Afterimages Take 3: The Madness Issue

C o n c o r d i a ’ s

U n d e r g r a d u a t e F i l m M a g a z i n e A f t e r i m a g e s t a k e 3

the take 3

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C o n c o r d i a ’ s

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M a g a z i n e

AFTER images Cover photo by Amelia Moses Graphic Designer: Hannah Materne Editor-in-Chief: Julien Bouthillier Managing Editor: Miia Piironen International Liaison: Nina Patterson

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7 : Editor’s note 8 : Side Effects May Include Murder Miia Piironen

10 : Film animation Daniel Sterlin-Altman

14 : Why I Film What I Film: How The Student Diaries Got Made Karina Licursi

16 : Take Shelter: A “New Cinema” Depicting the 21st Century Nightmare Mario Melidona

18 : UNUSUAL VISIONS Interview by Julien Bouthillier

22 : La quête et le quêtage de subvention Alberto Franco

24 : Circus Freaks and the Carnivalesque: Camped Cross-dressing and Drag in Female Trouble Emma Catalfamo

29 : Flattened: The Death and Rebirth of the Saskatchewan Film Industry Mattias Graham

34 : The Fifteen Best Madmen in Movie History Julien Bouthillier

36 : Night of the Hunter drawing Naomi Silver-Vezina

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Editor’s NOte

Werner Herzog once said: « I shouldn’t make movies anymore; I should go to a lunatic asylum! ». But without his insane passion and ferocious ambition, never would a film like Fitzcarraldo have existed. Indeed, whether we’re battling capricious elements or leading a quixotic fight for funding , it would seem like the mere idea of making movies is utter madness, compared to the comparatively calm waters of, say, stamp collecting (no offense to our philatelist readers). Obviously, none of that is stopping us, and between the madness of end-of-term exams, we’re writing about cinema in Afterimages, for the third time now.

In Take 3, you’ll find the writings of people suffering from what is known as cinephilia, a passion for cinema bordering on obsession. Whether they’re interested about experimental documentaries, the future of Saskatchewan’s film industry or the representation of cross-dressing in cinema, they’re united by this very special feeling of contentment when the lights go down in the theatre and the picture starts (well, after a few minutes of commercials)...

But enough ravings! Enjoy your reading!

Julien Bouthillier Editor-in-Madness

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There is something latent here, and it isn’t her toxicology.

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Side Effects May Include Murder Miia Piironen *This review contains spoilers

After a brief interlude with the world of exotic male dancing, Steven Soderbergh has returned to his rightful native genre – the thriller. The director best known for such titles as Out of Sight (1998), Traffic (2000), and Ocean’s Eleven (2001) has built a career on keeping audiences guessing. His films, while varying dramatically in style, do share a common sinuous thread. They are transgressive but fashionable, both polished and provocative. Side Effects (2013) keeps nicely to this wheelhouse. Nicely, but not magnificently.

The film centers on young Manhatten designer Emily, who is suffering from acute depression. Her wellmeaning husband Martin has just been released from prison for crimes that remain ambiguous and Emily has great anxieties about reviving the life she has long since buried. After an apparently hapless suicide attempt, she comes under the care of Dr. Jonathan Banks, a psychiatrist conducting a trial for a new anti-depression drug. The treatment seems to have a profound and instant effect on Emily, but it does come with the uneasy caveat of some very lucid sleepwalking. Her nocturnal behaviour soon devolves into an act so violent and unexpected that a drug investigation is launched – one in which no one is more baffled than Dr. Banks. Side Effects grows increasingly intricate as it unravels, but its culmination is actually rather numb. The film is part Basic Instinct and part All The President’s Men. The viewing experience is electric, but hardly shocking.

Side Effects can be seen as a partner to Contagion (2011). Soderbergh’s fascination with medical drama is explored thoroughly here and even touched upon in Traffic. In the former, illness’ manipulation of humans is showcased. In Side Effects, it is man’s manipulation of illness. When we find out Emily has been “malingering” – exaggerating or fabricating symptom’s for personal gain – the stage has already been set for the ensuing details.

Emily has, of course, been conspiring with her former psychiatrist who she is, of course, in a gay relationship

with. It is the crux of this psychiatrist’s character, and she strikes us as suspicious from the beginning (I hate to be a Suzy spoilsport, but it had to be said).

The cast consists of Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, which leads me to another auteurist trait – Soderbergh exclusively makes movies with very beautiful people. Unfortunately, this works against the particular film in question because the audience is fully aware that cross-pollination is going to occur at some point. There are saving graces in Mara’s performance as Emily, who perfects the femme fatale dichotomy of being both fearful and feared. For the film’s first thirty minutes, Emily seems to us as gentle as a deer.

The first glimpse we are given of her depravity emerges in her first sleepwalking episode. There is something latent here, and it isn’t her toxicology.

Despite what it ultimately becomes, the film does offer some real insight into mental illness. There are surely some people who will take offence to Side Effects, whether it is to its satiric take on psychiatry, big pharma, or simply its skin-deep portrayal of the mentally ill. For the better part of the film though (this is its first half, to be sure), the subject is treated attentively and respectfully. There is one scene in particular where Dr. Banks quotes Rollo May’s idea of depression being “an inability to construct a future.” In fact this is precisely Emily’s problem. But is she depressed?

She is likely more deranged than anything else.

Soderbergh is always fearful of boring his audience, but Side Effects takes this to fear to new unproductive heights.

Shots are noticeably shorter than his previous works and the film’s twists are Type A. I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy the film. Side Effects is a profusely enjoyable film (perhaps too enjoyable for a film that is essentially about depression), and as usual, Soderbergh is Hollywood gold – a real master of the middle. His films have an expansive appeal and I can in no way fault him for his success. They are fun to watch and similarly fun to castigate, an affection of which Side Effects is all too symptomatic of.

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Film animation:

Brushed to Perfection, HeadStrong, and The Chaise Longue

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Brushed to11 Perfection

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HeadStrong

The Chaise Longue

Daniel Sterlin-Altman Daniel Sterlin-Altman is currently a second year film animation student at Concordia University. He specialize in bizarre storytelling, simple aesthetics and animation, and careful editing, resulting in films that reflect the idealized world that he loves to see come to fruition. His films HeadStrong, Brushed to Perfection, and The Chaise Longue are examples of his work that apply simplistic animation techniques to tell lighthearted, escapist stories.

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Why I Film What I Film: How The Student Diaries Got Made Karina Licursi

Youth. Rant. Angst. Lust. No- Rant. Youth. Angst. Love.

Order doesn’t matter. After all, Jean-Luc Goddard, said that “a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”. And if that’s the case, should a film be made about my life, it would begin the year I turned twenty, and end the year I was born.

By early March, restless energy was apparent in the halls at school. You couldn’t walk anywhere without a debate going on. The generation I resented growing up due to its seemingly sterile identity had gained a voice of its own.

Why? Well, I like to think my life began at age twenty.

That age, for me, coincided with 2012, the year the Mayan calendar “ended.” It was also the year Quebec experienced a rebirth – it was both painful and blissful.

Then it happened, something no groundhog could predict upon seeing its shadow: March 22nd. I asked a classmate whether the attendance was larger than the national day of strike that occurred November 10th of the previous year. She felt just as flustered as I did. Students from across the province gathered at Place du Canada in hordes. If it had not been for the empty trees, you could be fooled into thinking this was a midsummer’s day.

