The Sunday morning streets are quiet, empty and very cold as we make our way over to Florian’s for a tasty breakfast and a tour of his terrific collection of small format film cameras, lenses and super cool books like Super 8 Scope. Not only does he offer to loan us any piece of equipment we like, Florian also lets us borrow two bikes and even pumps up the tires! Oh, and even though he’s facilitating a day-long cinema symposium tomorrow, he also presents us with this sweet film he made on Saturday afternoon at the EPFC Pop Up at Blaak 10. I don’t think the man ever sleeps.
Next stop: Kids On The Floor at the Schouwburg Theatre where we’re going a Movies n’ Music interactive workshop for 25 tots between the ages of 3 and 9. In the span of two hours, we create a Kiddie Kazoo Orchestra and and perform an improvisational soundtrack to a Charlie Chaplin Super 8 silent, watch the Sound We See on the big screen, sing some songs, do some interpretive dancing, and make a short stop-motion animation film. More coffee, please!
After checking out a brief part of Beijing 2003, the 150-hour video installation by Chinese filmmaker Ai Weiwei that brings back some memories from July 2010, we meet our friend Martha Otte for dinner and catch up on the latest on TIFF: Tromso, Norway’s International Film Festival of which Martha is the Director. We were fortunate enough to be in Tromso back in June 2007 for the NUFF Global Youth Film Festival at the invitation of Martha’s husband Hermann Gruel but we vow to one day return for TIFF which takes place in mid-January and features an outdoor screen made of ice!
All plans of getting to bed at a decent hour are thrown at the window when we stop by Worm at 10 pm for an expanded cinema performance by Alex McKenzie (his Vancouver microcinema, The Blinding Light, was a big early influence on EPFC) only to find out he’s not on until 11:30 which of course turns out to really be 1:30, er, make that 2 am. The wait is definitely worth it. Alex’s piece, entitled Log Book, transports us to a magical cinematic world through the exquisite interplay of abstractions and images captured with a hand-cranked camera on homemade emulsion and projected at various speeds and sizes with loving precision and a lulling soundscape. Shot on Lasqueti Island, British Columbia, the film leads me back in time and into my future.. homesick, hopeful, exhilarated and humbled all at once. Breathtaking.
Hi Lisa,
Sounds like you two are having a great time. You guys are way too busy, slow down & take it easy.
Love, Dad