ba Planet of the Arts My Trip to Oregon Each year, the Northwest Film and Video Centre in Portland, Oregon sponsors the aptly named Northwest Film and Video Festival, to survey new moving image art produced in the Northwest (oddly enough). Work submitted must be by residents of Alaska, B.C., Washington, Montana, Idaho or Oregon and can be in film, video or multi-image formats. The goal of the festival is to provide an opportunity for the Northwest film & video makers to have their work critically appraised and exhibited in a public showcase that reaches the audience they deserve. (taken from the opening statement of Bill Foster, Director, NWFVC) Or: It was a Dark and Stormy Night --- Atravelogue British Columbia has a Long Beach. Washington State has a Long Beach. California has a Long Beach. Oregon does not have a Long Beach. But instead Oregon does have the Northwest Film & Video Festival, and | did have a film selected, and they did offer me two luxurious nights in the Mallory Hotel and an opportunity to come to the Grand Opening. So | went, carefree spirit that | am. | had a great time and learned, or at least consoli- dated many things: a) Whenever | make a trip down to the States, it is always a dark and stormy night, and if it isn’t night, it's still stormy. That's part of why | am a Canadian. America hates me. Sure, it storms here, but at least | don't feel personally responsible. b) Portland is an amazingly beautiful and diverse city (well, large parts of it) especially when you consider it could be just one large industrial sewer. | especially liked the little beaver statues running around the downtown core. c) This “Mighty City” is the hub of a whole lot of artistic activity. The Oregon Art Institute, where the NWFV Centre is housed, sponsors an amazing assortment of events, and is situated downtown, amidst theatres, concert halls, churches, boulevards, restaurants, and it's an art school, kids’ school, theatre, art gallery, research centre...and they have this thing, the NWFV Festival, which is the only regional festival in the States, accepting applications from Alaska to Oregon and parts thereof, in moving art—film, video, multi- format—and they get a judge, say, from New York City, named, say, Karen Cooper, and they don’t put any categories or restrictions on the work, like film or video, short or long, animated or live, student or professional. And they advertise the screenings around town, and they have seminars for the artists, and they tour these films around the country from museums to neigh- bourhood theatres. And the mandate is that independent artists should get the audiences they deserve, and the Pacific Northwest should be represented in a format that doesn't stress the similarities of the region, but rather celebrates the huge diversity. And they hardly have any money to do any of this with, because funding in the States makes Canada look like a land of milk and honey, unless you get corporate sponsorship, which brings me to: d) The fact that Jim Blashfield and Will Vinto (two Portland independent animators) are spending their time making Michael Jackson videos, which doesn't give them a whole lot of creative control but gives them big budgets to go cowabunga on experimenting with new “stuff” and equipment. Thing is, if the songs they're working on don’t hit the charts “big” then their videos will never be seen. Hell is getting a contract with a B-side single. e) Oh, yeah...and there's all this camaraderie and mutual respect with all the artists down there and they don't even have strong accents... : f) And | think I've done just about enough crowing about this whole thing and how Portland is the most wonderful place on earth, | mean , there is the other side... g) But let's just skip that... h) And ask important questions like: “Why does Cosmopolis, Oregon only have 1600 people and a Weyerhauser pulp mill?”; i) “Why is it called the Trojan Nuclear Generator Plant and Wildlife Park? Is this a pun?”; j) “Why can you do everything you could ever imagine in that playpen called Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington?”; k) “And why does the Conway Tavern and Eatery have all those paper shamrocks all over the ceiling?”. 