A PLACE TO STAND

A PLACE TO STAND

 

Recently some friends gathered to see some 16mm films from our collection and I introduced them to A PLACE TO STAND, my favorite Canadian film. It was commissioned by the government of Ontario to be shown in the Ontario Pavilion at the World's Fair at Expo '67 in Montreal. Created and Directed by Christopher Chapman, the 18 minute film was a crowd favorite at the Fair. Rarely did I go to Expo '67 without seeing it and I was there every few days for months. The film went on to get a theatrical release, distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was nominated at the next Academy Awards for Best Documentary Short AND for Best Live-Action Short, the only time that happened, and won the latter.

 

The film has no narration, only music and effects but does have the song A PLACE TO STAND. Even before the Fair was over, recordings of the song were printed and sold due to demand, and even today the song endures as a sort of Ontario anthem, featured in media (”Ontari-ari-arioo”) . People know it but not the film where it was first heard and for which it was written.

 

A few years later I had the honor of being elected President of the Society of Film Makers. While there were organizations for directors, writers, cameramen, actors and so on in the film industry, this was the organization for all professionals in the film industry. Eventually Wally Gentleman, Peter Benison and I turned it into the Canadian Academy of Motion Pictures and Television. From the membership I was able to select two Vice Presidents and it was a total pleasure to pick the two people who had done the most for film as an art form, Norman McLaren and Christopher Chapman.

 

In 1992, for the 25^th anniversary of Expo '67 I organized some public events in celebration and remembrance. There was an extensive collection of the World's Fair memorabilia and artifacts and the showing of many of the unique films from Expo '67, ending with A PLACE TO STAND. At every showing that film ended with very many in the audience in tears, so I was not alone!The film has come to represent the Fair and for those who had come to the reunions this film was the height of nostalgia. It brought back great memories of the Fair as well as the feeling we had back then of what a great place Canada was in its centennial year and the confidence we had in its future, which is the unstated but shown spirit of the film. While about Ontario, it was really about the Canadian character.

 

The film is indeed 18 minutes, but has close to two hours of footage in it. It pioneered the multiple-image screen. On the immense screen at the pavilion, the screen was filled with constantly changing moving images. Sometimes the entire screen would be one large image. At other tines you could see two images, like a spit screen, or many small images, moving left to right or vice versa, moving out of the way for another image to come in, zooming in or out, starting small, zooming out, then in again, anywhere from one to a dozen or more images at any moment, all of them actual movies, not slides.

 

It sounds chaotic, but it is miraculous because it is so well conceived and directed and edited. One can go back to Eisenstein and others who discovered cause and effect in editing. He once took footage of a woman with a totally blank expression. Then he experimented: A baby crying was shown, then some of the woman. A fire scene, then the woman. A wedding scene, then cut to the woman. Test audiences reported that the woman's expression showed how sad, terrified or happy she was in each case.

 

In the same way, the positioning of the multiple scenes in A PLACE TO STAND creates a new feel, a cause and effect carryover as it were, but more than single shot editing provides. Fade in to scenes of a wintery blizzard, three different scenes across the top of the screen, and one at each  side at the bottom. The middle part of the screen at the bottom is black, no image. Once we're conditioned to the cold wintery exterior, a scene of a curling game is seen in the black ares. The people curling are warm and cozy while the storm outside rages (literally onscreen) all around them. It gives a more embracing feel than if it had been done the traditional way, showing the storm outside then cutting to a curling scene indoors. The storm and the game are happening at the same time onscreen at the same time without the need to cut from one to the other to keep showing it. You can watch the storm or the game. Most will watch the game as it is the new element onscreen, but still feel the storm.

 

As the game continues, another scene pops on, a shot of the trophy to be awarded to the winner of the game. The game scene is intensified by seeing the goal. Yet another scene is added to the mix, a closeup of the brooms in the game as the teams battle. Now the game is intensified as they go for the trophy. It is a film experience like no other.

 

Norman Jewison used the technique in filming THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway not long after, and other films have used miultiple image effectively but not as extensively. I am told the technique was used in the television series 24. You can see A PLACE TO STAND on YouTube for an approximation of it, but it does suffer from not being seen on a huge screen, where the images can be seen clearly, and with that great soundtrack turned up high.