ILO ILO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - In childhood, solace is fleeting and that which soothes, aches in the face of losing it. Stunning feature length debut from young director from Singapore.

TIFF 2013 - DISCOVERY
Ilo Ilo (2013) ****
Dir. Anthony Chen
Starring: Koh Jia Ler, Angeli Bayani

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Kida can really be horrid little things. Ten-year-old Jiale (Koh Jia Ler) is no exception to the rule.

It's 1997 and Asia's economy is crumbling. Jiale's Mom and Dad are struggling to make ends meet as it is, but they're determined to do so at a level that will maintain a solid lifestyle - not only for themselves and their son, but in anticipation of the new child growing in Mom's belly. Both parents are working full time and they hire Terry (Angeli Bayani, in a performance of staggering power and sensitivity), a nanny from the Philippines to help out.

Jiale is prone to acting out his brattier instincts at the best of times, but with a new nanny in the home, the floodgates open and he becomes a holy terror - most of all to Terry. That said, one of the extraordinary aspects of first time feature director Anthony Chen's direction is the delicate and subtle manner in which he builds the myriad of "small" things in a child's life that can seem so huge and insurmountable.

We experience and discover all of this through Chen's observant lens and narratively, we seamlessly, effortlessly shift our point of view between Jiale and Terry - allowing for maximum dramatic impact.

The relationship of genuine love and friendship between nanny and child shifts gradually into the deeply felt, but also confusing emotions which begin to develop as the lines between care worker and surrogate parent begin to blur – especially given the mounting pressures Jiale’s parents must deal with. Jiale can tell something is not right, but as a child he can’t possibly understand why he feels distance between himself and his parents and an ever-intensifying bond with Terry.

It doesn’t help that his parents are trying to mask these pressures. Jiale’s father loses his job and in secret, he shamefully takes on whatever he can to bring money into the home, while his mother continues in the employ of a company that treats its employees – especially female secretaries – like slaves and yet she too tries to keep her troubles to herself.

The physical and psychological hardships his parents experience affects Jiale – at first in the adversarial stance he takes against Terry, but eventually as his dependence and love upon her grows. Terry herself seems soulful almost beyond words, but she too has a breaking point with Jiale’s nasty behaviour and she needs to make it very clear to the child that she’s not going to take it.

Ilo Ilo is one of the best films about childhood I've seen in quite some time. It's a movie that feels like it comes straight from the heart and its storytelling techniques are so simple and pure that one feels you're in the hands of a master filmmaker. The emotions are never mawkish or contrived in obvious ways, but there are several big set pieces that alternate between rich, full bodied human comedy and deeply moving, gorgeously observed and downright heartbreaking moments designed to wrench tears from you. These moments are honest, however, and they feel like the stuff of life.

Sometimes the pain of childhood is the realization of love when you least expect it and in ways you could never have imagined and sometimes events conspire to snatch away newly discovered joy and warm memories offer only fleeting solace - it's like that which soothes you aches and gnaws at your very being in the face of losing it.

"Ilo Ilo" is enjoying its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013 (TIFF #13). For tickets, visit the TIFF website HERE. The film is distributed by Film Movement.

SHIVERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - Cinematheque Restoration - An Orgy of Canuck Carnage!!!

Surgical Shenanigans - Cronenberg Style, of course

Shivers (1975) Dir. David Cronenberg *****
TIFF 2013 - Cinematheque Restoration
Starring: Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, Barbara Steele, Lynn Lowry, Susan Petrie, Alan Migicovsky
Review By Greg Klymkiw

