The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Phone: 905-845-3824 (ext. 5559) Fax: 905-337-5567 e-mail: rjerred@haltonsearch.com W K I )M u S I )A Y . J A N l A U Y 2 2 . 2< X ).* · I'a g e ( !H mmm C a th e rin e C h a lm e rs ' e x h ib it e x p lo re s th e F o o d C h a in Viewing Catherine Chalmers' exhibition Food Chain is a little like watching The Sopranos on television. Both are about the drama of sex. intrigue, predators, consumption and death. Chalmers' Food Chain will be on display at the Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square from Jan. 25 -March 30. The official opening of the show is at Centennial Square at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 7 followed by a reception in Gairloch Gardens at 8:30 p.m. An artist's talk is at 2:30 p.m. at Centennial Square on Feb. 9. The 22 large scale colour pho tographs in Chalmers' exhibition are the result of a long term proj ect, which involved raising insects and other animals in order to recreate the predator-prey encounters one would normally see in nature and then capturing them on film. Photographed on a stark white background with con trolled lighting, the creatures are removed from their usual con texts, thus examining the vivid detail of their actions. "I'm interested in how, these days, we're unhinged from the natural world," says Chalmers. "The truth is, these life and death struggles happen all around us. all the time. And in some ways, the very' beginning of our desire to be civilized is a desire to be out of the food chain ourselves." Before turning to photogra phy, Chalmers studied engineer ing at Stanford University and painting at the Royal College of Art in London. She also had solo exhibitions of her work at P.S. 1 Pictured here are a few examples of Catherine Chalmers* upcoming Food Chain display at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square. in Long Island City. New York and the Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria, and was commissioned by M A SS MocCA to create a large body of work for the exhi bition Unnatural Science. She lives in New York City. Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens is located at 1306 Lakeshore Rd. E ,, two kilometres east Of downtown Oakville. The gallery is open is open 1-5 p.m.. Tuesday to Sunday. Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square is located at 120 Navy St. The gallery is open 12-9 p.m.. Tuesday to Thursday, 12-5 p.m.. Friday. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday and l-5p.m.. Sunday. Admission is free. For more information call 905-844 4402 or visit www.oakvillegalleries.com. i Filmmaker just wanted to be cool By Craig MacBride S P E C IA L TO T H E B E.W K K increasingly elaborate zombie Ryerson was the only university movies, often getting high school around that had a film school that teachers involved as victims of the went beyond just theory and appre zombies and showing those movies ciation classes. at his high school. He was surprised Coming out of Ryerson though, when his film was viewed by a sell McDonald found it difficult to gel out crowd. that first feature done. He took jobs " 1 remember the cool kid of the driving cabs and eventually with school turning around." McDonald Lome Greene's wilderness show said, acting the part of the 'cool on the C BC . The C BC position kid" giving him the thumbs up. "1 allowed McDonald and his friends to edit short films during late hours just went from nerdom to cooldom while the editing by making a suites weren't movie, and I " There was something really being otherwise guess I got attractive about both the used. hooked." guitar and the camera. When And then came If acceptance his first break, a from his peers is you played a guitar and you band manager what McDonald played a cool song, you felt tracked him down had been looking kinda cool, and with a for, he has after watching received great one of camera one of the first amounts of it M cDonald's things I noticed was that shorts in a bar. since leaving high you could get people to The plan was to school and giving make a movie as a up the zombie do just about anything." vehicle for a band, genre. · Canadian filmmaker though the band, Among other Bruce McDonald when the lime accolades, he has came to make the won Best Ontario Film, Best Canadian Film, Best movie, weren't able to take part. Canadian Screenplay, Best Director "Our first feature was Roadkill, and has had his films featured in the and we made it for about $100,000 in two weeks." Toronto and Vancouver film festi Even after losing the band that vals. the rock tour movie was originally Looking quite tired, with disheveled hair and a black dress created for. Roadkill was still about shirt with the three top buttons and a road trip. But after getting a gov cuffs undone, McDonald said he ernment grant and hiring a produc had attended a Queer as Folk wrap er to budget the film, an actual road trip was out of the question. party the night before. In a quite animated way. ' He went on to talk about coming McDonald re-enacted a conversa out of high school and being pres tion he had with the producer before sured by his parents to go to uni versity. He