For those of us who don’t know, Super 8 is a type of motion picture film developed by Kodak in the 1960s and recently discontinued. Because of its small format, and nostalgia-inducing aesthetic qualities, those in the know greedily track down what little supply of the stuff is still to be had. The short availability of the medium helps explain some of the festival’s rules, such as not letting contestants cut or edit any film so as to avoid wasted stock. With this year’s theme, “Secret Love,” firmly in mind, each of the 28 filmmakers was given one Super 8 reel, totalling about three minutes and twenty seconds.
For a few hours on Wednesday night, a near-hush fell over La Sala Rossa as the gathered audience of filmmakers, friends and fans watched the results. Many of the shorts made clever use of accompanying soundtracks, winning the audience over with wit and humour. Several films flopped face first. Certain participants made good use of conventions from historical periods of film like German Expressionism, or the French New Wave. Still others invoked the pixilation style of animation made popular by Norman McLaren. An air of playful creativity and experimentation was present throughout the screenings.
The event also oozed a community atmosphere, as pauses between reels gave attendees time to laud or lambaste the last film, go talk to its director elsewhere in the crowd, or get another drink. Organizer Gilles Castilloux, scrambling around the projection table in the middle of the room, was also being approached and congratulated throughout the evening. Indeed, Castilloux spent most of the night, as he put it, “running around with my hair on fire making sure everything goes well.” This brings us to the event’s principal shortcoming.
Montreal Super 8, due in part to its obscure and esoteric nature, lacks the organizational smoothness of larger film festivals. While this can be both strength and weakness, allowing for more interaction and audience participation, it slowed the event down dramatically. The awkward transitions between films became tedious after two thirds of the 28 films had been shown. As a result, only a fraction of the attendees stayed to hear the announcement of the evening’s winners.
The festival’s jury, consisting of three local filmmakers, awarded prizes at evenings end based on technical know-how, use of sound, creativity, and overall quality. Jose Garcia-Lozano was the event’s big winner and, suspiciously, also the projector operator for the evening. His Untitled, a clever vignette about love lost and planting new seeds, took home the Best Sound and Best Film awards. The slickest film of the night but also very funny, Mario Morin’s L’Univers de Catherine, took home the Technical Merit award. Owing something to the dry humour of Wes Anderson films, Morin’s short was a guided visit to a young girl’s favourite things in her house and room. Minor awards aside, the real competition was for the audience choice prize. This went to Aimee VanDrimmelen for Hip Skip, an ode to the delightful activity of skipping down the street. The hilarious short finds a skipper, made outcast by unsympathetic joggers, recruiting other hip people with whom to skip.
Despite the evening’s misfires and occasional tedium, when the Super 8 Film Festival is good it’s a laugh riot. So if you skipped the event this year, make sure you skip on up to Sala Rossa next November for a fun night of films and friends.
Note: This article was originally published on 27 November 2006 in the McGill Daily and can be found on that paper's website here.
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