So with surgery less than a week away, a dayjob to do, and things I have to do to prep (like get a COVID test and an ECG), I'm slammed for time to write. I am working on two magazine articles pre-surgery, one of which I am doing the interview for tomorrow, if all goes to plan (with a band who are on a lot of people's lips this year, really THE band to interview right now, at whose party I am a very late arrival; it's all very exciting and the transcribing/ writing will likely be pretty intense). The tendency is to want to have everything done, even though, in all likelihood, after I get back from the hospital, I will have a few weeks of writing time at my disposal - because I sure won't be talking much while my tongue heals up, and probably won't mind having something to do on sick leave (I'd been saving it up in case of COVID, but this seems a good time to spend some of it).
Anyhow, I've got an interview with Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig that I may or may not be able to transcribe in time. It's apropos of his documentary Records, trailer here, which is playing at the VIFF. I didn't tell him this, but I found his first film on record collecting, Vinyl - which you can see in full on Youtube - too depressing, even self-hating, when I tried to watch it 20 years ago, and didn't even make it through; I first watched it to completion last week, as part of my research.
Records - which Zweig describes as being about "acceptance," where Vinyl is about "failure" - is quite a bit easier to watch, while still being very recognizable as Zweig's work, even paying "homage" to the earlier film, using a few of its conceits; for instance, a lot of his first-person narration in both films is shot with him filming into mirrors, and - he tells me - in preparing Records, he actually went shopping for a mirror that would compliment the one he'd used previously. There is a framing device used in the second film that resonates beautifully off the first one, too, tying both films together brilliantly, but he shies from spoiling it in our conversation, so I won't either. I'm not sure if the change of tone is just a matter of personal life experiences (a lot has happened for Zweig since his first film, including several films in between, and the birth of his daughter, who teases her Dad at one delightful juncture of the film about the attendance his films sometimes gets at screenings), or if there are larger cultural changes at hand that somehow - after all the insanity of the last two decades, from 9/11 to the wars in the Middle East to a huge uptick in school shootings and the resurgence of fascism in the United States to, of course, this fucking pandemic - have made us all a bit gentler and more grateful for things that give us comfort...?
In any event, people who are afraid of watching Zweig poke into someone's stories of testicle cancer and connect their record collecting to their emasculation (probably the peak of discomfort in the first film) can rest assured, compared to Vinyl, Records is a much gentler, more forgiving experience, all around. And there are a few local heroes who pop up, including Voluntary in Nature/ Native North America man Kevin James Howes and former Vancouverite Reg Harkema (above, with his partner Cindy; Reg's first feature, A Girl is a Girl, was filmed in part at Neptoon Records, and I have a big ol' interview with Reg about Monkey Warfare - which also features vinyl - here). There are also a few big-name collectors like Jello Biafra - taking you through his Heino collection - and Steve Albini (whom I didn't recognize, in fact - he doesn't much look like he did on the inner sleeve of Big Black records, and I don't watch poker tourneys or follow his bands since the days of Two Nuns and a Pack Mule, so I had no idea it was him).
Really enjoyable film, all told. You might spy Zweig in town, too - he's flying out for VIFF and will no doubt be seen at a few record stores. Sadly, I doubt I'll be able to meet the man; I'll be home trying not to talk.
Not coming to town, but with even a stronger local connection, Kier-la Janisse has what has been described as her first feature film, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, playing at the VIFF, though I do ask her about that, because I had thought she cut her teeth as a filmmaker back in 2005, making short documentaries that functioned as between-feature filler at the Big Smash festival in Vancouver (and presumably between films at the Alamo Drafthouse). She didn't seem to credit these at the time - said, when I asked her in the Cinematheque lobby about them, that they were just things she'd slapped together; but I remember totally enjoying one on the history of Krautrock, and being bummed when it got turned off so that the next film could play, whatever that was (something cool, no doubt, but weirdly, it's the Krautrock doc I remember).
In any event - from curating Cinemuerte and Big Smash to writing House of Psychotic Women and publishing books like Satanic Panic through the Spectacular Optical imprint - Kier-la has done plenty with the intervening years; I don't know the half of it, really, since much of it has not happened in Vancouver (like the microcinema she ran in Montreal, Blue Sunshine). But even though she will not be personally present for the VIFF screening, her film, Fantasia Fest award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, stands as a TRIUMPHANT full return to Vancouver. It's an authoritative history of folk horror, beginning with the "big three" British folk horror films (Witchfinder General, The Blood On Satan's Claw, and The Wicker Man), digging deep into other British antecedents like Night of the Demon, and then expanding its reach beyond England into discussing folk horror in America (including some brilliant feats, like connecting the dots between Puritans fleeing persecution to Jonestown and then to Children of the Corn) and the rest of the world. All sorts of experts - from author Jonathan Rigby to two female editors of Diabolique magazine, Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger, to filmmakers like Piers Haggard (The Blood on Satan's Claw) and the team of Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer (who directed the not-folk-horror film, Starry Eyes, and the very-much folk-horror Pet Sematary remake) - weigh in, and all sorts of angles are explored. Folk horror seems to be going through a very interesting Renaissance right now, with recent films like Apostle, The Ritual, and Midsommar building on the past classics in very exciting ways (and truth is, I prefered watching any of those three films to The Blood on Satan's Claw or Witchfinder General, as important as they are). It's a perfectly timed film, and will no doubt prove as significant a step in conversation about folk horror as Carol J. Clover's Men, Women and Chainsaws was in the discussions around slasher films.
