#Cape Breton filmmaker

[sociologyontherock]

For Vince Walsh

By Linda Cohen

My husband Tim and I were travelling during the celebration of Vince’s life and couldn’t make it home in time, but we spent hours on the road reminiscing. Tim has so many stories going back to their teen years, including a trip to Toronto to look for work. As the oldest, Vince took charge and found an apartment and employers who hired on the spot. He knew what it meant to be a “migrant worker.”  

Vincent Walsh

My memories “only” go back 40 or so years, to our early twenties. Vince was one of the few M.A. graduate students in my MUN cohort, he in anthropology and I in sociology. Our departments worked closely together at that time and we took many of the same courses. A favourite was Louis Chiaramonte’s “photography as fieldwork” course: our projects were hilarious! Documenting how we made wine and beer were favourite topics. We also worked together one summer. We were both hired as fieldworkers to go to Lark Harbour (NL) and take notes on return migration for a Nova Scotian professor. Being very young and too eager to get a job like this, neither of us asked any questions about transportation, pay, or accommodations. We found out too late that none would be provided up front, so we hitchhiked from St. John’s. With no money “until the grant came in” and nowhere to stay, we arrived in Lark Harbour late one evening as a pair of townie streels.

Vince was a consummate anthropologist, very good at breaking the ice. He managed to convince our last ride into Lark Harbour that we were harmless enough, if a little loopy. That guy brought us to a family who would let us sleep on their basement floor on the promise of rent to come. Week after week we waited and called the Nova Scotian professor. Our hosts very generously fed and housed us, largely because Vince was so engaging. They loved him and he enjoyed the work. He even helped dig out their septic tank (a barrel) when the added load on their plumbing threatened our stay.

I’ll remember Vince for his great conversation and his sparring with intellectuals in and beyond the university – particularly writers / philosophers John Horwood, Frank Barry and David Benson.  Vince was a Marxist in the early days, even after becoming a businessman running the Ship Inn. He laughed at the irony of it. However, he was adamant about not imposing his theoretical interpretations on participants in his research on inner city housing  and grassroots politics in St. John’s and Manchester, England. He always let them speak for themselves and vigorously upheld this position in successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation (“The Social Life of Hulme: Politics and Protest in an Inner City Housing Estate,” 1994, University of Manchester, supervisor: Professor Tim Ingold). 

Vince was a respected colleague in the Department of Anthropology at MUN. An active consultant and filmmaker in the Visual Anthropology Unit at Memorial University, Vince had more than a dozen films and papers on local issues and the arts to his credit. In addition to his many years as an online instructor at MUN, he taught sociology and anthropology courses in universities and colleges in Manchester (England), Cape Breton (Nova Scotia), Wolfville (Nova Scotia), Prince George (B.C.), Brandon (Manitoba) and Grand Falls (Newfoundland). He was a good friend to many and whenever we met, professors Tanner, Inglis, Chiaramonte, Nemec, Clarke, Leyton, Kennedy and others would inevitably ask how Vince was making out after he moved to Grand Falls. He continued to teach online for the Department of Anthropology until 2022, encouraging students to write and think critically about their worlds. Students loved his stories and illustrative examples. 

Finally, Vince was a dad. Everyone in our family has great memories of times and outings with him, Katie, and Morgaine. He taught me (and many others) how to fish for trout! Even after he moved away, Vince sent in something every year for our communal Christmas Eve potluck table: moose or salmon or berries.     

I miss Vince for all these reasons and more. He was a true brother in spirit. RIP, Dr. Vincent Stephen Walsh, September 7, 1955 – June 12, 2024.

[montrealmarketingdesign]

Geographies of Solitude wins Best Canadian Feature Documentary

Geographies of Solitude film won  the Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award at Hot Docs for its experimental  portrait of researcher Zoe Lucas and her work on Sable Island.

The film is directed by Jacquelyn Mills  and produced by Mills and Rosalie Chicoine Perreault. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000, sponsored by Telefilm and the Documentary Organization of Canada.

Hot Docs Winner – Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award

Hot Docs Winner – The Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award

Geographies of Solitude is a film about an environmentalist (Zoe Lucas) living on Nova Scotia's Sable Island has won top Canadian honours at this year's Hot Docs Film Festival 2022 .

Her Sable Island film , "Geographies of Solitude," chronicles the life's work of environmentalist Zoe Lucas, the only full-time inhabitant on Sable Island.

Visual and Aural Storytelling Film

This Sundance supported film is directed by Jacquelyn Mills and produced by Mills and Rosalie Chicoine Perreault. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000, sponsored by Telefilm and the Documentary Organization of Canada.

The jury praised this experimental documentary film Geographies of Solitude for “its deft ability to reveal the complex intersections between the natural world and humanity’s excesses on a singular isolated island through strongly crafted and arresting visual and aural storytelling.”

Mills also won the Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award, which honours an artist presenting their first or second feature at the festival. The award carries a cash prize of $3,000, sponsored by the Glick family.

Geographies of Solitude Trailer

The trailer for "Geographies of Solitude " by Jacquelyn Mills, starring Zoe Lucas.

About the film: For decades, Zoe Lucas has catalogued the flora and fauna on Sable Island, a thin strip of land off the Canadian coast.

Jacquelyn Mills Canadian Experimental Filmmaker

Experimental filmmaker Jacquelyn Mills joins her to observe the sand dunes, freshwater ponds, wild horses and washed-up plastic waste.

This Environmental Documentary Canada was shot on 16mm, the film often incorporates eco-friendly film making techniques to capture, in beautiful effect, Mills' encounters with Zoe Lucas and the Island. In this sense, Zoe Lucas and Sable Island are not “subjects” of the film, but collaborators and co-creators.

We spoke with Jacquelyn Mills to learn more about her intuitive approach in making this Experimental Documentary in Canada and the different ways she worked with her surroundings - including eco-friendly hand processing techniques like using plant emulsion, exposing parts of the film in moonlight and starlight, and placing specimens from Sable Island on film stock.

Towards the end of the episode, we speak briefly about her previous film, IN THE WAVES, a touching portrait of the director's grandmother as she grieves the loss of a sister available to stream on Vimeo

ABOUT THE FILM - Geographies of Solitude

Canada, 103 minutes

Director: Jacquelyn Mills Production company: Jacquelyn Mills Executive Producer: Brad Mills International sales: Acéphale mustafa@acephale.ca Producers: Rosalie Chicoine Perreault, Jacquelyn Mills Cinematography: Jacquelyn Mills, Scott Moore Editor: Jacquelyn Mills, Pablo Álvarez-Mesa Sound design: Andreas Mendritzki, Jacquelyn Mills Sound: Jacquelyn Mills Music: Emily Millard, Mark Boudreau Photography: Jacquelyn Mills. Additional Camera: Scott Moore

[ashishdewantoronto]

20 Tourist Destinations in Canada by Ashish Dewan

1. Vancouver, British Columbia

Vancouver is so beautiful that it’s become a hit with filmmakers: so much so that the city has the nickname Hollywood North. Among the most popular attractions here are Stanley Park, Granville Island and the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

2. Whistler, British Columbia

Whistler is North America’s largest ski resort and was the host mountain resort for the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver. Summer activities here include hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing and golf.

