Hot on the heels of the recent announcement of the closing of the Granville 7 Cinemas at the end of November, an interview with Festival Cinemas owner Leonard Schein in yesterday's Globe and Mail about the ticking clock on our beloved Park Theatre, just around the corner from us on Cambie Street.
The former announcement puts the future of the Vancouver International Film Festival in doubt (though I would counsel Director Alan Franey to get on the phone to the International Village Cinemas asap). The latter announcement would be a blow to the residents of Cambie Village, who have a wonderful local 300-seat cinema in the neighbourhood that can show everything from 3-D blockbusters to indie art house films. Just this past Thanksgiving Monday Richard and I walked up to catch Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. I think the movie's been overhyped; but the physical experience of watching it was, as always, most pleasing.
With the Denman Cinema having recently closed, and before that the Hollywood, and the Ridge about to go as well, it would be a shame to lose one of the few remaining old-style, single-picture cinemas in the city.
Whither film in Vancouver?
P.
Showing posts with label Vancouver International Film Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vancouver International Film Festival. Show all posts
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Saturday, October 8, 2011
VIFF
Went to a fabulous Saturday morning screening at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival. The film was First Position, a documentary by Bess Kargman about six young ballet dancers ranging in ages from 9-17 preparing for the finals of the Youth America Grand Prix, an elite competition that awards prizes in various age categories, but also, for the older dancers, scholarships at some of the finest schools around the world, and/or contracts at professional companies.
The lead-up to the finals and, before them, each dancer's individual regional semi-final, is--in the best tradition of similar performance documentaries--edge-of-the-seat gripping. However, what sets Kargman's film apart is not just her obvious empathy for each of the young personalities at the heart of this work, but her commitment to documenting the tremendous sacrifices they and their families are prepared to make in order to achieve their goals. And, mercifully in that respect, this is a rare example where all of the storylines have a happy ending.
Not so for the residents of the famous artist studios above Carnegie Hall, who are the subject of Josef "Birdman" Astor's Lost Bohemia, and whose unsuccessful battle to stave off eviction by corporate managers of the performance space below in search of extra office space ends up being a searing indictment of New York's larger willful neglect of its cultural past: in this case, both Andrew Carnegie's original vision for the building he endowed, and the collective artistic legacy of all the famous residents who have lived and worked and studied in its spaces.
One of those residents was Bill Cunningham, the New York Times photographer who was the subject of last year's wonderful documentary Bill Cunningham's New York. Seeing Astor's film this past Monday at VIFF was a perfect bookend to the earlier film, because it fleshes out the Carnegie relocation drama in greater depth, as well as letting some of the personalities we meet in the Cunningham film (including the incomparable Duchess) take centre stage in their own right.
Together with Pina this past Wednesday, that brings the grand total of attended screenings at this 30th anniversary edition of VIFF to three--a far cry from my original ambitions to buy a matinee pass this year and see as much as possible. I do hope to get to Alan Bennett and the Habit of Art tomorrow, a behind-the-scenes look at the staging of Bennett's play about a fictional encounter between W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten, which I saw at the National Theatre in London in May 2010, and which I briefly blogged about here.
But I might not get to blog about the film, as we're off early next week for another trip to London (and Frankfurt and Paris and NYC). Lots of performance and culture are on the agenda (as well as a couple of research archives), and I will have my new iPad with me. However, given all the connectivity issues I've had to deal with in the past when traveling in Europe (where it's hard to find free WiFi), and the general pressure of finding time in the day to blog, I may take a bit of a hiatus from posting, saving a global summary of the performance highlights for when I return to Vancouver in mid-November.
Fair warning to the two or three people who might actually follow this blog with any regularity.
P.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Re-Membering Pina
Yesterday afternoon Richard and I attended a sold-out screening of Pina, Wim Wenders' 3D homage to the dance-theatre legacy of Pina Bausch. The film was playing just up the street at the Park as part of a special presentation by this year's Vancouver International Film Festival.
