News

More than Half a Decade in the Making,
Locally Produced Feature Perspective at Cinéfest

Thorneloe University, federated with Laurentian University, is proud to announce the participation of faculty members in its Motion Picture Arts (MPArts) program at this year’s edition of Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival.

Benjamin Paquette, the Supervisor of the MPArts program, will present the latest chapter of his locally produced drama Perspective on Friday, September 22, at 2:00PM. Subtitled “Variations on a Love Triangle in 9 Chapters,” the film is divided into nine chapters that span nine years in the lives of three characters named “Alex.” Annually since 2012, a new chapter of Perspective has been produced and presented exclusively at Cinéfest. The sixth and latest chapter, titled “The Saddest Lines,” will premiere this year following the preceding five chapters. Thus far, the duration of the film is 103 minutes. The entire faculty of the MPArts program and all of its students were involved in the production.

Conceptually, Perspective is most unique in two significant regards:

• The duration of its making: As noted, since the project was begun in 2012 with the first chapter, another five chapters have been produced, and another three are to be produced, a year apart, with a year spanning between the narratives of each chapter. While not unprecedented, films made over a period of years while integrating their ellipses into their narratives are extremely rare for obvious reasons. A most recent example is the critically acclaimed Boyhood (2014), which was in production, intermittently, from 2002 to 2013. Perspective spans nearly a decade in the lives of fictional characters that actually age. “As a recording art form, motion pictures are uniquely paradoxical,” says Paquette, “they can capture realities that authenticate its artifice.”
• The film only has three characters and each of which is portrayed, at various points, by three different performers. While the casting of a single performer to play two or more characters in a film is, and always has been, common (think of films with Peter Sellers or Monty Python, or the Austin Powers trilogy), the opposite of this concept – the casting of multiple actors to play a single character – is extremely rare. In the second chapter of Perspective, for example, the three performers continually rotate the three characters they play, not only within the same chapter or scene, but also sometimes during the same dialogue exchange. “The audience can neither immediately nor continually identify a specific character with a specific actor,” says Paquette. “It democratizes the three characters.” Other films that employ two or more performers as a single character include Palindromes (2004) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).

This is a Cinema Summit event. To attend, please visit the Apply for Accreditation section at www.cinefest.com. All Cinéfest screenings are at SilverCity Sudbury Cinemas, located at 355 Barry Downe Rd, Sudbury, ON.

Thorneloe University has offered academic programming in the humanities for more than 50 years. As a founding member of the Laurentian University Federation, on the campus of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Thorneloe is home to the departments of Ancient Studies, Theatre and Motion Picture Arts, Religious Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well the Thorneloe University School of Theology.

For more information about Thorneloe University, visit www.thorneloe.ca.

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MEDIA CONTACT
Benjamin Paquette, Supervisor, Motion Picture Arts Program
Thorneloe University
705-560-9187
bpaquette@laurentian.ca