3. Quebec City, Quebec

Founded in 1608 but first settled in 1535, Quebec City is one of North America’s oldest European settlements. Attractions here include the historic Old Town, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as the Château Frontenac and, in winter, the Ice Hotel.

4. Montreal, Quebec

If you can see only one Canadian city in 2017, Montreal should be at the top of your list. Home to attractions such as the Notre-Dame Basilica and Old Montreal, Canada’s second most populous city celebrates its 375th anniversary this year.

5. Toronto, Ontario

The joke may be that Toronto is New York City run by the Swiss, but the city on the shores of Lake Ontario is a vibrant, multicultural city with fascinating museums, stunning architecture, beaches and a great restaurant scene. The best-known attraction is the CN Tower, which you can now dangle off of.

6. Canmore, Alberta

Canmore is one of the gateways to Banff National Park but is also a destination in its own right. The town in the Canadian Rockies is an outdoor lover’s paradise and also hosts a variety of festivals and the Canmore Highland Games during the year.

7. Kelowna, British Columbia

Located on Okanagan Lake, Kelowna is in the heart of the Okanagan wine country. Outdoor pursuits such as boating, hiking and golf are popular in summer while the nearby ski resorts attract visitors in winter.

8. Niagara Falls, Ontario

A popular honeymoon destination, Niagara Falls is home to attractions such as a butterfly conservatory that is one of the largest in North America. The main attraction though is the set of three waterfalls the city is named after.

9. Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

Cape Breton Island is home to a unique style of fiddling, a rich Scottish Gaelic heritage and the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site. The island is also very scenic, with attractions like the Cabot Trail and the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

10. Stratford, Ontario

Like its namesake in England, Stratford is located on the banks of a river named Avon. The city is famous for its Shakespeare festival, its music festivals and for being the hometown of Justin Bieber.

11. Calgary, Alberta

The oil industry has made Calgary a prosperous and multicultural city. However, its location on the edge of the prairies means it’s still cowboy country, and the Calgary Stampede is the city’s most famous – and raucous – event.

12. Ottawa

Canada’s capital is also its most educated city and home to most of the country’s national museums. The main attraction here is Parliament Hill, and in winter, a must-do is to go skating on the Rideau Canal.

13. Edmonton, Alberta

Edmonton has a vast park system with hiking and biking trails and is one of the cities where you may be able to spot the Northern Lights on a clear winter’s night. Other attractions include the TELUS World of Science, the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village and North America’s largest shopping mall.

14. Winnipeg, Manitoba

Winnipeg hosts some great festivals during the year and is also a popular destination for sports lovers. The city’s architecture and museums are among its greatest attractions, with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights the ultimate showcase for both these aspects.

15. Mississauga, Ontario

Mississauga is really a suburb of Toronto, and its long shoreline makes it perfect for waterfront dining and shopping. With plenty of amusement parks and festivals, Mississauga is especially popular for family vacations.

16. Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria’s location on Vancouver Island, its many stunning beaches and its Mediterranean climate make it one of Canada’s best boating destinations. Historic architecture, the Royal BC Museum and Butchart Gardens are some of the city’s other attractions.

17. London, Ontario

London is located on the banks of the Thames River – the one in Ontario. Festivals like the Sunfest world music festival and the London Rib-Fest as well as attractions like Springbank Park and the Fanshawe Pioneer Village draw many visitors in summer.

18. Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton has been used as a filming location for movies as diverse as Hairspray and the Resident Evil franchise. The city’s attractions are diverse too and include Dundurn Castle, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the Bruce Trail, African Lion Safari and more than 100 waterfalls.

19. Richmond, British Columbia

Richmond is located just south of Vancouver, at the mouth of the Fraser River. With more than half of Richmond’s population of Asian descent, this is a fantastic destination for lovers of Asian cuisine. The city is also home to great shopping and the impressive International Buddhist Temple.

20. Halifax, Nova Scotia

As a busy port city, many of Halifax’s attractions are related to the sea. They include North America’s oldest lighthouse as well as the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. Citadel Hill with Fort George is one of the city’s most well-known historic sites.

[instachron]

I think I always had a cold eye. I always saw things realistically. But, it’s also easier to show the darkness than the joy of life. Life is not beautiful all the time. Life can be good, then you lie down, and stare up at the ceiling, and the sadness falls on you. Things move on, time passes, people go away, and sometimes they don’t come back.

Robert Frank [Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]

© Mitch Cullin

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[listenzaheer]

Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Jacquelyn Mills – “Geographies of Solitude”

Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Jacquelyn Mills – “Geographies of Solitude”

Jacquelyn Mills is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Breton Island and primarily based in Montreal. Her movie “In the Waves” premiered at Visions du Réel and was theatrically launched at TIFF’s Cinematheque. Mills has labored as editor, sound designer, and cinematographer for the National Film Board of Canada in addition to different internationally acclaimed movies. “Geographies of Solitude”…

[thisiscapebreton]

What Louisbourg, Nova Scotia Was Know For: Swordfishing

Chris Bellemore                                                            

                                     It is easy to romanticize the past, especially when monstrous fish are involved, evoking a sense of prosperity, adventure, exploration and facing the unknown. Adventure is a common thread here, and on the surface it seems that the turn of the 20th century was all about adventure. We always seek to understand, but with history we have to often ask ourselves the basic question of if we are reinforcing our own values, or coming at it from a true sense of impartiality.

People today, both in Cape Breton and abroad understand in general where Louisbourg stands; in basic terms what it is “known for”- its historic French fortress that once stood as a strategic seaport and the role it played in the English/French conflict that took place during the 18th century. In an article written by Frederick Edwards in 1941, he stated this very thing while talking about Louisbourg’s other claim to fame in the world - it being the epicenter of the Broadbill swordfishing industry, something that was once just as widely known not only locally, or nationally but also internationally. It not only brought prosperity, but scientific understanding and fame.

Apologies for using sword fishing and swordfishing interchangeably. I still haven’t resolved that one after collecting information from many sources and seeing it both ways.

Broadbill Swordfish

Swordfish are, at maturity, massive, majestic fish. Cape Breton’s Magazine, issue 4, 1973 described them this way.

“The swordfish is a solitary creature. It does not school, and it is considered rare to find two close together. It is pelagic, which means it lives in the open seas; and it is a warm-water fish, seeking temperatures of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They are found throughout the tropical and temperate Atlantic; in the Mediterranean; around New Zealand, Hawaii and Japan; and in the South Pacific north to California. In the western Atlantic, it ranges from Jamaica, Cuba and the Bermudas, to Cape Breton Island, entering into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and upon the Grand Banks. They are generally found north only in the warmer months.”

The Commercial Fishing Industry

Large numbers of swordfish once travelled to the east coast of Cape Breton in the summer months. New England began fishing swordfish off the Scotian Shelf that runs between provincial waters and the Gulf of Maine in the 1880s. The commercial fishery in Canada formally began in 1903. Fishing boats travelled from Digby to Dingwall and beyond to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in pursuit of fish, but Glace Bay and Louisbourg (apparently bitter swordfishing industry rivals at the time) were the epicenter for activity between 1909 to 1959. Melvin S. Huntington , a past mayor of Louisbourg who kept excellent diaries of Louisbourg during the period from 1896 to 1950, made his first reference to “quite a large member of sword fisherman in port” in 1917. He continued to collect detailed information related to the resident and seasonal fishing vessels that called Louisbourg home during swordfish season and their catches throughout the years.

