The Oscars® are right around the corner, and while we have no contenders in the race this year, we’ve certainly had our share of nominees and winners in the past. We’ve also got quite a few films in our collection that are worthy of the Academy’s top honours, so in the month leading up to the big day, we thought we’d put together some of our favourites for you.
This series will feature five films in five different categories, each of them outstanding films and fine examples of excellence in their field. The five categories we’ll be looking at are: Editing, Writing, Cinematography, Music, and Animation.
First up, Editing!
21-87
You cannot think of the words “NFB” and “Editing” without having the genius of Arthur Lipsett come to mind. He was a master, weaving and juxtaposing images together to tell a completely different story. This one in particular is a commentary on our machine-dominated society.
oehttps://www.nfb.ca/film/21-87/
Trip Down Memory Lane
Yes, it is another Lipsett film. Be thankful all five aren’t Lipsett films, and that we managed to narrow it down to just two. This film is a compilation of over 50 years of newsreel footage, cut together to form a commentary on human force, majesty, and mayhem.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2rYukm6
Carts of Darkness
In places, this film was shot and cut like an action film, and features the extreme sport of shopping-cart racing. Murray Siple’s doc is about a group of homeless men who race these carts down the hills of North Vancouver while collecting bottles as a main source of income. This is something you don’t see every day. Viewer discretion advised.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2GxLcDm
The Back-breaking Leaf
This film is a joy to watch. Given the subject matter of transient workers harvesting tobacco, I know that’s a weird thing to say, but it’s true. The film is masterfully put together. I especially love the scenes when the music starts up and we watch them working the field and the tables. The images, the pacing, the flow – it’s perfect.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2rYumKK
Stories We Tell
Sarah Polley’s foray into documentary filmmaking resulted in an incredibly rich, vivid film that’s impossible to forget. It’s a visual tapestry of lush images woven together to tell an incredible story. Join Polley as she plays detective in her own family, tracing its history in search of answers to age-old questions.
Radiooooo lets you listen to music from different countries & decades by clicking around a visual map.
Transport Yourself To A Different Time And Place
I really like Argentinian music from the 1940s. I didn’t know that until a few days ago, when I discovered Radiooooo, an inventive and well-designed site that has an annoyingly difficult name to type correctly. Radiooooo is, as its annoying name might suggest, an online radio. But it differs from most products of its type in that its goal is to expose visitors to music from as many different regions of the world, and eras of musical history, as possible. To listen to a song on the site, whose name I don’t feel like typing again right here out of fear that I may use too many or too few “O”s, you click on a country. Then, you select a decade. And music from that specific time and place starts playing back.
A Global Music History Lesson
At the time of this writing, not all of the countries on the Radiooooo map have music corresponding with them. That could change, however, as the site is interactive. Users can add songs to the map for other visitors to discover. This feature adds to the community feel of the site, with a likeminded group of users just trying to help each other discover interesting music. Users can also filter to find a specific sound, choosing “slow,” “fast,” “weird,” or all of the above. Even though Radiooooo is technically in beta mode, there’s still a wealth of interesting music to discover. Explore the past and the rest of the world at the same time, and find something, like me, that you never knew you liked.
Mixel shows you how to make cocktails based on ingredients you already own.
No Need To Go To The Store
Most cocktail recipes are incredibly simple. Most are also difficult to perfect. Many cocktails require complex ingredients. Even more can be made with ingredients you probably already have in your home. Mixel is an app that contains more than 900 cocktail recipes, all tailored to the specific ingredients that you already have. After downloading the app, which is free and available on both iOS and Android, Mixel asks you to enter your ingredients. This includes alcohol types, as well as items like bitters or garnishes like lime or celery salt. There’s an extensive list of ingredients, so it’s best to be as thorough as possible in order to make the most of the app’s recipe database.
