September is the coolest month. I still get the back to class clarity and creased new denim crispness of my school daze….focused energies which this morning I’m channeling into my first blog entry in months.
At last post we were on the cusp of the film festival known as Hot Docs, the subject of the lion’s share of my previous posts here. Let’s just say it was a whirl whence followed an extended documentary blackout . Nada, ixnay re audio-visual nonfiction for the past four months…nary even a feature news profile. But having watched several documentaries just this past week, my first taste in months, I profess myself recovered, or relapsed, depending. My summer detox: child rearing; book reading; ridiculous fitness attempting; cottage staying….. and as little screen watching as possible. And learning the names of clouds.
No need then to rehash the triumphs and traumas of fests yore (they’re so ephemeral, aren’t they, these events we spend months concocting)…and, anyway, by all accounts it was a smashing success, Hot Docs 2009. So, leaving it at that, here’s what’s on the work bench for September:
tiff-a-riffic
My former employer, the Toronto International Film Festival (so happy they’ve finally embraced the whole lowercase tiff thing as their official brand) has invited me to be on the Canadian Feature Jury. This entails watching something like 26 Canadian feature films in 7 days…or more Canadian fiction films than I’ve watched (as a confession) in the previous 5 years. The best thing about being on juries is that your screening schedule is done for you, and all meetings can be deferred with the tacit understanding that the important and time sucking tasks of jury duty trumps all other festival business. Drafting a festival schedule, as we all know, is a herculean task often requiring at least five software programmes running simultaneously, and a supreme knowledge of sync functions. I’m happy to be rid of the responsibility, while getting flush re my native country’s current cinema.
The Great One
Also, at tiff (so unassuming, their lower case branding) I’ll be hosting the Maverick session Peter Berg Presents Kings Ransom. Kings Ransom is a doc the actor/director Peter Berg made for the ESPN (also formerly a lower case brand) “30 for 30″ series. Its about The Trade. Of course, if you instantly acknowledged that The Trade, in a Canadian context, could only refer to Wayne Gretzky being sold (he wasn’t really “traded”) to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988 then you pass muster hockey wise. Two things you need to know about me: 1) I vividly recall where I was when I found out about The Trade and 2) right now, as I type these words, I can glance to my right at an almost distastefully large, signed and handsomely framed portrait of Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One” embossed on cheap gold trophy plating at the portraits footer. I’m overqualified for the panel, a first.
And then…
On the heels of tiff I’ll be attending IFP’s Independent Film Week, where I’ll do some screening, take some meetings and capably moderate the panel Film Festivals And Emerging Technology, for which I’m most underqualified, given I still haven’t figured out the Hot Docs database.
And on the heels of IFW I’ll be at Nordisk Panorama, a traveling Scandinavian event which this year is held, yippee, in Reykjavik. There I’ll be doing many of the same things as at IFW, but against a more imposing natural landscape, less optimism, and more hard liquor drinking. My duties there will include moderating several panels in the Outlook Programme.
Beyond September its all still very first draft, though there will be several stops in Europe and maybe one in South America. Also, I’m committed to thinking about and discussing the increasingly complicated strategies by which filmmakers are representing reality. I intend, on occasion, to use this blog as a kind of white board for this stream of inquiry. Most of the other times it’ll be fluffy updates like above.