Vancouver International Film Festival, One Week Down and One Week Left: Ten VIFF Films to Watch

It's the most wonderful time of the year...... ah VIFF, how much do I love thee and how much do I wish that I had more time and stamina to attend all of the films on my long list. The Vancouver International Film Festival is in full swing and has been running since September 25th and will close at the end of this week on October 10th.

I have already attended a number of great screenings-- so far, my hands down favourite for sheer jaw dropping visuals and spatial phantasmagoria overload is the epic three hours I spent watching Cathedrals of Culture. This was a 3D film project involving six directors (Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margret Olin, and Karim Ainouz) exploring six iconic buildings through the simple question, "If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?" The film continues to stay with me and will prove very inspiring when I return to teaching the History of Architecture in the near future. However, I don't want to tell you about all the films I have seen that you can't watch anymore, so allow me to offer some suggestions for the remaining days of VIFF.

With less than a week left, and with many of my own students left with the task of viewing a screening as part of a class assignment (or for bonus points!), I thought I might share some titles for films to catch before VIFF closes. Among the films listed in the slider (click through for more information on the VIFF website) are picks that I am either planning on viewing this week, movies friends and colleagues have seen already and recommend, and of course those films that couldn't fit my schedule but are on that long wish list. I do hope that if you are in the city and get a chance to attend a screening, you come out and support one of the best celebrations of film that Vancouver enjoys each year. Many of the festival favourites do get a second life in future screenings around town (I will continue to tweet or share these on Facebook in the coming weeks and months), but there is nothing quite like the buzz and energy of attending a VIFF screening. Enjoy!

Regarding Susan Sontag

"Susan Sontag’s contributions to the intellectual zeitgeist of the 1960s, 70s and 80s is beyond reproach for its seriousness of purpose and wide-ranging influence." 

Art and Craft

“Nothing is original under the sun now,” explains spindly, sleepy-voiced Mark Landis, an unlikely yet internationally prolific art forger. Prone to mischievousness and philanthropic binges, Landis has managed to donate some 100 forged artworks—everything from works by Picasso to a Dr. Seuss drawing."

Mr. Turner

"A labour of love from Mike Leigh, this warts-and-Spall portrait of 19th-century landscape artist J.M.W. Turner may also be a self-portrait à clef (though the famously contrarian Leigh inevitably denies it)." 

Revivre

"In Korean, Hwajang has two possible meanings—"Live again" and "Make-up"—and both are relevant to this masterly film. Im Kwontaek is of course Korea’s greatest living director, the last man standing from the Chungmuro studio system, Korea’s answer to Hollywood." 

Something Must Break

"Collecting the prestigious Tiger Award at its Rotterdam debut, Something Must Break elevates the typically generic romance of young love to liberating new heights."

The Vancouver Asahi

"Once upon a time in Vancouver, there was a baseball team called the Asahi, This was in the 1930s, when the city had a small Japantown on the downtown wharves, and the team was formed by the Canadian-born kids of immigrants."

Handmade With Love In France

"The French title—time suspended—perfectly captures this affectionate celebration of the artisans who create fabulous haute-couture outfits for Dior, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent"

The Great Museum

"In this eye-opening documentary, Johannes Holzhauzen takes us behind the scenes to explore one of the world’s greatest museums: the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. It’s a fascinating peek behind the curtains..."

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

"Looking for love (and hemoglobin) in the desolate streets of Iranian ghost town Bad City, an alluring vampire (Sheila Vand, entrancing) must also navigate the comically offbeat, unequivocally cool reality envisioned by director Ana Lily Amirpour."

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here

"Generally considered the most important living Russian artists, the husband-wife team of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov ("Ilya paints and draws. I do everything else,” Emilia has said) gave their full cooperation to this "marvelous documentary film"." 

Courses for Fall 2014: Topics in New Media, Film Studies, and Renaissance to Modern Art

As registration for Fall 2014 academic courses begins soon, I wanted to provide more information about courses I will begin teaching in September, 2014. Please see detailed descriptions below. If you have any specific questions that are not answered here or in the links I provide you to the registration for the courses, you can contact me directly. I look forward to another rich and engaging semester with both new and familiar faces.

