TIFF: Wavelength Must-Sees and Misses

Thom Andersen: Get Out Of The Car: still from a colour film, 2010.

By Bil Antonio

It’s exciting for a film reviewer to take a look at the films programmed in the Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths series. I consider myself a daring cineaste who is very comfortable with unconventional and non-narrative-oriented experiences — I could stare at Antonioni’s frozen architectural meditations for days without being bored — but, the worlds of film and video art are still relatively unknown to me. Usually, I just use terms like “decontextualize” and drop Tracey Emin’s name at cocktail parties because they sound good from the inside of a dry martini.

The films in the Wavelengths series will bend your mind towards the most daring ways to look at film — sometimes fresh and alive, other times tired and haggard. These are not generally the films that the majority of festival-goers run to. Maybe they are worried that they will find the films too bland in experience or too difficult to get into; the cinematic equivalent of the Canadian animals section at the Toronto Zoo. The relative unpopularity of these experimental gems is part of their appeal, however. They are a trip into a gorgeously sexy world where stories are threadbare and, at times, sound is a luxury.

An outstanding evening of unusual experiences is to be had in Program 1: Soul Of The City, screening Friday, September 10 at 9pm at Jackman Hall (AGO). The films range from the picturesque to the downright riveting, providing a wonderful opportunity for gorgeous imagery and hypnotic sounds to wash over you for two hours. Tomonari Nishikawa’s Tokyo-Ebisu features beautiful images of the Japanese capital’s railway lines, with patchworked frames sewn into each sequence; it’s sort of like Hou Hsiao-Hsien without the interruptions of people eating soup for long periods of time. Dominic Angerame’s The Soul Of Things opens with a quote by William Denton before showing ragged, roughly cut silent images of San Francisco that eventually give way to smooth, long takes that find beauty in the urban landscape. Victoria, George, Edward and Thatcher by Callum Cooper is a curious piece, a collage of London row-houses that was created with iPhone photos and a clever use of mechanical sound.

Paolo Gioli: Photofinish Figures: still from a silent black & white film, 2009.Less effective is Landscape, Semi-Surround by Eriko Sonoda, featuring collaged frames from a train window that are then multiplied on an art gallery wall. It is technically impressive, but doesn’t quite stand out among the bunch. The least effective would have to be Oliver Husain’s Leona Alone, which examines the beauty of Toronto suburbs without actually discovering much beauty in them. Everywhere Was The Same is an interesting combination of elements, using lushly romantic narrative text over images of abandoned Palestinian housing projects before switching to urban beauty with pro-Peace voice-over narration.

The masterpiece in the Soul of the City program is the exceptionally well done Get Out Of The Car by Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself), a series of static images of billboards, diner signs, dilapidated billboards and stunningly beautiful neon signs. The film tells the story of a human city without using any actual humans (except intermittently on the soundtrack for comic effect). Each image has a carefully chosen selection on the rich soundtrack, which includes Bob Dylan, Los Lobos, Ike and Tina, Frank Zappa and Los Tigres Del Norte. (I ended up purchasing a Brenda Holloway song off iTunes after viewing it, right after I bought the Fairuz song featured in the previous film.) The film includes on-camera criticism — “When you make a movie about something, call me!” someone shouts at him — and signs for torn-down buildings and landmarks that describe a city in cultural decline. It is a stunning record that will benefit future archaeologists and makes watching the entire program worthwhile.

Also interesting is Program 6: Coming Attractions, screening at Jackman Hall on Monday, September 13 at 9 p.m. I wasn’t able to preview the entire program, but what I did see are a dazzling collection of photographic experimentations that will please the aesthetic junkies, despite the fact that most of the films are silent. (And, boy… do I mean silent.) Paolo Gioli’s Photofinish Figures is a dreamy, black and white blend of faces and images of the city that holds your attention despite the muteness of the soundtrack. Ken Jacobs’ two films Day Was a Scorcher and Jonas Mekas In Kodachrome Days create strobelike, 3-D imagery out of digital photographs, forcing one to take in all the details of the pictures he captures but, after enough exposure, they also induce a minor headache —- epileptics beware. Friedl vom Groller’s Delphine De Oliveira is a very short, but much tamer, exercise, its images softly monochromed and very romantic.

So, throw on a skinny tie and grab an espresso. It’s time to let the movies watch you.

Bil Antoniou is a Toronto-based actor and writer who blogs about film at myoldaddiction.com, and an editor at  mygaytoronto.com.