From Classic To Obscure
After you’ve entered your ingredients, Mixel returns a list of results. There are obscure cocktails in the database such as “Blushing Mary” and “La Rosita,” as well as classics like the “Old Fashioned” or the infamous “Long Island Iced Tea.” The app offers clear instructions as to how to craft each cocktail, citing its sources (the app uses recipes from major cocktail recipe books that are also available for purchase through the app via Amazon, even though the app itself is free). If you don’t have a particular ingredient but want to make a cocktail that you find in the app, you can easily add it to your shopping list via Mixel. While you could theoretically look up any cocktail recipe online, Mixel is useful in showing you what you can make with what you already have. It’s also got a cool 8bit aesthetic that makes it fun to browse while you dream up your next alcoholic concoction.
Have you seen The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? It’s brilliant. I’m a huge fan of the show’s writers, and an even bigger fan of stand-up comedy. Sadly, the show only has an eight-episode season, leaving me wanting so much more. So, naturally, I turned to the archives and found the perfect salve – The Next Big Thing series.
On Maisel, Midge literally stumbles into stand-up when she wanders on-stage and starts ranting about her husband. Stream-of-conscious comedy is her thing, and she does it well. But for most comics, an incredible amount of work goes into producing a set. When I was learning stand-up, it took me three months to write a semi-solid 5-minutes. Comedians work for years to perfect their act, hoping for a spot that’ll turn into their big break. This is something that’s only touched on in Maisel, but forms the central focus of The Next Big Thing.
The Next Big Thing follows six comics – Shaun Majumder, Kristeen Van Hagen, Jason Rouse, Laurie Elliott, Dave Martin, and Nikki Payne – as they try to break into the big time by winning a slot in Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival. It follows the specific trajectory of stand-up comics, as opposed to sketch and/or improve groups, like Second City, Kids in the Hall, or the SCTV gang.
I spoke with producer Gerry Flahive, who has fond memories of working on the project. He recalls:
“The documentary’s co-creator, Andrew Clark, said something that attracted me to the project, that stand-up comedians are the ‘un-Canadians’ because they are individualistic, as opposed to the more established, CBC/mainstream sketch comedy/group humour approach. I felt—especially with such an interesting group of comedians—that we could really reveal where their comedy came from, and why people were laughing! I think we picked well: all of the comedians in the film are still up there, 17 years later.”
The series follows them as they work the clubs in Toronto and do their showcases in Montreal. Then we follow the lucky one(s) to LA, where we’re granted access to network meetings and dreams in action. We’re privy to the highs and lows of stand-up with this series – from the packed clubs filled with laughter to sets that go horribly wrong and leave you feeling awkward and pained. And we catch some pretty private moments along the way (I’m looking at you, 18 m 20 s mark in the LA episode…).
If you’re a fan of Canadian comedy, you’ll enjoy some great cameos from people like Mike MacDonald, Harland Williams, and Joey Elias (fun fact: Joey was my comedy writing teacher) while getting behind-the-scenes access to green rooms and awards shows. But if strong language and a few obscene gestures offend you, you may want to proceed with caution.
We had a busy year in our digital studios last year, and we have no reason to believe this year will be any different. As we wait for 2018’s projects to launch, here are three new interactive experiences you can enjoy right now.
We live in a very busy world. Time is short, and we want to get as much as we can, as fast as we can. Very Very Short attempts to capture the essence of this in a new series of interactive projects for smartphones. Each project is under 60 seconds long, and is explores the theme of mobility in some way. The project creators hail from across the globe, from Canada to Brazil, from Belgium to Taiwan.
Every Thursday, a new project is put online. The series was launched at the end of November, with a total of 10 projects, meaning that the last one will be released on February 1.
For some of us, heading out for an evening of gambling is just another form of entertainment – like catching a movie or a play. For others, it’s a lot more. Gambling addiction poses a real threat to the gambler, their family, and those around them.
Casinos are in business to make money, and they know just how to manipulate people into playing. They use proven behavioural psychology to encourage us to keep playing when we win, and to try again when we lose. Through the stories of three individuals, this project allows us to see just how this works, and how dangerous it can be.
If you happen to be in Montreal before the end of April, we have an interactive installation at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition, A Crack in Everything, a tribute to Leonard Cohen. The exhibit is comprised of 20 works by 40 artists from 10 different countries.
