Cinema > News and Events

Two animated films from Concordia at TIFF Student Film Showcase

2013-05-18T03:41:32Z

Two graduating animation filmmakers, Sharron Mirsky (Blackout) and Eileen Peng (Godfather Death), will screen their student films at the very prestigious Toronto International Film Festival Student Showcase

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiffbelllightbox/2013/2550007524

Cinema Graduate Nicolas Renaud wins an award at Hot Docs

2013-05-18T03:36:44Z

Cinema graduate Nicolas Renaud is the winner of the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award at Hot Docs 2013 in Toronto, for his film BRAVE NEW RIVER (Fr.: LA NOUVELLE RUPERT). This award was given by the jury for the Canadian Spectrum program to a director for a first or second feature-length documentary.

http://www.hotdocs.ca/news#hot_docs_2013_award_winners_announced

Hot Docs is the largest documentary film festival in North America.

Brave New River is a trip along the Rupert River just after it was diverted for a new hydroelectricity project in James Bay. Unlike conflicts of the past, the indigenous Cree now join other workers to take part in the transformation of their land. The film explores the nuances and contradictions of this new situation. It chronicles the paradoxes of development, the meeting between two worlds and the various relationships people have with the river, whether for work, food, science, electric power... or cultural identity.

"Witnessing the contrasting imagery of a pre- and post-dam river environment, questions of modernity's quest to control nature arise, while Renaud's sensitive portraits and reflective observations provide a comprehensive understanding of identity, history and responsibility. Not since One More River has a film captured the complexity and beauty of nature's gifts and the human issues of how it should be received." - Alexander Rogalski, Canadian programmer HOT DOCS

Other cinema graduates who worked on the project are Kyle Stanfield (sound design) and David Pieropan (production).

It was produced by MC2 communication media.

The film is released at Cinéma Excentris from May 17 to 24 (Fr.v. La nouvelle Rupert, i.e. with French subtitles on English and Cree dialogues).

Watch the trailer:

http://vimeo.com/nouvellerupert/trailer

Nicolas Renaud studied in Film Production 1995-1998 and went back to complete his BFA in 2003. He also writes about film and the arts, has exhibited video installations, curated film programs at the Cinémathèque québécoise, and has been PT teacher of Film Aesthetics, Film History and FFAR courses at Concordia. He is completing part-time a Masters in Sociology.

Cinema alum head to Cannes

2013-05-03T12:57:53Z

Two cinema alumnae, Chloé Robichaud and Fanny Malo, are heading to Cannes! Two cinema alumnae, Chloé Robichaud and Fanny Malo, both BFA 10, are heading to Cannes!

Their film, Sarah préfère la course, tells the story of a young woman (Sophie Desmarais) who moves from rural Quebec to Montreal with her boyfriend to run on the McGill track team. But big-city life and her passion for the sport put pressure on their relationship. It will be screened in the Un certain regard ! section of the famed film fest, which runs from May 15 to 26, 2013. This is not the pair's first feature to make it to Cannes. Their first Cannes appearance was last year for the short Chef de meute.

Fellow cinema graduates involved with the production - and accompanying director Robichaud and producer Malo to Cannes - are director of photography Jessica Lee Gagné, BFA 12; artistic director Bruno-Pierre Houle, BFA 10; and first assistant director Catherine Kirouac, BFA 12. Another film studies graduate Alice Black, BFA 93, is among the festival's jury members.

Part-time Concordia instructor Micheline Lanctôt - who introduced Robichaud to directing through her course - also stars in the film as the athletic coach.

Watch for Sarah préfère la course in Quebec theatres June 7.

Related link:

Concordia Student Film Festival

2013-05-02T15:02:22Z

May 1 to 4, 2013
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Recognized as one of the best cinema schools in North America, students from Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema presents outstanding at the annual year-end film festival.

When:
May 1 to 4, 2013
For the schedule, visit the film festival website.

