Final Report to the Canada Council on Home for Christmas

 

 

Rick Hancox

189 Roncesvalles Avenue. Toronto, ON M6R 2L5

September 30, 1978

 

 

Mr. Maynard Collins

Assistant Film Officer

The Canada Council

255 Albert Street

P.O. Box 1047

Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5V8

 

Dear Mr. Collins,

Thank you for your interest in the progress of my grant #A76:0372 ($4,964). I am pleased to present herewith a final report on Home for Christmas, the 50-minute film finished last spring in this connection. You will recall at the time we agreed to let the report accumulate information with regard to screenings over the summer. I think you will find it more interesting as a result.

 

Following this letter, the report begins with a personal statement reflecting my theoretical stance as reaffirmed by this film project. It will be published by the Art Gallery of Ontario in the book for their autobiographical film festival for this fall. I have been asked to appear as a guest with Home for Christmas for the festival’s conclusion in December. I especially look forward to this honour, since the film will appear in a better context than the Grierson Documentary Seminar last June, where it was given bad projection and programming, and suffered from an oppressive atmosphere of discussion. The criticism lost validity as a result, an opinion reinforced by the fact that response to the film everywhere else has been completely the contrary.

 

The premiere of the film last March in Hamilton was very successful, despite the mis-timed and occasionally blank answer print which was all the lab could produce in time. Still, the audience of 40-50 received the film so well I was kept for an hour afterwards answering questions. It was based on this enthusiastic reception that Don McWilliams later encouraged me to be a guest of the Grierson seminar, which he was organizing at the time.

 

A few more months of work were required though, before a good print was possible. Complicated colour and density corrections were necessary, since Home for Christmas had to be shot entirely in natural light to maintain integrity. This meant dealing with mixed illumination of great variance in colour temperature, and light levels so low as to require forced processing as high as three and a half stops. The resulting colour shifts and graininess may be unthinkable to some filmmakers, but such qualities have been totally accepted by my audiences, who apparently see them as clues that the film is authentic, and that I took risks to make it so.

 

The editing was no less difficult, since my technique of unobtrusive ‘wild-sync’ shooting required unbelievable feats of continuity and synchronization in the editing room. I had confidence in my skill in this area, but it explains why Home for Christmas was so long in post-production.

 

I stuck to the budget as initially proposed in my application, but I must mention here that some items were more expensive due to price hikes at the lab. Also, I was not in a position to obtain the tax exemptions I had assumed at first, and this further boosted the cost of the film beyond what the Council kindly did provide for. The number of useful prints I had expected were reduced to one (to be sent under separate cover for possible purchase), since I could not anticipate the number of answer prints the lab would have to correct to arrive at the final timing specifications.

 

When a good print was finally obtained it was shown at the Funnel in Toronto, where an audience of 30-40 people were quite enthusiastic about it. Some hailed it as a universally Canadian film, an opinion shared by Gerry McNab, Joyce Wieland,  Michael Snow and others, including Ian Birney, who selected  it for the Art Gallery of Ontario.

 

In June I designed a one-sheet to publicize the film, and this was included with a letter form the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre introducing me to film programmers in Western Canada in whose vicinity I might be during my summer holidays. As a result, I was able to do one-man shows at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, in Lethbridge, the national Film Board Theatre in Calgary, the Banff School of Fine Arts at the Banff Centre, Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, and on the way home, Algoma University in Sault St. Marie. I would have done more, but traveling by car was a limitation.

 

The letter which concludes this report is from George Semsel, Professor of Film at Algoma during summers, and a former teacher of mine. I had shown Home for Christmas to a large class of his which included teachers, librarians and media people, as well as adults generally interested from Sault St. Marie and surrounding area. Some of their comments which appear in this letter are so typical of response to the film everywhere, I have included the letter in its entirety.

 

I want to add how pleased I was that Westerners identified so well with the film, even though it’s about going down east for Christmas. I have yet to show it in the Maritimes, where I hope there will be just as much interest.

 

Considering how low the budget was for a 50-minute film, it is remarkable what I achieved. It represents a tremendous personal success, and fully embodies what I had in mind when I applied for the grant. It has proven my belief that the autobiographical film mode does indeed have a value beyond the individual artist-that it links us as humans by a bond of often mythical proportions. It has led inevitably to my next project, for which I am actively engaged in research: the phenomenon of quasi-eidetic images which lodge in memory-graphic scenes from early childhood whose meaning remains elusive despite constant re-formulation in consciousness. I think I can effectively bring forth their significance through judicious experimentation with film, and subsequently time, following a course initiated by my film Next to Me.

 

I want to express my gratitude to the Canada Council for the funds that made Home for Christmas possible, and for the faith invested in me to carry it out. Thank you very much.

 

Yours sincerely, Rick Hancox