Look back in whimsy

Kingsville’s Tim Swaddling’s first feature The Arrow and the String will have two screenings at this weekend's Windsor International Film Festival.....Swaddling, who has a few short films under his belt, came up with the idea of the film because it’s somewhat reflective of his age.....He grew up in Kingsville and graduated from the University of Windsor with a combined major in communications and visual arts. But recently he started to realize he was getting to an age - 30 - when you start to look back on your youth. “I was already starting to gain perspective on the guy I was when I first entered university or moved out of my parents’ home,” he said. “I had friends who were all commenting on the same thing...about these issues dealing with how you reconcile your past with your future".....The film’s main character Jerry (Noah Davis) is in a rut with his career and his girlfriend. One day he runs into an old acquaintance who appears as vibrant as Jerry felt years earlier. The acquaintance gives him a card for a Detective Brown (Jeff Williams) who specializes in finding past lives. Jerry is sceptical.....Swaddling was able to obtain equipment to make the film through the support of the U of Windsor's Studio 5. Swaddling, also a musician and visual artist, is thrilled that WIFF picked up the flic, with two screenings followed by question and answer sessions with the director.....“It’s quite a big honour for me, just getting into the festival.”

Film Notes: Jean-Luc Godard an anti-Semite? There's an uproar in the American Jewish community about famed New Waver Godard being honoured at an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences banquet Nov. 13. Godard is sharply critical of Israel and at one time claimed to be a Maoist. Godard, among other things, made a statement in 1985 and reported in a 2008 biography by Richard Brody: "What I find interesting in the cinema is that, from the beginning, there is the idea of debt. The real producer is, all the same, the image of a Central European Jew"......I just returned from two weeks in Montreal where it seems quite possible to simply roll through the months going from film festival to film festival. After attending the Festival of New Cinema, Cinemania the French film festival (wth English sub-titles) has opened. There is also the Greek and Arab film fests, not to mention the gay and lesbian fest.