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00:00:19Hello, this is Keith Locke doing the commentary.
00:00:24This is my credit.
00:00:25I thought a film buy is pretentious since no one person makes a film.
00:00:31For fun, I chose symbols used in comic books for obscenities.
00:00:37I used whatever typewriter I could access to do the credits.
00:00:41That's why the fonts all look different.
00:00:45That's me humming in the background.
00:00:48During editing, this is actually the sound I heard in my head when I would watch the
00:00:52repetitive names of the title sequence.
00:00:55This is Jim Grano going to get water, which is a recurring action in this film.
00:01:01I wanted to break down the barrier between subject and audience, so I encourage people
00:01:06to look at the camera.
00:01:08For the whole film, I only used one lens, the 25mm or standard lens.
00:01:14Using only this lens allows the audience to understand the spatial relationships in the
00:01:19world of the film.
00:01:20space is constant and not distorted by different lenses.
00:01:27While I was editing, I often listened to a cassette of an archives recording called Songs of the
00:01:33Watusi, and this African music inspired the film's title sequence.
00:01:38The central words are like a call, and the words surrounding them are like a response
00:01:43to the call.
00:01:45Eventually, the title of the film is expressed.
00:02:00Here, my voice was looped and recorded by Joe Lickwa.
00:02:04Joe hacked home stereo components and created all the synthesized sounds and tones in the
00:02:10soundtrack of the film.
00:02:15I was very influenced by Michael Snow's La Région Centrale, where the camera movements are
00:02:21unorthodox and even turn upside down.
00:02:24That's really rare to see in films.
00:02:54That's Tom Buriette, one of the people who started Buck Lake.
00:02:58He was kind of shy at first.
00:03:04From the tree's point of view, it couldn't have been much fun to have someone drilling
00:03:08into you like we were doing.
00:03:20Most Canadians would recognize maple syrup production when they see it, but at one screening, someone
00:03:26from the UK thought this was some kind of druid ritual.
00:03:31The sounds of maple sap dripping into many pails, far into the woods.
00:03:36It's like a sound art installation.
00:03:38It's indescribable.
00:03:40It alters the space.
00:03:42You're fine.
00:04:08You're fine.
00:04:11It's just kidding.
00:04:12So again we have a newgin shot, I just want to write things beautiful."
00:04:22we were completely off the grid no electric lights at night we relied on moonlight to see
00:04:31out of this necessity we paid special attention to the rhythms and the cycles of the moon
00:04:37i wanted to represent this here the black represents night and the filmed images represent daytime
00:04:46light from the sun and light from the moon are represented by two different audio tones
00:04:52when moon and sun are both visible the two tones blend it's spring and near the equinox so
00:04:59night and day is of the same duration the waxing quarter moon rises a little bit after dawn moves
00:05:08across the sky and sets a little bit after the sun sets the cycle of day and night moves around
00:05:15until
00:05:16finally the full moon rises when the sun sets and sets when the sun rises the cycle continues and
00:05:24this is eventually reversed when the new moon rises and sets with the sun
00:05:58so
00:06:17you
00:06:25Wherever the Big Dipper is seen circling the North Star,
00:06:28I put it at the angle you would see it in the sky at dusk
00:06:32at a specific time of year being shown in the film.
00:06:36But the only sound from outside we could hear was a distant train.
00:06:41Sometimes the effect could be quite haunting.
00:06:46This image is actually upside down.
00:06:49I inverted it so the light comes from the bottom of the frame rather than the top,
00:06:54making the axe feel more iconic.
00:07:05Again, the camera was inverted for this shot to make the saw feel more iconic.
00:07:17That's artist-filmmaker Jim Anderson working with Tom.
00:07:22Normally, the perforations at the end of a roll of film are thrown away.
00:07:27But there is a mysterious beauty here.
00:07:30Actually, I didn't have much film and I couldn't afford to waste anything.
00:07:48In early cuts of the film, shot followed shot, scene followed scene.
