Jodorowsky's Dune

image from here

I love documentary films, they are my go-to cinematic selections that feed that side of me that needs to know.  I'm a compulsive google-er and I've always loved watching DVD/Blu-ray extras after the movie.  Now present me with a documentary about the making of a movie?  About Alejandro Jodorowsky's efforts to bring Frank Herbert's Dune to life? Give it to me.

I used to photograph in-between frames of films back in the CRT television days.  This was one image I saved from El Topo (1970), my first introduction to Jodorowsky.  This film is a surrealist and absurdist hero's journey in the form of a western, starring Jodorowsky himself as the main figure. This film falls in the same school of thought featuring visually rich and symbolically heavy tableaux as Parajanov or Fellini have created in their earlier films.  

In Jodorowsky's Dune (2013), the viewer is introduced to an ambitious feat in science-fiction filmmaking, one that never comes to fruition.  The film re-lives Jodorowsky's journey in assembling his army of "spiritual warriors" with names like H.R Giger, Dan O'Bannon, Orson Welles and Salvador Dali (!?!?!?) being attached to the project. This totally boggled my mind. 

Jodorowsky and Pavich, image from here

There are loads of incredible nuggets in this Frank Pavich directed doc, but so much of the life of the film comes from the central character, Jodorowsky himself, bursting with energy and colourful quotes.

On filmmaking:

"What is the goal of life? It's to create yourself a soul. For me, movies are an art...more than an industry.  And it's the search of the human soul...as painting, as literature, as poetry.  Movies are that for me."

On his ambitions:

"My ambition with Dune was tremendous.  So what I wanted was to create a prophet. I want to create a prophet to change the young minds of all the world.  For me Dune will be the coming of a god.  Artistical, cinematographical god.  For me, it was not to make a picture.  It was something deeper.  I wanted to make something sacred, free, with a new perspective.  Open the mind!  [...] My ego, my intellect, I want to open!  And I start the fight to make Dune."

On assembling his army or team of collaborators:

"In that time I was like a prophet, I was enlightened.  And I give to them that they are not only making a picture.  They are making something important for humanity.  They have a mission, they were warriors."

Richard Stanley on Jodorowsky:

"Alejandro is a bit like a dictator or a cult leader in assembling his army around him.  Alejandro's genius was picking those people and finding absolutely the right people for designing the spaceship, the clothes or designing the whole look of the world.  I think he seized the potential of science-ficiton."

In the end, it was not meant to be.  Despite amount of prep that had gone into the project, financing did not go through citing the lack of confidence in the director's ability to helm such a big project. In 1984, a non-sensical studio romp of Dune was released, directed by David Lynch, who has since distanced himself from the project.

Jodorowsky on the studio system:

"This system make of us slaves.  Without dignity. Without depth.  With a devil in our pocket.  This incredible money in our pocket.  This money.  This shit.  This nothing. This paper who have nothing inside.  Movies have heart.  Have mind.  Have power.  Have ambition.  I wanted to do something like that.  Why not?"

On viewing Lynch's Dune:

"When I heard that David Lynch would direct, I have a pain because I admire David Lynch.  He can do it! [...] I suffer because it was my dream, another person will do that maybe better than me.  [...] I will not go to see [the picture] because I will die.  And my sons say, "No, we are warriors.  You need to come and see that." [...] I start to see the picture and step by step, step by step, step by step, I became happy because the picture was awful!  It's a failure!  Well, it's a human reaction no?  I say, "It is not possible.  Is not David Lynch because he is a big artist."  Is the producer that did that."

Although we might fantasize of the greatness that could have been, is it possible that Jodorowsky was spared from disaster and the weight of such a big production?  Maybe the film would have toiled in a cinematic hell as Lynch's did?  

In the end Jodorowsky fulfills his prophecy as the influence of the well-documented imagery and the assembled warriors have since permeated the cinematic landscape.  They are all whispering, "I am Dune."

Festival Nouveau Cinema 2014

The best film festival in town just got underway yesterday and I just took a look at the program.  Holy moly there's lots of good stuff here. A couple of projects I did the costume design for are going to partake in the fun, so check it out!

First up, Turn Off Before Living, directed by Annick Blanc, a dark and steamy film set in Havana, Cuba about a cast of characters living personal lies.