My uncle gave me my first camera that January. I looked at it, honestly not knowing what would be born from this Fuji Finepix T550, other than short films… How arrogant of me to think that, since I didn’t even know how to handle a camera.

Several weeks later, student protests slowly emerged.

I felt both curious and alienated, since the media hadn’t explained the reason they were protesting. As a staff writer for “The Plant,” Dawson College’s newspaper, I took on an upcoming February 2nd protest for my second assignment.

We were to meet at Concordia’s Hall Building.

Arriving there nervously, my mind was filled with images of pepper-sprayed-angry-young-people that dominated the newspapers. None of this happened that day. In fact, it was the first time I felt like a Quebecker, having never experienced that kind of cultural unity before.

Only a thousand or so students went marching, yet with my camera in hand, a part of me knew this was the start of something even bigger.

The protest lasted for five hours, keeping Montreal in a paralysis. Once we arrived at the Old Port, I looked up at a television through the window of a restaurant, while simultaneously listening to speeches from student groups and workers’ unions. Onscreen, the local news was showing helicopter footage of Downtown Montreal. We were over 200 thousand people.

Realizing that my camera could be exploited for more than whatever archival footage it captured, I decided to spam the inboxes of student union leaders from various CEGEP’s and universities that were on strike, asking for anyone interested in being interviewed for a documentary to contact me. This is how The Student Diaries came to be.

This took much longer to direct than expected, and the idea of making a feature at the time was beyond me.

Aside from not being able to afford any desired

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software, groups like the National Film Board and Telefilm couldn’t help fund the project unless I was in university, which meant there wouldn’t be a budget either. Despite this, every month, my video timeline grew longer. A film this size without a budget is like giving birth without an epidural.

I took prolonged breaks in-between, and sometimes wondered when the motivation to complete the film would finally hit me. I thought about all the great stories told by those I interviewed, and all the times I changed the channel in frustration, knowing the protest I just attended was more significant than the small group of rebels in black throwing rocks at windows. These people had something important to say.

Among those interviewed in The Student Diaries are; Devon Walcott, an aspiring journalist who boldly describes what it’s like to be hit by a projectile; Jeanne Reynolds, former co-speaker of CLASSE; and Martine Desjardins, former president of the Quebec University Federation (FEUQ), all of who didn’t receive half the media coverage they deserved for their hard work.

“We each had our own caricature in the media,” explains Desjardins, “Léo, who was the nice boy, Gabriel, who some thought was a Che Guevara-type, and I in the middle there to balance one or the other […] It didn’t really project the reality of what we were doing.”

Also interviewed is Érica Mazerolle, who decided to join CLASSE to become more directly involved in the movement; Tom McGurk, a student originally from the

United States; Cassie Smith of British Columbia; and Jane Ellis of Ontario, both who comment on how they felt their families back home weren’t receiving proper coverage of what was going on in Quebec.

Watching the film today, I know why it got done: subconsciously, I understood that made into a film, the 2012 Quebec student movement would become permanent – onscreen, the events of that year are only images today – but images that will last forever.

Of course, some of these images are shocking and even difficult to watch knowing that all this is real, unrehearsed, and what the province lived. Then again, if people were aware of when their actions are making history, they wouldn’t have enough scars to prove their credibility, hence the cliché of life not being a dress rehearsal.

So this is why my life began at twenty. Before then, I was passive, stubborn, and I saw everything through the rose-colored glasses that others imposed on me. They controlled the setting, the soundtrack, and the script. I was merely a player, as Shakespeare noted.

Now, I see through my own zoom lens.

* More details concerning The Student Diaries are available on IMDb, facebook.com/CarusProductionsKL, and youtube.com/user/anirak90.

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Take Shelter: A “New Cinema” Depicting the 21st Century Nightmare Mario Melidona

A storm is coming. In its preoccupations with spirituality, economic instability, and illness both mental and physical, Take Shelter (2011), from writer-director Jeff Nichols, is representative of New Cinema in its realization of the 21st century American nightmare. Curtis (Michael Shannon) is struggling between his reality and that of his nightmares, which have begun to follow him into waking life. But this is not the face he is putting forward. As his best friend Dewart (Shea Whigham) tells him, “You’ve got a good life, Curtis. I think that’s the best compliment you can give a man: take a look at his life and say, ‘That’s good’” (O. Scott). From here though there begins the relentless feeling of an impending doom that Curtis fails to understand. His American Dream is in danger. This is something Curtis understands completely, but he does not know how or why.

As with the French New Wave, independent American filmmakers struggle to make personal films against the gluttony of Hollywood mega-productions with budgets in excess of $50-70 million and sometimes as much as $200 million once marketing and advertisements have been factored in. In earnest then, independent American productions are defying conventions by shooting on minimal budgets; Take Shelter had an estimated $5 million budget. As Nichols mentioned in an interview with MakingOf, the crew would sometimes shoot two different scenes simultaneously in one location as the production deadline approached. After the production finished its primary shooting, the post-production studio Hydraulx was so devoted to making the project a reality that it was willing to help tackle the grandiose CGI sequences (depicting flocks of swarming birds and apocalyptic storms) on a shoestring budget (Nichols). The film opened September 30, 2011 in a limited release and as of November 13, 2011 has only made an estimated $1.35 million in the US. Often with these kinds of films, box-office success is rare. They usually fare much better in the festival circuit, as Take Shelter

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did when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011. Similar to François Truffaut, a major director of the French New Wave who worked under similar circumstances, Nichols has still managed to be nominated for many awards, winning two of them at the Cannes Film Festival. Overall, this small ‘personal film’ has been very well received by the press.

And Take Shelter is indeed a personal film for Nichols.

On the film’s official website, he provides a director’s statement shedding light on the project’s inception: When I began writing TAKE SHELTER in the summer of 2008, I was in the middle of my first year of marriage.

Although both my career and personal life were on a positive track, I had a nagging feeling that the world at large was heading for harder times. This free-floating anxiety was part economic, part just growing up, but it mainly came from the fact that I finally had things in my life that I didn’t want to lose. All of these feelings filtered directly into the characters of this film.

Thus, Nichols writes himself into the story’s thematic and narrative structure. Curtis’ family acts as a trigger for the disruptions that occur in his psyche: he begins to fear that he is inheriting his mother’s paranoid schizophrenia when his own behavior becomes manic and frazzled. His nightmares feel apocalyptic and are filled with violence targeting himself as well as his deaf daughter Hannah.

He is compelled to prepare for the impending storm by building an underground shelter in his backyard. One night, a storm alert begins to sound, throwing the family into panic until they take solace in the shelter. After the storm passes, however, Curtis cannot bring himself to open the doors and return to reality, fearing the nightmare might not be entirely over.

What’s truly remarkable about Take Shelter is how the film’s aesthetic choices refuse to reveal whether Curtis’

prophetic visions and apocalyptic nightmares will become real manifestations. This is again indicative of the New Wave – as François Truffaut was once asked: “Does the label ‘New Wave’ correspond to reality?” Truffaut responds to this by saying “I think the New Wave had an anticipated reality” (Marie 6-7). The cinematic style is strikingly similar to Take Shelter in which nightmares appear to foreshadow an impending doom on a personal scale for Curtis but also on a larger scale, as the Midwest town he resides in also feels to have numbered days.

