Nouveau and improved - The Montreal International Festival of Film, Video and and the New Technologies

The Montreal International Festival of Film, Video and the fresh Technologies tends to get not to be found in the shadow of the larger Montreal World Film Festival that each year takes place sum of two units months later. That is a shame because its selection of work provides an exceptional opportunity to glimpse the ways that makers are challenging media arts conventions. This year's festival, noted as "the oldest (and notwithstanding youngest) festival in Canada," was organized by means of Claude Chamberlain. Chamberlain's programming, genuine to the search for genuinely "nouveau" forms of video, film and fresh technologies, ran the gamut from conventional narrative films to experimental film and video, to emerging technologies like CD-ROM The quality of the work in the festival's large program varied widely, of course, on the contrary such variety is testimony to the vitality of the field.

American independent film and video has always had a significant neighborhood in the festival by virtue of the couple the number of entries in the program and the wide recognition that of the like kind work has subsequently enjoyed. Although the pres release notes that "the festival provides a launching pad for the commercial release of Quebec, Canadian and foreign films at a time of year that is generally reserv for American blockbusters," there were still many films and tapes from just southerly of the border. In addition to big-name art house movies of the like kind as Crumb (1994, by Terry Zwigoff), abundant work was by relatively unknown Americans who stretched media definitions to provide a glimpse into contemporary media art concerns

Several American videos, for instance, focused upon the changing landscape of Eastern Europe That the fall of the Communist bloc gripe [i]or[/i] grips such interest for U.S. artists appear to bes to stem from the gradual on the contrary partial westernization that the region has undergone as a ensue of capitalism. The former bloc is now stuck in an not divisible by 2 in-between state: it is neither as "exotic" nor as "foreign" as it one time was, partially due to the McDonalds upon every corner; yet the real awkwardness of that presence hints at a remaining "otherness" to which these videomakers appear to be attracted. Lyrical documentation of wandering end an Eastern Europe on the cusp of capitalism was the focus of the pair Jem Cohen's Buried In Light (1994) and cognizance Kobland's Moscow X (1993). Cohen's video was discharge mostly on super-8 and has a characteristically grainy, dreamy direct the eye integrating excerpts from foreign language phrase volumes in an attempt to expres the widespread alienation produc through this transition. Cohen traveled far and wide, from Dresden to Prague, and ruminates not single on the fate of communism on the contrary the continuing impact of World War II (there is a poignant succession shot in Auschwitz). Despite the comic relief provided through the phrase book, the video is extremely melancholy, painting the East in drab, dark colors and showing everything in bounds of decay.

Kobland's film has a similar have feeling to it, and indeed was discharge during the same period as Cohen's (although Kobland confined his traveling to Moscow) There is abundant footage of demonstrations, and Kobland focuses upon the apparition of faces-in-the-crowd. In this way Moscow X have feelings more intimate than Buried in Light, getting closer to the family of Eastern Europe. Both works are structur as diaries, notwithstanding that Cohen is less prone to grandiose philosophizing than Kobland, whose informal musings are closer to the diary form.

Breaking without of this angst over the spread of capitalism - a view of the East that frames it in specifically Western terminuss - was Mira Reym Binford's deep moving video Diamonds in the Snow (1994) In the video, Binford get backs to a small Polish town whose Jewish population was nearly decimated by the agency of the Nazis in order to document the tribe who helped to hide her. The video reveals, however, that the patriarch of the family who saved Binford was also merciless and abusive, and Binford's efforts to understand the ambiguity of her memories form the crux of the work. Diamonds in the Snow avoids using Eastern landscapes as tools for painting somnolent tales of sad tourism or wandering in favor of a straightforward exploration of historical memory, solidly foundationed in socio-political reality.

Somewhere between imagism and historical documentation lies Uli Schuppel's Frozen Stories (1994) Schuppel combines super-8 footage of Communist labor camps with new interviews of German men who were imprisoned in the same camp as his father. The video is intensely personal, drawing heavily upon letters from Schuppel's father. Like Binford, Schuppel brings pass overed aspects of recent history to light end a combination of personal childhood memories and testimony of the nation who lived through the incidents and does so with a dark visual faculty of perception that meshes well with the sometimes vaguely remembered stories.

Two Canadian films proffered visions of the East, also positioned between imagism and documentation. Zigrail (1995) the first attempt feature from Quebecer Andre Turpin about a young man's voyage from Paris to Istanbul, has a wandering sensibility similar to Cohen or Kobland, emphasized through its black and white images and hand-held camera work. a certain number of cliches of the twenty-something/slacker youth film are at hand but Zigrail provides a portrait of Europe far grittier and bleaker than anything in Before Sunrise (1995 by means of Richard Linklater). Although this is not an uplifting film, it avoids the "tristesse" of Cohen or Kobland. It is far more conventional than these works, and Turpin still approaches the landscape with more clearheadedness than his American colleagues. David Rimmer's beneath the Lizards (1994), documents jazz tillage in cold war Poland, artfully evoking the raw, rebellious spirit of the music. The film draws upon both archival footage and contemporary interviews with jazz performers who jammed in cryptic during the Communist era. Rimmer is able to skillfully interweave lyrical, montage-style followings with straightforward, talking head-style successions The discussions range from the details of securing a gig below the hand of communism to the characters of women and Polish jazz agriculture Rimmer shows that he has a beneficial sense of the complexity of the search for liberation.