Vancouver International Film Festival 2015 Selections: PART 1

**UPDATE** Part 2 of my VIFF Selections can be found here.

Nothing quite compares to the feeling of anticipation each fall when the VIFF Guide drops in Vancouver. With post-its and calendar in hand, I sit down with a big cup of coffee and pour over the selected film descriptions and plan for the two-week event. Every year I tell students enrolled in each of my fall classes the story of being given the assignment in a first year UBC Film Studies class to attend the festival. That experience was a transformational one for me, and one that in fact helped foster my lifelong love and study of film, and today I offer the same assignment to both my film studies students (for whom the assignment is part of their grade), but also as a bonus assignment to all of my other students. What I know, and many of my former students tell me years later, is that film festivals not only open our eyes to a whole new landscape of cinema beyond the mainstream, together with the community of engaged viewers that you share that moment with, but they also remind us how much cinema culture helps reinvigorate the way we see and can think in new ways about the world around us. Films are much more than stories set to moving images, they are immersive and intensive visual experiences that imprint themselves upon individuals and cultures.

As in years past on my blog, I have offered some of my selections below from the 350 films on offer this year. This is no easy task, so I am listing films of both personal interest and those that provoke discussions about art and life. They are listed here (in no particular order) in Part 1 of this post with both a gallery of the movies and links to VIFF’s schedule and ticketing information, and a list below the gallery with a few thoughts on why I picked the film, along with a trailer or interview with the director. Part 2 can be found here. I hope you get a chance to enjoy VIFF this year—and if not, take note of these films as they pop up on other screens and digital spaces in the months to come.

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT

BROOKLYN

BEEBA BOYS

THE ANARCHISTS

CITY OF GOLD

THE COMPETITION

ALL EYES AND EARS

INVENTION

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland (USA)

Peggy Guggenheim is a figure as important to modern art as any of its major artists, and this documentary promises to delight all of the senses as it is directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, the woman who created the visually dynamic Diane Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, one of my favourite documentary films from a few years ago.

BROOKLYN directed by John Crowley (UK/IRELAND/CANADA)

Having spent several weeks around Brooklyn neighbourhoods this past year, I am fascinated with both the history and the specific cultural contexts that position this place. This film is set in the Brooklyn of the 1950s and follows the story of one woman's journey from Ireland to America. I am a sucker for sweeping epics of this variety, especially as a child of immigrants, and I have read wonderful reviews about both the acting and cinematography in this film.

BEEBA BOYS directed by Deepa Mehta (CANADA)

Deepa Mehta is one of my favourite Canadian filmmakers, and I have spent a great deal of time thinking about how she puts her films together, both as a researcher (I published a paper on the film Earth as a grad student that examined her use of melodrama in telling the story about India's partition) and as a true fan attending most of her films for the first time at VIFF. In this film, Mehta sticks closer to home and tackles the subject of youth gang culture within the Indo-Canadian community in Vancouver. I am sure she will make her own unique twist on the staple gangster movie and create the important conversations that her films are always known for.  

THE ANARCHISTS directed by Elie Wajeman (FRANCE)

Any movie about anarchism is sure to interest a person like me steeped in the study of the avant-garde, but I am especially drawn to this French film for the setting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century era-- a time in history I have spent so much of my time researching and teaching about. I am looking in this film for the kinds of links connecting political radicalism from the past to the present, but I am also expecting to be thoroughly entertained.

CITY OF GOLD directed by Laura Gabbert (USA)

The subject of this documentary film, LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold caught my attention right away as he has been popping up in many books about foodie culture that I have been reading over the past year. Gold spends a lot of time hunting down food on the margins of LA's food landscape, so I think this film promises to be one for the senses!

THE COMPETITION directed by Angel Borrego Cubero (SPAIN/ANDORRA)

Architects competing with one another caught on camera-- that is enough of a synopsis to hook me! This film follows the design competition for the creation of an art gallery high in the Pyrenees and features some of the big names in the world of architecture today. Can't wait to check this one out. 