This dialectic demands as much of an emotional investment from Bausch’s audience as it does from her performers. One cannot sit in passive anticipation of pretty steps at a Bausch premiere. Rather, in often simultaneous scenes of serial repetition one can expect to be assaulted by an equally serial (and often simultaneous) set of affects—shame, joy, anger, disgust, hate, love, fear, pity, tenderness—as they replay, in particular, a social history of the gendered body. That body, Bausch makes clear, is always at the (physical) mercy of the other; but the vulnerability, she also suggests, is shared. And so in her work Bausch is relentless in soliciting our attention and awareness not just of the bodies and bodily behavior on stage, but of our own. Again, this happens mostly on an emotive rather than a cognitive plane. Even when we cannot make sense of Bausch’s work, Norbert Servos claims, we still maintain a “’sense connection’” to it. Even when we cannot explain our response to a given piece or sequence, we are still responding. In this way, as Servos also suggests, the boundary between rehearsal and performance dissolves, and just as the performers lay bare their creative process on stage, so must we in the audience give up something of ourselves (energy, autonomy, objectivity, distance) in our reception of it. It is an intensely co-dependent relationship, to say the least. In the world of contemporary dance, one tends either to love Bausch’s work or to hate it. One rarely remains indifferent. And just as the fierce loyalty Bausch inspired in her dancers has left them understandably bereft in the wake of her sudden death in 2009, so have many of her fans been plunged into a prolonged period of mourning.
How is it that I have come to share in this grief? I, who have only ever experienced Bausch’s work via video or grainy YouTube clips or the thick description of print reviews and criticism—why have I been so affected by her death? And in ways that, at least to me, far exceed the more temporary and vicarious forms of mourning one is wont to perform upon the passing of a great artist? These questions are what initially motivated the writing of my essay on Bausch and dance-theatre as a form, and they are also ones I took with me into yesterday’s film.
I am unquestionably biased, but I do honestly think that Wenders has crafted an exemplary tribute to Bausch, one that manages simultaneously to capture and document some of her most iconic works and, as crucially, to allow the performers who danced them to express (in words and in movement) the range and intensity of their feelings for their lost mentor. Those performers span virtually the entirety of Bausch’s 35 years in Wuppertal, with veterans like Meryl Tankard, Josephine Anne Endicott, and Dominique Mercy offering up their testimonials and dancing some of their signature roles (including Mercy in his tutu from Nelken) alongside the younger, newer members of the company, a polyglot rainbow united in their love for Bausch and their total immersion in her movement vocabulary. It’s worth noting, in this regard, that Bausch’s death actually came in the middle of filming, and so the tone of the work obviously changed. Wenders’ unifying conceit between dance excerpts is to shoot a close-up head shot of each of the featured dancers, with their words about Bausch (spoken in their native language) heard in voice-over and subtitled accordingly.
But it is the dance that takes centre stage, made fleshly and impossibly intimate thanks to the 3D technology. Wenders' use of 3D never feels gimmicky or intrusive. Rather he uses it in the same way that he uses various exterior spaces in and around Wuppertal as backdrops: to make Bausch’s choreography pop, to leap off the screen and grab hold of us kinaesthetically—in other words, to move us (physically and emotionally), as the best live dance is meant to do. In this regard, the filmie in me was surprised at just how restrained some of Wenders’ shot-making was. In pieces like Vollmond, where the dancers famously frolic in ankle-deep water and leap from a giant rock stage left, there are lots of pans and quick edits, and the drops of water from when the dancers kick it or throw it seem to land in our laps. Yet in the classic chamber work Café Müller, Wenders is quite content for his camera to remain static for long periods, letting us take in that work’s famous chair-cluttered mise-en-scène. And in the opening “chorus line” from Kontakthof (which I was pleased to see featured not only in its professional Wuppertal company version, but also those that Bausch set on senior citizens and teenagers from the community), Wenders shoots in long shot, so that we actually see the seats from the intradiagetic auditorium, an uncanny visual experience in 3D, as those seats necessarily start to merge with the those in the Park theatre, to the point where I couldn’t tell at times whether movement in the rows was happening onscreen or off.