1) Yup, | sure learned a lot on my trip to Oregon. And made some friendships that will probably last me a lifetime. And before | say good-bye, I'd like to leave you with a little message from Mr.Rogers who knows just one or two things about life. Let me see if | can para- phrase him: Why just imagine drawing a great picture, when you can pick up your crayons and make a really lousy picture. Then you'd really have something. Ann Marie Fleming m) P.S. Sorry | didn’t interview anybody famous. @ CINE Late Summer Blues White the majority of Israeli films are historical dramas, it was a pleasant change to find a sort of contemporary Israeli film at the recent Vancouver International Film Festival. | say “sort of” because the film, “Late Summer Blues” Is actually set in the 1970's. But it’s message is modern enough to retain its relevence a whole (gasp) ten years later. The film looks at a group of high school grads waiting to be drafted Into the army. Naturally, they are a cross-section of teenagers at that particular time. There is a sensitive type, a patriotic type, a radical type and a middle-of-the -road type. And, naturally, they all go through changes as they are drafted, one by one. The characters are all blatent symbols and their acting falls flat quite often, but the thing that makes this film work Is the way It is shot. The grads’ compressed summer is seen through the eyes of one of their own, who happens to be an amateur film-maker. Or, more accuratly the summer is seen through his camera. Even when we are not literally looking through his Super-8 lens, the film still retains a home-movie quality to it. Colors are washed out and composition sometimes appears to be hurried, which all combines to give the feeling of the forced exuberance the characters are experiencing. With its undisguised anti-war message, it is no wonder that this film was banned from playing in Israel for a while, before it was finally allowed to be screened. With a lower budget and no special effects, this unimposing film is a far better statement about the loss of innocence than that “P” film (“Platoon”) that was all the rage just last year. Not too shabby a directorial debut for Renen Schorr, and a brave film for a country that has been at war almost since its inception. ARTISTS ANONYMOUS Volume 3 Number 3 December 1987 ofthe TIMES My Friend ivan Lapshin The Iittle blurb in the Vancouver Flim Festival Program describes this Soviet film as an “indescrib- able blend of comedy, drama, folktale and social history”. Indescribable Is right. This film is indescribably bad. The focus of the story seems to be a young secret police officer on the trail of a murderer. But the characters are so dull and ill-defined, lacking any kind of change throughout the film, that a protagonist of any sort is sadly missing. Everyone is simply presented as is, without any kind of understanding or depth. Much like the filmitself. | don’t know what the production procedures are like in modern day Russia, but | don’t think that it would be too difficult to just buy a large amount of raw film, all of the same stock, and then use that to shoot the film. But instead, the director seems to have just used whatever film was at his disposal; switching from black and white to color to sepia and then to color and then, maybe , to black and white and so on, until | wanted to get up and hit the side of the projector to try and get the picture back to normal. What else? Well, there’s a stereotypical portrayal of an acting troupe and their little bohemian friends. There’s enough bad acting to keep American sit-coms busy with cast-calls for the next ten years. There's dull camera work that would be better sulted to the CBC, and there’s a plot that wanders so much that the film should be dedicated to the American who walked across the Bering Strait a year ago and didn’t know that he was on Communist soil. Whatever worries people have about the Red Menace, there is at least one area that is free of concern, and that is film, if “Ivan Lapshin” is any indication. @ Martin Stein .. YES CUT To justify \ $so You Beueve IRRELEVANT ART ON. =? PERWAPS THAT 1 THE PREMISE OF =» SHOULD FOCUS ON THEIR REAUTY ANO =) PERTINENT ISSUES AESTHETIC QUALITIES 25 SUCH AS ENVIRON - 1S THE PRATTLE OF A MENTAL » SOCIO MIND TAT HASN'T