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST by Antoine Barraud (FRANCE)

Because this film actually features an art historian doing there job in the field, I was immediately hooked. But the film's subject of looking for the definitive artistic image of "the monstrous" is a truly compelling premise. The French also have a way of representing their cultural history on film in unexpected and highly original ways, so I have high hopes for this offering.

ALL EYES AND EARS by Vanessa Hope (USA/CHINA)

As the US is set to meet with China next week, I like many around the world continue to be fascinated with the tense relationship as it unfolds between the two world powers. This film follows and connects three different individual's stories that help highlight the current state of US-China relations. One of these figures in human rights advocate and activist Chen Guangcheng-- a man who has brought worldwide attention to human rights abuses in his homeland.  

INVENTION by Mark Lewis (CANADA)

Sometimes a film just has to be seen, and that is why this one made my list. Canadian film and video installation artist Mark Lewis created this work as a way to meditate on the pre-verbal form of the cinema, as a technology rooted in seeing and visuality and providing a means of representation that begins in the eye of viewer. That the Louvre commissioned Lewis to create a series looking at their own collection is yet another reason I want to see this film (below is a clip from that work).

THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD by Thom Andersen (USA)

Another filmmaker that delves into a meditation on the cinematic medium is Thom Anderson. His highly acclaimed film from several years ago Los Angeles Plays Itself made a huge impression on me as a student of film history (which I also saw at VIFF), and I have since been fascinated with both Andersen's theories and ideas concerning cinema, early films especially. This movie looks to be his own love letter to the movies, but told through the lens of his own specific critical inquiries and interests. I have not found a trailer (just the screen grab published by VIFF), and that just makes me more intrigued to check it out.

Focus on Tech: Create Your Own Magazine of Links With Flipboard

**Update** I have included a direct link to the blog's Flipboard Magazine in the menu of this website, accessible as a drop down tab if viewed on a mobile device. Happy reading!

Like many of you, I work hard to reduce the often distracting and overwhelming digital and information clutter that comes at us in a constant stream as part of day-to-day life. Where towers of books and stacks of papers, memos, and notes used to fill up physical space on our desks and offices, today we are faced with unanswered emails, stray files, and dozens of digital bits of information in the form of documents, links, and images stored on our computer desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

And while I have worked hard to corral digital information from my work life into some manageable order, the last frontier of my digital clutter has been the many bookmarks and links that I dutifully collect— via social media, web browsing, blogs, and reading digital news/magazines, but others sent by colleagues and students—that find their way into many dump piles and forgotten bookmark lists on my computer. In this sense, I am still a bit of a hoarder when it comes to information, but I was determined this past year to figure out some way to sort, collect, and share the best of the digital information I was consuming day to day.

The magazine that I created for this blog is what started my interest in Flipboard. You can also find it in the navigation bar of my blog.

A screenshot of Flipboard on iPad-- finger swipe gestures work to move from one article to the next.

A few years ago I began using an app called Flipboard on my iPad, and in its infancy the app promised to help collect content from various media outlets. At the time, I was especially drawn to the feature of uploading and collecting one’s Twitter feed via Flipbook and selectively “flipping” and collecting bits of information into my own personally curated “magazine” that I found interesting or worth reading. I could then browse the information and links at my leisure in an easy to navigate form (Flipboard uses a cool finger swiping  interface to move from one article to the next). I later created the public magazine “Avant-Guardian Musings Round-Up”, which is now available to view from a link on the desktop version of my blog (or can be found via a quick search on the phone and tablet app), as a way to replace the weekly selection of art-related links and info that I used to dutifully cut and paste into weekly posts.