David Cronenberg is responsible for my teenage delinquency. I desperately wanted to see "Shivers" when it opened first-run. Alas, I couldn't gain entrance to the cinema because it was slapped with a Restricted Adult rating (the Manitoba equivalent to an X-rating). This peeved me to no end. The ads, featuring a gorgeous woman hanging upside down from a bathtub with a grimace of utter horror attached to her face tantalized me to no end. That the movie starred my favourite scream queen Barbara Steele was icing on the cake. I tried to get in, but was turned away by the cashier for not having the necessary I.D. So what's a red-blooded hoser movie geek to do? Well, I did what any North End wrong-side-of-the-tracks Ukrainian boy in Winnipeg would do - I painstakingly forged my own fake I.D. It worked so well, I not only gained entrance to "Shivers", but discovered that it successfully got me past Fat April, the door-lady who kept watch at the Kildonan Motor Hotel Beverage Room. Soon, I went into business. I began to forge fake I.D.s all the way through high school. My reputation for fine forgeries extended far and wide. Needless to say, my illicit activities proved to be most lucrative. For years I longed to relay this tidbit to Mr. Cronenberg. I finally got my chance at a small dinner party. I was introduced to him and I immediately launched into my tale of forgery, deception and entrepreneurial initiative - crediting him solely for my corruption. His response, however, was quite unexpected. Mr. Cronenberg looked at me blankly for a moment, turned around and walked away. Disappointing as this proved to be, I eventually chalked it up to the fact that perhaps his tummy was infested with an orgy of blood parasites.

*****

Imagine you're a delivery boy strolling down the hallway of a brand new luxury high-rise. A grotesquely corpulent old woman with moles and hairs on her face (stained with cheap, smudged makeup and blood stains sustained during a parasite attack in the laundry room), pokes her head out of a doorway and moans at you lasciviously: "I'm hungry." She waits for the response you're too shocked to give. "I'm hungry!" she intones almost desperately. Again, you're too agog to say anything. Lunging violently at you, her teeth bared, she screams, "I'm hungry for love!"

The violation you suffer as she sates her unholy desires, will last only as long as it takes for you to succumb to the gooey, gelatinous blood parasite she deposits down your throat as she sucks face with you. Within minutes - perhaps even seconds - you'll be mounting the porky old sow and ramming your pulsating rod of manhood into her thatch of hair pie.

And it will be glorious!

MIGICOVSKY the MIGHTY

Welcome to David Cronenberg's Shivers, his first commercial feature film that took the world by storm while inspiring incredulous Canuck pundits to demand government accountability as this film represented a very early investment from the federal agency that eventually became known as Telefilm Canada. Pundits and politicians be damned, however. Shivers was not only a huge hit, but it immediately established Cronenberg as a true talent to be reckoned with.

It's a great picture and still holds a place, after more helpings than I could ever possibly imagine, as my all time favourite David Cronenberg film. Other work might be more polished, but nothing Cronenberg ever did even begins to approach the mad, hilarious, repugnant and utterly horrifying experience he served up to audiences the same way one might offer up a soiled, steaming barf bag to a stewardess after a bout of air sickness.

The first time I ever saw the movie, I was thoroughly flabbergasted. Every few minutes, a story beat moved the picture ever-forward into territory of the most increasing, mounting and almost delectably foul kind.

The movie never once lets up - and even between scenes of carnage, Cronenberg served up some of the strangest and most downright creepy goings-on I'd ever seen and even now, it's still up there on the regurgitation meter.

MORE MIGICOVSKY ACTION THAN
YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT!!!

Most importantly, the picture is not only a scare-fest, but it's replete with all manner of nasty, dark laughs. Not that the humour is ever tongue-in-cheek - all of it comes naturally out of the utterly unnatural situation. Pre-dating the AIDS crisis, Cronenberg links sex with death. It's a delightfully simple tale involving a selection of residents and employees of an ultra high rise complex on an island on the St. Lawrence in Montreal. A new form of parasitical venereal disease begins to spread like wildfire within this luxury community gated by its island borders. The disease turns its victims into homicidal sex maniacs.

I kid you not. Allow me to repeat that:

HOMICIDAL SEX MANIACS.

And what a frothy concoction Shivers truly is with all manner of viscous emissions - blood parasites being vomited from a balcony onto an old lady's clear plastic umbrella, parasites roiling and bubbling just under the surface of Alan Migicovsky's sexy, hairy belly, a lithe, nude body of a lassie formerly adorned in a school uniform who gets her midriff sliced open, the insides then drenched in acid and, of course a magnificent 70s cast of terrific actors (notably, the wonderful late Joe Silver as the deli-loving doctor and Alan Migicovsky as the ultra-creepy philandering hubby) PLUS a whole whack o' babes (from pretty Susan Petrie as the weepy wifey, Lynn Lowry as the drop-dead gorgeous nurse and the heart-stoppingly sexy British scream queen Barbara Steele who appeared in so many 60s horror classics).

