Nobody makes horror films like the Canadian taxpayer
Canuxploitation fans rejoice! On Sunday, 20 May at the Roxy Bar and Screen, the newly-inaugurated Shivers Film Society launches its first in a screening series devoted to Canadian genre cinema, with an all-day marathon of indie films from the last decade and capped off with a screening of David Cronenberg’s seminal Videodrome (1983). Don’t consider yourself a Canadian B-film aficionado? You probably are more than you know.
“The mandate [of the organization] is to illicit an appreciation of Canadian films by audiences and a sense of national pride from contemporary indie Canadian filmmakers by revealing the strong influence, cultural relevance, and cinematic history in the story of Canadian cinema, and cinema production,” says Vince D’Amato of Vancouver’s Creepy Six Films, who first hatched the idea for Shivers when he was living in London last year. “London is a city rife with film societies and has a phenomenal cinema culture unlike anything I’ve experienced,” he continues, “and I was inspired to begin screening films from our own production catalogue there in the city.” Although he’s now back in Vancouver, his partners Justin Harries from Filmbar ’70 and Scala Forever, and Nadeem Ali from Videotape Swapshop will be running the London-based events, while D’Amato focuses on setting up similar screenings on Canadian soil.
With the event bearing the tagline ‘The Influence of the Canadian Tax Shelter Films’, it’s probably important to know what tax shelter films are. While the term has gained some cachet in recent years, many people are still foggy on the details, so simply put, the Tax Shelter Era refers to the period between 1974-1982 when the Canadian Film Development Corporation gave investors in Canadian filmmaking a 100% capital cost allowance, as a means of encouraging national production. The term sometimes extends to films made through the late 1980s, as there was still a 50% tax break, but by 1990 it had dropped back to roughly 30% and the tax shelter era was officially over.
But this period was about more than economics – many people think of the tax shelter as an ethos, a ‘golden era’ of unprecedented freedom from stifling nationalist mandates. It was, for better or for worse, a cinematic free-for-all. The founding of the Canadian Film Development Corporation (or CFDC) in 1967, a federal initiative to create a self-sufficient film industry outside of documentary and experimental animation (what Canada was primarily known for, via the NFB) was especially seized upon in Quiet Revolution-era Quebec, which was enjoying an exciting cultural and political overhaul. It was in this context that Canuxploitation pioneers Andre Link and (the late) John Dunning were able to turn their distribution company Cinepix into a production house, which ushered in Quebec’s wave of ‘maple syrup porn’ (a term coined by Variety but adopted into the Canadian vernacular) with Denis Héroux’ Valérie (1969) and L’Initiation (1970). Countercultural softcore films and sexy satires proliferated in their wake, from lowball sex comedies like Après Ski (1971) to campy spy capers like 1972’s IXE-13 (‘The French Canadian Dream!’). By the early 70s, Cinepix – like their counterparts Quadrant, Astral Bellevue Pathé and Cineplex – turned to horror as the next wave, which gave a start to directors like George Mihalka (My Bloody Valentine), William Fruet (Death Weekend), Bob Clark (Black Christmas) and David Cronenberg (Shivers), who all benefited from the tax breaks that were by then in place. While many of these directors didn’t necessarily see themselves as aligned with the genre per se (Fruet for example was best known for penning Don Shebib’s 1970 CanCon classic Goin’ Down the Road), the tax shelter program allowed them find a way to marry their more heady aspirations to the exploitation ethos.
During the tax shelter era, Canada was actually out-producing Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean the films were lapping up awards. The tendency of the tax shelter pictures toward exploitation fare elicited the ire of Robert Fulford of Canada’s Saturday Night magazine when he discovered that Canadian tax money went in to the creation of Cronenberg’s transgressive parasitic orgy, Shivers (1970). “You Should Know How Bad This Movie Is, You Paid For It,” admonished the headline of his review. Of course the fallout from this notorious editorial only stoked Cronenberg’s then-budding career.
Nearly 350 movies were made before the 100% capital cost allowance was abolished as a national embarrassment – an indignance helped along by the fact that the funders found out that many companies weren’t even bothering to release the films they made. But the influence of Canada’s notorious tax shelter era – from both the resourceful financial structuring of the productions to the anti-capitalist themes of the films themselves – is rife in the Canadian genre films that followed, which the Shivers Film Society hopes to illustrate through their series by pairing original tax shelter films with contemporary counterparts. “The addition of Videodrome to the program was to connect these films with one that was actually from the Tax Shelter era in Canadian history,” says D’Amato, who also says that their namesake film may be in the cards for a future screening. But he wanted to kick things off with Videodrome, which he cites as “one of my favourite films of all time”, along with The Brood (1979), Cannibal Girls (1973), Black Christmas (1974), Rituals (1977), and his “guilty pleasure”, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (1987).