00:07:53But I wanted to represent everything, including the time when the camera wasn't running.
00:07:59First, I used black leader in between scenes, and this later became specific color frames.
00:08:07The deep tones on the audio are sounds I heard in my head while watching the film in the editing
00:08:12process.
00:08:20The idea of the small white circle was to give the audience a steady visual reference where they can rest
00:08:26their eyes during shaking or changing scenes.
00:08:30I chose the circle because it symbolizes completion, and the notion of totality, of everything.
00:08:37The circle also represents zero, or nothing.
00:08:41So, it's everything and nothing.
00:08:43I used a typewriter and typed the letter O, and photographed it.
00:09:02Rob McHenry and Tom Brouillette started Buck Lake about a year before this was shot.
00:09:08Tom and Rob met on a construction site and told each other of their dreams of living in nature without
00:09:14machines.
00:09:22That's Anna Grano, an artist and filmmaker.
00:09:30The nearest road was a mile or so away.
00:09:33We'd have to walk or ride on this trail if we went to the outside world.
00:09:41We paid a little bit of money, $200, to buy the wooden structure of this old barn.
00:09:47The plan was to tear it down and rebuild it at Buck Lake.
00:09:55Except for Tom and Rob, none of us had done anything like this before.
00:10:23Here we go.
00:10:41It was very hard work, and we learned on the job.
00:10:45Tom with the beard was a boilermaker, and we followed him.
00:10:50At 26, he was also the oldest, and some might say the craziest.
00:11:01Anna's brother, Jim, is removing a porcupine quill from our setter, Fiholi.
00:11:06If quills get stuck into flesh, they can eventually work their way deeper and deeper, and can be
00:11:11fatal to animals.
00:11:28That's Santa Grano, and that's me, and Jim Grano.
00:11:34There's Tom.
00:11:36I don't know who shot this, possibly Jim Anderson.
00:11:44Local people like Elwood Hunter here knew things and could do things we couldn't, and
00:11:50they helped us out a lot.
00:11:52We looked up to them.
00:11:55They were authentic, and we wanted to be like them.
00:11:58They knew it, and it would mock us in a good-natured way.
00:12:05Throughout the film, I used numbered word sequences.
00:12:10I didn't want to use conventional documentary voiceover.
00:12:15I wanted a kind of minimal poetry to tell the events.
00:12:33Of me, Jelen's class, a lot of people in the limited world moments.
00:12:37I'm so glad they made this video, but I'm so glad I've played these video games!
00:12:38I hope I've wasn't the same, so I may have the same, but it's a good idea.
00:12:38There's a wonderful idea.
00:12:38It was, I think, of course, a nice story.
00:12:42I've had a great idea of this.
00:12:42We didn't want to make a big deal with this.
00:12:43It's a great idea.
00:12:44So I've had a great idea.
00:12:45I think you inhale a little bit, and you're looking for a little bit.
00:12:50Here, Elwood is dowsing for water.
00:12:54He's using a twig cut from a red willow bush.
00:12:58When there's water below, the twig is pulled by some strong, unknown force.
00:13:04Dowsing's a special ability.
00:13:06You have to be born with it.
00:13:09Rob tried, but got nothing.
00:13:20There was no full volume in the water below below...
00:13:32No, that's not only one person, but it's only one person.
00:13:38Dowsing is local.
00:14:39We tried to make things from scratch and had very few commercial products around the house.
00:14:46One of the products we did have around was baking soda.
00:14:51Somehow the logos of two brands of baking soda ended up in the film.
00:14:55As I mentioned, I used only the 25mm or normal lens, and you can see how cumulatively it creates a
00:15:05consistent and undistorted visual space.
00:15:19I was thinking a lot about filming space when making this film.
00:15:24I started thinking how the cinema frame has four corners, and how we also speak about the four corners of
00:15:32the earth, which means everything in the entire world.
00:15:39That's Leslie's three-year-old daughter, Ramona McNabb.
