LIFT Monthly Viewing: Documentary and Authenticity

The LIFT monthly viewing is a new social event intended to get LIFT members talking about diverse approaches to filmmaking. During the workshop season, the last Sunday of each month will be devoted to screening and discussing a selection of work from the library of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) and elsewhere. This is an excellent opportunity for filmmakers to get together, discuss the approaches other filmmakers have taken, and develop their own ideas. For the Winter-Spring 2009 season, we will focus on a diverse selection of classic Canadian documentary work.
 
Documentary and Authenticity’s Featured Films

Total running time: 36 min.

?O, Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film) by Philip Hoffman

23 mins., 1986

Philip Hoffman’s ?O, Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film) uses a diary
format to skirt along the edge of someone else’s filmed narrative (Peter
Greenaway’s ‘A Zed & Two Noughts’), and to trace the anatomy of
pure image-making. ‘Pure’ is both the right and the wrong word: Hoffman
is a man addicted to the hermetic thisness of filmed images, and plagued
by the suspicion that these images, far from being pure, are really
scabs torn away from the sores of the world. Found footage shot by his
grandfather (a newsreel cameraman) is the starting point for Hoffman’s
meditations on the illusion of visual purity, and on the distance
between the ‘neutral’ image and the value-laden narrative that it can be
made to serve. It is a moral distance, one that this filmmaker surveys
with a wary fascination.”

– Robert Everett-Green

 Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion by Philip Hoffman

6 min., 1984

The bus stopped on the Mexican highway, placing us in full view of a
young boy, motionless, on the hot pavement. In this film, the incident
is revealed through a poetic text, derived from my written journals. The
poetry mixes primarily with Mexican streetscapes which compliment the
text in a tonal sense. Most images are 28 seconds long, the “breath” of
the 16mm Bolex camera. A lone saxophone (Mike Callich) weaves its way
through the narrative, blending to make stronger the tones and
accentuations of the images.

Eulogy / Obverse by Ryan Feldman

7 mins., 1999

A filmmaker confronts his own sense of responsibility based on images he has created.

Sunday 29 March 2009 –

Non-members: $5.00
Members: $5.00

Location:
LIFT Classroom 
1137 Dupont Street 
Toronto ON Canada