I can’t possibly do justice to all of the works from the Bausch repertoire featured in the film, but I will say that it was wonderful that Wenders begins with a big long excerpt from Bausch’s Rite of Spring. This work, from 1975, was the last one that Bausch created in a “classically balletic” style, but also announced a clear shift in her aesthetic: the peaty soil on the stage over which the dancers move; the explicitly gendered politics of the work; the emotional demands it places on performers and audience members alike. Wenders’ film traffics in those demands as well, not least in those film-within-a-film sequences when he brings both groups together to watch ghostly apparitions of Bausch dancing and creating.
Before her untimely death in 2009, Bausch--from her nowheresville outpost at the state theatre in Wuppertal, an industrial town in northwestern Germany--revolutionized contemporary dance: in part by jettisoning completely the core principles of dance composition; by forging a company that was as much a family as it was a working collective; and by making an emotional connection with her audiences (whether positive or negative) central to her aesthetic. Let me explain a little better what I mean by these three prongs by reproducing here the first three paragraphs of an essay I recently completed on Bausch and her contributions to contemporary dance-theatre:
When, soon after taking over the directorship of Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1973, Pina Bausch famously commented that she was less interested in how people moved than in what moved them, she was first and foremost announcing her own choreographic break with conventional dance composition as the virtuosic arrangement and execution of steps. Yet she was also reciprocally hailing audience members whose engagements with dance are deeply felt, but who may not be able to articulate precisely what about the movement they have watched has so transported (or alienated) them. In both instances the different limits placed upon access to or deployment of a technical dance vocabulary to say all there is to say in or of a given work is offset by a shared emotional vocabulary, one that is still profoundly, viscerally, corporeal, but that refuses to abstract, divide between, or pit against the other, performers’ and audience members’ subjective experiences of the work. Thus, starting in the late 1970s, with works like Blaubart (1977) and Kontakthof (1978), Bausch developed a new rehearsal process, one roughly akin to the emotional memory exercises of a Stanislavski or a Strasberg. That is, she threw away her dancers’ safety net of having movement patterns set directly upon their bodies, and asked them instead to first respond as an ensemble to a series of questions or prompts that could cover everything from personal relationships, memories, and moods to social situations, customs, and behaviors. The dancers’ responses might involve or incorporate movement, but just as frequently they took the form of stories told, or of images seized upon, or of objects proffered. These elements, some jettisoned, others refined and expanded, would then function as the basic building blocks for the piece, its emotional architecture. Indeed, the affective force of Bausch’s dance-theatre comes as much from its reveling in theatrical expressiveness—scenography and design, costumes, music and sound, spoken text—as it does from its eschewing of some of the more repressive canons of dance.
This dialectic demands as much of an emotional investment from Bausch’s audience as it does from her performers. One cannot sit in passive anticipation of pretty steps at a Bausch premiere. Rather, in often simultaneous scenes of serial repetition one can expect to be assaulted by an equally serial (and often simultaneous) set of affects—shame, joy, anger, disgust, hate, love, fear, pity, tenderness—as they replay, in particular, a social history of the gendered body. That body, Bausch makes clear, is always at the (physical) mercy of the other; but the vulnerability, she also suggests, is shared. And so in her work Bausch is relentless in soliciting our attention and awareness not just of the bodies and bodily behavior on stage, but of our own. Again, this happens mostly on an emotive rather than a cognitive plane. Even when we cannot make sense of Bausch’s work, Norbert Servos claims, we still maintain a “’sense connection’” to it. Even when we cannot explain our response to a given piece or sequence, we are still responding. In this way, as Servos also suggests, the boundary between rehearsal and performance dissolves, and just as the performers lay bare their creative process on stage, so must we in the audience give up something of ourselves (energy, autonomy, objectivity, distance) in our reception of it. It is an intensely co-dependent relationship, to say the least. In the world of contemporary dance, one tends either to love Bausch’s work or to hate it. One rarely remains indifferent. And just as the fierce loyalty Bausch inspired in her dancers has left them understandably bereft in the wake of her sudden death in 2009, so have many of her fans been plunged into a prolonged period of mourning.