Commercial fishing of Broadbill Swordfish was done with harpoons. Harpoons consisted of 16-18 foot pole attached to a bronze dart called “lily irons” The spear was rigged by rope to a keg. The fish make a habit of lazing about just under the water's surface, known as “finning”. The standard crew for the board consisted of one at the top of the mast as a lookout, one steering the boat and a harpooner at the end of the bowsprit. Over time several boats were retrofitted to that they could be steered from the mast, eliminating the need for a third crew member in calmer weather. When a fish is spotted, the lookout directed the harpooner to sneak up on the fish from behind. When the bowsprit passes over the fish, the harpooner impales the fish.

Picture of swordfish boats on the Havenside side of Louisbourg just up the road from where I live on the way to the lighthouse. Credit: Clara Dennis

The glory years had started by 1930, with prohibition ending and boats being retrofitted to meet the needs of this new, emerging lucrative market. In 1932, over 2,000,000 pounds of swordfish were landed at Louisbourg, with 40 to 50 people employed in processing the fish at the Lewis & Co. wharf. In August of that year Huntington stated ”swordfish quoted in the Boston Market at 10 cts per pound, which means that the local dealers can pay only 1 ½ cts a pound to the fisherman. This is the lowest price on record. At this time last year the local buyers were paying 10 cts a pound”, which demonstrates that this industry, like all others was both lucrative and volatile. He regularly took count of how many were brought into Louisbourg, as many as 430 one day and 480 another in 1938.

Clara Dennis, well know at the time for her adventures and exploits as one of provinces first native-born travel writers in the 1930s, visited Louisbourg in the mid to late 30s and recorded aspects of the commercial swordfish industry as part of her mission to “seek and find Nova Scotia”. Her exquisite photographs, many found in this article, contributed to several of her published books and are now in the care of Nova Scotia Archives.

Charlie Stacey, Harpooner in Louisbourg. Clara Dennis

Commercial swordfishing boat, Louisbourg. Photo credit: Clara Dennis

Swordfishing boats. From the Lewis and Company Wharf. Photo credit: Clara Dennis

Recreational Fishery

Recreational fishing of Broadbill swordfish is quite different. It involves a hook and line, and usually several hours of fighting before the fish is tired enough to be brought in.

As word of the large numbers of swordfish being fished off of the east coast of Cape Breton spread, it attracted the interest of recreational fishermen in the United States. The first of these to recognize the sport fishing potential was Michael Lerner, the Founder of Lerner Clothing stores in New York. Lerner, who had both strong fishing and scientific interests, approach the American Museum of Natural History to accompany him to Louisbourg.

The Lerner Expedition, including Michael Lerner and Fransesca Lamont. Photo Credit: Gary LeDrew

In July of 1936 he arrived as part of the “Lerner Expedition”, accompanied by scientists Dr. J. Nichols, Mr. H.C. Raven and Ludwig Ferraglio, as well as lead scientist Fransesca LaMont, known later to be Earnest Hemingway’s go-to fish authority and according to a 1952 edition of The Long Island Press, a “general big-game whiz bang.” Bill Lewis from Lewis and Company acted as a go-to between this group and local fishermen. A temporary laboratory was also set up at Lewis and Company’s wharf for sample collection and accommodation of the scientists while they were in Louisbourg. This was the first of two expeditions that Lerner would finance.

Lerner was the first man to catch a Broadbill in Canadian waters. He landed his first fish, at Louisbourg on Aug 3, 1936 weight 462 ½ lbs. On Aug 6, 1936 he brought in two more, weights; 535 and 601 lbs. Interest in the sport soon skyrocketed. Eventually, dozens of wealthy sports fishermen were coming to Louisbourg annually to try to land a big fish.

Harvey Lewis, another former mayor of Louisbourg, and of the fames Louisbourg family, recounted this time as part of an interview he gave to the Cape Breton Post related to the launch of his book “ Lewis & Company: Memories of a Business, a Family and a Community”.

“When Lerner came to Nova Scotia, the province gave him a boat and even had a photographer go with him,” said Lewis, adding that Lerner’s wife came to Louisbourg with her husband the year after Lerner’s first visit, being the first women catch a swordfish in Canadian waters, stirring up even more interest in the sport.

These exploits soon attracted the major big game anglers of the time to Louisbourg, including writer/ editor for Field and Stream Kip Farrington and author and filmmaker Lee Wulff. Several notable American doctors, lawyers and business people (both men and women) are mentioned landing fish in Louisbourg in the Huntington Diaries, with the accounts spanning into the early 40s.

The Second World War Through Until Today

The lucrative fishery boomed up until the start of the Second World War. With the harbour regulated with a torpedo net and U-boats prowling the coastal waters, as well as many men off to war, the swordfishing in Louisbourg dwindled. Some brave few, including Lerner, continued to fish the waters off of Louisbourg through 1941. In July of 1942 Huntington wrote “swordfishermen today discovered wreckage including, life rafts, life boats, and buoys and many other articles belonging to a steamer, which is supposed to have been sunk by an enemy submarine last night or early this morning. A signal light usually used on life rafts was still burning when found.”

Gary LeDrew, who grew up in Louisbourg told me a story related to the war and swordfishing from his uncle Al Bussey. Al was fishing off of Scatarie Island. Having a good size fish on he saw a huge shadow beneath the boat, over 200 feet in length which broke his line and freed the fish. Gary says he is 95% sure that this was the French submarine cruiser Surcouf, which was involved in altercations of St. Pierre and Miquelon at the time.

After the war was over, many felt that things would be back to normal with the swordfishing industry in Louisbourg. Swordfish were still being taken throughout the war years, although the recreational fishery had slowed. By that time regular fisherman started to trawl for swordfish with baited hook and line, and ended up catching swordfish of all sizes. Some blame this for the stock plummeting, others the construction of the Canso Causeway affecting the migration patterns of bait fish the swordfish depended on, and yet others pointed to larger boats fishing them off of the Grand Banks before they could come inshore. One thing is clear – the species never recovered, and the unifying consensus is that it was us. There is still a commercial fishery in Nova Scotia, but we are far removed from glory days of legendary monsters being hauled into town by the hundreds.

 Swordfish bone I found in my Havenside house that started me down the path of this story.

Conclusion

As we contemplate these glory days we should think about how it has shaped the community of Louisbourg today, the good and the bad. Louisbourg, for a small community challenged with outmigration and other rural issues, continues to be a very dynamic place, and although it has officially lost their status as a town, it still, in many ways, functions like one, and has always had a strong legacy of leadership. What do you think it will it be “known for” in the future? What will the new generations of people like Edwards say?

The other thing that comes to mind as I sifted through the various bits of research, is how future generations see the decisions me make or decide not make in our lifetime, and what legacy they will be left with. With all of our understanding and technology do we have the ambition and resolve to do better and will that effort be recognised. Maybe if the armies of large fish return one day we will be able to point to something positive. Maybe it will be what we can collectively do in the communities we live in.

