Week of February 21, 2008, Issue #644
FILM
Prairie Tales tells our own stories
JONATHAN BUSCH / jonathan@vueweekly.com
The pink, locally made elephant at the centre of the room during Prairie Tales 9, Metro Cinema’s collection of bits and pieces by Alberta media artists, is the complicated situation of recognizing the creative individuals and their work in the global scheme of film and video audiences. Some people will likely walk out of these public screenings feeling really good about themselves, and rightfully so, having supported creative works conceived and created not far from their front door. But several others will probably feel sad, guilty, depressed and alienated, for equally justifiable reasons, conditioned by the tightly controlled likes of popular cinema and television.
There’s a false standard of quality regarding screen performances, production values, entertainment and the ability to properly quote previously established stylistic techniques—it’s a concentrated task not to unconsciously apply, even for brief moments, these standards to local works (that, merely by being produced independently, can subvert socialized habits of viewing). In that sense, it’s hard to draw a line between the will to artistic freedom and how “good” something might be, and in the end, there exists a great risk of the opportunity to more fully engage with a piece.
It’s with great reluctance that I observe such a condition. Metro’s annual Prairie Tales is consistently reliable in sharing a courageous set of films and videos that deserve to be witnessed with a clear eye, as hard as it may be to achieve. The program provides a satisfying window into the uniquely Albertan filmic sensibility, a heavily debated blend of cityscapes, history, smooth topography, loneliness and oil. Like last year and the one before that, it’s a selection with a preference for films that locate a specific personality at the centre of fresh ideas and visions.
The program opens with “Hand Sum,” a shadow-animated fable that details, through eight minutes of silhouettes and sharp colour, the escape from the rat race of city life to a fantastical realm of nature and meditation. Edmonton filmmaker Eva Colmers brings a background in both video and theatre to conduct a soothing, cartoon-like series of moments, its notable strength being a great awareness of visibility and rhythm. In “Cea,” Domique Keller documents a beige-clad interpretive dance troupe’s performance staged in a wheat field. The camerawork is well-accomplished and exquisite, framing the dancers against a blue sky from marvelous angles. It evokes a passion for movement and the decadent gaze, both of which are fully realized in under five minutes (in fact, one might say it runs a little short).
The animated works include Kim Anderson’s “2,” Kevin Kurytnik and Carol Beecher’s “Intergalactic Who’s Who: Pork’N’Beings,” and Garrett Baumgartner’s “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Each involves varying states of absurdity, demonstrating the admirable lengths to which Alberta can take the art of cartoons. In some form, they also find their own methods of begging the significance of classical animation, using but also parodying different “institutional” styles made popular by the National Film Board.
A fascinating creative origin makes a piece like “Tricoter” memorable— filmmaker Lynn Eldershaw comes to Prairie Tales as a fellow at the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology at the University of Alberta. Her film, a documentary short about the politics of knitting and its participants, is as much a creative work as an innovative method of ethnography.
I couldn’t get myself more enthusiastic than I already am about Trevor Anderson’s “Rock Pockets.” After screening at both the EIFF and Exposure Festival, it gets another well-deserved whirl at Prairie Tales. It tells the story of the childhood alienation over the experience of gawking at the cool older kids at a Calgary fair, and desperately envying a particular style of expressing companionship. Anderson’s dynamic piece witnesses his own queer hipster intellectual imagination at the centre of Alberta’s brand of capitalism. It’s really beautiful, and I’m envious of the accomplishment. V
Sat, Feb 23 (7 pm)
Prairie Tales 9
Featuring Hand Sum, Rock Pockets,
Missing Person, The Song, others
Metro Cinema, $10
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www.metrocinema.org/film_view?FILM_ID=1551
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letters@vueweekly.com