Tag: TIFF

One Great Runaway

On January 5, 2010

I’m in the midst of putting together a piece about the National Film Board‘s animated selections at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which opens January 21st in Park City, Utah. I always associate the wintery film festival with intellectual independent features but it’s warming to see a loopy animated short like Runaway be featured there as well. The Cordell Barker work is one of the three animated shorts being shown at this year’s festival, the other two being Vive La Rose
and Rains.

Runaway had its world premiere last May at the Cannes Film Festival, and was also shown at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September. Watching it, I was taken back to my youth, when I saw Barker’s first animated short, The Cat Came Back. With its zany animation and insanely catchy theme song, the short remains a personal favourite of mine. What’s so neat about Barker’s works is that he blends social commentary in with the crazy narratives and colourful characters. So Runaway is about much more than a train; it’s a not-so-subtle metaphor on class distinctions, consumerism, environmentalism, economics and social responsibility. It’s also fabulously entertaining, with a lively score by Ben Charest (the man behind the Oscar-nominated The Triplets of Belleville) and Barker’s kooky, charming animation.

One of my mantras for 2010 is “less head, more heart.” To borrow a line from Rumi, I’m attempting to stop the forward-pressure of the mind, at least sometimes, and blend it with Duchamp‘s idea that “the desire to understand everything fills me with horror” -so why try? It feels like such a ciphoning of energy to try to rationalize and square out the details of every little thing, all the time; it feels like an egotistical attempt at control that isn’t there in the first place. Head just can’t replace heart, and at its essence, this is what good animation (and all visual art, in fact) provides me: a portal into a world where logic doesn’t always rule, control is illusory, and possibility is endless. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be challenging or difficult, or contain social commentary and exploration, but I think it’s possible to marry the yin and yang together, through skill, and of course, passion. The best animation, for me, goes straight for child-like wonder, universal feeling, and a sparkling joy that is sometimes intertwined with social commentary. The NFB brings all of that wonder, feeling, and joy to Utah this year, in zany colours and deft pencil strokes. Looking at their works, it makes sense the word “art” is contained in “heart.” As it should be.

Don’t Sign This

By Catherine Kustanczy

On September 15, 2009

In inspiration

The Beatles Rock Band opening Cinematic E3
by pamelapatty

I came across this incredible piece of animation courtesy of my illustrator friend Kit on Facebook, who kindly provided a link. It’s taken from The Beatles ‘ Rock Band game. Yes, it seems the Fab Four are everywhere these days, what with videos and box sets, and, from what I can glean across social media networks, a whole new demographic coming to know and adore their enormous -and enormously influential -body of work. Watching this animation, with its combination of running, flying, playing and well… playing, I was struck by the sprightly, fun spirit of the piece, and how it perfectly encapsulates the madness that was Beatlemania.

Equally, I can’t help but look at the footage with confusion and a discomfort. I’m immediately reminded of the masses lined up outside some of Toronto’s swankiest hotels for the past few days. People are breathlessly waiting for some kind of glimpse of a celebrity -a wave will suffice, never mind the pandemonium around a handshake or an autograph. There’s a surreal kind of madness around fame that I do not pretend to understand. Perhaps my own time around the famous and celebrated has jaded me, although, in all frankness, I’ve seen people of all stripes and levels of notoriety at their very best, and at their very worst. When it comes to artists, the guy playing the back room of a dirty beer joint is sometimes more awe-inspiring than the stadium-fillers (and the latter will cop to this, too); the violinist on the subway platform can produce a more transcendent experience than a symphony, a spontaneous piece of graffiti inspire something deeper and more stirring than any framed canvas. I guess it depends on one’s mood, and perhaps more tellingly, perspective.

But at the heart of it, people are people, whether they walk around barefoot or they’re escorted everywhere in Cadillac Escalades. Artists -not ones playing at art or fussing around its edges -are seeking some kind of connection, to a wider world and experience than is easily granted. Does fame water down artistic output? That’s a tough one -one I’m still at odds to work out. Does the public actually want to be challenged? I engaged in a debate around celebrity reporting earlier on my Twitter feed, with Doug Saunders and I both agreeing that, from a journalistic point of view, offering intelligent, insightful reportage is harder than ever (though if you’re looking, check out Lynn Crosbie, who is one of the best). The Beatles manifest in cartoon form is, on many levels, a keen commentary on the nature of popular perception around fame -we like our heroes two-dimensional, don’t we? Don’t make a mistake, don’t get too weird, don’t be political, and talk in a language we all get. (The whole “Dammit, be normal and stop the weird crap, you’re one of us! / Dammit, you’re so awesome and stratospherically awesome, you’re not like us!” dichotomy is a whole other argument, and perhaps, future blog post.) The fact you can now play along with The Beatles, and thus claim your own little slice of Beatles-dom, makes it even more interesting, twisted, and surreal: “You too can be Paul, John, George or Ringo… just press a button!” Forget practise and craft. Pffft.

