........................ mira burt-wintonick

Tomorrow, I’m off to good ol’ Gatineau for a week of ‘Ideas into Images’, a workshop my dad is giving at the Summer Institue of Film and Television (SIFT). I must say, I’m a little nervous. Everyone else in my class is going to be in their 30’s, finishing up their second masters degree and working on their third feature documentary while raising their first child. Meanwhile, I’ve got one year of ‘coms’ under my belt (a.k.a. didley-squat) and I’m only there because my dad is the teacher.

Oh well. Tomorrow night is the opening dinner/reception. Do you think that means free booze?

As some of you may know, I’m making a film with my dad this summer. It so happens, and quite conveniently might I add, that my dad is Peter Wintonick, no stranger to the booming business that is canadian documentary. You may remember him from such films as ‘Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media’ or ‘Seeing is Believing’. Or maybe you don’t. But nonetheless, we are setting out sometime in July to make the documentary to end all documentaries. Or something of the sort. We’re still figuring it out.

Here is a sample from the official synopsis which we are currently sending to all canadian art institutions whether they like it or not, in the hopes of getting just a little more funding.

“A father, Peter Wintonick, and his 19-year-old daughter, Mira, both filmmakers, take a cinematic roadtrip around the world. They trek through the present and future of film and image-making, using significant contemporary and historical cinematic sites and personal encounters as their points of departure. pilgrIMAGE is a trans-generational, cine-genetic meditation on media and its personal and social consequences. Equal parts verité film-journal, digital-diary and ciné-blog, through a series of Socratic father-daughter dialogues, gleaned from years of inter-continental film-gypsy journeys, they meet other renowned film ‘pilgrims’ and media practitioners. The goal is to transfer a bit of crazy wisdom between father and his daughter. From a renowned documentarian of cinema’s Generation Why? to those of the next-wave Generation D (as in digital) era.”

So as you see, it’s obviously just an excuse for us to go travelling the world on someone else’s tab. No, no. That’s for giggles.

Where will we go, you ask? Well, my stops include The Squatter’s Film Academy in Amsterdam, the roots of the Dogme film movement in Copenhagen, meeting the father of Linux and the open-source movement in Helsinki, editor Walter Murch in San Francisco, Adbusters in Vancouver. And so on. Of course, most of these people don’t know they’re expecting us yet, so who knows. As I said, we’re still working on it.

In the meantime, I have a new blog which I’ll be using to write journal entries for the film while I’m away (don’t worry, digital downpour is still number one in my heart). But, I’m still in the process of designing it, and it has to look pretty cause it’s going to be on film after all, so I’d apreciate any comments on the look of things over there. Thanks.

I got a strange phonecall a few years ago. It started off like this:

“Is this Allie? You don’t know me but…”

And thus began one of the oddest friendships I have ever had. This was Dan. A friend of a friend who thought we would make good friends due to a shared interest in three-chord anthems.

The second time we met face to face, Dan showed me his scrapbook. It was mostly made up of angsty poetry and drawings and pictures of strangers cut out of the newspaper.

“This is the page where I put all of the depressing senior citizens,” said Dan.
“Those are my grandparents,” said I, pointing to the bottom left side of the page. They had recently had their picture in the paper as a celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary.

…

Dan and I were close for a while, but then my friends all thought he was strange and he moved to Port Perry so we didn’t talk much.

He recently moved back.

I visited him tonight and it was weird, but I guess it always was. He put on a Propaghandi c.d. and brought out the scrapbook again.

I told him a story about someone I know meeting the announcer from The Price is Right.

“Oh, Allie. Still so vicarious,” said Dan.

I sort of half-smiled and changed the subject because I forgot what vicarious meant. So when I got home I looked it up in the Dictionary.

I’m kind of insulted.

Iceland. It’s like Canada, but small and extra cold.

That and the island’s sheep outnumber the people 5:1. No kidding.

Yet somehow, despite the bitter cold and ever present threat of an angry sheep takeover (seriously, they are on the verge of revolt), the country has been providing festivals around the world with some of the most unique and beautiful films for the past few years. Most never make it to theaters once the festivals end, like the minimalist, dogme-style Salt, my personal favourite from last year’s Montreal World Film Festival, usually a somewhat disapointing two weeks.

