EyeSteelFilm presents the WORLD PREMIERE of Daniel Cross’ Chairman George!

From the director who made THE STREET: A film with the Homeless and the team that made SPIT: Squeegee Punks in Traffic, comes CHAIRMAN GEORGE, a free-wheeling, jet-setting documentary which follows George Sapounidis’ musical trajectory through China, Ottawa, and Greece…chasing the Olympic Torch.

In Canada, George is a statistician. But in China, George is Elvis… CHAIRMAN GEORGE is a documentary feature about a Greek-Canadian troubadour who refuses to live anything but an extraordinary life. ln Ottawa, George is a statistician who lives with his mother. But every few months, he takes an extended leave from his job and heads to China where he metamorphoses into an international man of culture. Armed only with his bouzouki, guitar and cell phone, he becomes a star in China (with both the critics and the ladies). He concludes that since he is “the only Greek in the world who can sing in Chinese,” it is his duty to perform at the Closing Ceremonies of the Athens Olympic Games, as the torch is passed from Athens to Beijing.

AIRDATES:
May 28, 2005 : North American Premiere on CTV Television! On Saturday May 28th at 7:00 PM, you’ll be able to watch the film that CTV has promoted all week! – May 29, 2005 : There will be a repeat screening Sunday 29 May 12:35am-1:45am (Saturday night)

From an anonymous cinephile:

“They make me feel guilty, cheap and dirty. I don’t know if I even like them, but eventually I think I will end up seeing every movie Todd Solondz ever makes if only cuz it takes too much commitment to avoid them. So it will be with his latest, PALINDROMES, which runs at Cinema du Parc from Friday May 27th to Sunday June 9th. This one looks like it could be pretty inventively sleazy—-8 different actresses, one character. In any event, this film could prove to be definitive: it will reveal Solondz as either the authentic anti-american-values idiot savant of his generation; or, conversely, as a lottery-lucky talentless skeeze.”

“En étroite collaboration avec l’historien de l’animation William Moritz, la veuve de Fischinger, Elfriede, a consacré ses énergies à retrouver les films et à les faire restaurer à l’aide d’éléments conservés dans les archives (dont celles de la Cinémathèque québécoise). Depuis le décès d’Elfriede, sa fille, Barbara, poursuit cet exigeant travail. Pour sa part, Moritz a établi une filmographie qui constitue aujourd’hui une référence dont l’exactitude et l’exhaustivité sont reconnues. Les archives Fischinger, dirigées par Barbara, collaborent depuis quelques années avec le Center for Visual Music de Californie à la restauration des chefs-d’oeuvre du cinéaste. C’est le résultat de ce travail que le public de la Cinémathèque aura le plaisir de découvrir le 26 mai. Quarante minutes de projection lumineuse pour admirer les oeuvres dans leur éclat d’origine.”

The following films will be screened ;

TIME magazine recently published a list of the 100 best films ever made. While the list is mainly populated by already canonized movies (“Citizen Kane”, “Star Wars”, “Dr. Strangelove” and my personal favourite “The 400 Blows”), it also features a film by the late montréal director Jean-Claude Lauzon. Léolo (1992) which got a very positive review in the magazine back in 1993 made its way to the top 100.

“For a movie that worms inside a child’s hopes and fears, that understands how kids can be both shaped by their family and in righteous rebellion against it, you should see—immediately—Leolo”. —TIME Magazine, Apr. 5, 1993

The complete list and the full review of “Léolo” are available at the following URL;

La prochaine rencontre de la Coalition cinéma se tiendra à la CASA OBSCURA LUNDI LE 23 MAI PROCHAIN À 19H00 (4381 PAPINEAU À MONTRÉAL). Nous invitons tous ceux qui nousnécrivent à venir pour participer aux différents groupes de travail qui ont été formé.
Comme vousle savez, les causes ne manquent pas !

Ces jours-ci, l’urgence est au documentaire et à l’animation, car le commissaire Jacques Bensimon a très sérieusement coupé les budgets de production à tel point que l’avenir du Programme français est menacé.

Plusieurs propositions d’actions à entreprendre sont sur la table de travail. Nous en discuterons lundi prochain. Dans l’urgence, une carte postale adressée à la ministre circule afin de signaler notre inquiétude vis-à-vis de l’application de certaines politiques qui mettent en péril la diversité artistique, ainsi que les conditions de création des artistes et professionnels du cinéma.

Shannon Bramer (The Refrigerator Memory), Stephen Cain (American Standard / Canada Dry) and Sherwin Tjia (The World is a Heartbreaker) read at Pharmacie Esperanza with Corey Frost, author of The Worthwhile Flux (Conundrum Press) and Genevieve McClean. Music by Amber Goodwyn.

