Now in its second year, the Fokus Film Festival, presented by TV McGill, is set to storm the screens of Cinema du Parc with the best in student films culled from the McGill community. The inaugural 2007 edition of the festival saw over a hundred student filmmakers, fans and members of the local cinema community cramped into the confines of the Arts-West screening room to take in the art of McGill under-represented community budding filmmakers.
"It was sweaty and hot and people were having a great time," says Kira Leinonen of TV McGill. Fortunately, last year's festival proved so successful that the 2008 edition has been moved to Cinema du Parc, a venue likely to prove more accommodating. Harbouring hopes of packing the theatre, Leinonen encourages students to come out to support the films of their follow students.
"I really do feel strongly that this is a good event," she says. "For the purposes of promoting each other's art…it's encouraging people to try [filmmaking] and makes the whole process much less intimidating." With the university sadly lacking a film program, the Fokus Film Festival aims to stimulate the creation among students interested in the cinematic arts, offering valuable experience in conceiving a film from script through to post-production. With more than twenty entries in the categories of short, experimental, animation and non-fiction, as well as four groups competing in the 72-hour film competition (where a short film must be conceived, produced and submitted over the course of three days), this year's Fokus Film Festival is bound to satisfy student filmmaker and filmgoer alike, and further cement both the popularity and importance of this now annual event.
- John Semley
Making Music with NFB: CPC Gangbangs (Short)
Dir. Matt Goerzen
Backed by the National Film Board and Pop Montreal, Goerzen's entry possesses polished production values that far exceed the shoestring budgets of most student films. The short sees the members of one of Montreal's most volatile rock acts, CPC Gangbangs, as they expound upon themes of chaos theory, aggression, harmony and love against a background of broken mirrors, dangling mannequin limbs and waist-high ashtrays. It's all very post-punk and all very arthouse as the band parades around Droog-like, all dolled up in white slacks and bondage gear, drinking highballs of fake blood etc. Fans and dilettantes of the band will equally enjoy the keystone of Goerzen's film: a take of the group performing "Teenage Crimewave" with all the unchecked energy expected of them, despite the gaggle of hipster dandies hopping around, trying to sing along, fist pumping cans of Grolsch and generally trying to look cool for the camera. -John Semley
Three Shorts (Short)
Dir. Emmett Fraser
Fraser's entry consists of three shorter individualized clips all compiled under the general theme of spontaneity. Though a hand-held camera is used for most of the film, Fraser does incorporate some other techniques like animated words that add a certain flare to the stories displayed. From the mock-emo kid scene with an acoustic guitar soundtrack, to the image of an audience enthusiastically clapping to a metronome, the impulsive quality of the action is decidedly appealing. What actually makes this film original is the lack of artsy-fartsy content, which tends to overwhelm student films. Word and image play is cleverly and humorously superimposed within each story in a surprisingly logical manner. As opposed to the standard "crack your skull to figure out the deep meaning" flicks, bluntness is in fact what makes this short so comical.
-Renée Sutton
McGill Freestyle (Short)
Dir. Daniel Abrams
Drawing from freestyle winter sports and, presumably, freestyle rap, Abrams presents what would be well described as a freestyle film. Without a particular narrative or overt message, this late coming 2001 short offers the simple pleasures of athletics and rap. Editing and montage create a strong sense of rhythm which maintains interest throughout. This entry works essentially through the cinema's basic rules of attraction. Who doesn't want to see freestyle snowboarding and skiing tricks, never mind the inevitable wipeouts? This film shows the viewer how it's done on the slopes while holding a camera. And even moments of poorly executed aerial acrobatics and ball-busting tumbles show how it should
not be done.