Of course, anyone interested in seeing the beginnings of Cronenberg's career-long obsession with finding horror in the human body, it doesn't get better than this - plenty of fat for eggheads to nibble on here.

The best news is that the movie has been restored and probably hasn't looked as gorgeous since Cronenberg himself had to approve final colour timings on the very first prints run at the lab back in the 70s. Shivers got so much play throughout the 70s and early 80s that I don't recall ever seeing a 35mm film print that wasn't caked in dirt, scratches and splices.

Stunningly, Cronenberg manages, in one salient area, to match the great Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Hitch, of course, infused utter terror in the minds of millions who dared to take a shower. In Shivers, Cronenberg delivers one of the most horrendous bathtub violations ever committed to celluloid. Best of all, the sequence involves the horror goddess revered by every adolescent boy in the 70s - Barbara Steele. In Mario Bava's Black Sunday, Steele had a metallic mask of Satan with humungous spikes inside of it pounded brutally into her pretty face. As horrific as that was, it's kid stuff to what Steele endures in Shivers.

And to that - a toast! God bless you, Mr. Cronenberg, God bless you!!!

The restored print of "Shivers" (colour correction personally supervised by David Cronenberg) has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2013) as a precursor to a major TIFF retrospective devoted to his work and the exciting new exhibition "Cronenberg: Evolution", both of which will unveil at TIFF Bell Lightbox later in the Fall Season. For tickets visit the TIFF website HERE.

PARKLAND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF2013:Before, during & after November 22 1963

TIFF 2013 - GALA PRESENTATION
Parkland (2013) *1/2
Dir. Peter Landesman
Starring: James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver, Jackie Earle Haley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Even at age of four I knew what was happening on our murky black and white television with rabbit ears and why my mother was crying. President John F. Kennedy was genuinely larger than life and the impact of his assassination on November 22, 1963 was felt all over the world. Fifty years later, nobody believes the spurious findings of the Warren Commission and there is enough evidence to suggest that the President was murdered by forces much larger than the lone patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. That's why I really don't understand the necessity of a film like Parkland (the title signifying the name of the hospital in Dallas where both JFK and Oswald were unsuccessfully operated upon). Shot in urgent annoying shaky-cam and blended with actual stock and news footage of the time, the film details the preparations leading up to Kennedy's visit to Dallas, his assassination, all the chaos of getting him to the hospital, the desperate unsuccessful attempts to keep him alive, the various law enforcement gymnastics with respect to the FBI, CIA, Dallas Police and the Secret Service, the assessment of the Zapruder 8mm home movie footage, the capture of Oswald, the subsequent shooting of Oswald, the unsuccessful attempt to keep him alive in the hospital and finally, juxtaposing the opulent state funeral of the slain president with the threadbare proceedings afforded to the purported assassin.

Though the reasons for this film's existence is a mystery, the ponderous James Newton Howard musical score which alternates between militaristic solemnity and a kind of bargain basement John Williams bombast, reminds us that the intentions of the filmmaker are very serious - though at face value, one couldn't begin to imagine what those intentions actually were. In fact, one of the most offensive things about this movie is that it's structured to avoid the notions of conspiracy in JFK's murder. If anyone was watching this film without a whole lot of knowledge on the subject (sadly, not as surprising as one would think), they'd be leaving this film convinced that the Warren Commission findings were NOT a load of utter horse shit.

Screenwriter-Director Landesman used Vincent Bugliosi's book "Four Days in November" as the primary source material, but one really has no idea why he chose to re-enact a hodgepodge of all the above, with an all-star cast instead of, perhaps, choosing one or two interesting threads, sticking with them, and maybe creating a sustained narrative with actual characters instead of what amounts to extended cameos. It's actually more than a little bit ludicrous to have former teen heartthrob Zac Ephron trying to act as the bewildered inexperienced resident in the president's operating room with dewy-eyed nurse Marcia Gay Harden relieving a weeping Jackie Kennedy of chunks of the President's skull and brains and to then drag Jackie Earle Haley on screen as a priest to administer the last rites.

