Pacific Cinémathèque is pleased to introduce Screen B.C., an exciting new regular showcase for work by B.C. filmmakers and media artists. New stuff, notable stuff, old stuff, great stuff - Screen B.C. will ensure that local film and video is always in the foreground of Pacific Cinémathèque's larger Canadian and international programming. All types of material - features, shorts, documentaries, experimental films, animation, video-based art - will be presented; a wide range of programming approaches will be offered: retrospectives of work by individual artists; screenings of independent features; collections of works from various film schools and co-ops; thematic-based programs; and more. We encourage you to see and support B.C. work, and hope that Screen B.C. becomes an important and engaging forum for its exhibition.
And, yes, submissions are welcome and will always be considered!

Screen B.C. - A Double-Barrelled Indie Inauguration:
Dan Zukovic's The Last Big Thing and Ross Munro's Brewster McGee

We can't think of a nastier way to ring in a new year and a new decade, and inaugurate our new Screen B.C. showcase, than with these two edgy independent features from Vancouver-based filmmakers. The ranting-and-raving protagonists of Dan Zukovic's The Last Big Thing and Ross Munro's Brewster McGee are very nasty guys indeed. Imagine being against everything that is happening today! Hey, it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it!

The Last Big Thing
USA 1996. Director: Dan Zukovic
Cast: Dan Zukovic, Susan Heimbinder, Mark Ruffalo, Pamela Dickerson

The rampant mediocrity of our infotainment culture got you foaming at the mouth? Then this one's for you. Vancouver writer-director-actor Dan Zukovic made this wickedly funny, corrosively clever assault on the contemporary zeitgeist while living in Los Angeles; The Last Big Thing won critical raves across the U.S. for its truly original, highly subversive vision, but never found a Canadian release. Zukovic, in an ace performance, plays Simon Geist, an over-bearing, culture-jamming jerk who professes to be against 'everything that's happening today.' Given to angsty imitations of Munch's The Scream in the distorted reflection of his chrome trash bin, Geist ostensibly runs a magazine entitled 'The Next Big Thing,' devoted to profiles of up-and-coming actors, rock musicians and models. The mag doesn't actually exist, but is the pretext that allows Geist access to various vacuous celebrities, whom he proceeds to harangue and insult. The very funny Susan Heimbinder co-stars as jittery Darla, the devoted girlfriend with whom Simon shares a dreary suburban home. When Geist betrays her for supermodel Tedra (Pamela Dickerson), and is offered the opportunity to direct a rock video, he's self-righteously convinced that he's subverting the system from within - but he's really just turning into everything he despises. "A millennial comedy aimed squarely - or perhaps hiply - at educated insiders... a consistently funny, relentless scabrous critique of fin-de-siecle media culture... smarter urbanites could be talking about it right into the next century" (Ken Eisner, Variety). "A distinctly original and brilliant work...unfalteringly imaginative... Zukovic is not only a visionary but a terrific director of actors, including himself" (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times). "Nasty fun... A satire whose sharpest moments echo the tone of a Nathaniel West novel" (Stephen Holden, New York Times).Colour, 35mm. 98 mins.

Monday, January 10 7:30 pm
Wednesday, January 12 9:00 pm
Thursday, January 13 7:30 pm

Brewster McGee
Canada 1998. Director: Ross Munro
Cast: Brent Neale, Reid Edwards, Don Ackerman

A nastily comic underground feature, made in Vancouver by transplanted Winnipegger Ross Munro, Brewster McGee is the profane, low-rent saga of two dangerously obsessive misfits who spend their time together hatching improbable marketing ideas and get-rich-quick schemes - mostly from the confines of a rusted-out car parked in the lot of a Chicken Hut franchise. The eponymous Brewster - played by Brent Neale, from Guy Maddin's Careful - is a foul-mouthed, utterly obnoxious proselytizer, preaching a scorched-earth, ranting-and-raving gospel about whatever's pissing him off at the moment; his latest dim idea is to make his fortune by coining and copyrighting a new profanity. The timid Malcolm (Reid Edwards) is Brewster's simpering hippie sidekick - "who belongs in a Crumb cartoon" (David Barber, Winnipeg Cinematheque). The slacker plot has the pathetic pair attempting to bring new blood into their narrow world by ensnaring Oliver (Don Ackerman), an unsuspecting Chicken Hut employee. "With its obscenity-peppered dialogue, slacker characters and black-and-white photography, the movie may remind movie buffs of Kevin Smith's 1995 breakout hit Clerks" (Morley Walker, Winnipeg Free Press). Writer-director Munro describes Brewster McGee as "REAL indie local filmmaking - i.e. no appearances by Don McKellar or generous dollops of the taxpayers' lucre - although believe me... I tried!!" B&W, 16mm. 68 mins.