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ARTH 3150: NEW MEDIA IN ART: HISTORY & THEORY

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Mondays 1:00-2:50pm, Surrey Campus Fir 3414)

Stan Douglas, Abbott and Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008)

This course offers a critical and historical examination of “new media” and the influence of technological, digital, computerized, and networked information and communication technologies in the development of new formats of art making. Looking first to the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth century avant-garde stagings and engagement with new technologies of seeing (through photography and early cinema for example), the course will examine how innovative ideas about representation and free use of materials in the art of cubism, futurism, surrealism and dada set out to re-envision the strict adherence to traditional hierarchies of art represented by painting and sculpture. The course will then explore how artists and art movements of the last fifty years have embraced new media formats to further their visions. From conceptual photography to video, collage to assemblage, installation to performance, digital to virtual environments, new media formats have extended notions of what art could materially consist of, but have also affected the anticipation of audiences for that work, having social as well as aesthetic implications. An important aspect of the course will therefore involve thinking about how contemporary new media practices must be understood in a broader historical and social context involving changing ideas about time, duration, and narrative, notions of embodiment, and the turn to a digitally mediated world. Ultimately, our attention will be on the network where new media art is made, exhibited, and reacted to by different parties, and to the ways that portions of the art system have conceived of and explained the workings of such a system and the society it exists within. 

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ARTH 1130: INTRODUCTION TO FILM STUDIES

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Fridays 1:00-4:50pm, Surrey Campus Fir 128)

Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless (1960)

Students will study the history and development of world cinema, and the comprehension and theory of film as a visual language and art-making practice from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the critical interpretation of the cinema and the various vocabularies and methods with which one can explore the aesthetic function, together with the social, political, and technological contexts and developments, of moving pictures. The weekly format of this course (as a 4 hour block) will normally entail a 1.5-2 hour lecture and the screening of a full-length film. Each film will thus serve as a starting point and gateway for discussion about the course’s weekly theme.

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ARTH 1121: RENAISSANCE TO TWENTIETH CENTURY ART

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Mondays 7:00-9:50pm, Richmond Campus Main 2500)

Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies Bergere (1881-82)

This course provides students with an introduction to the art, architecture, and visual culture of Western Europe and North America from the fifteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. Major works representing principal historical periods will be studied in detail in order to illuminate the social, cultural, and political factors contributing to both the production and the reception of visual art. This class is not intended to be all-inclusive in which each and every monument contributing to the “canon” of Western art is studied. Rather, we will consider the constructed nature of the discipline of art history in order to trouble assumptions, both historical and contemporary, regarding the nature of art, its relation to different social and political institutions, and issues of patronage and viewing publics. Furthermore, through an introduction to critical and historical methods, students will develop the basic tools and terminology for analyzing visual art and culture, a skill set of crucial importance in understanding the barrage of images and technological stimulus at play in our postmodern world.

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FPA 167: VISUAL ART & CULTURE I 

Simon Fraser University (Thursdays 6:30-9:20pm, Vancouver Harbour Centre Campus 1800)

Caspar David Friedrich, The Abbey in the Oakwood (1809-1810)

This course provides an introduction to the complex ways in which social and political change, and ideologies of gender, class, race and ethnicity, worked to shape aspects of nineteenth century visual culture in Europe and North America. Emphasis will be placed on the roles played by industrialization, political revolution, rapid urban growth, global commerce, and the new media technologies of an expanding consumer culture in defining a wide range of visual culture. Throughout the term we will also examine different representations and debates around the idea of modernity and the “modern.” Since the time period under investigation has often been called “The First Modern Century”, we will pay particular attention to shifting ideas related to labour and leisure, urban social space and spectacle, and issues bearing on Euro-American expansion of empires in relation to indigenous populations, throughout the nineteenth  century to turn of the twentieth century up to WWI.

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Throwback Thursday: Art 21's "New York Close Up" Series

Back in the summer of 2011, I blogged about a compelling media project that the non-profit contemporary art organization Art 21 was launching called "New York Close Up"-- a web series following the lives of ten artists in the first decade of their professional career following grad school. As graduation ceremonies are just around the corner for many BFA and MFA students, I decided to revisit the series this week and feature it as part of my contribution to Throwback Thursday. At this time of year, the process of reflecting on the path one takes beyond university and art school is especially heightened and so I see this project in the vein of Sharon Louden's recent book Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists, a book I recently added to my book wish list and a text that has struck a chord with many friends and colleagues about the realities of committing to a life in the arts. The original series can be found at Art 21's YouTube page and can be viewed in order (scroll to the bottom for the list to watch the oldest episodes first).