Not unlike the George Stevens all-star Jesus biopic The Greatest Story Ever Told, I half expected John Wayne to wander into the Parkland Memorial Hospital in full Roman Centurion garb and stand over JFK's corpse and intone: "Truly this Man was the son of God," before realizing he'd stepped onto the wrong sound stage via some kind of Time Machine or wormhole. Well, if only this film was even a pubic hair as good as the Stevens picture (which was pretty rank to begin with), then maybe one might have been able to ignore the messy inconsequence of Parkland and perhaps embrace the genuinely fine (albeit wasted) performances of Paul Giamatti as Zapruder and James Badge Dale as Oswald's brother. But no, instead of choosing to focus on either one of those characters, we're given a parade of cameos and scenes that are only marginally a cut above those cheesy dramatic recreations inserted into lower-drawer TV "documentaries" for cable.

In fairness to Landesman and his abysmal misfire of a movie, one must give him some credit for allowing the inimitable Jacki Weaver to shred every stitch of the scenery with her ludicrously overwrought performance as Oswald's crazy mother. Weaver is every bit the quintessential crazy Southern belle/harridan that if anyone was planning a remake of gothic white trash classics like God's Little Acre or Baby Doll, or for that matter, one of those Robert Aldrich old lady slugfests like Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, then one look-see at this movie and they'll know Weaver is their go-to gal.

"Parkland" is a Gala Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2013). For tickets, visit the TIFF website HERE. Opening theatrically via Remstar just in time to celebrate JFK's assassination.

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013- Moe Does Donald Good - Does Him REEL Good

The Unknown Known (2013) ****
Dir. Errol Morris
Starring: Donald Rumsfeld

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ace master documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is back in familiar territory with this one-on-one exploration of the life and times of George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the clearly gifted master of political doubletalk, misinformation, disinformation and perhaps one of the most dangerous, despicable and evil Americans of the past decade. Much like The Fog of War, Morris' exploration of Robert McNamara, Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War, Morris hits his new subject with tough questions. Blending archival footage, graphs, charts and an assortment of Rumsfeld's memos (numbering over 20,000 he issued during a six-year period) the veteran documentarian attempts to paint as honest a portrait as possible of a political mastermind of legal mass murder, or, if you will, the war against terror. (The only thing missing is a Philip Glass score - inexplicably replaced with a so-so Danny Elfman score.) McNamara was a different beast, though. He at least seemed to be telling the truth. None of that - truth, that is - appears to be on display here.

With a malevolent grin, Rumsfeld makes you think he's letting the cat in the bag slip out, but in the same breath, he's letting you know the cat's still in the bag and that his final word on the matter will always ensure that the bag's indeed, in the river. In fact, we never get a clear picture of anything from Rumsfeld. It always seems clear, but never feels truthful. In several contexts, Rumsfeld is caught completely contradicting himself and hilariously ignoring and/or talking his way out of his obvious falsehoods and/or contradictions

The film delivers a good deal of personal and historical detail on Rumsfeld, the most fascinating of which is his keen interest in and study of history - especially, not surprisingly, in terms of war. When he discusses America's past, one gets a clear sense of how his own decisions are colored by his analysis of past American failures and triumphs. For example, he refers to America's unpreparedness for the attack on Pearl Harbor as "a failure of the imagination". Of course, he prides himself on his own imagination and how it leads to a constant state of "worry" - one which he maintains is the ultimate state of preparedness. He goes so far as to suggest that great nations must never accept the notion that peace can ever be achieved.

"If you wish for peace," Rumsfeld maintains you must immediately begin to "prepare for war."

Morris usually keeps his cool as the off-screen interviewer, but on occasion, his utter incredulity with respect to Rumsfeld's delectable twisting of the truth is genuinely entertaining. We're witness to one magnificent turn of phrase after another. The man is a master spin doctor and even more astoundingly, he might actually be the best generator of juicy sound bites in the world - ever. Here's a tiny, but choice grocery list of a few of them:

"All generalizations are false, including this one," he proclaims.

"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," he opines on weapons of mass destruction or lack thereof in Iraq.

Of course, Rumsfeld treats us to one of his astounding humdingers (which Morris uses for the film's title): "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know. The unknown known, however, is a thing that we know, but are unaware of knowing."

And there are even some sound bites that feel genuine, almost moving, such as his response to 9/11 and an explanation for his subsequent actions: "Something terrible happened on my watch."