Cronenberg’s final tax shelter film comes in at the end of a colorful lineup that includes John Fallon’s bloody relationship-showdown short The Red Hours (2008), Christian Viel’s action-revenge picture Deaden (2006), Maurice Deveraux’ $lasher$ (2001), a gory real-time sendup of the Japanese game show phenom (prefiguring what would soon after become the North American obsession with reality TV), and Vince D’Amato’s own The Hard Cut Double/Feature (2011), a sort of film noir Rashomon full of gangsters and immortal femme fatales and where the focus of alternative recollection is a missing film print.
“The mandate is not meant to focus on the Tax Shelter era specifically in the long run,” D’Amato concedes. “We’re trying to build a palpable cinematic history of Canadian film. We’ll be showing more films directly from the Tax Shelter era in future screenings, too. Shivers won’t be a one-time event, we’ve got two more planned in London that will flesh out the cinematic structure of the Tax Shelter films and a monthly double-feature event in the works for Vancouver, which I hope will launch pretty quickly.”
The series is rather timely too – Jason Eisener’s Hobo With a Shotgun and Astron-6’s Father’s Day have gotten oodles of international press over the last year, all of which directly references the Canadian tax shelter era. Fangoria Magazine devoted a special issue to Maple Leaf Horror back in January, the Toronto Film Critics Association awarded Cinepix with the illustrious Clyde Gilmour Award (a bit of revenge considering Gilmour was among Cinepix’ loudest detractors in the 70s, when he was a critic for the Toronto Star) and American theatres from Austin to L.A. have hosted screening retrospectives, all aided in no small part by the wealth of information coming from Paul Corupe’s encyclopaedic Canuxploitation.com website and Caelum Vatnsdal’s pioneering tome They Came From Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema), the latter of which spearheaded probably the first serious retrospective of tax shelter films to tour across Canada. Canada’s capacity for exploitation gold is really being mined and reappraised of late, and Shivers promises to help that appreciation along in a major way.
Sunday 20 May
The Roxy Bar & Screen
128-132 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LB</i?
3:00 pm: The Red Hours / Deaden: £3 (both films)
5:00 pm: $lasher$: £3
7:00 pm: The Hard Cut Double/Feature: £3
9:30 pm: Videodrome: £3
ALL DAY PRICE: £8.00 – Tickets will also be available at the door or online at TheyCameFromWithin.com
SEE THIS TONIGHT
St Lucia at CAMP
Following a successful eighteen month stint in NYC, Popshop takes the leap across the Atlantic to putt on some shows in London and Paris this month. 17th May finds them at CAMP, with their very own synth poppers St Lucia as headliners. The Black Cab Sessions will chip in their ten cents, showcasing the primal pop of Hannah Yadi, followed by Savoir Adore and Foxes. Priced at £7, it’s a steal. Pop along!
Snipe Likes BRAINLOVE FESTIVAL 2012 SNIPE LIKES
Brainlove Festival: Tall Stories
Close associates of the inner circle of Brainlove Records, Tall Stories are today’s featured band for this year’s festival – hoorah! Anyone who’s caught the London-based trio before will know what exciting antics to expect and won’t need much convincing to want more.
For newcomers, the group describe their live set-up as “a lot of energy and a lot of sarcasm”, and considering last time frontman Rob played the Brainlove Festival he drank a bottle of spirits before arrival, this time will surely equal these epic feats.
We had a quick word with the band before they head off to Liverpool Sound City, where they play tonight at Mello Mello.
Could you introduce a little about yourself first and foremost?
We are a three piece, north London based band who aim to make the biggest, catchiest racket we can possibly muster.
For people who haven’t seen you live before, what can they expect?
A lot of energy, and a lot of sarcasm.
Have you been to the Brainlove Festival prior to this year?
Yes actually, Rob played Brainlove fest last year as a drummer for the Ethical Debating Society.
And how was it?
It was great. I drank a bottle of Sailor Jerry in the car on the way there and they had a bubble machine.
Who are you excited about seeing live this time round?
Some of the bands that we met and played with at Tallinn Music Week, Estonia.
How do you find festivals in general? Do you prefer smaller venue shows?
We just prefer good shows! Festivals are great because none of the normal rules apply any more. You can embrace your inner lunatic.
Do you enjoy the prospect of people that necessarily aren’t that familiar with your music getting the chance to stumble upon you?
Yeah, that’s all we need really. A bunch of people in a room to rock out to.
Could you tell us a little bit about the track you chose to give away as a free download?
This was our first demo that we recorded and mixed entirely on our own, which was arduous to say the least! It has so far been played on XFM by John Kennedy and Huw Stephens on Radio 1.
