12 October 2003

Hollywood North Growing Up

VIFF showcases range of Canadian filmmaking, with DV filmmakers coming up strongly. By Robert Alstead.

	Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell (left) with director Guy Madden at the Anniversary Gala. Campbell a writer for local TV cop show Da Vinci's Inquest, was a VIFF regular.
	Photo: RA

In film, as in nature, diversity is good. Perhaps it is a sign of the growing maturity and strength of Canada's film industry that it continues to accommodate such a range of cinematic styles? You only need to look at the Vancouver International Film Festival galas to see the differences.

Interestingly, this is the first time the three festival galas have all been Canadian.

Snow Walker, an upbeat story set in the Canadian North, rounded off the Vancouver International Film Festival last night. Although the story of a native girl saving the life of a crashed bush pilot followed a familiar survival tale formula, it was not without entertainment value. Made by a local production company, it was a reminder that Vancouver can do mainstream.

The film that opened the festival, the critically acclaimed Barbarian Invasions, is a more sophisticated creature. Quebecois writer-director Denys Arcand’s lucid and emotional drama provides an intimate critique of social mores. It already has made its mark, winning the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes and Best Canadian Film at the Toronto Film Festival.

Quite unlike either of these is Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin’s outlandish black-and-white melodrama The Saddest Music In The World - a film guaranteed to divide audiences' opinions everywhere.

Three films, three very different styles.

Considering the VIFF Canadian programme featured a record 32 features, as well as four mid-length films and 54 shorts this year, you'd think the industry was in good health.

Yet, you only had to turn up at one of the filmmaking forums (organised by local film organisation Cineworks or VIFF Trade Forum) to hear howls of anguish from cash-strapped Canadian filmmakers. Telefilm, the body charged with the promotion of Canadian film, television, new media and music has an annual budget of £100 million. It's £100 million more than their American cousins receive but many Canadian filmmakers still are having to scratch budgets together themselves.

In the past, tax-breaks and more flexible working conditions have helped Vancouver position itself as a service city for the US film and television industry. However, a strengthening Canadian dollar and greater competition from South of the border has made making movies in "Hollywood North", as Vancouver (and Canada as a whole) is often dubbed, less attractive. You can be sure Governor Arnie will be looking at incentives to keep US film crews working in California.

Theatrical distribution of Canadian film in Canada remains problematic, with US films dominating cinemas.

The corollary of all this is an increasing sense of urgency amongst local filmmakers to make their own films about their own experiences. And to celebrate homegrown filmmaking in all its diversity.

Closing party

By the end of next year VIFF director Alan Franey hopes to have a new film centre for showcasing alternative cinema throughout the year not just for a couple of weeks in September and October. Maybe he can be more selective about party venues too.

When Franey quipped "Don’t eat the fish!" before the closing party for Snow Walker, perhaps he should have added, "And don’t throw your cigarette butts in the Beluga pool".

Snow Walker features the eating of raw fish. The Aquarium is a theme park with live fish and sea mamals, and the scene for the final gala party.

Joel Balkan, author of The Corporation, fields questions and jellyfish are caught in the media spotlight at the Vancouver Aquarium

There’s something disconcertingly tawdry about making captive mammals the backdrop for a late night event such as this, especially when party-goers could dangle over the circling beluga whales with pizza, booze and/or cig in hand. Were the otters (whose small compound was in the thick of things) covering their ears with their paws from the shrill strains of the jazz band and cooing party guests? It looked like it.

Fest 2003: "a success"

The festival may err in its taste, but the organisers have been getting it right financially. VIFF director Alan Franey, who has helmed the festival since its start 22 years ago, reckons that this has been the most successful festival to date. Building on its sponsonship deals, box office receipts are at record levels, thanks to raised ticket prices and more screenings. Attendance was "above the 150,000 mark, reached for the first time in 2002" .

The only other fly in the ointment, or fag-end in the Beluga tank, has been a spattering of technical hitches with projectors stopping part way through screenings. I lost count of how many times documentary Squat!, which as the name suggests is about squatters in Montreal, stopped and started in its public performance. And did the projectionist at the final gala in the Vogue cinema have the film slightly out of focus or was that just the way it was filmed?

DV filmmaking expanding

	Flash? No, CBC radio host Bill Richardson announces awards for window displays at closing gala
	Photo: RA

Perhaps technical difficulties is part of the process of maturing into digital video. Many of the technical problems seem to have related to video projection rather than film projection. Not only is filmmaking becoming financially viable to emerging filmmakers as DV technology continues to get cheaper and better but the final results are much more impressive as the industry hones the tools and processes of DV filmmaking. It’s increasingly difficult to separate movies shot on video and those shot on film.

The influence of DV was reflected in the VIFF programme itself, and the locally made films from this year’s award-winners.

The best feature from Western Canada, Nathaniel Geary’s finely pitched On The Corner, a First Nations drama set in Vancouver’s drug-infested downtown Eastside, was shot on DV.

Gina Chiarelli won the Women in Film and Video Award for her performance in the ultra-low budget DV feature See Grace Fly (maybe they heard director Pete McCormack singing from the rooftops about her performance whenever he got the chance?).

Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot, who made The Corporation, took DV recordings of news footage and commercials off the television and then cut it into their documentary to great effect. It took the Federal Express Award for Most Popular Canadian Film.

The Dragon and Tigers Award winner, Uniform, was shot on mini DV. Tony Rayns, who programmes the Asian strand of the festival, suggested at the Vancouver Trade Forum that it is only a matter of years before DV usurps film completely.

If cheaper technology means more films being made, then the future of film festivals may be more like filtering processes. Festivals may be subjective and imperfect, but they offer one way of separating wheat from chaff. Or, as in the case of festivals like Vancouver, selecting a strand of films that are most relevant to the local audience.

More VIFF coverage