, qui est dans la collection du MBAM.

Ce tableau a eu beaucoup d’effet sur moi. Il m’inquiétait et m’envoûtait à la fois. C’est ce sentiment paradoxal, d’horreur et de beauté, de frayeur et d’attrait, qui m’a donné le goût de creuser l’oeuvre.

J’ai alors appris qu’une grande exposition allait se poser à Montréal, au MBAM et me suis dit que si j’obtenais la permission de filmer les tableaux, la création de l’exposition, l’accrochage, j’avais une porte d’entrée dynamique et cinématographique. Puis l’idée de greffer des épisodes de la vie de l’artiste, par des incursions dans ses lieux (maison de famille à Hemmenhoffen, Galerie à Berlin, etc..) ont fait sortir le film des murs du Musée.

L’histoire du Portrait de l’avocat Hugo Simons, 1925, était tellement romanesque, avec ce procès et la fuite de l’avocat juif vers le Canada, la correspondance soutenue sur plus de vingt ans entre l’artiste et l’avocat, m’ont convaincu qu’il y avait, derrière, tout une charge émotionnelle qui enrichissait l’oeuvre. Comme une archéologue, je suis partie à la recherche de ce terreau fertile qui donne aux oeuvres cet aura de mystère, bâti par le temps, les mouvements de l’Histoire, la vie humaine.

Il y avait un certain défi à explorer la trajectoire d’un homme qui a tué (Dix était soldat en 1914 et encore en 1945) et son oeuvre fait état des traumatismes qui l’ont poursuivis toute sa vie. J’ai été attirée par la force, le courage qui émanait de son parcours. Considéré comme un artiste dégénéré par les Nazis, il n’a pourtant jamais cessé de peindre. De dire et de montrer les horreurs dont il avait été témoin.

Dans mes recherches, je suis tombée sur cette phrase de Nietszche : “L’art nous est donné pour nous empêcher de mourir de la vérité”. Sachant que Dix avait été très touché par la philosophie de Nietzsche, cette phrase qui a trotté dans mon esprit pendant un an et guidé mon film. Je crois qu’elle offre une vrai clé pour comprendre l’oeuvre de Dix.

J’avais je crois besoin de me dépayser mentalement, me confronter à un univers plus cru, plus choquant de la peinture.

PROJECTIONS:

‘Dix fois Dix – un portrait du peintre allemand Otto Dix’ prend l’affiche du cinéma Beaubien à Montréal et du cinéma Le Clap à Québec avec en avant programme, La vie imaginée de Jacques Monory, un autre film de la réalisatrice Jennifer Alleyn. Du 4 au 10 nov. 2011

” C’est très fort. Rythmé. Inattendu. Profond. Émouvant. Surprenant.” – Nancy Huston

Voir la bande-annonce.

Lauréat du “Prix tremplin pour le monde Artv” – FIFA 2011.

Sélection officielle Pessac (France) – Festival international du Film Francophone en Acadie 2011

A McLaren film for the 21st Century: Philippe Baylaucq’s 3D film ORA

The other day I went to see two exceptional films in 3D at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal. Millions of words have been written already about Wim Wenders’ film about the amazing choreographer Pina Bush, and I don’t have anything to add.

But that film was preceded by another extraordinary dance film, Philippe Baylaucq’s ORA. Shot with infrared cameras which capture only the heat of the bodies, with no light source whatsoever, it creates totally original images of translucent bodies dancing to a score by composer Robert Marcel Lepage. Philippe had chosen this project for his two-year residence in the National Film Board of Canada’s French program. I asked him what motivated this choice.

“The project started with the idea of marking the first century of abstract painting. I re-read Kandinsky and wanted to explore that period of painting and set design (Diaghilev, etc) when the human figure was still present in environments that were becoming increasingly abstract.

Initially I was interested in exploring the relationships between the human figure, dance, colour and space. I wished to work again with my friend and colleague dancer-choreographer José Navas and met up with him before applying to the NBF for one of their two year residencies. I was lucky, I got in and began to read up on my subjects. Soon I became aware of what was being done at the NFB StereoLab where I was blown away by what I saw, by what I was shown by Munro Ferguson. It became clear to me then that my two years spent at the Board would have to lead to a film that could be done there and nowhere else. Hence the 3D.

I had a full year of tests before opting for a world technological first: 3D thermal cinematography.