Step Well Pilgrim is a dance film that I had the pleasure of making "butt turbans" for four of the performers.  Director Duncan McDowall was inspired by principal performers Katia Lesvesque and Jonathan Fortin's performance from Cabaret Carmagnole and transformed it to a screen adaptation.

I was super stoked to assist the insane talent of costume designer Patricia McNeil for one day on the set of Félix et Meira.  Directed by Maxime Giroux, the film explores the unlikely crossing of paths of a young mother and wife in the Hassidic Jewish community and an eccentric francophone québecois. 

My one awesome day consisted of transforming about twenty bearded men, from young hip dudes to elderly santa claus-like gentlemen into Hassidic Jews.  With the treasures of eBay Israel and a bunch of resourcefulness, McNeil orchestrated epic movie magic.

shoot studio X ans

Shoot Studio recently held their annual photography exhibit and showcased their roster of talent with a big bash to celebrate their ten years of image making.  Experimental filmmaker Karl Lemieux (above) was invited to stage a multi-projector performance/cacophony with the use of 16mm film.  The audio component was not dissimilar to distorted drone metal like sounds which emanated from the film being manipulated through the projectors' magnetic heads with an equally grindcore-ish vocal accompaniment on the microphone.

With visions of Cremaster 2/bees/death metal drum solos, I grabbed a glass of wine and headed downstairs to the gallery to check out the photography.
A couple of faves:

Geneviève Demers, positive and negative images of the waters of Kalymnos, Greece.

soft and ethereal underwater photography by Sandrine Castellan

dark and moody with awesome use of colour by Pierre Manning

Southcliffe

image from den of geek

One evening, during an endless browse through Netflix I was really excited to find Warp Films/Channel 4's wonderful Southcliffe.  I watched the four-part mini-series last year at TIFF without any prior knowledge to the work other than the fact that it was directed by Sean Durkin.  That was pretty much all I needed to know.

Like his work on Martha Marcy May Marlene, the dialogue is pared down to the minimum, the narrative is not so much plot driven, but rather character studies of people in exceptional conditions. In Southcliffe a shooting takes place and the series explores the psychological toll that is taken on the small town.  Painful, beautiful and slow moving were words that resonated as I left the screening.  It is works like this that truly lets the actors flex their thespian muscles and deliver heart wrenching performances.  It didn't hurt either that the images are stunning, with an overall grey heaviness of the English town.

So needless to say I'm ready to watch it all again.
May I recommend that should you have the luxury of watching this in one or two sittings that you do so?
Enjoy this great interview with Sean Durkin from Den of Geek.

Mathieu Quesnel

The July issue of ELLE Québec's culture section features a portrait I styled with actor Mathieu Quesnel.  This charming man (of vague Chris Martin resemblance) has a Denys Arcand feature in the can and an Émile Gaudreault film hitting screens right about now.  Gaudreault's Le vrai du faux centers around a soldier dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, inspiring an army feel with the styling.  Photographed by Daniel Cianfarra, Quesnel wears a marbled print shirt by DUBUC, khaki trousers by Dolce & Gabbana, and a belt from Denim & Supply by Ralph Lauren.

weekend

It was a particularly summery Montreal weekend, lots of meandering, encounters and art.

a quick stop at a new wellness studio Espace Yama Naka for some kobucha to start my day

All in Eyewear event at Les Montures

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a stroll up the mountain...

...to check out Chromatic festival. Above Jason Botkin and Jeremy Shantz's giant Mr. Potatoheads on acid.

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installation by La Camaraderie
#vscocam
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works by Sébastien Lafleur
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dans le chalet du Mont-Royal
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a bike ride to the east end for an atelier/birthday party complete with smoked meat sandwiches and a mechanical bull. enough said.
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winding it down with the incredible Watermark by Edward Burtynsky and heartbreaking La Vie d'Adèle

FNC 42

The 42nd edition of the very wonderful Festival Nouveau Cinema has just come to a end.  Twelve days of cinematic good times flew by and I unfortunately only got a miniature sampling (only caught two features this year!)  But I squeezed in the last hurrah to attend the festival's closing party.
Above, projections light up the dancefloor
Middle, 1st AD Catherine wears an intricate leather necklace by LaLaYeah
Bottom, leaving the party for a rainy, late-night bike ride home

Inside the Lightbox

TIFF's three year old, five storey, super fancy home, the Bell Lightbox hosted many of the festival's films.  People watching of attendees racing to their next screening was in abundance.