More recently, I have revisited my use of Flipboard for personal use and as a classroom tool to collect and share information on specific topics, and have found that improvements and wider accessibility to the app have resulted in one of the best vehicles through which to select, save, and share digital links and information in an intuitive and user-friendly way. For beginners to Flipboard, I recommend downloading the app on your phone or tablet and adding your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts to get a look at how your social media stream can be accessed in a more user friendly and visually attractive format. From there, you can create a personal magazine (for public or private viewing) into which you “flip” specific articles, images, and bits of info from your feed. You can also activate the Flipboard app on your phone/tablet’s share settings, and any time you run across an article you like through other apps and browsers, you can flip that info into your magazine for later reading. From there, you can choose to follow other magazines that your friends have created, or search for magazines on topics of interest from media, blog, and publishing outlets that you find interesting. For example, I am teaching a course on Street and Graffiti art this semester, so I have been following several magazines that collect info, images, and articles on that topic into a personal magazine.

One of the best features of Flipboard is that you can collect stories and information on highly targeted topics.

For more advanced users and those who want to use Flipboard as a teaching resource, I recommend downloading the free desktop app (debuting earlier this year) from which you can sort, organize, and pull more content into your magazine via a Flipboard + key that is installed on your browser navigation bar. I also love how visually stunning the app appears on a big screen. It certainly makes the process of reading and enjoying media far more pleasurable than the olden days of choppy RSS feed readers. But more importantly, you too can conquer the final frontier of digital clutter that inhabits your daily life.

This video discusses the latest version of Flipboard and demonstrates some of its best features.

Mini Musing: I Got Adult Colouring Books For My Birthday

This week marks the end of a very long summer semester and the beginning of my mini summer vacation. I am also celebrating my birthday this week—lots to look forward to! Growing up, I was always glad to have an August birthday—the day was almost always sunny, I was most often on vacation and out of school, and my family and friends were much more relaxed and ready to join in the celebrating. This year I was happy to be reminded of past childhood birthdays when I received a fantastic gift that also happens to be the biggest art trend of 2015—adult colouring books.

Who wouldn't want all of this for their birthday? I am looking forward to some colouring time on my holidays. It will certainly appeal to my neat and organized Virgo nature to stay within the lines.

If you haven’t been in a bookstore lately (and you would be forgiven since it seems one is closing every other month around major North American cities), you may have missed out on seeing the tables of glossy and beautifully illustrated, and mostly hand-drawn and artist-made, colouring books promising a chance at a mindful and plugged-in activity. There is something at once nostalgic and of-the-moment about this trend, offering the mind and the imagination a reprieve from the omnipresent screen culture that surrounds us. Its like we all understand that soon there will be a generation of children that don’t remember a world of creativity before the computer. Digging a little deeper into the trend, I found some pretty serious consideration given to the discussion of these books. The New Yorker published an article last month describing the interest in colouring books as being fuelled in part by an interest in play as it “correlates with academic and reproductive success, stress reduction, and innovative performance at work.” Indeed, many of the claims for this activity relate to notions of mindfulness, meditation, happiness, healthy escapism, and even a form of therapy—ideas that have been endorsed by several art therapists as somewhat valid.  Still, for many adults, I suspect the interest also stems from a longing to be artful and creative without judgement—an excuse to pick up art tools and make something creative and pleasing without worrying about labels and pretensions to being an artist. Why does this kind of art-making have to stop once you leave grade school?

Here is a great example of the kinds of illustrated pages you are invited to colour in from Steve McDonald's Fantastic Cities.

The books chosen for me were especially fitting—Zoe De Las Cases’ Secret Paris is filled with pages of street scenes, opulent architecture, and a world of elegant food, design, art, and fashion, while Steve McDonald’s Fantastic Cities offers aerial illustrations of the world’s most interesting cityscapes, many transformed into intricate mandalas that potentially take hours and hours to complete. A quick search of the colouring books available to adults bears out that this trend is only growing and appears to cater to a diverse and dynamic set of tastes and interests. Many of the bestseller lists feature these books and it appears that hundreds of new titles will be on the market for fall. If nothing else, it will introduce many more people to the therapeutic aspects of art making while helping to keep book publishers and line artists in business. Next up on my wishlist—Secret New York and The Color Me Good James Franco Unofficial Coloring Book.

