VIFF 2024: Eno, Realm of Satan, Guy Maddin, plus...

Realm of Satan

There are some terrific films playing VIFF this year -- including a couple of one-of-a-kind presentations, like a long-lost, believed-to-be-destroyed Guy Maddin rarity and the first ever "live cinema" experience, a screening of a film that will never, ever play again in exactly the same way as you'll see it at the VIFF. This will be my only post about the festival! I haven't applied for a media pass this year: I simply don't have the time or stamina. There's lots of stuff that I might consider seeing, that captures the eye and the attention, but that I know nothing much about; I am sure that, say, the documentary about Hidekazu Tojo -- inventor of the California roll and the man behind Vancouver's Tojo's Restaurant -- will be terrific, but I just don't have the mojo to preview it. 

Still, I want to crack the seal for people on a few of the things that are indubitably exciting, in case you haven't noticed them -- a few personal picks, films I either have seen or do not need to see to know they will be of great interest to my readers: 

1. Eno: so I'm not really sure what a "generative documentary" is or how it works, since it apparently is something that has never been tried before, but Gary Hustwit's career-spanning documentary about Brian Eno -- official site here -- uses "custom generative software" to present a film that plays with "different scenes, order, music" each time it is shown; what we experience at the Playhouse on Sunday will be one-of-a-kind, never performed before, never to be repeated in exactly the same way. Not sure what factors determine the changes; there's no mention in the program of any interactive element, so for all I know, Hustwit (or his software) is doing the figurative equivalent of rolling dice (or, uh, drawing Oblique Strategies cards) to determine what exactly we see, but it is probably as close as most of us will come to seeing Eno live (apparently he did something at the Vogue in Vancouver in 2011, but where I was, I do not know!). 

Of course, one of my "bragging rights" claims as a concert attendee is that I *did* see Eno perform live, once, when he was collaborating with J. Peter Schwalm on what would ultimately emerge as the album Drawn from Life. The closest approximation I can find on Youtube of what I experienced is this, but it's not the actual Fuji Rock Festival performance that I was at in the summer of 2001, where a polite, dapper Eno delivered a brief but impressive prepared speech in Japanese, which he did not seem to truly speak, but had nonetheless practiced at length, far beyond the odd "arigatou" that other festival performers offered, phonetically explaining to us about his "atarashi ongaku" (not to be confused with Atarashi Gakko, it means his "new music"); he then sang "No One Receiving" (twice, if memory serves, bookending the set), and... well, all I really remember was chatting with a hairy old Japanese hippie who was as blown away as I that we were about to see Eno, and -- did I mention that mushrooms were semi-legal in Japan at the time? -- visualizing as I danced beside him up front that I was a happy sperm, wriggling towards the light as the music played, standing in the field in front of the small stage... He's given a couple of dozen concerts since, but mostly in Europe. It would be fun to see footage of the Japan show, if it exists, or, say, if there is footage of Eno during the Roxy Music years. Did he ever perform live in full costume? No one did glam quite as stunningly as Eno. If you don't know his music from the early 1970s, start with Roxy Music's "The Bogus Man," off their second album, For Your Pleasure, and then go buy Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), which will ever be one of my top 10 most essential rock albums of all time. 

Note also that one of Eno's collaborators on the albums Before and After Science and Another Green World was born in Vancouver, grew up in Gibsons, and now lives in Victoria -- Paul Rudolph, interviewed here. The same magazine, It's Psychedelic, Baby, also has a more in-depth review of Hustwit's documentary, if you want/ need to read more about it before seeing it. One wonders if Paul will come to town for this? 

2. Realm of Satan: The one film I did preview this year is a strange, very appealing documentary about the Church of Satan. Not the Satanic Temple, which is profiled in Hail Satan?, which presumably some of my readers saw, whose members are (mostly) using Satan as an entertaining pretext for political agitation, but the old-school Church of Satan, the one established by Anton Szandor LaVey. One of my favourite things about LaVey is that he very clearly had a superb sense of humour -- listen to his music for a minute, which reminds one equally of a carnival amusement park ride and the stuff played by Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. I wish all Satanists had LaVey's smirk. (Many seem to stop at having his sense of theatre). 

There is definitely a smirk (maybe even a wink) in some of what you see in Scott Cummings' documentary portrait of the current members of the Church of Satan, but it's a bit more meta-level. Most of the Satanists depicted are pretty straight-faced, even when the tableaus around them are somewhat playful.  I don't want to spoil anything here, since the element of surprise is essential to the film, which throws some truly WTF, laugh-out-loud moments at you; I would, in fact, advise against reading much more about it, if you're interested -- it's a "just go see it" kind of film. But to ruin a relatively minor moment, there is a scene where one of the film's Satanists -- a black metal musician, it turns out -- is seen in his kitchen applying corpse paint. His child (?) can be heard asking his wife (?) if he can watch TV; my own wife, at this point, turned to me and asked a very reasonable question (one of many she had, also including, "They're not going to sacrifice that goat?"), which in this case was, "Is he preparing for a concert performance or a ritual?" 

