Tag: arts

Categories
Arts

The Watershed sheds light on political issues

Politics, water and the Experimental Lakes Area take centre stage at the Centaur Theatre

Have you ever heard of the Experimental Lakes Area(ELA) near Kenora, Ontario? Have you ever thought about how much clean water is worth? Are you willing to find the answers by driving across the country in a Winnebago crammed with three children, a husband and a bacon-loving dog? Maybe not, but thanks to Montreal playwright Annabel Soutar, you can experience that journey from the comfort of the Centaur Theatre.

The Watershed is Porte Parole and Crow Theatre’s newest venture in documentary and political theatre. According to the Porte Parole website, documentary theatre is a creative process whereby artists record current event stories from many different perspectives, such as TV segments, in person interviews, radio and online sources. They then sort and mediate those perspectives for an audience in the form of a play. All of the dialogue in The Watershed came from recorded interviews and family conversations about water and the ELA. The Watershed explores Soutar’s journey to find answers about why the Canadian ELA the world’s only freshwater research site, was shut down by the Harper government in 2013, after a scientist who worked there published an unflattering review of the Oil Sands.

The Watershed follows playwright Annabel Soutars family as they journey across Canada to find answers about the ELA. Photo courtesy of Porte Parole Productions

Commissioned for the 2015 Panamania Festival, the play begins with Soutar speaking to a local plumber about how water comes into the home. It then grows to become a cross-country journey to find out why the Harper government cut funding to the ELA, which had an annual budget of about $2 million.

The greatest part about this play is its documentary style, specifically the dialogue and characters. The play’s characters range from Soutar’s hilarious children to former Prime Minister Harper and scientist Diane Orihel, who put aside her research to fight for the ELA. The documentary style gives the characters depth, reliability and reasoning since they are real people speaking their own words, rather than ones made up by a playwright to go along with a story.

Soutar’s children, Ella and Beatrice (the third child on the trip, Hazel, is director Chris Abraham’s daughter), played by Amelia Sargisson, and Ngozi Paul, are almost like average audience members within the play. They begin the journey with little knowledge about water, watersheds or where freshwater comes from. As the play continues, the girls become more and more knowledgeable as they sit in on many of the interviews—which the audience also witnesses as they are reenacted on stage.

By the end of the play, the children are conducting their own interviews and learning more about how different people view the oil sands—for example, as a vice president of sustainability for a Montreal oil company said in her interview with Soutar, “People who are for it call it the oil sands. People who hate it call it the tar sands.”

Both The Watershed and Soutar’s previous documentary play, Seeds, have definitely solidified documentary theatre as my favourite style of theatre. While traditional playwriting definitely has its place, this new documentary style feels much more sincere and appeals to modern-day audiences. The Watershed runs until Dec. 4 at the Centaur Theatre. Tickets are available online, at centaurtheatre.com.     

Categories
Arts

MAJOR! A documentary about transgender power

Cinema Politica’s upcoming screening of the documentary MAJOR!, takes close look at the discrimination faced by transgender women.

Cinema Politica continues its legacy of screening truth to power through the lens of a trans-woman activist

Cinema Politica’s upcoming screening, MAJOR!, directed by Annalise Ophelian, aims to depict the struggles and abuse faced by trans* women of colour on a daily basis, particularly in prison. It won Best Documentary at the New Jersey LGBTQ Film Festival, the Queer Hippo International LGBTQ Film festival and the Boston LGBTQ Film Festival. The Kickstarter campaign associated with the film raised over $25,000, which provided the funds necessary to complete the project.  

The film, set in San Francisco, tells the story of Miss Major, a trans-woman activist who has dedicated 40 years of her life to fighting for the rights of the trans* community. Miss Major is a very animated person who never fails to make you laugh throughout the documentary. She brings light to very dark stories and gives hope to the hopeless. The film intertwines Miss Major’s personal story of becoming a trans* woman and an activist with the stories of people who have experienced violence and punishment for being trans*. MAJOR! showcases the courage of those who fight against the hate crimes and discrimination aimed at the trans*community.