Monday, January 10 9:30 pm
Wednesday, January 12 7:30 pm
Thursday, January 13 9:30 pm

Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks!
Canada 1996. Director: Ileana Pietrobruno
Cast: Tara Frederick, Rebecca Godin, Alex Ferguson, Christine Taylor

One of the most drop-dead gorgeous movies ever made in Vancouver, Ileana Pietrobruno's Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks! is a dizzyingly ambitious experimental drama that traces the troubling relationship between women and their bodies. Pietrobruno - maligned in the media as a pornographer during last year's Bubbles Galore brouhaha because of the gender-bending theme of her forthcoming feature, The Girl Who Would Be King, but actually a talented filmmaker of decidedly distinctive vision - here updates the Arabian Nights saga of Scheherazade to tell the modern-day story of a young fashion model hospitalized with an eating disorder. This contemporary Scheherazade comes to suspect that her inept doctor is out to kill her - and that the only way to stop him is to keep him regaled with stories. For this, she enlists the assistance of Kore, a fellow patient whose fondness for trashy tabloids provides Scheherazade with fodder for her death-delaying tales. The film was shot in the abandoned buildings of a local insane asylum, and Pietrobruno and cinematographer John Houtman seem to have had a drip-drip-drip Tarkovskian field day. The apocalyptic production design is breathtaking; the mix of colour, black-and-white and High 8 images highly evocative. "Intriguing... invites comparisons to fellow Canuck Guy Maddin... the mixed morbidity, fantasticism and quirky humor works surprisingly well" (Dennis Harvey, Variety). "Stunning... Part feminist fable, part surreal dream and part horror flick, this hallucinatory first feature shows Pietrobruno is a director full of promise" (Liz Czach, Toronto I.F.F.). Colour and B&W, 16mm. 75 mins.

Wednesday, January 26 7:30 pm

Aldous Huxley: The Gravity of Light
Canada 1996. Director: Oliver Hockenhull
Cast: David Odhiambo, Judy Klassen, Andrew Laurenson, Sheri-D Wilson

Vancouver director Oliver Hockenhull's experimental features - including Determinations (1988), Entre la Langue et L'Océan (1991), and the new Building Heaven, Remembering Earth (coming soon to Pacific Cinémathèque) - are bold, daring, dazzling, erudite, aesthetically extravagant, politically radical works of impressive thematic and stylistic accomplishment, and have marked Hockenhull as one of the most uniquely ambitious filmmakers in the province. No less estimable but perhaps more accessible is this 1996 feature, an unusual documentary that is as multi-layered, mind-altering, and non-traditional as its subject: the great English novelist, essayist, iconoclast, social prophet, and proponent of psychedelic drugs, Aldous Huxley. Described as "a contemporary reading of Aldous Huxley's cultural criticism and social prophecy," Aldous Huxley: Gravity of Light interweaves archival footage, computer animation, excerpts from Huxley's essays, selections from a 1957 CBC interview with Huxley, idiosyncratic dramatic sequences, comments by U.N. advisor and Huxley scholar Jean Houston, and Personal Cinema reflections by space-age baby Hockenhull. The fascinating, exasperating, mescaline-rush result: a Brave New Look at the author of Brave New World - and a much-needed meditative look back, as we near the end of the millennium, at one of the century's most modern thinkers. Colour and B&W, 16mm. 70 mins.

Wednesday, January 26 9:00 pm

Happy Valentine's Day!
Love & Kisses B.C.
A delirious look at dating, romance, love and marriage through the deliciously skewed sensibilities of B.C. independent filmmakers

Wedding Knives
A hair-raising wedding night begins with the hirsute (and embarrassed) groom locked in the bathroom with a straight razor, and goes bloody well downhill from there. A bold short set in the early 1960s, and shot at the Motel 2400 on Vancouver's Kingsway. Johanna Mercer/1998. 15 mins.

Second Date
Julie and Jason have an awkward reunion after their drunken one-night stand when she returns to retrieve her forgotten glasses. An understated, emotionally perceptive work, featuring Vancouver rising star Sarah Strange. James Genn/1999. 16mm, 11 mins.

Babette's Feet
A whimsical, witty romantic comedy about obsession, in which a restless man with a serious foot fetish (Dirty's Tom Scholte) finally meets the perfectly fixated partner. Harry Killas/1999. 35mm, 15 mins.

The Lonely Passion of Petar the Pig Farmer
In the eccentric mode of Guy Maddin, a surreal little fairy-tale in which a lonely farmer's romantic dreams come true - except he forgot to check his piggish attitudes at the barnyard door. Caroline Coutts/1999. 16mm, 15 mins.

Rules for Romance
Kathy Garneau's weird documentary, shot in 1940s newsreel style, is an old favourite. It profiles oddball Kurt Preinsperg, former UBC student politician and self-styled ladies' man, who gained notoriety by publishing his 'Rules for Romance' - outrageously old-fashioned tips on how to meet and impress women. A hilarious, head-scratching reminder that reality truly is stranger than fiction. Kathy Garneau/1993. 20 mins.

