2004 marked the end of an era for the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF). After 28 years, the festival is going annual. Why depart from the successful alternating year format? Well, there are benefits in funding and continuity but the main reason is that animation has changed. It’s big business now and the festival has
For the past several years, Winnipeg has been home to writer and filmmaker Clive Holden, the proprietor of Cyclops Press, and an intense observer of the urban emotional landscape. Holden’s ambitious film cycle Trains of Winnipeg—14 Film Poems premiered at Toronto’s Images Festival this past spring, and has since played Victoria’s Antimatter Festival, Winnipeg’s own Send
When Ali Kazimi’s latest film Continuous Journey premiered at the 2004 Hot Docs festival, the atmosphere in Toronto’s Royal Cinema was electric. Canada’s documentary filmmaking community was out in force as were a number of prominent South-Asian Canadians. They were there to see Kazimi’s most personal work, an exposé of the scandalous Komagata Maru Incident of
’s fitting that the feature documentary’s rise in profile has coincided with an era of unprecedented information control. What’s unfortunate is how often the films misinterpret control as concealment. For most of the stories that need to be told these days, it isn’t secrecy that’s the problem, but distraction—and reading secrecy over this enforced ignorance
“Imagine you’re a Roman Centurion.” Bare legged, draughty uniform, stationed in the damp northern colony of Britain surround by hostile natives—but enough about my school days. Although, that really was my first History homework essay and whilst it could have had the makings of a ripping yarn, it proved the basis for my first school
BRITISH COLUMBIA — Katherine Dodds Adam’s Eyes Adam is 12-year-old boy. His mother is a filmmaker. Adam also has a form of autism known as Asperger’s Syndrome. Director/Producer and mother Marianne Kaplan decided to make a film during Adam’s last year in elementary school. She wants to not only reveal the inner world of autism but also
There is an indelible moment in Peter Raymont’s documentary Shake Hands With the Devil in which retired Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, ten years removed from his ordeal as the head of the embattled U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, steps out of an airplane and back onto that country’s soil for the first time as a civilian. Raymont’s
During the top half of the 1990s, Steve Reinke became not only a high-profile video artist but also a bona-fide Art Star. His vehicle was the serial-conceptual project The One Hundred Videos. This grandiose volume consisted entirely of short works, the longest an uncharacteristic ten minutes. The average length of these tapes was closer to
“WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE DARKNESS. ESPECIALLY WHEN WE FACE THE LIGHT. IF WE TURNAROUND, THERE IS ONLY DARKNESS.”— Anonymous female voice Delivered sombrely, the opening quote of Velcrow Ripper’s new feature documentary ScaredSacred, sets up beautifully the overriding theme of the film: to move ‘towards’ the darkness rather than running away. Just as effectively, it nails down the underlying metaphor, with ‘scared’ being shrouded in darkness, and
DURING APRIL 2004 AND BEYOND WE WERE CONSTANTLY REMINDED THAT THIS WAS THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC ALL–RACE ELECTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA. I was shocked by the realization that last year also marked the thirtieth anniversary of my first visit to that country, of my first experience with apartheid. After that first trip in 1974 as part of an African tour I was doing for the American NGO (non-governmental organization), CARE, I was to devote a large