A few weeks after the Oscars, Student Television at McGill (TVM) is returning with its own annual film festival—albeit on a much smaller scale. The Fokus Film Festival, now in its seventh year, comprises of a series of events, including a 72-hour filmmaking competition and the screening of the submitted films, which will take place at Cinema du Parc on Mar. 21. Thrown into the mix is a viewing of Salt of the Earth (1954), which is the sole connection to this year’s theme of blacklisting and censorship in a Red Scare-era film industry.

Unlike the era’s House Committee on Un-American Activities, TVM does not reject many of its “crowdsourced” films. This brings in mixed results both in the films’ cohesion to a central theme, as well as their overall quality, although a few outstanding pieces are bound to carry the festival.

“We usually play most of what we get,” says festival director Molly Bower. “Most of the films we get are really well made; a lot of thought is put into them. And so we’re always proud to show them.”

Fatal Occupation, the project of students Sarah Leitner, Hannah O’Rear, and Emma Baker, began as an assignment for their class in the study of cinematic horror. The film was conceived during the student uprisings in Montreal—a time when ‘occupation’ described a type of protest more often than a type of employment. The movie’s antagonist works as a security guard; a serial killer with a flashlight as a murder weapon and a penchant for student protestor homicide. The short film follows him across the campus, making reference to both horror movie tropes and McGill in-jokes, and works by making satirical jabs in the right places as well as taking a neutral political stance.

Less than half of the films were shown at Fokus’ press screening, and the 72-hour filmmaking competition took place while this article was being written, so perhaps the best is yet to come. But the most impressive film so far is Ruffle, by Alexander Kasstan. Set to “New Error,” by German band Moderat, and shot in reverse motion, the work chronicles the brief journey of a man walking through a park in France. The chosen track, which advances as steadily as the man’s gait, is featured prominently, and gives the impression of a music video. Although Kasstan didn’t have this concept in mind originally, he has since contacted Moderat, and hopes to get an endorsement from the band.

Much like CKUT, or the McGill Tribune, one of the mandates of TVM is to educate students in the production of a medium that is not widely embraced by a specific McGill department. Fokus realizes this goal by providing a vehicle for students to get their films seen by a broader audience, and encourages those who wouldn’t normally show their films publicly to participate.

“TV McGill is a really great source for learning production,” says Leitner. “That’s where I learned everything, and their equipment is amazing.”

“It’s a skill that takes a long time to develop,” adds Bower. “For the people that are able to learn it while they’re here, without any program at all, it’s a miracle.”

TVM’s Fokus Film Festival runs this Thursday, Mar. 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cinema du Parc (3575 Avenue du Parc). Admission is $6 in advance and $7 at the door.

When Adam Gopnik was growing up in 1970s Montreal, he chose to steer clear of CEGEP. Instead—like Will Hunting—he simply went to the library and read. The choice appears to have paid off. Since completing his BA in Art History, the McGill alumnus (’80) has become an esteemed author, with three National Magazine Awards and a George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting to his name. His essays in the New Yorker magazine, where Gopnik is a staff writer, deal with a wide range of topics. From art, to science, to anthropology, they remain edifying without verging on the pedagogic, imbued with a light, measured humour. After his recent Macnamara lecture on learning and mastery at McGill, the Tribune spoke to Gopnik about the process which led to his literary success.

MT: You came to writing through art criticism. How did you develop the interest to write on other topics?

AG: I don’t know that I ever did, really. It’s like the matrix—more of a three dimensional illusion of erudition than the real thing. The truth is I never really wanted to be an art critic in particular, it just was an accident of my own personal history that I found myself in New York City with a scholarship to do graduate work in art history. It was a way of getting from Montreal to New York. Once I’d done that, I had a certain expertise in art … that was a very natural thing for me to be writing about. But the art history was much more instrumental to my ambitions as a writer, than writing was instrumental for my desire to be an art historian, or an art critic.

MT: Did it provide a base of historical context and a cultural awareness, or is it just the fact that you read so much?

AG: Yes, it did—I got my basic training in … research [when] doing academic work in art history, but the simple truth is I think I would’ve done exactly the same things that I picked up in art history. The real foundational moments in the making of my own mind came from going into a library when I was 16 or 15. I think those were really the crucial years, and the experience of digging deep in a library and taking pleasure in it, finding that it’s a reliable source of pleasure for me—that shaped my mind. My mind worked better at that age than it has since, and to the degree that I’m able to do good work now, I really feed off the capital that I’d accumulated in those years.

MT: What is a key piece of advice for someone who wants to write?

