Column

I guess we all knew it would happen - it seems the Liberals and Conservatives have taken stock and realized there's only one way either party can protect their agenda from the separatist, left-wing Bloc and the re-energized, left-wing NDP:

Hey folks! Sorry to be absent for so long. Among my busy business, I've set up a screening in Toronto, proceeds to go to those bold US war resisters in Canada, seeking refugee status, Jeremy Hinzman (who will speak at the event) and Brandon Hughey. Please spread, post and list the word.

Zero for Conduct
Politics and Film
by Flick Harrison

At times, while reading this fast-paced autobiography of one man's travels as a reporter, filmmaker, and activist through New Zealand, India, Britain, across Canada and around the world, I actually had to blink and remind myself that I wasn't reading George Orwell's ghostly in-depth political reportages from beyond the grave. At other times, Richardson's book leans towards the gay wit of Gordon Sinclair's travel writing.

Growing up in 1930's South Island, N.Z., signing aboard the Invercargill Southland Times, traveling through South Asia and schooling in Britain, writing for a smalltown Thomson paper in Ontario, slouching through the Montreal Star's head offices and then in their London post, working with the James Bay Cree and the NFB, following the Queen's North American tour, and many other illustrious and / or humble postings, provide Richardson with a rich field of anecdotes and personalities, political contexts and broad worldviews to share with us. In-depth reminiscences of the 1960's Labour-Party debate over Britain's abandonment of The Bomb, the grubby but iron fists of newspaper magnates, and a lifetime of planting socialist angles into mainstream media outlets make for a colourful, enjoyable, and highly educational book. I was happy to hear an account of working for Lord Thomson of Fleet, Canada's first media baron, compared with trying to get published under Conrad Black and Izzy Asper; it was also educational to hear how amazingly open-minded and collaborative the NFB was, taking on federal ministries and not bowing to the cult of "journalistic objectivity".

Zero for Conduct
Political film analysis
by Flick Harrison

This documentary, produced by MoveOn.Org and something called the Center for American Progress, sets up probably the harshest Democratic-Party argument against George Bush's war in Iraq that we are likely to see. That's somewhat depressing, despite all the important information and insider dirt that exposes Bush' blatant lies, from the mouths of the very CIA officers whose work he distorted in his rush to bombing. The film's failure becomes clear in the segment "The Cost of War," which confused me at first, because after the chapter title appeared on the screen, Donald Rumsfeld and some other folks started talking about numbers of dollars. "The Cost of War indeed!" I thought to myself. The Iraq war as a US budgetary problem!

Made this poster in tribute to Paul Martin's decision to oust Sheila Copps. More later, but in case you don't know the details:

Copps fighting Martin

(Dreaming in the Rain, David Spaner, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2003, arsenalpulp.com, 224pages)

[this review originally appeared in print in Vancouver's The Rain]

This book promises to answer the question on everyone's lips: How did Vancouver become Hollywood North by Northwest? But Vancouver-Province film guy David Spaner's book, sadly, reminded me of the old Schoolhouse Rock episode about how a bill becomes law. Instead of taking us into smoky backrooms, big-money deals and national political juggling acts, Spaner simply tells us, "First, you make your movie. Then it gets into the Toronto Film Fest, Sundance, and Cannes. Then all your friends do the same, and your city becomes a big movie town!" Simple as that. The rest of the book is just tea-party anecdotes.

And, come on? Hollywood North by Northwest!? Does Toronto really need to be pandered to, in the very title of Vancouver's brag book? Especially when this tome is just one more attempt to package the wildly variable film scene in this burg into two homogonous streams-- Hollywood vs Canadian Indie -- connected by some fine, photogenic gossamer threads, and then declare them to be an international, not to mention national, treasure?