Curtis’ nightmares range from anxieties about crime (unidentifiable strangers who attack him and kidnap Hannah while they drive through a rainstorm), to environmental (rain that is the same colour and thickness of oil), to economic (losing his home to some sort of gravitydefying earthquake) and finally health (waking from his dream to realize he has pissed himself and shortly after experiences a seizure – this happens on two occasions).

This exploration of terror is described aptly by A. O. Scott in The New York Times, where he deems Take Shelter “a quiet, relentless exploration of the latent (and not so latent) terrors that bedevil contemporary American life, a horror movie that will trouble your sleep not with visions of monsters but with a more familiar dread” (O. Scott). These nightmares are woven seamlessly into the film’s narrative, signaling an independent American New Wave cinema with a focus on combating the terror of contemporary life, where the monsters exist in non-corporeal form. The nightmares eventually come to crack Curtis’ impressive veneer, which is demonstrated when he passionately assaults an entire community hall with his prophecies of impending doom.

What’s also apparent of Take Shelter’s status as a New Wave film in contemporary America is the particular socioeconomic conditions that middle-class Americans are faced with. All of us are familiar with the deregulation of

economic institutions that caused Wall Street to crash and sent the country into an economic tailspin that resulted in the worst recession since 1929. This left homeowners with mortgages they could not pay off, a Medicare system in ruins, and job security non-existent. All of these issues plague Curtis and his family, although relative to most he is lucky; he is happily married to his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) with a nice home and a child and has a decent job as a construction worker, enjoying medical benefits: the perfect suburban life. While all seems to be perfect, his mental stability becomes increasingly compromised, resulting in his expensive and time-consuming underground shelter project. In this refuge, Curtis is caught between competing anxieties of a spiritual and psychological nature. These very personal preoccupations are all strong adherents of the auteur policy. Nichols’ vision is not only apparent in the film’s script but also in its style (Thompson 407).

Nichols certainly exerts his personal vision as both writer and director of Take Shelter, a perfect example of New Cinema vis-à-vis the Independent American New Wave. Nichols puts his own anxieties about marriage and economic instability into Curtis, who suffers from nightmares about losing the ones he loves. No longer can typical Hollywood productions ignore the resurgence of independent films that reflect the 21st century nightmare of contemporary America.

Works Cited Marie, Michel. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Trans. Richard Neupert. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

Nichols, Jeff. “Director’s Statement.” Take Shelter: The Official Motion Picture Web Site. http://www.sonyclassics.com/takeshelter/main.html#director. Web. 18 November 2011.

Nichols, Jeff. Interview. “Jeff Nichols talks ‘Take Shelter’.” With Christine Aylward.

MakingOf (2011). Web. 15 November 2011.

O. Scott, A. “Movie Review Take Shelter (2011).” The New York Times 29 Sept. 2011: Web. Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction, Third Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.

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vis visio ions 18

sion ons os ns UNUSUAL VISIONS Are you crazy about experimental documentary?

Then you’ll be crazy about Visions, a new monthly film series focusing on experimental documentary. We chatted with ex-Concordia student and creator of Visions.

Interview by Julien Bouthillier

What is Visions?

Visions is a monthly screening series focussing on experimental documentary. It’s a rather broad category but the interest is in presenting works that look at reality with an unconventional perspective. Visions also focuses on screening works that are otherwise not represented in Montreal.

How did this project get started?

I’m a filmmaker myself and over the past couple of years I’ve presented in a few festivals and done a bit of selection and programming for some places. In that time I got to see works and meet filmmakers that are really interesting but knew they would only go so far because they’re a strange breed that’s hard to program. I had a bit of downtime between films and wanted to put my energy into something

else so I pulled together that list of works and asked if people wanted to come and present. Their reaction has been really positive and with one screening down it seems there is a public that is equally enthusiastic to see these works. I’ve got works for the next six months and if all goes well I don’t see why the series won’t continue.

As you previously said, experimental documentary is a rather broad category. What do you specifically search for in a documentary? Are you searching for unusual subjects or characters, or rather an experimental aesthetic or narrative?

I’ve stopped looking for an “interesting subject” in any films I watch. Too often you read the synopsis of a film and you don’t know what it means really because it’s the treatment of the material that changes everything. On any

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Too Toooften oftenyou youread readth th of ofaafilm filmand andyou youdon’t don ititmeans meansreally reallybecau becau treatment treatmentof ofthe themate mat changes changeseverything. everything.O subject subjectyou youcan canhave havea or oraaterrible terriblefilm filmdep dep Vision Visionof ofthe theone onewho’ who given subject you can have a great film or a terrible film depending on the Vision of the one who’s making it. So I’m always interested in how people see, not necessarily what they see. One of the greatest joys of cinema and art is to see something you thought to be so familiar as something new.

Last Sunday, you screened “Public Hearing” by James N. Kienitz Wilkins. What can you tell us about this film?

It’s a strange one because it doesn’t sound appealing (again, a problem with a synopsis) –the script is a transcript of a town meeting concerning a Wal-Mart expansion.

Enthralling, right? But it is played out verbatim by actors and is shot in 16mm, almost exclusively in close-ups (a little like Dreyer’s Joan of Arc). This creates all kinds of interesting tensions between the text, the acting, the subject and the power dynamics of the ‘characters.’ A transcript is one way of looking at reality and then embellishing that transcript back into life is another way of looking at it and behind it you have all the issues and problems surrounding the expansion of these giant commercial centres.

forest in a cinema and film some ghosts, we’ll see how that goes.

We’re doing this issue of Afterimages on the theme of Madness. Can you share a story/ anecdote/film relating to this?

Umm... Not really... I think making films is madness but every now and then it can provide a flash of clarity.

What’s the craziest thing you ever saw?

A trailer for a Barbie film in which Princess Barbie and Pop Star Barbie get to magically trade places and learn about life. That was pretty crazy.

Fair enough.

Speaking of synopsis, in the one found on Visions website, “Public Hearing” is described as documentary “in the most literal sense”, which is interesting because when you say “documentary”, most people probably wouldn’t think of a movie like this, that sort of blurs between “reality” and “fiction”. How would you describe the “idea” of a documentary?

Well I guess there’s the ‘genre’ of documentary which has its modes, traditions and methods and then there’s this ‘idea’ of documentary that you mention. I guess anything man-made can be read as a ‘documentary’ or a ‘document’ – architecture can say a lot about a generation or a person; a fiction film becomes a reflection of a time and place when studied within anthropology; you can do it with everything really. But for where cinema is concerned and what Visions is interested in are works that consciously grapple with or try to understand the ‘real’ world external to the film. What is interesting about Public Hearing is that it is a document of a document, so at the same time it addresses the subject and its own form.

What can we expect from Visions (and yourself as a filmmaker) in the next few months?

The next few months of screenings are coming together and include a peyote trip through the desert, a lo-fi YouTube epic, a spinning vinyl, a demolition derby, a 911 emergency call and the wide-open ocean (but it’s how you see all those things that counts). As for my own films, I’m trying to fit a

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* Vision’s next screening (La main au-dessus du niveau du cœur by Gaëlle Komàr) will be presented at on May 15th. More details to come.

he hesynopsis synopsis n’t t know knowwhat what use useit’s it’sthe the terial erial that that On Onany anygiven given eaagreat greatfilm film pending pendingon onthe the o’s ’s making makingit.it.