What do your band have going on at the moment? Anything you’re working on or forthcoming releases in the works?
Our manager keeps bullying us into “generating content”. So we’re recording lots of stuff and making videos. That’s all progressing nicely. We’ve got quite a few gigs coming up, including a slot at Liverpool Sound City tonight.
Tickets & Lineup Info for Brainlove 2012 at: www.brainloverecords.com/festival.
MPfree
Väljasõit Rohelisse - Teine Vals
This lovely track is by Estonian dronegaze project Väljasõit Rohelisse (pronounced Val-Yah-Sweet Row-Hell-Ease, meaning “roadside picnic”). “Teine Valss” gives a good indication of their woozy, hypnotic sound, and we’ll be featuring an interview with them soon. The debut EP, “Külastus”, comes out this June 4th, on ltd. edition 10” vinyl – and if you like this track, you can order one here.
Quote COUNCIL MEETINGS TED JEORY TOWER HAMLETS“The police were called just after 11.30pm amid screams from the council chamber”
The compulsively readable Ted Jeory has news of the Tower Hamlets councillor arrested last night over an alleged threat to kill. In the council chamber.
Read his post, for details. It contains the phrase “Sopranos but with curry.”
EVENING STANDARD MEDIA
London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
The most frustrating thing about the mayoral election result wasn’t the result. It wasn’t the waiting, either. It was the coverage.
There can’t be many places in the world where an election in which the winner gets one million personal votes, and gets to play with a multi-billion pound budget, has to jostle with news of far away provincial polls. It certainly wouldn’t happen in New York, where TV channel NY1 tracks mayor Michael Bloomberg’s every move.
But that was what happened in London. With no dedicated TV channel of our own, we were forced to rely on Sky and the BBC for updates from City Hall, who interspersed it with reheated soundbites from elections elsewhere, sports updates, newspaper reviews and a whole Ten O’Clock News.
Worse still, the BBC dimmed its own local TV stars – political editor Tim Donovan and presenter Riz Lateef – and shoehorned national big gun Jon Sopel in front of the camera. Sopel’s a great journalist where it comes to Westminster politics – but a tourist at City Hall, and it showed.
If you wanted to know your own local results, you were out of luck.
The decline of local media’s been well documented elsewhere, but it’s been felt hard in London, where some boroughs don’t even have a paid-for weekly newspaper. It affected an election where policies and sensible debate hardly got a look-in for all the personality clashes and mudslinging.
It hasn’t always been this way. Once, the Thames TV skyline and LWT’s river-inspired ribbons left you in no doubt you were watching ITV in London, with both stations producing hours of local journalism, discussion and entertainment. Meanwhile Capital Radio was just that – radio for the capital.
But now both of those have been swallowed up into bland nationwide brands, with local news an afterthought. The BBC picked up some of the slack by creating BBC London News a decade ago, but it’s woefully underfunded compared to its counterparts in Wales and Scotland, who cover far fewer people with far bigger budgets and much more airtime. In addition, local TV news in London has always rated lower as fewer people are at home by 6pm to tune in.
Worse still, the BBC’s snobbery about “local news” meant when BBC London had a genuine scoop – about Boris Johnson’s links with News International, and the resulting on-camera outburst – the national bulletins stayed well clear of it, denying the story the audience it deserved.
So London never really saw its election through its own eyes – instead, it got a narrow Westminster village vision of the toff versus the tax-avoider, a black and white view of an election of varying hues.
Would Ken’s energy co-op have been a goer? Can Boris be as good as his word on creating apprenticeships? Would Brian Paddick have been a great police reformer ? All questions that should have been asked, but weren’t.
There may be much more media around us than 20 or 30 years ago, but opportunities to hear or read serious discussion about our city have declined. We don’t even have a serious daily newspaper covering London issues any more, after the Evening Standard spent a second election slavishly backing Boris.
In a sharply-divided city, such uncritical support for either candidate means kissing goodbye to your credibility – but backing the winner probably gets owner Evgeny Lebedev into a few more parties.
Worse still for the Standard, it largely ignored the growing story of cyclists’ safety, presumably because it was a weak issue for Boris.
Instead, it was championed by The Times after a journalist at the national title was seriously hurt riding to work. This was a story the Standard should have owned – instead, it was The Times who organised a hustings on the issue and pushed forward the debate, leaving the tired old Standard looking irrelevant once again.
Can the web ever fill the gap? Londonist’s fact-checking stories scored hits, while Mayorwatch, Snipe and newcomer The Big Smoke also ran election stories. But we’re all small fish in a pond dominated by some big names.
