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TIFF 2006 Preview: Wavelengths
And so we begin our action-packed film fest preview. Excited? We are!
We thought we’d start with our preview of the Wavelengths programme, because frankly, it doesn’t get that much coverage compared to the rest of the festival, and we admitted that we didn’t know that much about it ourselves. TIFFG were kind enough to put on a special preview of a few Wavelengths shorts for local journalists, and we stopped by to check it out with our neophyte eyes.
Wavelengths Programme 1
Un Pont sur la Drina (A Bridge over the Drina): This is an intriguing if slightly over-long piece. Simply a shot of the bridge over the river Drina (at Višegrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina), the audio comes from the war crimes trial over the atrocities committed nearby. As the man tasked with fishing mutilated corpses out of the river recounts his story, the viewer is shown the bridge in various weather conditions, though it is never as beautiful as it is bathed in mist at the beginning of the film. The meaning of history and place is explored well, but it somewhat labours the point. 3/5
Also featuring: Bouquets 28-30 and Fi Haza Al-Bayt.
Wavelengths Programme 2
Hysteria: Ominous music plays as childish drawings of the Salem witch trials crackle and pop as if the film were alive. Christina Battle apparently worked directly on the surface on the film, and it shows, creating a distinctive effect that is moving and unusual. 2.5/5
Natchtstűck: Using the unusual technique of contact printing the film by hand, Peter Tscherkassky’s film is a scratchy, loud bit of debauched madness that looks like it was created in the time of Mozart, never mind soundtracked by him. 3/5
Roads of Kiarostami: This is perhaps where our neophyte status comes into play, because this is, almost certainly, the most boring film we have ever watched. An near endless series of pleasant pictures of roads are displayed on screen while (we assume) filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami free-associates about his interest in these roads. This would all be very well and good (and boring) but after what feels like hours of this he suddenly starts showing pictures of nothing but stray dogs and leafless trees, as if he’d forgotten what his film was about. According to the last, wildly incongruous shot, though, his film is about is the threat of nuclear annihilation. Contains one excellent shot that we maintain was probably coincidental, and while in retrospect we can see what he was building up to, he didn’t have to make it so dull. Wavelengths Programme 2 is worth seeing as long as you walk out when this starts. 1/5
Also featuring: v-r, 18 Videos: #18, PSA. 09 body count, PSA. 14 target, PSA. 10 occupation, Kristall, Afraid So, Memo to Pic Desk, and Tsuioku.
Wavelengths Programme 3
3 Minuten: Little more than three one-minute shots of a train station platform created by running the same strip of film through the camera hundreds of times, it’s simply a beautiful shot, and the ghostly apparitions that wander its boundaries only add to the interest. This could have been a feature and we might have enjoyed it. 4/5
Also featuring: Poet’s Dream, lions and tigers and bears, Swivel, Lancial Thema and Ema●Emaki II.