[Frameworks] Film Series: "The Road Ended at the Beach, and Other Legends, " Winnipeg Cinematheque, Nov 2010-May 2011

Mon Nov 1 18:19:06 CDT 2010

Hello all,

I missed getting the
 following program into This Week in Avant-Garde Cinema.  The four-part series begins at Winnipeg Cinematheque this weekend,
and features work by Canada's Escarpment School filmmakers, including Philip Hoffman, Richard Kerr, Carl Brown, Mike
Hoolboom, Marion McMahon, Janis Cole, Rick Hancox, among many others.    

Brett Kashmere
Pittsburgh

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The Road
 Ended at the Beach, and Other Legends: 
Parsing the
 "Escarpment School"

Winnipeg Cinematheque, November 2010 - May 2011
Curated by Brett Kashmere 

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

-- Jorge Luis Borges 

The Road Ended at
 the Beach, and Other Legends
represents the first critical survey of Canada's mythic and amorphous
"Escarpment School," a loosely knit band of Ontario-based filmmakers
that came together in the late-70s at Sheridan College, under the
tutelage of Rick Hancox and Jeffrey Paull. Its assumed "members"
include Hancox, Carl Brown, Philip Hoffman, Mike Hoolboom, Richard
Kerr, Gary Popovich and Steve Sanguedolce, while Janis Cole, Holly
Dale, Marion McMahon, and Mike Cartmell are occasionally linked to the
group. A number of other accomplished filmmakers and cultural
producers, such as Lorne Marin, Lorraine Segato (of The Parachute
Club), and Alan Zweig overlapped with and intersected this circle,
through acts of collaboration, social interactions, inspiration, and
friendship. The American filmmaker and scholar George Semsel, Hancox's
first teacher and mentor, also deserves mention, as many of the
concerns expressed in the films of the "Escarpment School" can be
located in Semsel's own cinematic work. Paradoxically, what is most
noteworthy about the "Escarpment School" today, whether seen as a
legitimate art-historical movement or as a PR strategy concocted from
within, is its absence from the annals of Canadian cinema, despite the
influence and accolades of the aforementioned individuals. Did the
"Escarpment School" ever exist, and if so, what did it look like, what
might it look like now (with the hindsight of historical perspective),
and how do we evaluate its legacy? This four-part series seeks to
celebrate the "Escarpment School" as a unique confluence in Canadian
film history and to simultaneously expand the frame, by offering an
inclusive, inter-generational interpretation of its membership.

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Downloadable Press Materials:
- Press Release (PDF)
- Press Kit (PDF), with program info, screening schedule, artist bios, supplementary materials, more 
- Film Stills (opens in a new window)

Interviews:
- Philip Hoffman
-
 Brett Kashmere

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Part 1.
A Map Turned to Landscape

Saturday, November 6th at 7pm
Introduced by Brett Kashmere
Discussion with Rick Hancox, Philip Hoffman and Janine Marchessault to follow

The
"Escarpment School" receives its name from the Niagara Escarpment, the
most prominent of several land shelves formed in the bedrock of the
Great Lakes, located several miles southwest of Sheridan College. All
of its central figures either grew up around, or lived/worked in some
proximity to the escarpment. This reference to a specific region, just
an hour from the United States, and a transitional land formation is
significant. While much of the "Escarpment School's" history and
activity is like cinema itself, spectral (now you see it, now you
don't), one manifest aspect is a desire for understanding through
physical exploration and encounter with landscape. Taking their cameras
on the road, to the ocean's shoreline and across southern borders, the
filmmakers featured here infuse rituals of masculinity with critical
self-reflection and patient, poetic lensing; often conjoined in a diary
or travelogue format. Although varied in tone and texture, the films in
this program share numerous qualities, including an attention to
geography, a drive to record reality, the filtering of documentary
material through individual experience, the looming presence of
America, and a process-based, formalist approach to nonfiction. These
characteristics in turn reflect the twin impact of the New American
Cinema and its conterminous postwar movements, especially Beat
literature, as well as the Canadian social documentary tradition, which
were often viewed side-by-side in the "Escarpment School" classroom. 

Landscape (George Semsel, 1977, 16mm, 3 minutes)
A
paint-by-number painting of a rural landscape is filled in using
time-lapse cinematography, sometimes in 'correct' colours but more
often with garish variations on natural tones. Periodically, the
painting forms part of a collage of photographic and cut-out images.

