Victoria Film Festival Archives | Otaku No Culture

[Victoria Film Festival ’14] Behind the Scenes: Cyber Seniors. An Interview with Director Saffron Cassaday

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

The documentary Cyber-Seniors is getting special sneak previews at film festivals around the world, and at the Victoria Film Festival, it screened February 11th. An added show will also happen on the 15th. On May 2, it will be making its theatrical premiere.

Saffron Cassiday

For the young actress turned director, Saffron Cassaday, this film marks her debut. Many stories are intertwined here: from explaining the origins of what the film title is about — an education program that started in Toronto for showing seniors how to use a computer to effectively communicate — to what these people can do with it, there is even a personal note added to this film.

When Saffron’s sister, Macaulee, and grandfather were diagnosed with cancer during production, that did not bring making this film to halt. Their journey is also chronicled. Having started two years ago, the teaching program called Cyber-Seniors was well underway. When medical issues only showed how effective online communication works for two very close family members, the ties that bind are expressed online too. But that should not stop people from meeting for real.

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[Victoria Film Festival ’14] A Story of Children and Film, a Documentary Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

story_of_children_and_film_xlg

The documentary, A Story of Children and Film might be better off named The Role of Children in Cinema, and it can easily become a textbook for the next cinema studies course at a university campus if Mark Cousins, Irish director and occasional critic, wanted it. He shares to the world his excellent knowledge of this subgenre.

In Cousins’ video essay, he delves into a nearly complete history starting from Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921) to Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and wraps it around his own little video shoot of his visiting neice and nephew playing with a marble toy set. The juxtapositions he makes are interesting. When he delves into actual cinema, a few movies, like Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) is missed for good reason – it’s an adaption of a book. But with more than a century’s worth of movies to sift through, this narrator successfully finds the movies from many countries (25 in fact) and representative of different eras to make his point with. He also uses it in a compelling juxtaposition when he includes footage of his neice and nephew visiting his flat and playing with a marble run.

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[Victoria Film Festival ’14] Introducing Guy Maddin

The Do It Yourself (DIY) approach to filmmaking is at the heart of how respected artist and auteur Guy Maddin makes many of his films.

Guy Maddin

The Do It Yourself (DIY) approach to filmmaking is at the heart of how respected artist and auteur Guy Maddin makes many of his films. When he’s a first-wave post punk rocker – born in ’56 and growing up listening to the music of the Sex Pistols and Public Image – he lived and breathed everything that had to do with what that music revolution represented. When he started daydreaming about making films, the ethos of just picking up an instrument to play what you felt, or to be a brat at the time, and many of the thrills he felt from the music were in the audio textures and in the process of how they were recorded way more than in any melody.

“It just seemed to me that just by analogy people would love movies made of the same spirit,” said Maddin.

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[Victoria Film Festival ’14] Just What is The Congress About? An Analysis

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

The Congress Movie Poster

Directed by Ari Folman
Screenplay by Ari Folman

A dystopian future is firmly presented in the movie, The Congress and not everyone, including audiences, will realize it. Here, it weaves both satire and science fiction into one superlative Alice in Wonderland style narrative with elements of Yellow Submarine, Cool World and The Matrix weaved in. Maybe on a second viewing, audiences can fully appreciate this film for what it is.

For most of the first act, this movie superbly pokes fun at the Hollywood system about how it treats its own people. From its producers, stars and cinematographers, they are nothing but cogs in a wheel. Back in the Golden and Silver Age of filmmaking, these products were being developed in a formulaic manner. But in the early days when cinema was fresh out of the womb, filmmakers were allowed to express themselves because the rules were not established. But when the business of making a film became more prominent, it had to follow a system.

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[Victoria, BC] The Victoria Film Festival from a Geek’s Perspective

Half of the Otaku no Culture team is definitely getting excited for the Victoria Film Festival, running from Feb 7th to the 16th at various venues, for the huge variety of films offered. On my Friday night wish to hit list is The Congress, a sci-fi product that looks like it blends elements of Cool World, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Matrix together. When actress Robin Wright (The Princess Bride) plays herself as a starlet struggling to help her young son, she gives up her rights to be on film for a digitized version. Just what happens is a look into a not too distant future if Hollywood has their say. Il Futuro is a must since it features Rutger Hauer. It’s been a long time since I last saw him on-screen. I remember him best in Blade Runner, so what I’m after to see, based on my geeky interests, are consistent.

I would like to see the gala film, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, that night in hopes Colm Meany might be in town. He’s one of those underrated stars that I can truly appreciate and I like to meet him and say I really enjoyed all the work, like Law & Order the The Commitments, he has done outside of the Star Trek universe, but that’s unlikely. When considering this film played in European theatres last year and it’s not a world premiere, the chances for the stars to show up is very slim, but the director might be around.
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[Victoria, BC] Gracepoint Pt 2; Pictures at Clover Point

Photography by Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

When we of Otaku no Culture are able to (and that locations are publicly known), we may head out to check out the current day’s film set activities of FOX TV’s Gracepoint. Although we arrived as crews were wrapping up for one location, a little birdie flew by to give us hints of where filming is happening later that day.

But with other work ahead of us in prep for the Victoria Film Festival (who knows, maybe some of the cast may take in a film to relax after a long day), here is a tease of what roving photographer Eddie found:

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