European Union Film Festival 2012

Celebrating 8 years in Toronto this month, the European Union Film Festival remains under the radar for many Toronto cinephiles, which is a real pity. For one, it’s the only film festival I’m aware of where all screenings are FREE. But quite apart from that, it offers a huge selection of cinema from a wide range of cultures, and in a multicultural city like Toronto, that makes some of the screenings feel like impromptu gatherings for various outposts of the European diaspora. This year marks the first time that they’ve been able to show at least one film from every EU member country. There are 30 films from 27 countries in total.

This year’s festival takes place from November 14-27th and all screenings are at the Royal Cinema (608 College Street). You’ll need to arrive early since many of the films fill up completely.

The films are a mix of new and old, stuff that plays high profile festivals like TIFF and films that rarely play outside their country’s borders. In other words, it’s really an unmissable opportunity to peer into some rarely-glimpsed corners of the world through cinema. Here are a few I’m looking forward to seeing:

Byzantium

Byzantium (UK, Director: Neil Jordan) – screening Saturday November 17th at 8:30pm

This character study of two vampires (Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan) hiding out in a coastal resort just played TIFF and drew attention for its lush visuals and deliberate pacing. It will be introducted by veteran UK producer Nik Powell, who is also presenting Neil Jordan’s film The Crying Game (1992) on Friday November 16th at 3:00pm and conducting a number of workshops during the festival.

Vampyr

Vampyr (Denmark, Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer) – screening Saturday November 17th at 11:00pm

And a perfect follow up to Byzantium is this 1933 classic from Danish auteur Carl Theodor Dreyer. The Criterion Collection called it “one of cinema’s great nightmares.”

Silence

Silence (Ireland, Director: Pat Collins) – screening Wednesday November 21st at 6:00pm

Documentarian Pat Collins creates an interesting hybrid film here, equal parts meditation and odyssey, “tracing the psycho-geographical journey undertaken by an enigmatic soundman (writer and co-scenarist Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde) from his adopted city of Berlin to his native Donegal. His undertaking is to aurally document landscapes free from man-made noise – a journey that ultimately leads our protagonist inwards, as he finds himself drawn to his childhood home.”

Hot Hot Hot

Hot Hot Hot (Luxembourg, Director: Béryl Koltz) – screening Sunday November 25th at 6:00pm

A classic fish-out-of-water comedy from a charming country my wife and I just visited in September. “Ferdinand is a longtime employee of Fish Land, the aquatic centre within the globalized leisure complex “Worlds Apart”. He’s a small, bald forty year-old, and a solitary, anxious introvert entirely devoted to his passion for fish. Ferdinand’s obsessive little existence is turned upside down the day Fish Land is closed for six months of renovations.

He is transferred to another section of “Worlds Apart”, the Finnish-Turkish Delight spa. Ferdinand is suddenly thrown into a world of nudity, sensuality, relaxation and letting go. In short, everything he could possibly be afraid of.” I’m eager to see what the Luxembourgeois find funny.

P.S. Vancouver also has a European Union Film Festival running from November 23-December 6. They might have a nicer website, but they only have 26 countries represented, and they also charge for tickets. Ours is FREE! 🙂

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William Kurelek’s The Maze

William Kurelek's The Maze
Note: Because of the intricacy of the painting depicted in the poster, I’ve linked it to a much larger version, so please click to see more. And a bit of trivia: Van Halen used a detail of this painting for the cover of their 1981 album Fair Warning.

William Kurelek’s The Maze (Directors: David Grubin, Robert M. Young, Zack Young, Nick Young): My familiarity with the work of Canadian painter William Kurelek is largely due to a childhood friendship. My friend’s parents knew the artist and despite the fact that we lived in a modest apartment building, their home contained a number of what I think were original works. It was the 1970s and I knew him as a deeply religious Catholic artist. What I didn’t know was the struggle his life had been up to that time.