Trains of Thought (Lorne Marin, 1983, 16mm, 10 minutes) 
"In Trains of Thought
Marin leaves the usual domestic setting of his films for a road trip to
the Maritimes. Using the car's windshield as his canvas, he conjures up
dynamic scene changes thanks to an innovative optical printer he
designed himself to accommodate his unique vision. Trains of
 Thought
was invited to the Flaherty Film Seminar in 1983, but despite its
immediate recognition, the film has fallen into neglect, like the rest
of Marin's remarkable body of experimental work." (Rick Hancox)

Beach Events (Rick Hancox, 1984, 16mm, 8.5
 minutes)
"This
film completes a trilogy of landscape/poetry films, and was shot near
the family home on the Northumberland Strait in Prince Edward Island.
In writing the text for Beach Events,
I wanted to challenge the cinema's dominant present tense by imitating
primitive 'event' poetry, referring superficially to action present on
the screen, but gradually slipping out of synchronization with its
referent. This practice, together with reading a kind of sub-conscious,
internal monologue… helps the viewer transcend the spectacle of the
present, and be aware of a larger temporal universe." (RH)

The Road Ended at the Beach (Philip Hoffman, 1983, 16mm, 30 minutes)
"Film images, stills and sound collected over six years coalesce in The
 Road Ended at the Beach. Hoffman interrogates both the journey, involving
 famed American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, and the process of its documentation as/in film." (Rivers of Time: The Films of
 Philip Hoffman) 

His Romantic Movement (Richard Kerr, 1984, 16mm, 15 minutes)
"His Romantic Movement reenacts the drama of going on the road, Kerouac style; but what it really depicts is the dream of freedom turning sour. His Romantic Movement re-presents
the male-band on the road living it up, taking drugs, drinking in the
sights, and just traveling, significantly, to the Florida Keys. But it
does not simply depict these activities, and in doing so reproduce that
myth. By depicting members of the band as ugly and vicious, it
deconstructs the myths of the male-band and conveys uneasiness with
that celebration of manliness that was so much part of the ethos of
Beat literature." (R. Bruce Elder, C
 Magazine)

Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion
 (Philip Hoffman, 1983, 16mm, 6 minutes)
"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 weaves its way through the
narrative, blending to make stronger the tones and accentuations of the
images." (PH)

Mexico (Mike Hoolboom and Steve Sanguedolce, 1992, 16mm, 35 minutes)
"This
high contrast, anti-travelogue benefits from a sharply ironic image
track and a mordant voice-over that lends menace to the notion of
direct address. Between the film's title and its somewhat arch
'erasure' the subject shifts from Mexico to its Canuck observers."
(Cameron Bailey, Now Magazine)

Approximate Running Time: 108 minutes. 

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Related Events:

THE CINEMA LOUNGE: 
PHIL HOFFMAN INTRODUCES THE FILMS OF RICK HANCOX
Special Guest: Rick Hancox
Fri, Nov 5, 7:30pm – Winnipeg Cinematheque
Free Admission

MASTER LECTURE SERIES: CURATING AND CONTEXT
Instructor: Brett Kashmere
This
seminar will focus on the role and responsibility of the curator in
contemporary life, providing an overview of curatorial practice within
the stricter context of moving images.  This will include a
consideration of the methods, procedures, and decision-making processes
of media art exhibition; the shifting relationship between artists,
institutions, programmers, and curators; critical and conceptual
aspects of curating; curating for different spaces; and writing about
artists’ work.
Sat, Nov 6, 2-4pm
 – The Black Lodge (Winnipeg Film Group Studio)
Free Admission (Seating Limited)

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Part 2.
Presence and Absence

February 2011
Films
by Sarah Abbott, Mike Cartmell, Janis Cole and Holly Dale, Mike
Hoolboom, 
Marian McMahon, Gary Popovich, and Steve Sanguedolce 

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Part 3.
Passages

March 2011
Films by Carl Brown, Rick Hancox, Philip Hoffman, Richard Kerr, Louise Lebeau, 
Gary Popovich, more

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Part 4.
Echoes

May 2011
Films by Joshua Bonnetta, Tracy German, Marianna
 Milhorat, Cara Morton, 
John Price, Michael Rollo, Daichi Saito, Elida Schogt, more

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Additional information will be posted soon. The Road Ended at the Beach, and Other Legends is produced by the Winnipeg Cinematheque. Films distributed by Canadian Filmmakers' Distribution Centre, except for Landscape, which is provided by Rick Hancox. Details subject to change.

For more info, contact brettkashmere at yahoo.com

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