'Fringe' filmmakers profiled

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Erbach’s Under Chad Valley (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Experimental filmmakers are a breed apart.

That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of writer Mike Hoolboom, an experimental filmmaker himself, in his book Practical Dreamers: Conversations with Movie Artists, which is being launched tonight with a talk by Hoolboom and screenings of four films by some of his subjects.

Hoolboom says the filmmakers profiled tend to be shunted to the fringes of film art because their works are too different from conventional product.

The Toronto-based Hoolboom offers an analogy:

"It's like if you spent your whole life buying chairs from IKEA, from a factory that makes a thousand chairs a week, and then one day you notice there's a sound coming from your neighbour's garage and you walk over and see they're building this unusual thing.

"You don't recognize at first what it might be, but eventually, you see that's also a chair. But it feels and looks so different, because it's coming out of his or her hands and the way they're living their life and it offers different kinds of comforts and different kinds of pleasures."

Carrying forth the neighbour analogy, Hoolboom profiles two local artists, Daniel Barrow and Jeffrey Erbach among the 27 artists profiled in his book. He includes two of their films, Barrow's Black Heart's Desire and Erbach's Under Chad Valley in the program of four films he'll be screening.

"Both are absolutely singular artists," says Hoolboom. "Jeff looks like a feature filmmaker in a more traditional sense. He works with large crews and he's very concerned with things like 'proper' lighting and high-gloss cinematography.

"And yet his work emerges out of a certain kind of wound," Hoolboom says. "It's about sharing a wound, and sharing that wound is more important than three-act structures, or driving towards some kind of narrative end, so his work really looks like feature films but it's really about something else."

Barrow, who frequently animates his works utilizing transparencies and an overhead projector, is also one of a kind, Hoolboom says.

Two other films screening tonight are Benny Nemerofsky's Live to Tell -- a cheeky performance piece cued on Madonna's hit song, and Richard Fung's Sea in the Blood, a personal doc utilizing the filmmaker's old home movies.

Copies of Hoolboom's book will be available for sale.

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Saturday night, Hoolboom returns to Cinematheque to present two more experimental films, View from the Other Side of the Falls, an artist's perspective of Niagara Falls, and Up to the South, an "oblique" documentary on South Lebanon. Both films are being screened in conjunction with Cinematheque's program titled Critical Dialogue on Canadian Cinema.

Admission is free for both evenings.

* * *

After being delayed by a certain economic recession, it looks like the basketball biopic Sweetwater will start shooting in Winnipeg in April, according to local producer Kent Ulrich of Two Lagoons Productions.

The film, which will tell the story of Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, the first black player in the National Basketball Association, promises to bring actors Mira Sorvino, Kevin Pollak and James Caan to town, in addition to Motown legend Smokey Robinson.

Two Lagoons will co-produce the film with L.A.-based production company Astra Blue Media.

Ulrich says Sportsarc, a sports entertainment consulting firm, has been hired to help "maintain the historical look and creativity for the film." Sportsarc is looking for 65 Winnipeg-area basketball players between the ages of 18 and 34 as extras in the film.

For more information e-mail info@sportsarc.net

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Movie Preview

Practical Dreamers

Featuring Mike Hoolboom

Cinematheque

Tonight at 7 p.m.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 20, 2009 D6