-William Robinson
Connecting in Three Parts (Animation)
Dir. Benjamin Feldman
Moulding, sculpting, patience and poking have resulted in this cutesy plasticine experimental animation. Variations on the theme of the paradox between connectivity and alienation, Feldman's entry brings colourful blobs briefly to life for a fast paced exploration of their own limitations. Simple but characteristically crafted beings attempt to interact on the three different subjects of "music," "puzzle" and "conversation," until sentience quickly backfires on each of them in turn. A stark canvas background, the absence of soundtrack and only minimal sound effects ensure movement is the sole focus of this fiddly film, which injects child's play with the poignancies of mortality and failure.
-Clare Pidsley
Of Ice No Hits (Short)
Dir. Michael Rubin
With backwards walking, subtitles and a camera that flips willy-nilly on its own axis, Rubin's short is a student film through and through. Presented in grainy lo-fi, something like the video equivalent of an early Guided By Voices album, the film documents two girls waiting at a bus top. As passerby stop or simply pass by,
bodies are fragmented by panes of glass, resulting in a bordering uncanny effect which calls attention to the splintered sensation of transparent seeing afforded by the
cinematic apparatus. Brief, dark and captivating in its stylistic oddities, Rubin's film foregrounds the strange spells that movies, by their very illusory character, cast upon us.
-John Semley
Don't Be Sad (Short)
Dirs. Devan Welsh, Austin Milne, Michelle Mackinnon
With its grainy texture and lack of a linear narrative, Don't Be Sad presents an impressionistic take on the life and habits of urban youth. Though the characters alternate between home, street and café, they fill each location with their own inimitable social presence, casting the city in a warmish, personalized glow. Lacking almost any dialogue, the film relies heavily on an indie soundtrack of thick though indeterminate sentimentality, which goes well with the ever-present fixtures of cigarettes, leather jackets, thick, black-rimmed glasses and creative facial hair. In short, Don't Be Sad celebrates the melancholy hipster joys of urban life, smoking and moustaches.
-Ezra Glinter
Can in Box (Short)
Dir. Tim Reyes
Using Justin Timberlake and Adam Samberg's "Dick in a Box" SNL sketch as a jump off point, this film is less of a parody (of a parody) than a feel-good lesson about the joys of recycling. With characters waltzing around McGill and Montreal in impressively constructed beer can costumes singing about what you can do to save the earth, "Can in a Box" takes the humorous rather than fire and brimstone approach to environmental improvement. The self-deprecation of the actors (whose singing abilities leave something to be desired) is refreshing both for environmental messages and student films, and their instructions about where to drop your used cans come shining through.
-Ezra Glinter
DJPTV (Experimental)
Dir. Nicolas Epstein
Known under the self-applied mixmaster moniker of DJ Phonix, Nicolas Epstein presents an abridged version of a year of his life, documented, as he puts it, "with hopes of entertaining." Beginning in a summer home in Italy, where we see Phonix and his well-gelled entourage playing soccer, dancing to house music, acting rowdy and smoking a lot of weed, and jet-setting to L.A., Toronto and McGill's campus, Epstein's biographical travelogue aims to capture the seminally "formational" period of young adulthood. While at times the action seems all too mediated by the presence of the camera, Epstein nonetheless presents a fairly honest portrait of the times in all our lives where hanging with buds, laughing and, well, smoking a lot of weed, took top priority.
-John Semley
Legends at Home
Dir. Zachary Akselrad
Running less than five minutes with little dialogue and shot in black and white, Akselrade's entry will give artsy minimalists a great run for their money. The film stars a mysterious figure characterized only by a cigarette in his mouth and an appetite for infamously hard crossword puzzles as he looks over an old issue of the New York Times magazine featuring a young Bob Dylan on the cover. The entry is a quintessential pomo piece-a standard for
independent college films.
-Charlie Cheng
TV McGill presents the second annual Fokus Film Festival at Cinema du Parc (3575 Parc) on March 19 at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are $5, available at the TV McGill office (Shatner B-12) and at the theatre. Ticket price includes access to the after party at Pistol (3723 St-Laurent). For more film previews, check out yesterday's edition of The McGill Daily.
2008 Woodie Awards
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