00:15:47At Buck Lake, putting on a special bathing outfit just to go swimming was a foreign concept.
00:15:55Local airplane pilots knew and flew low over the lake to look.
00:16:00To us, this was a stupid intrusion and tangible proof that the outside world was totally screwed up.
00:16:08The words, airplane, moon, fish, to me, represented a new reality I was experiencing.
00:16:23A moment of stillness and emptiness transmitted through camera work and framing.
00:16:29Living at Buck Lake was the first time I experienced this kind of peacefulness.
00:16:46Linda.
00:17:17Wild strawberries are smaller than the store-bought variety,
00:17:21but they taste good.
00:17:25Other red things were not to be eaten.
00:17:38Here, we are digging a well where old Hunter said there was water.
00:17:43We hit bedrock and couldn't dig any deeper by hand.
00:18:35Anah and Jim's father and uncle came up to show us how to use explosives.
00:18:39explosives. At that time, you could buy dynamite at a local building supply store.
00:18:58Both dynamite experts happen to arrive with injuries unrelated to working with explosives,
00:19:04but they give a sly humour to these scenes. Living in the woods, totally off the grid,
00:19:24we saw almost no designed and manufactured imagery. So, of the few designs around the house,
00:19:31a number found their way into the film. We planted tiny seeds and watched them grow into edible
00:19:43things. Here, I tried to map this movement and growth, for which I felt a sense of wonder.
00:20:08That's Leslie Padore. We started hanging out together at Buck Lake. We're still together,
00:20:16so many years later. I remember shooting this shot vividly. David Anderson was standing next to me,
00:20:27watching. When I finished, he said, you know, everyone carries a burden. You either help them
00:20:34with their burden or fuck off, because anything else is static and they just don't need it.
00:21:00Being from the city, we had never raised livestock and we made a few mistakes. Not knowing any better,
00:21:07we named the pigs and related to them almost as pets. When it came time to slaughter them, we learned
00:21:15better.
00:21:19The women at Buck Lake were feminists and wanted to be involved in doing all the work, especially work
00:21:25that was not traditional work for women. Here, we are laying out the foundation for the new barn. The construction
00:21:33process was new to me. Step by step, stone by stone, I saw that it was linear. To represent this
00:21:43conceptually,
00:21:44I placed the first letters of the alphabet sequentially in the four corners of the frame.
00:21:51Around this time, the women announced that it was unfair that the men could take off their shirts to stay
00:21:57cool
00:21:57in hot weather. And from now on, they were going to do the same. We had all seen each other's
00:22:04bodies
00:22:05by then and we all agreed with the principle. I didn't think it was a big deal. However, Tom, who
00:22:12grew up
00:22:13working in construction, told me recently that it pretty well blew his mind. I remember the women correcting us
00:22:21men if we said or did anything sexist. We were all learning. In the next sequence, I wanted to express
00:22:30something that happened to me when I was alone picking blueberries on the other side of the lake.
00:22:36I tell the story in a series of subjective, impressionistic moments. My intention was for the viewer to feel
00:22:44they are experiencing this incident as if it were happening to them right now. The moments are numbered.
00:22:53The first four numbers are flipped.
00:22:57Into a basket.
00:23:06Blue sky.
00:23:08I flipped and inverted the numbers to make them unfamiliar and mysterious.
00:23:12It's like this.
00:23:13Eating my back.
00:23:26The hesitation in my voice makes the story real and immediate.
00:23:40Wind and trees.
00:23:50Here, the film was slipping out of register in the camera. I like the roughness, so I added sound effects
00:23:57and used it.
00:23:58Out from the basket of berries.
00:24:15Suddenly feeling afraid.
00:24:24My friend Charles Bagnell did all the optical effects with an optical printer he made himself.
00:24:31He found a device in a surplus store to rotate the image.
00:24:36I shot the white symbols myself and put all elements along with Charlie's optical footage and sent it to the
00:24:42lab.
