TIFF GUIDE

WAVELENGTHS

A moving elegy for American radicals and lesser-known victims of what one tombstone calls “the lust of greed,” John Gianvito's Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is as strong a film as you'll see at TIFF. It's also the sort of work you only find in Wavelengths. A move of venue to the Varsity should encourage more fest-goers to investigate its six programs of avant-garde, experimental and non-narrative works. Detailing a seldom-told version of US history via the gravestones and historical markers that commemorate people and places instrumental in the labour and civil rights movements, Gianvito's hour-long film – which plays in Program 6 on Sept. 8 – is so elegant and compelling, it's equally accessible to hardy avant-gardists and relative neophytes.

Two more long-form works at Wavelengths deserve your attention. Hannes Schupbach's Erzahlung (Program 4, Sept. 9) is a silent yet bustling tribute to Cesare Ferronato, an Italian sculptor who doggedly devotes himself to his work before our eyes. More meditative by nature is Heinz Emigholz's Schindler's Houses (Program 5, Sept. 9), a placid series of views of Californian buildings by architect Rudolf M. Schindler. Due to the decaying state of many sites, Emigholz's film feels like a haunting tour of an eerily depopulated Los Angeles.

If you long for some human presence instead, Ute Aurand and Maria Lang's The Butterfly in Winter (Program 3, Sept. 8) celebrates the value of tender loving care with its marvellously kinetic yet gracefully arranged shots of Lang with her elderly mother. Program 6's bounty of essential shorts include Pip Chodorov's Faux Mouvements, a mesmerizing and fast-moving array of trains, tracks and spirals, and Chris Kennedy's Tape Film, a nifty piece of self-effacement via masking tape and scratchy celluloid. The same program closes with a projector performance by Bruce McClure that includes two 16mm projectors and eight (count 'em) guitar pedals. Reverberations mean big fun but in terms of condensed joy, nothing tops this year's contribution by fest fave Apichatpong Weerasethakul: though describing Weerasethakul's film The Anthem (Program 5) too closely would spoil the surprise, I will say that it involves mangos, badminton and dancing, and that after watching it you'll wish every movie did.

JASON ANDERSON

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