Camera Phone - Brooke Biaz

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1967, or ’69 maybe? Either way, it started when two guys from USP decided to screen at the Roxy, during the Waters Art Festival, some 8mm shorts they’d made on the beach that summer. The screening was a hit, and soon other USPites and film-makers from the beach and the Valley were wanting to screen their own films, both professional, by that stage, and amateur. By the 1970s (bored yet?) the festival had become a noticeable Southport event. They launched a regular awards program, screened Mondo Trasho one year and, in the third year (’74, I believe), actually had both George Romero and Karen Black as guest presenters. Later that year the festival was taken over by the Arts Festival Committee as a formal USP annual event. Local council support was “thus forthcoming” (to quote the flyer); followed by such corporate sponsorship from the likes of: KB Beer, Mixx Surfwear, Monstrol Pharmaceuticals, Loon Bach clothing, the Mitsui Motor Company and, recently, One-Tech Supa-Phone Shops. Growth continued through the ’80s and 90s to now “combining the best local talent with a varied program of major independent productions, new talent showcases” and the occasional first release studio slot. Everything is screened at The Roxy cinema.

      End of History 101.

      Down at Lystead and Wishhart, the office is buzzing as they’re starting to comb through Christ knows how many University accounts (all very Miss Marple), looking for monies in, monies out, trying to pick up where the cash went so the College doesn’t have to lose their government contract for overseeing this kind of big public arts spending, acting like nothing is happening, while the two senior charity managers (unknowing) are going on attending board meetings at Hycraft Concrete, the Montreal View Gallery, Donatii Constructions, the Festival of the Waters Film Festival, and the Board of Governors of the University of Southport. Before they leave, that is, for Greece to view the Mycenaean palace architecture in ancient Pylos.

      The way I figure it, it’s always possible to reject the performative ineptitude of some crimes and still gaze on their beauty—to quote Truffaut who does it, after all, in La Mariée était en noir. And really, having said all that, who gives a shit? He also says: “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” Or was that Godard who said that? Anyway, it’s relevant.

      “Candia O Candia,” Karen sings.

      I go in first and phone film her from behind the Kencaf machine, entering through the cafe doors whose glass is partly covered by such things as STUDENT UNION APRIL 3: GOMEZ, TICKETS HERE and THE GAY CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE WANTS YOU and FENDER BASS FOR SALE, CHEAP. She does not know why she sings and is embarrassed to have done it. She laughs and apologizes. Karen’s laugh enters my soundtrack like . . . the scent of cinnamon, a pinch of vanilla, some sweet cake shop. She reveals that she may have done it because she is happy at having been accepted to do a master’s degree in English Literature, and has taken a job in Supa-Video on the Halfmarket, overlooking the beach.

      The mall is already cranking up and glaring and the traffic follows a curve, like some kind of giant knee raised abruptly into downtown, and pedestrians, mostly office bods and shop assistants from places like Linens n Things and Best Buy, Target and Big Shoes, alight from the buses which, at this hour, having access to the entire street, growl and smoke and give off heat which hangs in the air.

      As Karen sits down next to me, I say, pulling back to keep her in full frame: “So here-- voice over-- we have Karen Munson who is writing a thesis on Joan of Arc. . . sorry, I mean representations of Jeanne d’Arc.”

      She takes a lip liner from her pocket and gets ready to do her lips. “Well thank you, Mr. Droste,” she says, to my phone, “and I believe your own work is coming along a peach on Love and Death in the films of Roman Polanski? Or is it Dreams and Nightmares in the Hollywood Blockbuster? Better still: What Ever Happened to Farley Granger?”

      “The latter,” I say, thinking Karen may not know that Farley Granger is still alive and appeared in The Whoopee Boys in 1986, and also thinking that Karen is obviously planning to let her hair grow out so that she looks like Ingrid Bergman.

      She orders the Viennese coffee, medium ground. I order a brulot of the medium ground Costa Rican, along with some Honey Madeleines.

      Candia is quite full for breakfast. I figure it’s because this week is Freshmen Week and also because there’s that upcoming local event called the USP Arts Festival for which step vans and floats and electricity company trucks are passing in the direction of the beach, and which would be pure poke if not for the Festival of the Waters Film Festival, which is attached to it. I decide also, in the same moment that I decide a medium long shot will give a sense of depth to what is feeling at this moment like a very narrow and hard place to tone, that I might write something on the films of Sam Raimi, being as Wes Craven has been all done to death and nobody really seriously believes he will ever do anything better than The Hills Have Eyes. I might also join the Student Film Society, though I hear they’re all into Gandhi and what Antonioni likes best and spend most of their time talking about what Harry Dean Stanton did to Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas. . . . like it’s not obvious!

      The food arrives. My Madeleines look like something from a tomb, the clear amber they find in Egypt, I mean.

      Karen says: “Considerable!”

      She points at the wall opposite and says: “That’s In the Car by Roy Lichtenstein.” But she doesn’t stop there, pointing one by one. “Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird by Miro. Something by Hockney. Uh. Uh. That’s . . .”

      “Sigourney Weaver,” I say, “In Gorillas in the Mist.” admiring the cinematography of John Seale and Alan Root for which neither of them, I might add, was nominated for an Oscar. “You’re very arteestic these days, Karen,” I say ironically, but she doesn’t bite.

      We unwrap the cutlery which is wrapped in red paper napkins, though neither of us is planning on using it; but before I’ve even started my brulot, Helena walks in.

      “Film what, did you say?” she asks Karen, kissing her on a cheek in a manner I can’t help noticing. Karen is her best friend and once when they were temping (she told me in confidence, but what the Hell) Karen slept with her when they shared a flat on The Corso and Helena was dabbling in film, acting, running and so forth and Karen was a USP freshman . . . though Karen may have been totally lying and just trying to get a reaction from me. Then it didn’t happen at all. It’s difficult to tell.

      Karen looks up in my direction. I phone shoot them both in American shot, shaking their heads and grinning like juveniles, and then I call out from behind the Kencaf: “Hi, Helena.”

      “What’s got into you, Ciaran?”

      I don’t bite at this and just go on filming until the waitress, who reminds me of Drew Barrymore, comes over to take Helena’s order.

      “You won’t believe this,” says Helena, “but what I really want is the moussaka, but I know it’s like impossible. So I guess I’ll just have the au lait—a Kenyan—and, by the way, is it okay to use the . . . ?”

      Drew Barrymore points her out through the bead curtain (Candia is, to my mind, a cross between ’70s retro and a place done over with nice white enamel touch of Zanussi) and Helena, first lighting an MB Light Tar, then leaving it smoking in foil ashtray on the table, sidles out.

      For some reason Karen has her face dipped into her Viennese, which she has half drunk, staring at me, and I think it’s just lucky that Candia serves decent sized coffees or she wouldn’t be able to do whatever she thinks she’s doing. I try to ignore her and, looking out into the mall where maybe a hundred people are now sliding past in the direction of The Eastside and Grantham which have not yet opened but which have turned on their music which sends into the mall Sex and Candy by Marcia Playground and also The Daddy of The All by The Space Monkeys which really surprises me, I describe to her for no good reason the differences between J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear made in 1962 and starring Robert Mitchum and Mark Scorsese’s Cape Fear, made in 1991 and starring Robert de Niro. This is basically the difference between Polly Bergen and Jessica Lang and just how good Juliette Lewis really was. Personally, I think Gregory Peck had no range.

      “So Ciaran,” says Helena, returning, “what’s your film going to be about anyway?”

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