Art in Action

Sad Mag is pleased to part­ner with the DOXA fes­ti­val, Vancouver’s doc­u­men­tary film fes­ti­val, this year. We are a screen­ing part­ner for Art in Action, a film directed by Mag­nus Isac­s­son. Isac­s­son, a for­mer pro­ducer for the CBC, has been cre­at­ing films about sig­nif­i­cant social and polit­i­cal issues since 1987. Art in Action is his look at the very per­sonal and all-encompassing life of the full time artist-activist.

The film fol­lows Annie Roy and Pierre Allard, founders of the artists col­lec­tive ATSA, that stage “urban inter­ven­tions,” includ­ing instal­la­tions and per­for­mances that call atten­tion to urban social issues. Isacsson’s cam­era fol­lowed the artist cou­ple for four years, doc­u­ment­ing their tri­umphs and dif­fi­cul­ties along the way.

Isac­s­son took a moment to answer some of our ques­tions about the film via email this week, and this is what he had to say:

Sad Mag: What was your first intro­duc­tion to ATSA, and what moti­vated the cre­ation of this film?

Mag­nus Isac­s­son: I had been aware of their work for sev­eral years because they get a lot of media cov­er­age in Mon­treal, but at first I didn’t have time, I was busy with other projects. It was five years ago that I had the time to go and hear Annie speak at an arts con­fer­ence, and found their approach fascinating.

I con­tacted them and lent them a cou­ple of my pre­vi­ous films. They liked them. Even though I told them that I was not inter­ested in putting them on a pedestal or doing PR for ATSA, but that I wanted to be in on the dif­fi­cult moments, they gen­er­ously accepted to be the sub­jects of a film.

I asked my friend Simon the be the Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy, and we started shoot­ing. Because of Simon’s very con­sid­er­able invest­ment in the project and his key role, I later asked him to also be an asso­ciate director.

SM: You fol­lowed Annie Roy and Pierre Allard and their fam­ily for four years to make this film. What sort of rela­tion­ship formed between you and your crew, and the sub­jects of your film? With a lengthy time in the field, did you strug­gle to rep­re­sent them fairly?

MI: For me, shoot­ing for sev­eral years is the key both to form­ing real rela­tion­ships of com­plic­ity and trust, for hav­ing enough dra­mat­i­cally inter­est­ing mate­r­ial to make a good film. The crew was just Simon on cam­era and myself doing sound, plus some­times an intern or stu­dent helper.

We became very close to Annie and Pierre, which wasn’t hard because we share a lot of inter­ests, we live in the same neigh­bor­hood, and although I’m quite a bit older we have chil­dren the same age.

One dif­fi­culty was how to cap­ture their cre­ative process, because they don’t have sched­uled meet­ings to make cre­ative deci­sions, their key dis­cus­sions can take place while they do the laun­dry, or walk to the cor­ner store, what­ever. Another one of the big chal­lenges was that their often con­flict­ual work­ing rela­tion­ship was of inter­est to us, and we did film many heated arguments.

After a while this became a source of many wor­ries for them, espe­cially Annie, and they some­times didn’t want us to film when things were too tense. We were very much aware of these con­cerns and we had to respect them – with all their gen­eros­ity, giv­ing us access to both their cre­ative process and their per­sonal life, we couldn’t let them down by mak­ing a film they wouldn’t like.

But I insisted on includ­ing some scenes where they argue, and sev­eral inter­view clips where they talk about their fights. They didn’t like it at the first screen­ing or two, but they got used to it, and saw that it didn’t take away from other people’s appre­ci­a­tion of their work.

SM: The film’s syn­op­sis reads that you focus the film on the domes­tic life and demands of the artists. How does this con­tribute to the film’s mes­sage? To the audience’s under­stand­ing of the artists?

MI: The main empha­sis [of the film] is on ATSA’s pub­lic instal­la­tions and the way they are received by the pub­lic, and on their intense invest­ment of energy and cre­ativ­ity in what they do.

But they are a cou­ple, and their work is tightly inter­wo­ven with their role as res­i­dents of a neigh­bor­hood, as lovers and as par­ents. I feel any time you can get behind the façade of things and see the real peo­ple, you are win­ning. I also found it impor­tant to show that the intense artis­tic activism they prac­tise, like any intense involve­ment, doesn’t come with­out a price.

It does have an impact on their rela­tion­ship and their par­ent­ing, and I find it very touch­ing when they talk about these difficulties.

SM: Fund­ing for the arts oper­ates quite dif­fer­ently in Que­bec as com­pared to British Colum­bia. I see that the artists are sup­ported by Coun­seil des arts de Mon­treal, Coun­seil des arts et des let­tres de Que­bec, and the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. How do you think this con­tributes to their suc­cess? Is fund­ing essen­tial for groups with a polit­i­cal mis­sion, such as ATSA, to operate?

MI: I am no expert on arts fund­ing, but I would say that Que­bec does take arts very seri­ously, and Mon­treal is an incred­i­bly cre­ative place. (I see it of course in the domain of cin­ema – just look at how many Quebec-made films get the top nom­i­na­tions in Cana­dian film awards.)

I think for Pierre and Annie the arts coun­cil fund­ing is essen­tial, and it comes from all three lev­els of gov­ern­ment. But because their work is so inspir­ing, and because it’s both cre­atively excel­lent and socially rel­e­vant, they get an awful lot of dona­tions and as you see in the film the recruit huge num­bers of volunteers.

Don’t miss DOXA’s screen­ing of Art in Action on Wednes­day, March 12 at 3:00 p.m.