Too often you read the synopsis of a film and you don’t know what it means really because it’s the treatment of the material that changes everything. On any given subject you can have a great film or a terrible film depending on the Vision of the one who’s making it.

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La quête et le quêtage de subvention Alberto Franco

« Le cinéma est pour nous, de tous les arts, le plus important » - Lénine

Ça me fait chier de devoir quêter pour des subventions. Mais les subventions gouvernementales pour le cinéma me font chier aussi. Que personne ne critique la nature de ces subventions me fait chier tout autant. Ma critique (ou plutôt ma montée de lait, communément appelée rant) se trouve sur la mince ligne séparant les idées anarcho-libertaires des idées libertariennes.

Le cinéma, c’est une des formes d’art la plus dispendieuse qui soit, à cause de la division du travail qu’elle exige : équipements, décors, costumes, maquillages, comédien(ne)s, technicien(ne)s, sécurité, électricité, cantine, assistants de ci et de ça, bla-bla-bla.

Bref, la production d’une œuvre cinématographique exige énormément de capital, et ce capital (le cash !), il doit venir

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de quelque part. Même si les producteurs me font chier (des fois, je vais rester poli, je ne voudrais pas me faire d’ennemis tout de suite), surtout ceux qui sont très intrusifs, il est tout à fait légitime qu’ils imposent leurs contraintes, car le capital n’apparaît pas en récitant des formules magiques mais en exploitant des ressources naturelles et la force de travail des individus (ou de soi). Évidemment, les contraintes de ces producteurs peuvent finir par jouer en défaveur du succès commercial d’un film, au même titre que les fantasmes (artistiques ou non) du réalisateur/ réalisatrice.

Lorsque le capital provient de l’État , ce capital provient des victimes du racketeering légal, c’est-à-dire des contribuables (coucou monsieur Legault! vous me gardez une place dans votre équipe?). Dans ces circonstances, l’État a lui aussi le droit d’imposer ses contraintes, qui peuvent servir à la propagande (ou même au contrôle

Les subventions pour le cinéma ne sont pas une forme de justice sociale mais une autre forme de recherche de profit, qu’il soit monétaire ou social. social). Les subventions pour le cinéma ne sont pas une forme de justice sociale mais une autre forme de recherche de profit, qu’il soit monétaire ou social. Je prends en exemple la SODEC, la Société de développement des ENTREPRISES culturelles. Un capital engagé dans un processus de production quelconque afin d’obtenir plus de capital. Si l’État produit le cinéma d’auteur c’est parce qu’il (je soupçonne ici un État masculin) sait que ce cinéma va être projeté dans le circuit des festivals à l’étranger et faire rayonner notre belle province ainsi que la fédération canadian. Il y a donc un profit : ça va rapporter en standing, en prestige, en capital social. Les subventions pour le cinéma sont d’abord et avant tout un investissement.

des contribuables serve à financer des guerres, l’armement (et le salaire) la police, la construction d’autoroutes coupant des écosystèmes en deux, des stades olympiques, des escortes (féminines, trans, mineures, name it) et des films dont le spectateur/spectatrice décrochera après 15 minutes. Le cinéma est un art qui exige du capital et les exigences des producteurs sont légitimes. C’est une réalité qu’il faut accepter à moins de prendre le contrôle des moyens de production. Sinon, il y a d’autres formes d’art et d’autres activités à explorer comme la miction et l’horticulture.

Ce que je critique, c’est l’idéalisation des ces subventions qui ne voient dans le cinéma et l’art qu’une autre source de profit, un investissement. Je ne suis pas contre l’idée de producteurs laissant le champ libre à la création. Je trouve ça génial. Je m’oppose à ce que l’argent

Alberto Franco.

Props, menaces, insultes ou réfutations en moins de 140 caractères, @elalbertosaurio

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Circus Freaks and the Carnivalesque: Camped Crossdressing and Drag in Female Trouble Emma Catalfamo Throughout the history of cinema, the representation of sexualities that do not conform to heteronormative ideology have been richly problematic. The representation of non-heteronormative characters has reflected Western society’s perception of homosexuality and other sexualities at each film’s respective time period – until recently, non-heterosex¬ual orientations have been pathologized

by Western institutions, and the majority of Western film history depicts a negative view of these identities and the behaviour commonly associated with them. Until very recently, non-heterosexual characters were usually villainous and pathologically evil; immortalized negative stereotypes.

However, with the rise of the counter-culture movement in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, as well as the drastic increase in a minority population that rejected the conservative, homogenous and close-minded values of a post-war American society, there was a large cultural movement to try and change the rigid social hierarchies that dictated how people should live. The post-war American ideals had pressured minorities that did not fit into the typical notions of femininity and masculinity to conform to strict social standards of normality, so with the rise of the counter-culture revolution, the representation of previously ‘perverse’ acts such as cross-dressing and drag were able to be displayed in a way in which these behaviours were not pathologized or directly associated with a character’s psychosis. There was one notable director within this period who truly pioneered and pushed the boundaries of how non-heteronormative sexualities were represented through his parodic and ridiculous representations of both heteronormative female and male gender roles. I am speaking, of course, of John Waters. And his superstar cross-dressing queen Divine!

Female Trouble (1974) specifically assumes a very different sensibility in its representation of cross-dressing as a natural element of actress Divine’s portrayal of protagonist Dawn Davenport – rather than it being pathologized as a direct symptom of psychosis as was seen in the cinema of previous eras. Within Female Trouble, Divine’s crossdressing to play female lead Dawn Davenport fits into

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Judith Butler’s concept of “gender performativity” within the context of drag and cross-dressing as addressed in her article “From Interiority to Gender Performatives,” [Society’s] disciplinary production of gender effects a false stabilization of gender in the interests of the heterosexual construction and regulation of sexuality within the reproductive domain… If the inner truth of gender is fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can neither be true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity… drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity… drag and cross-dressing also reveal the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence. In imitating itself as well as its contingency [through this impersonation]… sex and gender [are] denaturalized by means of a performance which avows their distinctness and dramatizes the cultural mechanism of their fabricated unity (Butler, 362-4).

Butler’s explanation of how cross-dressing and drag highlight the performative nature of gender emphasizes its synthetic construction. This applies perfectly to Divine’s exaggerated performance of femininity in Female Trouble.

Through Divine’s parodic performance of Dawn Davenport, she not only mocks gender norms, but also undermines them by highlighting how destructive they can be through her own exaggerated portrayal of femininity. To begin, when a teenaged Dawn doesn’t get the cha-cha heels she requested for Christmas, she desides to leave home for good, hitching a ride from a man named Earl (also played by Divine) who proceeds to rape and impregnate her. Divine sets the tone for this sequence upon Dawn and Earl’s first encounter – Dawn is shown distressed on the side of the highway when Earl drives by and stops his car to gawk at her and cackle as she passively looks away in disgust. Earl then circles back to Dawn, who is fixing her hair. He hollers, “Get in sugar dumpling!” and Dawn

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complies. Once she shuts the door, the car drives off down the road but pulls over immediately as the camera cuts to Earl with Dawn at his arm. He pushes her onto a mattress and begins to mount her from behind. The camera cuts to a close-up of Earl as he forcefully undresses Dawn, leering and grunting as he takes off her clothes. This is then intercut with high angle shots of Dawn screaming (but making no attempt to stop him or resist his thrusting) with low angle shots of Earl as he rapes her. As Earl begins to climax, Dawn’s screams are replaced by the sound of pleasurable moans as she reaches into Earl’s back pocket and takes his wallet. Earl finishes and mounts her again. He is then shown performing oral sex on her while making disgusting slurping noises. Here the camera cuts to a very pregnant Dawn walking down a city street and cross-cuts to Earl working in a factory before returning to Dawn as she enters a pay phone and calls Earl to ask him for child support. Earl stops his work and picks up the phone to retort, “You stole my wallet you fat bitch! You’ll never get any money from me, cow. Just ‘cause you got them big udders don’t mean you’re somethin’ special! Get the hook! Go fuck yourself for all I care!” before hanging up. In this scene then, Divine parodies both the stereotypical notion of femininity and masculinity through her exaggerated performances of both Dawn Davenport as a weak, passive but ultimately conniving woman, and Earl Peterson as an irresponsible, misogynistic, aggressive, and sex-obsessed man.

