LUCIDMEDIA

Bravo! Shows Off Its Shorts

Written by Catherine Kustanczy Thursday, 10 September 2009 13:27

The Toronto International Film Festival will see its share of accolades, applause, and attention given over to a variety of films screening across a myriad of the city’s screens in just ten short days. Along with feature-length works, forty short films are to be screened. Eleven of those were funded by Bravo!FACT (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent), a division of Canadian broadcaster CTV.

The Foundation, established in 1995, is the largest funding source for short films in Canada. Over 1,400 Canadian short films have been made possible owing to the more than $15 million provided by Bravo!FACT. You may have caught some of the works during the weekly half-hour program Bravo!FACT Presents, which is shown in prime-time on cable network, as well as A Channel. Since 1998, a total of 61 shorts funded by Bravo!FACT have been selected to screen at Toronto International Film Festival.

Included in the Bravo! bill at TIFF this year are a variety of works that run the gamut from personal experiences and history to poetic, non-linear meditations.

Danse Macabre, from filmmaker Pedro Pires, is a dark, haunting tale that explores the journey of a body after death. Based on a concept by acclaimed Quebecois theatre artist Robert LePage, and performed by AnnBruce Falconer (who also had the original idea), the work is full of textures, colours, shadows and shades, and is set to the music of Bellini as sung by operatic legend Maria Callas.

Tungijuq is another unique, dialogue-free work that explores the relationship between hunter and hunted as filtered through Inuit culture and mythology. With music by celebrated throat singer Tanya Tagaq (along with Jesse Zubot), directors Paul Raphaël and Félix Lajeunesse have crafted a visually arresting piece of work. The film is haunting for its evocative mix of sound and image; Tagaq’s throat singing comes through in sighs, shudders, whimpers, and whispers, marrying gorgeously with each close-up of an eye, each drop of blood staining the snow, and even (perhaps especially) each morsel of seal meat portrayed. The white-washed world of the North works as a beautiful canvas on which computer-generated images dance with photographed ones and bleed over, blending fantasy, reality, and mythology in one tidy, if equally bold package.

Along with poetic films, there’s plenty of comedy to enjoy in the Bravo! shorts too. Trevor Anderson’s The Island takes as its premise a piece of “fan mail” the director received, spinning it into a sarcastic, fantastical romp set against the frozen landscape of northern Alberta. Film and television director Peter Wellington turns a basic tale –a transaction over a futon –into a snappy, funny exchange between seller (Soulpepper regular Oliver Dennis) and purchaser. Simply filmed but funny and intriguing, Pointless definitely conjures the spirits of Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard in its embrace –and reflection –of contemporary absurdity.

Embracing many of these styles –poetic, funny, absurd –are two other short films with simple premises. In one, a man can’t retrieve his bicycle; the other portrays an old man reflecting on past events in his life. These are the works of Canadian filmmakers Mio Adilman and Ed Gass-Donnelly’s respectively.

Unlocked is a linked series of three short, five-minute pieces written and directed by Mio Adilman. The film features the simple central premise of a young Asian man and his attempts to deal with an unfortunate series of bicycle incidents that reveal deeper aspects of his life. The work touches on the lead character’s relationship with his mother, as well as his battle with alcoholism. It’s a lot of heavy subject matter to fit into such a short space of time, and Adilman admits it was a battle in the editing room to decide on which footage to use and which to discard.

“When we came to edit almost all of our transitionals got blown out,” he says. “We weren’t only dealing with shortening some of the subtext –we also had to deal with pacing issues. There were moments where, really I thought, ‘I wish this was longer…’”

The initial cut of Unlocked was, in fact, longer, and was made without a thought of it being entered into any film festival at all. Issues around family relationships and addictions could’ve been easily expanded, but were forced into the short, episodic nature of the work. “For me, as an artist, plumbing the family dynamics will always be there,” Adilman admits. “The other issue, which was really important –we feature an Asian character who doesn’t deal with his Asian-ness. Being an alcoholic is quite unique. That (theme) could’ve used a little bit more, to make it interesting, a bit more set-up or something.”

The scenes of the lead character (played by actor Bobby Del Rio) at a group meeting hints at a deeper issue, but is never fully brought out until later on. Equally, the fact the character is from a mixed-race background isn’t fully explored, but simply presented, with the mother figuring prominently, and a father who only occasionally looks in on his son’s heated exchanges with her. The obvious awkwardness while sharing a sushi dinner with a fellow group member (who is also Asian) hints at a deeper characterization that doesn’t require dialogue.

While Adilman second-guesses his own attempts at set ups, exposition is something director Ed Gass-Donnelly didn’t have the luxury of. The director makes the five-minute time marker (the average length of the Bravo! shorts) seem positively decadent with Sixty Seconds of Regret. It offers precisely what its title implies, with hints of poetic longing conveyed in a colourful, creative palette and imaginative sound work. The piece is a dialogue-free meditation that features an old man (Jock McLeod) sitting at a table, thinking about a moment from his past, which is then briefly portrayed. The effect is haunting, and hints at a richer subtext than its brevity might imply.

“There is one thing I’ve kind of embraced if you want to sculpt and manipulate audience,” he says. “It’s kind of like a painting: it is whatever someone sees in it, and I think I like the idea of treating every story like a mystery. You’re compelling the audience to put together pieces and think, to be inspired to talk about something. It’s a balancing act of knowing at what point you’re feeding off someone too much or it’s elusive and confusing. The mind is still processing it after it’s over.”