The film separates the themes of the story into several “chapters” in an interesting way. From the first chapter to the last, the story teaches us about trans* rights and the everyday struggles trans* people face, while also exuding the love this community has for one another. Miss Major, also referred to as “Mama Major,” is the mother hen who brings all of this love together. She is the go-to person for advice, she helps strengthen those who need it, she cares about people’s experiences and she listens to those who come to her for advice or council. The chapters in the film provide valuable information about the The Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Project—an organization run by members of the trans* community and previously directed by Miss Major—as well as other statistics about the criminal justice system and street economics, the term used to describe the methods which some trans* women have to turn to prostitution or drugs in order to make a living.

This film is a definite eye-opener. Even if you are well-aware of the discrimination trans* people constantly battle, you will certainly learn something new. Each and every one of the stories recounted in this film is unique and should be heard. Some of the interview subjects include Major’s previous romantic partners, her son and many of the people she has helped throughout the years.

The trans*community has countless stories to be told and MAJOR! allows for a few of these stories to be heard, including Miss Major’s. The film recognizes her for all the hard work she has done in her community. It shows us that she is a legendary advocate for trans*rights, and that never giving up is the true foundation of change.

Be sure to check out MAJOR! at this year’s Cinema Politica. It will be screened on Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. at Concordia in H-110.

Categories
Arts

Going beyond the classic cartoons

Concordia graduate Daniel Sterlin-Altman positions the characters of his short film Hi it's your mother Photo courtesy of Daniel Sterlin-Altman

If you roll your eyes every time your friend tells you animations are  a sophisticated version of Disney films, you should take them to the 15th edition of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation.

The festival that put Montreal animation on the map is back with a dazzling program. The festival ran until Nov. 27 and  hosted a total of 148 short films, two feature films and three exhibits. It also featured an international film selection and conferences on the future of animation.

This year, the festival’s competitive programs focused on 29 shorts and included work from three Concordia graduates, whose work was selected from 400 submissions:  Le clitoris  by Lori Malépart-Traversy;  Nutag, Homeland by Alisi Telengut   and Daniel Sterlin-Altman’s stop-motion Hi it’s your mother.

Telengut painted each frame of the film by hand for her pictorial and aesthetically delightful short Nutag, Homeland. It is based on the forceful relocation to Siberia of the Kalmyk people of the Soviet Union during WWII. “The camera was on top and I always painted on the same surface, unlike traditional animation which is made by changing papers. For each image, I would take off the oil pastel and start again,” said Telengut.

Daniel Sterlin-Altman’s Hi it’s your mother is a hilarious and refreshing look at filial love. “I want this film to contribute to the still very small roster of queer animated films,” Sterlin-Altman said. “In this film the queerness is meant to just be a part of the film, definitely contributing to shock value, but the focus is not on a tragedy or conflict with queer identity. I think this film can help show that queerness can be a part of animated narratives and not such an emotional trauma.”

Sterlin-Altman, who graduated from Concordia with a BFA in animation and a minor in human environment, said he is obsessed with small things, like puppets.

“I worked with a ridiculously long list of materials that are mostly found from anywhere around my house. I really love how stop motion filmmaking is all about repurposing things from the big world to do something different in the mini world,” said Sterlin-Altman. “I made the characters out of a material called foam latex, which takes the form of a mold I sculpted and allows me to squish it and manipulate it without ruining the shape.”

Concordia Graduate Alisi Telengut is the director of Nutag, Homeland Photo by: Katherine Delorme

What Marco de Blois, the festival’s organizer and former Concordia professor  loves most about Sterlin-Altman Hi it’s your mother is that it made de Blois laugh at a time where he was exhausted from binge-watching short films. “The film is a comical masterpiece which allows the public to breathe,” de Blois said.

The winners of the student competition were announced on Sunday,  Nov. 27 during the award and closing ceremony of the festival at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

According to de Blois, the event featured three prevailing themes. It didn’t take long before the Clyde Henry Productions’ impressively detailed and nightmarish puppets came to life in the halls of the Cinémathèque and set the tone for the first theme: monsters and creatures.