Thank you to so many, including Don MacLean, Gary LeDrew, and Pat Lewis. And thank you to the former mayors for capturing so much about Louisbourg.

Gary's Vintage Louisbourg page https://www.facebook.com/VintageLouisbourg/

Abandoned Places and Untold Stories of Cape Breton https://www.facebook.com/groups/518156224947471/?multi_permalinks=1761060267323721&notif_id=1530696915827502&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic

My music https://soundcloud.com/crispbellemono

[bunchoffaceclaims]

Alec Butler

Gender: Two-spirit/male (transgender)

DOB: 1959

Nationality: Canadian

Ethnicity: Métis (Mi’kmaq-French-Irish)

Gif Hunt tag RP Icons tag

Alec Butler is a Canadian playwright and filmmaker. Butler was born in in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and was assigned female at birth. He identified as a lesbian before pursuing gender reassignment in, and currently identifies as a Two-Spirit trans man. Prior to his gender reassignment, his work was published under the name Audrey Butler.

He was a nominee for the Governor General's Award for English drama for his play Black Friday. He has also worked on artistic projects with The 519 Church St. Community Centre as their first artist-in-residence. He was named one of Toronto's Vital People by the Toronto Community Foundation in 2006.

[irinache]

Dora Maar

Henriette Theodora Markovitch, pseudonym Dora Maar (November 22, 1907 in the 6th arrondissement of Paris – July 16, 1997 in Paris), was a French photographer, painter, and poet. She was a lover and muse of Pablo Picasso.

Biography Henriette Theodora Markovitch was the only daughter of Joseph Markovitch (1875–1969), a Croatian architect who studied in Zagreb, Vienna, and then Paris where he settled in 1896, and of his spouse, Catholic-raised Louise-Julie Voisin (1877–1942), originally from Cognac, France. In 1910, the family left for Buenos Aires where the father obtained several commissions including for the embassy of Austria-Hungary; His achievements earned him the honor of being decorated by Emperor Francis Joseph I, even though he was "the only architect who did not make a fortune in Buenos Aires. " In 1926, the family returned to Paris. Dora Maar, a pseudonym she chose, took courses at the Central Union of Decorative Arts and the School of Photography. She also enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian[2] which had the advantage of offering the same instruction to women as to men. Dora Maar frequented André Lhote's workshop where she met Henri Cartier-Bresson. While studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Maar met fellow female surrealist Jacqueline Lamba. About her, Maar said, 'I was closely linked with Jacqueline. She asked me, “where are those famous surrealists?" and I told her about cafe de la Place Blanche.' Jacqueline then began to frequent the cafe where she would eventually meet Andre Breton, whom she would later marry.[3] When the workshop ceased its activities, Dora Maar left Paris, alone, for Barcelona and then London, where she photographed the effects of the economic depression following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in the United States. On her return, and with the help of her father, she opened another workshop at 29 rue d'Astorg, (8th arrondissement of Paris).[4] In 1935 she was introduced to Pablo Picasso and she became his companion and his muse.[5] She took pictures in his studio at the Grands Augustins and tracked the latter stages of his work, Guernica.[5] She later even acted as a model for his piece titled Monument à Apollinaire.

Dora Maar the photographer Maar’s earliest surviving photographs were taken in the early 1920s with a Rolleiflex camera while on a cargo ship going to the Cape Verde Islands.[3] At the beginning of 1930, she set up a photography studio on rue Campagne-Première (14th arrondissement of Paris) with Pierre Kéfer, photographer, and decorator for Jean Epstein's film, The Fall of the House of Usher (1928 French film). In the studio, Maar and Kefer worked together mostly on commercial photography for advertisements and fashion magazines.[3] She met the photographer Brassaï with whom she shared the darkroom in the studio. Brassai once said that she had, “bright eyes and an attentive gaze, a disturbing stare at times.”[3] Dora Maar also met Louis-Victor Emmanuel Sougez, a photographer working for advertising, archeology and artistic director of the newspaper L'Illustration, whom she considered a mentor. In 1932, she had an affair with the filmmaker Louis Chavance. Dora Maar frequented the October group, formed around Jacques Prévert and Max Morise after their break from surrealism. She has her first publication in the magazine Art et Métiers Graphiques in 1932.[6] Her first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Vanderberg in Paris.[7] After the fascist demonstrations of February 6, 1934, in Paris along with René Lefeuvre, Jacques Soustelle, supported by Simone Weil and Georges Bataille, she signed the tract "Appeal to the struggle" written at the initiative of André Breton. Much of her work is highly influenced by leftist politics of the time, often depicting those who had been thrown into poverty by the depression. She was part of an ultra-leftist association called “masses,” where she first met Georges Bataille,[3] an anti-fascist organization called "The Union of Intellectuals Against Fascism"[8] and a radical collective of left-wing actors and writers called October.[3] She also was involved in many Surrealist groups and often participated in demonstrations, convocations, and cafe conversations. She signed many manifestos including one titled 'when surrealists were right' in august of 1935 which concerned the congress of Paris which had been held in march of that year.[3] In 1935 she took a photo of fashion illustrator and designer Christian Berard that was described by writer and critic Michael Kimmelman as, “wry and mischievous with only his head perceived above the fountain as if he were john the baptist on a silver platter.”[3] At the end of 1935, Dora Maar was hired as a set photographer on Jean Renoir film , The Crime of Monsieur Lange. On this occasion Paul Eluard introduced her to Pablo Picasso.[9] Their liaison would last nearly nine years, without Picasso nevertheless breaking his relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter, mother of his daughter Maya. Dora Maar photographed the successive stages of the creation of Guernica,[10] painted by Picasso in his studio in the rue des Grands-Augustins from May to June 1937; Picasso used these photographs in his creative process. At the same time, she is the principal model of Picasso, who often represents her in tears, she, herself produced several self-portraits entitled: La Femme qui pleure – The Weeping Woman.[11] It is, however, the gelatin silver works of the surrealist period that remain the most sought after by amateurs: Portrait of Ubu (1936), 29 rue d'Astorg, black and white, collages, photomontages or superimpositions.[12][13][14][15] The photo represents the central character in a popular series of plays by Alfred Jarry called Ubu Roi. The work was first shown at the Exposition Surréaliste d’objets at the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris and at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. She also participated in Participates in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, at the MoMA in New York the same year.[16] Maar met Picasso in 1936 at the Cafe des Deux Magots. The story of their first encounter was told by the writer Jean-Paul Crespelle, "the young women serious face, lit up by pale blue eyes which looked all the paler because of her thick eyebrows; a sensitive uneasy face, with light and shade passing alternately over it. She kept driving a small pointed pen-knife between her fingers into the wood of the table. Sometimes she missed and a drop of blood appeared between the roses embroidered on her black gloves... Picasso would ask Dora to give him the gloves and would lock them up in the showcase he kept for his mementos."[3] Her liaison with Picasso who physically abused her and made her fight Marie-Therese Walter for his love[17] ended in 1943, although they met again episodically until 1946. Thus, on March 19, 1944, she played the role of Fat Anguish in the reading at Michel Leiris' place of Picasso' first play, Desire Caught by the Tail, led by Albert Camus. In 1944, through the intermediary of Paul Éluard, Dora Maar met Jacques Lacan, who took care of her nervous breakdown by administering her electroshocks,[18] which were forbidden at the time. Picasso bought her a house in Ménerbes, Vaucluse, where she retired and lived alone. She turned to the Catholic religion, met the painter Nicolas de Stael who lived in the same village and turned to abstract paintings.