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all together now
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all gone

Packing for TIFF

Heading to Toronto for the first time in about three years to see friends, friends of the family and of course TIFF!  Bought a couple of tickets for some shorts I worked on and the British mini-series Southcliffe directed by Sean Durkin of the Martha Marcy May Marlene fame.  Our visit will be quick and dirty and jam packed.  Commence the bag stuffing of the travel/wardrobe essentials.

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Of course by essentials I mean three pairs of shoes and a pair of flip flops for four days.  This picture does not even include outerwear and sweaters, but with all the erratic weather we've been having this summer you just never know.

La Maison du Pêcheur

The September issue of Elle Québec's culture section features four actors (styled by yours truly, lensed by Julie Artacho) who star in the soon to be released La Maison du pêcheur, a film chronicling the encounter of the young revolutionaries in Percé that would culminate in the October Crisis of 1970.

For those not from La belle province, let me just say that politics and language are at the heart of this culture despite being made out to be all about a cool artist/music scene by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin etc, which I would argue stems indirectly from our politics.  While Québec politics is too dense of a subject to be covered in this post, whether one considers the FLQ terrorists or freedom fighters, what was imminent in this province was change for a distinct society in an anglicized/Canadian mold.  While I don't condone any acts of violence, what I keep in mind is: it is never that simple.  My brain first started processing these complicated ideas when it was twelve years old, upon meeting the grandson of Pierre Laporte in high school, where the history I had learned in class was staring at me in the face.

tiff.festival'13

Super stoked to learn that two projects that I did the costumes for will be playing at the juggernaut of a festival: the Toronto International Film Festival (tiff is alot easier no?)

First up, Daybreak or Éclat du jour directed by Ian Lagarde about a group of kids on bikes, rebellion and pack mentality.  Some behind the scenes images here.

Film number two is The Sparkling River directed by Felix&Paul.  This 3D short has undergone various incarnations and had received the Guillaume Corbeil touch in its final stages.  We shot this many many moons ago, and I have yet to see the end result!

Here I will take a moment to say that a dear friend, Daniel Allen Cox has co-written Gerontophilia with THE Bruce LaBruce, Canadian queer filmmaker/artist extraordinaire.  I don't know how many more excuses I need to go to tiff now.

Sergei Parajanov, FOFA Gallery

I did my undergrad in film production many moons ago.  In terms of cinema geekiness, I was and still am not the top dog.  My knowledge of Bergman was limited, I did not love Last Year at Marienbad (although am curious to see if my opinion has changed), and only saw my first Terrance Malick film when Tree of Life came out last year.  But I had and always will have the love of aesthetics, moving images and the use of so many elements and variables that come together in mammoth projects to convey ideas and visions.  Then there's that wonderful thing of discovering something new, and that was my modus operandi when I attended the first in a series of five screenings featuring the work of Sergei Parajanov.  Ummmm, who?!  Off I went to be enlightened.

Beginning last week and continuing over the course of the next four Saturdays, curator Marcin Wisniewski in collaboration with Concordia University's FOFA Gallery will be presenting screenings of Parajanov's work, a short lecture by a guest speaker and an accompanying short film that reflect themes and ideas that relate to the Soviet filmmaker.  Parajanov has been praised by and his work lives in the same realm as many of the great auteurs of cinema: Fellini, Godard, Antonioni and Tarkovsky. Andrei Tarkovsky was a strong artistic influence and close friend to Parajanov, but despite this he is seemingly overlooked in cinema history.

"...while Tarkovsky is to this day well known and much celebrated director [...] the link between Tarkovsky and Parajanov is also important; placing them in two simultaneous contexts not only that of art cinema or auteur cinema [...] but as representatives of cinema d'auteur in the Soviet Union and  the developement of the new politics and aesthetics of Soviet cinema at the time, however different they may be."
-Masha Salazkina, Soviet Cinema & the Poetic School, January 19, 2013

Upon watching the first film in this series "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" (1964), his first foray into poetic cinema, I felt a familiarity watching the surreal or absurdist tableaux go by.  They recalled to mind Fellini's Satyricon (1969) or Jorodwsky's El Topo (1970), films that contain very simple narratives surrounding a (life) journey or a mission and illustrated with dreamlike scenarios.