How is it that I have come to share in this grief? I, who have only ever experienced Bausch’s work via video or grainy YouTube clips or the thick description of print reviews and criticism—why have I been so affected by her death? And in ways that, at least to me, far exceed the more temporary and vicarious forms of mourning one is wont to perform upon the passing of a great artist? These questions are what initially motivated the writing of my essay on Bausch and dance-theatre as a form, and they are also ones I took with me into yesterday’s film.
I am unquestionably biased, but I do honestly think that Wenders has crafted an exemplary tribute to Bausch, one that manages simultaneously to capture and document some of her most iconic works and, as crucially, to allow the performers who danced them to express (in words and in movement) the range and intensity of their feelings for their lost mentor. Those performers span virtually the entirety of Bausch’s 35 years in Wuppertal, with veterans like Meryl Tankard, Josephine Anne Endicott, and Dominique Mercy offering up their testimonials and dancing some of their signature roles (including Mercy in his tutu from Nelken) alongside the younger, newer members of the company, a polyglot rainbow united in their love for Bausch and their total immersion in her movement vocabulary. It’s worth noting, in this regard, that Bausch’s death actually came in the middle of filming, and so the tone of the work obviously changed. Wenders’ unifying conceit between dance excerpts is to shoot a close-up head shot of each of the featured dancers, with their words about Bausch (spoken in their native language) heard in voice-over and subtitled accordingly.
But it is the dance that takes centre stage, made fleshly and impossibly intimate thanks to the 3D technology. Wenders' use of 3D never feels gimmicky or intrusive. Rather he uses it in the same way that he uses various exterior spaces in and around Wuppertal as backdrops: to make Bausch’s choreography pop, to leap off the screen and grab hold of us kinaesthetically—in other words, to move us (physically and emotionally), as the best live dance is meant to do. In this regard, the filmie in me was surprised at just how restrained some of Wenders’ shot-making was. In pieces like Vollmond, where the dancers famously frolic in ankle-deep water and leap from a giant rock stage left, there are lots of pans and quick edits, and the drops of water from when the dancers kick it or throw it seem to land in our laps. Yet in the classic chamber work Café Müller, Wenders is quite content for his camera to remain static for long periods, letting us take in that work’s famous chair-cluttered mise-en-scène. And in the opening “chorus line” from Kontakthof (which I was pleased to see featured not only in its professional Wuppertal company version, but also those that Bausch set on senior citizens and teenagers from the community), Wenders shoots in long shot, so that we actually see the seats from the intradiagetic auditorium, an uncanny visual experience in 3D, as those seats necessarily start to merge with the those in the Park theatre, to the point where I couldn’t tell at times whether movement in the rows was happening onscreen or off.
I can’t possibly do justice to all of the works from the Bausch repertoire featured in the film, but I will say that it was wonderful that Wenders begins with a big long excerpt from Bausch’s Rite of Spring. This work, from 1975, was the last one that Bausch created in a “classically balletic” style, but also announced a clear shift in her aesthetic: the peaty soil on the stage over which the dancers move; the explicitly gendered politics of the work; the emotional demands it places on performers and audience members alike. Wenders’ film traffics in those demands as well, not least in those film-within-a-film sequences when he brings both groups together to watch ghostly apparitions of Bausch dancing and creating.
I can think of no greater memorial to the woman and her work.
P.
P.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Getting Angry at VIFF
Although Reginald Rose's play Twelve Angry Men (itself adapted from Rose's own 1954 teleplay for CBS Studio One) was revived successfully on Broadway in 2004, most of us are probably more familiar with Sidney Lumet's 1957 movie version, starring Henry Fonda as the famously dissenting juror. A classic liberal drama about prejudice and society's quickness to judge (the accused is Spanish-American), the play and film also function as sharp allegories of the intersection between class and masculinity in 1950s Cold War America.