Earl is still confused and asks Taffy what she looks like, to which Taffy responds, “Well… she’s fat.” The camera then cuts back to Earl who says, “Fat… oh yeah, I fucked her!” and lets Taffy inside. Earl closes the door behind her and leers at her as he slurs, “Do you fuck as good as your mom too?” Taffy slaps him and says “You slimy pig!” The camera then cuts to a close-up of a boar head mounted on the wall of the trailer, then returns to a close-up of Earl as he takes out his penis, then cuts back to a close-up of the boar head, and finally back to the close-up of Earl’s penis. As Earl approaches Taffy to rape her, the camera returns to a medium shot of him in profile as he moves toward her but vomits and collapses before reaching his target. Divine’s exaggerated and satirical performance of Earl as a chauvinistic sex-crazed male is epitomized in this sequence where he tries to rape his biological daughter and is visually equated to a pig through Waters’ intercutting of the mounted boar head and Earl’s penis. Through this associative montage, Earl’s behaviour is symbolized as pig-like and disgusting, emphasizing his appalling behaviour and his animalistic obsession with sex. Therefore, Divine’s stereotypical and exaggerated performances of masculinity and femininity are seen through her drag performance of female protagonist Dawn Davenport and the male supporting character Earl Peterson, which illustrates drag’s ability to undermine and parody societal constructions of gender roles.

Through her exaggerated performances of these stereotypical male and female gender roles, Divine not only subverts the validity of these gender constructions in her ability to play a man and woman with equal farce, but she also reveals how negative these gender roles are in the behaviour they promote. These satirical performances of femininity and masculinity are seen throughout Female Trouble. A sex scene between Dawn and her husband Gator is one example – Gator has a toolbox full of different objects he penetrates Dawn with, which furthers this notion of men’s treatment of Dawn (and most women) as if she were a barn animal or sex object rather than an individual.

Perhaps Female Trouble’s strongest criticism of patriarchal masculinity is Divine’s performance of Earl in the scene where Dawn’s daughter Taffy goes to his house to meet him. In this scene, Taffy is shown walking to his trailer, as the camera cross-cuts to a medium shot of Earl drinking beer and eating mayonnaise out of a jar. Upon seeing him, Taffy excitedly exclaims “Daddy!” and rushes to hug him. The camera then cuts to Earl as he looks disgusted and pushes her off of him saying, “I have no daughter!”

The camera cuts back to Taffy as she insists that he is her father, trying to remind him by saying, “My mother is Dawn Davenport. She told me you were my father.”

Furthermore, Waters’ critique of societal gender roles is facilitated through his undermining of patriarchal beauty standards, which he achieves through his equating of beauty with violence and disgust. As explained in CaroleAnne Tyler’s article “Boys Will Be Girls: Drag and Transvetic Fetishism,”

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Camp is radical because it de-fetishizes the erotic scenario of women-as-spectacle… The loss of gender norms [through drag and cross-dressing] would have the effect of proliferating gender configurations, destabilizing substantive identity and depriving the naturalizing narratives of compulsory heterosexuality of their central protagonists: ‘man’ and ‘woman’… To play the feminine is to ‘speak’ it ironically, to italicize it… to parody it… The mimic and drag queen ‘camp up’ ideology in order to undo it, producing knowledge about it, that gender and the heterosexual orientation presumed to anchor it are unnatural and even oppressive (Tyler, 374-81).

Female Trouble illuminates the negative, constructed, and oppressive nature of gender roles, by aligning beauty, the major merit women are valued by in patriarchal society and a notion that is innate within the construction of femininity, with both violence and disgust through the appearance and actions of Divine’s character. Dawn’s

progression from a bratty and vapid, but relatively normal teenager, into a psychotic monster who murders in the name of glamour is a result of her obsessive pursuit of beauty. This obsession is evident from the very beginning of Female Trouble, notably when one classmate calls Dawn a “dumb cheap girl” and she simply scoffs, but lunges at another who comments on her weight.

When Dawn becomes a “crime model” for a rich couple known as ‘The Dashers,’ she willingly turns herself into spectacle in order to receive merit and value. Dawn’s willingness to do anything for the Dashers’ camera extends to her own willingness to hurt others as well as being physically violated herself. This is evident in the scene where Dawn arrives at her photo shoot with a black eye from her husband gator. Upon seeing this Mr. Dasher exclaims “What happened to your eye? May I take a photo of it? Lovely!” Eagerly Dawn poses, glorifying the domestic abuse she has endured. Later she is outraged by Taffy’s rude behaviour towards the Dashers and gets up to hit her when Mr. Dasher requests her to pose. Dawn complies, and proceeds to knock Taffy unconscious. In this scene then, Waters’ equates violence directly with beauty through Divine’s violent actions toward others as well as her own self-destructive behaviour. In addition, he undermines patriarchal beauty standards by directly connecting the notion of beauty with disgust. As explained by Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton in the book “Cult Cinema,” John Water’s presentation of Divine fits into the “carnivalesque” as: …The carnivalesque is a unique instance in the social processes of meaning-making- in which taboos are lifted and people are allowed to engage in what is otherwise culturally prohibited… laughter, orgiastic pleasure and grotesquery (especially grotesque bodies) which were both inimical to official culture, were celebrated as subversive acts, and the dominant order was rendered relative through its inversion… Within the early features of John Waters’ Pink Flamingoes and his next two films Female Trouble and Desperate Living, the material body, particularly in forms that are often repressed, are thrust into full visibility and often exaggerated [creating an aesthetic of]… ‘grotesque realism’… [that] challenges people’s attitudes towards size and gender by parading cross-dressers, transsexuals and overweight people (Mathijs & Sexton, 98-106).

Thus, the consistent cast of misfits Waters’ uses in his early films, most powerfully the drag queen Divine whose persona he helped create, oppose all patriarchal standards of feminine beauty not only through Divine’s female impersonation but also through her physical appearance.

In Female Trouble this subversion of beauty norms is clear throughout in the changes to Dawn’s physical appearance.

At film’s start, Dawn appears to be a very ordinary teenage girl who, with her sweater sets, pleated skirts and beehive hairdo is very typical of late 1950’s fashion. However, as Dawn drops out of school and begins with her life of crime; her outfits become increasingly ridiculous and unflattering, her make-up becomes heavier, her hair becomes wilder.