Where:
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal (Metro Peel)

Related links:

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Cinema toasts excellence

2013-04-26T15:17:18Z

The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema pays tribute to students in film animation and production, and film studies.
Faculty, staff and donors of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema paid tribute to students in an awards ceremony on April 25, 2013 at the D. B. Clarke Theatre.

The annual event recognizes excellence in student film animation and production, and academic achievements in film studies.

"We would like to extend sincere thanks to all the donors who make the cinema awards and scholarships possible," said Dan Cross, associate professor and chair of the department of cinema. "With support from the community, students can explore techniques, develop critical and aesthetic perspectives, and articulate their unique artistic personalities. Congratulations to all of this year's winners."

The evening's laureates included Monica Chen, Antoine Benhini and Ben Browning, who each earned a Sandra and Leo Kolber Scholarship for academic achievement in film animation, film production and film studies, respectively. The newly established Fanstasia award went to Simran Dewan.

The big winner of the night was Matthew Wende, who won the Mel Hoppenheim Award for Outstanding Overall Achievement in Film Production.

Wende's film, Innocence, a story about friendships, old cars, drawing and sex, will be screened at the Concordia student film festival on May 3. The event, which runs from May 1 to 4, takes place this year at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Download the awards ceremony program for a complete list of laureates.

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Image: Matthew Wende accepts the Mel Hoppenheim Award for Outstanding Overall Achievement in Film Production from Mel Hoppenheim himself. | Photo: Concordia University

Posted on April 26, 2013

Graduate film studies symposium allows for invaluable feedback in an informal setting

2013-04-24T20:55:05Z

Juan Llamas Rodriguez, Master's student in the film studies program, took part in the Concordia Film Studies Graduate Student Symposium on January 26, 2013. Here is his first person account of the day - burritos, banter and all. Juan Llamas Rodriguez, Master's student in the film studies program, took part in the Concordia Film Studies Graduate Student Symposium on January 26, 2013. Here is his first person account of the day - burritos, banter and all.

Coffee and tea was brewing, academic chatter was stirring, guacamole and chips were being passed around - the second annual Concordia MA Film Studies Symposium was underway. Hosted once again in the third floor of the Burritoville restaurant on Bishop Street in downtown Montreal, the symposium took place in late January. Like last year, the event provided a venue where any Master's student in Film Studies could present their work - often for the first time - to an audience of their peers in order to receive valuable feedback. In preparation for my presentation at an upcoming national academic conference, I spoke about my research on informal distribution of films. It was heartening to receive both new perspectives from those who had never heard it before, and warm support from those who have heard my project evolve over the past year.

Other presentations tackled such diverse and exciting topics such as the use of sound in HBO's The Wire, the promotion of Criterion Collection DVDs, and the crossover star persona of Jackie Chan. Usually these were part of ongoing research projects like a MA thesis, final papers students continue to develop, or lectures they are preparing for class. The range of topics and approaches underscores the wide variety of interests present in the department.

The symposium first grew out of an interest among the Film Studies community to create a space to practice our presentation skills outside of the classroom and a desire to show our peers what our research interests were shaping up to be. The atmosphere is casual in order to foster a sense of camaraderie and to encourage discussion amongst those in attendance. The audience is usually composed of other MA students, department faculty, and a few interested members of the community.

When the executive of the Concordia Graduate Film Studies Student Association first came up with the idea for the event, we were unsure of how it would turn out. Much to our surprise, the feedback we received from both faculty and students was overwhelmingly positive - some faculty even pitched in their funds to finance the event! Now the symposium is well on its way to becoming a Film Studies tradition. And it's a tradition well worth having. It fits in with Concordia's mission of inspiring students' spirit of enquiry and desire for learning, it fosters community building among the Film Studies graduate programs, and it's all around lots of fun - chips and guacamole included.

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Second Edition of EcransMed short film festival

2013-04-24T13:23:36Z

Anne-Myriam

The second edition of EcransMed, an annual short film festival that features recently produced films from the Mediterranean, will be presented from 7 to 12 May 2013 in collaboration with MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) and Vidéographe.

