Maybe Film Dreams
Calgary, 2010
3:19
Dir: Murray Smith
Black and White Super 8
Experimental
Kicking off a trio of experimental works is this lighthearted tribute to celluloid film in an age when cheaper and more convenient digital media are starting to take over both the industry and the art. Murray Smith shot Maybe Film Dreams on black and white Super 8 during a CSIF workshop introducing participants to such methods of personalizing film footage as hand processing, optical printing and photograms. Smith’s playful imagery is largely preoccupied with old-fashioned special effects applied to images of aging technology like the analog telephone, handwriting and film projectors. He also seems to find some symbolic motif in their circular properties: phone dials, film reels and analog clocks. He narrates his montage in the person of a satiric character who dislikes celluloid film, particularly its black and white variety, because it looks “crappy”. Subsequently he turns the soundtrack over to audio samples from films by Richard Linklater, including Slacker, Waking Life and Before Sunset, and splices in excerpts from Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Play Time, which was shot in colour and then processed to make it look predominantly black and white. These references to the work of an American director known for a European penchant for philosophical dialogue and a European master’s work about the failure of the modern world to accommodate human unpredictability play foil to his narrator’s taste for IMAX blockbusters in which increasingly inhuman action sequences are made “realistic” using digital technology. “Did you know,” writes Murray of his piece, “an increasing number of underprivileged film reels sit perpetually dormant? So mightn’t they spend this time dreaming?” Let’s hope we never lay them entirely to rest.
Murray Smith describes himself as a critical thinker and a film formalist. His interests and influences include philosophy, holography and holism, contrast, ambiguity, film noir, surrealism, David Bohm, Jacques Tati, Robert Altman, Richard Linklater, and Stanley Kubrick. He is passionate about photography, writing, film theory and, especially, film editing. While he believes the new media
MURRAY SMITH
and digital cinema are positive developments that bring new meaning to the term cinematic “depth”, he retains a fond appreciation for celluloid film and the experience of watching movies in an actual theatre, along with the post-viewing discussion it engenders. He loves to experiment in all things, from formal writing to tournament paintball and hobby electronics. Smith received a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from the university of Calgary in 2011 and works as the Administrative Coordinator and webmaster for the Calgary Cinematheque. He volunteers frequently within the local film community and otherwise loves to learn, philosophize and develop and design web sites and systems.