Now imagine transporting all of that to a prison in Lebanon. The documentary 12 Angry Lebanese, which I saw yesterday at the Vancouver International Film Festival, chronicles director Zeina Daccache's year-long project working with 45 inmates in Lebanon's Roumieh Prison on a staging of Rose's play. A proponent of drama therapy as a way of transforming the lives of disadvantaged and marginalized individuals, Daccache is at once an inspiring human being and a terrifying theatre director, cajoling, haranguing and generally browbeating a motley collection of "murderers, drug dealers, and rapists" into putting on a production that is not merely competent but artistically rewarding for audiences and actors alike. In so doing, she manages not just to effect concrete social reform (in helping to jumpstart a stalled bill on early prison release), but also to restore a sense of purpose and self in her actor-inmates' lives, some of whom are serving life sentences or even sitting on death row.
But what is so amazing about the film record of this journey is that it gives equal weight to the social message and the artistic process, juxtaposing interviews with the prisoners' about their lives and the galvanizing effects of Daccache's production with fascinating scenes of the men rehearsing Rose's play and building additional elements for the larger evening's performance, of which the play will serve as the climax. To this end, the men work with Daccache in developing individual monologues about their lives and the crimes they committed, original music to accompany the production, dance and movement sequences, and even a bit of drag. Throughout, Daccache is solicitous and stern, funny and fierce, tender and terrifying in equal measure. She's not afraid to yell at her actors until they get their line readings right, nor even to fire one of them two weeks before they open because of his inability to commit to the project one hundred percent. And then there's the scene when she learns that Mustafa, who is to play Juror #5, has been released from prison--five days before they open! As much as she's elated for Mustafa, there's the little matter of finding a replacement. She calls on Capo, who up to this point has remained somewhat apart from the proceedings, only willing to take on a backstage role. That Daccache not only convinces Capo to agree to the part, and to memorizing his lines with the aid of his cellmate at night, but further solicits from him a bravura performance, is a testament to her uncompromising vision. As the VIFF program guide puts it, Daccache essentially is the star of her own documentary.
If I see nothing else of any note at this year's Festival, this film alone has made the experience truly memorable.
P.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Playing Catch-Up
It’s been a while since my last post—no doubt this will continue to be one of the perils of trying to maintain this blog while in full-on teaching mode and, as at present, also trying to juggle home renovations.
A lot has happened in that time, from Mayor Gregor’s announcement yesterday of Vancouver’s rebranding as the Silicone Valley of the new Green Economy to the arrest of Roman Polanski. Rather than trying to summarize it all, let me instead draw people’s attention to one important bit of political news, and two favourite returning cultural events in Vancouver.
The political news concerns the public hearings currently being conducted across the province by the Finance Committee of the BC government. These hearings were, of course, announced with very little notice, and the first of them, held this past Monday at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue here in Vancouver, left members of the arts community scrambling to make their voices heard in all their fulsomeness and all their fury. (I’m told representatives accomplished both tasks admirably.) I reprint the schedule for the remaining hearings below, and I urge concerned citizens in relevant communities to attend and make their own voices heard—and not just about the dreaded HST! If you are unable to make one of the meetings (as in my case), you can also fill out an on-line survey, or make a written, video, or audio submission. Here is the link to do so: https://www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations/index.htm.