 A portrait of Parajanov, 1979, by Y. Mechitov, from here

Next Saturday's screening will feature Parajanov's most celebrated work Color of Pomengranates (1968); here are a couple of words from curator Marcin Wisniewski on the film:

"I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty coming at me from the screen. Here was art and cinema coming together in a beautifully poetic form to make ART CINEMA. It's like every shot was a painting and when they all came together they formed this overwhelmingly beautiful, cleverly crafted poem. I've always been a fan and a supporter of beauty -I know how grandiose it sounds-but i'm not talking about pretty things, I'm talking about beautiful things that challenge the viewer and their experience of the world."

Sigh...
More info on the screening here. Be prepared to have your senses ripped out and rearranged....

Valtari Mystery Film Experiment

Ok, let's get meta for the end of the year.
That was my tweet on the 9th of December for the Sigur Rós Valtari mystery film experiment screening.  During that weekend of December 7-9, more than a hundred screenings of the project were taking place on all seven continents.  The screening for Montreal was at the more than awesome Phi Centre, where guests viewed 16 shorts inspired by the tracks on the band's latest album Valtari.

And the result? Let's discuss!
The premise was to give the filmmakers creative freedom.  Neither the band nor the filmmakers knew the content of anyone else projects. Knowing this, it is interesting to observe overall themes and imagery that came out of the shorts.

The album Valtari consists of 8 tracks, some of which were used as the sole guide to the video or two or three songs were compiled to create a longer piece.  The most dominant track was "varúð", which was featured in five of the videos.  Overall feel/conjured imagery: atmospheric is a given, moody, end of the world as we know it/economic collapse aesthetic.
Examples:

film #15: varúð by björn flóki

 film #16: leaning towards solace by floria sigismondi

 film #14: valtari by christian larson

Another dominant theme was nature (surprise!)  The sweeping sounds of Sigur Rós dares you not to conjure images of (Icelandic?) landscapes full of dollies and pans of forests and celestial montages.
Examples:

film #8: dauðalogn by henry jun wah lee

film #11: dauðalogn by ruslan fedotow

film #10: ekki múkk by nick abrahams

The films varied in themes, styles and production values.  The music lends itself easily to dance/performance and is represented by 5-6 shorts in the series (depending on your personal interpretation.)

Two dance/performance pieces from top: film #7: varðeldur by melika bass and film #13: varðeldur by clare langan

But things start getting tricky when a narrative is applied; such as leaning towards solace by Floria Sigismondi.  Being a fan of her work since the nineties, I was surprised at the heavy handed voice-over and certain clichéd imagery.  The video featured Elle Fanning and John Hawkes; two actors whose faces and expressions I could stare at for hours, but with the already emotional Sigur Rós track, the extra maudlin touches lacked subtlety that could have taken the clip to the next level.

Floria was not alone in the heavy narrative catagory, but somehow film #9: seraph by Dash Shaw and John Cameron Mitchell fared a bit better.  Maybe because it was an animation.  You be the judge.

But enough with being critical- let's talk about coincidences!  As mentioned earlier, there was no conferring between the directors or the band.

The carving/drawing with glass and making eyes.

Seen in film #3 fjögur píanó by alma har'el and film #9, mentioned above.

Removing peeling paint from walls
seen from top: film #15: varúð by björn flóki and film #14: valtari by christian larson

 

People crying (even in the same aspect ratio!)
from top: film #4: rembihnútur by arni & kinski and film #3: fjögur píanó by alma har'el and yes that is Shia Leboeuf getting all performance art on us.

There is also blonde haired girls with gemstones glued to the corner of thier eyes, plenty of animals, New York City, and snowfall/rainfall. But please feel free to treasure hunt for those yourselves!

I'll take this moment to mention one of my personal faves, a short that features a body covered in what looks like gooey marshmallow, shot in negative?

 film #12: fjögur píanó by anafelle liu, dio lau and ken ngan

That's it for me! Wishing you lots of food, art, film and fashion awesomeness in the new year!
Amusez-vous!