I tried to make a top ten list of all the theatrical releases I saw this year and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find ten films that deserved to be on the list. Regrettably, 2011 is going down in my books as a flawed vintage, notable for admirably over-extended ambition (Melancholia, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and overhyped nostalgia (Hugo, The Artist). Instead, here’s a list of eleven personal cultural experiences, cinematic or otherwise, that moved me in 2011.
Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life
“Tell us a story from before we remember.”
Of all the over-reaching auteurs in 2011, Terry definitely reached the furthest. With the hotly debated creation sequence Malick crafted what might in time rank among the boldest and most radical digressions in the history of narrative cinema. The Tree of Life dares to be the ultimate ontological film. It’s about the foundation of the universe and the foundation of an individual. No other theatrical release this year filled the big screen with such a vast, detailed exploration of the nature of being itself.
M83: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
“We didn’t need a story. We didn’t need a real world.
We just had to keep walking.
And we became the stories. We became the places.
We were the lights, the deserts, the faraway worlds.
We were you before you even existed.”
Somewhere tonight the saxophone solo in Midnight City is saving someone’s life.
The Death of the 35mm Film Camera
They stopped manufacturing 35mm cameras this year. When I read the news I cried. Then I went and shot a 22 minute HD short on a Canon 7D for a budget of less than 2k. The tears dried quickly.
The Battle for the Kasr Nile Bridge, Cairo
Seeing this clip on YouTube was the moment I felt certain that something in the world was changing.
Hilary Clinton addresses the UN on LGTB Rights.
Thank you for taking a stand Hilary.
Ken Lum Retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery
An irresistibly debonair fellow took me to the VAG to see Ken Lum’s installations for our first date. We kissed in the mirror maze and it felt like a moment of pure cinema. Everything was ours.
The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival
For our second date we travelled around Vancouver on foot, searching for the year’s first cherry blossoms. It was springtime and maybe we were falling in love.
Judas Kiss (Caravaggio in Dublin)
Judas was hot in 2011. The year that brought us Lady Gaga’s worst single yet also brought me to one the most astonishing paintings I’ve ever seen. I sat rapt before Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ at The National Gallery of Ireland for what felt like an hour. Seeing a photo of this painting does not do it justice. The play of light across the photorealistic figures and faces is magnificent.The recent history of the painting is fascinating as well. From Wikipedia: “By the late 18th century, the painting was thought to have disappeared, and its whereabouts remained unknown for about 200 years. In 1990, Caravaggio’s lost masterpiece was recognized in the residence of the Society of Jesus in Dublin, Ireland. The exciting rediscovery was published in 1993.”
The Samuel Beckett Bridge (Calatrava in Dublin)
My trip to Dublin also brought me in contact with another masterpiece in an entirely different artistic discipline. I’ve marveled at Santiago Calatrava’s bone-white morphogenic structures in photographs for years. A stroll along the Liffey brought me face to face with the real deal for the first time. The sublime elegance and grace of his architecture is otherworldly.
Weekend
Andrew Haigh’s Weekend is an intimate two-hander about a brief drug-fuelled romance between bearded British lads in their mid-twenties. Tom Cullen’s sensitive lead performance as a stoner lifeguard ill at ease with his sexuality broke my heart. To my mind this is the best “LGTB film” in recent memory. It’s up there in the pantheon of British romance pics next to David Lean’s Brief Encounter.
Parallel Lives: A Jamie Travis Retrospective (Vancouver Queer Film Festival)
Few Canadian short filmmakers in the past decade have left a more distinct mark than Jamie, who is now poised to kick off 2012 with the premiere of his first feature For A Good Time Call at Sundance next month. I had the pleasure of getting to know Jamie in film school and contributing to the art department of his hit short The Saddest Boy in the World, but I think his best work is Patterns 3, the voodoorific musical climax of his anti-romance story cycle The Patterns Trilogy. It was great to see his collected shorts presented at VQFF in August. Jamie’s work always inspires me.
And so we bring 2011 to a close. It’s the end of several phases of my life, including this blog. I’ll be rebooting this site as part of my revamped personal artist site in early 2012. Lots of exciting creative work looms on the horizon. Let’s embrace it, everyone.
Everything remains to be done.