The opening night of the festival also gave us a taste of the second theme—the significant presence of female directors. The Sommets kicked off with Noémie Marsily and Carl Roosens’ short film, I don’t feel anything anymore, and Ann Marie Fleming’s long feature, Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming, a touching tale about a young Canadian poet who reconnects with her roots by attending a poetry festival in Iran.

For its third main theme, the festival joined forces with the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) for the first time to present the animated reality section. Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre’s  Oscar, a short about jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, visually bridged documentary and animation together.

“The mission of the festival goes beyond the notion of animation as something cute, funny and made for children—which it is—but not only,” said de Blois. “Animation can also be surprising, innovative, social and political.”

As creative as it is zany, the 15th edition of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation overflowed with events dedicated to the student community, such as the Money and Eyeballs panel discussion on films funding and a meeting with Framestore studio where speakers spoke about job opportunities in the visual effects industry.

Categories
Arts

Image+nation film festival comes to Montreal

Handsome Devils, the festival's opening film, is a coming of age story set in Ireland.

Image+nation film festival comes to Montreal

From Nov. 24 to Dec. 4, the image+nation film festival will present a diverse array of LGBTQ+ films hailing from all corners of the world.

“I think it’s an important opportunity to see great independent film, and it’s also an opportunity to see yourself reflected on the screen if you happen to be a queer person,” said Katharine Setzer, the programming director for the festival.

Image+nation, which is in its 29th year, is the oldest queer film festival in Canada. It will present films from a variety of genres and formats, including powerful documentaries, beautiful shorts and award-winning features. There are over 30 films to choose from.

“There’s a power in coming to a festival,” said Setzer. “It is a genre festival—it is a queer festival. There’s a power of being with your people, sitting and congregating in the dark and watching images of yourself on the screen.”

This year, the festival will have a focus on Irish and American cinema, two countries that legalized same-sex marriage in the last year. Handsome Devil, the opening film of the festival, which will screen on Nov. 24 at 7:30 p.m. is part of this Irish focus. Directed by John Butler, the film is a coming-of-age story about Ned, a young outcast in a rugby-crazed, all-boys boarding school who sets out on a mission to finally have his voice heard.

According to Setzer, queer cinema has evolved over time. Although there’s still a place for coming-of-age and coming-out stories, the focus has shifted to representations of queerness that go beyond this, looking instead at the experience of living as a queer person in the world.

Golden Boys, an Israeli film directed by Revital Gal, takes a look at the ageing gay community in Tel Aviv and explores the challenges these men faced coming to terms with their own sexuality in a country which hasn’t always been open or tolerant. Golden Boys will screen on Dec. 3 at 3:15 p.m.

Although the festival includes films from around the world, it still has a local focus. Long-time festival staple Queerment Quebec gives an opportunity to see short films produced by Montreal filmmakers. These shorts will be presented on Monday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m. at the Phi Centre and include bustling local talent.

Films from this year’s festival will be screened at a number of different venues, including Cinéma Imperial, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Concordia’s JA de Sève cinema and Cinémathèque québécoise.

Tickets can be purchased both at the door and online. Regular passes are $12.75 per film or $9.50 for students. For information on the festival or to buy tickets for screenings, visit www.image-nation.org.

Categories
Arts

Rowling’s wizarding world is back

A hunt for missing magical creatures soon becomes much more complicated when dark forces appear.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them brings a whole new wizarding world to the big screen

Demiguises, erumpents and nifflers are just some of the fantastic creatures that have slipped out of Newt Scamander’s (Eddie Redmayne) magical suitcase, causing havoc in 1926 New York City in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

The film, adapted from J.K. Rowling’s book of the same title, is directed by David Yates and stars Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell and Dan Fogler. Written by Rowling, it has the same familiar feel the Harry Potter series offered. This familiarity makes it easier for the audience to relate to the film, although this era of the wizarding world is much darker.

