Recto/Verso Week 2 Activities

fofa_132011

JULY 11 - AUGUST 5

RECTO/VERSO

A summer spatial intensive

WEEK 2

THIS WEEK:

July 20 - 7 PM Performance with Bronwen Moen, Ste-Catherine Street Sculpture Garden Courtyard

July 22 - 8 PM Outdoor Screening + Vernissage, Ste-Catherine Street Sculpture Garden Courtyard

Ongoing - "Tea Time Interviews" with Sally Lee

Ongoing - Declarations, Invitations, Rearrangements, Documentation, Ste-Catherine Street Vitrine

EVENT:

OUTDOOR SCREENING
+ VERNISSAGE | July 22, 8PM

Galerie FOFA Gallery launches the Recto/Verso summer intensive studio with a series of NFB shorts programmed by Graeme Langdon followed by a reception with works by Louis-Alexandre Douesnard-Malo, Corina Ilea, Sally Lee, and Bronwen Moen. This is the first of four weekly screenings to be held in the Ste-Catherine Street Sculpture Garden Courtyard alongside the ongoing actions and activities of Recto/Verso participants and guests.

Film still, 21-87, Arthur Lipsett, Courtesy of the NFB/ONF

Location:

Ste-Catherine Street Sculpture Garden Courtard*

*In case of rain projections will take place in the gallery.

FOFA Gallery, Concordia University

1515 Ste. Catherine Street W., EV 1-715, Metro Guy-Concordia
Montreal, Quebec

Cost:
Free of charge. Everyone welcome.

ABOUT THE SCREENING

This screening aims to give some sense of the formal experimentation at the NFB during the first half of its so-called Golden Era. A number of NFB films from this period – and especially those produced by the Unit B – are particularly suited to this summer intensive studio in which participants experiment with ways of using the particular spaces and places of the gallery. For at the NFB during this time, teams of filmmakers made a habit of questioning cinematic codes and the specialist practices of the Hollywood model. Within this culture of collaboration, filmmakers moved fluidly between posts in the writer’s, director’s, editor’s, and producer’s chairs. Not surprisingly, many of the films produced during this period explicitly question the orthodoxies of earlier animated and documentary film. With this first screening of the series, we hope to highlight the aesthetic, social, and political significance of the NFB’s work acrdoss the recto and verso of cinema: divided as it is by the "4th wall."

Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway Switchman | Roman Kroitor, 1953, EN, courtesy of the NFB

In winter the rail-switches on streetcar tracks in Winnipeg froze and jammed with freezing mud and snow. Keeping them clean, whatever the weather, was the job of the switchman. In this film about a bygone era, Paul Tomkowicz, Polish-born Canadian, talks about his job and his life in Canada. He compares his new life in the city of Winnipeg to the life he knew in Poland, marvelling at the sort of liberty Canadians enjoy.

21-87 | Arthur Lipsett, 1964 EN, courtesy of the NFB

A wry commentary on machine-dominated man, the man to whom nothing matters, who waits for chance to call his number. The film is a succession of many unrelated views of the passing crowd.

September Five at St-Henri | Hubert Aquin, 1962, FR, courtesy of the NFB

Vignettes of life in a Montréal working-class district, this film offers a host of impressions, from dawn to midnight, on the day school opens. A mother fussing over children, a father's enforced idleness, teenage boys clowning, young lovers dallying--the unposed quality of life.

Voisins/Neighbours | Norman McLaren, 1952, courtesy of the NFB

Norman McLaren here employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower. Film without words.

+++FOFA Gallery would like to express our gratitude to the National Film Board of Canada for their generosity, materials and support for our screening series.+++

WEEK 2 PHOTO DOCUMENTATION

Outdoor Screening #1 - "The 4th Wall"