PhD student programs a film series at Sebastopol

2013-04-24T13:17:43Z

Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, California, 21-24 March 2013

Papagena Robbins, PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies, recently programmed a film series as part of the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival in California.

Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, California, 21-24 March 2013

Papagena Robbins, PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies, recently programmed a film series as part of the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival in California. The program was called "Spotlight on the Archive" and featured eight films by international experimental and documentary directors each of which highlighted a different approach to the use of archival material in documentary film. The centerpiece of the program was an interactive, cinematic event, Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, presented by a San Francisco digital archivist, media theorist, and filmmaker, Rick Prelinger, which generated more attendance than any other film or event in the festival's history. Robbins also chaired a roundtable discussion on archival cinema, featuring Prelinger along with documentary filmmakers, Jason Osder, Tina Witham, Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto.

Here is a link to the festival program: http://www.sebastopolfilmfestival.org/film.php?id=188

Making things perfectly queer

2013-04-18T20:45:16Z

Cinema's Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hayes redefine convention with their queer film studies classics series.

In his seminal 1981 book The Celluloid Closet, late activist Vito Russo perceptively summarized 80 years of the portrayal of homosexuality in film with a "necrology," a list of how lesbian and gay film characters met their demise. This included some of the most violent murders, suicides, castrations and executions ever portrayed onscreen and was a clear reminder of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community's skewed representation by Hollywood.

Three decades later, times have certainly changed - mostly for the better - with local cineplexes and TV networks regularly featuring gay and lesbian characters and storylines, and university cinema departments offering courses on LGBTQ film. Yet the need for socio-historical context and critical theory remains paramount. It's one of the reasons why Concordia's Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema professor Thomas Waugh and part-time film studies instructor Matthew Hays, BFA 91, MA 99, launched the Queer Film Classics series in 2009. Nearly two dozen volumes are planned under Arsenal Pulp Press, written by leading scholars and critics and co-edited by Waugh and Hays.

Read the entire article (pdf).

Poignant short now on AWN

2013-04-12T19:51:24Z

Animation World Network is helping spread the work of an award-winning student.
Film Animation student Alisi Telengut's short Tengri has been turning heads at festivals on the Canadian circuit, earning such kudos as best animated film (2012 Montreal World Film Festival, 43rd Student Film Festival) and Rising Star Award in Animation Competition (2013 Canada International Film Festival). Now, many more people can watch this tender animated film depicting an ancient Mongolian burial tradition on Animation World Network. Watch it here.

Alisi Telengut at work on a new project. Photo by ARHphoto.
Click to enlarge.

MFA alum wins Jutra award

2013-04-09T17:19:49Z

Myriam Magassouba (MFA 08, Film Production) has won a 2013 Jutra Award. Myriam Magassouba (MFA 08, Film Production) won a 2013 Jutra Award in the category of best short or medium fiction film for La où je suis, a piece about a teenage girl mourns her best friend killed in a car accident during a brutal Quebec winter.

Exhibitions explore with light and hypnotic, spinning images

2013-04-08T19:21:10Z

Cinema professor's pioneering 'spinning camera' technique, studio arts alumna's evocations of time-travel on view at the FOFA Gallery from April 15 to May 24. Richard Kerr, video still, Staggered Loops, 2012

Pavitra Wickramasinghe
Time Machine
Main Gallery and Black Box

Richard Kerr
snap,crack,pop...(less about meaning than being)
York Corridor and Ste.-Catherine St. W. vitrines

When:

Exhibition: Monday, April 15, to Thursday, May 24, 2013
Vernissage: Thursday, April 18, 2013, 5 to 7 p.m.
Catalogue launch of Pavitra Wickramasinghe's The Book of Light and Shadows: Thursday, May 9, 2013, 4:30 to 7 p.m.
Open house with Richard Kerr: Wednesdays during the exhibition, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
A Conversation - Brett Kashmere with Richard Kerr: Thursday, May 16, 2013, 6 to 8 p.m. (York Amphitheatre, EV 1.605)

Where:
FOFA Gallery, EV 1.715, Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex, Sir George Williams Campus (1515 Ste. Catherine St. W.)