For me, artists -the ones I really admire, am challenged by, and who open up ways of perceiving existence and point at (indeed, celebrate) the world in all its maddening, chaotic horror/splendor -they aren’t two-dimensional (even if some choose to take that by-now-tiresome ironic pose, or play that damn role into the ground -especially annoying if you know they’re actually interesting). In the same vein, I don’t buy the airbrushed version of celebrity. I don’t want to. Messy, human, faulty, wrinkly, fat, grey and ridiculous: kind of like the rest of us, only with flashbulbs, sharpies, Whole Foods and questionable taste.

I’ll be on the Park Hyatt‘s roof shortly -not because I want to meet any celebrities, but because it’s simply one of my favourite spot in Toronto, and I want to enjoy the September sunshine while it lasts. If anyone wants a chat, famous or not … you know where to find me. Leave the cartoon-you on the street below.

Action

By Catherine Kustanczy

On September 11, 2009

In opera

I always feel like the calamitous meets the surreal this time of year. Maybe it’s seasonal, what with the changing over from summer to autumn. Transformation and transfiguration are afoot. There’s a strange energy of walking through the threshold of something vaguely important, especially for me this time of year. Early September comes and goes and I always feel like something has totally shifted.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 irrevocably underlined, on a personal level, this profound sense of shifting from one mode into another. And yet, along with sadness and fear, there’s also a mountain of excitement that comes with this change. The annual Toronto International Film Festival is on and the city goes mad for movies. Sure there are the “stars” but people are also interested, I believe, in seeing something new, unique, and unusual. It was this promise -this encapsulation of strange, surreal, and transformative -that propelled me to start attending the film festival so many moons ago. Now, as a journalist covering the fest (my second year), I’m finding myself wistful for the old days, if also equally inspired by the way the event brings the city together and makes people excited about Toronto. Sure, there are foreigners everywhere, and it’s usually the celebs getting the flashbulbs, but people are still out and about, curious to be a part of a larger event, and taking a chance they might see something special at the multiplex.

I’m only covering a handful of things, but they’re goodies. I’ve already done a story on two of the Bravo!FACT shorts, a piece on the National Film Board of Canada’s animated works, and a feature interview with director Guy Maddin. While they’re smaller works, I kind of feel it’s the spirit of these quiet, poetic works that still nicely encapsulates the original feeling of the TIFF -back when it was called the Festival of Festivals. I still have programs from that time on bookshelves in my basement, and every time I see their aging spines, flecked with creases and scratches, I harken back to all those times I lined up in the rain, or the wind, or the heat, just to catch that exact “something special.” The Toronto International Film Festival was a big reason why I went on to film school long ago. I loved the movies. Lately I’ve been re-examining that time in detail, examining my motivations, my choices, and the eventual outcomes that lead me here, now. It makes for heavy thought (if equally boring reading, ha) but it also gives me a unique perspective on the fest, and my own personal memories.

Without going into a laundry-list of moments and meetings, I’ll just share a few special TIFF-going experiences. The first was meeting Nigel Hawthorne, who is perhaps best-known to North American audiences as poor mad King George in The Madness of King George. (He was here at the time for Twelfth Night.) He was warm, funny, and very sincere. Once he gleaned that he had a true theatre afficionado stood before him, he really opened up, whence a stream of lovely conversation between us poured forth. In a similar vein, I remember seeing the premiere screening of Al Pacino‘s Looking For Richard. I know a lot of critics -theatre and film -balked, but I loved the energy of his work, and I still really adore his huge, vocal passion for Shakespeare and theatre in general. During the screening, Pacino was seated a mere two rows behind me and I recall turning around to observe him watching, to see if there was any kind of rise -or if he was even still sitting there. Indeed he was, furiously gnawing on his nails, eyes like saucers, a knee against his chest. I’ve never seen anyone look so nervous. I actually felt sorry for him. Then there was a Dutch film called De vliegende Hollander; it took the mythic roots of the flying Dutchman and combined it with elements of history, fantasy, and other European folklore (mainly central and Eastern), fashioning a surreal, deeply poetic, and utterly moving piece of cinema. To my knowledge, it never got a North American release, and yet it was easily one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen at the TIFF (yes, ever). I remember returning to film school the week after, re-energized and re-inspired for the year ahead.

And though I’m not working in film now but covering its artists instead, it’s moments such as these that make me glad to have been part of this event, and at such an important, seminal time of year. Today is grave for so many people (and let’s not forget Chile, please) but in Toronto at least, there is a symbol that embraces these contradictions of life experience, balancing them with the magic of light and dark, to show us something beautiful, important, and perhaps most importantly, connecting. We may sit in cinemas, not talking, staring at a dance of shadows and projected light -but we’re all together, in the magic of the dark, creating our own shared world. That has to count.