Mini Musing: Google Art Extension for Chrome, A New Artwork Each Day

I love a tidy desktop, especially on a large home computer screen. At home, I often utilize my large computer monitor as another "blank space" to place and enjoy art images, uploading and changing my desktop wallpaper with different artworks as the seasons and my mood/interests change. Late this spring, I was happy to run across a Google extension for the Chrome browser that refreshes new tabs with artworks chosen at random from art museums/galleries/collections from all around the world. 

If you don't use Chrome, this extension won't work for you, but if you needed an excuse to finally switch browsers, this might be it. 

The Google Art Extension is part of the larger Google Cultural Institute project that has been working to help digitize and make available exhibits and collections from museums and archives around the world. One of the main arms of this larger initiative is the Google Art Project which allows users to browse and virtually visit many art galleries and museums from around the world. With the click of a button, the extension is simply added to Chrome and works immediately to present a new randomly chosen artwork with each new opened tab. At the bottom of your screen, there is a link with information that takes you over to the Google Cultural Institute to learn more about the art and artist. A great additional feature is that each image is categorized and tagged with several other topics, so that you can explore the form, content, or context of an art object and see how it is connected to a larger world of art. Oh, and if you don't care for the art you were presented on any given day, or want to explore more works, you can simply hit the refresh button next to the link at the bottom of the page and voila, new artworks appear!

Some years ago, I blogged about Google Art Project when it first launched and talked about its status as a cabinet of curiosities, speculating on what was at stake with how it was presented and what would come of the site. Last year I finally began to work more directly with Google Art Project in my survey art history courses as a way to introduce students to particular art objects up close and in a far more detailed way than a traditional art slide could provide. I also encouraged students to virtually tour museums on the site and look at works of lesser known art or work by lesser known artists that were still meaningfully connected to the canonical artworks we studied in class. Over time, I have come to utilize Google Art Project as a great resource for student research (you can create your own galleries to compare and contrast high-quality images) and as a means through which to interrogate and question the way art exhibitions are curated and planned. That is not to say I have completely been seduced by the initiative, but I am glad to see the inclusion of non-Western art and a healthy selection of street and urban art projects as among the images popping up on my screen. The only downside is that you may find yourself carried down the rabbit hole once you begin to explore the many dimensions of these artworks!

Top 10 Modern and Contemporary Art Exhibitions Worth Visiting in Fall/Winter 2015

Each year in January and August, ahead of the new academic semester, I take time out to browse the web and check back on bookmarks from art journals, critic's blogs, and other social media feeds to research upcoming exhibitions at some of the leading modern and contemporary art museums around the world. I love dreaming up fantasy itineraries that have me traveling on an open airline ticket and visiting these shows (in fact, I would be very happy to be the Anthony Bourdain of the art world!). Back in January, I wrote about my selections for spring and summer as I have in years past on my blog, and I was fortunate to visit a number of these exhibitions as part of the New York/Venice Biennale field school back in June. Alas, I will be sticking much closer to home for fall and winter, but I haven’t given up the dream planning. And so I present to you, in no particular order, a list of 10 exhibitions worth visiting for fall and winter 2015. I hope some of you will be able to check out any number of these shows if your travels find you at the right place at the right time (and if you do, please report back and let me know what you thought)!

Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980

Museum of Modern Art, New York : September 5-January 3, 2016

My dissertation work focused very heavily on the emergence of modernism and the avant-garde in Budapest and Vienna in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and it is for this reason I am very intrigued by MoMA’s exploration of the comparisons between the art movements of Eastern Europe and that of Latin America in the latter part of the century. The time frame of 1960-80 is set within a loaded historical context—the challenge of artists and critics from these regions of the world to Western art historical paradigms, together with ways of thinking of international exchange, experimentation, and institutional critique was profound, and remains for the most part misunderstood by many North American scholars. I especially look forward to seeing the catalogue that emerges from this exhibition, and hope that alternative accounts of this period of art history are made better known.