POLITICAL AND YET FEGUN TO THINK... ISSUES SUCH AS ENVIRONMENTAL, § SOdI0 - POLITICAL | SUPPOSE YOU'RE = GOING TO sAyY THAT BY BEING CONSCIOUSLY 1 THINK THAT Y BEING CON- [You ARE THE PRODUCT OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT YOU HAVE A VAST AMOU OF DATA AND STimuLt FROM WHICH TO WORK FOR INSTANCE... ARE YOU USTENING VO ME?... r | | il \ il Ss © BRIEN CLEMENT @87 Hope and Glory Wien the apparent popular response to writer/ director John Boorman's 1987 release, Hope and Glory, what | am about to say will probably not make me a candidate for the most-popular -man-on-campus award. Alas- not an enjoyable job but one that must be done. It is understandable why the film has aroused so much excitement. World War Il as seen through the eyes of a seven year old is indeed an interesting concept. However, Boorman has given us a very superficial treatment of what it must have been like to experience “fear, terror and deprivation, exhilaration, humor and delight all tumbling over each other.” The experiences presented are not depictions through the eyes of a seven year old but are, rather, interpreted events through the eyes of a man in his late forties or early fifties. The frequent adult interpretations of the remembered or possibly fabricated scenarios (ie: the scene with the German pilot being shot down directly into the back yard) makes his shallow treatment inexcusable. Admittedly there are some truly humourous moments. The scene with all the children reciting the morning lesson while wearing gas-masks is priceless: we can only imagine what those children are actually reciting into the muffled void. The film really falls short of its potential (not including the scenes that aesthetically and technically fall as flat as the deflated flak balloon scene) is in its lack of ability to show the other side of the humour. An attempt to capture the pathos that the bombing of ones’ neighborhood or the burning of ones’ house would evoke was simply not achieved. Not only was it not 11 achieved in the few places it was tried, for the most part it simply was not attempted. Numerous times Boorman could have made his humour more effective if he had balanced it with the poignancy the scenes demanded. Qne may think that this is excessive criticism for a simple lack of balance, but that is not the major source of my displeasure. It is because films like this frighten me. It frightens me not for any of the horrific events that war may represent, but for what it says ( ie: Isn’t war a grand adventure!) With the temperature of the cold war presently hovering at about -273 C (absolute zero),the last thing we — need are films that make light of war. While not as obviously dangerous as the ever-popular film Top Gun, the message Hope and Glory inspires is insidious. Perhaps we should all go out and talk to someone who has experienced war first hand. Let me suggest however, that instead of talking to someone who experienced the war some forty-five years ago (for we all know that time has a tendency to color events with somewhat of a romantic tint), we instead talk to someone who's memory of war is fresher. There are pler ty of Vietnam vets, still recuperating from the effects of their war, who might provide a more accurate perspective on the subject. Or maybe we prefer to wait another ten years or so, when we can simply ask each other, for with the present status of international relations we may well experience these thrills first-hand. This very real possibility is why | am frightened, and this is why | feel there is not much hope for the kind of glory that Boorman presents.&© Bill Hornecker Planet of the Arts My Trip to Oregon Each It was a Dark and Stormy Night --- Atravelogue Basen cotunba has a Long Beach, Washington Stato has a Long Beach Calfoma has 8 Lang Beach ‘Grogan dove not have & Long Bosch Butinsiad Oregon dos have the Nortwost Fim £ Vidoo Fertval andi have aim elocted, and thoy ofr mo wo Tourous nights nthe Maloy Hot and 'n opportunity to come to Grand Opening” So | wont, of spr at am haa grat te and lard, or atest const: ated many tings: 'a} Whonevr | mako ap down tthe Stats, itis aways adark and stormy ght, andi tient its fl stormy, Tats pat of why am a Canadian. Amaia fats ma. Sur, it storms hore, but atest | dont fool personaly responsive. >) Portand san amazing boauttl and diverse cay (wel, largo pars of) especialy when you cnsior ‘Zo bo stone larga dual Sewer expecaly ‘he tho lito boavr stmvoe unning around he owntown eae. 2) This “Mghy Ci" isthe hub of whole lat ot ‘arise actviy. The Orogon Art insti, where te NWEV Cont is house, sponsors an amazing [ssorient of event, and'sstuntod downtown, amit ‘Haves, concorthal, churches, bouvar, Tocturants, adits an art schoo, fede schoo, teat, ‘tt gallry,rosorch canv.