The Guardian is best placed to fill the gap, but seems reluctant to create a “London” section to give a home to its excellent London writer Dave Hill and the various comment and analysis pieces. Instead its capital coverage spills out across the site, annoying northerners and diluting its impact. The Telegraph could do the same, while the BBC’s London web coverage badly needs the love and investment its counterparts in Wales and Scotland get.
With Ken digging up the garden and Boris presumably off to hunt a bigger prize, the next mayoral election will bring a new, lesser-known cast of characters to the London stage. The era of the celebrity mayor may well be over – making it much more vital that London develops its own media to cover it. Are we up to the challenge?
London Agenda1. Watch a film of London’s skaters attempt to kill themselves in City of Rats [Le Cool]
2. Stand athwart history and yell ‘Stop!’ at Surviving Progress [Run Riot]
3. Get caught between different planes of existence at the group show, Liminal States [Flavorpill]
4. Spend the night at This is not happening [Don’t Panic]
5. Watch the City enforce its medieval borders at Beating the Bounds [Ian Visits]
6. Attend Late Shift at the National Portrait Gallery [Tired of London]
London Agenda is Snipe's daily compilation of what to do in London as suggested by everyone else. Send additions to listings@snipelondon.com
Radioblue - Take Me Home
We like sultry Berlin techno-siblings Radioblue a lot. Their first single, “Take Me Home”, is out on Monday, and they’re rumoured to be headed for London in June – watch this space.
MPfree BRAINLOVE FESTIVAL 2012
Brainlove Festival: Bleeding Heart Narrative
Today’s Brainlove Festival artist of the day is Bleeding Heart Narrative, who released a thrillingly ambitious EP called “Bison” on the label last year. Recently seen giving When Saints Go machine a run for their money as support at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, BHN will play Brainlove Festival for the first time early in the afternoon.
You can read our interview with the band’s drummer Simon below, read the rest of the BRNLV Festival interview series here, and once thoroughly convinced by the lineup’s breadth and quality, get your hands on tickets here.
Could you introduce a little about yourself first and foremost?
We’re Bleeding Heart Narrative and we’re a six-piece from North/East London.
For people who haven’t seen you live before, what can they expect?
You can expect a pretty big but coherent noise from guitars, drums, cellos, violins, synths, voices and a wood block. The last time we played the Windmill I managed to catapult my glasses off my face with one of my drumsticks and smash them to pieces against a wall, so there’s always a chance that’ll happen again too.
Have you played or even been to the Brainlove Festival prior to this year?
Our singer, Oli, has played the last couple of years, but the rest of us have somehow contrived to book holidays before we’ve been asked. We’re excited to finally play as a full band.
What are you looking forward to most about it?
Our last EP came out on Brainlove so we’ve been exposed to a few of the other bands on the label’s roster as a result. It’ll be good to finally hear some of them live. Also, what’s not to look forward to about a day with music, bbq and booze at the Windmill?
Looking at the line-up, who are you excited about seeing live?
Mat Riviere. We were lucky enough to tour with him recently so it’ll be good to reacquaint myself with his set.
How do you find festivals in general? Do you prefer smaller venue shows?
I’ve not been to a big UK festival as a punter for a while now, mostly because of how expensive they’ve become, so in that sense it’s great to see a lot of smaller, venue specific events come to the fore. While there’s been a decline in the number of beer-sponsored 3-dayers, there seems to be more call for festivals like Brainlove, Southsea and Swn, where people can come and listen to great music for a fraction of the cost. Having said all that, playing Green Man last year was a pretty incredible experience, so I can’t pretend I’d ever write bigger festivals off completely!
Do you enjoy the prospect of people that necessarily aren’t that familiar with your music getting the chance to stumble upon you?
That’s what festivals are all about, right? It’s always exciting to try to win people over who haven’t heard of you. I think we’re also excited about people stumbling across us who have heard our music too, though. The sound of the band has changed quite a bit over the years, so it’s always good to surprise a few people who had us pegged in a certain genre.
Could you tell us a little bit about the track you chose to give away as a free download?
Well, it’s called Shoals and it’s the opening track from the EP Bison, which we released on Brainlove at the end of last year. We made a video for it too, which you can find here
What do your band have going on at the moment? Anything you’re working on or forthcoming releases in the works?
At the moment we’re just concentrating on writing, recording and gigging as much as possible. We’ve got a really busy few weeks coming up with The Great Escape, Liverpool Sound City, a couple of London gigs and, of course, Brainlove Festival, and in between we’re recording some new material and making more videos for the remaining tracks from Bison. Fingers crossed there’ll be some new material released in the near future…
Chelsea supporting cow faces uncertain future
So the cow seems safe, albeit she’s probably feeling a little blue (that’s a her, right?). Chelsea are big in Nigeria, partly because of John Obi Mikel.
The Scoop
London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
MP Free
Brainlove Festival: Tall Stories
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