In 1969, American filmmaker Robert M. Young had been approached by James Maas of Cornell University to make a film about so-called “psychotic art.” When Young saw Kurelek’s painting “The Maze” in Professor Maas’ slide collection, he knew he wanted to make a film about the man who created it. “The Maze” was painted while Kurelek was a patient at a psychiatric hospital in England in the early 1950s. It wasn’t intended for public consumption, but rather to illustrate the contents of his mind to the doctors who were treating him. Admitted in a suicidal and depressed state, he was originally diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He spent several years on and off in two different hospitals in England, and received a staggering 14 sessions of shock treatment.

How he arrived in such a mental state is the focus of the film. Young interviewed Kurelek and his family members and produced a half-hour version that was widely shown, but he had been working on a longer version that had been lost until recently. Young’s sons Nick and Zack, musicians and visual effects artists, decided to complete their father’s work on the longer film, incorporating music and animated sequences.

The interviews from 1969 remain compelling for their honesty. Kurelek himself comes across as a man of extreme shyness and humility, and his description of his darker younger days as a “spiritual crisis” give an indication of how he regained his mental health. Growing up on the prairies as the son of Ukrainian farmers, William never fit into their ideal of physical strength and mental toughness. His artistic temperament was misunderstood both at home and at school, and he was bullied physically and emotionally. Despite his journeys to Toronto and Mexico to attend art school, he never seemed to connect with kindred spirits and as a result, he felt more and more disconnected from the real world. Painting was his gift and his only form of expressing his pain, but all his parents could see was that he couldn’t earn a living.

Ultimately, Kurelek was saved (quite literally) by his conversion to Catholicism in 1957. Through his faith, he was able to turn his focus outward and to temper his perfectionist tendencies. He painted a major series on the Passion of Christ, and he began to see his own sufferings as preparation for depicting those of Jesus. He came to forgive the harsh treatment he received from his parents, and went on to paint a happier series of paintings of his childhood on the prairies. With that came a measure of success and stability, and the family that he’d always wanted. Though we don’t hear how they met, his wife Jean is interviewed in the film and their children are seen. Because the filmmakers were limited to the original interviews, we don’t get a full picture of what brought Kurelek to the point of conversion or really any details of his life from 1957 up to 1969, when the interviews were conducted.

Sadly, William Kurelek died of cancer in 1977 at the young age of 50. His reputation grew after his death and though I don’t know where current tastes rate him, it’s safe to say that he is among the greatest of Canadian artists.

The longer film really dazzles, with more focus on the individual paintings, and the use of animation really evokes the powerful emotions that must have gone into their creation. William Kurelek’s The Maze has given me a much fuller picture of a fascinating man and an artist with a unique vision. Though some of the “psychological” paintings remind me of the work of Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Breughel, the range of Kurelek’s work as seen here set him apart as a true original.

The film has been accompanying a traveling exhibition of his work called William Kurelek: The Messenger during 2011 and 2012. It’s also being shown at the Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival, coming up from November 9-17 here in Toronto.

Official web site of the film


oehttp://vimeo.com/29900822
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Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012

Toronto’s favourite genre film festival kicks off its 7th great year tonight, back at its old home the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. Presenting 20 feature films and, just as exciting to me, 29 short films over its 9 day run, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival is definitely a high point of the year for fans of sci-fi, horror, action and “cult” movies. As always, I’ve got my eye on a few things.