If none of this resonates for you - if you haven't seen these last three films, or the big three British films mentioned above, or don't really know what folk horror is - you might find Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched an interesting introduction to stuff you've seriously been missing out on; but if you do know these films or this subgenre, then Kier-la's documentary is something you simply cannot miss (and you'll end up with a list a mile long of other films you want to see - for me, topped by the Australian folk horror film The Dreaming, which I heard of for the first time in the doc, and which she situates in the political landscape of 1988 Australia, getting at the wider issues represented in the film).
Kier-la Janisse interviews Chris Desjardins at the VIFF Centre, at a 2018 screening of Border Radio
There's lots else to be said about Kier-la, including the fact that some of the key films she talks about in her documentary will be appearing on the Severin Folk Horror box set, All The Haunts Be Ours, coming out later this year, which includes an amazing, under-appreciated Canadian film that I've been hoping would see a proper release for decades: Ryszard Bugajski's Clearcut (on Disc 9). This is big news for me - the release of that film alone, in a new 4K scan, is exciting - but I've been shy about announcing it as yet, because certain extras have yet to be added to the website's description of the set, which... well, I guess I'll write about that more later - it's a major moment, for me, in any case. By the way, Kier-la's documentary will also be one of the discs in the box, and will also get a stand alone release (Clearcut does not have one scheduled as yet.) Oh, and by the way - Kevin James Howes is involved in THIS project, too!).
Now: Kier-la's film is going to screen on October 8th at the Rio, but I have a caveat for you: if you're set up for it, it might actually be better to watch this one streamed at home through the VIFF website, because the film is over three hours long, is idea-rich and full of interesting perspectives, some of which will slap you in the back of the head with considerable force. Take, for instance, the segment with Toronto First Nations film critic Jesse Wente, last seen by me in the superb documentary Reel Injun, about Hollywood portrayals of indigeneity. Wente digs into the horror trope of the "Indian burial ground." He takes issue with the homogeneity of the term, because there is no one uniform set of burial customs among First Nations, then talks about how it resonates of settler guilt, with Kier-la illustrating his point with clips from, say, The Amityville Horror or Pet Sematary, both of which deal with the possibility of being displaced from your home in the same way that our settler ancestors displaced the original peoples of this continent. I'm not sure I ever experienced The Amityville Horror as a film about colonial guilt before, and Wente's point was already making my antenna tingle wildly - making me wonder if the reading about settler guilt applied to Kubrick's The Shining isn't that wacky, after all - when. smiling affably, he drops his bombshell: that, despite its inaccuracy, he kind of likes the trope of the Indian burial ground, and has a warning for people who are afraid of the concept: "I've got news for you, it's all an Indian burial ground."
When a moment like that hits, it's good to be able to press pause and process it a bit, to let the chills run down your spine (made more poignant and harrowing given the ongoing count of children buried on residential school grounds, with over 6,000 bodies located last I read, but I doubt, when Wente was interviewed, that the first 215 graves had even been found). You need processing time, especially since the film has other moments of revelation, other exciting insights. You may also want to be able to play the film again, or revisit key scenes, which will be hard to do at the Rio ("could you rewind to 32:50? There was something I want to hear again.") The ideas are spaced out enough, using ample film clips, archival interviews, newsreel clips, and what look to be Dog Star Man-esque 8mm shots of the BC woods, as well as quirky, artful interludes involving papercut animations by Guy Maddin, that you can breathe between these ideas - which is great, because for a film this far-reaching (even touching on a Waltons episode!), your brain would overload, otherwise... but personally, I watched the film in short segments over the course of three days, and am a bit intimidated by the idea of taking it in in one sitting.
A final note, speaking of Jesse Wente: people who enjoyed his contributions to Reel Injun and who are gobsmacked by his mic-drop in Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched should also take note that he has a new book, just on the shelves this week - a memoir called Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance. I was immediately taken with him when watching Reel Injun - he's smart, funny, and political, but still seems like a genuinely nice person, which is a trait not all political activists are able to retain, it seems. (I also pestered him a bit on social media, in my flailing quest for allies to help get Clearcut brought back into the world, but, uh, nevermind, Jesse, we're good!). Got the book yesterday and began reading it. Opens with a heartbreaking story about his first experience of being mocked during a school baseball game. I'm very keen to get into it (and need some good reading material for my post-op period).
More to come...!
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