exo7 launched a website for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Thanks to Yoko Ono’s participation, the museum’s new exhibition offers visitors a rare chance to see up to 140 artworks that convey the couple’s message of universal peace. Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko. Free admission. April 2nd through June 21st.
Because peace is always a good reason to stay in bed…
Pas mal du tout. Pour sa première sortie en festival, Naissance d’un héros, d’Emmanuel Bellegarde, obtient deux mentions spéciales du jury au Festival ffAT de Munich.
Ce n’est donc pas juste nous qui le dit. Une fois de plus, Patrick Boivin fait parler de lui. Il est le réalisateur à surveiller. Voici ses plus récentes entrevues:
Il faut aussi voir sa dernière vidéo stop motion Youtube : Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee. TORDANT!
Who gets what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now? That is, according to Mamet, the essence of all drama. It’s not about nice things happening to nice people. It’s all about “get there,” in other words, what happens next? Forget what they teach you in school. There’s no such thing as character development. “All character is, is perpetual action,” says Mamet paraphrasing Aristotle.
Though it came out a year ago Mamet’s Bambi vs. Godzilla has the makings of a handbook for the eternal student of writing and film. It is a pamphlet urging the cause of the artist in Hollywood. It is subversive, irreverent and brutally honest. He dissects the system, everything from producers to the script to esthetic distance. He takes shots at everyone and everything in his own caustic way. Even the big Hollywood mechanism that he likens to the American Defense Department, which has an uncanny resemblance to big bad films: “…we are reassured by their presence rather than their content and operations.”
Mamet doesn’t end there. He asks what’s the use of big bad, vacuous block busters anyway? Is there a message? Oh yes. “Enough money spent can cure anything. You are a member of a country, a part of a system capable of wasting two hundred million dollars on an hour and a half of garbage. You must be somebody.”
But how does a serious director or writer survive in such an environment? By acknowledging the vital difference between trivial stimulation and true emotion. You can stay in front of your TV for five hours, but after you’ve seen King Lear, it’s time to go home.
God bless David Mamet.
Last Saturday, Killer Films head Christine Vachon gave a producer lesson during Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois’ much sought lesson series. The veteran NY-based indie producer talked about her experiences and where she was at in her career. But didn’t mince words to provoke the crowd into thinking about the future of independent film.
When asked how she got to finance most of her films, her formula is the same: equity source, foreign sales and North American distribution. With another one of her trademark comments, she wondered whether Canada produced better films with its state-funded industry.
With the economy as it is and increasing access to new technologies, she encouraged young, emerging filmmakers to continue to consider independent film as a genuine alternative. Because the very idea of indie film still holds. It must hinge on original ideas and original methods of production. She reaffirmed the mainstay of indie film: singularity of vision. The idea is to find the perfect vehicle for the new paradigm.
While her yearly travels take her to the world’s most obvious film festivals and markets, she did say that South by Southwest is clearly on the rise.