Dora Maar the painter The painted works of Dora Maar remained unrecognized until their posthumous sale, organized in 1999, which made the public and professionals discover a very personal production that had never left her studio. Dora Maar abandoned photography for painting alongside leaving Picasso and his influence, or rather the crushing presence of the master, who had imposed on her a cubistic style. Pushed by Picasso to express herself in this style, one can wonder about Picasso's desire to remove his lover from the domain where she excelled, and to constrain her in a painting style which he had long mastered. It is from the painful separation of Picasso that Dora Maar truly became a painter. Tragic figurative works, such as the Portrait of Eluard, or Self-Portrait to The Child of 1946, translate, in dark tones, the pain of post-war years. After years of struggling with depression,[19] Dora Maar confined herself within her own memories. It is between the 1960s and 70s that there was the beginning of a respite when she experimented with abstract formats in shimmering colors. It was in the 1980s, though that the painter expressed herself fully in her many paintings of the Luberon region. Paintings of the landscapes around her house in Ménerbes,[20] showed locations dominated by wind and clouds, strongly revealing the struggle of an artist with the ghosts of her past.[21] Dora Maar was buried in the Bois-Tardieu cemetery in Clamart.[22] Legacy[edit] Although Maar is mostly remembered only as one of Picasso's lovers, there have been many recent exhibits devoted to presenting Maar as an artist in her own right, including exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, October 13, 2001 – January 6, 2002; the Centre de la Vieille Charité, Marseille, January 20 – May 4, 2002; and the Centre Cultural Tecla Sala, Barcelona, May 15 – July 15, 2002.[23]

Bibliography Louise Baring: Dora Maar: Paris in the Time of Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, and Picasso, Rizzoli, 2017 Mary Ann Caws: Dora Maar With And Without Picasso: A Biography, Thames & Hudson[24] Mary Ann Caws, Les vies de Dora Maar : Bataille, Picasso et les surréalistes, Paris, Thames & Hudson, 2000, 224 p. (ISBN 2878111850) Georgiana Colvile, Scandaleusement d'elles : trente-quatre femmes surréalistes, Paris, J.-M. Place, 1999 (ISBN 2858934967), p. 179 à 185 James Lord, Picasso and Dora : a personal memoir, 1993 Judi Freeman: Picasso and the weeping women : the years of Marie-Thérèse Walter & Dora Maar Anne Baldassari: Picasso : love and war, 1935–1945 Zoé Valdés : The weeping woman : a novel, 2013 Alicia Dujovne Ortiz: Dora Maar prisonnière du regard, Le Livre de Poche, 2005. ISBN 978-2253114727 Olivia Lahs-Gonzales: Defining eye : women photographers of the 20th century : selections from the Helen Kornblum collection

[biofunmy]

Robert Frank Dies; Pivotal Documentary Photographer Was 94

Robert Frank, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, whose visually raw and personally expressive style was pivotal in changing the course of documentary photography, died on Monday in Inverness, Nova Scotia. He was 94.

His death, at Inverness Consolidated Memorial Hospital on Cape Breton Island, was confirmed by Peter MacGill, whose Pace-MacGill Gallery in Manhattan has represented Mr. Frank’s work since 1983. Mr. Frank, a Manhattan resident, had long had a summer home in Mabou, on Cape Breton Island.

Born in Switzerland, Mr. Frank emigrated to New York at the age of 23 as an artistic refugee from what he considered to be the small-minded values of his native country. He was best known for his groundbreaking book, “The Americans,” a masterwork of black and white photographs drawn from his cross-country road trips in the mid-1950s and published in 1959.

[Read our appraisal describing how Robert Frank redefined the expressive potential of documentary photography — until he gave it up.]

“The Americans” challenged the presiding midcentury formula for photojournalism, defined by sharp, well-lighted, classically composed pictures, whether of the battlefront, the homespun American heartland or movie stars at leisure. Mr. Frank’s photographs — of lone individuals, teenage couples, groups at funerals and odd spoors of cultural life — were cinematic, immediate, off-kilter and grainy, like early television transmissions of the period. They would secure his place in photography’s pantheon. The cultural critic Janet Malcolm called him the “Manet of the new photography.”

But recognition was by no means immediate. The pictures were initially considered warped, smudgy, bitter. Popular Photography magazine complained about their “meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness.” Mr. Frank, the magazine said, was “a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption.”

Mr. Frank had come to detest the American drive for conformity, and the book was thought to be an indictment of American society, stripping away the picture-perfect vision of the country and its veneer of breezy optimism put forward in magazines and movies and on television. Yet at the core of his social criticism was a romantic idea about finding and honoring what was true and good about the United States.

“Patriotism, optimism, and scrubbed suburban living were the rule of the day,” Charlie LeDuff wrote about Mr. Frank in Vanity Fair magazine in 2008. “Myth was important then. And along comes Robert Frank, the hairy homunculus, the European Jew with his 35-mm. Leica, taking snaps of old angry white men, young angry black men, severe disapproving southern ladies, Indians in saloons, he/shes in New York alleyways, alienation on the assembly line, segregation south of the Mason-Dixon line, bitterness, dissipation, discontent.”

“Les Americains,” first published in France by Robert Delpire in 1958, used Mr. Frank’s photographs as illustrations for essays by French writers. In the American edition, published the next year by Grove Press, the pictures were allowed to tell their own story, without text, as Mr. Frank had conceived the book.

It was only after completing the cross-country trips chronicled in “The Americans” that Mr. Frank met Jack Kerouac, who had written about his own American journeys in the 1957 novel “On the Road.” Kerouac wrote the introduction to the American edition of Mr. Frank’s book.

“That crazy feeling in America,” Kerouac wrote, “when the sun is hot and music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that’s what Robert Frank has captured in tremendous photographs taken as he traveled on the road around practically forty-eight states in an old used car (on Guggenheim Fellowship) and with agility, mystery, genius, sadness, and strange secrecy of a shadow photographed scenes that have never been seen before on film.”

Twenty years later, Gene Thornton, writing in The New York Times, said the book ranked “with Alexis de Tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America’ and Henry James’ ‘The American Scene’ as one of the definitive statements of what this country is about.”

‘Snapshot Aesthetic’

Mr. Frank may well have been the unwitting father of what became known in the late 1960s as “the snapshot aesthetic,” a personal offhand style that sought to capture the look and feel of spontaneity in an authentic moment. The pictures had a profound influence on the way photographers began to approach not only their subjects but also the picture frame.

Mr. Frank’s aesthetic — as much about his personal experience of what he was photographing as about the subject matter — was given further definition and legitimacy in 1967 in the seminal exhibition “New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show presented the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, who at the time were relatively little known younger-generation beneficiaries of Mr. Frank’s pioneering style. The show established all three as important American artists.