00:24:43When I got the results back, I was shocked to see the white circle perfectly centered on the horizon.
00:24:50Everything was framed by eye and I had no way of checking or adjusting the positions later.
00:24:56It all just somehow miraculously came together.
00:24:59Bouncing between rocks and clouds.
00:25:03The white circle from the rods.
00:25:05The sand of the lines.
00:25:11The 49ers.
00:25:12The 50ers.
00:25:18The 70ers.
00:25:19In the 60ers.
00:25:33The 60ers.
00:25:44This is Jim Anderson and Jim Grano working in the garden.
00:25:48In summer, the mosquitoes and black flies are fierce.
00:25:53This was my first time shooting color reversal stock.
00:25:57My exposures improve as the film progresses.
00:26:09In this scene, I feel a strong influence of Chinese landscape painting.
00:26:25I had just bought one of the first very small audio cassette recorders and paddled out on the lake to
00:26:31test it.
00:26:33I put down my paddle and took up the recorder and I just marveled at it.
00:26:38This little black box which could capture sound.
00:26:43I hadn't tried it out.
00:26:45I pushed record and started saying whatever thought came into my head.
00:26:50Meanwhile, the canoe was drifting near shore and a bird began singing, chirping along with the sound of my voice.
00:27:21This is Jim Anderson and Anna getting dinner ready.
00:27:40A portrait of Tom and Anna, the Boilermaker and the Artist.
00:27:45At the time, they were the nucleus of Buck Lake.
00:27:50These cats are named Hinkle and Napoloni, names from Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
00:27:57We had a very strong work ethic.
00:28:00Everyone wanted and was expected to make an effort and learn how to do things.
00:28:19This visual sequence has a word-associative meaning.
00:28:23It occurred to me while I was editing.
00:28:27I put it in, but I didn't expect anyone else would see it.
00:28:32So I was quite surprised at a screening when somebody in the audience said,
00:28:36Hey, blood, sweat, and tears.
00:28:39You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:41You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:41You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:44You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:44You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:47You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:50You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:55You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:59You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:28:59You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:29:00You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:29:00You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:29:00You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:29:01You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:29:03You know, it's been a long time for years.
00:29:10This entire film was shot on what were called short ends.
00:29:15This was leftover film from commercials and other film shoots
00:29:18which I purchased cheap from this guy I knew.
00:29:23This was my first time shooting color film
00:29:25and it could sometimes be a month before I would see anything I had shot.
00:29:30The exposures improve as the film progresses.
00:29:35This sequence follows Tom walking from the house out to the garden.
00:29:40You can pretty well see most of the trail we walked along pretty well every day.
00:29:45The garden is the only place with enough soil and sun for growing food.
00:30:16That's Leslie's terrier, Shag.
00:30:25The audio is summer insect sounds recorded and then played back at different speeds.
00:30:33In this shot you can see clouds of mosquitoes around Tom.
00:30:38Mosquitoes really made being outdoors very uncomfortable
00:30:42and were a constant fact of life in the warm weather.
00:30:47That little gesture he makes looking at his right shoulder
00:30:50is due to being bitten by an insect.
00:31:04Pigs are very intelligent.
00:31:06They're supposed to be more intelligent than even dogs.
00:31:10Ours certainly had their endearing moments.
00:31:13We bonded with them more than we knew.
00:31:39George Short was an old lumberjack and farmer who became a mentor.
00:31:44We relied on him to show us how to do things.
00:31:48He showed us how to slaughter our pig, whom we had named Raymond.
00:31:53According to George, the proper time to slaughter animals is late afternoon.
00:31:58The slanting red rays of the sun give this scene horrific lighting.
00:32:03I remember we were really stressed.
00:32:06We wanted to do it right and proved to George that we were good farmers.
00:32:12I think you can tell from the faces of Leslie and Anna how stunned we were.
00:32:17To George, slaughtering animals was part of everyday farm life.
00:32:21But I think he picked up on our feelings that day.