The World Is a Heartbreaker inaugurates a new subgenre: imposter poetry. This collection is a set of 1600 pseudohaikus, bite-sized chunks of poetic goodness shotgunned at the distracted masses. What’s a pseudohaiku? It’s the poetry of pure indulgence, a three-liner without the constraint, the pretension or the 5–7–5 syllable form. The subject matter? Relationships, cats, insecurities – themes recur and build into a kind of non-linear narrative. These micropoems are easily digestible yet remarkably acute, a catalogue of scattered thoughts and pointed observations that go down like potato chips – betcha can’t read just one. Sometimes sexy, sometimes scandalous, sometimes sentimental, but always three lines long, these pseudohaikus are the future of poetry in a world awash with sound bites, news clips, catchphrases. There are no pleasures like the guilty ones.

Sherwin Tjia is a Montreal-based poet and painter. He has exhibited widely and works as a medical illustrator for McGill University. He is the author of “Pedigree Girls” (comic strips) and “Gentle Fictions” (poetry), both from Insomniac. Recently, he illustrated JonArno Lawson’s “The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask” (Pedlar). A second “Pedigree Girls” collection will be published by UK-based Saqi Books in spring 2005.

“Quand il ne tournait pas, Gilles Carle peignait, dessinait, que ce soit dans sa maison du square Saint-Louis ou de l’île Verte. Des créations thématiques, des autoportraits, mais également des portraits de ses amis et de sa muse, Chloé Sainte-Marie. On peut voir ces oeuvres depuis le 16 dans une salle aménagée au rez-de-chaussée du siège social de Loto-Québec.”

Gilles Carle, le cinéaste, le peintre et l’homme…* est présenté jusqu’au 26 juin à Espace Création Loto-Québec, rue Sherbrooke Ouest. Les portes sont ouvertes de 11h à 18h, du mercredi au vendredi, et de midi à 17h, les samedis et dimanches. L’entrée est gratuite.

L’International du Cinéma Hip Hop is a collective seeking to encourage and exalt positive and inclusive Hip Hop culture, while cultivating the understanding of Hip Hop cinema and its connection to perception. We intend to create a safe and open environment for personal expression though films and docs that examine the diversities of modern Hip Hop culture: Music, Dance, Visual Arts and Scholarship.

The success of Canada’s first International Hip Hop Film Festival in Vancouver last September 1st-5th 2004 has given way to renewed enthusiasm amongst the Festival’s organizers. The diverse and unified collective, composed of young professionals, has cooked up a grandiose curriculum for the Montréal version. In addition to films & documentaries, the Festival will also host Art exhibits, book launches, panels, cocktails, spoken-word night and soirées with some of the City’s best Hip Hop acts, performers, emcees and deejays.

All movies and documentaries, unless indicated otherwise, will be showed at the JA de Sève Cinéma,located in the Library Building (Ground floor) of Concordia University. 1400, de Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montréal. Tickets will be sold in the foyer of JA de Sève Cinema prior to each showing, at $6.00 per ticket. Tickets will be available as early as one hour prior to projections.

The full schedule is available on their website.

Early 70’s US-based Video Collectives presented by Dara Greenwald

A talk about the early decentralized television movement in the US and a screening of rare, recently preserved clips of videos documenting political and cultural movements – including Fred Hampton’s last interview, the first Women’s Liberation March, and a pirate TV station. The discussion will also explore the challenges of archiving and preserving video – a quickly degrading medium. Including Fred Hampton’s (Black Panthers) last interview!

Dara Greenwald has worked at the Video Data Bank since 1998 (http://www.vdb.org). She is an educator, artist, and engaged cultural worker. She has been working on preserving a large collection of obsolete format videos from the early 70’s. You can see her other projects at http://www.daragreenwald.com and http://www.pinkbloque.org.

Stencil Pirates: A History of Street Stenciling

An in-depth slide presentation on the 15,000 year history of street stenciling. From caves in France to 1930’s Spain to 1970’s South Africa to 1980’s New York City to the present, this presentation delves deep into the uses, motivations and practices of hundreds
of years of stencil artists and activist. Josh MacPhee is a street artist, designer, curator, author and activist. His first book, Stencil Pirates: A Global Survey of Street Stenciling, was published in July 2004 by Soft Skull Press. He is currently working on a number of other books, including a book about political street art to be published in 2006 on AK Press. He also runs a radical art distribution project, justseeds.org and organizes the Celebrate People’s History Poster Project.

See his work at http://www.justseeds.org, http://www.stencilpirates.org and http://www.counterproductiveindustries.com.