Admission is free of charge and everyone is welcome.

***

Pavitra Wickramasinghe, Time Machine, 2012

In Time Machine, multidisciplinary artist Pavitra Wickramasinghe explores the concept of time-travel and its implication of longing, regret and hope. She was inspired by the work of physicist Ronald L. Mallett and his theories of time-travel based on laser technology - in a sense using light as a time machine. For this project, she worked with imagery that provokes notions of traveling (in time and space) and the fluidity of place, using shadow as a stand-in for these notions.

"Shadows provide an opportunity for illusion, trickery and exploring perception as an integral part of understanding," she writes. "It is proof that not all meaning can be created or displayed in light and indicates the absolute consistency of change and the impossibility of fixed meaning."

Wickramasinghe is the 2011 Concordia University recipient of the Stephen and Claudine Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. The exhibition and publication of her catalogue The Book of Light and Shadows mark the conclusion of her two-year fellowship term.

The vitrines will show snap,crack,pop...(less about meaning than being) from experimental filmmaker and Concordia faculty member Richard Kerr. It will consist of several of his signature works from the series motion picture weavings as well as a new body of projections coupled with paint-based objects. This material iteration of the "spinning camera" technique Kerr created to present hypnotic and deeply formal concerns evoke Marcel Duchamp's rotary reliefs and early machinist modernists like Jean Tinguely and his metamechanics.

The exhibition and a conversation with Pittsburgh-based filmmaker, curator and writer Brett Kashmere will unpack Kerr's particular path of constant production, described by Kashmere as a mix of aesthetic intensity/energy and patient observation/restraint that results in a fusion of abstraction and documentary styles.

Related links:

Posted on April 8, 2013

Spring 2013 animation news

2013-04-06T05:26:46Z

Animation students have been busy in the first part of 2013.

Animation student Tyler Nicolson has been featured in the Huffington Post for an amazing animated music video. Congratulations, Tyler!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/stop-motion-claymation-music-video-atlas-genius-trojans_n_2955864.html#slide=2266706

The films of five animation students were been accepted to be screened in the short film section the Future Film Festival in Bologna, Italy (April 12 to 17, 2013) - Hamish Lambert, Tyler Nicolson, Mi Tian, Agathe Bray-Bourret, and Ethan Kalman. For more information, visit http://www.futurefilmfestival.org/en/program.

Film Studies 2013-2014 Undergraduate Bulletin

2013-03-19T19:19:18Z

To view the 2013-2014 Film Studies Summer Session, Seminars, New Courses, Special Topics, and Rotational Lecture Courses please click here. To view the 2013-2014 Film Studies Summer Session, Seminars, New Courses, Special Topics, and Rotational Lecture Courses please click here.

Kim Nguyen's Rebelle wins big at Jutra awards

2013-03-18T16:01:24Z

Rebelle, written and directed by Kim Nguyen, BFA (Film Production) 97, won an impressive eight Jutra awards at the March 12 ceremony in Montreal. The Jutras recognize accomplishment in the Quebec film industry. Rebelle, written and directed by Kim Nguyen, BFA (Film Production) 97, won an impressive eight Jutra awards at the March 12 ceremony in Montreal. The Jutras recognize accomplishment in the Quebec film industry.

Not only was Rebelle chosen as the year's best film, it also won prizes for best director, screenplay and sound, as well as best actress (Rachel Mwanza) and supporting actor (Serge Kanyinda).

Two other Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema alumni contributed to the feature's success and were celebrated with Jutras. Cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc, attendee 94, and editor Richard Comeau, BFA 87, both won in their respective categories.

Fellow alumnus Pierre Even, GrDip (Communication Studies) 90, produced the 90-minute drama.

The Jutra awards win caps off Rebelle's astonishing award-season run. Not only was the film nominated for an Academy Awards in the best foreign-language category, it brought home ten Canadian Screen Awards.

Related links

Posted on March 18, 2012