In conversation with Isiah Medina

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This article was published 29/08/2015 (4050 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Isiah MEDINA started making movies when he was 11 years old, inspired by Dante’s The Comedy. Growing up in Winnipeg’s West End, Medina said he was fascinated by the idea of being able to think and communicate without language. Ever since, he said, he’s been half philosopher, half filmmaker; he positions his work as a sort of visual philosophy.

Now 24, Medina’s first feature film, 88:88 — set in his childhood neighbourhood — will have its North American première in the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths program, reserved for the festival’s avant-garde and experimental contributions. Out of the 399 films in the festival, 88:88 is one of only three shot in Winnipeg.

Like Medina’s first film, Semi-Auto Colours, 88:88 is a montage-style ode to the West End that feels like a home movie, shot in formats ranging from RED camera to 16mm to a smartphone. It stars Medina’s friends — and Medina himself — and digs into ideas of time, class, poverty and friendship.

The Free Press sat down with Medina to learn about Winnipeg’s upcoming time in the spotlight. The interview has been edited for space.

 

Free Press: Can you say a little bit about your newest film?

 

Isiah Medina: If you can’t pay your bills — say your electricity gets cut off, your water, your heat — then once you’re finally able to pay it… all the digital clocks in your home will flash 88:88. The idea is that this is a demonstration of the fact that, in the movie, basically, the people stop resetting their clocks to the time of the world because the poor don’t live in a time that progresses, but in suspended time… But that’s not necessarily the worst thing. The idea is that this is a starting place for thought, because if you just simply progress absolutely in a circle, then suspension allows you to start again.

 

FP: How autobiographical is your work?

 

IM: There is no material in the movie whereby I wouldn’t have lived it, or my friends wouldn’t have experienced. Or you might actually be seeing the actual moment in the movie. There’s something special about the way that we can capture our lives as they happen. I want to demonstrate that, that there’s no need to create, because what’s in front of us is already worth thinking about and worth trying to think through with the cinema.

 

FP: Has making the movies changed how you think about the people and places in the films at all?

 

IM: You can never choose your beginnings… But at the same time, I feel like I wouldn’t have been able to make the film if I hadn’t grew up there. It was just pure freedom. There was no culture that we had to follow, we could just invent anything we want… But in a sense, it was sort of a blank-slate feel. When I would travel, I realized, oh, if I grew up here… there’s this huge cultural legacy you feel sort of pressured to continue. If I talk to friends who live in Paris, they say, ‘Oh, this is so Paris, this is so French.’ If I say ‘This is so West End,’ what does that even mean? It’s so blank I can explore any idea I want… whereas other identity determinations force you in different directions.

 

FP: The Wavelengths program bills itself as showing work by filmmakers that is “redefining the art of cinema.” How does that characterization relate to your contribution?

 

IM: I think any cinema worthy of the name is an attempt to start again, just to start thinking again. You can’t always continue with the same… You become kitsch, right? That also comes back to the title of 88:88. That’s the time you see when your clock starts again.

 

FP: Do you think that viewers who aren’t familiar with philosophy will still be able to pick up on the philosophical ideas in there?

 

IM: The whole idea of cinema is that you don’t have to read. (Laughs.) That’s why a lot of people like going to the movies… (88:88 is) that immediate; it’s like listening to a friend speak. Most of my movies are just my friends, and they’re speaking and thinking. It’s not on (philosophers) Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Badiou. If there’s any of that in there, it’s through the way I cut the movie, through the way I frame it. But in the end, it should feel like being with friends. Because friendship is an important idea too, right?

 

FP: What’s the role of friendship in the film?

 

IM: When someone’s friends with someone else, it’s automatically truth and love and conflict, right? Everyone who’s in the movie, we’re friends in some sense. That’s the idea. You can’t think with someone if they’re not your friend, right? There’s a level of trust in sharing an idea, sharing an emotion, a minimal collectivity. There’s a home-movie aspect to the movies, some people say. You only show your home movies to your friends, so there’s that level of intimacy.

 

FP: What do you hope people get from the film?

 

IM: To be honest, if they sit with me for the entirety of the movie, that’s great. It’s like thinking with someone else, or thinking with a stranger for 65 minutes. To think with a stranger for that extent of time — maybe we won’t be strangers after that.