Robert Louis Frank was born in Zurich on Nov. 9, 1924, the younger son of well-to-do Jewish parents. His mother, Regina, was Swiss, but his father, Hermann, a German citizen who became stateless after World War I, had to apply for Swiss citizenship for himself and his two sons.

[Read about how Robert Frank brought a uniquely Jewish approach to his art.]

Safe in neutral Switzerland from the Nazi threat looming across Europe, Robert Frank studied and apprenticed with graphic designers and photographers in Zurich, Basel and Geneva. He became an admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who co-founded the photo-collective Magnum in 1947 and whose photographs set the standard for generations of photojournalists.

Mr. Frank would later reject Cartier-Bresson’s work, saying it represented all that was glib and insubstantial about photojournalism. He believed that photojournalism oversimplified the world, mimicking, as he put it, “those goddamned stories with a beginning and an end.” He was more drawn to the paintings of Edward Hopper, before Hopper was widely recognized.

“So clear and so decisive,” Mr. Frank told Nicholas Dawidoff in 2015 for a profile in The New York Times Magazine. “The human form in it. You look twice — what’s this guy waiting for? What’s he looking at? The simplicity of two facing each other. A man in a chair.”

Early on, Mr. Frank caught the eye of Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary magazine art director, who gave him assignments at Harper’s Bazaar. Over the next 10 years, Mr. Frank worked for Fortune, Life, Look, McCall’s, Vogue and Ladies Home Journal.

Restless, he traveled to London, Wales and Peru from 1949 to 1952. From each trip he assembled spiral-bound books of his pictures and gave copies to, among others, Brodovitch and Edward Steichen, then the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art.

Walker Evans’s book “American Photographs,” which was not well known in the 1950s, may have been the greatest influence on Mr. Frank’s landmark “Americans” project.

“When I first looked at Walker Evans’ photographs,” he wrote in the U.S. Camera Annual in 1958, “I thought of something Malraux wrote: ‘to transform destiny into awareness.’ One is embarrassed to want so much of oneself.”

Evans, then the picture editor at Fortune, as well as Brodovitch and Steichen, wrote recommendations for Mr. Frank when he applied for a 1955 Guggenheim Fellowship to finance the project. Carrying two cameras and boxes of film in a black Ford Business Coupe, he traveled more than 10,000 miles and wound up taking, by his count, more than 27,000 pictures, from which he culled 83 for “The Americans.”

In 1949, he met the artist Mary Lockspeiser, nine years his junior, and gave her, too, a handmade book of photographs, which he had taken that year in Paris. They married the following year and settled in Manhattan, in the East Village, in the heart of a vibrant Abstract Expressionist art scene. (She is now known as Mary Frank.)

Mr. Frank remembered seeing through a window Willem de Kooning, paint brush in hand, pacing his studio in his underwear. At the Cedar Tavern, a legendary neighborhood bar, he would drink and argue with the artists of the period. Their son, Pablo (named after the cellist Pablo Casals), was born in 1951, and his daughter, Andrea, in 1954.

All the while Mr. Frank supported himself sporadically, if reluctantly, with commercial work. Just before the American edition of “The Americans” was published, Lou Silverstein, The Times’s art director then, hired him to make a series of photographs on the streets of New York for an advertising campaign for the newspaper titled “New York Is.” The pictures were later compiled in a slim promotional book of the same name to attract prospective advertisers.

For all their commercial intent, however, the pictures for The Times revealed a strain of loneliness similar to what runs through “The Americans.” After Mr. Silverstein died in 2011, Mr. Frank sent a note to his memorial service and had it read aloud, saying, “He gave me moral support as well as financial — and this made my life in New York City possible.”

After “The Americans” was published, Mr. Frank’s artistic energies shifted to film, and, although he continued to work in photography and video, he would never again reach the same level of recognition for his work. Mr. MacGill, a longtime friend, once posited that Mr. Frank would eventually be remembered as a filmmaker more than as a photographer.

The Scene: A Bohemian Loft

His first film, “Pull My Daisy” (1959), is a cornerstone of avant-garde cinema. Made in Alfred Leslie’s art studio loft in the East Village, it was co-directed by Leslie, narrated by Kerouac and featured, among others, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Frank, Gregory Corso, David Amram, Larry Rivers and Mr. Frank’s young son, Pablo.

Adapted by Kerouac from his play “The Beat Generation,” the film, 28 minutes long, follows in grainy black and white the antics of a merry band of bohemians who show up unannounced at a Lower East Side loft, where a painter, the wife of a railway brakeman, has invited a respectable bishop over for dinner. The film became a cult favorite as an expression of the Beat philosophy of improvisation and spontaneity even though, as Leslie later revealed, it was planned and rehearsed.

In 1960, Mr. Frank, along with Jonas Mekas (who died in January), Peter Bogdanovich and other independent filmmakers, founded the New American Cinema Group, the same year Mr. Frank began filming “The Sin of Jesus,” based on an Isaac Babel story.

He made his first feature-length film in 1965, “Me and My Brother,” about Julius Orlovsky, brother of Peter, who was Ginsberg’s lover. With this film, Mr. Frank began to blur the line between documentary filmmaking and staged narrative scenes.

The breakup of his marriage to Mary in 1969 coincided with “Conversations in Vermont,” the film he made about his children, Andrea and Pablo. The next year he bought a fisherman’s house in Mabou, Nova Scotia, with the artist June Leaf, whom he married in 1975 and who is his only immediate survivor. Andrea died in a plane crash in Guatemala in 1974; Pablo died in 1994.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Frank was commissioned to make photographs for the cover of the Rolling Stones album “Exile on Main Street.” He was then asked by the band to shoot a documentary film about its 1972 concert tour. The film chronicled not only the group’s performances but also the violence of the crowds, the drug use and the naked groupies. It was not what the Stones had in mind. The band obtained a restraining order, which put limits on where and how often the film could be shown.

That same year, Frank published “Lines of My Hand,” a book of photographs he had made before and after “The Americans.” His work was becoming more autobiographical, diaristic.

While the photographs in “The Americans” are the most widely acknowledged achievement of Mr. Frank’s career, they can be seen as a prelude to his subsequent artistic work, in which he explored a variety of mediums, using multiple frames, making large Polaroid prints, video images, experimenting with words and images and shooting and directing films, like “Candy Mountain” (1988), an autobiographical road film directed with Rudy Wurlitzer.

Still, it is “The Americans” that will probably endure longer than anything else he did. In 2007 he consented to hang all 83 of the book’s photographs at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, in celebration of the book’s 50th anniversary. And in 2009, the National Gallery of Art in Washington mounted “Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans,’” an exhaustive and comprehensive retrospective of his masterwork, organized by Sarah Greenough. The show traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Mr. Frank acknowledged that in photographing Americans he found the least privileged among them the most compelling.

“My mother asked me, ‘Why do you always take pictures of poor people?’” Mr. Frank told Mr. Dawidoff in The Times Magazine. “It wasn’t true, but my sympathies were with people who struggled. There was also my mistrust of people who made the rules.”

William McDonald contributed reporting.

Sahred From Source link Arts

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[atlanticcanada]

Police issue update in 1992 disappearance of Kenley Matheson

Police in Nova Scotia have conducted a site visit at a location on Melanson Mountain in relation to the 1992 disappearance of Acadia University student Kenley Matheson.

