"Trains of Winnipeg"

We won't be beating our own drum every single day, but what can you do? It's an eventful week at The Auteurs. Today sees the opening of a panel discussion of Clive Holden's Trains of Winnipeg: 14 Film Poems, part of an ongoing project that includes a book and audio CD, as well as of the potential online distribution may offer to avant-garde cinema.

Alley Pezanoski-Browne introduces the illustrious panel: "Chris Gehman (filmmaker, writer, former Toronto International Film Festival Wavelengths programmer, and former Artistic Director of Images Festival, i.e., the first Trains of Winnipeg programmer); Brenda Longfellow (filmmaker, writer, film theorist, and Associate Professor in the Department of Film at York University); Dave Barber (Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque programmer for over 25 years); Michael Sicinski (Houston-based teacher and writer in Cinema Scope, indieWIRE, Cineaste and Cargo); Jason Anderson (novelist and film critic in Eye Weekly, artforum.com, Globe & Mail, Village Voice and Cinema Scope); Alex Rogalski (Toronto International Film Festival programmer, and founder of the One Take Super 8 traveling film project); Tobias Morgan (Paris-based film director, and producer of The Auteurs' Garage project engine)" and Alley herself (San Francisco-based film producer, and Producer for The Auteurs & The Auteurs' Scratchpad online magazine), and of course, Clive Holden himself. A week from today, that is, on December 16, you can join the conversation as well.

Meantime, the community's been posting away in three new "best of the decade" topics in the Forum: Images, Filmmakers and Films. And of course, the current lists and awards tracker tracks on.

In other news: Explore the Universal Monster Legacy; David Bordwell and Donald Richie on Akira Kurosawa; "2009 was a killer year for underground films coming out on DVD," writes Mike Everleth, introducing his Holiday Shopping Guide; new issue of Offscreen; Yoel Meranda on Fred Camper on "ways of seeing"; at Cargo, David Lynch at the Dark Splendor exhibition at the Max Ernst Museum Brühl.

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