culture
Talking Shorts and Screenings with Local Filmmakers Kazik Radwanski and Dan Montgomery
We chat with the brains behind local production company MDFF ahead of the Toronto debut of their new short Cutaway.
Still from Cutaway.
Ask any Toronto cinephiles about the best local screening series these days and you’re bound to hear a lot of love for the monthly offerings of MDFF, short for Medium Density Fibreboard Films.
Over the past year or so, Toronto filmmakers Kazik Radwanski and Dan Montgomery—the director and producer team behind TIFF 2012 success Tower—have carved a niche for themselves as programmers as well as artists sculpting the sorts of modest but solidly constructed films hinted at by the production company’s name. They’ve exposed local audiences to a selection of some of the best undistributed independent films from the past few years, both North American and international.
This month the team comes back to its roots with a screening at the AGO’s Jackman Hall, pairing Quebec filmmaker Denis Côté’s strange and beguiling documentary Joy of Man’s Desiring with the North American premiere of Radwanski’s powerful new short Cutaway. The film, which made waves at festivals such as Locarno earlier this year, seems bound for even happier returns in 2015, having landed a coveted spot in TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten list for shorts and a spotlight in the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look program, in addition to its Toronto premiere.
Cutaway’s success is no surprise to anyone who’s been following the team since the first film in their so-called MDFF Trilogy, 2007’s preternaturally accomplished debut Assault, a sympathetic procedural about a young man’s effort to secure a lawyer after being charged with assaulting a police officer. Radwanski’s films are not unlike Côté’s in their generosity to outsiders, their precise, minimalist construction, and their reliance on strong, singular performances from nonprofessional actors. The film’s clear-eyed, unsentimental realism also recalls the humanist documentaries of Allan King.
Cutaway is both a refinement of those earlier films’ craft and an experimental departure of sorts. It’s an impressionistic study of a young labourer, whose life over a few days is glimpsed entirely through his hands’ interactions with the world around them—from the cracked cell phone on which he furtively texts his partner to the work materials he transforms into products at the expense of his calloused palm. We spoke to Radwanski and Montgomery about the upcoming screening, which will be followed by a discussion with Radwanski and Côté moderated by Globe and Mail and Cinema Scope critic Adam Nayman.
Torontoist: First off, congrats on the film’s many recent successes. In your own screening series you’ve made a point of pairing features with short films. What do screenings like this one mean to you, particularly as filmmakers who’ve continued to do great work in shorts after Tower was so well-received?
Radwanski: Shorts are important because there are no rules with shorts. After making Tower it’s even more apparent how vital they are. They afford a rare arena of creative freedom for directors that you really have to fight for with features. I likely wouldn’t have had the confidence to make Tower the way I did if it were not for shorts. I really admire directors like Guy Maddin who continue to make short works after having success with features. We think they are essential and we’ll always try to pair an exciting new short with a feature if we can.
Montgomery: Shorts are where we started out and I think they’ll often be something we return to in one way or another, whether it’s making them ourselves or showing work made by others. You can learn a lot about filmmaking from shorts, and it’s important for us to support this notion considering a lot of young filmmakers regularly attend our screening series.
Still from Joy of Man’s Desiring.
In the closing credits you single out Denis Côté for thanks. Despite being very different projects, Cutaway and Joy of Man’s Desiring have a lot in common, from their minimalist cutting to their focus on labour and process. Can you talk about Côté’s influence, either as a filmmaker or a friend and fellow artist?
Radwanski: Denis is a hero to us. Carcasses is one of our favourite Canadian films; we met him in 2009 when he was at TIFF with it. Since then he’s helped us out a lot and given us a lot of advice. He was one of the first people who saw an assembly of Cutaway. We were still in the midst of editing and he gave me some helpful feedback, which is why he’s in the credits.
Montgomery: We’ve always admired the fierce output Denis maintains with his films. In the past 10 years I think he’s made just about as many films. The way he balances shooting $1-million plus films and smaller micro budget projects without compromise is something we aspire to.
MDFF’s screening series has become one of the best platforms for Toronto audiences to see this kind of truly independent filmmaking. What kind of work do you see screening series like yours doing in light of the limited distribution channels for films like these in Toronto?
Montgomery: We want to foster a sense of growing cinema culture in the city. These screening series are important because we’re celebrating the work together as a community, watching it here in Toronto while it’s simultaneously being discovered in other parts of the world. When we can, we try to make it a more memorable and unique experience by bringing in directors to talk about their work.
Radwanski: It’s just so necessary for these films to play here. It’s important for us as filmmakers to see these films but also for audiences and film writers too. For Toronto’s film culture to reach its full potential we need to build its ecosystem by having films like this plant seeds.
A number of MDFF’s screenings have showcased work by American filmmakers like Nathan Silver, Eliza Hittman, Joel Potrykus, and Joanna Arnow. Is American independent filmmaking having a good moment?
Radwanski: Definitely. It seems like there are multiple waves with so many different connections and collaborations. We feel a real kinship to a lot of American filmmakers. Joel and I both premiered our first features at Locarno together. At the time, Olivier Père [Artistic Director at Locarno] kept referring to it as a New American Wave, and he called us their Canadian cousins.
Can you give us a sense of some of the filmmakers whose work you’re hoping to showcase in the coming year?
Radwanski: We’re excited about the screening at Jackman Hall and potentially screening more films there. There are a lot of American films we want to screen and a lot of foreign films but they are trickier to get. There are also a lot of Canadian films we really love that haven’t screened in Toronto yet that we are excited to share with everyone.
Montgomery: Filmmakers we’ve featured in our series over the past year already have new projects that we’re keen to share with Toronto audiences. It’s exciting for us to present most of our films as Toronto premieres. Otherwise, they simply wouldn’t get shown theatrically in the city, which is a great shame, but we’re doing our best to fix that.
Cutaway and Joy of Man’s Desiring screen Sunday, December 7 at 6 p.m. at Jackman Hall. For information on tickets, click here.