Newt Scamander is a magizoologist studying all manner of magical beasts and creatures, cataloguing them for a book he’s writing. After disembarking in New York City, a mix-up between suitcases leads to a few of his creatures roaming free in a city rocked by anti-wizard sentiment. Newt, no-maj (American term for muggle) Jacob Kowalski (Fogler) and disgraced auror Tina (Waterston) team up and attempt to round up the magical creatures. Although they aren’t dangerous per se, these creatures can be annoying. One of Newt’s nifflers, a mole-sized creature attracted to objects that shine and sparkle such as coins and gems, gets into trouble ransacking a jewelry store and storing its contents in its marsupial-like pouch.

Things get more complicated when Newt discovers an obscurus is on the loose. This dark magical entity, taking the shape of a roiling black cloud, is a creation that comes about when a magical child tries to suppress their powers for fear of discovery by the non-magical community. While Newt wishes to find the child to save them from themself, other forces wish to use the obscurus for their own agendas.

The world we are introduced to in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fractured one. The beginning sequence emphasizes this: headline after headline warning of humans suspicious of magical activity, calling for a second Salem witch-hunt in Manhattan. At the same time, there is fear of a magical war being sparked by Grindelwald, a powerful wizard tired of hiding from no-majs. Divisions exist between no-majs and wizards and between wizards themselves. Newt’s journey to document magical creatures brings him to the epicenter of these tensions, and he becomes entangled in an effort to prevent an all-out war.

Rowling’s incredible imagination is once again brought to life on the big screen. The creatures she’s whipped up are funny and troublesome, dangerous and sneaky. For a film that needed to introduce a whole other subsection of a hidden world, the pace is quite good, albeit a little information-heavy at times. It might have been worthwhile to take some more time to develop Newt’s character, especially seeing as how Fantastic Beasts is set  to be a five-part series. Newt is a funny character who has trouble interacting with humans. Instead, he finds refuge in his suitcase, which contains a whole ecosystem of creatures, beasts and magical things.

Fantastic Beasts is now in theaters.

4.5 stars out of 5

Categories
Arts

Highlights from Cinemania film festival

Kristen Stewart, who has avoided being typecast in her roles, plays a fashion assistant who attempts to communicate with the dead in Personal Shopper.

Slack Bay and Personal Shopper were the talk of the town at the Cannes film festival this year

As a rift grows between the more conspicuously commercial elements of the French film industry and the personal, unconventional auteur pieces that defined French cinema for much of its golden era, it is the latter that continues to be a staple of international film festivals. Montreal’s Cinemania festival, which celebrates the brightest French productions of the year, featured two films that have been attracting attention since their premiere at Cannes this past spring.

Ma Loute, known in English as Slack Bay, is singularly grotesque. What could have been a straight comedy—the slapstick, satire and absurdity—is instead an entrancing, if unsettling experience. The film’s humour is so relentlessly over-the-top it seems to be mocking its own audience. Even the viewer’s act of marveling over the striking setting—a coastal region of Northern France, home to director Bruno Dumont—is ridiculed during the film.

Who are we to identify within this caricature of class warfare? On one side, we have a decadent bourgeois family, played by well-known actors who overact as if in a state of drunken insanity. On the other, a mysterious family of oyster farmers and ferrymen, played by eerie-looking locals whose presence intensifies the surreal style of the film, making it seductively hostile.

It is an often baffling, unclassifiable work, comparable in part to David Lynch and Monty Python but bathed in French sensibilities, incorporating both theatre and carnival traditions. It will alienate viewers who find it suspect for being fundamentally unexplained, or frustrating for its deliberate lack of cohesion. However, those curious to immerse themselves in a foreign vision, one that is unpredictable and perhaps beyond reach, may come out pleasantly mystified by the experience.