The Southwest Nova RCMP Major Crime Unit made the update to the case public on Friday after a search of Melanson Mountain. The Major Crime Unit was joined by:

the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner’s Office

St. Thomas University’s Anthropology Department

Acadia University’s Earth and Environmental Science Department

Doug Teeft of Teeft K9

“Based on the information obtained, the RCMP and our partners are making plans with regard to the best and most effective way to process the site both thoroughly, and safely,” investigators said in a statement.

Investigators say a September 2022 plea for information from the public did not result in any new information coming forward.

But on May 29, 2023, investigators received a call from a journalist hoping to schedule a meeting regarding the investigation. Police say investigators learned the journalist had taken part in a search on May 23 and 24 on Melanson Mountain. According to the journalist, a cadaver dog was brought in to assist the search.

“The dog indicated an area of interest,” RCMP said in a statement, “however, no human remains were located.”

On June 13, investigators met with the cadaver dog team and visited the site on Melanson Mountain. Officers say the area is on “very steep terrain” and safety precautions would be required for any search or excavation efforts.

On June 22, the owner of the property officially permitted the RCMP and the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner’s Office to conduct a search on the property.

Police say more details will be released to the public “once the site processing has occurred.”

KENLEY’S DISAPPEARANCE

He was last seen on Sept. 21, 1992, walking on Main Street in Wolfville, N.S. A police description of Matheson at the time indicated he was wearing jeans, a purple t-shirt and a baseball cap at the time of his disappearance. Police say he was also carrying a red and black backpack.

Since then, loved ones have been unable to make contact with Matheson. His bank account has remained untouched.

Matheson’s case was added to the Nova Scotia Department of Justice Reward for Major Unsolved Crimes Program in 2012, offering up to $150,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for his disappearance.

Five years later, in 2017, police released an age progression sketch of what Matheson may look like in present day.

‘MISSING KENLEY’

Matheson’s disappearance was featured in the 2022 docuseries “Missing Kenley,” created by filmmaker Ron Lamothe.

In October 2022, Lamothe reflected on his journey of over 10 years creating the television program about Matheson’s disappearance.

"It's our belief that Kenley's remains can be returned to his parents in Cape Breton because we believe we know where his remains are," said Lamothe. "So, that would be one of the next steps moving forward is to locate them."

"Missing Kenley" is available on Amazon Prime, Google Play and several other streaming platforms, which are all listed on the "Missing Kenley" website.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Katie Kelly

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[tune-collective]

Rose Cousins Premieres Bluesy, Dark 'Chains' From New Album 'Natural Conclusion'

Rose Cousins Premieres Bluesy, Dark 'Chains' From New Album 'Natural Conclusion'

It’s been a minute since we’ve had new music from Rose Cousins — five years since the Canadian singer-songwriter’s Juno Award-winning We Have Made A Spark. But Cousins is confident her new Natural Conclusion, which comes out Feb. 3, benefits for that time.

“I wanted to slow down a little bit,” Cousins, who did release an EP in 2014, tells Billboard. “All the touring I did behind the last record kicked my ass. I really needed to slow down a little bit.” And Cousins used that time to extensively explore co-writing collaborations, working on the Kickstarter-funded Natural Conclusion‘s 12 tracks with Mark Erelli, Ryan Roberts, K.S. Rhoads and others. Watch the exclusive premiere of a video from Natural Conclusion, “Chains,” below.

“I have always been intimidated by walking in a room with somebody I don’t know or people I don’t know and making songs. I think I always worried I would be too slow or wouldn’t come up with good ideas,” Cousins explains. “I’ve never been able to be someone who’s extremely creative on the road in the sense of writing songs, though I’m always gathering ideas. So with these very deliberated, scheduled-in writing sessions I think I finally debunked it as this terrifying thing, and it felt really good. It actually took more pressure off than it put on, I think.”

Cousins wrote “Chains” in Nashville with Andrew Combs and Jeff Bowman. “The brief was everything has gone to shit and swampy, so it’s real bluesy and dark,” Cousins says. “That was really a great writing session.” The video, meanwhile, was shot at Lever’s Lake in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, directed by Nathan Boone from a script by Cousin’s friend and local filmmaker Mat Barkley. “[Boone] came up with this great idea of two people tethered to each other somehow, walking through a woods, and he had this beautiful area that he had access to that was attached to his family somehow,” Cousins says. “It was really exciting to me that these are two local, young filmmakers and they gathered their friends to be in it and to help out and made it really beautiful.”

Producer Joe Henry had his own role in making Natural Conclusion special for cousins. The two have been friends since meeting at a Canadian festival during 2012, and the idea of having him helm an album for Cousins has been tacitly considered ever since.

“I really think we vibe on the aesthetic presentation of music, and the poetry,” says Cousins, who hits the road Feb. 12 to promote the album. “I love his music so much and the production ideas and choices he’s made on his own projects. He really believes in the taking care of the song. My stuff isn’t necessarily straightforward, and I thought if there’s anyone who would be able to maintain what I created and enhance it and not try to straighten it out, it would be him.” 

Source: Billboard

http://tunecollective.com/2017/01/24/rose-cousins-premieres-bluesy-dark-chains-from-new-album-natural-conclusion/

[instachron]

I speak of the things that are there, anywhere and everywhere— easily found, not easily selected and interpreted. A small catalog comes to the mind's eye: a town at night, a parking lot, a supermarket, a highway, the man who owns the three cars and the man who owns none, the farmer and his children, a new house and a warped clapboard house, the dictation of taste, the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights, the faces of the leaders and the faces of the followers, gas tanks and post offices and backyards.

Robert Frank, from his Guggenheim grant application, 1954 [Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]

© Mitch Cullin

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[atlanticcanada]

Toronto International Film Festival renames cinema for activist Viola Desmond

The Toronto International Film Festival is renaming its largest cinema after civil rights activist Viola Desmond and will launch an initiative to support Black women creators in her honour.

TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey made the announcement at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Tuesday evening at a special event celebrating the legacy of Desmond and her sister, activist Wanda Robson, who died earlier this year.

Bailey said TIFF is pledging to raise $2 million over the next five years to provide support to Black women creators, develop programming for Black audiences, and amplify Desmond's and Robson's stories.

The figure will contribute to a number of elements from connecting women to mentor figures to establishing programs and opportunities to travel abroad to be trained by those advanced in their careers.

"It's not always a matter of putting dollars in somebody's hand," said Bailey. "It's a matter of actually giving them opportunities and training to be able to tell their own story."

For Bailey, it's as much about helping today's generation of Black women creators as it is about carrying on the legacy of two pioneers.

"My whole professional life has been movies and I'm incredibly moved that Viola Desmond's act of resistance took place in a movie theatre 76 years ago," said Bailey. "That quiet kind of Canadian racism that Black people have had to deal with is something that I think Viola Desmond called attention to with her act of just saying no."

On Nov. 8, 1946, nearly a decade before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama, Desmond was dragged out of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, N.S., by officers, arrested, thrown in jail for 12 hours and fined. It would be 63 years before Nova Scotia would issue Desmond, a businesswoman who died in 1965, a posthumous apology and pardon.