If Rumsfeld seems less up-front in this film than McNamara was in The Fog of War, it doesn't make him any less fascinating and Morris expertly presents us with a movie that might have even more obvious entertainment value. The almost-easy-to-swallow nature of The Unknown Known in terms of how engaging it is as a movie, also doesn't make it any less an important record of contemporary American history - and by extension, world history.

The whole movie, in fact, is a hoot from beginning to end, but what we're ultimately presented and left with is 96 minutes of lies - or, at the very least, what Rumsfeld wants us to hear, even if we don't believe a word.

The man has no shame. None. He could have been a President.

"The Unknown Known" is part of the TIFF Docs series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. Visit the TIFF website HERE. The film is being distributed via E-One.

TRACKS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013: Babe + Camels +Dog + Hunk = Cute Movie

Tracks (2013) **1/2
Dir. John Curran
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Adam Driver

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Robyn Davidson (Mia Wasikowska) was an Aussie hippie chick who abandoned a formal post-secondary education and instead lived with a bunch of radical animal science types n Adelaide (where she learned a whole ton about God's creatures). She subsequently joined a left-wing organization of wanker egghead fruitcakes in Sydney (that included the likes of Germaine Greer) where she grooved the Bohemia electric. In the 70s she settled in the middle of nowhere and learned everything she always wanted to know about camels (and was, decidedly, not afraid to ask). Her first experience was with a brutal camel farmer who exploited her until finally, she met and worked for a kindly camel expert who taught her a great deal and partially bankrolled what was to become her biggest challenge.

Davidson's ultimate goal was to trek 1700 miles alone across the deserts of Western Oz from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. Well, she wasn't completely alone - she had her faithful mutt and a handful of ornery, but loyal camels. Since her trip was financed by the National Geographic Society, she was occasionally in the company of Rick Smolan (Adam Driver), a photographer who would add the pictorial materials to Robyn's eventual story in the famous wildlife magazine. The two enjoyed an on-again-off-again love affair and eventually Robyn wrote the full length memoir that this film is based upon.

This is by no means a dreadful film. Wasikowska is a pleasing screen presence and very easy on the eyes. When the film focuses upon Robyn and the camels, it's pretty engaging - especially in the first third of the movie. Unfortunately, something is off about the period detail in terms of the performance of the genuinely annoying Adam Driver who seems completely miscast and throws the picture off balance anytime he's on-screen.

Even the picture's sense of place seems off. The movie feels like a Walt Disney True Life Nature Adventure set in the wilds of Australia (with occasionally chaste boinking). Tracks certainly doesn't have the richness in both period and ethnographic detail that is so infused in works like Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout and Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright. We never really feel any danger or mystery in the proceedings and other than the early going, the central conflict has no real punch.

This is more than a bit surpising since John Curran's direction of the exquisite film adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel The Painted Veil was so rich in period detail and observational attention to character nuance. Here, howeve, the leading actors wear everything on their respective sleeves and we're left with little more than a girl and her camels, doggie and an occasonal poke under the desert sky from an enormously unappealing actor.

The movie clips along amiably enough and the scenery is almost always a saving grace, but somehow the whole thing feels a touch inconsequential. While it might provide momentary and relatively inoffensive entertainment as a girls' adventure tale, Tracks doesn't stick to your cerebellum, but rather, sticks to your craw.

"Tracks" is part of the TIFF Special Presentation series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. Visit the TIFF website HERE. The film is distributed by Mongrel Media.

JODOROWSKY'S DUNE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - TIFF DOCS - The Epic Story of the Greatest Epic Science Fiction Movie Never Made

TIFF 2013 - TIFF DOCS
Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) ***
Dir. Frank Pavich
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, H.R. Giger, Chris Foss, Brontis Jodorowsky, Nicolas Winding Refn, Richard Stanley, Gary Kurtz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If we imagine a world without Star Wars, we can probably imagine a world where cinema was no longer being driven to the slow, painful death it is suffering now. More importantly, if we imagine a world where Alejandro (El Topo, Holy Mountain) Jodorowsky, the mad, obsessed/obsessive visionary director had been able to make his film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune - beating Star Wars to the punch and laying the groundwork for a new and different kind of spectacle in the cinema rather than the empty state of the art blockbusters of the 80s - we can imagine a far greater world than we live in now (especially those who love and care about movies).