Dawn’s changing appearance culminates in her club performance, where she is announced to be “the most beautiful woman in the world.” She wears a tight sparkly jump suit, her hair is shaved, her make-up is extreme, and her face is horribly disfigured from an acid attack. At this point, Divine’s presentation of Dawn is as physically revolting as possible to most audiences as she embodies the antithesis of heteronormative, patriarchal beauty standards.

Through the increasingly grotesque appearance that she achieves as she pursues beauty, Dawn’s appearance in Female Trouble becomes very representative of Mathijs and Sexton’s concept of the transgressive grotesque as she inverts the female beauty standards of patriarchal society while also criticizing the pursuit of beauty imposed on women by the construction of femininity. Moreover, Divine undermines societal standards of beauty by inverting the notion of the ideal female body in proudly flaunting her obesity. For instance, in the scene entitled “Dawn Davenport, Career Girl: 1961-1967”, Dawn is shown doing typical female work in a montage. At one point she is shown in a typical 1950’s style diner appearing vastly underwhelmed. The camera then cuts to the exterior of a strip club and proceeds to show the inside where Dawn is doing an erotic dance, her stomach jiggling enthusiastically.

A medium shot of her on a street corner follows. She is wearing fishnets and a skin-tight purple dress, soliciting herself to people who walk by with two girlfriends. All three women are smoking cigarettes as one of the cars pulls over. Dawn approaches it to talk to the driver before waving her two friends over and the three of them climb inside. In this sequence, both costume and low camera angles, notably in Dawn’s erotic dancing shots, are used to emphasize how large Divine’s body is and showcase her form as incredibly unappealing according to accepted standards. Waters puts Dawn in these stereotypically working-class female jobs, which position her as both spectacle and subservient – which would be arousing to most heterosexual male viewers if she conformed to patriarchal beauty standards. However, by replacing the ideal female body with an obese drag queen and dressing her in the same skin-tight and revealing clothes, as well as using low-camera angles to exaggerate her already huge mass, the notion of beauty and the female gender role are satirized by the inversion of the “female-as-spectacle”

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rule of mainstream Hollywood cinema. Through assuming the antithesis of the patriarchal ideology of beauty but still assuming the female role as spectacle, Divine undermines and destroys the construction of beauty and femininity.

Therefore, through Divine’s parodic representation of masculinity and femininity through her dual roles and equating of violence and disgust with the patriarchal notion of beauty, the film subverts the construction of beauty standards and gender roles by illuminating how grotesque these constructions are, thus proving that the true “female trouble” is patriarchal society and its oppressive gender roles. By illustrating the oppressive hierarchy created through gender roles and beauty standards, Waters’ Female Trouble displays the liberating potential of drag and cross-dressing to change patriarchal heteronormative society by undermining its synthetic construction.

In conclusion, the bold use of drag and crossdressing as a vehicle to challenge, mock, and undermine heteronormative gender roles and beauty standards in Female Trouble is indicative of the societal changes that occurred during the film’s creation, specifically in terms of the weakening of cultural notions of ‘abnormality’ and ‘mandatory heterosexuality’ that occurred from the preStonewall to post-Stonewall eras in the U.S. Queer cinema has proven its ability to be radical with the use of drag and cross-dressing to undermine heteronormative constructions of gender and beauty in many films like Female Trouble, so ideally this challenging of heternormativity and patriarchal hierarchies within a radical queer context will one day be possible in mainstream cinema.

Bibliography Butler, Judith. “From Interiority to Gender Performatives.” Camp, Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. 1st ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1999. 361-68. Print.

Hire, Richard O. “The History of Psychiatry and Homosexuality.” LGBT Mental Health Syllabus (2012): 1-7. Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.

Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. Cult Cinema. 1st ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print.

Mennel, Barbara. “Introduction.” Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys. Vol. 1. London: Wallflower, 2012. 1-5. Print. Short Cuts Series.

Turner, Kenneth. “Baltimore’s King of Repulsion: The Films of John Waters: Where Do You Go after You’ve Gone Too Far.” Rev. of Female Trouble (Waters, 1974). The Washington Post 20 Apr. 1975: 14+. Print.

Tyler, Carole-Ann. “Boys Will Be Girls: Drag and Transvestic Fetishism.” Camp, Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. 1st ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1999. 369-408. Print.

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Flattened: The Death and Rebirth of the Saskatchewan Film Industry

by Mattias Graham

Creative Progress: How the demise of the Saskatchewan film industry can save Saskatchewan film These letters are not to defend the government of Saskatchewan, nor to reprimand the democratically elected legislature. Nor is this letter an antiindustry manifesto, let alone an anti-film tirade; nothing could be further from the truth. This is a letter to my home province and my peers, a call to re-frame the regressive dialogue ongoing between the film community and government circles. The fact is, our industry was not as healthy as it should have been. In writing this text, I wish to outline possibilities and solutions that could lead not back to the way things were, but to a creative community reflective of the unique disposition of Saskatchewan culture. I love Saskatchewan, I love film, and I think we owe it ourselves to not get caught up in the way things were, but rather to focus on realizing our dreams and visions within this new industry context.

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PART 1 - CREATIVE STAGNATION The film industry is dead – in Saskatchewan, anyway.

Not wanting to settle for undercutting the other provinces, the provincial government canned the industry-standard tax credit incentives. Producers have had to move on, and hundreds of skilled technicians must now either give up their dreams or move to Toronto, Vancouver, or, of all places, Manitoba. Massive infrastructure, dependent on big-money productions, like the Canada-Saskatchewan Production Studios (ie. the soundstage) and other worldclass production services will sit unused, collecting prairie dust. To most, the fate of the industry had been clear since the Sask Party announced their decision in March of last year but now, with the announcement of a new but fatally small-scale “Creative Industries” fund, any doubt that remained about the industry’s demise has been put to rest.

Rest in peace, o’ film industry. At barely twenty years old, you really were too young to go.

But are there not lessons in mortality? Faced with devastation, should we not re-evaluate the circumstances that lead to the tragedy itself?

The Saskatchewan film community reacted with unanimous shock at the provincial government’s decision, and after negotiations to streamline the original unceremonious termination of the tax credit program the industry’s dialogue has remained the same: bring back the Sask Film Employment Tax Credit Program. Our protest is not baseless; tax incentives are critical for Canadian film and for most industries. But the government, in return, has behaved as governments often do. They have not reversed their decision and in all likelihood, never will (at least until a new legislature). Now, with the announcement of the “Creative Industries” fund the lamentation for the past position of Sask Film has continued. Put things back the way they were, we say. Not a chance, says the government. And we both lumber ahead, stuck in the past and ill-equipped for the future.

The loss of the film industry is, without a doubt, a calamity. Dozens of producers must throw away twenty years of work at building services, stimulus and international connections to bring large-scale productions to the province. Hundreds of jobs have been lost, and skilled workers are now being forced to sell their homes and move away from the province that least needs emigration. Talented, independent filmmakers will not be able to support their livelihood with relevant work in the flatlands anymore. And as a final sting, the provincial economy will now lose the net gain of the film business.

Frankly, it just doesn’t add up.

But the Saskatchewan film industry, I’m sad to say,

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was not healthy. Top-heavy and favouring services to bigbudget productions rather than empowering local creation, the downward trajectory of the film industry is clear in hindsight. An independent review of the industry completed in 2009 contains revealing observations: “The predominant strength of the sector is the existence of what has been described as the ‘five pillars.’ These pillars include SaskFilm, Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit (SFETC), Canada Saskatchewan Production Studios, Saskatchewan’s quality labour base, and Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN).”

