Tribute to Graham Greene at the VIFF Centre: Clearcut comes back

Tom Charity, year-round programmer of the VIFF Centre, says that he typically does not like to do "in memoriam" screenings, "partly for practical and logistical reasons (I prefer not to cancel screenings and our schedule is usually set three or four weeks in advance)." However, he continues, "when Graham Greene passed on Sept 1, I did have a couple of slots available on the last weekend before the start of VIFF. (We are closed to the public for a couple of days immediately before the festival as we're using the theatre for testing and volunteer orientation, things like that)."

The timing was right for a few reasons besides. For one thing, he knows I'm always itching for an excuse to turn people onto the film Clearcut; he had facilitated the first Vancouver screening of the film after its initial release, where we projected from the best element available at the time (the German DVD I mention in the article), and after a previous screening at the Cinematheque was cancelled due to COVID, was the person I pestered to bring the film back (in fact the Cinematheque re-booked it but there were definitely discussions, especially when Severin announced the new scan). Charity knows that it's a powerful film, as we discuss in my current Georgia Straight article. And the new transfer from Severin looks stunning; the film makes great use of Canadian landscapes, and has images seldom seen on screen (like footage inside a sweatlodge; certain elements of the sweat were altered, Greene explains on a disc extra, to preserve the sacred elements of the ceremony, but I'm told that there was still a story about the film being cursed (which might help explain why it disappeared from view for three decades).

The nice thing, this time, was it was Tom who wrote me about the screening, not the other way around. 

There are other consdierations that make such a politically-charged film appropriate to screen. however. "As it happened," Charity tells me, the weekend the film has been programmed for "also falls right before Orange Shirt Day, aka the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation (Tues 30th), so it felt like we could raise a glass to Graham and wave our orange shirts, if you like" (if that's provocative to you, see here -- an article about Clearcut not by me! -- about white virtue signaling and token gestures; you figure the character of Arthur would have no truck with such things such as land acknowledgements, either. In fact the story behind Orange Shirt Day is pretty interesting, though, and I'll be wearing one myself on Friday -- though probably my Native North America shirt, the orangeness of which has nothing to do with the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation). 

Charity continues: "Greene was probably the most impactful and respected First Nations actor since Chief Dan George. I first encountered him as a film critic in London in a small role in PowWow Highway in the late 1980s, and of course he followed that up very quickly with his Oscar nominated role in Dances with Wolves, Thunderheart, and this movie Clearcut, which I didn't see until much later. The thing about Graham Greene on screen, you never doubted him for a second, he was always so real, he could ground the whole film."

While angry and political, the thing that's remarkable about Clearcut is that it works as a thriller, too. It the commentary conversation with Ryszard Bugajski, I ask questions comparing elements to films like the Scorsese Cape Fear remake, the Canadian outdoor ordeal adventure Rituals, and even The Hitcher. We also talk about the dying moose (actually a moose roadkill being manipulated like a puppet), the snake scene (no heads are bitten off! the snake was fine!), and Bugajski's own history with cinema, which, after he left Poland, includes making a fistful of episodes of the 1980s Twilight Zone series reboot and an NFB short (also discussed on the blu-ray extras).

The film plays twice, this Friday at 6:30 and Sunday at 4:15. Again, read my Straight feature here. Soundtrack composer Shane Harvey will be on hand to answer questions; he actually knew Greene. And I'll be there too, though at this point I feel like my job is done, in terms of bringing this film back from its undeserved obscurity: I've had a hand in four screenings of the film, written a dozen articles about, interviewed the filmmaker, done a whole bunch of work to flesh out the blu-ray extras, and have even used a scene from the film in an ESL classroom, talking about logging. I'll be coming both days, but I'm not doing any homework: I'm just there to watch the film... and I urge my readers to be there too...