one last post from the Yukon

...had the pleasure of recapping the Film Fest for the Whitehorse paper, The Yukon News...

get out there

so much more inspiring than "keep calm..." this is by moleiteau.
i found it at 43 Folders (really good ideas from Merlin Mann)
and you can download the image from flickr.

fest faves

so many good films at the Dawson Fest...there were nearly 150 movies being shown over the weekend. i didn't get to all of them but some of my favourites include:

Jeff Winch's Close & Low. a man, a dog, and a poetic leap through life--winner of this year's Lodestar Award.

Eva Weber's City of Cranes. who'd have thought crane operators in London would be such philosophical guys? and i don't know how she got such clear skies and luscious colours in grey London Town.

Anna McRoberts' The Windfisherman. this is such a funny fairytale, i want to believe that Gust Town actually exists somewhere in rural Alberta.

Daneil Janke's How People Got Fire. as told by elder Kitty Smith. the animation here is breath-taking, partly using painted live-action footage and partly sketched by artist Jay White. 1st place winner of the Yukon Energy Award.

Dustinn Craig's 4 Wheel War Pony. i never expected to love a film about skateboarding, but this is great--historic photos, Apache skateboarders, and smart split-screen effects.

Lulu Keating's Dog=God, made with Karen Hines. 2nd place winner of the Yukon Energy Award, with lush black & white footage Keating developed in a bucket, in her bathroom. (i love the idea & the word "bucket-development". must be the name of a production company somewhere...)

Duane Gastant' Aucoin's My Own Private Lower Post, which bravely explores his mother's experience in residential school, and its painful legacy in his own life.

drivin' back to whitehorse

...in a 1981 Dawson-ized Honda...

(okay, we took the caribou rack off for highway driving)

The Ampersand, part 3

last posting from Dawson for The National Post's Ampersand (some of the links are unembedded, alas)

(image: filmmaker Terry Haines clowns around with an old Super-8 camera, for Scott Amos' 1-minute-film project)

The Ampersand, part 2

more on the Fest, in The National Post's Ampersand

The Ampersand, part 1

while i'm at the International Short Film Fest, i'm doing some journal entries for The National Post's blog, The Ampersand (scroll down for day one, otherwise you begin at day two).

Cattle Call

just before the outdoor screening, i ran into calligrapher Owen Williams, who recently finished a gallery performance in Whitehorse, where he drew 10,000 variations on the letter S.

i'm looking forward to checking back with Owen, to talk about Matthew Randin & Mike Maryniuk's film, Cattle Call--a wild animation inspired by an auctioneer at the Winnipeg stockyards, which include all kinds of text fonts & numbers. i had a chance to preview the film at Deco Dawson's afternoon talk. it's so fast-moving that a couple of viewings are handy...so i had a chance to see it again at the late night Friday screening. so far, it's one of my favourites of the festival.

below...getting the outdoor screening underway, in the window of the ODD gallery. even at 10pm, it's very bright outside...though by the last film of the outdoor series, night was definitely coming on.