Then there are the Icelandic films that actually get screened here at the few ‘art-house’ cinemas willing to give some foreign flick a chance instead of playing ‘When Arnold met Bomb’ or ‘You got served: Redux’ on every screen. Films like Baltasar Kormakur’s ‘101 Reykjavik’ and ‘The Sea’.

The latest of these is Dagur Kari’s Noi Albinoi.

Noi is 17 and bored to hell in Bolungarvik, a town of 957 inhabitants. He sleeps through his classes, breaks into museums and shoots at glaciers in his spare time. The shotgun is his grandma’s, who uses it to wake him up in the morning with a nice, loud bang out his bedroom window.

The film is simple and stunning and darkly funny and really worth going to see. So just do it.

Plus, it’ll help you touch up on your icelandic. And you never know when that’ll come in handy. Like right now, for example.

“Eg er med ofæmi fyrir thorski.” That was me telling you I’m allergic to cod, which is actually a lie. Or how bout this: “Hvad i andskotanum ertu ad gera a thakinu minu?” Eh? This time I was asking you what the hell you are doing on my roof. See what fun Iceland can be?

Employers are bullies. If you are, or ever have been a student, you can probably think of some great examples of an employer taking advantage of your labour. Maybe they didn’t pay you enough for the hours you worked. Maybe they fired you without just cause. Maybe they didn’t let you eat lunch. Well, guess what. You are not in the wrong, and you deserve better. This is a digitaldownpour guide unlike any other. It’s for serious. Student workers need to know their rights. And digitaldownpour is there for the children. So here, now, is the hard truth about Canadian Employment Law that your employer doesn’t want you to know.

1. I gotsta get paid!

And so you shall. Federal minimum wage recently increased to $7.15/h. You are entitled to this wage. Do not accept a job that attempts to pay you a weekly salary in order to avoid paying you overtime. If you divide your weekly salary by the number of hours you work, and it amounts to less than minimum wage, blow that whistle, baby. Your employer is a weasel.

2. The effing deal with overtime.

Here’s the deal. If you work more than 44 hours a week, or more than 12 hours in a day, any extra time, is overtime. This means you get 1.5x your usual wages! You also get this if you work the following summer holidays:

Victoria Day
St. Jean-Baptiste Day (Quebec)
Canada Day
Simcoe Day (1st Mon. in August, Ontario)
Labour Day

3. I’m hungry. And my boss won’t let me go have lunch.

Your boss is a jerk. Tell him that for every 5 hours you work, you get 30 minutes of break. And that, is the Law.Who’s gonna fight with the law? Enjoy your scooby snacks kids.

4. Holy Shit! I didn’t even start work yet and I’m fired!

Now this is where things can get messy. If you get hired somewhere, and have a contract of sorts (verbal or otherwise), and then one day they call you up and say they found someone else, or that they don’t have a job for you anymore, you can totally sue them. Not only are they jackasses, they are breaking the law. It’s called Anticipatory Breach of contract, and you have the right to sue for all the money you would have made, had your sleazy employer been good for his word.

5. F-U! I’m quitting!

If your job sucks, and you want to quit, giv’r. If you’ve been working for less than a month, you don’t even have to give any notice! After 3 months you have to give a weeks notice, that’s it that’s all.

There are tons laws out there to protect you from evil, heartless employers. Know your rights. I got all of my information from a book called “For Better or For Worse: A Practical Guide to Canadian Employment Law” by Randall Scott Echlin and Christine Thomlinson.

Lately, Google has been so kind to digital downpour that almost no matter what you type into the little search box, our blog is sure to pop up. From “hypermasculin breasts” to today’s “does lawren harris have a famous painting?”, all signs, for some reason, point to here. While we are always amused to see what latest query has brought some poor, misled Googler to our blog, we are also curious to see what these people were really looking for and why? And how confused were they when their often only result had absolutely nothing to do with what they were looking for? So begins our study into the lives of the Googlers. We’ll keep you posted.

This is silly and hilarious and worth checking out. Thanks to little leah and her crazy site for the link.

If you can’t wait ’til “sometime in 2005″ when The Family Guy reclaims its rightful throne as televisions’s King of Comedy, here’s your chance to see it live!

That’s right folks! The cast will be at this year’s Just for Laughs festival in Montreal for a reading of an episode, Q & A, and surely a whole lot more family fun.