I have posted below two of my favourite films from the original series. The first is an episode featuring artist Shana Moulton, an aspiring performance artist and chronicles a day in her life as she prepares for an upcoming opening. As the Art 21 summary describes, "Moulton considers her aesthetic ambitions, audience expectations, and the pragmatics of being an artist in New York." The second episode features artist Tommy Hartung and his recollections of how he decided to become an artist and how he and his fellow artist friends survive and thrive as a community in the city. "Making New York his home since the mid-2000s" the Art 21 film synopsis reveals, "Hartung shares how he's developed a calculus for surviving and succeeding as an artist in the city."

One of the unexpected benefits of revisiting the series was the discovery that the project has continued to live on well beyond the 2011 launch. I am looking forward to catching up on the newly featured artists, and I am including here one of the more recent additions to the series featuring artist and art instructor Josephine Halvorson leading undergraduate students through a painting class group critique. This short film is sure to be of interest to many who have either lived through this process as a student/instructor, or wonder about what takes place during the mysterious critique process. The comments and feedback are quite raw and authentic, and I think that the reflection on how the critique works (or fails) is especially honest.

An Architect of Cloth: Charles James "Beyond Fashion" at the Met

Over the past several years, the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute has been attracting a great deal of interest for creating bold exhibitions focusing on the art of fashion. The Alexander McQueen "Savage Beauty" show in 2011 and last year's "Punk: Chaos to Couture" exhibition are especially outstanding for the kinds of conversations they sparked about the intersections between avant-garde fashion and modern/contemporary art. This year's selection of a seemingly traditional evening gown designer thus seemed an odd move for the museum. Charles James to the average person, or even those with some rudimentary knowledge of fashion history, is certainly not a designer that comes to mind as especially iconic or transgressive. But it is clear upon closer research and consideration that James was influential and well respected as a true artist and quiet innovator within the fashion industry.  In the New York Times this week, art critic Roberta Smith in reviewing the Met's exhibition described James' designs as equal to that of other innovators of the past century. "It reveals an artist" writes Smith "as interested in visual spectacle and extremes as McQueen, but with a more classical, architectural mien and a more subtle sense of ostentation. One of James’s most stunning ball gowns is an ivory silk satin number with four voluptuous, bustle-like forms protruding at the front, back and sides. It has been described as resembling a half-open parachute and is also a kind of walking soft sculpture." 

The New York Times produced a behind the scene's slide show that can be viewed on their website

Digging a bit further, we learn that James was the first designer to be collected by an American art museum-- the Brooklyn Museum-- which leant the exhibition forty garments for the show. As many commentators have noted this week, James' interest in space and architectural forms helped influence the silhouette and shapes we think of in fashion today as especially modern. The comparison of his designs to the modern art of New York in the 1950's and 60's (in particular the work of abstract expressionists) is also especially compelling here. Smith refers to James' designs as "a sartorial sublime" in this vein, and there is certainly a sense in all of the discussion that a well-deserved place in fashion history is being made for James that links his aesthetic to an especially American modern art sensibility.

Charles James photographed by Cecil Beaton in Interview Magazine (1972)

In 1972 when James was featured in Warhol's Interview Magazine, he was characterized even back then as a reclusive designer, known for an intense dedication to his craft and the skill set required to execute his highly structured and painstakingly elaborate designs. This at a time when the casualization of fashion was well underway. Living and working in the famed Chelsea Hotel that helped foster the 1960's counterculture, he spoke candidly about the timeless and enduring quality of his designs in the face of trends, fashion transitions, and outright plagiarism: "I don't think that my work has ever been out of date, in that it was only ahead of its time, therefore it was only a matter of waiting until it became a New Look; and right now I feel that what I'm working on can replace the tacky, fag-hag-drag that which has been passed off as fashion by those who never learned the rudiments of cutting and fitting; usually working from sketches and plagiarizing the process designs produced by the couture markets of the world." 

To be sure, there will be those who argue that the Charles James exhibition is too restrained, conservative, and even elitist as a follow-up to the McQueen and Punk shows of the past several years. I am still undecided on this count, but I do think that the title "Beyond Fashion" suggests that the Met Costume Institute is continuing to push forward the argument started with these earlier shows about the relevance and place of fashion as a worthy form of art. That they chose to celebrate a formalist and less overtly avant-garde or "sexy" artist is a tactic not dissimilar to the one used by modern art museums when they seek to tell the complete history of art through retrospectives of lesser known (at least to the public) artists. It is the sketches, patterns, material, and work that become the focus in the Charles James exhibition, and these are essential components to the workings of fashion design and production that are often missed by today's fashion consumers.