In I Heard There was a Secret Chord, visitors enter a space where they’re encouraged to hum Cohen’s iconic Hallelujah, and join the voices of those who have been there before them, and those who will come after.
It’s going to be a stellar year for NFB animation. How do I know? Just take a look at some of the films we’ve got scheduled for release in 2018.
Animal Behaviour
You know 2018 is going to be hot when the Oscar-winning team of Alison Snowden and David Fine is back! This time, they’re bringing us a clever and hilarious take on group therapy. Led by a bespectacled hound, watch as a motley crew of animals confess their deepest secrets and reveal their basest instincts.
Until the film is released, enjoy some classic Snowden/Fine in the Oscar®-winning Bob’s Birthday, a painfully funny film with some surprisingly subversive humour.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2nev6pm
The Cannonball Woman
Madeleine and her husband’s travelling “cannonball woman” show may be spectacular, but their domestic life is just plain boring. This is a bittersweet stop-motion animated film about love standing the test of time.
This film, produced by Claude Barras (My Life as a Zucchini), had its premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2017. Watch the trailer below.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2DDRmnq
Hedgehog’s Home
This sumptuous and delicately choreographed stop-motion fable—made entirely of needled felt—revives the timeless and timely notion of cultivating our own place of safety, dignity, and comfort, no matter how big or small. Like a welcome blanket on a chilly day, Hedgehog’s Home is a warm and universal tale for young and old that reminds us there truly is no place like home.
This film has already hit the festival circuit and has won over 25 awards, from Annecy to Zagreb. It still screens from time to time, so keep an eye on our events page for it to hit a theatre near you.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2ndWi7z
Freaks of Nurture
Alex Lemay’s animated stop-motion short about a young filmmaker’s complicated relationship with her mother is a smart, laugh-out-loud film with heart. Playful and self-deprecating, it reveals what it means to grow up, become independent, but still crave the love and support of a parent.
We don’t have a release date for the film yet, but you can read more about it here and watch Alex’s first film with us, the brilliant All the Rage.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2DG7V2i
Shop Class
This is the darkly funny coming-of-age story of Hart Snider, a newly minted teen trying to survive junior high—and shop class—and discovering a few things about himself along the way. It takes us back to the 80s, with plenty of off-beat humour and clever nods to pop culture.
Three years in the making, the film will be released in 2018. Snider himself describes it as a follow up to his earlier film, The Basketball Game.
Caterpillerplasty
This animated short is from David Barlow-Krelina, who first worked with the NFB as a participant in the 2012 edition of Hothouse. His latest film focuses on plastic surgery for the modern era. While other clients are getting their faces lifted and their tummies tucked, man with a perma-smile is ushered into the VIP operating room for a whole different kind of procedure.
The film will be launched in 2018. Until then take a look at his earlier work, The Visitor.
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2G5WePW
Wall
We’ve also got a feature-length animated film coming out this year, which had its festival debut in late 2017. Wall explores both sides of the barrier separating Israel and Palestine. Written by two-time Oscar® nominee, screenwriter and playwright David Hare, this visually striking 80-minute film takes an unflinching look at the Middle East.
The film was directed and animated by Cam Christiansen, who previously worked on one of the short films we produced for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards recipients, The Real Place.
Sweatcoin tracks your steps and converts them into a digital currency.
Another Digital Currency
The cryptocurrency craze exploded last year, finally breaking through to the mainstream. People who know nothing about the technology were talking about and buying into Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other projects. It seems like there are new coins popping up everyday. Sweatcoin is another new form of digital currency, and although it’s vastly different than any cryptocurrency out there, it’s certainly capitalizing on the craze in terms of its design, marketing, and aesthetic. The app tracks users’ GPS data and steps on their phone or through a Fitbit, motivating people to get up and move. The app converts steps into their own form of digital currency, called Sweatcoins.
Move To Get Rewards
Sweatcoins can be redeemed to purchase a variety of things through the app’s platform. It’s kind of like a digital arcade, because the rewards are all somewhat random and occasionally useless, but the beauty of the app is that the only thing required to earn these things is to walk around (and, of course, give Sweatcoin your data). The app has monetized itself in a smart manner, as you can also earn additional rewards by watching ads or completing other tasks. There are some great offers on the app, though, like $1,000 in PayPal Cash, Samsung TVs, and iPhones. You have to walk around a lot to earn them, but Sweatcoin makes it worth it.