- Nordicity, Saskatchewan Film/TV Production Sector Plan. Pg 4.

The consultation provides ideas for improvement towards each of these tenants and is optimistic for the industry: “in spite of the effects of the recession, the economic structure of the film/TV production sector is sound; and the province’s producers have proven their resilience for decades” (Nordicity, pg. 5). How those optimistic words sting today. The butchering of SCN and the destruction of the SFETC, which seems to have left SaskFilm gagged and bound, removed these crucial pillars and the industry crumbled. However, what’s shocking isn’t the fact that an outside source indicated that the tax credit was keeping the industry afloat years ago – the industry’s collapse was an entirely natural consequence.

What is disconcerting is that this report fails to adequately address the most important aspect for the future of any creative industry: stimulating local talent. An exhaustive breakdown on the trappings of this previously pillared industry is far outside the scope of this essay (though I encourage anyone interested in a comprehensive breakdown of the true viability of the industry to read through the quoted report in its entirety), but virtually nowhere does the outside consultation note that a strong independent sector is crucial for the vitality of the entire industry.

Independent production, the dynamic, creative middle-ground between student filmmakers and the media business, was dangerously malnourished in this province.

This middle-ground – micro-budget productions where new talents and sensational ideas collide – is hugely important for recent graduates of film schools and technicians alike.

Independent short films and features provide significant opportunities for technicians to gain experience and make connections, and are absolutely critical for filmmakers to hone their craft and develop a name for themselves.

Artist-run centers like the Filmpool were by-and-large the only refuge for the independent filmmaker in this province, and these centers and co-ops simply do not individually

have the resources to support the amount of high-quality independent production necessary to endow the industry with up-and-comers and big ideas. But the most significant loss from suffocating the independent sector is a loss of self-representation. Independent productions, uninhibited by shareholders and box-office returns, are free to explore local stories, settings, and challenges in ways that large budget productions simply can’t risk.

Without that middle-ground, where risk-taking collides with technical experience, very seldom do truly local productions manage to adequately reflect the people of the province. The industry employed skilled technicians and talent, but besides the odd run-off success like Corner Gas, the times that local culture was reflected in the film industry were unbelievably few and far between.

The situation is even more dire when looking for cultural nuances (which, for all of their hilarity, isn’t the strongest suit of the characters in Dog River), or when reflecting on the more difficult or unique aspects of life on the prairies.

Outside of documentaries and PSAs, it was incredibly rare that Saskatchewan was confronted with its own prides or challenges on-screen. The industry can’t necessarily afford to invest in such risky ventures but the importance of independent productions that tackle these issues cannot be neglected (for example, a film on gang life in Saskatoon would be a dangerous investment for a large production company, but would be a very powerful and culturally pertinent topic for an independent production).

Unfortunately, the provincial funding bodies were focused on importing large-scale production at any level, rather than heavily investing in bold new talent. In that sense, the structure of the Saskatchewan film industry, rest in peace, was unfortunately maligned with Saskatchewan itself.

PART 2 - CREATIVE CORE Film, both as an art form and as a business, is critical to the re-assertion of local cultures. This is no more clear than in Quebec, where language and identity are constantly reflected by the film and television industry.

Careful, dedicated funding by CALQ (the provincial Arts Board equivalent) and SODEC (roughly translated to the “development of cultural enterprises,” its name is remarkably similar to the Sask Party’s new program) allows both independent productions and studio features to thrive. Independent success creates opportunities higher up in the industry, and studio productions benefit from the energy and ideas cultivated at the independent level.

Without the SODEC Jeunes créateurs program, a funding program specifically for young directors between the ages of 18-35, filmmakers like Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.),

Denis Villeneuve (Incendies), Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar), and Kim Nguyen (Rebelle) would not have gotten their start and would not have become the high-grossing, Oscar-nominated superstars of the Quebec film industry that they are now. In turn, Quebec would never have had these films to reinforce and empower their local culture.

The economics may not be as lucrative as Hollywood, but the results are astounding: for three years in a row, Canada’s submission to the Oscars has come from Quebec. This is no coincidence, but rather the product of a healthy, dynamic environment for both art and industry alike. But most importantly, beyond critical success the thriving film industry speaks back to the public. These are films with local talent, local crews, local language and local stories. Films are distributed in local festivals, theatres, and bought by local television stations. In this kind of vibrant environment, individual talent becomes not just a vessel for personal success, but for the vindication of entire populations.

In Saskatchewan, cinematic success, at least from an industry perspective, was largely an imported commodity.

Truly, what local directors and stories come to mind when you think of Saskatchewan cinema? Brent Butt, Corner Gas? Renegade Press? Can we even name one film outside of the controversial Prairie Giant? These are good creative works, and many great productions have been made at the independent level as well. There is no dearth of talent in this province. But, why are these notable works so rare? Barring the rare mix of charisma and impeccable, centennial timing that Brent Butt had, where are our local stars? We are a province of one million; over twenty years, shouldn’t we have had least one other Brent Butt on the scene? Why did our industry so rarely connect to our populace? Simply put, this is because our film industry catered to the outside. Funding did not nurture local talent, therefore talented locals could rarely bring their stories to the province in any substantial way. Provincial funding bodies for film were developed with the mandate to support local culture, but in practice this emphasis was woefully inadequate. An extraordinarily low amount of independent films – the primary creative outlet for budding talent and festival prospects and also where the most intimately local stories are produced – were funded by the province, outside of non-dedicated funding by the likes of the venerable Arts Board.

Film production university graduates are exceptional assets to the industry and to all that surrounds it (volunteers at festivals, well-rounded and educated workers, etc.), but they previously had to jump straight into the industry, with little impetus to develop individual

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artistic abilities outside of the academic environment. You need that middle-ground – or should I say battleground – where a bit of funding and a lot of new ideas collide to propel the next generation of talent. In Saskatchewan, we tried to create a government funded vacation-spot for Hollywood, where “being independent” meant having few prospects for serious investment in your work. Given the industry’s current status, it’s clear that the top-heavy model developed over the last two decades was ill-fated.

But that’s all gone, and now we have the chance to start something completely different: amidst this destruction, is it possible to leap forward and make something beautiful?

PART 3 - CREATIVE PROGRESS The new Creative Industries Transition Fund announced by the government offers support of up to $60,000 for local productions. This is virtually meaningless for established producers—you can’t run a circus on peanuts. But for the independents this fund is a godsend.

This is a grant, not a complicated, long-term equity investment or multi-year tax credit return. Successful recipients of the fund have cash in the bank --- $60,000 is virtually nothing for a union feature film, but could fund a micro-budget feature or several short films. Used in conjunction with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm, etc., suddenly the independent filmmaker has the means to bring their stories to life. Will their salary be fantastic? No, but it’s a building block to future opportunity. In the interim, this fund can launch careers and bring local stories to life, which in turn will facilitate future funding and production in the province. We’d be starting from the bottom up, but with a much more sustainable future in mind.

Furthermore, this major change of structure occurs in tandem with a permanent paradigm shift in cinema as a whole. Digital cinema has all but replaced film, and disruptive distribution methods have followed suit. In the new digital cinema – with its REDs, its Alexas, and its 2Ks, 4Ks, and 5Ks – production has been democratized.