00:32:25I remember he became angry at me for filming.
00:32:28He didn't think it was proper that this moment should have been recorded.
00:32:33The innocence of three-year-old Ramona changes the mood.
00:32:56We got to know the people in the tiny hamlets and isolated back roads.
00:33:01I remember George Short described his neighbor down the road as a rich man
00:33:05because he had a year's worth of firewood stacked up by his house.
00:33:14I was walking down the street in Weshago, and this woman called me over to show me her African violets.
00:33:28This man came in to help us dig our well once we hit bedrock.
00:33:32I remember his name is Cooper.
00:33:37This is Robert Haynes, a welder who lived on a back road near Buck Lake.
00:33:42In the 70s, it was unusual to have a movie camera.
00:33:46And I would ask people if I could take their picture, and they would pose, expecting a momentary click.
00:33:54When the sound of the Bolex movie camera started, they would wait, not knowing what to do.
00:34:18Meanwhile, at Buck Lake, the others got used to having their most mundane moments filmed.
00:34:26And the other one was filmed.
00:34:43And the same thing, they would ask people to have a movie camera.
00:34:44And the other one is being filmed.
00:34:44I think they were not going to be filmed.
00:34:45I think they were not going to see anything that was intended to have a movie camera,
00:34:45but they were not going to be filmed.
00:34:45And the other one was going to see the movie camera.
00:52:12This is
00:58:00¶¶
00:58:08Carrying water again.
00:58:10This time it's Jim Magrano.
00:58:13Chop wood and carry water has a real meaning here.
00:58:18¶¶
00:58:23¶¶
00:58:55Leslie at sunset, taking water out to the barn.
00:59:18This day, the air was a little warmer and there was life in the form of birds around the house.
00:59:24If you look close, you can see a little silver circle on the wall.
00:59:29That's a convex truck mirror someone wedged there.
00:59:33This mirror appears again later.
00:59:43It's warm enough for mist and there's a little meltwater on the lake ice.
01:00:08This is the only shot in the film using a different lens.
01:00:12This is shot with a 10mm wide lens.
01:00:17I was single framing to pixelate the clouds and for some reason this caused a scratch in the film as
01:00:23it went through the camera.
01:00:25Again, another happy creative accident.
01:00:29Perhaps the camera knew and wanted to tell the audience that this shot is different from the others.
01:00:35When you're out alone with your camera, you tend to anthropomorphize.
01:00:56Okay, this scene is not at Buck Lake.
01:01:00I thought it was obvious at the time I was editing the film, but I should make that clear.
01:01:06This was an animal cruelty case and we were asked by the Humane Society to go along with George Short
01:01:12to see if we could help care for these poor horses.
01:01:18It just makes a scraping sound when it breathes in and sighs as it breathes out.
01:01:40George was called as a witness during the animal cruelty trial.
01:01:45He gave us a word-for-word account.
01:01:48According to George, he was ridiculed by the slick defense lawyer they had brought up from Toronto.
01:01:55Mr. Short, you claim this horse had pneumonia.
01:01:59You're not a trained veterinarian, Mr. Short.
01:02:02How do you know it had pneumonia?
01:02:07George, who had worked with horses all his life, answered,
01:02:10A blind man could feel it with his cane.
01:02:14The defense had no comeback.
01:02:16The prosecution won the case.
01:02:19Everything will stop momentarily.
01:02:21Everything will stop momentarily, and then we will bury it.
01:02:41I think you can see this was a very difficult experience for us.
01:02:50This is birch bark on a living tree.
01:02:53I find something very soothing looking at this.
01:02:58It's a beautiful thing.
01:02:58I know it's a beautiful feeling.
01:03:01The end of this is little Impf guard.
01:03:02He'll have a beautiful friend right next time.
01:03:10I know it isn't a little Los Shiites.
01:03:16I know Dr. Short or worker in the sea sex code the proc텐ats.
01:03:16I want to throw it in.
01:03:16I'm Flour, right.