Frank Pavich's fascinating feature documentary is as close as we're ever going to get to seeing what might have been one of the greatest movies of the late 20th Century - a film that was a mere five million dollars short of becoming a reality, a film that would have starred Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali and Orson Welles, storyboarded by Moebeius, with effects by Dan O'Bannon, costume and creature designs by H.R. Giger and, of course, the legendary Jodorowsky at the helm.

To see this documentary is to be caught up in the creative excitement that went into every second of preparing this epic motion picture. Jodorowsky himself transports us to a time, place and state of being that captures every thrilling story beat in the development of this insane, passionate and mind-blowing film.

As the story proceeds, we're caught up in the fervour - nay, the fever pitch that never abated over several years of trying to make Dune a reality. And of course, as things start taking turns for the worst and we experience the whole enterprise crumble under the weight of cheap, vision-bereft studio chiefs who all eventually turned the movie down for the last financing piece of the puzzle. we feel like we're being dragged through the coals of sheer decimation of a staggering work of art - one that would have clearly changed the way we see movies.

Even more depressing, but almost strangely uplifting, is seeing storyboard and art designs from Dune that were outright stolen copiously by a who's who of Hollywood's artistic power brokers. There isn't one single mega-hit from a period of over 30 years that doesn't owe a debt of gratitude to the movie that now only exists on paper. It's also kind of cool to discover that not even Jodorowsky knew just how long his movie was going to be. All he knew was that it would be as long as it needed to be.

One of the more maddening revelations is how studio heads loved everything about the film, but hated it's director and yet, it was that same director who rallied the talent, guided the vision and drove the creation of the very materials the bean counters were in love with.

An all star cast of artisans, filmmakers and pundits join Jodorowsky in this tale of the movie that was never made. Best of all we are able to experience the sheer joy and twinkle in Jodorowsky's eye as he launches into one passionate tale after another about the making of the film, but also the film itself. Most extraordinary of all we experience his pride in being able to influence several generations of filmmakers from the fruits of his labours that led at once to a heartbreaking end and to another, seeds for the future greatness of others.

His pride and happiness about this is ultimately what makes him one of the great artists of cinema history.

"Jodorowsky's Dune", programmed by Colin Geddes, is part of the TIFF Docs series during the 2013 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. For more information and tickets, visit the festival website HERE. The film is to be released by Mongrel Media.

WAKENING - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - First Independent Short To Launch TIFF Opening Night Gala, part of the ViDDYWELL FiLMS series of shorts celebrating the historic Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre in Toronto, Canada.

Wakening (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Danis Goulet
Starring: Sarah Podemski, Gail Maurice

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You've got to love an opening like this. The first cut is out of black and into the action of a great shot cascading over the grey cement of an alleyway piled up with refuse - some of it seeming to dance wildly within the "natural" wind tunnel of these bleak urban corridors usually meant for garbage trucks and denizens unfit for the eyes of downtown shoppers. We're following the urgent, wall-hugging dash of a pair of shapely gams in tight black pants - a raven-haired babe (Sarah Podemski) adorned in a stylish fur-collared khaki-coloured winter coat and armed with a bow and arrow.

Clearly, some bad shit's hit the fan in this town. Life as we know it seems to have been sucked right out of everything; all the colours of the world have drained to a critical flirting point with monochrome. Gunshots fire in the distance, sounds of storm trooper-styled boots clomp on the pavement and an eerily monotone Big Brother echoes over loudspeakers - issuing directives to a populace that doesn't even appear to exist - at least not in the numbers that once thrived.

Our raven-haired heroine narrowly misses an encounter with armed, helmet-adorned enforcers of the State. She spies the devastation that's swept over the main square of the city, clutches her weaponry and enters one of the few abandoned buildings standing - a mighty and imposing old theatre - its interior murky and mouldy with neglect. In spite of the disrepair, remnants of the theatre's halcyon glory days remain, but within the auditorium we can almost smell the same sickening stench of death our heroine encounters.