The answer (beyond my chuckling "I don't know!") proved to be neither: he was preparing... to hang his laundry. The next time we see him, he's in his backyard, in full makeup, pinning a Star Wars-themed blanket to an outdoor laundry rack. Ha! We do see him later, performing black metal with his partner (?) but, you know, Satanists have to do their laundry just like the rest of us... 

Obviously almost everything in the film is carefully staged -- a series of eye-catching, un-narrated, often piquantly weird-ass set pieces done collaboratively with members of the Church (and a few people who are not, it is revealed in the credits, actual Satanists, but I don't know who was who: is the guy doing magic tricks a Satanist? I sure hope so!). If you saw the doc Buffalo Juggalos on Mubi, which does a similar thing, you'll be at least somewhat prepared for Cummings' approach. That film is essential to the development of Realm of Satan. says Cummings in the press release: 

The Juggalos had proven themselves incredible partners, willing to match my ideas and often push them even farther. The film had a robust festival life, and as it wound down I wondered what I could do next, and with whom I could work. The Juggalos were such ideal collaborators, I struggled to think of anyone with the same level of cultural baggage and cache they carried with them. And that’s when I remembered [the] Satanic Bible. I had found the perfect collaborators and I fired an email off into the abyss, not expecting to hear back…

As with Buffalo Juggalos, there is almost no talking-head-style exposition in the film, and what there is happens indirectly, when, for example, a wheelchair-bound (presumed) Satanist watches a clip of another documentary on TV. Mostly what you get is shots of people who identify as Satanists, including High Priest Peter Gilmore, doing things for the camera. One of these borders on a dance piece (with music you might not expect). There are even some special effects! 

And speaking of mushrooms, some of the film is positively psychedelic in its weirdness: I think it would be delightful to trip to, if one were so inclined. Rest assured that no goats are harmed (one gets fed in an unorthodox way, but to tell you how would be a spoiler; suffice to say that it seems to enjoy its meal). It may be a Halloween essential, but there's nothing scary or disturbing at all in the movie (okay, I did worry that that raven was going to peck out her eyes; I would not be able to snooze with an animal that big hopping around my bedroom. But. like, it didn't; it's a very well-behaved bird, though it might need some elocution lessons -- it had a heavy avian accent...). 

More about the Church of Satan here. 

3. ...and if that's not intriguing enough, there are also two Guy Maddin films: his newest film Rumours sounds great -- " a more explicitly satirical work that we have come to expect" from Maddin, a Cannes review notes. It's another collaborative effort with Galen and Evan Johnson, who also worked on The Green Fog, but sounds a bit more of a straight narrative (or at least as straight as one can expect from Maddin), starring Cate Blanchett. I am even more intrigued by The Hands of Ida, which you are far less likely to get any further opportunity to see; it will be screened off a degraded VHS tape -- the only known copy of the film in existence, after it was destroyed "in a black magic ritual" after its only screening, on Winnipeg TV. Maddin, interviewed (I guess) before a copy turned up, describes it here:

I melted the only tape of my 1995 TV exercise The Hands of Ida at a picnic. Too bad, it had a few good friends in it, but I needed to destroy it in a black magic ceremony because this was the first film I made strictly for money ($5000), and the first film I made with producer Ritchard Findlay. This film triggered the first profound depression of my life – all these damned good reasons for throwing the cassette into Satan’s flaming asshole. I had a great time making the movie, but all too often one has a great time doing business with Satan.

I know little else about the film, though there is a clip from it on Youtube ("you don't think there's anything unusual about a group of vigilantes running around slicing men's testicles off?"). The Hands of Ida will be preceded by a presentation from  Paul Anthony, who will tell some piquant stories; it is his personal copy of the film! 

4. Joshua Oppenheimer's first fictional feature! I don't know anything about this film, The End, save what's in the program, where it's described as a musical apocalypse drama starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, and the first feature by Joshua Oppenheimer, who made the remarkable documentary The Act of Killing. 

Beyond that, I'm not going to kid you: I have no idea about the other films playing. I made a cursory tour through the listings, but I was amply distracted by other screenings coming up in October and November at the VIFF Centre, post-festival -- from the Les Blank doc about Werner Herzog, Burden of Dreams (which I've never actually seen, and which I'm disappointed to see is only appearing in the studio theatre, unlike Fitzcarraldo, which is also screening) to a repetition of Anju Singh's livescore for A Page of Madness (which I wrote about here, including an interview with Anju). There's lots more Halloween-appropriate cinema, also including a screening of Nosferatu with music by Radiohead (!) -- not that they will be personally present! Most excitingly, they're going to play The Battle of Algiers as part of their Pantheon series, showcasing "the greatest films of all time" (which descriptor the film definitely deserves, though I had a flicker of worry that that would actually be playing October 7th, which would have been in questionable taste, but no; see here for more on that film). Oh, and look, Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre! (Definitely some serious hand-stuff in that film, too). 

Whether it's at the VIFF itself or at the VIFF Centre post-festival, there's lots to see; I'll leave you to navigate your own course through VIFF 2024 here. Note that the Eno screening is happening on Sunday, so if that film interests you, I'd get tickets sooner, rather than later!