Another film at Cinemania is the much less compelling and blandly titled Personal Shopper, starring Kristen Stewart as a fashion assistant who attempts to communicate with the dead. Stewart, made famous by the Twilight series, has become something of a darling in France—she was the first American actress to win a César Award, which is comparable to an Oscar, and the film’s director Olivier Assayas called her one of the best actors of her generation. While it is true that she has successfully avoided being typecast and has proved herself to be a reliable talent, such enormous praise remains puzzling. Assayas’ assertion back in September that Stewart has “an infinitely [large] range” is at odds with the fact that she is notoriously inexpressive, and rarely has that been more obvious than in Personal Shopper, which barely gives her any character material to work with.

A ghost story provides ample excuse for suspense and frights generated by an invisible, watching presence, but such luxuries are in short supply here. The film works best when dealing with the supernatural, but it is essentially a parable for grief, more akin to a European existential drama than to, say, this year’s gripping Under the Shadow.  Personal Shopper indulges in long, empty scenes that involve Stewart’s character walking through a deserted manor or shopping for clothes and accessories—not an activity most audiences are likely to find exciting.

No release date has been announced yet for Slack Bay. Personal Shopper will be released in theaters on March 10, 2017.

Categories
Arts

Performance art and history

Howard J. Davis brings forgotten racial injustices to the forefront in C’est Moi, his filmmaking debut.

Performing artist, Howard J. Davis, debuts his film, C’est Moi, based on black Canadian history

Performing artist Howard J. Davis marked his debut as a filmmaker with C’est Moi, a story based on a little-known event in black Canadian history. It is a reminder of the many forgotten incidences of racial injustices that pepper Canada’s past.

Set in 18th century New France—now known as Montreal—C’est Moi is the tale of Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a slave in her late 20s who was convicted, tortured and hung for starting a fire that ravaged what is now Old Montreal. The fire was allegedly part of her plan to escape her slave-owner, but the evidence presented at the trial was inconclusive. “The beauty of storytelling is that the audience should be left to decide,” said Davis.

Angélique is “an emblem of resilience against slavery in Canada,” said Davis. He added that a big inspiration for imagery in the film was Joan of Arc.

C’est Moi was filmed in Montreal, with dancer Jenny Brizard starring as Angélique. The music and lyrics were composed and written by Davis.

The creative process for C’est Moi began eight years earlier, in 2008, during his first year at Ryerson Theatre School, said Davis. He said the story was first performed as a dance, then in spoken word before Davis decided to make it into a film. Davis decided on cinema as the most appropriate way to tell Angélique’s story because of the intimacy this medium allows.

Unapologetic about the length of time it took him to complete this project, Davis said, “I am at such a formative stage of my career that I should be allowed to take my time, and to let things sit and see how they resonate.”

Born in Britain, and of mixed race, Davis was raised in Kelowna, B.C. and lives in Toronto. Davis said he was attracted to the performing arts at a very early age, and he can’t think of a time when he was not performing—either at home with his two sisters or while at school.  Despite the fact that neither of their parents were involved in the performing arts, Davis’ sisters are also performing artists. He added that, while growing up, he idolized British actor and comedian Sir Norman Wisdom, and was mesmerized by the films he starred in.

Davis is  a member of the Dora Award, an annual arts award in Toronto, winning ensemble for Passion Play, and also a cast member of the Dora Award for nominated play Bombay Black.  More recently, Davis was promoted on set of Downsizing and was given a speaking part. Downsizing is a soon-to-be-released film directed by Alexander Payne.

Davis said he submitted C’est Moi to several film festivals and has launched a crowdfunding website to help defray the associated costs. The trailer for C’est Moi is available at www.howardjdavis.com/c-est-moi, where anyone interested in viewing the film can sign up to receive information on screening dates and locations.

Categories
Arts

The rare case of a seemingly justified sequel

RENTON (Ewan McGregor), SPUD (Ewen Bremner), SICK BOY (Jonny Lee Miller) BEGBIE (Robert Carlyle)

The trailer for the T2:Trainspotting sequel has fans and critics jumping for joy

Heroin consumption is a bleak topic. One would be pressed to find a single positive aspect of opioid consumption, as it is known to destroy lives and relationships. That’s what makes Trainspotting (1996) such a memorable film—it explores the topic of heroin addiction with a weirdly realistic sense of humour. The characters realize the futility of their habit and make fun of each other’s horrible life choices. However, the movie is still a sincere story of the void created by drugs. The film has developed a cult following due to its great script and highly-effective editing.