Die With Me lets your phone die with other people who have less than 5% battery left.
No one wants to be alone when they die. The most peaceful death imaginable would come in one’s old age, surrounded by supportive friends and family members. It only makes sense that the same logic would apply to phone deaths. No one wants to undergo the terrifying prospect of having their phone battery die by themselves. It’s much more comforting to be around, or at least communicate with, people who are going through the exact same thing. That’s the idea behind Die With Me, an app that’s only usable once the phone on which it is installed reaches 5% or less battery.
My phone hasn’t yet reached 5% with this app installed, because like most people I obsessively make sure the battery is charged. For all I know, Die With Me may be a practical joke. Yet it’s a great, hilarious concept. The app consists of a chatroom filled with all the people around the world whose phones are on their way to shutting off completely. Or, as the app calls it, “offline peace.” It’s a gimmicky app that’s not going to bring people to lasting connections, but it is a nice idea that anyone is able to connect around the shared terror of a low battery meter. Die With Me isn’t going to change the world, but it will make people feel a little more comforted when their phone battery is on the verge of death.
Let me guess – you’ve got a great idea for a movie, you just need to figure out where to get the cash.
We get a lot of queries from filmmakers looking for funding for their films. Unfortunately, we’re unable to help because we’re not a funding agency. We’re Canada’s public producer and distributor.
That said, we would like to be able to point you in the right direction. What follows is an incomplete list of funding sources for Canadian independent filmmakers, specifically those that include documentary and non-fiction works. If you know of others, please leave a link and description in the comments.
The Bell Fund has a production fund with grants of up to $150K, for webdocs and digital series. They accept fiction and non-fiction, but no animation. Deadline is February 5, 2018 for webdocs, and May 7, 2018 for digital series. They will also be announcing details on a TV series fund shortly.
Canada Council for the Arts offers a wide variety of grants for artists, including filmmakers. Browse the different categories to see if there’s something that fits your needs.
The Canada Media Fund offers many different funding opportunities, catering to a wide range of applicants. See their website for a complete breakdown and application deadlines.
The Canada Media Fund English POV Program supports POV docs from Canadian filmmakers. One of the eligibility requirements is that your content be destined for at least two platforms, one of which is television. See the website for details and deadlines.
The Hot Docs CrossCurrents Doc Fund provides funding for both short and theatrical docs from diverse, emerging filmmakers. Short films can receive up to $10K, and features up to $30K.
The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Fund supports Canadian documentary filmmakers by offering up to $20K to three or four projects per year. Some production credits are required for this one. Applications open in April, and close in June 2018.
The Quebecor Fund “contributes to the development of Canadian content production and simultaneously promotes the use of new broadcasting models.” They have two main production categories: The Main Television Production Assistance Program (MPAP), and The Event and Film Production Assistance Program (EFPAP). The next deadline is January 24, 2018 for the Film Production Assistance Program.
The Rogers Documentary Fund provides financial support for documentaries in both languages. See website for deadlines.
The Rogers Cable Network Fund provides equity financing for television programs that have a distribution deal in place, with Canadian broadcasters having the first window. See website for deadlines.
The Telus Fund provides development and production funding for projects that promote the health and well-being of Canadians. There’s no application deadline for development funds – they accept applications on a continual basis. The next deadline for the production fund is Friday, February 9, 2018.
Telefilm offers an interesting option for emerging filmmakers working on their first feature called Talent to Watch, and offers funding for development through to distribution and marketing. They’re currently in the process of updating their guidelines.
Of course, another option is to crowdfund your film on a website like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. If you’ve got something that people are really interested in, there’s a good chance you can raise some money through an online campaign. But be warned – good crowdfunding campaigns take hard work. Make sure you’re prepared!
