Style is substance at visual smorgasbord
In our daily consumption of music videos and ads, it’s easy to overlook the artistry that goes into their visual effects. Local Resfest producer Nathan Whitford of Urban Visuals points out that “We’re so used to seeing these crazy effects—and that’s a lot of what Res is about—but a lot of what we see now are things that 10 years ago that if you saw that on TV you’d be like, ”˜Whoa! That is crazy!’” Resfest (named after the RES Media Group that launched the film festival) puts that talent front and centre on the big screen when its 10th annual showcase of some of the world’s most cutting-edge short films and music videos comes to the Vancouver International Film Centre from Friday to Sunday (November 17 to 19).

Retrospectives are a focal point of this year’s programming, such as A Decade of Resfest: 10 Seminal Short Films, which highlights 10 shorts from the past decade. Musicwise, there’s Basement Jaxx, Beck, Nada Surf, Japanese hip-hoppers Hifana, and even a survey of Radiohead’s visual portfolio (“Radiohead, the Visionaries: A Decade of Breaking New Talent”).

Whitford adds that it’s not all just pretty pictures. Programs like By Design feature content that is “really heavily composited, total eye-candy kind of stuff”. He emphasizes out that “we’re getting to the point where people are realizing that if you’re going to do all that stuff you still gotta have some good content or a good story to tell people.” A case in point is Everything Under the Sun: Filmmaking With a Purpose, which presents innovative ways to tackle serious contemporary issues from environmental crises to antiglobalization.

The CanCon program, now in its fourth year, includes music videos by MSTRKRFT, the Constantines, and Circlesquare (filmed by local director Bienvenido Cruz). Local filmmaker Jamie Travis’s short “Saddest Boy in the World”, which Travis describes as “a dark comedy about a boy who prepares to hang himself at his ninth birthday party”, is also in the mix.

For more information, check out resfest.ca/; for tickets, visit www.ticketweb.ca/.

> Craig Takeuchi

Vancouver support for African women
Rape as a mode of warfare has become more frequent in the Congo, says Leanne Chan, director of the Vancouver-based Lundin for Africa Foundation. Women there are often violated by numerous men, frequently with the use of sticks and guns.

To mitigate the effects of these atrocities, the foundation has joined forces with grassroots organization Souls in Stride to raise funds for Grounds for Hope, a centre in the Congo city of Goma with a medical facility and housing for 30 women. On surgery wait lists, they can neither heal from the fistulas caused by rape nor return home because of their inability to control their bowels. An animal-husbandry and agricultural project is also being created, Chan says, so the survivors can be self-sustaining.

The two groups will present the documentary Lumo—about the struggles of a raped Congolese woman who has had five fistula surgeries—at a fundraiser for the hospice next Thursday (November 23) at the Kay Meek Centre (1700 Mathers Avenue, West Vancouver). For tickets, visit www.kaymeekcentre.com/on_stage/2006-11/.

> Craig Takeuchi

Locals dance into competition
Filmmaker Karen Nielsen and choreographer Josh Beamish of Move: the Company are among 200 hopefuls who have entered the Cinematic CD film2music competition. Entrants had to create a short film set to a track from the instrumental CD Cinematic by electroacoustic composer Kubilay Uner. Nielsen and Beamish’s brooding “Perceptions” features the song “Steel & Sky” and depicts, through modern dance, a drug addict caught between two lovers. It was the first time the local director had filmed dance, and she discovered that film allows for things that live performance doesn’t. “Sometimes in performance you don’t quite get the story,” Nielsen told the Straight, “whereas in film you get more of a manipulation, to be able to control it, to tell a better story. You can go back to [a movement] a couple of times from different angles and really hold that.” Though a panel of international filmmakers will award the bulk of the prizes, there is an on-line audience award of US$5,000. To view the entries, visit www.cinematiccd.com/. On-line voting closes next Sunday (November 26).

> Craig Takeuchi