It is worth mentioning the film only lasts 90 minutes and concludes with an open-ended scene. This abrupt ending leaves the viewer wanting more, and rightly so. The movie was based on a then-unfinished series of books written by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh.  The book’s sequel, Porno, was published in 2002—almost a decade after the first installment. The cinematic sequel to Trainspotting will be loosely based on this second book and will explore the unorthodox topic of porn-addiction and vices.

However, Trainspotting was released 20 years ago, which makes its scheduled January 2017 sequel seem unnecessary for those who haven’t seen the original. According to Mohamad Hassan Bassal, a film studies student at Concordia, the movie industry is filled with reboots and remakes which often come much too late for them to be justified. For instance, Alice Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to the blockbuster hit Alice in Wonderland, proved to be a massive box office and critique failure, one of the reasons being the film was released six years after the original. This delay hurt the film’s ticket sales and the sequel seemed unjustified by fans and critics who found the film devoid of the charm of the first movie. Therefore, it is understandable for fans of Trainspotting to be weary of the upcoming sequel only being a cheap attempt at using nostalgia to lure people into the theater.

Despite these negative speculations, the trailer for T2: Trainspotting, which was released last week, has considerably increased interest in the story’s continuation. The trailer showcases the original cast, including big names such as Ewan McGregor, whose role in Trainspotting catapulted him to Hollywood stardom. The trailer does not reveal specific plot points but instead proves to have kept the overall feel of the original. The famous “choose life” speech, which has been endlessly quoted by cinema fans, is given a modern spin as the narrator tells the audience to “choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares.”

The trailer is full of little nods to fans of the original, as it uses locations and songs from the first film. As the film has not been released yet, only time will tell if producer Danny Boyle will be able to capture lightning in a bottle for the second time.

Categories
Arts

Concordia grad joins Second City’s holiday show

Aimee Ambroziak joins the famous Second City Touring Company in Eat, Buy, Repeat

Aimee Ambroziak joins the famous Second City Touring Company in Eat, Buy, Repeat

As of Monday, Nov. 21, Concordia theatre grad Aimee Ambroziak will be joining the ranks of hilarious female comics. Ambroziak will be a part of the Second City Touring Company’s new holiday show, Eat, Buy, Repeat: The Second City’s Guide to the Holidays.

The Second City opened in 1959 and has since become a world-renowned comedy club, theatre and improvisation school. Its notable alumni include Tina Fey, Catherine O’Hara and Bill Murray, all of whom Ambroziak said are her heroes.

“While theatre is my first love, I started thinking about who my heroes are, and I realized that all of them had something to [do] with improv at Second City,” she said.

Ambroziak grew up in Hudson, Que. and was a member of the Hudson Village Players theatre group, with whom she performed with throughout her teenage years. After graduating from Concordia in 2007 with a BA in theatre performance, Ambroziak immediately found work with Geordie Productions. For a year, she toured Eastern Ontario elementary and high schools, performing various children’s theatre plays, including a Robert Munsch adaptation.

After attending a Level A improvisation class—a weekend-long, entry-level intensive course—at the Second City in Chicago, Ambroziak auditioned for the Second City in 2013. For the past three years, Ambroziak has been a part of the Second City’s Boat Company, performing on Norwegian Cruise Lines’ Pearl and Epic ships, as well as the Second City’s Family Company, which performs children’s shows. She is now making her debut with the Second City’s touring group in Eat, Buy, Repeat: The Second City’s Guide to the Holidays.

Ambroziak said the show draws inspiration from world events, as well as themes like consumption. The show was created through various improvisation sketches performed in front of a live audience.

“We got to see what worked and what didn’t,” she said. The show includes original songs and some Second City favourite performances from past holiday shows. Because the show draws inspiration from world events, some of the sketches have evolved to fit the changing news, particularly after the U.S. election on Nov. 8. “There is actually one scene where, as I was doing, I thought ‘I wonder if this will change when Hillary wins,’” Ambroziak said. “Evidently, it didn’t.”