Whatever your politics, there’s no denying that in his prime, Winston Churchill was a larger-than-life force to be reckoned with. While Darkest Hour paints a portrait of the man himself, Churchill’s Island lays out the strategy for the Battle of Britain. The film went on to win the NFB’s first Oscar®, when it won the first ever award for Documentary Film.
Actress Meryl Streep just earned her 21st Oscar nomination for playing Katharine Graham, the first female publisher of a major American newspaper – The Washington Post. Sophie Wollock’s Newspaper profiles Sophie Wollock, who founded The Suburban in 963, a free weekly newspaper distributed in the western suburbs of Montreal. Although the paper sold in the late 80s, it’s still in circulation today.
One eccentric filmmaker who lives on the outskirts (whether figuratively or literally) who believes they can do it all? Check. Make said filmmaker someone who turns out to be incredibly endearing? Check. Okay, so maybe Cadomin, Alberta isn’t the same thing as L.A. and the Golden Globes, but James Franco/Tommy Wiseau is no Flash Williams, either. In the end, there’s no denying the charm of this little film.
So, you enjoy movies about outspoken teens navigating life and relationships? You like movies with a lot of heart? Look no further than Becoming 13, a short doc about 3 girls on the cusp of their teenage years. Let Jane, Avi, and Jazmine take you on their journey from childhood to maturity. It’s a strong film.
War is a combination of acts of horror, and of heroism. Both these films focus on both, while showing the humanity that exists behind all the ugliness. In Return to Dresden, a Canadian bomber plane pilot returns to the city he tried to destroy during the war. This time, however, he is there on a mission of peace.
One film is a feature, the other a short. One film is live action, the other animated. But if you put all that aside, at the core of both films is an examination of people, progress, and our relationship with machines. If you haven’t seen Theodore Ushev’s Drux Flux, watch it now.
With his strongest grades in maths and physics, David Barlow-Krelina seemed destined for a career in the pure sciences — but a graphic design teacher in his last year of high school pointed him in an altogether different direction.
Jump forward a decade or so and the would-be scientist is hard at work in the NFB Animation Studio, performing the final nips and tucks on Caterpillarplasty, a mesmerizing and meticulously crafted tale of body modification, medical technology and transcendence.
Working with a range of 3D animation tools, he’s crafted an unsettling and seductive dream world, a vast temple-like spa where clients submit to dark and mysterious procedures at the hands of a gaunt surgeon with murky intentions and a sphinx-like smile.
“I like playing with narrative expectations”
“I like playing with narrative expectations,” he says. “My main character goes into this place for treatment. We don’t know exactly what, some kind of ‘next level’ procedure. And then it just gets weirder with each scene.”
Riffing off the idea of plastic surgery was just a starting point. “What I really love is caricature, drawing and distorting characters, taking what’s considered natural and then tampering with it. Caricature is already a kind of plastic surgery, and with 3D animation you can create a visceral sense of skin — its wetness and texture — and then modify it. You can mess with proportions, adding or subtracting, and get these really strange and interesting results.”
Life, Death…and Ren & Stimpy
As the title suggests, insect imagery looms large. “My grandmother was an entomologist, and I have nostalgic memories of seeing trays of butterflies in her studio. More recently I’ve been listening to podcasts while I work — and one really stuck with me. It was about metamorphosis, how caterpillars melt down into soupy goo inside a chrysalis and then get reborn. It’s that idea of life and rebirth, a recurring theme in all kinds of religions.”
An alumna of Hothouse, the NFB animation mentorship program now in its 12th edition, Barlow-Krelina draws inspiration from a multitude of cultural sources — ranging from Timothy Leary and Carl Sagan and to 2001 Space Odyssey and Ren & Stimpy, a cult hit credited with ushering in edgy animation like South Park.
“I was big fan of music videos, especially the work of Chris Cunningham who did amazing things with early 3D,” he says, singling out Come to Daddy, a video Cunningham made for the pioneering electronica act Aphex Twin, in which he superimposes the likeness of singer Richard James onto every face in a menacing street gang. “It had a really new look, cutting edge at the time. I also like how Cunningham edits to music. His videos often start with traditional narratives, but once the music kicks in, they become these super intense synaesthesia-like experiences.”
