On the Record at the Toronto International Film Festival

Published at 1:11 pm on September 18, 2009
No Comments 1 image

About the author:

Mike Crisolago
I am a 29-year old Toronto-based journalist and writer who has a passion for theatre, literature, history and baseball...

Tags:

Share this article:

Dylan Reibling is a tease. That’s right. I said it.

Proof? Check out Record, the Toronto filmmaker’s latest offering, fresh off a run as part of the Short Cuts Canada program at the Toronto International Film Festival. Reibling’s film – his first at TIFF – runs just five minutes long and the only dialogue is in Russian. It features a Soviet-era marching song and takes place at a used-record sale in Kensington Market. It’s funny and strange and just when you’re hooked (and his film will hook you), it’s over. You’re left sitting there, staring at a black screen.

“I like the short film as a format,” Reibling, a York University grad, said. “And I like short, short. I like getting into an idea and getting out of it. I don’t like any extraneous stuff. And that’s where I am now. I’m working towards feature length.”

That’s all fine and good, but what about us Dylan: the viewers? The ones you intrigue with your unique plot, vibrant cinematography, clever shots and familiar yet somehow fresh setting? What are we to do?

“If there’s a bit of ambiguity I’m happier with that. I’d rather have that than have some sort of pedagogical or pedantic, ‘This is what you have to think’,” Reibling said. “I love that people can sort of draw their own inferences and be part of the encounter, the experience.”

The sunny side of TIFF’s velvet rope was, until this year, an unfamiliar place for Reibling. A long-time volunteer and submitter of films, Reibling finally got to attend TIFF the way he’s always hoped to: by invitation. And it’s no surprise why. Record, based on actual events, centres on a used-record seller named Derek and his surreal encounter with three former members of the Russian army. The film is so natural in its pacing, so recognisable in its locale and a perfect balance of “What the f—k?” and believability, that the viewer feels the same sense of opportunity, of tension, of confusion and of shock that Derek does by the second the screen goes blank.

At that point, I wanted to rush through Kensington and find the three Russians. I wanted to know what that twist at the end of the film was all about. I wanted to shout “five more minutes!” at the flashing credits.

But the real beauty, I discovered later, comes in the small tips of the hat to Russian art history that Reibling scatters throughout the film.

“I’ve put in little details, like the writing on the record is an ancient Russian proverb…[and] an allusion to Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin,” Reibling said. “I like when people have intellectual reactions because I’m always interested to hear what people say and the back and forth is really exciting.”

The film is also intriguing for it’s depiction of the overwhelming sense of recall that music can trigger. For the Russians in the film, the reactions to a glaring remnant of their Soviet past are passionate and varied. For Russians who happen to be in the audience, Reibling says the response tends to be slightly more subdued.

“I kind of feel like there’s a very guarded response to it,” Reibling said. “I think it’s such a complex history – culturally, religiously, economically, socially – that there are lots of walls that have been built up. So I’m waiting for more.”

Reibling may not have to wait much longer. If his film gets the recognition it deserves from the TIFF brass, it could launch the 30-year-old toward one of his many future goals.

“I’m trying to get an actual screening in Russia,” Reibling said. “I’d just be so fascinated to see how they’d react – how they would connect with it or not connect with it.”

I’d be careful Dylan. I’m not sure how kindly the Russians take to teasing.

For the complete interview with Dylan Reibling, check out Mike’s blog, Bastard Type.