Monday, February 14 7:30 pm
Wednesday, February 16 7:30 pm

Kissed
Canada 1996. Director: Lynn Stopkewich
Cast: Molly Parker, Peter Outerbridge, Jay Brazeau, Natasha Morley

UBC alumnus Lynn Stopkewich's memorable first feature is undoubtedly the most tender and romantic film ever made about, uh, necrophilia. Based on a taboo-breaking story by Barbara Gowdy, Kissed features the luminous Molly Parker in a star-making (and Genie-winning) performance as Sandra, a young woman whose girlhood fascination with the rituals of burying dead animals develops into a lifelong sensual attraction to death - and a sexual hankering for the corpses in the funeral home where she works. Peter Outerbridge co-stars as an intense young medical student who becomes obsessed with Sandra's secret passion, but is unable to compete with it for her affections. In Stopkewich's confident hands, the salacious subject matter makes for a film that is surprising delicate and disarming, yet electrifying. The striking images are by the hot Vancouver cinematographer Greg Middleton, a recent Genie nominee for The Five Senses. "A sensational work of intense beauty... Stopkewich's feature debut is one of the most auspicious in Canadian cinema in many years" (David McIntosh, Toronto I.F.F.). "Unusual, to say the least, but also indisputably impressive" (Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail). Colour, 35mm. 78 mins.

Monday, February 14 9:05 pm
Wednesday, February 16 9:05 pm

Dirty B.C
Porn, perversion, and puppy dogs' tails: explicit sexual representation and the dark side of eroticism in some recent B.C. independent work by guys (and one gal).

By Michael Turner:
Shooting Blanks
This disquieting first film by Hard Core Logo author Michael Turner originated as a live poetry performance at Pacific Cinémathèque, and anticipates themes in his acclaimed new novel, The Pornographer's Poem. Murky images from an old 8mm stag loop are set to a detached poetic voice, which imagines the sad personal journey that led to what we are seeing.Michael Turner/1998. Video, 9 mins.

By Shawn Chappelle:
Heirs to a Felt Fortune
'Full frontal assault' is one way to describe this sledgehammer attack on Hollywood hegemony and its effect on Canadian cinema. Vancouver video artist Chappelle, whose kaleidoscopic collage work often concerns technology and sexuality, is working here with prolific Toronto film experimenter Hoolboom. The latter's reflective words give way to the former's barrage of (often shocking) images. Shawn Chappelle, Mike Hoolboom/1996. 16mm. 8 mins.
XXXSpacejunk
Neil Armstrong meets Bob Guccione - and moon shot equals cum shot - in Chappelle-s psychedelic space-age porn odyssey. A ravishing, shock-cut exercise in subliminal seduction, and a stunning display of the potential of new digital editing systems. Shawn Chappelle/1996. Video, 9 mins.

By Dylan Cree and Tanya Hoeltgen:
Perversions: Four Little Deaths
Aesthetic provocateurs Cree and Hoeltgen serve up four "pornological" little films, united by low-fi pop music; grainy, blown-up-from-8mm visuals; Euro-intellectual salaciousness; and, always, a nightmarish ability to unsettle and/or outrage - all culminating in a disgustingly scatological finale involving a deliberately constipated man and the doctor who blocks his attempt to scam health benefits. Dylan Cree, Tanya Hoeltgen/1997. 16mm, 28 mins.

By Dylan Cree:
vulgar...incomplete 'n yet whole
There's no denying that a distinctive and consistent artistic vision propels vulgar and the other rude works of Dylan Cree. This "pornographically baroque" drama has Uncle Tardici arriving for dinner, and climaxes in a climax. Cree claims he made it partly in response to Bruce Sweeney's Dirty, which he says wasn't dirty enough, and partly in response to Mike Hoolboom's House of Pain, which he says wasn't painful enough. Okay, buddy, whatever you say. Just don't try to date my sister. Dylan Cree/1999. 16mm, 18 mins.

Monday, February 28 7:30 pm
Wednesday, March 1 7:30 pm

Dirty
Canada 1998. Director: Bruce Sweeney
Cast: Tom Scholte, Babz Chula, Benjamin Ratner, Nancy Sivak

Bruce Sweeney's answer to Mike Leigh's Naked is the darkly humorous, darkly erotic Dirty, a film with a highly evocative sense of place i.e. - Vancouver, rarely so well captured - and a highly provocative feel for the messier side of life - i.e. sex, sex, sex. Local diva Babz Chula heads the cast as Angie, a dope-dealing, middle-aged mom involved in a spank-happy sexual relationship with David (Tom Scholte), a university student half her age. Their masochistic game-playing moves into dangerous emotional territory as troubled David becomes increasingly demanding of Angie's attention. Intersecting their obsessive orbit, meanwhile, are several other desperately lonely and/or dysfunctional characters - roommates, neighbours, relatives. A devotee of Brit master Leigh's directorial methods, Sweeney put his ensemble cast through a lengthy, improvisational-based rehearsal process before shooting; the results show in the film's assured performances. Dirty is a sizzling, sophisticated sophomore feature (the director's first, Live Bait, won Best Canadian honours at the Toronto festival in 1995). "Bruce Sweeney emerges as a filmmaker to watch" (Emanuel Levy, Variety). Colour, 35mm. 94 mins.

Monday, February 28 9:05 pm
Wednesday, March 1 9:05 pm