didn't really want to they started shooting the movie. " The movie starts in Toronto," study at university, so when he found out about film school, where he told the producer, "and it goes up one " gets to watch movies and to North Bay. and it goes up to Kapuskasing and it goes across make movies, I though it sounded Lake Superior and ends in Thunder pretty cool." Bay: that's what the movies about. In the late 1970s and early '80s, going on the road." His producer responded, " You can't go on the road. If you want to go on the road, you can't shoot the movie. Look, it takes place in a house here, and there's a road here and there's a club here. We can shoot all that on Highway Seven." McDonald eventually dropped his concerns about not capturing the essence of the Canadian Shield and northern life, realizing that sacri fices had to be made in order to complete the movie. Using your brain instead of your producer's chequebook leads to deeper thought on what it is you're trying to capture with certain scenes. McDonald told the budding directors, some of whom left early, apologetically, to shoot their own documentary for class. What McDonald had been talk ing about the whole time came to a head near the end of his time with the class. Even during his youth, while shooting zombie movies with his friends, filmmaking was about find ing the smartest way to get the shot and make the movie. He didn't have actors, so he used teachers who "were just impressed that we were doing something with our time instead of getting high in the park ing lot." And after growing up and gain ing clout enough to get proper financing, McDonald, against his wishes, still had to shoot scenes meant for Edmonton in Abbotsford. British Columbia, a suburb of Hard Core Logo's home base of Vancouver. And that problem solving is one element that makes Canadian movies so different than American movies. "You can't fix things with money like our friends down south can. You have to fix things with your brain." Bruce M cD onald gives tips to aspiring Sheridan film students If things had worked out differ ently Bruce McDonald might have been the lead guitarist of a rock band instead of one of Canada's leading filmmakers. Best known for his movies Hard Core Logo and. more recently. Picture Claire, as well as television work that includes episodes of Queer as Folk. Tw itch City , and the pilot for Degrassi: The Next Generation. McDonald spoke to a class of television and film students at Sheridan College on Saturday about his beginnings as a filmmak er. McDonald said in high school he was tom between playing the guitar and shooting films. It was his early work that he had come to talk to the students about tliod^h. With a Super-8 camera and inspiration gathered from his first viewing of Night of the Living Dead in Etobicoke, McDonald and his high school friends began shooting zombie movies. Wanting, at the time, to be a gui tarist. McDonald was faced with a decision. He could slave away, learning chords on his guitar, or he could make short movies with his Super-8 camera, a relatively simple tool to master, he admitted, when compared to modem hand-held vir tual studios, or guitars for that mat ter. " There was something really attractive about both the guitar and the camera. When you played a guitar and you played a cool song, you felt kinda cool, and with a cam era one of the first things I noticed was that you could get people to do just about anything." So, he began spending more time with his camera, making Bruce McDonald Enjoy a Sunday brunch with a favourite author The Bookers Books and Brunch series returns to the Oakville Club on Sunday, Feb. 2 with pre sentations by three Helen Humphreys. Charlotte Gray and Wayne Johnston. Humphreys will read from The Lost Garden. her third novel. " It's a story about reading," offers Humphreys, an avid reader. During her early years as a writer. Humphreys confesses that she took on menial jobs to support herself, only because they allowed her to read while on the job. " Gas jockey was the best," she enthuses. " You can read a lot during the night between customers but dispatcher and security guard are good too." Humphreys admits that "Reading is unimagin ably important to me. It's the place I have always learned the most about writing." Gray w ill read from her latest book Flint and Feather: The Life and Times o f E. Pauline Johnson. Tekaliionwake. G ray's new biography deals with Pauline Johnson's complex and tormented life. Part Mohawk and part English, part literary poet and part dance hall performer, Johnson was a rule breaking " New Woman" and genteel Victorian lady. Wayne Johnston' s latest book is the Navigator o f New York. This novel is the story of one man's quest for the secret of his origins that ranges from nineteenth century St. John's to the bustling streets of New York to the remotest regions of the Arctic. It continues the reinvention of the historical novel Jonston began with his The Colony o f Unrequited Dreams. The brunch event runs from 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tickets cost $30 and are available at Bookers Bookstore. Reserved seating only. Call 905-844-5501 for details and to make reservations.