1550 Chairs Stacked Between Two City Buildings is an installation by Doris Salcedo at the 2002 Istanbul Biennial. Her projects are both thought-provoking and visually striking.

Doris Salcedo

Guggenheim Museum, New York: June 26-October 12

I recall being awestruck when Columbian artist Doris Salcedo created the temporary 2007 installation Shibboleth in the floor of the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern museum in London. The dramatic piece took the form of a 548 foot long crack or “scar” in the floor—an artwork she created to symbolically address a long legacy of racism and the fractures in modernity itself, especially with respect to truths about the dark side of colonialism and the excluded underclasses of the world.  It is wonderful that she is being given a much-deserved retrospective at the Guggenheim. I cannot wait to see how her sculptural work and projects are installed in that most iconic space.

The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop

Tate Modern, London: September 17-January 2016

Pop art began as a mid-twentieth century art movement in the U.K. and not in the U.S.A. as many people mistakenly believe. Blame Andy Warhol for this historical oversight (perception is everything as he would have us believe), but trust the Tate Modern to set the record straight with this very bold and groundbreaking exhibition looking not only at the British roots of pop, but more importantly, the global story of pop art. As the Tate website states: “The exhibition will reveal how pop was never just a celebration of western consumer culture, but was often a subversive international language of protest – a language that is more relevant today than ever.” The show will also be coinciding with a number of high profile pop art themed exhibitions set to open around the world in 2017.

The poster for the Tate Modern's pop art show using Japanese artist Ushio Shinohara's Doll Festival from 1966 demonstrates the global range for this art movement usually associated with the West. 

Frank Gehry

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles: September 13-March 20, 2016

I have been wearing different kinds of Frank Gehry torque rings on my right hand for many many years. When people comment and ask about the jewelry, it allows me a moment to share my love of architecture, but also to share in my admiration for the experimental and organic architectural style of architect Frank Gehry. Both loved and hated in the architectural world, Gehry’s buildings have largely defied easy categorization and have consistently broken the rules. My kind of artist! Gehry will be featured in a much-anticipated retrospective in his home town of Los Angeles this fall with the focus on two main themes in his practice—urbanism and digital design.

Splendour and Misery: Pictures of Prostitution in France

Orsay Museum, Paris: September 22-January 17, 2016

Each year when I teach about the French Impressionists, I get to the point in the syllabus when I discuss the role of the prostitute in both the representation and symbolic associations with class/social mobility in the subversive works of the Impressionists. Manet’s Olympia has become the iconic painting associated with this chapter of art history, and the painting, more than just a portrait of one prostitute, relates to a larger world of emerging modernity and the shifting social contexts of mid to late nineteenth century urban Paris. The Orsay Museum in Paris will be launching the first major show ever to take up the subject of prostitution, and the exhibition promises to include both documentary materials and cover the broader history of the prostitute as subject, from traditional salon painting to the art of the modern movements.

Manet's Olympia (1863) is one of the most iconic representations of a prostitute in art history. The new Orsay exhibition promises a full exploration of this subject in French art. 

to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer

Museum of Modern Art, Vienna: October 10-January 24

Some of my favourite modern art museums are in Vienna. They never fail to excite with their programming, and they have housed many of my favourite shows over the years. This fall MUMOK will tackle a relatively recent but very rich period in contemporary art history—the global art activities of the 1990’s. This was a time of growing identity politics, a turn to questions of gender and class, and the rise of institutional critique together with the broader question of how and why art should be exhibited to audiences. It will be interesting to see how this period of art history – a period that I studied as truly contemporary and “of its moment” in the early to mid 2000’s—is captured in a retrospective way.