The show is now all planned out, excluding a few scenes that require audience interaction. Ambroziak said if there is time after a performance, the troupe will perform a completely improvised third act. As this is a comedy show, Ambroziak wants the audience to enjoy themselves and feel refreshed. “I want them to leave the theatre having laughed a lot,” she said “Ideally, I hope they feel like it is something they haven’t seen before.”

Eat, Buy, Repeat: The Second City’s Guide to the Holidays runs from November 24, 2016 to January 5, 2017 at the Second City Mainstage Theatre in Toronto. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased online at secondcity.com.

Categories
Arts

you are running around in the dark and for my first workshop part 1

Graphic by Florence Yee

In her poetry, Kara Bowers explores themes of womanhood, healing, and coming of age, to name a few. Bowers is in her fourth year at Concordia University, where she studies Creative Writing and Studio Arts. She is from Toronto. This column was put together with the help of Annah-Lauren Bloom.

you are running around in the dark

i am hungry but also not

my therapist says “i know you hate confrontation”

i haven’t really thought about it

the clock on the kitchen stove is seven hours fast

i walk all the way

you are going to sleep to hide from a problem

i am staying awake beside windows

where dark presses in close

like bodies in a room in the middle of the night

i cross the street without looking

i ask if you saw me watching

you say no

inside of you it is me

i have pulled a muscle in my left thigh

walking in the fresh

my therapist says “anxiety is awareness”

i repeat this in the new city

in my urges to ravage my body

and to destroy its natural shape

something made me want to change

you feel like the blue and the green out the window in my parent’s house

i had so much more to say when i walked across that bridge every day

many strangers have been talking to me

we all wake up early when the sun comes in

will you sing me to sleep?

will you still love me even when i go away?

we stayed like that for months before i was swallowed up

i stayed in the mouth with an old woman

she said “i used to look just like you —

you remind me of my friend who died in the war”

for my first workshop part 1

i will not prune myself for you

i can’t sleep when i’m touching you

in the mornings i wake up with you

and i drink two

cups of water

i go right into the center

and i bite the pit

we move

closer together

i run into you

on the way

you shout whisper

my name

when you eat an apple

do you eat the whole thing?

i turn into an eggshell

i press my face into my knees

the message she sends says: i care

about you. i never stopped caring

i wash my hair

it is spilling out

i call the angels. another crisis without your voice

i sleep with the blinds open and i wake up every hour

each day i wear red for the fire power

there is so much more than just

seeing your name. the plants sing a song

to make us fall asleep i tell you about lying

underneath the flower blanket i tell you

about the book i’m reading i put

my face into bowls of salt and water

i will be safe with you

a piece of wire

breaks off my teeth and flies away

Graphic by Florence Yee

Categories
Arts

2010 G20: A dark moment in Canadian history

Lucius Dechausay's short documentary, Kettle, showcases footage from the mass arrests at the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit

Protesters who were held hostage by the Toronto police share their story in new documentary

The 2010 Toronto G20 summit will forever be remembered as a sad moment in Canadian history. According to the Toronto Star, the event marks the largest mass arrest in Canada, as over 1,100 people were detained. The majority of these individuals were never charged, since there was no valid reason to warrant their arrest. It is a moment most Canadians would like to forget, as it projected an overwhelmingly negative image of our police force onto the international stage. At Cinema Politica’s latest screening, filmmaker Lucius Dechausay’s short documentary, Kettle, showcases footage from the protest and interviews with people who were detained by Toronto police.

What is shocking is how mundane the initial protest was. There were just a group of people standing in an intersection protesting the G20 summit. According to Terra Dafoe, one of the protestors, the atmosphere was quiet and rather calm. It was a spur-of-the-moment demonstration. After a couple of minutes of peaceful protesting, a large crowd of police officers advanced on the group, banging on their shields. What ensued was the kettling, a term used to describe the cops’ technique of boxing in a large group of people, both protesters and bystanders.

