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Images 2011 Gets All Arty and Stuff
Still from Luo Li’s Rivers and My Father, which opens the 2011 Images Festival.
It may seem like it’s getting trickier to call film “art” in any meaningful way. After all, it was just last summer that Marmaduke dog-danced into cineplexes, annihilating all hope and upturning the smiles of young children in the process. Then you have stuff like Incendies, schmaltz parading as art, duping everyone. But on the other hand, when thoughtful films like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives make tracks into the larger film culture, and when Apichatpong Weerasethakul becomes a household name (if your household is a film classroom), it may signal certain shifts in contemporary cinema. Because not only is Uncle Boonmee unproblematically, unself-consciously “artful,” it was also the culmination of a multi-platform project that had its origins in a seven-screen installation project.
So why all this rambling about a Thai filmmaker whose name you probably couldn’t say five times, fast? Well, because the 2011 Images Festival kicks off this week. And of all of Toronto’s many film and film-related festivals, Images consistently creates a space for the pure art of cinema. With that in mind, we’ve pored over some of the shorts, features, and long-shorts that Images has put together for its twenty-fourth annual festival, in order to give you a sense of just what’s on offer this year.
Opening the festival on March 31 is Rivers and My Father (Canada, 75 min), the latest film (well, video) from Hamilton-based filmmaker Luo Li. A darling of Images—his debut narrative feature, I Went to the Zoo the Other Day, screened at last year’s festival—Li’s followup feature blends documentary, fictional re-enactment, and wistful reminiscences. Set against the Yangtze River (where Li lived with his family growing up), Rivers and My Father is based on an unpublished memoir, An Account at 60, penned by Li’s father after his retirement. A series of stories and ruminations linked by a sonorous voiceover and rich black-and-white cinematography, Rivers marks another thoughtful, meditative effort by Li.
On the shorter end of the spectrum, Images has also put together a handful of On Screen programs that collect thematically overlapping shorts and mid-length films and videos. On Screen 1: Same Same But Different gathers films that deal with copies and interpretations including, most curiously, Gloria Nava’s “Black Swan Makeup Tutorial” (USA, 4 min), which first emerged as a YouTube video. Nava, who has attracted attention with instructional lessons on how to mimic the makeup effects of Avatar and The Human Centipede, has now entered the realm of video art proper. And ditto YouTube. What this means for Rebecca Black’s legitimacy, we can only guess. (Do you even appreciate how relevant that reference is?!)
On a totally different tip, On Screen 3: Stone and Salt and Stars and Skin takes aesthetics down to the elemental level. Elvira Finnigan’s video, “Saltwatch Experiments: Robles’ Flock” (Canada, 3 min), traps paper birds in a sphere of salt, while Lina Rodriguez’s 35mm film “Einschnitte” (Canada, 3 min) assembles snatches of statues of monuments, and Deborah Stratman’s “…These Blazeing Starrs!!!” looks into the cosmos to explore the tracking of comets.
Still from Lina Rodriguez’s “Einschnitte.”
If you’re looking to get away for a little while, without having to actually leave town, On Screen 5: Disorientation Express may be your ticket out of this dump. Like those theme park rides where you just kind of get locked into a seat while a huge moving screen gives you the sensation of movement, this programme provides the sensation of escape, allowing you to visit new landscapes, like the depressing and eponymous venue of Mike Hannon’s “Greyhound Track” (Ireland, 16 min). Even better, you can visit some familiar landscapes with “new eyes” (as the saying goes). Peter Dudar’s “Starlings (At Nightfall)” (Canada, 8 min) plants a static camera beneath a hydro tower, as swarms of birds rustle and swirl around it, their movements and chirps assuming a hypnotically arrhythmic quality. Janie Geiser’s “Kindless Villain” (USA, 5 min), also exceptional, reassembles a found film into a jerky montage of childhood and naval warfare, its overlapping montage effects making it look a little like a Guy Maddin film under pressure.
Any way you cut it, Images has a little something for everyone. Well, everyone who loves curated 16mm films and plaintive video art anyways. And even if it’s not your cup of tea, you should at least try to catch one of the programmes, if only to balance out a steady screening diet of Marmadukes, Sucker Punches, and Paul Blart: Mall Cops.
Images 2011 kicks off Thursday, March 31. Luo Li’s Rivers and My Father opens the festival March 31 at 7 p.m. at the Royal (608 College Street). For info on all of Images film, and non-film, goings-on, head over to its website.