Using Time Wisely: Art & Culture Podcasts

Commuting to work, walking to the gym, taking the bus to school, waiting in line, cleaning house... these are the mundane tasks of life that eat up more of our time than we like. Along with these routines, it is also tough to work in the uninterrupted time to catch up with more than a superficial read of all the emerging cultural news, articles, books, exhibitions and other stories crossing our social media news feeds via Facebook, Twitter and blog feeds.

Many years ago, well before the widespread use of digital news media, I asked several trusted and very busy and productive mentors in my field what they did to stay on top of all the news and emerging conversations in the world of art and culture that fed their interests and research. What I found is that most of them shared two very important routines-- 1) reading book reviews; and 2) listening to art and culture talk radio. Back then, this largely translated to the maintenance of print subscriptions (The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and the Sunday New York Times Book Review all ranked high on the must-read lists) along with a habit of listening to the CBC, BBC, or NPR art and culture talk shows-- I still recall fondly sitting in more than one professor's office with the quiet hum of conversation coming from a radio.

Today, of course, we are inundated with far more options and accessibility to the rich array of art and culture news, book reviews, and radio frequencies available via the Internet. And while maintenance of subscriptions to journals and newspapers is something I personally recommend and still do myself (if you pick one, I always suggest the New York Review of Books), the access to free information and cultural news opens up accessibility in a way that was unimaginable even a decade ago. Podcasts in particular have become an important medium to allow for that deeper level of exploration and dialogue missing from the world of the Internet sound bite or click bait that produces a more shallow engagement with the world of ideas. Listed below, I have collected some of my favourite art and culture podcasts with a brief description of what they offer listeners. They have become part of my daily and weekly routines and help make wise use of time that you might otherwise spend doing the mundane and ordinary.

Q: The Podcast from CBC Radio-- this is probably one of the best and most downloaded art and culture podcasts in North America (even as the show originates in Canada), and with good reason. Host Jian Ghomeshi and his producers plan daily shows that cut across a broad spectrum of art, music, culture, and political news that always seem to be one step ahead of what is trending in the mainstream press. Ghomeshi is also known for his deeply engaging interviews and debates with invited guests. This one is an essential part of my daily routine.

Slate Magazine's Culture Gabfest-- a quirky mix of high brow and low brow conversations about evolving art, film, TV, and popular culture topics by Slate magazine's culture critics. Listening to the Gabfest is like being a fly on the wall at a great party (most likely in the kitchen, where all of the best debates and conversations finally take place). What I like best is that the show feels unedited and really manages to capture the cultural zeitgeist of any given moment from wherever it happens to emerge. If you like the Gabfest, you can also subscribe to the Slate Daily which includes an assortment of other Slate podcasts, including one of my other favourites, the Slate Spoiler Specials which do "postviews" of movies.

Inside the New York Times Book Review Podcast-- this podcast is a long time favourite as it takes one or two key reviews from the text version of the NYT Book Review and expands it with interviews of the reviewers, and sometimes the book's authors. For those of us who don't have time to read as much as we like, this podcast gives you insight into the trending books on the bestseller lists, along with reporting on the world's literary scene. 

New Yorker, Out Loud-- many of you have probably seen or read the iconic New Yorker magazine at one point or another, and here again, I was drawn to the podcast for its deeper level exploration into the magazine's feature articles. Much like with the Inside the NYT podcast, the content here is enriched by reading the articles or reviews and then listening to the extended discussion offered up each week on the podcast. The best part however is that it is not necessary to read the magazine to enjoy the conversations offered up here.

Ideas From CBC Radio-- I remember tuning into this show as a student, rushing back home to catch Paul Kennedy on his nightly radio show. The podcast provides an intellectual engagement with an eclectic mix of topics spanning art, culture, politics, and emerging conversations across the humanities spectrum. Once again, CBC is at the forefront of cultural talk radio in North America, and Ideas is available as a daily podcast, ready for your listening pleasure whenever and wherever you like.

MoMA Talks and Tate Events-- These podcasts, produced by the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern are placed here together because they offer excellent, albeit less consistent, content directly from the symposia, visiting lectures, and artist's talks presented on site at the special exhibitions put on by both institutions. The archives of both podcasts are especially rich, and also serve as a great pool of research material for students of contemporary art.