The documentary shows footage of those who were left standing in the heavy rain without proper clothes or shelter. Since the event took place in June, some protesters were wearing tank tops and flip-flops and were not given any blankets. Erin Macpherson, one of the protesters interviewed in the film, joined the voluntary line-up for arrest, thinking she would at least be able to escape the cold weather by surrendering herself to the police. Instead, she was handcuffed and left standing in the rain for hours while waiting to be processed.

A lot of those who were held in the kettle were not involved in the protest. Some were only walking home from work, some were kids enjoying a day downtown or mothers running errands. They were people in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Some were detained for 24 hours, simply because they were standing on a public street.

One of the main reasons the situation got so out of hand was the clear miscommunication between protesters and police. There was no warning to disperse nor any use of crowd dispersing equipment. Law enforcement officers were waiting for instructions from Supt. Mark Fenton, who instructed his team to arrest every person caught in the kettle. Fenton latter publicly apologized for the mass arrest order, as it “demonstrated a lack of understanding to the right to protest.” In 2015, The Toronto Star reported that Fenton was convicted on two counts of unlawful arrest and one count of discreditable conduct relating to two incidents of kettling.

This documentary reminds us why we can’t allow ourselves to shove critical moments in our history under the rug. We owe it to those who were affected by the mass arrest at the G20 summit to determine why such an embarrassing situation was allowed to unfold. Even though Kettle is uncomfortable to watch, it conveys the shortcomings of our police system.

Categories
Arts

Marvel’s superhero ranks grow once more

Doctor Strange uses his time- and space-bending abilities to save the world from destruction.

Doctor Strange brings another superpower to the Marvel cinematic universe: Magic

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) includes people gifted with incredible genius, raw power, cunning intelligence and the strength of gods. Now, it’s adding magic to the mix.

Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams, Doctor Strange is an interesting and worthy addition to the Marvel franchise. It has the same core formula (reluctant hero, powerful item, final showdown) that Marvel has perfected, yet it also brings something new to the genre.

Dr. Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) is a brilliant neurosurgeon whose intellect is surpassed only by his ego. His world collapses after his hands are shattered in a terrible car accident, in which his vehicle goes careening off the road one rainy night. Broken both inside and out, Strange goes to great lengths to repair his hands—the tools that allow him to perform his life-saving miracles. When Western medicine fails him, a desperate Strange travels to Nepal to dabble in the mystic arts as a last resort. There, he meets the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton).

In a psychedelic montage that must have been inspired by some drug-induced trip, Strange gets a glimpse of this new world of mysticism: rushing lights, hands growing on fingers, mirror dimensions and endless universes. From there, Doctor Strange begins his tutelage in the arts of mysticism, where he learns to manipulate time, matter and space.

The cinematography of the film is incredible, featuring beautifully composed shots and incredible montages of a city folding and bending in on itself. The depictions of magic and spells are interesting and creative.

Aficionados of the superhero genre will find a breath of fresh air with this atypical Marvel film. We might not have needed another superhero origin story, but we got one anyway and it is an interesting direction to take the MCU in.

Unlike other Marvel movies, Doctor Strange doesn’t rely as much on explosions and grand finale battles. Rather, the fights occur in different dimensions where gravity is subjective and, in order to vanquish your opponent, you must bend space and time at your will. Think Inception meets The Avengers.

What’s interesting about Strange’s character is that he went searching for this power. Unlike Spider-Man, who was bitten, or Bruce Banner, who accidentally radiated himself, Strange goes out of his way to learn the mystic arts—but not under the guise of being a hero. His intentions, like his character, are self-centered. He wishes to heal his hands and become the surgeon he’s always been. Having worked on the cutting edge of science and medicine, he transitions to the harder-to-grasp mystical arts, something none of his PhDs will help him understand.

Doctor Strange is yet another piece of the Marvel puzzle, and it will be interesting to see how they all fit together.

⅘ stars.

Exit mobile version