Suddenly, it’s not necessary to strike a deal with Kodak, pay expensive lab fees, and pay for a distributor to send your reels around the world. All that can now be done with one camera, an internet connection and a computer (although admittedly a rather nice one). Local collectives have already started to invest in their own equipment, carving themselves new opportunities away from the hegemony of large production companies. Nearly everyone across the planet has been affected by the explosion of digital images and its ease of sharing, bringing DSLR documentaries to

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Vimeo devotees and slow-motion experiences to YouTube cinephiles. With this democratization, why in the world would we be begging to hold on to an old industry model?

Media has changed. Why shouldn’t our funding platforms follow suit?

Of course, it can be said, that these changes could have happened within the previous structures. The province could have funded more independents, while still retaining the tax credit. This absolutely could and should have happened, but it did not. And now, that industry is gone.

We’re paying the price of having only fed our local creatives the scraps left over from hotel productions. The tax credit, I believe, will inevitably return. Subsidies exist in every industry, and the shocking, sudden dearth of government incentive offered by the province of Saskatchewan is an anomaly. But let’s not make the same mistakes again. We ought to work even harder to foster our independent and local voices before we push for large-scale incentives once again. Instead of lamenting the death of the industry, we should be looking at how to make our filmmaking culture and community even stronger.

Instead of fighting to reverse the government’s decision, we should push them to go even further. We should be fighting for new solutions, not status quo expectations. We should fight for things like quotas on local production in theatres and on television. A theatre wants that new liquor license the government has recently allowed? Sure, but only if they screen a Saskatchewanmade short film before their feature presentation. For the theatre it’s a no-brainer – five minutes of screen time in exchange for selling beers to its entertainment-seeking patrons – and for the filmmaker, it can jetstart their career.

Netflix is enormously popular in Canada. If Sasktel, for example, wants to retain its image as a model for provincial innovation, why don’t they develop a streaming service for Saskatchewan produced content? A “Saskflix,” if they will. Combined, the Filmpool, SCN, the CBC, and the NFB would be able to provide an impressive archive of locally produced content to get things going and development for local production would in turn increase incrementally with this new accessible venue. For that matter, what about bringing back SCN as a digitally-focused platform? If the government wants to innovate, then why not motion to become one of the first English-Canadian film centers to represent its local population on-screen? There’s massive opportunity to restructure the way we relate to media in this province, and these sorts of proposals are what we should be developing and passing on to the government, not shouting for recalls of long-decided policy change.

Quebec isn’t perfect by any means, but it sees – and

the chance to not just see ourselves on-screen, but to truly believe in ourselves on-screen believes – in itself on-screen. Saskatchewan, on the other hand, does not. Yes, English-Canada faces a very difficult challenge in sharing the language of the American film monopoly. But imitating Hollywood, the success of which is impossible to ignore, is a complete pipe-dream in the Saskatchewan (or even Canadian) context: we don’t have the money to compete with the studios in Los Angeles, we are geographically isolated, and more importantly we would do absolutely nothing to set ourselves apart culturally. In order to distinguish ourselves in an endless, shallow sea of English production, we must first distinguish the local talent who are in tune with the unique cultural disposition of us who call Saskatchewan our home. A thriving industry in Saskatchewan would be a fantastic achievement, and tax credits, or similar incentives to offset the insurmountable head start by Hollywood hegemony, are necessary in the long run. But, it should return only when we believe in our own stories and talent. Until then, let’s talk about what we can do to make Saskatchewan film even more relevant and viable. Until then, let’s talk about how to

empower our dreams for the future. It’s not just taking our own culture, communities, and visions seriously, but believing in them for others to see.

In this province of firsts, we have the ingenuity, solidarity and co-operative spirit to build a truly remarkable avenue of cinematic expression. Exploring alternative distribution methods and stimulating bold local production gives us the chance to not just see ourselves on-screen, but to truly believe in ourselves on-screen. In removing the tax credit, the government of Saskatchewan is putting the fate of prairie cinema in the hands of the people. Now, it’s up to us to shape our future as media professionals, as filmmakers, and as artists. Now, it’s up to us to tell our stories. For me, this fund means I could come back to Saskatchewan to shoot a film. The previous structure for financing never allowed that. Let’s not let the opportunity in this crisis go to waste. Together, we can build up a more truly sustainable and representative culture of film in our province. A new path has to start somewhere, and it has to come from the hearts of Saskatchewanians themselves.

Are we ready to take the first step?

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The Fifteen Best Madmen in Movie History Julien Bouthillier 15. Harry Powell (Night of the Hunter): Hate and Love hand tattoos, conversations with God, plot to marry a widow and kill her and her children to get his hands on a stash of money: your true psychopath at work.

14. John Doe (Se7en): Makes Westboro Baptist Church’s followers seem progressive.

13. The Joker (The Dark Knight): Duh. 12. Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs): Come on. You didn’t seriously think we’d make a list without him? Honourable mention: Skinharvesting Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine.

11. Norman Bates (Psycho): He might be troubled, but watch out for his mother. She’s the real lunatic.

10. Jack Torrance (The Shining): From the opening scene.

9. Mark Lewis (Peeping Tom): Mark Lewis is a young man dabbling in filmmaking with a knack for filming the murder of women (hello meta-fiction!). Released the same year as Psycho in 1960, these two films laid the foundation for the slasher genre as we know it.

6. Hans Beckert (M): Peter Lorre plays this sinister yet strangely endearing serial killer in the classic from Fritz Lang.

5. Asami Yamazaki (Audition): Granted, the chauvinist male protagonist did reap what he sowed, but Asami is a truly terrifying psychopath, even scarier than Alex (Glenn Close), her American counterpart in Fatal Attraction.

4. Kakihara (Ichi the Killer): Another Takashi Miike film! This time we follow a deranged yakuza with masochistic tendencies.

What he won’t do to his enemy, he’ll do to himself.

3. Patrick Bateman (American Psycho): Played by a pre-Batman Christian Bale (insert your witty Batman/Bateman joke here), Patrick Bateman is a pretentious, greedy, superficial, racist, misogynist, murderous, deranged, and egotistical banker. So, pretty much your typical yuppie.

2. Annie Wilkes (Misery): She puts the misery in Misery alright. And she proves that it is definitely possible to be too much of a fan.

8. Michael Myers (Halloween series): No, we’re not talking about that guy from Austin Powers.

1. Col. Kurtz (Apocalypse Now): Even tough he only appears for a few minutes in the final act, Marlon Brando’s hypnotic performance continues to enthral over 30 years later.

7. Frank Booth (Blue Velvet): A gas-inhaling crime lord with a passion for blue velvet and Roy Orbison. Of course it’s a movie from David Lynch. Honourable mention: Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) in Wild at Heart.

Honourable mention: The Collector (The Collector, The Collection): Home invasion hasn’t been this scary since Rugrats did it.

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NAOMI SILVER-VÉZINA This drawing was done with charcoal on a 8 1/2” 11” page of paper. The inspiration was Harry Powell, protagonist of Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton (unfortunately his only film). As a corrupt preacher, Powell is driven by his undying greed. The most iconic imagery of this rural noir is the tattoos on Powell’s knuckles, one hand symbolizing love, and the other, hate. His chilling monologue explaining his ink is a true demonstration of blinding convictions. In this drawing, only the hands are present, for they are the most quintessential indicator of his madness.

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fin.

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40 All images credits are availble upon inquiry.