Geeking out on ‘sub-surface scattering’
Producer Jelena Popović has been taken with David’s work ever since she saw his first student films. “I remember thinking, wow, who IS this guy! He’s an extraordinary artist, a real perfectionist. Every surface is treated and polished, with layer upon layer of highlights — and the effect is remarkable.”
Barlow-Krelina has embraced the art of ‘sub-surface scattering,’ a set of CG techniques used to capture the play of light on translucent and semi-translucent surfaces like milk, wax —or skin. In a story that revolves so closely around flesh and its transformation, he employs the technique to particularly surrealistic and creepy effect.
“The designers of these 3D rendering packages have managed to deconstruct human vision, breaking it down into specific sliders and knobs that you can adjust however you like,” he says. “The more you work with the software, the more you learn about your own perception and aesthetic. You get to deconstruct and reassemble the visual world. It’s easy to get lost in all the possible combinations. It’s like plastic surgery in that way — always striving to be what you think is beautiful but never really getting there.”
Jessy Veilleux and Francois Beaudry, from the Montreal-based CG and animation house Digital Dimension, came on as consultants, finding rendering solutions that met the project’s specific needs and creating shader templates that Barlow-Krelina then customized for his own purposes.
“Every shot was planned, as if we were working in live action”
While 3D computer animation allows for an almost unrestricted variety of camera moves, Barlow-Krelina was keen to stick with certain filmic traditions, consulting with live-action cinematographer Luka Sanader to create detailed digital camera staging and choreography.
“Every shot was planned, as if we were working in live action,” he says. “It was important for me to respect conventional cinematographic language, not to have it look too computerized or smooth, or to put the camera in places that aren’t possible in real life. I wanted the sense of real camerawork — static camera or dolly shots that give the impression that it was shot in real world locations.
3D animation specialist Dana Darie assisted Barlow-Krelina with character rigging and armatures, and a top-notch team of 3D artists — Patrick Rouleau, Patricia Granato, Tulia Dicaire-Acosta, Laurence Grégoire and Alexandre Francoeur-Barbeau — helped with character animation and set construction.
“I’d been listening to lots of vaporwave”
On a soundtrack without dialogue, music and sound design play a key role in setting a disquieting and strangely upbeat tone. “I’d been listening to lots of vaporwave, this internet genre where young people sample stuff from the 80s and 90s — smooth jazz, elevator music, that kind of thing — and then mess with it. It brings back warm-n-fuzzy feelings that I associate with music I heard when I was younger, and I started thinking, this might work for my film. So we start with an ironic kind of corporate mall muzak — but then we take it in other directions.”
Canadian artist Blank Banshee has been a vaporwave pioneer.
Barlow-Krelina worked with composer Vid Cousins and sound designer Greg Debicki. Co-founder of Monkey Puzzle Sound Studio, Cousins has collaborated with the likes of Arcade Fire, Kronos Quartet and Kid Koala. Debicki writes generative music software, composes ‘glitch music’ under the pseudonym Woulg, and teaches electronic music production through his own company Studio Marie Anne.
Debicki also created the score for Barlow-Krelina’s independently produced 2013 short Bless You. A hit on the international animation festival circuit, it’s one of Vimeo’s staff picks. Check it out:
Hothouse: launch pad for auteur animation
Having studied computation arts and film animation at Concordia University, Barlow-Krelina was among the participants in the 2012 edition of Hot House. Since the mentorship program was established, over twenty Hothouse alumnae have returned to the NFB to work on larger-scale animation projects, and sixteen have gone on to direct their own post-Hothouse films.
Barlow-Krelina is one of a several Hothouse alumnae — Paloma Dawkins, Alexandra Lemay and Alex Boya are others — who are currently at work on auteur-driven animation projects at the NFB.
Here’s David’s own Hothouse effort, the 2012 release The Visitor:
oehttps://http://ift.tt/2G5WePW
Caterpillarplastyis a production of the NFB Animation Studio. It directed by David Barlow-Krelina, produced byJelena Popović, and executive produced by Michael Fukushima. It is scheduled to launch in 2018.