Allan Kaprow: Fluids, 1967/2015

National Gallery of Berlin, Berlin: September 19-until further notice

Allan Kaprow makes me happy. It is that simple. And his approach to art production—one that is rooted in making everyday events into art and involving audiences in the creative process—is one that literally transformed art practices of many key art figures from the 1960’s onwards. Kaprow passed away in 2006, and since then a number of art institutions have been recreating his famous Happenings in one way or another. This fall, the city of Berlin will play host to the reenactment of Kaprow’s Fluids (1967)— a project where volunteers construct blocks of ice in public spaces around the city in an effort to challenge traditional understandings of public art. Berlin artists and architects responded earlier this year to a call where they were asked to respond critically to Kaprow’s original project. The invited artists will be setting up their works throughout the city this fall and I look forward to seeing what creativity and responses they will bring.

Several art institutions (such as LACMA above) have re-performed Allan Kaprow's happening works since his death in 2006. It is Berlin's turn this fall!

Camera Atomica

Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto: July 8-November 15

One of my most important academic mentors is Dr. John O’Brian, Professor of Art History at the University of British Columbia, with research interests in Canadian art, modern and contemporary art, modernism, and the photograph. This fall his years of research and writing on the role of photographs in shaping perceptions of nuclear weapons, war, and energy, will be given full dimension in a guest-curated exhibition on the same theme at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition, which opened in July, shows photographs of all kinds (vintage, fine art, scientific, touristic, advertisements, etc…) and is organized thematically in an effort to open up conversations about how the photograph has played a multi-faceted role in our understanding of what “nuclear” means. A rich catalogue accompanies the exhibition and is sure to become a fantastic resource for historians of all kinds.

Rebel, Rebel

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle: August 29-December 13

The poster for this exhibition caught my eye first—who wouldn’t look twice at a woman astronaut with American flags for breasts and genitals (and a penis poking through her pants!) and wonder, what is this exhibition all about? Luckily for me, the show is in Seattle, just a short drive from here in Vancouver, and the show is all about artists’ reactions to female stereotypes. The works are mostly part of a recently donated collection of art from a couple who were especially interested in gender issues. In this way, this exhibition will also be interesting for those who want to see how an art collection can be put together thematically. Worth the drive in my mind to check this one out!

The eye catching Woman Landing on Man in the Moon by Ann Leda Shapiro (1971) is evocative and part of the exhibition at the Seattle Art Gallery exploring rebuttals to female stereotypes.

Murakami Takashi: The 500 Arhats

Mori Art Museum, Tokyo: October 31-March 6, 2016

Yes, I know. Takashi Murakami is probably up there with Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst as among the most overexposed artists of recent years. But who could resist the chance to see an epic painting that is 100 meters long in the artist’s home country? In this much-anticipated exhibition set to take place this fall in Tokyo, the creator of the “superflat” approach to art making will exhibit his famous 500 Arhats painting cycle for the first time since its first showing in Qatar in 2012. The painting, as described by artnet.com is the artist’s masterpiece to date, and Arhat “refers to a tenet of Buddhism that has the goal of defeating greed, anger and delusion in order to achieve transcendence from earthly limitations.” I have always wanted to visit Tokyo, and I think this would be a great reason to get there this fall, no?

The 14th Istanbul Biennial

Multiple Venues, Istanbul: September 5-November 1

I wanted to add here a quick bonus selection of not just a single exhibition, but an entire biennial. After visiting the Venice Biennale several times in the past decade, I would love a chance to get to Turkey and see the global collection of art voices at the Istanbul Biennial. The curator this year—Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev— is especially intriguing to me since I read her book on the arte povera movement, a movement interested in subverting the commercialization of art, back in grad school. With so much tension in and around the Middle East and Turkey today, I am curious to see how this event will be organized and received both locally and globally. 

A much anticipated event for Murakami to bring this epic painting back to his home country.