David Cronenberg and Videodrome at Cinematheque
Posted by Trista DeVries on October 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment
On Thursday, October 22 an excited audience packed into the tiny 200 seat Jackman Hall, home to Cinematheque at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The audience was excited for two major reasons. First, they were there to see a screening of Videodrome, Daivd Cronenberg’s 1983 forecasting of the age of internet, video and media and, second, Mr. Cronenberg himself was slated to attend the screening and chat to the crowd. Now if that’s not enough to get a Toronto film fan excited, then nothing can.
The evening started with the wonderful and accomplished Steve Gravestock, Director of Canadian Programming for TIFF, introducing Norman Wilner and Adam Nayman, who are film critics for Now Magazine and Eye Weekly respectively, and both equally accomplished. Adam discussed the seminal and lurid nature of the film and how you could be punished severely if your parents found you with a copy of Videodrome in the house, while Norman noted that it was really the story of the Toronto’s media, especially the advent of blue movies on CityTV late on Friday nights. After this lively and wholly appropriate introduction that perfectly danced the line between critic and fan, up came the man himself – David Cronenberg.
Now I must admit that on this cold night in October that I did not fall on the side of ‘critic’, only on the side of ‘fan’. Sitting in the second row and being less than 20 feet from him was…. lifemaking. As in, it made my life and I can die happy now. Because, you see, I have a deep and perverse love of Cronenberg’s movies. His introduction of the film is below.
As for the movie itself, this was a first time viewing for me and people were right when they said it had aged… strangely. And I think they meant, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stranger…’ They would be right. This movie has everything in it. Everything from J-film gore to a “prophetic” look at the internet and interactivity with technology, all wrapped up with a sex and violence bow. Yes, I said a sex and violence bow. Frankly, I loved this movie. I think it has so much in it and so accurately captured what was to come in our relationship with technology, especially how it would influence our relationships with one another. I am quite glad that I got to see this in a theatre packed with people, since I think that if I saw it in my home all by myself, I would be a little unsure of what was real and what wasn’t. But then, itsn’t that the point?
N.B. While I was searching for images for this post I saw a listing that said, ‘Universal to Remake Videodrome’. Now that is truly terrifying and should be considered a crime against cinema.
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