Vancouver International Film Festival 2015 Selections: PART 2

As promised, I have added another ten selections to PART ONE of my VIFF Selections blog post from last week. These are once again presented in no particular order, but this time I am bringing attention to selections that struck my curiosity and stood out for me when leafing through this year's guide. I know some of these will likely appear in later iterations on a screen near you, but several of them will be the kind of one-shot viewing experience that makes VIFF such a special festival. Happy viewing! 

NO MEN BEYOND THIS POINT directed by Mark Sawers (CANADA)

What happens in a world where men are no longer needed? That is the premise of this Canadian mockumentary (one of my favourite genres) that follows the youngest man still alive in a sea of women reproducing asexually. The film is set in West Vancouver, so how could you not be curious about how this will all look on the screen?

EXPERIMENTER directed by Michael Almereyda (USA)

As a Gen-Xer, I adore Winona Ryder (Reality Bites was one of my favourite films as an angst ridden undergrad), and I am curious how she is cast in this film set during the infamous “social-obedience experiments” at Yale during the 1960s. This is more of a mainstream commercial film pick for VIFF, but the subject matter is both intriguing and timely.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS directed by Massimo Ali Mohammad (USA/ITALY)

When The Artist came to VIFF a few years ago and then shocked many by winning best film at the Academy Award the following year, I felt vindicated for advocating the significance and relevance of the silent cinema—movies after all are first and foremost a visually driven medium. This film also promises to be a tribute to silent movie making through the creation of a combination mockumentary and mock silent movie that tells the story of the film’s discovery.

PARADISE directed by Sina Ataeian Dena (IRAN/GERMANY)

Films from Iran are always a favourite at VIFF, and this year proves no exception with this selection shot clandestinely in Tehran. Following a mostly female cast through what is described as current-day existence in Iran, the movie promises to “reveal the role of women in contemporary Iranian society.”

SOUND + IMAGE SHORTS directed by various (CANADA)

This anthology of nine films showcases Canadian filmmaking talent at its most immediate and focused through the use of the short film format. Some of the most memorable films I have seen at VIFF over the years have been those under 10 minutes. Remember always, it is about quality not quantity in filmmaking as many other media forms.

PORT OF CALL directed by Philip Yung (HONG KONG)

The “Dragons and Tigers” section at VIFF showcasing films from East Asia grows exponentially every year, and I always eager to discover something new that I know I will not likely see again. This year, I was struck by the synopsis of a Hong Kong film that delves into the world of modern policing in Chinese society. With all of the social upheaval in Hong Kong in the last year, I am curious to see how this film tackles the subject.

A FLICKERING TRUTH directed by Pietra Brettkelly (AFGHANISTAN/NEW ZEALAND)

Some years ago, film director Pietra Brettkelly blew the lid off of the contemporary art world with a documentary examining and exposing the world of high stakes art making and selling at the Venice Biennale (if you haven’t seen The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins about Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft—most recently, art director to Kanye West—make sure to check it out). In this new documentary, Brettkelly travels to Afghanistan where she follows a group of Afghan cinephiles trying to preserve and protect their culture’s films from destruction by the Taliban regime.  

HOCKNEY directed by Randall Wright (UK/USA)

Although I am not a huge fan of artist psychobiography or this artist in particular, the film Hockney came recommended from a trusted colleague and promises not to be just a celebratory portrayal, but instead a documentary that delves more critically into the life and context of famed British artist David Hockney. We shall see….

DEATHGASM directed by Jason Lei Howden (NEW ZEALAND)

Many of my students accuse me of not having an open enough mind when it comes to the horror and gore-porn genres, so this selection is dedicated to them! The name of the film is intriguing enough to check out, and I will make sure to go see this movie on an empty stomach.

ORIGINAL COPY directed by Florian Heinzen-Ziob (GERMANY)

Following the lives of Bollywood film poster designers and painters, this film caught my eye right away for both the art form of the public movie poster (which as the film synopsis notes is today in the final stages of dying out) and the cultural context of the Indian film industry, within which this story plays out.

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!