This level of acknowledgment was only made possible due to Robson, from North Sydney, N.S., who played an integral part in raising public awareness around the legacy of her sister's civil rights imprint in Canada.

Gordon Neal, the nephew of Desmond and son of Robson, said that it was "insightful" for TIFF to honour Desmond and his mother in order to send a clear message.

"We should recognize that this should never happen again and honour the work that Viola did to clear her name," he said. "She never got cleared until my mother at 74 years old, went back to university to get a degree and told the story."

While Neal said he's warmed by the attention his mother has attracted, he said his mother -- who died at the age of 95 in February -- left some big shoes to fill.

Like Desmond, she was "an amazing force of nature," he said, reached by phone in Toronto ahead of the Viola Desmond Cinema announcement.

"Her whole life, she told us that the most important thing for anybody, particularly children, is education," said Neal. "I've seen her telling Viola Desmond's story, and she'll start talking to the adults and gravitate right to the kids. She was insistent upon guiding children to finishing their education."

In that same spirit, Neal acknowledges the lack of Black women in directorial and producer roles and hopes that beyond the name change, this move will provide enough momentum toward adding more Black women within the film industry through financial support and guidance.

"It's a great honour and recognition of what she went through and the struggle we continue to go through as Black individuals in this world," said Neal, who is a part of the Viola Desmond Chair in Social Justiceat Cape Breton University.

"The Desmond family, Robson family and all of us connected are very proud to be a part of this legacy. Hopefully, Black and female filmmakers in the industry will thrive and grow."

While the official reveal of the renamed cinema will take place next year, TIFF marked Viola Desmond Day on Tuesday in anticipation of the event with the designation of two side-by-side front-row seats in the soon-to-be-renamed Cinema 1, in honour of Robson and Desmond. Upon installation, they will become permanent fixtures that anyone can sit in.

In an event that was sold out, TIFF planned to welcome and honour the Desmond and Robson families with displayed art and music byDJ Mel Boogie. Celebrations also included Kelly Fyffe-Marshall's debut feature, "When Morning Comes," which premiered at TIFF 2022, preceded by a conversation about legacy and the future of Black creators in the industry.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2022.

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[atlanticcanada]

New documentary hopes to bring plight of North Atlantic right whale to wider audience

There has been no shortage of media coverage of the plight of the endangered North Atlantic right whale, but documentary filmmaker Nadine Pequeneza felt there was still something missing in the fight to save the species.

"You can't really appreciate something unless you at least see it and get to know it," Pequeneza said this week ahead of the theatrical opening of her latest film, "Last of the Right Whales."

"So we hope this film introduces people to the North Atlantic right whale, makes them aware of what's at risk here."

There is plenty at risk. The U.S.-based North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium reported in October that the species' population dropped to 336 in 2020, an eight per cent decrease from 2019, when the population was estimated at 366 animals. In fact, the species has been on a downward trend since 2011, when there were 481 whales, according to the consortium.

For Pequeneza, the documentary brings viewers closer to the mysterious animal and explores how humanity can be a part of the species' resurgence.

"For most North Atlantic right whales, the majority of deaths are not from natural causes, they're from human activities, shipping and fishing," the Toronto-based Pequeneza said in an interview. "Our hope is that we raise awareness about the species and the threats that they're facing and how we are responsible for the potential extinction of this species."

"Last of the Right Whales" is opening this weekend for screenings in select Canadian theatres to coincide with World Whale Day on Sunday. The film documents the efforts of several groups and individuals to protect and restore the population of the dwindling whale species hurt by entanglements in fishing gear and ship collisions.

This month, Oceana Canada called on the federal government to impose mandatory speed limits in the Cabot Strait, between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, to prevent ship strikes as right whales migrate to feeding grounds in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Climate change is pushing zooplankton on which the whales feed into cooler waters off Canada's east coast and bringing the animals farther north. Oceana also noted that since 2017, 21 whales have died in Canadian waters, and at least eight of those deaths resulted from collisions with ships.

Viewers are shown the realities of what the species is up against, including the fresh entanglement of a young male right whale and a necropsy performed on a beach after a whale was struck and killed by a vessel.

One of the figures featured in the documentary, Canadian Whale Institute researcher Moira Brown, said in a recent interview that the film allows viewers to see not only the obstacles facing the species but the dedicated group of people trying to reverse the damage that's been done.

"There is just a tremendous effort to work together to try and solve this problem," Brown said. "It's tough to watch the way these animals are suffering, but I think we've gained some ground since 2017 and 2019 - I think it's also a demonstration of how humans can turn things around."

Another key figure in the documentary is Nick Hawkins, a wildlife cameraman and photojournalist. In the film, Pequeneza follows Hawkins as he tries to give people a clearer look at the species through his photography.

"I really felt that there was this big gap between that highly technical knowledge that researchers were putting together and the general public, so I started looking at how I could fill that gap," Hawkins says in the documentary.

He echoed the sentiment during a recent interview, saying he hopes the movie and his own work help to connect people with the experiences of the right whales.

"There's so little good footage and good images of North Atlantic right whales," Hawkins said. "We've gradually been building and trying to bring this issue out there .... It's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of continued attention on this issue for us to change the future of the species."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 19, 2022.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

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[atlanticcanada]

'Godfather' of Cape Breton running completes last leg of Cabot Trail Relay Race

The man many call 'The Godfather' of Cape Breton running finished off an achievement of a lifetime over the August long weekend.

Peter Hanna of Whitney Pier, N.S. turns 81 in November. For years, it's been a goal of his to become the first to finish all 17 legs of the Cabot Trail Relay Race - twice. It’s a total of nearly 600 kilometres over some of the most challenging, mountainous terrain.

When the last two relays were cancelled due to COVID-19, Hanna decided he would run the final two legs he needed on his own.

"I was quite confident that I could get the distance in," says Hanna, who has been battling prostate cancer for the past three years.

Herbie Sakalauskas is a filmmaker and fellow runner who has been following Peter's every step for a documentary called The Last Leg.

"You think of how many people are in their 80s, and maybe they're not able to get out and walk or run.  But here's Peter getting out there," Sakalauskas says.

The final test, on Saturday, was a hilly 18.7 kilometres from Middle River, N.S. to the village of Baddeck. When Hanna came through the finish on Chebucto St. - which had been closed down for the event - hundreds of well-wishers were there to greet him.

"There was people here that I haven't seen for a long time," Hanna said. “I just think it's so wonderful that they were still thinking and come out to see me.  I mean, who am I?" asked Hanna.        

The day was also bittersweet.  While Hanna, who is also an accomplished triathlete and an IronMan finisher, plans to continue running - he says his days competing are now over.

"I won't be racing," Hanna says.  “I'll go out and do my runs and whatever I can achieve, I'll do it. Trying to get some swimming in. I haven't been biking much."

Now that Peter's work is done, next up is the documentary. Sakalauskas says the plan is for the one hour film to be ready for viewing sometime in winter 2022.

"This is more than a story about a man running. It's about life. And just being a super awesome human," Sakalauskas explains.

As for Hanna, who has been running since age 40 and racing since 1980, he takes all of the attention in stride.

"I don't think of myself as inspiring," Hanna says. “I'm just.. Peter."

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/3xpHbtP