The deadline for public input is October 23, 2009. There is still time, before the government finalizes its September budget update, to get the Liberals to reconsider their cuts to the arts. I urge all who can to tell Campbell, Krueger, Hansen and their cronies why culture matters. Again, here is the schedule for the remaining public hearings:
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 8:30 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Place: Douglas Fir Committee Room 226, Parliament Buildings, Victoria, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures Strathcona, #200-580 Duncan Ave, Courtenay, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures East Kootenay, 110A Slater Road NW, Cranbrook, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9: 00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Commumity Futures Peace Laird, 904-102 A Ave, Dawson Creek, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Summit Room, Hudson Bay Lodge, 3251 E. Highway 16, Smithers, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Skylight Ballroom, Ramada Hotel, 444 George Street, Prince George, British Colimbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Somerset Room, South Thompson Inn & Conference Centre, 3438 Shuswap Road, Kamloops, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Thompson/Shuswap Room, Woodfire Conference Centre at the Best Western Inn, 2400 Highway 97 North, Kelowna, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009
Place: Guildford B, Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel, 15269 104th Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Now on to some of the remaining fruits of arts and culture in this province. It’s the beginning of October (where did the last month go?), and so that means that hot on the heels of the Fringe the Vancouver International Film Festival is underway (as of yesterday, in fact). I haven’t yet had a chance to peruse the program in any depth, but my money so far is on Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues’s To Die Like a Man, which follows veteran Lisbon trans performer Tonia as she deals with younger competition, a petulant boyfriend, and her estranged son. The festival runs until October 16th.
Finally, DanceHouse, as part of its 2009-10 international dance series at the Playhouse (to which Richard and I have bought season passes, and which begins this November with the Hofesh Shechter Company) is bringing back its very popular "Speaking of Dance" series at the Vancouver Public Library. The talks are Tuesdays, from 7:30-9pm, in the Alice MacKay Room, on the lower level of the VPL, 350 West Georgia Street. The line-up of speakers is as follows:
October 13, 2009
Speakers
> Kaija Pepper, Dance Critic & Author
> Janet Smith, Dance Critic & Arts Editor, Georgia Straight
November 17, 2009
Speakers
> Santa Aloi, Professor Emerita, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
> Claire French, Independent Choreographer & Dance Teacher
January 19, 2010
Speakers
> Martha Carter, Director & Choreographer, marta marta HoP
> Emily Molnar, Interim Artistic Director, Ballet BC
April 6, 2010
Speakers
> Day Helesic, Co-Artistic Producer & Choreographer, MovEnt
> Rob Kitsos, Assistant Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
That’s it for now. More news soon.
P.
A lot has happened in that time, from Mayor Gregor’s announcement yesterday of Vancouver’s rebranding as the Silicone Valley of the new Green Economy to the arrest of Roman Polanski. Rather than trying to summarize it all, let me instead draw people’s attention to one important bit of political news, and two favourite returning cultural events in Vancouver.
The political news concerns the public hearings currently being conducted across the province by the Finance Committee of the BC government. These hearings were, of course, announced with very little notice, and the first of them, held this past Monday at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue here in Vancouver, left members of the arts community scrambling to make their voices heard in all their fulsomeness and all their fury. (I’m told representatives accomplished both tasks admirably.) I reprint the schedule for the remaining hearings below, and I urge concerned citizens in relevant communities to attend and make their own voices heard—and not just about the dreaded HST! If you are unable to make one of the meetings (as in my case), you can also fill out an on-line survey, or make a written, video, or audio submission. Here is the link to do so: https://www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations/index.htm.
The deadline for public input is October 23, 2009. There is still time, before the government finalizes its September budget update, to get the Liberals to reconsider their cuts to the arts. I urge all who can to tell Campbell, Krueger, Hansen and their cronies why culture matters. Again, here is the schedule for the remaining public hearings:
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 8:30 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Place: Douglas Fir Committee Room 226, Parliament Buildings, Victoria, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures Strathcona, #200-580 Duncan Ave, Courtenay, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures East Kootenay, 110A Slater Road NW, Cranbrook, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9: 00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Commumity Futures Peace Laird, 904-102 A Ave, Dawson Creek, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Summit Room, Hudson Bay Lodge, 3251 E. Highway 16, Smithers, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Skylight Ballroom, Ramada Hotel, 444 George Street, Prince George, British Colimbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Somerset Room, South Thompson Inn & Conference Centre, 3438 Shuswap Road, Kamloops, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Thompson/Shuswap Room, Woodfire Conference Centre at the Best Western Inn, 2400 Highway 97 North, Kelowna, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009
Place: Guildford B, Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel, 15269 104th Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Now on to some of the remaining fruits of arts and culture in this province. It’s the beginning of October (where did the last month go?), and so that means that hot on the heels of the Fringe the Vancouver International Film Festival is underway (as of yesterday, in fact). I haven’t yet had a chance to peruse the program in any depth, but my money so far is on Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues’s To Die Like a Man, which follows veteran Lisbon trans performer Tonia as she deals with younger competition, a petulant boyfriend, and her estranged son. The festival runs until October 16th.