AG: There’s a piece of practical advice I always give. The key to actually writing things is taking the mental task of writing, and transforming it into the physical task that your mind and intuitions are invariably smarter and truer than you are. It always happens to be that the things that people like best or enjoy the most in my own writing are things I was scarcely aware of when I was writing them. It just seems to be the seamless, the obvious, the self-evident way. So the trick with writing is to trust your own mind, and to simply put the words down on paper, or in pixel form, and the only way to do that, that I’ve found in 30 years of doing it, is to simply centre it not in your head, but in the pit of your stomach, and make it a task like riding a stationary bicycle at a health club. And when you succeed in making it a physical task, you can astonish yourself in spite of the relentless and never-ending exasperations and aggravations of the task of writing. Just as if you go to the gym every day and ride the bike for 40 minutes, your lungs expand; if you sit and simply try and write as though you were riding a bike, your work expands. It’s the same advice that every writer always gives, that you just have to apply yourself to it; but I mean it in a more encouraging sense: you don’t have to apply yourself to it intelligently, you just have to apply yourself. If you have anything to say, if you have any reservoir of wit or feeling in your mind, it will be expressed.

MT: What is the most important thing for students to get out of their university experience?

AG: Nobody knows what will prepare you for the work you’re going to do, and the work you’re going to have. I did art history, and that turned out to occupy a very small part of my life. It’s part of my pleasures, because I love going to museums and galleries, but it’s not what I ended up writing about. All of that effort—memorizing lists of post-impressionists, or the iconography of the Pergamon Altar—was wasted. But of course, in another way, it wasn’t, because what’s at the core of education is accomplishment—that is, mastering something, whether it’s a system of guitar chords, or magic tricks, or the name of post-impressionists, or the iconography of the Pergamon Altar. Once you’ve demonstrated to yourself that you’re capable of mastery, then any kind of mastery you tend to approach in life tends to yield much more easily to you. The thing I would tell any student is master something; really learn it, whether it’s the piano, or the history of science.

Adam Gopnik’s latest book, The Table Comes First: France, Family, and the Meaning of Food, is available in stores now.

Highly character driven, Based on a True Story follows the lives of ‘troubled’ youths and the biases attached to their lifestyle. Director Isaac Robinson and his talented ensemble examine human problems in this piece of devised theatre, as the cast animate semi-fictional characters that they each helped to write.

The audience is first thrust into Danny’s (Justin Lazarus) mind, who begins the play by breaking down the fourth wall and staring down the audience members. Indeed, the entire script boasts an awareness of the audience with its use of confessional monologues. Lazarus dynamically reveals the world through Danny’s drug-influenced eyes, and his perception of how others view ‘people like him.’ He captures the audience’s attention with his frantic energy, interspersed with glimpses of his softer side, as he talks about the love of his life, Camille (Kim Drapack). After overcoming some early nerves, Lazarus’ ability to shock the audience with Danny’s highs and lows is stunning. He is crazed, calm, vulnerable, and desperate, sometimes all in one breath—and leaves the audience wondering, “Who would Danny be if he wasn’t high?”

Opposite the erratic Danny is the hilariously loveable Stevie (Cara Krisman), his faithful second in command. Together, the two feed off  of each other on the stage. Krisman’s physical performance is scene stealing, whether she is fumbling around with her much loved wine bottle, searching for “the thing that tastes like what she wants,” or espousing her desire to stay sober so that she can be an artist. She presents Stevie’s struggle with care, uncovering the layers of her character.

Caught in between Lazarus and Krisman, Drapack is sometimes lost. Her character Camille acts as a calming influence on Danny, but points out that he only ever listens to Stevie anyway. As a result, it is difficult to find a purpose for Camille, other than that her world revolves around Danny. The writing for this character is weaker than the others, as her development is left until the end of the play, and reveals more about Danny than her.

The performances of Emily Doyle, playing Judge Parks, and Michael Ruderman, as Officer Davis, are notable. They bring depth to characters who could have easily been conveyed as two-dimensional villains trying to maintain an unjust order. Like Danny, an imperfect hero, Parks and Davis are both sympathetic, staying true to Robinson’s determination to show no clear right or wrong. Ruderman is striking. His honesty is evocative, and it is hard to condemn his character’s excessively violent arrests.

Set designer David Costello captures the stark contrast between the two battling worlds, simply by breaking the stage in two. He uses the intimate space wisely. Judge Parks’ courtroom and Officer Davis’ police station claim one side of the stage, neatly decorated with poster boards, while the other is cluttered with beaten up chairs and graffiti, the latter painted by art director Vanessa Chazelle.

Although the writing is weak in some areas, causing the play to drag, the well-directed acting provides a strong backbone for this ambitious collaborative project. Based on a True Story takes a hard look at its characters, and reinforces the fact that everyone has their own demons to confront.

TNC Theatre’s Based on a True Story runs from Mar. 20 to 23 at 8 p.m., Morrice Hall (3485 McTavish). Student tickets $6.