Audiences who see Sixty Seconds of Regret will most certainly be processing the work long after it’s finished; the fact that such a richness of character and situation can be expressed in such simple filmic terms is a testament not only to Gass-Donnelly’s talent as a visual storyteller but of his trust in his viewers.

The idea for the work had “been ticking around in my head for a long time,” he says. “I liked the idea of trying to do a one-minute film with no words and from that idea of sixty seconds of regret, that memory, it’s kind of pieced together. At one point, there were other projects I wanted to do more, (but) a year-and-a-half ago I just decided, ‘I’m not working on anything, I want to dig up this idea I’ve wanted to do for a long time.’”

He says filming his idea was partly a mix of matching what he’d previously envisioned with what the reality presented before him. The details, he notes, change once they’re in front of you as opposed to being a mere mental image. “Once I had actors and location, the basic set up was exactly as I planned it. Then details of subtlety [were included] –of what the place looks like, exact frames and shots, adapted on the day.”

Gass-Donnelly also made use of a unique technique that allowed his actors to truly inhabit their parts. To do this, the director used a technique he employed with success while making This Beautiful City. “We were trying to create improvise with Kat [Germain] and Aaron [Poole], the younger couple. I would have them improvising, and then tell them to stop. I would be rolling camera, which would catch the tension just after an argument. I felt something had just happened that the audience was not privy to –that was part of it. I knew roughly how to cover it but at the same time I was still trying to get something interesting and compelling and specific, as opposed to two people in car, and me saying, ‘Look sad.’”

Adilman says his film had its challenging directorial moments owing to the somewhat personal dimensions to Unlocked’s story. “Some of those things happened to me in my life,” he confesses.

Adilman and brother had previously had worked on CBC television series, and had also done experimental Super-8 films that had been shown at various film festivals, but the Toronto-based filmmaker had always wanted to helm a film of his own. Though he confesses to wanting to do a feature at some point, he says the experience of making short films is invaluable for burgeoning filmmakers.

“I’ve mainly written before,” he says, “and I was looking for a short. I didn’t want to do feature. A lot of directors do features without doing shorts. For me that’s insanity!”

Unlocked has all the hallmarks of being a great feature; indeed, the combination of snappy dialogue, urban satire and sensitive framing of actor Bobby Del Rio’s hurt, confused, angry face makes for a riveting viewing experience. There’s also the matter of the fact that bicycle theft being something many – particularly in an urban setting – can unfortunately relate to.

“Definitely,” he notes, “it’s an urban phenomenon. Every time I describe the phenomenon, pretty much everybody has, in downtown, had an experience with that.”

He’s quick to add that one need not have had such a negative experience to relate to the other aspects of the story, however specific they might be. Family, he feels, is what really matters in Unlocked. “Beyond the externals of the story,” he admits, “I also wanted to explore the character’s relationship with his mother. Also, I just love ironies, and the fact that sometimes you try to do the right thing and it still doesn’t work out.”

Through working in television, Adilman became more aware of what works and what doesn’t onscreen, though during the filming of Unlocked, he was conscious of not wanting any bad (or unconscious) habits to bleed over, technically or otherwise.

“Working in TV we were very conscious about [that],” he notes, “because it’s different. In doing four-minute stories for CBC, nobody talks for more eleven seconds, and we cut the hell out of them. There are a lot of tight shots, visual exposition and stuff, and Thank God we were so aware of that. So yeah, it took a lot of discipline [to avoid].”

Gass-Donnelly, whose full-length feature, This Beautiful City, was released last year, faced a different kind of discipline issue. He says Sixty Seconds of Regret was “more challenging” because of the fact that he decided to film it without dialogue. “Words take up so much space,” he notes.

His history directing music videos taught him how much of a story can be told in a simple, economical manner, without the use of dialogue to propel a story forwards. However, the challenge of establishing and maintaining a narrative without the elements of music and rhythm were considerable. “[Those elements] allow you to leap: two seconds here, two seconds there, and you’ve just conveyed someone’s life and death.”

Still, Gass-Donnelly took those lessons of pregnant brevity and used them to great effect. Along with meaningful visuals, he, along with sound designer Nelson Ferreira, who worked on the sound for This Beautiful City, threw around a myriad of ideas that would eventually come to be part of the story, placed in subtle, if important moments.

‘The placement of things like the sounds of crows, or a train whistle in the distance, these subtle things, almost read as lines,” he explains. “[They have] emotional impact, they signal something. Nelson always likes to play with ideas: ‘We’re going to pare it down, then throw ideas out, and then pull it back.’ The [sounds] have exact placement, too. They’re not stepping on another moment. For instance, we had the train whistle at too emotionally obvious a point –it was overstated –but by shifting it over, it would have a greater impact without being too on-the-nose in terms of timing.”

Timing is something you may want to keep track of when it comes to catching both Unlocked and Sixty Seconds Of Regret; both will be shown during TIFF, and on Bravo! Presents at some point in the near future. The Foundation itself will be celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2010, and will be marking it with retrospective screenings and special editions of Bravo!FACT Presents.

For this year, they’ll be celebrating 10 years with the Toronto International Film Festival, which is no small feat in itself. The films themselves may be brief, but all the shorts at this year’s edition of TIFF are deeply memorable, and imprinted with a unique view of the world. It’s through programs like Bravo!FACT that Canada is solidifying its reputation in the film community as a powerhouse of unconventional visual artistry. Who needs Hollywood anyway?

Unlocked screens on September 15th and 16th and Sixty Seconds Of Regret screens on September 14th and 15th at the Toronto International Film Festival.