  • Thursday October 18, 6:45pm Grabbers – an Irish horror-comedy about a village plagued by bloodsucking tentacled aliens. Turns out (of course!) that staying drunk provides some protection. Most Irish films have a lot of fun with stereotypes (The Guard and Zonad being two recent examples), so Grabbers should be good fun for this Irish lad.
  • Saturday October 20, 3:45pm Shorts After Dark – a showcase of 9 sci-fi, horror, action and “cult” short films from around the world, including Bobby Yeah, one I’ve been trying to see for a while.
  • Sunday October 21, 3:45pm Lloyd the Conqueror – a comedy about LARPers (Live-Action Role Players)? I enjoyed that element of Role Models quite a bit so this could be funny. Plus, it features Mike Smith, better known as Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys.
  • Tuesday October 23, 6:45pm My Amityville Horror – when I was growing up in the ’70s, the allegedly true book (and then film) The Amityville Horror scared the crap out of me. Then I heard its story of a real haunted house was all a hoax. This film seems to refute that. Intrigued, to say the least.
  • Thursday October 25, 9:45pm Wrong – I thought director Quentin Dupieux’s last feature Rubber (which I saw at After Dark!) was just about the craziest thing I’d seen that year. That’s enough to get me interested in this.
  • Friday October 26, 6:45pm A Fantastic Fear of Everything – Simon Pegg as a children’s book author turned crime novelist who begins freaking himself out. Yes.

The fun starts tonight, so what are you waiting for? See you AFTER DARK!

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2012 TIFF CAST Awards Announcement

Last January after compiling the second annual CAST Awards, my lovely wife Brooke gave me an idea. I’d been complaining that films that I see at TIFF sometimes fall between the cracks because I might vote for them in the year I saw them at the festival, while they may not actually get released theatrically until the following year. Simple, she said. Why not do a special edition of the awards just after TIFF? So that’s just what I’ve done.

Here are the CAST Top 10 based on the votes of 18 submitted ballots. Voters ranked up to 10 films on their ballot from top to bottom, with first choices receiving 10 points, second choices 9, etc. The Points column lists the total score for each film, Mentions indicates how many voters included it in their Top Ten, Average is the average point score, and Firsts shows how many voters chose it as their favourite TIFF film.

In the case of points ties, the film with the higher number of first-place votes is listed first, then by number of mentions. Because our sample size is quite small, these “rankings” don’t actually mean much, but I thought it would give a good idea of what this particular group of festivalgoers enjoyed this year. I’m curious to see how many of these show up in our regular year-end CAST ballot and how they do.

FILM TITLE
POINTS
MENTIONS
AVERAGE
FIRSTS
1. The Master 50 8 6.25 0
2. Sightseers 47 8 5.75 1
3. Amour 35 4 8.75 3
4. Berberian Sound Studio 34 5 6.8 1
5. Ghost Graduation 32 6 5.33 0
6. Cloud Atlas 32 5 6.4 0
7. Stories We Tell 30 3 10 3
8. Blancanieves 30 4 7.5 1
9. Leviathan 26 3 8.67 2
10. Frances Ha 26 5 5.2 0

Participants:

Here is a PDF with each person’s ballot and the full collated results, with a few more interesting stats included.

And for those still reading, here is my final TIFF CAST ballot:

My TIFF CAST Ballot

  1. Blancanieves (review)
  2. The Fifth Season
  3. The Color of the Chameleon (review)
  4. Berberian Sound Studio
  5. Room 237 (review)
  6. Something in the Air
  7. Tower (review)
  8. Eat Sleep Die (review)
  9. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (review)
  10. Painless
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Interview: Micheal Palmieri and Donal Mosher

Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher

At this year’s Hot Docs, the film that undoubtedly had the biggest effect on me was Off Label. This erstwhile “issue doc” turned out to be so affecting that I literally could not write about it for months. You can read my very recently posted review of the film and maybe get a sense of why it seemed to difficult for me. My first viewing was a few weeks before the festival, but after seeing it a second time during the festival, I knew I wanted to talk to the filmmakers. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to say, but I knew that any film that left me so unsettled was doing something right. I’d been a big fan of the pair’s first feature documentary, 2009’s October Country (review) but that film’s intimacy didn’t seem to fit with what I thought would be a standard takedown of the pharmaceutical industry. So we sat down for breakfast at the Sutton Place Hotel while I threw some half-formed questions and observations their way.

Continue reading

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