There is a monster in the building and it feeds on human flesh, but in spite of the creature's predilection for such delectable culinary treats, we quickly learn that it might well be the only thing that can save mankind and battle the scourge which has wreaked havoc upon the Earth. Soon our beautiful post apocalyptic warrior will face the horror that is known as Windigo (Gail Maurice), a demon who acts as a safeguard against acts of cannibalism amongst the Algonquian Nation - for no matter how hungry and destitute the people get in times of great strife, they are expected to face death rather than eat the flesh of their own kind. If they do, they'll be torn, shredded, masticated and ingested by the gluttonous creature.

An encounter twixt our babe and the monster is imminent. She herself might also not be of the natural world, but of the spirit world - the shape-shifting Trickster God known as Weesaggeechak.

Hell is about to break loose.

Wakening is a strange and rich tale of post-apocalyptic terror. Its slender nine-minute running time is packed with plenty of portent and suspense - so much so that we're left wanting for more. This is hardly a flaw, but a considerable attribute. I normally have little use for short films that can't work as short dramas on their own and instead act merely as calling cards for young filmmakers to generate TV camera-jockey employment or worse, when the short film is little more than an extended trailer for a feature in the eventual making. Neither of these aforementioned afflictions that have consumed so many young filmmakers are at play here, but I have to admit that by the end of the movie, I wanted - nay, demanded - a feature length dystopian science fiction thriller.

After all, how can one go wrong with a mega-babe wending her way through a Mad Max-like landscape and battling both Police State New World Order goons and, uh, monsters? Well, you can't go wrong with it at all and its my hope that director Danis Goulet, screenwriter Tony Elliiot, producer Glen Wood and star Sarah Podemski will soon reunite for one kick-ass science fiction feature film that draws upon all the traits of a populist genre, yet blended in a giant cinematic Mix Master with the meagerly-tapped indigenous Canadian cultural traditions of our First Nations.

For me, the first, last and (currently) only word on the subject of the representation of Native People in popular culture is Dr. Emma LaRocque. In her fine essay entitled "When the Wild West is Me: Re-Viewing Cowboys and Indians", LaRocque encapsulates the use of the "Ignoble Savage" as a villain in traditional days-of-yore westerns and (hilariously, I might add) the insufferable "Noble Savage" of contemporary westerns like Dances With Wolves. For me, science fiction often shares traits with traditional tales of the Old West - pioneers, colonizers, new worlds that are as thrilling as they are dangerous and often the threat of mass destruction via genocidal activities. The aforementioned post-apocalyptic Mad Max films by Australia's George Miller are westerns dressed up with cool hotrods, leather-adorned stalwart heroes and punk rock villains.

Where Wakening as a short (and frankly, as a potential feature film) can depart from George Miller's trilogy is that it creates its own cinematic mythology - borrowing from time-honoured genre tropes and cultural references that remain sorely untapped. LaRocque describes the need for an "authentic Indian" in popular culture as stemming from an "identity crisis" wherein Aboriginal peoples and, on the whole, "Native Identity has been constricted to romanticized nature/religion and consigned forever to the past." Because of "centuries of mixing up ideas of an authentic Indian culture" that's rooted in false ethnocentric (if not downright racist) notions of being "primitive", LaRocque grants the potential need for "Urban Indians" to seek images and representation that is "culturally 'different'" from the "dominant" cultural powers and result in hanging on to "Noble Savage" stereotypes. She also points out that many contemporary creators of cinema and literature "believe that the indigenous valuation for balance between humans and the environment would benefit an over-industrialized planet."

Personally, I see two truths here - two needs. Yes, contemporary tales of the Pow-Wow Highway variety are an absolute must - dramas and comedies that speak to "normal" lives of modern Native people are needed in far greater abundance than currently exist. While not to the exclusion of darker territory, I do think there needs to be less emphasis upon the suffering, exploitation and poverty some of the indigenous nations face and far more work that resembles the desire of the great African-American filmmaker Charles Burnett to paint a far brighter, funny and hopeful world for his people as demonstrated in his now-classic 1990 release To Sleep With Anger. That is one definite truth/need.

The other truth/need as I see it, is a new form of myth-making - especially within the context of cinema. To deny the power of cinema - perhaps more than any other artistic medium - in terms of its propagandistic tendencies is not only myopic, but somewhat foolish given the practical needs of satisfying the wants of the marketplace. Let's not forget that Hollywood was invented by Eastern European Jews who escaped the virulent anti-semitism of their homelands and generated product that delivered their own idea and mythology of an America they wanted to exist.