One does not really tell stories in the linear sense with dance. One does however have to be aware that most film spectators expect a storyline of some kind. I started with the title of one of Paul Gauguin’s most famous paintings: Where do we come from, who are we and where are we going? For optimal formal freedom, I wanted my dancers to evolve in a non-naturalistic setting, giving me the chance to be more audacious with gravity, depth, light, texture, movement.

From then on, I was interested in working in the “Norman McLaren” fashion which is to say that the filmmaker is led to his story-line through the interaction with the tools, materials and technologies that he is exploring. Our work with thermal imagery led us to discover very interesting phenomena that spoke of larger themes such as Darwinian evolutionary theory and classical myths such as Prometheus and Narcissus. Slowly, through the fundamental research with the technologies, a story immerged and eventually a film… It was fascinating.

2. A lot of the comments have been about the striking technical achievement, but the structure of the piece, with the music and choreography, must have been a considerable challenge. How did you work with composer, choreographer, dancers?

Working with me on this kind of subject is a trapeze act without a net. From the start, everyone becomes aware of the exploratory aspect of what we are doing. People are generally stimulated by uncharted ground, it gets them out of their routine and forces everyone to be ingenious, to extend further out and test their talents. Again I was blessed with many many inspired collaborators. I worked with people that also work in the documentary field and this is very important because it signifies that they know what it means to be open to chance and aware of what is there, in the world and not strictly on the pages of a script.

The film was loosely written, but my main collaborator José Navas, his magnificent dancers, my DOP Sebastien Gros, my musician Robert Marcel Lepage, my sound designer Benoît Dame, my editor Alain Baril, and many others, everyone was open to the idea that this piece was going to evolve until the very end of the very last stages of post production.

This requires a lot of patience and a very open minded producer. René Chénier did a remarkable job accompanying me through this open ended process. Despite the cutting edge, high-tech aspect of our novel technology, we tried to keep our feet on the ground and not get swept away by the myriad possibilities that both the camera and postproduction computer input might provide us. We tried to never lose sight of the organic, human aspects of our on screen subjects: the dancers. They are all that we see as they at once both the subjects and the light sources that define the subjects: they carry the light, they are the light.

The film is probably one of the very first films to have ever been shot without a single light source: no fire, no sun, no electricity; only heat, the heat of the body, biological light, the light of living things, the light of life itself.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with the blog.

The Interrupters at Cinema Politica

Ameena Matthews in "The Interrupters" by Kartemquin Films

The other night I went to see The Interrupters at another full-house Cinema Politica screening at Concordia University in Montreal, with the filmmaker in attendance. Cinema Politica regularly gets hundreds of people out to see socially and politically relevant documentaries – in this case 650 people on a Monday night! Kudos to organizers Ezra Winton and Svetla Turnin.

The Interrupters is a terrific film by veteran filmmaker Steve James. Initiated thanks to an article by Alex Kotlowitz, it tells the story of three ‘violence interrupters’ who intervene in violence-ridden, mainly black neighbourhoods in Chicago – the ones which became a national symbol of urban violence in the U.S. a couple of years ago.

It’s a classical ‘vérité’ film, tracking the main characters in many tense and emotionally raw encounters with both victims and perpetrators. The director is also the DOP, and the film is beautifully shot – and has excellent sound recorded in often difficult situations. James’ views on documentary making and the relationship between filmmaker and subject are very close to my own. For example, he spoke about the impact of the camera on the subjects as being sometimes negative, sometimes positive.

Steve James directed Hoop Dreams, a truly impressive and inspiring film. There was a controversy about Hoop Dreams not being nominated for an Oscar, something it definitely deserved. Hopefully that mistake will be made up for by an Oscar nomination for Interrupters.

At IDFA in Amsterdam Steve was given a carte blanche to show his top list of documentaries, see here.

The Interrupters was produced by a truly excellent company called Kartemquin Films. Last year I met Gordon Quinn, one of the founders. I remember asking him whether he felt that the new digital environment had any negative implications for filmmaking ethics.

Quinn said: ‘It’s true that the context is changing, but I think the underlying sets of responsibilities are still there. You owe ethical consideration to your subject and to the intended viewer, and these things can be in contradiction. We spend months or years with our subjects, and so our concerns for them have to be greater than if we were just parachuted in for an hour, or worse just grabbed something from the net. I do worry that pieces of our films could be used out of context and portray our subjects in a dishonest light.”

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with the blog.