01:03:17I know the warrior had been Ad Chandra
01:03:27Theodore and Mrs. Smith stood in front of their new place.
01:03:31Again, expecting the click of a still camera, they held their poses,
01:03:36and you can see an incredible strength showing from within.
01:03:47A lot of making this film, choosing images in their order was subconscious.
01:03:53I chose images that felt right.
01:03:56I didn't articulate it when I was making the film,
01:04:00but looking at this image, I now see how much the idea of home
01:04:04and understanding your place on this earth was very central.
01:04:12Again, the image of the axe made more iconic by inverting the shot in the optical printer.
01:04:19It would have been much easier to have inverted the camera at the time,
01:04:22but the idea came to me during editing.
01:04:33Jim Anderson, Splitting Wood
01:04:37We met in high school and made many films together.
01:04:41You can see the easy camaraderie going on between us.
01:04:49Airing out blankets, a sure sign that the worst of winter is behind us.
01:04:55Spring is approaching!
01:04:59By this point, I had become very interested how camera movements are like brushstrokes in western and Chinese painting.
01:05:06I was thinking how movement of the image expresses the inner motion of the camera operator.
01:05:14I felt unbelievably joyful that spring was approaching and I spun in circles with the camera rolling.
01:05:22I didn't have a tripod.
01:05:25I practiced this movement a few times to get it right.
01:05:29The water hole is open.
01:05:31Life reawakens.
01:05:33The sound of a distant plane and nearby bird sounds.
01:05:38I felt this was just the right sound for this moment in the film.
01:06:06That's the circular truck mirror mentioned earlier.
01:06:08I held it and again used the spinning movement for entrancing depth effects.
01:06:36Here's Jim Anderson again.
01:06:39We were all feeling it.
01:06:41Spring is on the way.
01:06:44Meghan
01:06:44Meghan
01:06:44She
01:06:44She
01:06:44I
01:07:15I was completely alone at Buck Lake for a few weeks.
01:07:19This guy showed up out of nowhere.
01:07:21He had just got out of prison and had nowhere to go.
01:07:26He was hitchhiking and somebody told him how to walk into Buck Lake.
01:07:32He talked me into letting him stay at the house.
01:07:35His name was Graham.
01:07:37It was really strange.
01:07:43Prison is too painful to talk about.
01:07:49He smashed his cell once.
01:07:52He can sing a song about anything.
01:07:57He called me Sir.
01:07:59He washed the clothes and for three weeks they were a frozen block.
01:08:05He asked how long he could stay.
01:08:08I hedged and he split.
01:08:13He came back a week later.
01:08:18He said he met dogs and marshmallows out there.
01:08:21And he said he knew he was one of them too.
01:08:26He never cooks.
01:08:27He never does dishes.
01:08:29He asked how long he can stay.
01:08:31And I was evasive.
01:08:34He's putting on his boots.
01:08:38He knows an Indian woman in B.C. who will marry him.
01:08:42Who will marry him.
01:08:56Jimmy Grano asked Leslie to cut his long hair.
01:09:01A haircut.
01:09:02A sign of change and renewal.
01:09:13Elwood rechecks the position of the well.
01:09:24The earth.
01:09:26Now soft and fertile.
01:09:30Spring's first flower.
01:09:35Frogs return.
01:09:36This one with a leech on its back.
01:09:55The winds are warming.
01:10:00These images and sounds are meant to take us back to the beginning of the film.
01:10:06This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:07This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:09This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:13This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:18This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:23This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:23This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:23This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:25This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:25This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:26This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:26This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:27This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:27This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:28This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:29This one with a leech on its back.
01:10:32This one with a leech on its back.
01:11:00The final image is a large beaver dam lake we
01:11:04had never seen before, something new and an image of hope.
01:11:11The last words aren't the end because every inhale is followed by an exhale.
01:11:44The final image is a large beaver dam lake we have to use in the air.
01:11:45The final image is a large beaver dam lake we have to use in the air.
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