Archive for the 'News' Category

Cuban sunset

It’s been ages, I know. What can I say? I’m busy with school and films. But that’s a good thing, right? But, of course, there has to be some time for kicking back as well. That’s what I did for a few days in February - I went to Cuba. Now, it wasn’t all fun and games though, I did go down there to do some work. A professor from school did a workshop down at the Escueal Internacional de Cine y Televicion, about 45 mins outside of Havana, wihch lasted about two weeks. Before that, I went travelling around for five days on my own, all the way out to the south-western tip of Cuba. That’s where I saw this sunset, at Cabo de San Antonio. I have lots of photos that I’ll put, and I’ll tell you a bit about what happened down there. For now, enjoy this :-)

Our house in the middle of our street

Some winter shots taken outside our building with the first snow.

Our street - rue Rivard. Or Rivard street, if you will.

My room is behind the window in the top left corner.

Our beloved green recycling boxes. Save the environment.

The bikes have definitely been retired for now.

A random Montrealer who walked by as I was taking photos and wanted some attention. Nice guy.

A ton of new photos

Well, I flatter myself. 38 photos to be exact, and they’re far from new, but none of you will have seen them before. Remember that American football game I talked about way back? Well, I took a lot of photos from that event, and here are the best of them. I haven’t had time to work with them, so they’re all untouched, except for being reduced in sixce for the web. Still, I think there are some pretty awesome shots there (really, I should stop flattering myself, I know) so I hope you enjoy them. They also show a pretty nice cross section of Canadian society, both students and families and young kids, all in harmonious, cheering glory.

PS. Guys! I’ll be home for Christmas on just a little over a month! It’ll be good to see the sweet mother land again. Take care everyone.

Trailer for my latest short

Hey people. I’ve promised you this, and now you’ll finally get it. This trailer is being shown in public for the first time tomorrow, when I’m doing a presentation on my work, but I wanted you guys to be the very first to get the opportunity to see it. So here it is, the five minute (approx.) trailer for my latest short film. You might have to turn up the sound volume.

Hope you enjoy it.

PS. I would love some comments on this.

PPS. The picture edit of the film is getting closer to completion, currently at 37 minutes, but the sound still needs a lot of work, hence the extensive use of music in this trailer.

On posting comments

I also wanted to give everyone a heads up that it is possible to leave comments now. In the beginning you had to register and I had to approve your post and a whole lot of nonsense. That’s all gone, so now everyone can post as they wish, and your comment will appear on my blog instantly. So get those comments flyin’, I’d like to hear how everyone’s doing and what you think of my posts, my photos, my films and anything else you might think of, like wishes for what kind of things you want me to post. Take care y’all!

On RSS

I just wanted to post this message about RSS. If you subscribe to the RSS feed on this site - click the little orange logo on the right that looks like radiowaves - you can get notified whenever I update the site. All web browsers should have RSS support now, and you can also use something like Google Reader to be notified of updates, so you don’t have to stop by to check, and then maybe be disappointed if there’s no new post…

Toronto and Niagara Falls

Last weekend I went to Toronto and Niagara Falls with CISA - The Concordia International Students Association. I hadn’t travelled anywhere in Canada outside Montréal before this trip, so I was quite excited to see a bit more of this HUGE country (in fact the second largest in the world).

Thursday night at 23:00 I left my appartment and took the metro to school. A rather bizarre feeling really, going to school that late at night. The bus left at 00:00, and we drove through the night, arriving in Toronto at 6:30 in the morning. When we got up to the top terrace of the hotel, this is the sight that met us:

Toronto at sunrise

Toronto at sunrise again

So, after soaking up the morning sun for a while, I guess most people went to their room and caught a couple of hours of well deserved sleep. Not me. Together with my two trusted roommates, I started walking the streets of Toronto. Which was a really special experience at 7:00 in the morning - you’ll see from the photos that the streets were not excactly jam packed with people.

Sorry about the last image, I just thought it was kind of an interesting image of the pressures of the big city, and how it can push even its winged inhabitants to what did infact look almost like a suicide. I still have no idea what happened to the poor bird.

Anyway, Toronto is a real nice city, especially for architecture, but in terms of charm and atmosphere… well it doesn’t hold a candle to Montréal.

On Saturday the time had come for, I guess the main attraction of the trip - Niagara Falls. I’ve always been really interested and fond of nature and its wonders, and Niagara Falls has always been on my list of natural wonders I want to see, so going there was really quite exciting for me. For the people who haven’t been, this is what it looks like (through the lens of my camera anyway, the real thing is much more impressive).

We also went on that boat you see on the pictures, the Maid of the Mist. It was quite spectacular, feeling the incredible force and wind and spray of the immense falls on the deck, taking photos was really hard. I do have som BW photos that I’m developing, so hopefully I’ll have some great shots for a later occasion as well.

Well, those are the best photos I have. I didn’t bring my camera to the club on Saturday night (probably just as well), but to all you people who were also on the trip - those photos are on Facebook, which you probably already know. Oh, and thanks for a great trip everyone. These parting images are from our busride home, when some of you might have been sleeping…

A look at Concordia University

So it’s already been two weeks, huh? Well, I guess by now you’ve realized that my postings won’t be completely regular. It’s not ‘cuasee I’m lazy, well a bit of that too, but mostly I’m just really busy.

I had my first presentation in school today, for a unit called Art, Ideas and Practices. Basically my group and I had to present some viewpoints on two readings, one by Hélène Cixous and one by Virginia Woolf, and then ask open questions in class that would lead to a discussion around the works.

Other than that, I’m still sorting out all the boring stuff. I got a bank account yesterday with Banque de Montréal, I sorted out dental insurance, and on Tuesday I paid my tuition fees (ouch). But most things are falling into place now, the only thing missing is getting the perfect bike (for which I’ve been looking since I came).

Tonight at 00:00 I’m going to Toronto and Niagara Fall for the whole weekend, so I’m really looking forward to that. It’ll be nice to see a bit more of this huge country, and I’m bringing a photo and a video camera, so I will post images from that trip.

For now though, I thought you might like to have a look at what Concordia University looks like:

EV building

The EV building, where I’m currently editing my latest short film (on the 5th floor), and where all the really cool equipment is (on the two top floors).

EV building lobby

The lobby of the EV building.

EV building workspace

A place to sit, relax, or work, in the EV building.

EV editing room

This is where I’m editing my last short film. The tiny image on the computer screen is now officially the first published image from the film.

EV editing room

The view from my editing suite… sweet :-)

Faubourg Tower

The Faubourg Tower, where the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema is situated. This is where we have production class, and where I might also be spending some time editing.

VA building

This is the VA building, where all the Fine Arts students at Concordia come to do their art… or whatever it is that arts students do. Sometimes that’s just hanging out, looking cool and acting all suave. But the film students are always hard at work ;-)

VA building

Another view of the VA building. There’s a nice little lawn in front for hanging out, looking cool and acting all suave. Or discussing really important things, like art and politics, art and society, art and meta art, or none of the above.

So there you have it, a look at my university. If you’re a bit disorientated by all the different buildings; don’t worry. So was I for the first two weeks. To put it simply, all these buildings are located in the downtown area of Montréal, some right next to each other, none more than a couple of minutes walk away. So it’s pretty cool, really. I like it anyway.

There’s another campus called Loyola, about 20 minutes outside of the downtown area. I usually don’t go there, but about a week ago, I went up there to see the opening game for our football team - The Concordia Stingers. That’s American football, by the way. I’ll post images from that next week, and tell you how it went…