-and thoy have ths hing, ‘fo NWEY Fost whic ho ony regional fosbal in the Siatos, accoptng eppbcaone rom Alaska fo Orogon and parts thereon moving afin, video, mu format-and they gota jdge, say, om Now York Cy, amod, sy, Karon Cooper a thay dot put any ‘atogores or reeicions onto wor, ho fim ooo, Start or long, arimatod ove, stadt or proton And tay edvorso bo seroonings round town, and thoy havo sominars for ho ass, and they our eco fis around te county from museums to nogh- outhoodthoaves An the mandates tat ndopandont rss shou ot ho asioncos thoy dosarvo, and ho Paci Nortwost shoud be rpresenod ina format Bat ooant sos th similares of the ragon, tut rater Calobats the huge dorsi. "And toy hardly hav any monoy to do any of is wi, bocadse funn nthe Sate makes Candsa ook The a land of mik and honey, ules You got eororato "Sponsor, which binge mo ) Th ict that Jen ashe and Wl Vito (to Portand neopendent anvmatrs) aro spandig tho mo ‘making Micheal Jackson vidos, which soos ‘hom a whol loa create consol but gos thom big budgets ogo cowabunga on experimenting wih now “stuf and equipment. Thing, Be songs tyro working on dot ht the chars og thon or os wil Tggoe foe Het geting conractwin a ce '©) Oh, yoah..and thors al this camaraderie and ‘mutual spect wi all tho artists down thore and thoy ont even have ong aczonts. 1) And | tink ve done just about enough crowing about this whol hing and how Portandis the most, Wwondartl place on earth, | mean, toro is tho oor se, 9) But lots ust ship at. 5h) And ask important questions lk: Why doos Cosmepols, Oregon oly have 1600 people and a Weyerhauser pup mil” i) Why st calod tho Trojan Nuloae Gonorator Plant and Wife Park? Ie tis a pun? 1) "Why can you do everything you could ever Imagine in tat playpen called Evergreen Colloge in (Olympia, Washington’ 1) "And why does the Conway Tavorn and Eatry hhave all those paper shamrock al over the coiling? 1) Yup, | sre foamed alton my tip to Orogen. ‘And made some tsondships that wil probably las mo a Btotme. And botore | say good-bye, ko to ave you with atte mossage from Mr Rogers who knows just ‘ne or two things about fe. Let me soe ean para- phrase him: ‘Why justimagine cawing a great pictur, whoa you can pick up your erayons and mako a realy lousy plcure. Then you'd realy have somoting, Ann Marie Fleming 1m) P'S. Sorry I cid’ interview anybody famous. CINE White the majority of teraell films are historical ‘dramas, twas a pleasant change to find e sort of ‘contemporary Israel film atthe recent Vancouver International Fm Festival. say “sort of" because the ‘lm, “Late Summer Blues” Ie actualy eat in the 4197%7s. But I's message le modern enough to retain I relevence a whole (gasp) ten year iter “The fm looks at a group of high echool grads ‘walting tobe drafted into the army. Naturally, they are 1 cross-section of teenagers at that particular time. ‘scting fll fat quite often, but the thing that makes thie lm work Is the way Ite shot. ‘The grade’ compressed summer Is seen through the eyes of one of thelr own, whe happens to be an ‘amateur fim-maker. Or, more accuraly the summer Is ‘Seon through hls camera. Even when we ere not ‘Merally looking through hls Super lene, the fm st retains s home-movie quallty to I Colors are washed ‘ut and composition sometimes appears to be hurled, which all combines to glve the feeling ofthe Torced exuberance the cheracters re ‘With its undlegulsed anti-war message, itis no ond that this fllm was banned from playing In Tarael fora whl, betore It was finaly allowed to be ‘screened. With a lower budget and no special effect, {his unimposing flim Isa far beter statement about {the loss of innocence then that “P”fllm (“Platoon”) ‘that wae all the rago ust last year. Not too shabby @