Film is, after all, as much a business as it is an art form. This doesn't mean catering to ephemeral lowest-common denominator wants, but creating commercial work that has shelf-life, a lasting value that maintains the qualities of universality. Science Fiction and other fantastical genres seem ripe for this sort of myth-making and certainly within the context of bringing new representations of the Aboriginal Nations to the silver screen, Wakening is most certainly a work that gives me some hope that this is possible. Like those great Jewish moguls believed, movies are made for mythology and why not create new mythologies?

And, as is my wont, I also see virtues in the "lowest common denominator".

Let's do the math:

-One mega-kick-ass babe.
-A world torn asunder by greed and nuclear war.
-Totalitarian villains bent upon colonization, genocide and subjugation.
-The goal of a heroic figure being the restoration of peace and balance in the world.
-A shitload of all-new (to most), super-cool and jaw-droppingly scary monsters.

Seriously, what's not to like?

"Wakening" has landed an unprecedented debut slot, screening Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. just before the highly-anticipated Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2013 opening film, THE FIFTH ESTATE, at The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre. It's the first independently produced short film ever to launch TIFF’s public opening night gala. "Wakening", is a part of "Stage to Screen", a commemorative project created the visionary young producer Glen Wood of ViDDYWELL FiLMS in collaboration with The Ontario Heritage Trust (and co-produced by Jordana Aarons) to mark the 100th anniversary of Toronto landmark The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre. Emerging filmmakers were invited scout the theatre and present a concept for their short film. Six films were selected for production to take advantage of the venue’s historic architecture and atmosphere. The "Stage to Screen" shorts are each promoted with a thirty-second teaser at all The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre TIFF 2013 screenings, directing patrons to view the shorts in full online at bravofact.com (Bell Media's bravoFACT - the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent - was established in 1995 by the national cable channel Bravo. The foundation is the largest funder of short films in Canada having supported over 1,500 short-form projects across the country.). In addition to "Wakening", three films were available for screening at press time. They were as follows:

"Silent Garden" (dir. Dylan Reibling) **** A visually sumptuous ode to the transition from live vaudeville theatre to cinema. The film lovingly recreates the era of silent cinema with the sort of attention to detail, good taste, genuine appreciation, deep understanding and (thankfully) no horrendous tongue-in-cheek (which made the overblown, over-rated "The Artist" such a mind-numbingly, godawful and downright sickening experience). "Silent Garden" is a haunting, deeply moving love story of a time when cinema was in its most delicate and truly imaginative stages of development - when the groundwork for cinematic storytelling was laid. Reibling's film magically makes use of the historic theatre to transport us back in time - not as a mere recreation and/or homage, but as a genuine work of raw beauty and power that could well have been made in those halcyon days of genuine exploratory artistic celebration. Like the aforementioned "Wakening", "Silent Garden" demands a big screen experience. It's a shame the picture has been relegated to a 30-second "preview" instead of joining its dystopian futuristic counterpart as part of an official TIFF gala screening in the mighty Wintergarden Theatre.

"Winter Garden" (dir. Alex Epstein) ***1/2 The snap, crackle and pop of showbiz drama and comedy comes alive with considerable charm in this lovely amalgam of backstage Busby Berkeley musicals (the wonderful Lloyd Bacon-styled sequences of those magnificent Warner Brothers classics), Woody Allen's backstage story dalliances and without question, the flavour of so many great Neil Simon works. Fine, crisp writing and a manic, muscular performance from the terrific Canadian character actor Enrico Colantoni generate a hugely entertaining homage to a time when theatre ruled popular drama.

"The Good Escape" (dir. Nadia Litz) *** Actress Emily Hampshire sets the screen ablaze with her luminous performance as a young woman whose eyes in a movie house are less fixed to the escapist qualities of the silver screen as they are to the presence of a very sexy, powerful gangster who seeks the escape offered (in more ways than one) of America's majestic temple of celluloid worship.

Not available for screening at press time were "The Archivist" (dir. Jeremy Ball) and "Tiny Dancer" (Dir. Doug Karr).