chumptastic dot orgmy first camera experience
somehow i managed to neglect writing about my first visit to camera on saturday, so i’ll make up for that now.
camera’s a pretty trendy bar/lounge/screening room on queen west in toronto owned by atom egoyan. we paid it a visit to check out a rough cut of egoyan’s latest project, a self-described “new reality show” called citadel. it was the first public screening of the film, so egoyan was there to introduce it as well as to discuss it afterwards. he explained up front that it was essentially a journal of his family’s trip to beirut (where his wife lived until she was 17) and initially wasn’t intended to be much more than that, but it grew into something more. the finished product is definitely interesting: it’s laid out as a letter to his son that he’s not supposed to watch for another ten years, and is essentially a juxtaposition of the banality of watching someone else’s family go on vacation with observations of a tense culture with a war-torn past. there are definitely some parts that drag on, but the insight provided in voiceover – not to mention the climax at the end that the entire film builds toward – made it worthwhile. i’m not sure if it will ever see the light of day, but it’s certainly worth watching.
as for camera itself, if it’s good enough for george stroumboulopoulos, it’s good enough for me.
last night i returned to camera to try to check out another free screening, this time of a bunch of short films. sadly, the tickets were gone by the time we got there. booo. i did however see atom egoyan (again) and don mckellar (!!!). robin had a david cronenberg sighting, but i must’ve been looking for george s. at the time…
December 9th, 2004 at 11:36 am