Finally, DanceHouse, as part of its 2009-10 international dance series at the Playhouse (to which Richard and I have bought season passes, and which begins this November with the Hofesh Shechter Company) is bringing back its very popular "Speaking of Dance" series at the Vancouver Public Library. The talks are Tuesdays, from 7:30-9pm, in the Alice MacKay Room, on the lower level of the VPL, 350 West Georgia Street. The line-up of speakers is as follows:
October 13, 2009
Speakers
> Kaija Pepper, Dance Critic & Author
> Janet Smith, Dance Critic & Arts Editor, Georgia Straight
November 17, 2009
Speakers
> Santa Aloi, Professor Emerita, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
> Claire French, Independent Choreographer & Dance Teacher
January 19, 2010
Speakers
> Martha Carter, Director & Choreographer, marta marta HoP
> Emily Molnar, Interim Artistic Director, Ballet BC
April 6, 2010
Speakers
> Day Helesic, Co-Artistic Producer & Choreographer, MovEnt
> Rob Kitsos, Assistant Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
That’s it for now. More news soon.
P.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Whither BC: The Sequel
As expected, most arts and culture organizations (along with several other social programs) in the province received letters last week advising them that previously promised revenues from BC gaming revenues were being withdrawn owing to the ballooning deficit and Finance Minister Colin Hansen's revised budget projections (read the Vancouver Sun story here). This despite the fact that most of these organizations had already gone ahead and programmed their seasons in anticipation of the funds they had been contractually guaranteed.
As Lorna Brown noted in a recent email sent to the community urging people to join a Facebook campaign protesting the cuts, combined with the cuts to the BC Arts Council announced in last February's budget, this amounts to a de facto 75% cut to arts and culture in the province. Where else in the world would this be allowed to happen?! We live in a largely information-based and creative economy: why aren't, therefore, the creative industries duly rewarded with stimulus spending the likes of which was lavished on so many other dead or dying industries? When will the people of this province wise up to the dirty tricks of this government? Everyone's in an uproar about the HST (as well they should be--another kick in the pants to arts and culture in the form of higher ticket prices); but this is an administration that has gleefully--and with impunity--lied to us before. And that continues to do so (BC Rail, anyone? Missing emails?).
Of course, the Liberals are hoping the outrage over all of this will blow over as a result of the massive party that will be the Olympics. But what kind of party will it be with no money for the artists and creative producers who are best positioned to showcase the city culturally? I vote for riding this wave of anger right on into the Olympics themselves, letting the world know in no uncertain terms just what price this government puts on the second pillar of the Olympic Movement.
In the meantime, the public must do all it can to support the organizations whose programs and livelihoods are now imperiled. The best way we can do that is by going to see their work. The Vancouver Fringe Festival starts next week--I've just bought my Frequent Fringer Pass. Soon after that it will be time for the Vancouver International Film Festival. Though there's the little matter of teaching to contend with (the sabbatical is officially over today-boo hoo!), I hope to attend as many films as possible. And The Dance Centre's 2009/10 program just came in the mail today. It's chock-a-block with exciting offerings, starting with my SFU colleague Rob Kitsos's new work, Wake, next Friday and Saturday (Sept. 11-12).
Dig deep into your pockets, people, and buy a ticket to these and other events. And, since we can't vote Campbell and the Liberals out of office for another four years, consider doing so to the federal Conservatives instead. I hear Michael Ignatieff has just withdrawn support from Harper's minority government, so I guess that means we're headed to the polls once again this fall.
P.
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