FEATURES

Kazik Radwanski (Image Arts ’08) is midway through shooting his third feature film, but is cagey about the details. Don’t worry, the shoot is going fine—it’s just that the movie will take a little while to grow into itself. ¶ “I hate pitching it,” says Radwanski, cheerfully, at the office he shares with his producing partner Daniel Montgomery (Image Arts ’08). “The whole film’s complex…I’ve pitched it a lot, and I’m trying to think of a good way to pitch it while omitting certain things…” ¶ Despite the tectonic shifts that have occurred in the film industry, pitching remains a stubborn part of the process. So, Radwanski obliges. Broadly, the plot involves a woman with a complicated mental health history who works in a daycare centre—or at least that’s how it began. “But as we’ve been making the film,” says Radwanski, “I’ve just been gravitating more and more towards keeping her backstory a mystery—not pinning down exactly what is going on with her. So, I’m very hesitant to just give an easy explanation of it.”

Other details: he is shooting at his mother’s daycare, with the 200 untrained children starring alongside actress Deragh Campbell in a realist style that rubs up against documentary. He imagines the film as the third in his loose trilogy of prickly, sandpaper-funny character studies. The first, Tower (2012), followed a 34-year-old man-child who sees little reason to leave his parents’ basement. The second, How Heavy This Hammer (2015), was about a middle-aged family man who abruptly leaves his wife, but can’t escape his ennui. These are difficult characters, and Radwanski’s films focus on them single-mindedly, almost entirely in close-up. Trapped with them, your distaste may evolve into a more complex mix of empathy, pity, recognition, and/or identification.

Radwanski defines the principle behind his minimalist aesthetic as “trying to capture moments that transcended budget”—in other words, both good art and good business. His emergence as a filmmaker has coincided with a time of enormous change in the industry: the advent of digital video has democratized filmmaking, but has also led to a saturated market where budgets have shrunk. Today’s young filmmakers have to be resourceful, adaptable and imaginative.

Radwanski’s DIY ethos is shared by a new generation of Toronto-based, millennial-age filmmakers, including some who are Ryerson Image Arts alumni: Sleeping Giant by Andrew Cividino (graduated ’06), Closet Monster by Stephen Dunn (’13), Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones (’07), Cardinals by Grayson Moore and Aidan Shipley (’14), The Rainbow Kid by Kire Paputts (’07), Acres by Rebeccah Love (’14), and Firecrackers by Jasmin Mozaffari (’13). Beyond the director’s chair are producers like Caitlin Grabham (’13), Kevin Kriskst (’07), and Karen Harnisch (’09), and dozens of editors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and other creatives. All have been shaped by the new realities of production and distribution. All formed close and lasting creative partnerships during their time at Ryerson.

BEFORE YOU CAN REINVENT a medium, you need to learn your craft. That’s where Ryerson comes in.

“The practice of filmmaking is still fundamentally about storytelling,” says Alex Anderson, professor at the School of Image Arts, who has worked with many of the young filmmakers. “Technology isn’t why these filmmakers are where they are. I do think the new technologies have given them more opportunities, but if you learn and practice the fundamentals of storytelling, you can easily traverse to all these other forms. What you need to know is how to write scripts, how to direct films, and how to shoot films.”

At the School of Image Arts, first-year Film Studies students are still required to shoot, edit and process a short movie on 16mm film. Such an exercise might seem counterintuitive in the digital era. But in addition to showing students the beauty of celluloid film, the exercise instils in filmmakers a rigorous sense of discipline.

“Working on these 1940s Bell & Howell 16mm cameras is the definition of cumbersome,” says Andrew Cividino, director of Sleeping Giant. “But the constraints were what allowed us to learn. You had to be meticulous in planning a scene. Same with the edit: you couldn’t have the luxury of your computer to non-destructively cut a frame here and there. You had to make strong decisions.”

Image Arts also grounds students with a background in design, art history and cultural studies. “It gives you a blanket of knowledge about what art has meant to the world,” says Aidan Shipley, co-director of Cardinals. “It’s a huge topic to cover, but I certainly see that as one of the elements that Ryerson has that other film schools don’t. It helps contribute to the freedom you have as a third- or fourth-year filmmaker. You’ve learned that a film can be anything—a story can be told a million different ways. It opens up a sense of freedom in what people can pursue.”

One of the major advantages of film school is the resources it provides. “I was very aware of the fact that we had a soundstage here, and that was huge,” says Rebeccah Love, director of Acres. “When you’re at school, you want to take advantage of the resources at hand. One of my favourite movies of all time was Moulin Rouge, so especially with my thesis film, I wanted to take advantage of the soundstage and the labour you have access to. You have access to all of the younger-year students who volunteer on your set, to the point where you have a crew of 60 people on your film, which you can’t have when you’re outside of film school.”

16 Ryerson University Magazine / Winter 2019