I'm currently taking part in an online conference, Eyebeam, which discusses distributed creativity, digital communities and networks. With reference to the arts specifically, but it's about the political implications of non-owned info / art and avoiding systems of control or disruptions. My section is 'Digital Karma: innovations in ethics'

Sound interesting? Check out:

ZERO FOR CONDUCT
Political Film Analysis
By Flick Harrison

It’s hard to bring oneself to even write about Quentin Tarantino, as overexposed as the man is. But as we sit in the inter-Bill “special period,” the queer cultural holding pattern that has been concocted by Hollywood through the emission of simultaneously-shot but sequentially-released feature films like Lord of the Rings, the Matrix sequels, and now “Kill Bill” volumes 1 and 2, it seems that this breathing space is the perfect time to pierce the bubble of hype. Kill Bill straddles the upcoming new year by a two-month margin in either direction, a gaping, raw wound on the mass-media psyche. Right now, a little salt seems appropriate.

The film is unabashedly a tribute to American film, as echoed through the copy-cat industries of spaghetti westerns, Hong Kong action films, and samurai movies. Gone are Tarantino’s watered-down nods to Godard, in their place are watered-down tributes to Woo. Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai, the keystone of the samurai genre, owes a debt to the John Ford western, led to more westerns like The Magnificent Seven, which then led to more Japanese easterns, and eventually to Hollywood easterns like Kill Bill. In the Hong Kong chop-socky cinema, on the other hand, Bruce Lee is as American as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Woo easily directs John Travolta, and Jackie Chan now stars with Chris Tucker. Spaghetti Westerns, of course, were purely American colonial productions, using Italian actors dubbed over into English, shot abroad to save money, banking entirely on the ignorance of North American audiences to distinguish Italians from Spanish-Americans.

ZERO FOR CONDUCT
Politics and Film
by Flick Harrison

In 1972, a group of theatre folk from the Big Smoke of Toronto got it into their heads to head out into farm country of Southern Ontario to create a play about what they found there. Michael Ondaatje, Can-Lit god and Booker-Prize-Winning author of The English Patient, documented the play and made this film, “The Clinton Special,” which is, like the play itself, both a documentary and a performance. Amazingly, I can’t find any coverage or reviews of this recent release on the web; that’s too bad, because it’s really worth checking out. 70’s activist theatre is where it’s at.

ZERO FOR CONDUCT
Politics and Film
by Flick Harrison

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was a pivotal moment in the mutual imperial massacre of 1914-18, which showcased Canada’s eagerness to wade in with the best of them. Canadian soldiers, fighting for the first time under separate flag, took a hill which everyone else had failed to take, earning a little glory as it was measured in those crazy days. In Vimy, Pierre Berton’s history of this most brutal battle of World War I, the author poses the question: was it worth thousands of dead, maimed and shell-shocked Canadian men to brand Canada in the brotherhood of nations as an equal? “The answer, of course,” he decides, “is no.”

Berton, the crusading hero of Canada’s historical record, is ready to drop our nationhood on a dime in this extreme and unique circumstance. When two Canadians come home in pine boxes from an illegal, imperial war, as happened this week, this is the time to discuss it. The total Canadians killed by the so-called ‘enemy’ in that faraway country has now risen to 50% of the total killed by our so-called ‘allies.’ – a strange statistic that feeds a lengthy, intense wave of anti-Americanism, first for failing to recognize our help in the so-called “War on Terror,” then for a cock-up which emphasized the pointless quagmire they had dragged us into over there.

What has this to do with movies? Well, the cinematic moment in which we finally saw the collateral-damage murders take place – the cockpit camera of the US fighter jet – could not better represent the Canadian-American relationship. An American movie in which the yankee top guns get all the dialogue, and the Canadians are cut out in the end. In Hollywood tradition, the drama centres not on the foreign victims, but on the heart-wrenching decision by the US pilot. “I sure hope that was the right thing,” he drawls. Did he disobey orders? Does the US give its pilots pep-pills? Was the pilot a victim? Did technology fail him? As in the Hollywood rewriting of Vietnam, this was America at war with itself, with foreigners only as scenic background, dehumanized radar blips. As uber-Canadian Marshall McLuhan once, said, war is education, especially for the loser.